Why a no-fly zone risks escalating the Ukraine conflict Expert comment NCapeling 13 March 2022

The US rejection of Poland’s offer to send fighter jets as a boost to Ukraine’s air defence shows just how uneasy nations are about direct combat with Russia.

The Pentagon’s decision to turn down the proposal by its fellow NATO member Poland to put Russian-made MiG-29 jets at its disposal demonstrates again how keen the US and allies are to avoid risking major confrontation with Russian forces.

The US Department of Defense says the offer to locate jets at bases in Germany was ‘not tenable’ as this risks flying into contested airspace over Ukraine – a non-NATO member – raising ‘serious concerns for the entire NATO alliance’ and echoing the continuing rejection of calls to implement no-fly zones (NFZs) as a way of easing the devastation being faced by trapped Ukraine civilians.

NFZs restrict any aircraft, including drones, from flying over a pre-defined region and can be used for both military and civilian purposes. But the implementation of NFZs is difficult to enforce and – most significantly – is unlikely to achieve the intended effect on the ground.

In conflict situations, they are usually implemented under the remit of United Nations (UN) peace support operations, requiring authorization under Article 42 of the UN Charter. This details that if all possible methods have proven ineffective in responding to a threat, countries ‘may take such action by air, or land forces as may be necessary to maintain or restore international peace and security’.

Protection but with limitations

NFZs provide both protection from attack and surveillance but do have limitations. They must be monitored and enforced which requires committing to fighter jet patrols with the explicit task of defending the area from the air by whatever means necessary.

This could mean jets firing upon Russian planes and drones so, if NATO allies and partners were to enforce a NFZ, it would represent an escalation of measures which is a step that would most likely provoke an unpredictable Vladimir Putin into further escalation – in short, it is highly likely to be seen as an act of war.

UK defence secretary Ben Wallace – among others – has repeatedly dispelled the idea, saying that enforcing NFZs would mean deploying ‘British fighter jets directly against Russian fighter jets’. In relation to moves such as the Polish jets, the Kremlin has warned that any countries offering airfields to Ukraine for attacks on Russia may be viewed as having entered the conflict.

There have only been three past instances of military NFZs. In Bosnia, as part of Operation Deny Flight from 1993-1995, a NFZ was enforced as part of a strategy which also including the provision of close air support and approved air strikes.

In Iraq, an NFZ endured for 12 years from 1991 and was succcesful in preventing Saddam Hussein from attacking Kurdish and Shia Muslim civilians. And in Libya in 2011, a NFZ was deployed to prevent the destruction of military infrastructure and the Libyan regime – although this quickly morphed into the provision of close air support.

So it is unclear just how successful NFZs are at providing protection. In Iraq and Libya, NFZ cover protection was provided but neither Saddam Hussein or Colonel Gaddafi were able to effectively target victims through their ground forces whereas, in Bosnia, Slobodan Milosevic infamously used ground troops to slaughter 8,000 Bosnian men and boys at Srebrenica.

Putin would still be able to continue to use both ground forces and artillery to assault Ukrainian cities with or without a NFZ – in fact, his sparse use of his Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) has been one of the surprising features of the war so far. Under a NFZ, missile attacks could also continue, there is nothing in the record of no-fly zones to suggest the provision of safe areas for non-combatants would work.

And NFZs have only been successful against vastly inferior forces such as in Iraq, Bosnia, and Libya. But Russia has an air force second only in size to the US and has a vast range of defences including the potent S-400 Triumf at its disposal. Not only would an NFZ be ineffective, it might also not be possible to enforce without risking significant losses to the peace operations force.

It is due to a combination of these reasons that NFZs have not been used more in previous conflicts. The most recent consideration for a NFZ was in Syria but President Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian forces, protected by Russian air cover, could still have targeted their intended victims despite air policing so a NFZ was not used.

In the long-term, under the terms of a ceasefire agreement, it may be possible to include a NFZ under a UN or joint OSCE-UN peace terms. However, the forces involved should exclude NATO allies and partners or any states with Russian alliances to avoid further conflict.

This leaves few suitable countries with the capacity, willingness, and political stance to be called on. Two of the world’s most militarily capable states – China and India – abstained in the Uniting for Peace vote in the UN General Assembly (UNGA). Whether another willing state with the military capability – such as a Gulf state – could be considered acceptable to all sides remains to be tested.

Notable successes with SAMs

Many military commentators also note that currently Ukrainian forces are having notable success without jets, downing Russian aircraft using sophisticated surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) such as Stinger and Javelin, and NATO countries continue to supply those in their thousands.

