The results of the study bring newfound hope to people with Long Covid: the Gupta Program led to a significant decrease in fatigue and increase in energy levels among participants after just three months. The Gupta Program was four times more effective at reducing fatigue and twice as effective at increasing energy compared to the control treatment.
London, United Kingdom, July 21, 2023, The Covid-19 Pandemic was life-changing for millions of people worldwide. Besides the economic devastation, may people are left with what is now labeled as “Long Covid”. A landmark peer-reviewed independent clinical study published in a medical journal called “Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine” has provided hope for millions of people who have “Long Covid” and other chronic conditions.
In a 3-month randomized controlled clinical trial, the Gupta Program was compared to a Wellness program, which as a control group, focused on changes to diet, nutrition, exercise and sleep. The Gupta Program led to a significant decrease in fatigue and increase in energy levels among participants after just three months. The Gupta Program was four times more effective at reducing fatigue and twice as effective at increasing energy compared to the control treatment.
Gupta Program Brain Retraining is a neuroplasticity brain retraining program, based upon the premise that Long Covid is caused by abnormalities in the brain. Following a Covid-19 infection, for a small percentage of patients, the brain may go into a hyper-defense mode, and continue to trigger the immune system and nervous system well after the infection has gone. This then causes on-going chronic inflammation which causes the symptoms of Long Covid. The Gupta Program attempts to reverse the hypothesized conditioning in the brain and return the body back to balance.
The program had previously shown significant positive results in randomized clinical studies for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and Fibromyalgia, The program is now available as an app on iOS and Android to facilitate easy access to the treatment for patients and doctors alike.
The founder, Ashok Gupta, is now looking to raise funds for larger clinical trials to replicate this promising initial results.
Last Saturday, dozens of former aides, friends, supporters and dignitaries gathered at the former synagogue that houses the Rainbow PUSH Coalition’s headquarters on the South Side of Chicago to commemorate the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s second presidential campaign 35 years ago. The organization’s founder, once a college football star towering at over six feet with broad shoulders, is now wheeled around by a group of trusted aides. Parkinson’s disease has ravaged Mr. Jackson’s body and arrested his speech — though according to those around him, it hasn’t slowed his mind.
Fifty-two years ago at the age of 30, Mr. Jackson broke away from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which had been led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. before his death, to form his own organization, Operation PUSH, which first stood for People United to Save Humanity and later, People United to Serve Humanity (and which then merged with the Rainbow Coalition). Mr. Jackson, now 81, announced he would be shifting day-to-day leadership of the organization to the Rev. Dr. Frederick Haynes III, a Texas-based pastor, 62.
It has been 39 years since Mr. Jackson first ran for office, and yet what he stands for — a living link to the civil rights movement and a symbol of the work that remains to fulfill that movement’s dream of full equality for Black people in America — is something precious. Perhaps all the more so given that Mr. Jackson remains a complicated, enigmatic figure whose work is as misunderstood as it is seemingly ubiquitous.
Mr. Jackson left seminary to march beside Dr. King in Selma, Ala., eventually making his way into the inner circle. He was there on the day that Dr. King was killed, wearing a shirt he famously said was stained by Dr. King’s blood. From that moment on, he would use his extraordinary oratory skills and knack for attracting media attention to become one of the most well-known Black people in America and perhaps the world.
Mr. Jackson had been sent to Chicago by Dr. King in 1966 to manage Operation Breadbasket. It had a bold mission: to address the economic conditions of Black people. Tasked with moving the movement beyond the sit-ins and protests aimed at securing basic decency for Black people in the South, Breadbasket targeted substandard housing conditions, persistent de facto and de jure racial exclusion and the diversity of products that stocked the store shelves in minority communities.
Mr. Jackson learned from and expanded on tactics Dr. King pioneered. In 1966, Dr. King and his wife, Coretta, briefly lived in a dilapidated housing project in Chicago to highlight the treatment of poor Black people by landlords, prompting the city to crack down on substandard living conditions. Months later, the threat of peaceful marches through the all-white Chicago suburb Cicero aroused the fury of the American Nazi Party, which sought to form a counterprotest. The march was called off after Dr. King reached an agreement with Chicago leaders to open more housing in the city to Black people. President Lyndon Johnson rode the momentum of national mourning in the wake of Dr. King’s assassination to push Congress to approve the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
In the years after Dr. King’s murder, Operation Breadbasket’s boycotts and Mr. Jackson’s pickets of local businesses became legendary. Later the organization’s ambitions grew, and after Mr. Jackson’s break with S.C.L.C., he began to target more powerful interests, shifting to national companies such as Pepsico and the grocer A&P. A similar pattern played out in dozens of meetings with countless corporate entities over the course of decades. There were times when the simple threat of a meeting with Mr. Jackson would touch off a cascade of events that resulted in new opportunities for Black business owners seeking to buy into franchises and executives who were locked out of board positions and C-suite positions. At other times, seeking to avoid the heat, corporations proactively moved to diversify their boards or corporate ranks.
Mr. Jackson often said he considered himself a “tree shaker, not a jelly maker.” Those who worked for him knew the saying well: After all, they were the ones responsible for picking up the fruit from the floor to make the jelly.
