Zelenskyy says Russia aims to erase Ukraine history, Kharkiv attack escalates | Main | Spanish edition

Russian paratroopers have landed in Kharkiv where deadly street battles erupted, while Russian troops made advances in the south on the seventh day of an invasion that Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Wednesday aimed to erase his country’s history.

Russian military attacks on Ukraine’s second-largest city, near the Russian border, killed 21 civilians and injured 112 others overnight, the regional governor Oleh Synyehubov said in a Telegram post, adding that Russian forces had attacked a military hospital.

Renewed Russian shelling on Wednesday morning struck several buildings, including a university, and killed four people, emergency services said.

Kharkiv, a largely Russian-speaking city, has a population of around 1.4 million.

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Collapse of the Space building: history of the decision that saved 22 families - Medellín - Colombia

In October 2013, at the age of 35, Jaime Enrique Gómez Zapata made a decision that changed his life and that of 22 families. Faced with the imminence of what would be a tragedy, he ordered the immediate evacuation of a building that, 34 hours later, collapsed. This is his story.

(Also read: Ex-participant of the ‘Challenge’ tells how he experienced the collapse of the Space building)

Jaime Enrique is a geologist. He knows very well the risks inherent to our geography. He has a specialization in prevention and response to natural disasters and a master’s degree in risk management and the environment. He began his career as an intern at the Medellín Municipal Disaster Prevention and Attention System (SIMPAD), which, years later, after the issuance of Law 1523 of 2012, became the Disaster Risk Management Administrative Department. (DAGRD). There he dedicated himself to visiting districts of Medellin and working on the prevention of mass movementsthe main threatening phenomenon in this mountainous area of ​​the country.

(See also: The unknown story of the refinery that changed the course of the country)

In 2008, after facing several emergencies due to rains -Jaime especially remembers the one in the El Socorro neighborhood, where 27 people died due to the magnitude of a landslide, as well as the tragedy in the Alto Verde urbanization, in the El Poblado neighborhood, where a landslide fell on six homes-, the capital of Antioquia declared a manifest emergency, in order to improve its response capacity in these situations, and for this it hired a team of engineers and geologists.

Jaime became a kind of mentor and taught them how to function in the field: he explained how to carry out risk inspections and what they should take into account during their visits. Thus, he soon took on a leadership role and in 2010 he became SIMPAD’s operational coordinator. Two years later he was appointed as deputy director of knowledge and risk reduction of the DAGRD, a position he held until the end of 2019.

Precisely, in that position he faced what, according to him, has been one of his greatest professional challenges to date.

(Of interest: The drama of merchants who close businesses for extortion in Barranquilla)

Currently, Jaime Enrique Gómez is director of the Administrative Department of Risk Management of Antioquia (DAGRAN).

The tragedy

Saturday, October 12, 2013. Tower 6 of the Space, a building located within a complex of apartments in the El Poblado neighborhood, in Medellín, collapsed around 7 at night. Tons of concrete went to the floor in a matter of minutes. At that time, Jaime was at his house, about to go out to eat with his wife and some of his friends. His phone started to ring. A wave of calls and messages confirmed what he knew the day before would happen sooner or later: Tower 6 of Space had collapsed, built six years ago by the Lérida CDO firm.

It wasn’t a hunch or a whimsical suspicion. It was the opinion of his expertise in risk management.

(In other news: In Medellín, the mask will no longer be used in public spaces from today)

Carlos Gil, the then director of the DAGRD, was on vacation and Jaime, as deputy director, took over as director in charge. That Friday morning, Jaime says, a call came to the 123 emergency line, in which “An elderly woman reported that the building had shaken, that it had sounded very hard, and that one of the walls of her apartment had cracked.”

The notice reached the office that the geologist was in charge of at the time. Jaime had a bad feeling, since it was an exclusive sector of Medellin where buildings do not usually present this type of complication. Immediately, he left the office for Space accompanied by three engineers from the mayor’s office and a team of firefighters to carry out the inspection.

This is what the building area looked like hours after the collapse, on Saturday, October 12, 2013.