A zoo on England's Isle of Wight announced the saga of its escaped raccoons came to a happy ending with the final animal safely recaptured.

Police in a small South Carolina town are warning residents to keep their doors and windows locked after 43 monkeys escaped from a research facility.

Human sleep exhibits multiple, recurrent temporal regularities, ranging from circadian rhythms to sleep stage cycles and neuronal oscillations during nonrapid eye movement sleep. Moreover, recent evidence revealed a functional role of aperiodic activity, which reliably discriminates different sleep stages. Aperiodic activity is commonly defined as the spectral slope of the 1/frequency (1/f) decay function of the electrophysiological power spectrum. However, several lines of inquiry now indicate that the aperiodic component of the power spectrum might be better characterized by a superposition of several decay processes with associated timescales. Here, we determined multiple timescales, which jointly shape aperiodic activity using human intracranial electroencephalography. Across three independent studies (47 participants, 23 female), our results reveal that aperiodic activity reliably dissociated sleep stage-dependent dynamics in a regionally specific manner. A principled approach to parametrize aperiodic activity delineated several, spatially and state-specific timescales. Lastly, we employed pharmacological modulation by means of propofol anesthesia to disentangle state-invariant timescales that may reflect physical properties of the underlying neural population from state-specific timescales that likely constitute functional interactions. Collectively, these results establish the presence of multiple intrinsic timescales that define the electrophysiological power spectrum during distinct brain states.

The energetic streams are together 23 million light-years in length—roughly as long as 140 Milky Way galaxies lined end to end

A special committee has until January 15 to finalize the design, location and funding for a monument that will be erected on the lawn of the South Carolina State House

Once the first primate made a break, the 42 others followed suit in a simple case of monkey-see, monkey-do

This story and others have come to light during a project to translate and digitize a series of texts about archbishops in York, England

U.S. president-elect Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin and advised him not to escalate the Ukraine war, a source familiar with the conversation said, but the Kremlin denied the two had spoken.

Effie Award Recognizes Marketing Company Small Army and DS SolidWorks for ‘3 Dudes Gone 3D’ Campaign

This is the 17th installment of The Rationalist, my column for the Times of India.

One of my favourite English words comes from chess. If it is your turn to move, but any move you make makes your position worse, you are in ‘Zugzwang’. Narendra Modi was in zugzwang after the Pulwama attacks a few days ago—as any Indian prime minister in his place would have been.

An Indian PM, after an attack for which Pakistan is held responsible, has only unsavoury choices in front of him. He is pulled in two opposite directions. One, strategy dictates that he must not escalate. Two, politics dictates that he must.

Let’s unpack that. First, consider the strategic imperatives. Ever since both India and Pakistan became nuclear powers, a conventional war has become next to impossible because of the threat of a nuclear war. If India escalates beyond a point, Pakistan might bring their nuclear weapons into play. Even a limited nuclear war could cause millions of casualties and devastate our economy. Thus, no matter what the provocation, India needs to calibrate its response so that the Pakistan doesn’t take it all the way.

It’s impossible to predict what actions Pakistan might view as sufficient provocation, so India has tended to play it safe. Don’t capture territory, don’t attack military assets, don’t kill civilians. In other words, surgical strikes on alleged terrorist camps is the most we can do.

Given that Pakistan knows that it is irrational for India to react, and our leaders tend to be rational, they can ‘bleed us with a thousand cuts’, as their doctrine states, with impunity. Both in 2001, when our parliament was attacked and the BJP’s Atal Bihari Vajpayee was PM, and in 2008, when Mumbai was attacked and the Congress’s Manmohan Singh was PM, our leaders considered all the options on the table—but were forced to do nothing.

But is doing nothing an option in an election year?

Leave strategy aside and turn to politics. India has been attacked. Forty soldiers have been killed, and the nation is traumatised and baying for blood. It is now politically impossible to not retaliate—especially for a PM who has criticized his predecessor for being weak, and portrayed himself as a 56-inch-chested man of action.

I have no doubt that Modi is a rational man, and knows the possible consequences of escalation. But he also knows the possible consequences of not escalating—he could dilute his brand and lose the elections. Thus, he is forced to act. And after he acts, his Pakistan counterpart will face the same domestic pressure to retaliate, and will have to attack back. And so on till my home in Versova is swallowed up by a nuclear crater, right?

Well, not exactly. There is a way to resolve this paradox. India and Pakistan can both escalate, not via military actions, but via optics.