Could anyone else shake the tree quite like Jesse Jackson? And even if they could, would America still value it? At a time when diversity is once again coming under political attack, the tactics that Mr. Jackson pioneered and the doors of opportunity he opened for countless women and people of color in corporate America are under attack as well.
Almost immediately after Dr. King’s death, Mr. Jackson moved to fill the vacuum that was left in the civil rights movement. But it wasn’t until more than a decade later that he began to look at politics. Mr. Jackson’s efforts to register voters in Chicago helped propel Harold Washington into office in 1983, making him the first Black mayor of that city. Mr. Jackson traversed the country to register voters, especially across the South. It would eventually fuel his unlikely national bid for the presidency. Despite years of living in Chicago, he never lost his South Carolina drawl or his connection to a network of Southern Black churches that sustained his ministry and activism. Mr. Jackson never actually pastored a congregation but ministered to a roving flock, preaching the virtues of civic engagement. His parable of unregistered voters (mostly in the South) as the pebbles in David’s slingshot in his fight against Goliath became a cornerstone of his presidential campaigns.
Mr. Jackson’s political influence was felt most acutely on the left, which has been shaped by the ideas he ran on in his presidential campaigns, his emphasis on increasing the electorate through widespread voter registration of youth and people of color, and by the scores of people who at some point made their way through his orbit. Among them: cabinet members like the former labor secretary Alexis Herman, Representative Maxine Waters, the political strategist Donna Brazile and the Housing and Urban Development secretary Marcia Fudge.
Many Americans, especially Black people, remember the spectacle of Mr. Jackson’s presidential ambitions: the massive rallies, the chants of “Run, Jesse, run!” But those campaigns also merged a unique platform of economic populism, social justice and moral urgency. While Mr. Jackson did successfully mobilize and energize Black voters, his candidacy is best remembered for mobilizing voters not on the basis of race but on moral imperatives and policy prescriptions that when compared with those of today’s Democratic Party seem prescient.
The shorthand of Mr. Jackson’s historic candidacies in the 1980s labels him correctly as the most serious Black candidate for the presidency until Barack Obama emerged two decades later. But Mr. Jackson’s greatest achievement was not, as some thought, his race but the policy platform he built. In 1984 and 1988, he ran to end economic inequality, introduce universal health care and promote America first policies that would have echoes in the decades to come. He envisioned a coalition of Black, white, Asian, Native, rural, urban, gay and straight people coming together to achieve social justice as much as economic justice.
“When we form a great quilt of unity and common ground, we’ll have the power to bring about health care and housing and jobs and education and hope to our nation,” Mr. Jackson said in his speech at the 1988 Democratic Convention. His unsuccessful campaigns had a concrete consequence: Mr. Jackson negotiated permanent changes to the Democratic Party’s nominating process, including ending its winner-take-all primary system, which made Barack Obama’s first victory in the Democratic primary possible. By the time of Mr. Obama’s run for office, an entire generation of Black Americans had seen and hoped for a Black man in the White House. “We lifted the low ceiling higher,” Mr. Jackson mused to me recently. “We lifted the ceiling up on Black possibility.”
Abby D. Phillip is senior political correspondent and anchor of “Inside Politics” on CNN. She is writing a book on Jesse Jackson’s legacy in American politics.
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Step behind the unassuming facade of Mendel Goldberg Fabrics on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and you’ll suddenly find yourself surrounded by an array of gorgeous fabrics on its floor-to-ceiling shelves: bolts and neatly folded stacks of fine cottons, silks, satins, taffetas and lace as well as more opulent materials, from bubble-gum pink metallic brocade to apple green silk satin jacquard and shimmery pleated navy chiffon. There are fabrics woven with gold thread or glittering with Swarovski crystals. And there is Chanel-style wool bouclé in pale pink, or black and white woven with little ribbons and pearls. The material is as luxuriously textured as a lamb’s coat. I want it.
I don’t sew. I haven’t got the DNA (no one in my family did). I’ve never really paid attention to the world of bespoke clothing or the fabrics a designer might use, not until a few months ago, when I went to Hester Street — a street once jammed with pushcarts and now crowded with delivery bikes — and walked into Mendel Goldberg, where, feeling as if I’d wandered into a psychedelic dreamscape, I coveted everything.
Presiding over the shop from her usual perch, above a large wooden table where she measures out the fabric, was proprietor Alice Goldberg, wearing a fitted white blouse, a narrow beige skirt with a zipper up the back and black flats. Goldberg is the fourth generation of her family to run the store since her great-grandfather Mendel founded it. Alongside Luis Ortega, the Goldbergs’ aide-de-camp since 1989, Alice has witnessed a few memorable shopping sprees, including the time a few years back when a group of Saudi princesses spent about 30 minutes in the store, “buying like crazy,” and the day seven bridesmaids purchased beaded sky blue tulle for their dresses.