Photo:

John Lopez. Archive THE TIME

“We arrived at the site. We spoke with the engineers (of the construction company) and they told us that there was no risk. The representatives of the construction company said the same thing, that there was no risk. That it was a punctual damage and they were going to solve it, ”he recalls.

However, the inspection ruled out that hypothesis. “We started to do a tour of the building and we saw some dangerous conditions in the structure. For example, the building looked tilted, we saw bent windows and cracks in the walls. And there we said: ‘something is happening here’”.

Jaime remembers the exact moment when he made the decision to order the evacuation.

With the inspection teams he had arrived at an apartment on the fourth floor. From the ninth floor downwards, the deterioration was progressive in the structure and its common areas, but at that point they showed an alarming signal: “there was a column with a crack due to compression failure, that is, the column was supporting more weight than it could ”.

(Other news from the country: Landslide in Manizales leaves 4 injured and 10 homes destroyed)

The geologist narrates that image with the precision of what is recorded in memory. “A part of the column was outside, in the corridor. And the other towards the interior of the apartment, in the kitchen. We checked it and realized that it was releasing a kind of dust, which indicated that the structure was in movement”.

For that moment there was only one certainty in his head: it was urgent to evacuate the building.

And despite the fact that construction officials continued to express their disagreement, Jaime and the inspection team met with the residents and told them they had to get out of there. “At no time did I doubt the decision I made,” he says.

The residential building had 24 floors and was located in the exclusive El Poblado sector of Medellín.

Photo:

John Lopez. Archive THE TIME

We checked the column and realized that it was releasing a kind of dust, which indicated that the structure was in movement

The recommendation was to evacuate tower 6 in its entirety. It was risky to be there, as there were clear signs that it could collapse. It was explained to the residents that they had to take out what was necessary and agree with the construction company on their place of stay for that night and the following ones. The community complied with the order. The versions that denied the risk of collapse, fortunately, did not persuade them.

That night, when they arrived at the building to issue the order that the authorities had issued hours earlier to the permanence to prohibit entry to the structure, the police officers realized that there was no one inside. The 22 resident families had left on time.

However, the calm was not complete.

At the time of the collapse, 12 people were in Tower 6 of Space. The rescue of their bodies ended 10 days after the tragedy. The investigation into the death of 11 of the victims (10 workers and a security guard) concluded in September 2014, after the construction company and the families reached a compensation agreement. And in the remaining case, that of a young man who was in the parking area, in 2019 the Supreme Court of Justice acquitted and ordered the release of Pablo Villegas Mesa, María Cecilia Posada Grisales and Jorge de Jesús Aristizábal Ochoa, former directors of the construction company. Lleida CDO, who had been convicted in that case.

In this regard, Jaime comments that the workers, for example, were aware of the restriction. “They were failing to comply with the recommendation that no work of any kind could be carried out until a safe plan was presented.”

On the Space lot, last October the news of the registration of the lot of almost 11,000 square meters where the building was built was knownwhich would allow it to be put up for sale and thus recover part of the money lost by those affected, who, in addition to spending years paying the bills for an uninhabited building, have reported breaches by the construction company.

(In context: Sell the lot, last hope of reparation for those affected by Space)

This is what the debris from the Space building looked like two days after the collapse.

Photo:

William Bear. Archive THE TIME

A decision that saved lives

After the tragedy, the mayor of Medellín asked the Faculty of Engineering of the Universidad de los Andes to issue its opinion on this case, which was key in the subsequent process. In the opinion of the specialists of that institution, if it had been designed in compliance with all the applicable requirements of Law 400 of 1997, the structure of the building “would not have manifested the collapse it presented under the imposed conditions.”

The building did have problems of differential settlements, which were intervened in August 2013. But the structure still had notable flaws.

When he talks about this episode, Jaime’s voice fills with pride. He makes it clear, however, that he doesn’t feel like a hero or anything like that. He acknowledges that his decision saved the lives of many people, but emphasizes: “we were just doing our job”.

In fact, he says that just last year he really measured the work they did that Friday in 2013. It was in June, when the world’s news reported that a 12-story building had collapsed in Surfside, Florida (United States), in the middle of at night while its inhabitants slept, causing the death of 98 people.