Modi and Imran Khan, who you’d expect to feel like the loneliest men on earth right now, can find sweet company in each other. Their incentives are aligned. Neither man wants this to turn into a full-fledged war. Both men want to appear macho in front of their domestic constituencies. Both men are masters at building narratives, and have a pliant media that will help them.

Thus, India can carry out a surgical strike and claim it destroyed a camp, killed terrorists, and forced Pakistan to return a braveheart prisoner of war. Pakistan can say India merely destroyed two trees plus a rock, and claim the high moral ground by returning the prisoner after giving him good masala tea. A benign military equilibrium is maintained, and both men come out looking like strong leaders: a win-win game for the PMs that avoids a lose-lose game for their nations. They can give themselves a high-five in private when they meet next, and Imran can whisper to Modi, “You’re a good spinner, bro.”

There is one problem here, though: what if the optics don’t work?

If Modi feels that his public is too sceptical and he needs to do more, he might feel forced to resort to actual military escalation. The fog of politics might obscure the possible consequences. If the resultant Indian military action causes serious damage, Pakistan will have to respond in kind. In the chain of events that then begins, with body bags piling up, neither man may be able to back down. They could end up as prisoners of circumstance—and so could we.

***

Also check out:

Why Modi Must Learn to Play the Game of Chicken With Pakistan—Amit Varma
The Two Pakistans—Episode 79 of The Seen and the Unseen
India in the Nuclear Age—Episode 80 of The Seen and the Unseen

The India Uncut Blog © 2010 Amit Varma. All rights reserved.
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Check here each week to keep up with the latest from John MacArthur's pulpit at Grace Community Church.

Check here each week to keep up with the latest from John MacArthur's pulpit at Grace Community Church.

Nairobi — A prominent human rights group is calling for the deployment of peacekeepers in Sudan, following a recent wave of attacks on civilians in Al Jazirah state widely blamed on the Rapid Support Forces, one of the warring sides in the country’s ongoing conflict. Human Rights Watch says the situation has become so grim that a mission is needed to protect the population.  According to a local pro-democracy group, the Wad Madani Resistance Committee, 169 people have been killed since the violence started in southeastern Jazirah state on Oct. 20.   The attacks began after a commander for the Rapid Support Forces defected and joined the Sudanese army. Rights groups report that in response, RSF forces entered villages and towns in the area where the commander was from and carried out targeted killings and abuse.   Laetitia Bader, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Africa division, said the violations have added more problems for a population reeling from more than 18 months of war.   "Sudanese women's rights groups have been documenting cases of sexual violence against women and girls in these towns and villages. And we're talking here about over 30 towns and villages which have been attacked in recent weeks, and these attacks are ongoing,” Bader said. “It led to massive displacement of the civilian population in an area where people had already fled to and from. So it's just adding to the layers of suffering."  The RSF has denied attacking communities in Jazirah state and has accused Sudanese forces of arming local communities.   The RSF and Sudan’s military have been at war since April of last year. Rival generals lead the parties and are locked in a power struggle.  Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch and other observers are calling for the deployment of peacekeepers to Jazirah and other parts of Sudan, in hopes of protecting civilians.   Getting a presence on the ground could deter further attacks and help monitor humanitarian obstruction, Bader said, and also play a role in bolstering local cease-fire efforts and efforts by emergency response teams to provide assistance.  “Right now the problem is that what is happening at the local level cannot act alone," Bader added.  Ahmed Hashi, a Horn of Africa political and security commentator, said troops are needed, and strong action must be taken against the leaders of the warring groups.   "There is a need to send at least 50,000 United Nations soldiers. There is a need to take the criminal generals to the International Criminal Court and issue a warrant for their arrest,” Hashi said. “It is important for the United Nations to put its foot down on conflicts because they are going to metastasize into a massive humanitarian catastrophe."  In a report issued last month, the office of U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed shock at the human rights violations often witnessed in Sudan’s western Darfur region being repeated in the Jazirah area.  The United Nations Security Council is slated to discuss the report on Sudan later this month.