Costume designers are also frequent customers. Among them is John Glaser, who oversaw the wardrobe for season one of Netflix’s “Bridgerton” (along with Ellen Mirojnick) as well as that for the upcoming season three. “You can get things here you can’t get anywhere else, like certain very rich and expensive over-embroidered or beaded material,” Glaser says. He’s used Mendel Goldberg’s fabrics for a number of the costumes for the Regency-era period drama, including a sheer white frock in laser cut silk chiffon, a fabric that “we used inside out,” Glaser adds. “There was also a dress for Lady Bridgerton made of pale blue silk jacquard that reminded me of an 18th-century wallpaper.”
While I’m in the shop, I watch as Goldberg drapes ivory gazar against a bride-to-be, showing her how it would work as an engagement party dress. Later that afternoon, Tsigie White, the costume designer for the TV series “Power Book III: Raising Kanan,” stops in. She’s mesmerized by a piece of gold material covered with glittering paillettes. “I’ll find something to do with it for the show,” she says while Goldberg measures a yard of it for her. “I’ve never been here before; a friend mentioned it,” she continues. “This is a great find for me.”
Goldberg knows her stock by heart, and even the stores’s website — seemingly the business’s largest concession to the 21st century — is wonderfully detailed, the fabrics carefully described and shown draped on mannequins. Goldberg’s customers are based all over the country, as well as abroad; some of them ask to browse the fabrics over Zoom or FaceTime. “I want everyone to buy on the internet with the same confidence as if they walked in the store. Let’s say you’re in Texas and you order something online. I don’t want you to open [the package] and say, ‘Oh my God,’ ” she says. “I want you to be thrilled.”
It’s a long way from the days when Mendel Goldberg, a Jewish immigrant from Poland, sold tailoring supplies off a pushcart on the Lower East Side. In 1890, he opened the shop in this five-floor building. (The basement is now the stockroom; apartments occupy the upper four stories.) His son Alexander sold silk to furriers for coat linings; Alexander’s son Samuel — Alice’s father — sold fabric to Gimbels and Macy’s, both of which had large departments for home dressmaking.
The business prospered. Alice was born in Brooklyn and spent her later childhood years in Great Neck, N.Y., where her parents lived and commuted to Hester Street. “I was a very sheltered girl,” she says. “All my clothes were made for me by my grandma Ida, Alexander’s wife.”
After college, Alice taught math, married and moved to Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where she still lives. She has two daughters, Alexandra, who lives in Jerusalem, and Josefa, who lives in New Rochelle, N.Y. Josefa’s daughter Eliana did her recent high-school senior thesis on fashion. If she eventually takes over Mendel Goldberg Fabrics, Eliana will be the sixth generation to manage the business.
Alice Goldberg didn’t join the family business until she was in her 30s. Her father came to her home and said, “‘Your mother is sick, you have to come into the store.’ I walked in and never left,” she says.
Her first assignment was a fabric buying trip to Europe. “At some of the great Swiss companies, I saw the most beautiful goods. They asked about my credit because they didn’t know me,” she says, smiling. “I say, ‘Can you do me a favor? Please send someone to tell my driver I’ll be here for some time.’ I figured if they saw I had a Mercedes with a chauffeur it would be all right.” She got the credit, and now travels to Italy, Switzerland and France twice a year.
It isn’t just the sumptuous fabrics that make Mendel Goldberg so sought out by connoisseurs, however, but Alice Goldberg herself. “I’ve never had a return,” she says. “Never. How crazy is that?” I’m thinking about a winter coat. As if she’s read my mind, she shows me navy blue French wool bouclé and suggests we line it in printed cashmere. As my mother always said, “Why have economy in fantasy?”
The Hunter Biden’s Lawyer and , Abbe Lowell, told the Office of Congressional Ethics in a letter that the Georgia Republican’s “unmoored verbal abuses and attacks on Biden represented numerous ethics violations.”
Lowell previously complained in April about Greene over alleged defamation, false allegations, publication of private photos and “bizarre dissemination of conspiracy theories about Mr. Biden and members of his family.”
“She displayed (on printed posters) sexually explicit and nude images of Mr. Biden,” Lowell wrote. “Then, toward the end of her questioning, Ms. Greene held up the graphic poster boards, spouting yet another of her untethered conspiracy theories, suggesting without any evidence that they showed Mr. Biden ‘making pornography.’”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene, R-Ga., prepares to hold up explicit images and an airline confirmation made by Hunter Biden during a House Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing with IRS whistleblowers at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, July 19, 2023.
The office doesn’t announce what it is investigating, but depending on a preliminary review, the complaint could eventually reach the House Ethics Committee. That panel of lawmakers could potentially recommend the full House censure or oust Greene, but few complaints result in discipline because the committee is evenly divided between the parties.
The hearing was part of wide-ranging inquiries the committee and the Judiciary Committee have held into Biden and his father, President Joe Biden. The White House has dismissed the probes as hyperpartisan innuendo.
Greene’s presentation came during a hearing with two Internal Revenue Service investigators about Republican complaints that a tax investigation into Biden was too weak.
Greene blasted the Justice Department for not prosecuting Biden aggressively and warned the audience that “parental discretion is advised.” She accused Biden of making amateur pornography, sex trafficking and paying for prostitutes while holding up pictures of him since material from a laptop circulated on the internet.
