What Happened Today: January 14, 2022
Britain's dueling scandals; Biden's thwarted mandate; Whale smarts
The Big Story
On Wednesday, not hours after Boris Johnson’s tepid apology for drinking at a party during a strict nationwide lockdown, the other shoe dropped on a second major scandal for British elites: A Manhattan judge denied the motion from Queen Elizabeth’s son Prince Andrew to dismiss a lawsuit against him alleging he’d raped and sexually abused Virginia Giuffre when she was a teenager. With Giuffre’s attorneys unlikely to settle the lawsuit without an admission of guilt, it appears Prince Andrew is in quite the pickle: either settle with Giuffre and reverse his ongoing denial of wrongdoing, or proceed to trial, where Andrew and other associates of the British royal family would be subject to depositions and compelled to share embarrassing and potentially incriminating information. The green light to proceed to trial from the Manhattan judge prompted swift action from the British crown, which announced that Andrew’s “military affiliations and royal patronages have been returned to the Queen,” leaving Andrew, still in possession of the title Duke of York, to defend “the case as a private citizen.” The duke has not helped his cause as the scandal has intensified, trying to brush off his longtime friendship with deceased financier Jeffrey Epstein and his partner Ghislaine Maxwell, who Guiffre claims trafficked her as an underage girl to various locales, where she was assaulted by both Epstein and the duke.
Evidence is strong about Andrew’s ties to Epstein over the years, including past vacations and parties together, and the duke did not exactly strengthen his position after his attorneys failed to shield their client under a prior civil lawsuit settlement between Epstein and Guiffre in 2009, when Guiffre dropped her charges against Epstein for his own sexual abuse toward her for $500,000 and a release of other “potential defendants” from future litigation. The duke’s lawyers argued that while innocent, their client was protected under Epstein’s agreement with Guiffre, a claim the Manhattan judge denied. Though Andrew’s fallout with his own mother and the royal family may temporarily overshadow the national uproar against the prime minister, the British themselves are left with a great deal of resentment toward both the royal family and their elected officials, further fraying trust in their national leaders.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/prince-andrews-legal-team-decline-comment-us-court-decision-2022-01-13/
Today's Back Pages: Your Weekend Reads
The Rest
→ President Biden’s major workplace vaccine-or-test mandate was blocked by the Supreme Court yesterday, which shut down his attempt to force large employers to enact the workplace requirement, but did agree with the portion of the mandate that installed the policy for healthcare employees in workplaces that receive federal money. After months of confusion for American employers unsure of how much money or additional staffing they might need to accommodate the Biden mandate, the decision only somewhat simplifies matters, as employers are still subject to a patchwork of overlapping state and local regulations that leaves the tough choice on workplace policy to business leaders. The court’s ruling fell along party lines, with the conservative majority handing Biden one more defeat in what has become a string of setbacks for Biden, who’d campaigned on a promise to deliver on his centrist agenda. Along with the mandate and his stalled Build Back Better plan, Biden’s major voting rights bill looks to have hit a major roadblock yesterday after members of his own party failed to support the repeal of the filibuster the bill would need to pass congress. Couple all of that with soaring inflation and a still-raging pandemic, and you get Biden’s latest Quinnipiac poll, which shows his approval rate at 35%.
→ Novak Djokovic might have to wait until the French Open after all to make a go of winning his historic 21st Grand Slam title, as Australian officials once again said his visa was invalid and he was not welcome to compete at next week’s Australian Open. Attorneys for Djokovic, the tournament’s defending champion, said they would appeal and pleaded with the courts to move swiftly so Djokovic could avoid forfeiting his first match while he’s sequestered in an immigration detention house awaiting the final verdict. The controversy over whether or not Djokovic’s natural immunity from a recent COVID-19 infection, rather than the vaccination he has decided against receiving, is no longer the issue: Australia’s immigration minister, Alex Hawke, canceled the player’s visa on the grounds that Djokovic’s behavior and statements endangered public safety because he “excited anti-vax sentiment.” Australians seem ready to be done with the episode. Today, 84% of 61,000 polled in a News Corp Australia survey said they supported Djokovic being deported.
→ Later this spring, an outside law firm hired by Microsoft will make public an investigation into claims of sexual wrongdoing against Bill Gates and other senior leaders, as well as allegations of corporate gender discrimination. Women at the company have made a series of complaints about unfair compensation since 2016, when Microsoft launched a public relations campaign saying it had essentially closed a long-standing pay gap. The campaign “does not honestly represent us as a company,” said one woman in a report to the human resources department obtained by The Seattle Times.
Read more: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/microsoft-pledges-to-make-public-investigation-into-claims-of-sexual-harassment-including-those-against-bill-gates/
→ With Roe v. Wade potentially on the Supreme Court chopping block, New Jersey legislators have solidified their position as a pro-choice state. Yesterday, Gov. Phil Murphy signed into law a new bill that codifies a woman’s right to seek an abortion or contraception. The Freedom of Reproductive Choice Act includes a provision that nullifies future regulation that would attempt to strip that right away, a key provision supporters say, as Roe v. Wade looks likely to fall to the conservative court majority, leaving more oversight of abortion rights to state governments. At least 22 states have active legislation that would ostensibly outlaw abortion if the landmark Roe v. Wade was overturned.
