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these are central to our national well-being. Our lives are threatened less by the Taliban in Afghanistan than by unregulated contaminants at home.

Initially, this concept was highly controversial among obesity experts, but a growing number of peer-reviewed studies have confirmed his finding and identified some 20 substances as obesogens.

The most important time for exposure appears to be in utero and in childhood. It’s not clear whether most obesogens will do much to make an ordinary adult, even a pregnant woman, fatter (although one has been shown to do so), and the greatest impact seems to be on fetuses and on children before puberty.

Dr. Blumberg, the pioneer of the field, says he strongly recommends that people — especially children and women who are pregnant or may become pregnant — try to eat organic foods to reduce exposure to endocrine disruptors, and try to avoid using plastics to store food or water. “My daughter uses a stainless steel water bottle, and so do I,” he said.

Science-based decisions to improve public health — like the removal of lead from gasoline — have been among our government’s most beneficial public policy moves

In this case, a starting point would be to boost research of endocrine disruptors and pass the Safe Chemicals Act. That measure, long stalled in Congress, would require more stringent safety testing of potentially toxic chemicals around us.

Endocrine disruptors are a class of chemicals that mimic hormones and therefore confuse the body. Initially, they provoked concern because of their links to cancers and the malformation of sex organs. Those concerns continue, but the newest area of research is the impact that they have on fat storage.

The role of these chemicals has been acknowledged by the presidential task force on childhood obesity, and the National Institutes of Health has become a major funder of research on links between endocrine disruptors and both obesity and diabetes.

Just this month, a new study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found that endocrine disruptors that are sometimes added to PVC plastic cause mice to grow obese and suffer liver problems — and the effect continues with descendants of those mice, generation after generation.

With such a huge food supply, food marketing got better and restaurants got cheaper. The low cost of food fueled the growth of the fast-food industry. If food were expensive, you couldn’t have fast food.

The epidemic was caused by the overproduction of food in the United States. Beginning in the 1970s, there was a change in national agricultural policy. Instead of the government paying farmers not to engage in full production, as was the practice, they were encouraged to grow as much food as they could. At the same time, technological changes and the “green revolution” made our farms much more productive. The price of food plummeted, while the number of calories available to the average American grew by about 1,000 a day.

Well, what do people do when there is extra food around? They eat it! This, of course, is a tremendously controversial idea. However, the model shows that increase in food more than explains the increase in weight.

There’s no magic bullet on this. You simply have to cut calories and be vigilant for the rest of your life.

Americans are wasting food at a progressively increasing rate. If Americans were to eat all the food that’s available, we’d be even more obese.

What new information did your equation render? That the conventional wisdom of 3,500 calories less is what it takes to lose a pound of weight is wrong. The body changes as you lose. Interestingly, we also found that the fatter you get, the easier it is to gain weight. An extra 10 calories a day puts more weight onto an obese person than on a thinner one. Also, there’s a time constant that’s an important factor in weight loss. That’s because if you reduce your caloric intake, after a while, your body reaches equilibrium. It actually takes about three years for a dieter to reach their new “steady state.” Our model predicts that if you eat 100 calories fewer a day, in three years you will, on average, lose 10 pounds — if you don’t cheat. Another finding: Huge variations in your daily food intake will not cause variations in weight, as long as your average food intake over a year is about the same. This is because a person’s body will respond slowly to the food intake.

People don’t wait long enough to see what they are going to stabilize at. So if you drop weight and return to your old eating habits, the time it takes to crawl back to your old weight is something like three years. To help people understand this better, we’ve posted an interactive version of our model at bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov.

we should stop marketing food to children.

weight change, up or down, takes a very, very long time. All diets work. But the reaction time is really slow: on the order of a year.

I could see the facts on the epidemic were quite astounding. Between 1975 and 2005, the average weight of Americans had increased by about 20 pounds

People think that the epidemic has to be caused by genetics or that physical activity has gone down. Yet levels of physical activity have not really changed in the past 30 years. As for the genetic argument, yes, there are people who are genetically disposed to obesity, but if they live in societies where there isn’t a lot of food, they don’t get obese. For them, and for us, it’s supply that’s the issue.

I think childhood obesity is a major problem. And when you’re obese, it’s not like we can suddenly cut your food off and you’ll go back to not being obese. You’ve been programmed to eat more. It’s a hardship to eat less. Michelle Obama’s initiative is helpful. And childhood obesity rates seem to be stabilizing in the developed world, at least. The obesity epidemic may have peaked because of the recession. It’s made food more expensive.