For Jaime it was inevitable to think about Space. “We saved many people’s lives,” he says today, almost nine years later, remarkably moved.

(Keep reading: Miami, Space and tragic building collapses around the world)

At the moment, he is director of the Administrative Department of Risk Management of Antioquia (DAGRAN), a dependency that works in that department designing strategies and programs aimed at risk reduction and disaster management. And he says he continues with the same motivation of his first day as an intern at SIMPAD, the one that also accompanied him to overcome the emergency in the Space building: to serve others.

WILLIAM MORENO HERNANDEZ
ELTIEMPO.COM journalist
On twitter: @williammoher

Inside a Special Black History Month Rite at 'The Lion King'

NEW YORK — 

During February, a special ritual takes place backstage at The Lion King musical on Broadway.

On show days, the four young actors who play the lion cubs Simba and Nala seek out fellow actor Bonita J. Hamilton in the moments before the curtain goes up at the Minskoff Theatre.

The youngsters have learned their lines and choreography, of course, but during Black History Month, they also tell Hamilton what they’ve learned about a Black historical figure. It might include a birthdate, the figure’s biggest achievements and some facts about their lives.

“February is my favorite month because the children — the cubs — get to teach me about Black history,” said Hamilton, who plays the hyena leader Shenzi onstage and offstage looks after the cubs with warmth and respect. “Every day in the month of February, they bring me a Black history fact.”

Hamilton has led the voluntary ritual for 17 years and the children seem to enjoy the challenge. “Telling Miss Bonita my fact is just really fun to do,” said Sydney Elise Russell, 10, who plays young Nala.

This month, the kids have honored Aretha Franklin, Shirley Chisholm, Whitney Houston, Billie Holiday, Frederick Douglass, James Baldwin, Michael Jordan, George Washington Carver, Angela Davis, Ethel Waters, Maya Angelou, Muhammad Ali, Dorothy Height and Mabel Fairbanks, among others.

“They’re learning, I’m learning. Because I say, ‘You’re teaching me something,'” said Hamilton, a graduate of Alabama State University and Brandeis University. “You’ve got to know whose shoulders you’re standing on.”

Last Friday night, Vince Ermita, 12, who plays Simba for four performances a week, sought out Hamilton to recite what he’d lately learned online about music icon Louis Armstrong.

“Louis Armstrong was born on Aug. 4, 1901, in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was a jazz trumpeter and vocalist, and one of the most iconic people he performed with was Ella Fitzgerald,” Vince said, without notes.

“His improvisation changed the landscape of jazz, and some of his most famous songs were What a Wonderful World, West End Blues and Hello, Dolly! And he passed away on July 6, 1971.”

Vince Ermita, from left, Alayna Martus, Sydney Elise Russell and Bonita J. Hamilton pose in the lobby of the Minskoff Theatre before a performance of Broadway’s ‘The Lion King’ on Feb. 18, 2022, in New York.

Vince had clearly nailed the assignment, and Hamilton beamed. But she had a follow-up question: What was Armstrong’s nickname?

“Satchmo?” he answered.

“All right!” Hamilton exclaimed, giving him a hand slap.

The other young actors also offered their facts. Alayna Martus, 12, picked gymnast Dominique Dawes — nicknamed Awesome Dawesome — and Sydney picked writer and poet Phillis Wheatley Peters, whose most famous poem is On Being Brought from Africa to America.

Hamilton also had a question when Sydney was done: “Do you know the name of Peters’ first published book?” Sydney did not but promised to return with the answer.

“Circle back, good job. Good job, guys. Thank you. I learned something today,” said Hamilton.

The backstage February ceremonies have had a lasting impact on generations of actors who have cycled in and out of the show, under Hamilton’s charismatic leadership. This year, several former child alumni of The Lion King — led by Caleb McLaughlin of the Netflix series Stranger Things — got together to make a video for Hamilton — each submitting their Black History figures for February.

Hamilton, from Montgomery, Alabama, the home of the civil rights movement which her family aided, started the tradition after coming to The Lion King and asking her then-young co-stars about the meaning of February.

“One day, just so casually, I said, ‘It’s Black History Month, guys. Let’s talk about it. What do you know about Black History Month?’ And they said, ‘Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks,'” she recalls, shaking her head. “There’s so much more to our history.”