→ When whales were being hunted down on the open seas in the 19th century, did the animals communicate about the threat and share ways to avoid being captured? Researchers analyzing logbooks from North Pacific whalers have found strong evidence that the animals were in fact capable of organizing a shared defensive response. “Our models show that social learning, in which naïve social units, when confronted by whalers, learned defensive measures from grouped social units with experience,” writes the team of researchers from several North American universities. Looking at kill rates over time, the scientists say “rapid, large-scale adoption of new behavior” is likely what accounts for the sudden decrease in successful whale hunting.
Read more: http://whitelab.biology.dal.ca/hw/Response%20of%20whales%20to%20whaling%20Biol_Lett_2021.pdf
→ Another day, another heist on the blockchain. This time, the NFT platform Lympo lost $18.7 million after attackers broke into its platform and stole crypto tokens that were quickly liquidated for other digital currencies. The value of the type of crypto coin, LMT, swiftly plummeted 92% after the breach was announced Monday. Yat Siu, the top executive of Lymph’s parent company, Animoca Brands, told a crypto industry publication that Animoca had stepped in to try to get the coins back but weren’t optimistic they’d be successful. “We are working with Lympo to assist them on a recovery plan, but we don’t have any specific mechanisms.”
→ Some 66,000 student borrowers will see $1.7 billion in college loans canceled after an agreement was reached between private loan provider Navient Corporation and 40 state attorney generals. “Navient repeatedly and deliberately put profits ahead of its borrowers,” said Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, one of the prosecutors who sought penalties against the loan provider after it targeted students with bad credit who between 2002 and 2010 sought college degrees from for-profit schools and universities. Some of those schools have since been shut down for failure to provide adequate education or disclosures about the risks of their high-interest loan packages.
→ Real estate forecasters say housing demand in 2022 won’t be as intense as last year, but housing prices will still remain far above what they were before the pandemic. In its annual report for 2021, the National Association of Realtors found that nearly a third of home buyers paid above asking price, and the number of first-time buyers jumped more than it had in almost five years. In its own recent analysis of the housing market, The Economist found that part of the home-buying crunch during the pandemic was driven by a massive slowdown in new homes being built in the years leading up to the pandemic. Prior to 2020, “house building in the rich world, once adjusted for population, had fallen to half its level of the mid-1960s,” according to the analysis.
Read more: https://economist.com/finance-and-economics/how-long-can-the-global-housing-boom-last/21807002
→ Dear readers: We will be off on Monday for MLK Jr. day, and back on Tuesday with a special announcement. Stay tuned!
Your Weekend Reads
→ Essayist Meghan O’Gieblyn writes about her daily routine of work and nature walks and the origin of similar practices in Benedictine monks, who developed a daily practice of prayer and mindful activity with the advent of clocks. In the piece, O’Gieblyn tries to separate the spiritual dimension of her habit from the modern vulgarity of life hacking and asks if it’s “possible in our age of advanced technology to recall the spiritual dimension of repetition? Or has it been conclusively subsumed into the deadening drumbeat of modern life?”
Repetition is a component of all ascetic traditions, and I like to think that my own habits constitute something like a spiritual discipline. My nature bends toward listlessness and disorder. Resolving to do the same thing each day, at the same time, has given my life a center, insulating me from the siren song of novelty and distraction that has caused me so much unhappiness in the past. I live a monotonous life, which is not to say a tedious one. (I believe, with Rilke, that those who find life dull are not poet enough to call forth its riches.) And I imagine that these tightly circumscribed days are radiating, with each turn of the circle, into widening arcs, amounting to a life whose ties are deeper, whose direction is more certain.
→ Even salad aficionados acknowledge the value of a well-made sandwich, but not all sandwiches are made alike. Some don’t even taste that great. But a meal is about more than just the nutritional value. Here, Zain Khalid breaks down the art and artifice of the bodega sandwich:
The best part, the fixins, are strictly a matter of personal preference. Subway, despite its obvious failings, was on to something when it decided to call its employees “artists.” Your job is to channel Dieter Roth. Assemble estranged and disparate bedfellows. Think hypothetically. Banana peppers and mango and pickled lotus root? Yes. Plantain chips and radish and triturated Excedrin? Go with God. There’s no accounting for taste, but there’s no dispensing with it, either.
Finally, wrap the sandwich in wax paper and split it using a serrated knife. A single, brutal cut will do. Return to the Medusa’s raft once more. Only 15 men were rescued, 132 were lost. Put the sandwich in a bag with two and only two of the world’s worst napkins. Those men were lost to dehydration and starvation and practiced cannibalism. Slide the bag over the counter and look at your customer, the tired commuter, the truant high school student, the jocular imam, the neighborhood snitch, your spouse or child. Remember: You are nourishing nothing less than their survival.
Read more: https://believermag.com/how-to-make-a-bodega-sandwich/
→ Novelist and photographer Teju Cole has been an early adopter of several social media platforms, where he experiments with form to sometimes interesting effect. Though he’s given up his Twitter account and is occasionally still posting photos to Instagram, he’s been a longtime (in internet years) user of Spotify, with a high-volume output of playlists built around various themes and musical concepts. On his website, he lists the dozens of Spotify playlists he’s created and updated since 2016. Some of these are obscure (“homage to the beautiful sound of the Persian kamancheh”), others are abstract (“compilation of Americana made around Robert Adams’ photography”), but there’s much that will be new to listeners and worth discovering.
Hear more: https://www.tejucole.com/playlists/
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