I think the food industry doesn’t want to know it. And ordinary people don’t particularly want to hear this, either. It’s so easy for someone to go out and eat 6,000 calories a day.

But amid growing tensions with the United States and its Western allies, Russian forces have again been spotted on the move across the border sparking concerns the war may be reignited.

Cell phone video has emerged of Russian armored columns driving towards the Ukrainian frontier.

In Moscow, the Kremlin says the troop movements are inside Russia, part of a planned military exercise and pose no threat.

the Ukrainian President told CNN a Russian invasion is a very real possibility his country is bracing for

"They are ready, but we are also ready because we are on our land and our territory," he told CNN.

Lt. Gen. Ruslan Khomchak, commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, told CNN an estimated 50,000 Russian troops have now gathered across the Russian border and in Crimea.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that there are "real concerns" over Russia's action.

Even before this current worrying build up in the number of troops at Moscow's command on Ukraine's doorstep, Zelensky called for the US to sell it weapons,

Those weapons have now been delivered

there are at least 35,000 Russian-backed separatists in rebel-held areas of Ukraine

"The question is, 'Is Russia going to continue to act aggressively and recklessly?

Military helicopters, deafening old MI-8s first developed during the Soviet era, painted in unnaturally vivid combat camouflage, fly fast and low over the countryside to avoid ground fire. Every few minutes they lurch upwards to leapfrog trees or electricity lines, then quickly plunge back down again within feet of the soil.

On board the aging presidential chopper, which retains a degree of well-worn comfort, Zelensky shouts above the engine noise of how the US is a "good friend" of Ukraine,

President Biden "must do more," to deter Russia

"If they [the US] see Ukraine in NATO, they have to say it directly, and do it. Not words," Zelensky told CNN.

With or without NATO, this is his country's reality. Ukraine is at war.

In 2014, Officer Jason Shuck shot a man who ran away from the police when they approached him as he was panhandling outside a Walmart in Springfield, Mo. Officer Shuck later told an investigator his “brain was saying Taser” but his “body moved faster” and he drew his pistol.Local prosecutors allowed the officer to plead guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge. As part of the plea deal, Mr. Shuck, who quit the police department, agreed to never work again in a job that required him to carry a firearm.

Mr. Weisberg said that cases in which officers say they mistook which weapon they were using are rare. He said they are legally different from the majority of police shootings, where officers concede they used deadly force but argue they were justified in doing so.

In 2019, Matthew D. Weintraub, the district attorney in Bucks County, Penn., investigated a case of weapon confusion involving an officer who yelled, “Taser!” before shooting a man in a police holding cell. Mr. Weintraub ultimately ruled out charges after finding that the shooting was “neither justified, nor criminal” and that the officer had an “honest but mistaken” belief that he had used his Taser against the victim, who was injured but survived.

Mr. Orloff said that had prosecutors known Mr. Mehserle was going to make that argument before charging him, “it would have made it more likely that a manslaughter charge was filed as opposed to a murder charge.” Mr. Mehserle was convicted of involuntary manslaughter.Mike Rains, a lawyer in California who represents law enforcement in criminal and civil cases, including Mr. Mehserle, said officers mistake firearms for stun guns because they are on “autopilot,” and the officers should not be held criminally culpable.He said many officers in such cases have been trained to draw the stun gun with the same hand as their firearm. He said they typically have fired only one shot with the firearm, indicating a mistake — if they intended to use the firearm, he said, they would likely have fired multiple shots.

Over the past 16 years, the court, often led by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, methodically limited the availability of the harshest penalties for crimes committed by juveniles, first by striking down the juvenile death penalty and then by restricting sentences of life without the possibility of parole.

Thursday’s decision, Jones v. Mississippi, No. 18-1259, concerned Brett Jones, who had recently turned 15 in 2004 when his grandfather discovered his girlfriend in his room. The two men argued and fought, and the youth, who had been making a sandwich, stabbed his grandfather eight times, killing him.

In 2005, Mr. Jones was convicted of murder and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, then the mandatory penalty under state law. That same year, the Supreme Court ruled in Roper v. Simmons that the death penalty for juvenile offenders was unconstitutional.

In Montgomery v. Louisiana in 2016, the court made the Miller decision retroactive. In the process, it seemed to read the Miller decision to ban life without parole not only for defendants who received mandatory sentences but also “for all but the rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility.”

“How low this court’s respect for stare decisis has sunk,” she wrote. “Now, it seems, the court is willing to overrule precedent without even acknowledging it is doing so, much less providing any special justification.”