Hamilton mixed it up a bit this year, kicking off the month by picking the names of several Black heroes from South Africa and putting them into a cup for the cubs to pick: Chris Hani, Steve Biko, Mamphela Ramphele and Tsietsi Mashinini, among them. The Lion King is set in South Africa, after all.

“They make me very proud. It’s like a game. It’s not anything that’s homework. Learning can be fun,” she said.

It’s a fitting ritual for a show in which Africa is celebrated and there are six Indigenous languages sung and spoken: Swahili, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Tswana and Congolese.

“The Lion King is steeped in ritual tradition, tribal things. Even the fabrics that we wear in the show have tribal markings, the mask, the makeup — all of it is tribal,” said Hamilton.

The ceremony clearly honors a legacy of greatness — updated, naturally, as the inclusion of gymnast Simone Biles can attest — but also teaches the children to respect how they got here.

“They have to know that there was a time when we weren’t allowed to perform on stage or, if we were, we couldn’t walk into the front door of the theater,” said Hamilton.

“It is a privilege to be able to share your gifts on the world’s largest stage. And that’s what I try to instill in them because we weren’t always able to do it.”

US National Debt Tops $30 Trillion for First Time in History

Washington — 

The Treasury Department this week reported that the total national debt of the United States surpassed $30 trillion for the first time in history, an amount equal to nearly 130% of America’s yearly economic output, known as gross domestic product. The eye-popping figure makes the U.S. one of the most heavily indebted nations in the world.

The federal debt has been high and rising for decades, but the federal government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which involved massive infusions of cash into the U.S. economy, greatly accelerated its growth.

At the end of 2019, prior to the pandemic, the national debt stood at $22.7 trillion. One year later, it had risen by an additional $5 trillion, to $27.7 trillion. Since then, the nation has added more than $2 trillion in further debt.

A grim reminder

While the $30 trillion figure, by itself, has no significant meaning, it may serve to focus attention on what some see as a major concern for the future health of the country.

“Hitting the $30 trillion mark is a reminder of just how high our debt is and just how much we’ve been borrowing,” said Marc Goldwein, senior vice president and senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Pedestrians pass signs in the window of an Urban Outfitters store advertising a sale, in downtown Seattle, Jan. 31, 2022.

“Debt held by the public, which is the measure we prefer to use, is about as large as the economy,” Goldwein told VOA. “In a decade, it’ll be larger than any time since World War II. Meanwhile, we have the highest inflation rate we’ve had in 40 years, and there doesn’t seem to be any sign that the borrowing is going to let up.”

Different debtors

The $30 trillion in outstanding debt is owed to a wide variety of creditors, including the federal government itself.

According to the Treasury Department, as of January 31, $6.5 trillion of the national debt was classified as “intragovernmental holdings.” This includes Treasury securities held by various agencies of the federal government, most prominently the Social Security Administration, which maintains a trust fund to provide income to senior citizens.

The far larger portion of the debt is classified as debt held by the public, which amounts to $23.5 trillion. The term “public” can be somewhat misleading because the category includes not just the debt instruments held by individual investors but also the debts held by the Federal Reserve, large investment funds and foreign governments.

According to the Treasury Department, foreign governments hold about $7.7 trillion in U.S. debt, though no country holds more than 5% of the total. As of the end of November, the most recent data available, Japan was the largest foreign holder of U.S. debt, with $1.3 trillion. China was the second-largest holder of U.S. debt, with $1.1 trillion, while the United Kingdom was in distant third place, with $622 billion.

The cost of debt

The cost of servicing the country’s outstanding debt has become a major part of the federal budget as the outstanding debt has grown. In 2021, the government made $562 billion in interest payments on outstanding debt. That is more than the annual budget of every individual federal agency except for the Treasury, the Department of Health and Human Services (which manages the Medicare and Medicaid government health insurance programs), and the Department of Defense.

Surprisingly, during the early part of the pandemic, the federal government’s interest payments fell even as the debt increased, because of a broad decline in interest rates.