“What’s even more troubling to me is that the Department of Justice has brought no charges against Hunter Biden that will vindicate the rights of these women who are clearly victims under the law,” Greene said.
Greene questioned why the department hadn’t prosecuted Biden more aggressively. She tweeted more questions Friday about why the Justice Department hadn’t prosecuted him for sex trafficking and writing sex payments off his taxes as business expenses.
People watch as US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., holds up a graphic photo of Hunter Biden during the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability hearing regarding the criminal investigation into the Bidens, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on July 19, 2023.
Lowell argued that none of Greene’s presentation was the House’s business.
“None of her actions or statements could possibly be deemed to be part of any legitimate legislative activity, as is clear from both the content of her statements and her conduct and the forums she uses to spew her unhinged rhetoric,” Lowell wrote.
Canada’s Julia Grosso, right, and Nigeria’s Michelle Alozie competed to a scoreless draw in Melbourne, Australia.Credit…Robert Cianflone/Getty Images
Not much of what led to this World Cup has gone the way Canada’s women’s team might have wanted. Fights over funding and paychecks and support. A key player lost to injury. A curious absence of match preparation. Nigeria, embroiled in its own bitter pay dispute, probably would say the same.
Both teams had declared they were setting those things aside this week now that the games were here. “Forget about the distractions, and just focus on the game,” the Nigeria striker Asisat Oshoala, who plays for Barcelona, said earlier this week. But it was perhaps fitting, or at the very least unsurprising, that the first steps of the tournament — a scoreless draw on Friday in Melbourne — will leave neither team entirely satisfied.
Canada, which saw its soccer matriarch Christine Sinclair fail to convert a second-half penalty kick, will leave believing it could have, and maybe should have, won. Nigeria, which piled up fouls (16) but not shots on goal (1), will be wondering how it will adapt to the loss of midfielder Deborah Ajibola Abiodun; she was sent off late in the second half for a foul that was upgraded to red from yellow after a video review.
The emotions of the moments after the final whistle suggested both teams were processing the result differently. Nigeria’s goalkeeper, Chiamaka Nnadozie, who had saved the penalty, dropped to her knees as if celebrating a memorable victory. Sinclair, substituted for only the second time in six World Cups, sat glumly on the bench as Canada Coach Bev Priestman whispered encouragement in her ear, perhaps in vain.
“Christine Sinclair has scored many, many, many goals for this country and I’m sure the fans, the team and everyone can forgive missing a penalty kick,” Priestman said.
About the only winner on Friday, it seemed, was Australia. Its victory over Ireland on Thursday, combined with the Canada-Nigeria draw, left it atop Group B. Given that it is dealing with its own crisis of confidence after losing Sam Kerr, that will be a comfort. For now.
Switzerland forward Ramona Bachmann scored on a penalty kick in her team’s opening match against the Philippines. Others have been less successful in this tournament.Credit…Sanka Vidanagama/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Five games, five penalties.
If the World Cup’s opening games have been slow to deliver in one statistic — until Spain started to pummel Costa Rica, the tournament had produced only two goals from open play — it is overproducing in another: penalty kicks.
Each of the first five games of the tournament has produced one. A handball by Norway. A shove by Ireland. A trip by Nigeria. A foul by Costa Rica. A very literal interpretation of the rules in Philippines-Switzerland.
Video assistant referees have played a role in several of the calls. The ball that hit the hand of Tuva Hansen of Norway late in its loss to New Zealand, for example, was spotted by the V.A.R. and relayed to the on-field referee, who had not whistled a penalty in real time. The penalties awarded to Canada and Switzerland, too, were only confirmed after officials took a second look.
Being awarded a penalty and scoring a penalty are two distinct actions, however. Only two of the five called were then converted into goals.
The upside of all those early trips to the spot? One of them has produced the play of the tournament so far: Chiamaka Nnadozie’s diving save of Christine Sinclair’s attempt in Nigeria’s draw with Canada in Melbourne.
Co-captain Lindsey Horan, left, and Coach Vlatko Andonovski know that there are high expectations on the United States going into their game.Credit…Abbie Parr/Associated Press
On the eve of his country’s meeting with the United States, the reporter from Vietnam got right to the point.
“Are you going to crush us like you did Thailand four years ago?” he asked Coach Vlatko Andonovski and the U.S. co-captain Lindsey Horan.
Andonovski didn’t give a direct answer. Decorum meant he couldn’t say what many have been thinking (that the U.S. team might, in fact, crush Vietnam). But Andonovski also didn’t know the answer.
Not even he knows how a new combination of U.S. players will work together. Or how Vietnam, in its first World Cup, will fare in its first game, scheduled for Saturday morning in New Zealand at a time that Americans will be able to watch on Friday night (at 9 p.m. Eastern).
What he and Horan do know, however, is that the world of women’s soccer has changed since the United States thumped Thailand, 13-0, at the last World Cup.
“There are not easy games that before you were just like, oh, this is going to be 6, 7-0 or whatever,” Horan said. “it’s not how it is anymore.”
Fears that an expanded tournament, now at 32 teams, might usher in more routs haven’t come true, at least not yet. The first two World Cup debutantes to take the field, Ireland and the Philippines, both lost, but in close games.