Justice Kavanaugh rejected the charge that the majority had twisted the earlier decisions, saying it had faithfully complied with stare decisis, the legal doctrine requiring respect for precedent.

Justice Sotomayor responded that the majority had satisfied none of the usual criteria for overturning earlier decisions.

Writing for the majority on Thursday, Justice Kavanaugh said the resentencing did not violate the Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishments, because the punishment imposed by the trial judge had been discretionary rather than mandatory.

Justice Kavanaugh wrote that the Supreme Court’s earlier decisions had made life-without- parole sentences for juvenile offenders uncommon. In Mississippi, he wrote, resentencings following the Miller decision have “reduced life-without-parole sentences for murderers under 18 by about 75 percent.”

The experience in states that require a finding of incorrigibility was different, she wrote. In Pennsylvania, for example, fewer than 2 percent of resentencings have resulted in the reimposition of life-without-parole sentences.

Justice Kavanaugh wrote that states had tools to address juvenile life without parole.“States may categorically prohibit life without parole for all offenders under 18,” he wrote. “Or states may require sentencers to make extra factual findings before sentencing an offender under 18 to life without parole. Or states may direct sentencers to formally explain on the record why a life-without-parole sentence is appropriate notwithstanding the defendant’s youth.”

Bays said Wegovy appears far safer than earlier obesity drugs that "have gone down in flames" over safety problems.

The drug carries a potential risk for a type of thyroid tumor, so it shouldn't be taken by people with a personal or family history of certain thyroid and endocrine tumors. Wegovy also has a risk of depression and pancreas inflammation.

Wegovy (pronounced wee-GOH'-vee) is a synthesized version of a gut hormone that curbs appetite. Patients inject it weekly under their skin. Like other weight-loss drugs, it's to be used along with exercise, a healthy diet and other steps like keeping a food diary.

Wegovy builds on a trend in which makers of relatively new diabetes drugs test them to treat other conditions common in diabetics. For example, popular diabetes drugs Jardiance and Novo Nordisk's Victoza now have approvals for reducing risk of heart attack, stroke and death in heart patients.

A state of emergency is now in effect in Elizabeth City, the county seat. The city also closed all its government offices for the day, citing the potential for public unrest once the video becomes public.

City police also announced downtown road closures around the county courthouse and sheriff's office on Monday, saying the streets "are closed for citizens exercising their constitutional right to a peaceful protest."

Initial details about Brown's death "are tragic and extremely concerning," North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said on Friday. He added, "The body camera footage should be made public as quickly as possible and the SBI should investigate thoroughly to ensure accountability."

What I guess I’m saying is that I think the importance of super-duper pre-K is probably overstated. I suspect that the middle school years are much more important, educationally and developmentally speaking, though they seem to be forgotten territory in terms of educational policy. I also think the main problem that afflicts American education is mediocre teaching and excessive bureaucracy, not insufficient funding.

Gail: Well, our government doesn’t seem to have any plans to require them. I can understand why private businesses might want their work force to have proof of inoculation. Or if I was going on — God protect me — a cruise ship, I’d want to be confident the other passengers had been vaccinated.

But I still find the whole idea pretty creepy. People who have valid ethical or religious or medical reasons for not getting vaccinated should not be barred from any kind of public accommodation for exercising a fundamental right of conscience. Nor should people be penalized when they might not have easy access to a vaccine. Obviously I hope as many people as possible get vaccinated, but we should respect the rights of those who don’t, whatever we feel about their reasoning.

Bret: Well, thankfully the jury reached the right verdict, even if it can never repair the harm that Derek Chauvin did. And I hope it serves as a deterrent against police abuses in the future. But since my conservatism inclines me to be a pessimist about human nature, I somewhat doubt it.

Taiwan is an arena for the rivalry between China and America. Although the United States is not treaty-bound to defend Taiwan, a Chinese assault would be a test of America’s military might and its diplomatic and political resolve. If the Seventh Fleet failed to turn up, China would overnight become the dominant power in Asia.

The government in Beijing insists it has a duty to bring about unification—even, as a last resort, by means of invasion. The Taiwanese, who used to agree that their island was part of China (albeit a non-Communist one), have taken to electing governments that stress its separateness, while stopping short of declaring independence.

Some American analysts conclude that military superiority will sooner or later tempt China into using force against Taiwan, not as a last resort but because it can. China has talked itself into believing that America wants to keep the Taiwan crisis boiling and may even want a war to contain China’s rise.