FILE – The Federal Reserve building is seen before the Federal Reserve board is expected to signal plans to raise interest rates, as it focuses on fighting inflation in Washington, Jan. 26, 2022.

However, with the Federal Reserve poised to begin raising interest rates in an attempt to ward off rising inflation, the rate the Treasury has to pay on newly issued debt will likely rise, meaning that the overall cost of servicing the federal debt will likely go up in the relatively near future.

Comparison with other countries

The United States’ ratio of debt to GDP, the measure most commonly used to gauge a country’s level of indebtedness, places it among the most indebted countries in the world.

According to data gathered by the World Bank in October, the country with the world’s highest debt-to-GDP ratio is Japan, which carries debt equivalent to 257% of its economic output. Other developed economies with very high debt-to-GDP ratios include Greece, at 207%, and Italy, at 155%.

With a ratio of 133%, the U.S. is the 12th most indebted country overall, and the fourth most indebted among the developed economies that make up the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development. The OECD average is an 80% debt-to-GDP ratio.

Both parties added to debt

The national debt is the cumulative total of annual federal deficits. The U.S. has seen federal surpluses in just four of the past 50 years, from 1998 to 2001, encompassing the last three years of the administration of Bill Clinton, a Democrat, and the first year of the administration of George W. Bush, a Republican.

In recent decades, both Democrats and Republicans have contributed to the rising levels of federal borrowing, with the debt increasing on a regular basis, regardless of which party controlled Congress and the White House.

It’s a fact that causes some members of Congress to express frustration with their colleagues over a seeming lack of concern about the problem.

“$30 trillion in debt is an obscene number, but what’s even more depressing is the fact that most politicians in both parties don’t really care,” Senator Ben Sasse, a Nebraska Republican, said in a statement. “Someone is going to have to pay that money when these politicians are long gone, and — spoiler alert — it won’t be paid by them but instead by our kids.”

Holocaust-Era Letters Prompt Writer to Dive Into Family’s History

Eleanor Reissa’s mother and father survived the Nazi Holocaust in Europe during the 1940’s. After the war but before they were married, they wrote letters to each other. Those letters led Eleanor on a journey to learn about her parents’ past. The result of that journey was just released in book form. Victoria Kupchinetsky has the story from Cold Spring, New York. Camera – Michael Eckels.

In America, Electoral Vote Perils Have Long History

WASHINGTON — 

The president-elect was warned – there was a conspiracy to prevent the counting of the electoral ballots and disrupt his inauguration. There was even talk of seizing Washington by military force in a deeply divided nation.

It was not Joe Biden receiving the alarming reports after his 2020 election, but Abraham Lincoln following the vote of 1860.

“There was also an assassination plot against the president-elect to prevent him from arriving in Washington at all,” according to Lincoln historian Howard Holzer.

This April 2, 2015 photo shows a lamp, believed to be one of two that were on the original train car that carried President Abraham Lincoln’s coffin along the 1600-mile route from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Ill., in Elgin, Ill.

Members of a white supremacist secret society and a Baltimore militia, both committed to preserving slavery, had discussed seizing Washington by force before looking to sabotage the train carrying Lincoln to his inauguration.

Lincoln was inaugurated as the 16th president of the United States on March 4, 1861. By then southern states had already begun seceding to form the Confederated States of America. To get to the ceremony in Washington, Lincoln avoided going through the slaveholding city of Baltimore, as had been announced, detouring to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania disguised as an ordinary passenger in a sleeping car on a night train.

The plot to kill the president-elect (who was assassinated in 1865 after winning a second term) “turned out to be little more than rumor and drunken boasting and Lincoln was afterward so embarrassed that he had listened to any of it that he almost went to the other extreme in disregard of his personal safety,” according to Princeton University Professor Allen Guelzo.

As in 2020, some Americans in 1860 were incensed by unfounded charges about the legitimacy of the popular and electoral votes.

“It was even more ridiculous than the recent charges by Donald Trump,” Holzer told VOA of the claims that Lincoln was not legitimately elected because he prevailed in the North but had no electoral votes in the South.

Lincoln “won the election on the strength of the electoral college vote, but with only 39 percent of the popular vote. However, the states where he won the popular vote — and thus the electoral vote — gave him whopping margins of victory, so there was never any question about challenges to electors in those states,” says Guelzo, director of Princeton’s Initiative on Politics and Statesmanship of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions.