But the U.S. team isn’t the same as it was four years ago, either. Horan was reminded of that on Thursday morning when Becky Sauerbrunn, the team’s longtime captain who is out with an injury, texted her to wish her good luck. Sauerbrunn, Horan said, told her to embrace her new role as captain.
Horan and her co-captain, Alex Morgan, lead a team that includes 14 World Cup rookies of its own. It is their job to show the newcomers how to win games under pressure, to live up to the expectations of a dynasty and to do it with the whole world watching.
Andonovski said Thursday that he would have the full roster at his disposal. Rose Lavelle and Megan Rapinoe, who have been nursing injuries, might see limited minutes. Julie Ertz, who has rushed back after having her first child last year, is “100 percent.” It is very important, he said, for him to see the team connect on the field after it hasn’t played together, with all of its parts, in a while.
“Regardless of what happened in the past, it is important for us to win this tournament, to do well in this tournament,” he said.
He also didn’t give a direct answer to another question from a different reporter from Vietnam, likely because it addressed a subject he doesn’t want to think about.
That reporter asked, “What will happen if U.S.A. cannot win against Vietnam?”
One of the toughest parts of watching the Women’s World Cup this year may be keeping track of all the time zones in Australia and New Zealand where the matches are being played.
That will require lots of math and, in some cases, middle-of-the-night alarms. So let us help!
Our friends at The Upshot have created a handy tool that allows you to see the World Cup schedule easily, accurately and in the time zone of your device’s location.
Credit…Madison Ketcham
The third time around, Megan Rapinoe’s reaction to a potentially career-ending knee injury went no further than an eye roll. She had torn her anterior cruciate ligament. She could reel off the recovery schedule from the top of her head. She could see, crystal clear, the next nine to 12 months spooling out in front of her.
The surgery, the painstaking rehab, the grueling weeks in the gym, the anxious first steps on the turf, the slow journey back to what she had once been. As she considered it in 2015, she felt something closer to exasperation than to despair. “I was like, ‘I don’t have time for this,’” she said.
The first time had been different. She had torn the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee at age 21, when she was a breakout star in her sophomore year at the University of Portland. At that time, she felt what she called “the fear” — the worry that it might all be over before it had begun.
Over the last year or so, that fear — and the searching questions it prompts — has coursed through women’s soccer. The sport has at times seemed to be in the grip of an epidemic of A.C.L. injuries, one so widespread that at one point it had sidelined a quarter of the nominees for last year’s Ballon d’Or.
Vivianne Miedema of the Netherlands, whose knee injury will keep her out of the World Cup, pointed out that, this season alone, almost 60 players in Europe’s five major leagues had torn their A.C.L.s. “It is ridiculous,” she said earlier this year. “Something needs to be done.”
Working out precisely what that might be, though, is more complicated than anyone would like.
Credit…Marlena Sloss for The New York Times
Sports are often about gaps: talent gaps, experience gaps, compensation gaps. And in the weeks and months before the Women’s World Cup that began on Thursday in Australia and New Zealand, the players on the U.S. national women’s soccer team have found an unlikely bond in jokes, jabs and stories related to what may be their most notable feature: a generation gap.
The team’s oldest player is Megan Rapinoe, 38, the iconic athlete who recently announced that she would retire after this World Cup and the end of her current professional season. The youngest is Alyssa Thompson, who is 18, just graduated high school and still lives with her parents. At least three of Thompson’s teammates — Morgan, Crystal Dunn and Julie Ertz — have children of their own.
Thompson said that her older teammates sometimes play music that she doesn’t recognize, but that the different age groups find a middle ground with Cardi B. Sophia Smith, a 22-year-old forward, said she does recognize the music, though by genre, not by artist. “They sound like what my parents listen to,” she said.
Smith admitted last month that she never has used a CD player and that she refuses to watch TV shows or movies if the video quality is “grainy.” One exception: videos of the 1999 Women’s World Cup final, a historic victory by the United States that spurred rapid growth of women’s soccer in America. Unlike some of her teammates, Smith has no memory of watching that team play — the final was played more than a year before she was born.
President Biden has picked Dr. Paul Friedrichs, a military combat surgeon and retired Air Force major general who helped lead the Covid-19 response at the Pentagon, to head a new White House office created by Congress to prepare for and manage future biological threats.
The White House announced the appointment on Friday and said it would take effect on Aug. 7. It will then be up to Dr. Friedrichs to set up the new office, the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy, although the administration has christened it with a shorter Washington acronym: O.P.P.R.
The appointment comes after a lengthy search for a director that ended where it began — at the White House, where Dr. Friedrichs recently joined the staff of the National Security Council as the senior director for global health security and biodefense. Before that, he served as the Joint Staff surgeon at the Pentagon, providing medical advice to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. His planned selection was reported last week by The Washington Post.
Why It Matters: Future health threats loom.
The coronavirus pandemic has often been described as the worst public health crisis in a century. But experts agree that given current migration patterns and the way humans intersect with animal life, it will not be a century — and it might not even be a decade — before the next pandemic arrives.