Xi Jinping, China’s president, has not even begun to prepare his people for a war likely to inflict mass casualties and economic pain on all sides. In its 100th year the Communist Party is building its claim to power on prosperity, stability and China’s status in its region and growing role in the world. All that would be jeopardised by an attack whose result, whatever the US Navy says, comes with lots of uncertainty attached, not least over how to govern a rebellious Taiwan. Why would Mr Xi risk it all now, when China could wait until the odds are even better?

America requires weapons to deter China from launching an amphibious invasion; it must prepare its allies, including Japan and South Korea; and it needs to communicate to China that its battle plans are credible. This will be a tricky balance to strike. Deterrence usually strives to be crystal-clear about retaliation.

Shortly after that breach, demonstrators scuffled with state troopers and Salem police. One man is accused of spraying officers with bear mace, allowing the crowd to make their way further into the building.

At least three people who participated in the Salem protest went on to participate in the attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Under the official misconduct charge, prosecutors stated that on Dec. 21, Nearman "being a public servant, did unlawfully and knowingly perform an act which constituted an unauthorize exercise of his official duties with intent to obtain a benefit or to harm another."

"He let a group of rioters enter the Capitol, despite his knowledge that only authorized personnel are allowed in the building due to the COVID-19 pandemic," the complaint said, calling Nearman's actions "completely unacceptable, reckless, and so severe that it will affect people's ability to feel safe working in the Capitol or even for the legislature."

The complaint requires an investigation into whether Nearman's actions broke workplace rules, a determination that would ultimately be made by a House committee evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Nearman could face consequences ranging from counseling to expulsion if lawmakers conclude he violated legislative policy.

While that process plays out, Nearman has seen his ability to impact bills during the Legislative session severely diminished. He's been removed from all of his former legislative committees, and agreed to turn in his Capitol access badge and provide 24-hours notice before coming to the building. Nearman has still regularly appeared at House floor sessions.

The lawmaker also faces a rather large bill. In early March, the Legislative Assembly invoiced Nearman more than $2,700 for repairs following the December incursion.

Nearman has not said much about his role in the breach, but in a statement in January he emphasized his belief that the Capitol should be open to the general public, a position many of his Republican colleagues agree with. The building has been closed since March 2020, leading lawmakers to hold hearings and take testimony virtually during three subsequent special sessions and this year's regular legislative session.

Nearman suggested in the statement he was the victim of a political attack, and that he was being subjected to "mob justice."

While Democrats and left-leaning groups have railed against Nearman, his Republican colleagues have had little to say about his actions. In one of her only statements on the matter, House Republican Leader Christine Drazan of Canby said in January she'd support the result of a criminal investigation.

ne of the most conservative Republicans in the House, Nearman has been a lawmaker since 2015. In that time, he's been tied repeatedly to right-wing demonstrations. In 2017, his then-legislative aide gave a gun to a convicted felon, who then brought it to a pro-Trump demonstration at the Capitol, the Oregonian/OregonLive reported. Court records show the aide, Angela Roman, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor in the incident.

Nearman's dedication to right-wing causes has not flagged, despite his recent controversy. On Saturday, he's slated to appear at a Salem rally in support of gun rights alongside former congressional candidate and QAnon conspiracy theory supporter Jo Rae Perkins, according to a flyer for the event.

Their culture is matrilinear, and information about the new dangers may have been passed on in the same way whale matriarchs share knowledge about feeding grounds.

Sperm whales are highly socialised animals, able to communicate over great distances. They associate in clans defined by the dialect pattern of their sonar clicks

It was a frighteningly rapid killing, and it accompanied other threats to the ironically named Pacific. From whaling and sealing stations to missionary bases, western culture was imported to an ocean that had remained largely untouched

Sperm whales also possess the largest brain on the planet. It is not hard to imagine that they understood what was happening to them.

The hunters themselves realised the whales’ efforts to escape. They saw that the animals appeared to communicate the threat within their attacked groups. Abandoning their usual defensive formations, the whales swam upwind to escape the hunters’ ships, themselves wind-powered. ‘This was cultural evolution, much too fast for genetic evolution,’

Now, just as whales are beginning to recover from the industrial destruction by 20th-century whaling fleets – whose steamships and grenade harpoons no whale could evade – they face new threats created by our technology. ‘They’re having to learn not to get hit by ships, cope with the depredations of longline fishing, the changing source of their food due to climate change,’ says Whitehead

Perhaps the greatest modern peril is noise pollution, one they can do nothing to evade.