FILE – Protesters loyal to then-President Donald Trump storm the Capitol, Jan. 6, 2021.

The first mob at the Capitol

In another parallel to recent events, on Feb. 13, 1861, a mob tried to force its way inside the U.S. Capitol to disrupt the electoral vote count. Unlike the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, authorities were prepared.

General Winfield Scott, a Southerner and hero of the Mexican War in charge of defending Washington, had even sent a cannon to Capitol Hill.

The general made it known that any intruder would be “be lashed to the muzzle of a twelve-pounder and fired out the window of the Capitol.” For emphasis, he added: “I would manure the hills of Arlington with the fragments of his body.”

“That intimidated the group a bit,” notes Holzer.

A major difference between 1861 and 2021 is that all the senators and many of the House members from the breakaway states had already permanently departed Washington.

“So, there was no one there really to take votes and object to the state counts. And that’s one of the other reasons why it actually went much more smoothly than it did in 2020,” says Holzer, director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College.

The vice president of the United States, who is the president of the Senate, in both 1861 and 2021 did not tamper with the ceremonial but crucial electoral vote count. On that fateful day in 1861, Vice President John Breckinridge of Kentucky (the runner-up presidential candidate from the Southern side of a split Democratic Party) presided over the event.

Two months later, civil war began when Confederate forces attacked a U.S. Army fort in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina.

President Joe Biden speaks from Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol to mark the one year anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol by supporters loyal to then-President Donald Trump, Thursday, Jan. 6, 2022, in Washington.

Modern day dispute

On the first anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, deadly attack on the Capitol, Biden declared: “We are in a battle for the soul of America,” accusing Trump of trying to unravel the country’s democratic system by continuing to repeat lies about the 2020 election.

Trump continues to insist, without evidence, there was “massive vote fraud” in several states he lost.

A special House committee, meanwhile, is investigating the siege of the Capitol and the violent attempt to disrupt the electoral vote counting.

The U.S. election system has improved since Lincoln’s days, but more reform is needed, according to numerous politicians, analysts and historians.

“In those days, state electors were elected in many states by the legislature, not even by voters. There was a lot of possibilities for fraud, or at least over-politicization that ignored the will of the people,” says Holzer. “We don’t have that now. We have electronic and computer counts. We have poll-watchers, we have the popular vote.”

Numerous technical issues with the certification and counting of the electoral votes remain concerningly vague, however, according to Michael Morley, a law professor at Florida State University and a member of the National Task Force on Election Crises.

“It’s an issue that four years ago wouldn’t have been on anyone’s political radar,” says Morley, who explains he is now “cautiously optimistic that we might see some changes.”

The danger for the next presidential election in 2024 in a deeply divided nation, as it was in Lincoln’s time, is “both the possibility, as well as a public perception of the possibility, that the outcome of the election could be determined by politically motivated decision-making rather than the dictates of the law and what the actual outcome of the vote is,” Morley tells VOA.

Electoral College ballot boxes arrive to a joint session of the Congress to certify the 2020 election results on Capitol Hill in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021.

Will law be updated?

Such concerns have a bipartisan group of U.S. senators examining ways to modernize the law concerning the electoral ballots.

The 1887 Electoral Count Act is woefully out of date, Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, told reporters on Wednesday. She explained that lawmakers are exploring how to raise the requirements for members of Congress to challenge state-certified election results and ensuring the vice president’s role is purely ceremonial when the electoral votes are certified.

The 1887 act written in reaction to the presidential election of 1876, in which Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote but ultimately lost to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes. Three Southern states had sent in multiple competing electoral returns and Congress had no rules in place to resolve the conflicts.

It is critical, according to Collins, to prevent a repeat of last year when Trump pressured his vice president, Mike Pence, to overturn electoral results.

“Fortunately, Vice President Pence did the right thing and followed the 12th Amendment, but the Electoral Count Act is ambiguous about the role of the vice president,” Collins told WMTW-TV. “But what if we had a vice president who wasn’t as ethical and bound by his constitutional duty?”