The era of Covid “czars” is over. Mr. Biden’s first White House coronavirus response coordinator, Jeffrey D. Zients, is now the White House chief of staff. The second coordinator, Dr. Ashish K. Jha, has gone back to his position as dean of the Brown University School of Public Health.
Covid-19 made clear that a biological health threat does not respect boundaries — including the boundaries that divide federal agencies. The appointment of Dr. Friedrichs signals a more permanent and coordinated effort to prepare for and respond to pandemics — one that will last beyond the Biden administration and will be centralized within the White House.
Background: Dr. Friedrichs served decades in the Air Force.
In a February speech, Dr. Friedrichs, who retired from the military in June, reflected on his 37-year career in the Air Force and shared a bit about himself. His father served in the Navy at the end of World War II, and his mother was a Hungarian freedom fighter whose parents were killed by the Russians. His wife was an Army doctor when they met.
He also reflected on the role of the military in fighting Covid-19, an effort that included helping to develop and distribute vaccines and providing medical support to struggling hospitals. “The military health system became the pinch-hitter that stepped in to help our civilian partners as we collectively struggled to work through that pandemic,” he said.
What’s Next: The job will focus on preparedness.
Dr. Friedrich’s new position gives him authority to oversee domestic biosecurity preparedness. He will need to work on the development of next-generation vaccines, ensure adequate supplies in the Strategic National Stockpile and ramp up surveillance to monitor for new biological threats.
He will also have to work with Congress to secure funding for preparedness efforts. Lawmakers created the new White House office as part of a government spending package enacted late last year.
“When President Biden came into office, we inherited a once-in-a-generation public health and economic crisis but no plan to get us out of it,” Mr. Zients said in a statement. “This office — under the strong and capable leadership of Major General Friedrichs — will lead the charge to ensure that never happens again.”
The Biden administration on Thursday proposed a rule that would raise the royalties that fossil fuel companies pay to pull oil, gas and coal from public lands for the first time since 1920, while increasing more than tenfold the cost of the bonds that companies must pay before they start drilling.
The Interior Department estimated that the new rule, which would also raise various other rates and fees for drilling on public lands, would increase costs for fossil fuel companies by about $1.8 billion between now and 2031. After that, rates could increase again.
About half of that money would go to states while a third would be used to fund water projects in the West.
Officials at the Interior Department characterize the changes as part of a broader shift at the federal agency as it seeks to address climate change by expanding renewable energy on public land and in federal waters while making it more expensive for private companies to drill on public lands.
“The Interior Department has taken several steps over the last two years to ensure the federal oil and gas program provides a fair return to taxpayers, adequately accounts for environmental harms and discourages speculation by oil and gas companies,” said Laura Daniel-Davis, the Interior Department’s principal deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management. “This new proposed rule will help fully codify those goals and lead to more responsible leasing and development processes.”
Oil and gas companies forcefully opposed the changes, several of which were required by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. In a letter sent to Congress when the law was passed, more than 50 oil and gas industry groups complained that the increased fees placed “constraints on the ability of companies to develop and produce the energy that Americans need to fuel our economy and strengthen our energy security.”
Lem Smith, a vice president of the American Petroleum Institute, which lobbies for the nation’s largest oil companies, wrote of those provisions, “It bears repeating at a time of high energy costs, when Americans need more energy supply, it does not make sense to raise costs for American energy production.”
The Inflation Reduction Act directs the Interior Department to increase the royalty rates paid by companies that drill on public lands to 16.67 percent from 12.5 percent, and to increase the minimum bid at auctions for drilling leases to $10 per acre from $2 per acre, among other provisions. The 12.5 percent royalty rates have been in place since 1920.
The law also orders the agency to set a minimum rental rate of $3 per acre on public drilling leases in the first two years after a lease is issued, rising to $15 per acre after 10 years, and to establish a new fee of $5 per acre for companies to formally register their interest in leasing public land for drilling.
But the Interior Department’s new rule would go even further than Congress required: It would dramatically raise the cost of the bonds that companies must guarantee to pay to the federal government before drilling on public lands, which has not increased since 1960. The department wants to use those funds to remediate damage left by abandoned uncapped oil and gas wells, so that the cost is borne by companies rather than taxpayers.
The new rule proposes to increase the minimum bond paid upon purchasing an individual drilling lease to $150,000 from $10,000. The cost of a bond required upon purchasing a drilling lease on multiple public lands in a state would rise from $500,000 from $25,000. The changes would eliminate an existing national bond under which companies can pay $150,000 as insurance against damaged, abandoned wells anywhere in the country.
The new rule, which could take effect as soon as next year, would also require the agency to prioritize approvals of new permits in areas where drilling is already taking place, as opposed to more pristine lands.
The huge increase in bond payments responds to years of efforts by environmental advocates and budget watchdog groups who have urged the government to enact policies that shift the burden of paying to clean up so-called orphan wells from taxpayers to the oil and gas companies that drill the wells and later abandon them.