Whitehead and Randall have written persuasively of whale culture, expressed in localised feeding techniques as whales adapt to shifting sources, or in subtle changes in humpback song whose meaning remains mysterious. The same sort of urgent social learning the animals experienced in the whale wars of two centuries ago is reflected in the way they negotiate today’s uncertain world and what we’ve done to it.

"Diplomacy is always our goal. Our goal is to reduce the risk of escalation. But, to date, we have not received any response," Psaki said, noting that the outreach "follows over a year without active dialogue with North Korea, despite multiple attempts by the US to engage."

However, experts told CNN prior to Kim Yo Jong's message that Pyongyang was likely to rebuff diplomatic efforts for the time-being for a number of reasons including the coronavirus pandemic, the Biden team's ongoing North Korea policy review, the meetings in the region and above all, the administration's rhetoric.

"That's just a non-starter for the North Koreans," said Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies.

On Monday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the administration had reached out to North Korea, noting they have "a number of channels, as we always have had, that we can reach out through."

"It has to be nuanced because you can't just say, you know, we want to have talks, and the talks are going to be about North Korea's complete denuclearization, because that sounds very one sided," he told CNN. "It would have to be long term and not the Libya model of complete denuclearization upfront before we give them anything they want."

But after the summit, Trump administration officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, said the agreement pledged North Korea to the complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear program, despite the fact that it said nothing of the sort.

Former officials and experts also noted that Biden administration officials' commitments not to lift tariffs on North Korea during confirmation hearings did not go unnoticed, which could be one factor driving Pyongyang's decision not to engage directly with the US.

"What if the US and China come out of their meetings this week and make it clear that they are headed for escalating US-China tensions? If you are Kim Jong Un you would read that as meaning that it is less likely that China will put the squeeze on North Korea," said Anthony Ruggiero, a former National Security Council official. "If that happens, maybe Kim now knows he can go to China to buy more pieces for its nuclear programs, or to go to China and sell more coal. That would be a bad sign for the future of any US-North Korea diplomacy."

Aum said that he doesn't think they'd "want to do anything to provoke the US prior to some greater signal that the US is going to take a very hostile approach."

Facebook and other social media sites’ caution about taking down posts or accounts in democratic elections may be understandable, but prominent people are more likely to be believed, which is why the company’s standards should be higher for them, not the other way around.

ut the law is clear that Facebook is exercising its own First Amendment rights to regulate speech on its own site, including from the president. Sadly, it took four years of Mr. Trump’s divisive posts and bald attempts to undermine our democracy — not to mention a new administration — for Facebook to act on that.

These conditions may be particularly prevalent in communities of color, who are likewise disproportionately affected by the pandemic.

Several people I know packed on quite a few pounds of health-robbing body fat this past year, and not because they lacked the ability to purchase and consume a more nutritious plant-based diet or to exercise regularly within or outside their homes. One male friend in his 50s unexpectedly qualified for the Covid vaccine by having an underlying health condition when his doctor found he’d become obese since the pandemic began.

The government subsidizes the production of both soybeans and corn, most of which is used to feed livestock.

Early in the pandemic, when most businesses and entertainment venues were forced to close, toilet paper was not the only commodity stripped from market shelves. The country was suddenly faced with a shortage of flour and yeast as millions of Americans “stuck” at home went on a baking frenzy. While I understood their need to relieve stress, feel productive and perhaps help others less able or so inclined, bread, muffins and cookies were not the most wholesome products that might have emerged from pandemic kitchens.

Not only is alcohol a source of nutritionally empty calories, its wanton consumption can result in reckless behavior that further raises susceptibility to Covid.

“you can’t eat just one.” (Example: Corn on the cob is unprocessed, canned corn is minimally processed, but Doritos are ultra-processed).

As Marion Nestle, professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, says, “This is not rocket science.” She does not preach deprivation, only moderation (except perhaps for a total ban on soda). “We need a national policy aimed at preventing obesity,” she told me, “a national campaign to help all Americans get healthier.”

The warnings from U.S. officials echo comments by the head of U.S. Northern Command, who warned members of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that North Korea could be testing an improved intercontinental ballistic missile soon.

"The North Korean regime has also indicated that it is no longer bound by the unilateral nuclear and ICBM testing moratorium announced in 2018, suggesting that Kim Jong Un may begin flight testing an improved ICBM design in the near future."