“This is a huge step in the right direction,” said Autumn Hanna, vice president of the fiscal watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. “Taxpayers have been losing for so long — we were just giving these assets on federal lands away, and industry hasn’t been paying the reclamation cost of damaging them. Leaving these rates to sit untouched for decades when the oil industry has changed so much is just super egregious.”
The Interior Department estimates that there are 3.5 million abandoned oil and gas wells in the United States. When oil and gas wells are abandoned without being properly sealed or capped, which can happen in cases when companies go bankrupt, the wells can leak methane, a powerful planet-warming pollutant that is a major contributor to global warming.
A 2021 infrastructure law provided for $4.7 billion to cap orphan wells, but, the Interior Department wrote, “this proposed rule aims to prevent that burden from falling on the taxpayer in future years.”
“Up until now it’s like BP could get a $150,000 blanket bond for 3,000 wells, but those bonds don’t come close to remedying the situation,” Gwen Lachelt, executive director of the Western Leaders Network, a conservation group, said in an interview last year. “And the state agencies just haven’t had the money to do this.”
The changes “end the madness of companies leaving this mess behind and taxpayers holding the bag,” she said.
The Biden administration has had to navigate challenging terrain when it comes to extraction of fossil fuels on public lands and in federal waters, which is responsible for almost a quarter of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.
As a candidate, Mr. Biden promised “no more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.”
But since Mr. Biden took office, his administration has continued to sell leases to drill, compelled by federal court decisions. The Biden administration approved more permits for oil and gas drilling in its first two years (over 6,900 permits) than the Trump administration did in the same period (6,172 permits). Major oil and gas companies saw record profits in 2022.
At the other end, Republicans and at least one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have accused the administration of waging a war on fossil fuels that makes the country less secure.
The Berlin bear was given a run for its money as the official symbol of Germany’s capital on Thursday. The authorities said that a “free-roaming lioness” in the area had led to a sprawling search with more than 100 police officers, veterinarians and hunters as well as drones and helicopters involved in trying to catch the animal.
“People are encouraged to stay at home if possible and not let their pets outside,” said a statement from the German municipality of Kleinmachnow, in the state of Brandenburg, where the first sighting of the animal was reported. Officials from the town of 20,000 people, about 14 miles from the center of Berlin, said the lioness had been “causing a stir” overnight since it was spotted eating a wild boar along the road.
The animal had not been captured as of Thursday evening local time, and the Brandenburg police said in a statement that veterinarians, hunters, helicopters and drones had gotten involved in the search. The search was focused on the areas of Teltow, Kleinmachnow and Stahnsdorf, three small towns along the southwest boundary of Berlin, where the police had issued warnings about the animal.
“We ask the population in the aforementioned areas to act with the appropriate vigilance and to avoid going in the adjacent forested areas,” the police statement said. Those who see the animal should “seek shelter immediately” and call the police.
The police received reports around midnight on Wednesday of a sighting of a wild animal chasing and eating a wild boar in Kleinmachnow, they said in a statement.
A short, grainy video of that sighting, which was shared with the police and then circulated on social media on Thursday, appeared to show a large wild cat feeding on a wild boar in a grassy, forested roadside area. The police said that the animal in the video appeared to be a lioness, calling that possibility “credible.”
A search for the animal began immediately, the police said, with the Berlin and Brandenburg police forces getting involved and using helicopters. Riot police were on the scene to protect local residents.
Officials from the town of Kleinmachnow said their goal was to tranquilize and capture the animal, rather than kill it. But a hunter was on standby in case the animal were to put any lives at risk.
After the initial sighting and video, the animal was spotted by the police themselves, a police spokeswoman in Brandenburg told The Associated Press. The mayor of Kleinmachnow and the police did not immediately respond to questions about the sightings. Other sightings reported by residents could not be confirmed, officials said.
The authorities said the animal was most likely to be in the forested areas of Brandenburg.
It was unclear where the lion had come from, as lions are not native to Germany. Though there are zoos, animal protection centers and circuses in the area, the police said none had reported a missing lioness.
Commenters online voiced doubts that the animal in the video was a lion, but the police said that it most likely was.
Others had fun with the chaos, and memes abounded: The Twitter page for Deutsche Bahn, the national German railway operator, tweeted a helpful reminder that while house cats and smaller pets did not need their own tickets, larger pets, “other than companion lions,” required their own train passes.
I think we all heard growing up that you shouldn’t swim for at least 30 minutes after eating. Well, that fact has been proved false. Needless to say, there are a lot of other things we were told growing up that turned out to be false.
Imgorthand / Getty Images
And a few months ago, Reddit user u/monsterpupper was curious about which things Gen Xers were told growing up that ended up being untrue when they asked, “What would some of our disproven facts be?”
Gustavofrazao / Getty Images/iStockphoto
Well, thousands of Gen X’ers shared the big myths they were told. And here are some of the top and best comments:
1.”I thought we were going to be offered drugs by strangers a whole lot more.”
Smith Collection / Getty Images
2.”The food pyramid is a healthy way to eat.”
Beth Keiser / Corbis via Getty Images
3.”You won’t always walk around with a calculator in your pocket.”
“I still remember reading books that the dinosaurs evolved into modern-day reptiles, only to be taught again many years later that dinosaurs are actually modern-day birds.”
“I recently discovered that my niece and nephew haven’t been taught about ‘Stop, drop, and roll’ in school. They looked at me like I was crazy when I explained it to them!”
10.”Don’t sit too close to the TV or you’ll go blind! Then computers came and we would have to spend eight-plus hours at work with a screen 5 inches from our eyes.”
11.”Acid rain wasn’t an actual threat to the extent it was touted. Oh, and killer bees!!! 😆”
Diana Walker / Getty Images
12.”The tongue has a map of different taste buds that taste different things.”
“Dude, it was quicksand and amnesia for me — like, I was ready for that shit, and nothing. But it seems it was more cartoon narrative tropes than anything. Oh well.”
15.”You will have to write in cursive for the rest of your life.”
16.”Plastic bags will save the Earth because we won’t have to kill as many trees to make brown paper bags to carry groceries.”
Shana Novak / Getty Images
17.”The United States will be using the metric system by 1983.”
Ievgenii Volyk / Getty Images/iStockphoto
18.”Technology would give us so much free time in the future that we’d only have to work 5–10 hours a week. And we’d be able to do it from home, and employers would be on board with it. That one still hurts.”
19.And last: “Mikey didn’t die after eating Pop Rocks while drinking a Coca-Cola.”
You can read the full thread of responses on Reddit.
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Summer travel is off to a roaring start, with little sign of a slowdown on the horizon. And airline executives say they are doing all they can to keep up, including contending with bad weather and congestion in the skies and on the ground.
Three of the nation’s largest carriers — American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines — set records for quarterly revenue in the three months that ended in June. Profits more than doubled from the same period last year, and the three companies raised their projections for how much they would earn this year.
“We’re still in a world where demand is very strong,” Vasu Raja, American’s chief commercial officer, told reporters and investors on a call on Thursday.
The strong quarterly results underscore the durability of the travel industry’s recovery coming out of the pandemic. June was slightly busier than the same month in 2019, and July appears to be on track to match prepandemic traffic. The Transportation Security Administration screened nearly 2.9 million people on the Friday before the Fourth of July weekend, the most it has ever handled in a single day.
But the recent recovery has been marred by problems, including delays and cancellations around the country.
Airlines and the air traffic control system have struggled to overcome bad weather, technology problems, staffing shortfalls and other disruptions over the past two years, contributing to major meltdowns like the one that Southwest Airlines suffered over several days in late December. Delays and cancellations have often cascaded on themselves, disrupting air travel for days, leaving many people stranded far from their destinations.
Weather has been responsible for nearly 70 percent of flight delays this year, compared with just under 61 percent during the same period last year, according to federal data. Heavy traffic has also contributed to delays.
United struggled to overcome a disruption before July 4, for which it had initially blamed bad weather and an air traffic control staffing shortage affecting its hub at Newark Liberty International Airport, but other airlines in the region did not struggle nearly as much. In the week leading up to the holiday weekend, the airline canceled about 17 percent of all of its flights and delayed more than 51 percent, according to FlightAware, an aviation data provider.
Overall, about 1.8 percent of planned flights were canceled in the two months that ended on Tuesday, compared with 1.9 percent over the same period in 2019, according to FlightAware data. But many more were delayed: about 25 percent over the past two months, up from about 19 percent in the same period in 2019.
Airlines say they have taken steps to prevent disruptions, including spending on technology, hiring and training. After its recent struggles, United said it would fly less during peak times, use more gates and make other changes.
“We’re now doing more than ever to mitigate the impact of weather, congestion and other infrastructure constraints at Newark,” said Scott Kirby, United’s chief executive.
American said passenger revenue from international travel rose nearly 22 percent from the same quarter last year, while Delta said it set a record for international revenue in the second quarter. United said this week that it would add more flights to Asia in October.
Driven by high demand, a round-trip international flight on average costs about $971, up nearly 24 percent from prices at this time in 2019, according to Hopper, the travel app.
Those rising fares have been good for airlines, and American, Delta and United say they expect the good times to continue. Delta, for example, now expects revenue to rise at least 17 percent this year from last year.
Ticket prices spiked a year ago, as airlines struggled to meet demand and the Russian invasion in Ukraine drove up the price of jet fuel. But fuel prices have come back down. American said it spent a third less on fuel during the second quarter than it did a year earlier, saving about $1.3 billion.
Partly as a result, the average price for a round-trip domestic flight was down more than 13 percent, to $261, on Thursday from the same day last year and more than 9 percent from 2019, according to Hopper. June fares fell so much from a year earlier that the drop contributed to a decline in overall inflation.
Even as fuel prices have fallen, labor costs have gone up. American said it spent about 12 percent more on salaries, wages and benefits in the second quarter compared with a year earlier. The airline is negotiating a new contract with its pilots’ union, which is expected to include substantial pay raises.
Over the weekend, pilots at United reached an agreement with the company on a contract valued at $10 billion that would increase pay up to 40 percent over four years, an increase that American said it would match. In March, pilots at Delta approved a contract that would increase wages 34 percent by 2026.
United and American are also negotiating contracts with the unions that represent their flight attendants.