Although Pyongyang halted testing of long-range missiles after former President Donald Trump’s 2018 Singapore summit with Kim, they continued to develop and parade sophisticated new capabilities, including a new class of intercontinental ballistic missiles, two new submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and diversified their inventory of short-range ballistic missile launchers, said a second senior defense official.

“North Korea’s continued development of ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction represent a threat to U.S. interests and the security of our allies and partners,” said Lt. Col. Martin Meiners. “In the near term, DoD, in close coordination with allies and partners, will seek to deter negative behavior from North Korea.”

Rhetoric from North Korea is heating up as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken are in Asia for their first overseas visit. The two wrapped up meetings with their Japanese counterparts and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga in Tokyo on Tuesday, before heading to South Korea on Wednesday.

he Biden administration has reached out to Pyongyang through various channels, but has yet to receive a response, Blinken said Tuesday in Tokyo.

But if the ship’s extraction takes longer, it could pose a substantial risk for an already-overwhelmed industry. Global trade has been disrupted as locked-down American consumers ordered vast quantities of factory goods from Asia, yielding a monthslong shortage of shipping containers, the metal boxes that carry parts and finished products around the globe.The blockage of the Suez Canal will affect the movement of things like exercise bikes and printers built in Chinese factories destined for American households, and soybeans grown on American farms and shipped to food processors in Southeast Asia.

ut first comes the technical quagmire of freeing the Ever Given. Pictures from the canal showed the container-laden ship sitting sideways at such an angle that the name of the company that operates it, Evergreen, was clearly visible from the ship behind it.“Ship in front of us ran aground while going through the canal and is now stuck sideways,” an Instagram user who gave her name as Julianne Cona, a ship’s engineer onboard another vessel, posted alongside a photo of the stricken ship on Tuesday evening. “Looks like we might be here for a little bit…”

Professor Brian Levin, with the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, says preliminary data show hate crimes targeting people of Asian descent surged nearly 150% last year across 16 major cities, from 49 in 2019 to 122 in 2020.

Many who chose to attend the training said they had been on the receiving end of racism

"And my other hope is that Asian Americans around the country realize that, look, we can't live our lives in fear. We have to at least do something about it and stand up to it," Kim said.

And a non-profit called Stop AAPI Hate (AAPI stands for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) collected 3,795 reports of what it describes as hate incidents, from verbal harassment to physical assault, between March 19, 2020, and Feb. 28, 2021.

Teddy Tong, a 64-year-old ophthalmologist, had never fired a gun before attending the training and has no plans to buy one. But he said he wanted to learn how to handle firearms "in case that need ever arises." "It seems like a very practical and useful lesson at this point," he said.

Nationwide, the increase in violence has fueled a conversation about the causes of anti-Asian racism, and how to address it. Three weeks ago, the U.S. House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties held a hearing on the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans.

Edward Chang, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Riverside, said the hearing is a good start, because over the years Asian Americans "were either being ignored or not invited" to discussions about race. "Asian American communities have been invisible," Chang said.

One woman - a senior physician at one of the area's top hospitals - was rattled by the experience. She declined to be identified because she wasn't sure how her colleagues would react to her considering using guns.

"I think it's ridiculous... I can't believe that I'm living in America now at this day and age where I have to think about how I can fend for myself and my family. And it's taken me to acquiring firearms to do that," Chung said.

A few weeks ago, he took his 16-year-old daughter to a gun range to teach her how to shoot. "I feel like I'm equipping her with something that empowers her, and hopefully she would never have to use it," he said.

The tragedy, upon other tragedies, is that the world seems to pay attention to Palestinians only when they use violence. Nonviolent activism goes largely ignored.

They don’t see the occupation itself—and what has flowed from it—as the original sin. And because they don’t recognize the centrality of the occupation, they don’t acknowledge what is so obvious to the other side: the basic fact of a lopsided power dynamic, in which Israel is the aggressor and Palestinians are the aggressed

American policy makers, regardless of whether they see Palestinians as fully deserving of rights and dignity, should understand that wildly unequal power and capabilities make peace all but impossible

The Biden administration is acting as if the past several years (or decades) have not happened. It is repeating the same mistakes as its predecessors, while hoping that a cease-fire can bring an end to hostilities and a return to calm. But until fundamental injustices—and Palestinian national aspirations—are addressed by ending an occupation that has lasted longer than my own existence, the calm will prove uneasy.

Bush said Tuesday night that her Republican colleagues were simply trying to “push the limits as far as they can.”

“If they won’t abide by the simple things this job calls for, then go find another one.”