London — A British soldier accused of passing sensitive information to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps pleaded guilty Monday to escaping from prison while awaiting trial. Daniel Abed Khalife is on trial at London's Woolwich Crown Court, accused of collecting sensitive information between May 2019 and January 2022. Khalife, who is no longer a member of the British armed forces, also denies leaving a fake bomb on a desk and absconding from his barracks in 2023. Prosecutors had also alleged Khalife escaped from London's Wandsworth prison in September 2023 by tying himself to the bottom of a delivery van, sparking a brief nationwide manhunt. The 23-year-old had originally pleaded not guilty to escaping from lawful custody but changed his plea to guilty Monday after having given evidence for several days earlier this month. Khalife is also charged with gathering information that might be useful to an enemy, namely Iran, obtaining information likely to be useful for terrorism and perpetrating a bomb hoax. He still denies those three charges and his trial continues.

DAMASAK, Nigeria — When Boko Haram launched an insurgency in northeastern Nigeria in 2010, Abdulhameed Salisu packed his bag and fled from his hometown of Damasak in the country's battered Borno state.  The 45-year-old father of seven came back with his family early last year. They are among thousands of Nigerians taken back from displacement camps to their villages, hometowns or newly built settlements known as “host communities” under a resettlement program that analysts say is being rushed to suggest the conflict with the Islamic militants is nearly over.  Across Borno, dozens of displacement camps have been shut down, with authorities claiming they are no longer needed and that most places from where the displaced fled are now safe.  But many of the displaced say it’s not safe to go back.  Boko Haram — Nigeria’s homegrown jihadis — took up arms in 2009 to fight against Western education and impose their radical version of Islamic law, or Sharia. The conflict, now Africa's longest struggle with militancy, has spilled into Nigeria's northern neighbors.  Some 35,000 civilians have been killed and more than 2 million have been displaced in the northeastern region, according to U.N. numbers. The 2014 kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls by Boko Haram in the village of Chibok in Borno state — the epicenter of the conflict — shocked the world.  Borno state alone has nearly 900,000 internally displaced people in displacement camps, with many others absorbed in local communities. So far this year, at least 1,600 civilians have been killed in militant attacks in Borno state, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a U.S.-based nonprofit.  And in a state where at least 70% of the population depends on agriculture, dozens of farmers have also been killed by the extremists or abducted from their farmland in the last year.  In May, hundreds of hostages, mostly women and children who were held captive for months or years by Boko Haram were rescued from a forest enclave and handed over to authorities, the army said.  In September, at least 100 villagers were killed by suspected Boko Haram militants who opened fire on a market, on worshippers and in people’s homes in the Tarmuwa council area of the neighboring Yobe state, west of Borno.  Analysts say that a forced resettlement could endanger the local population as there is still inadequate security across the hard-hit region.  Salisu says he wastes away his days in a resettlement camp in Damasak, a garrison town in Borno state of about 200,000 residents, close to the border with Niger.  Food is getting increasingly difficult to come by and Salisu depends on handouts from the World Food Program and other aid organizations. He longs to find work.  “We are begging the government to at least find us a means of livelihood instead of staying idle and waiting for whenever food comes,” he said.  On a visit last week to Damasak, Cindy McCain, the WFP chief, pledged the world would not abandon the Nigerian people as she called for more funding to support her agency's aid operations.  “We are going to stay here and do the very best we can to end hunger,” McCain told The Associated Press as she acknowledged the funding shortages. “How do I take food from the hungry and give it to the starving,” she said.  Resettlement usually involves the displaced being taken in military trucks back to their villages or “host communities." The Borno state government has promised to provide returnees with essentials to help them integrate into these areas, supported by aid groups.  The government says the displacement camps are no longer sustainable.  “What we need now is ... durable solutions,” Borno governor Babagana Zulum told McCain during her visit.  As the resettlement got underway, one in five displaced persons stayed back in Maiduguri, the Borno state capital, and nearby towns but were left without any support for local integration, the Global Protection Cluster, a network of non-government organizations and U.N. agencies, said last December.  Many others have crossed the border to the north, to settle as refugees in neighboring Niger, Chad or Cameroon. The three countries have registered at least 52,000 Nigerian refugees since January 2023, according to the U.N. refugee agency — nearly twice the number registered in the 22 months before that.  A rushed closure of displacement camps and forced resettlement puts the displaced people at risk again from militants still active in their home areas — or forces them to “cut deals” with jihadis to be able to farm or fish, the International Crisis Group warned in a report earlier this year.  That could make the extremists consolidate their presence in those areas, the group warned. Boko Haram, which in 2016 split into two main factions, continues to ambush security convoys and raid villages.  Abubakar Kawu Monguno, head of the Center for Disaster Risk Management at the University of Maiduguri, said the best option is for government forces to intensify their campaign to eliminate the militants or “push them to surrender.”  After not being able to access their farms because of rampant attacks by militants, some farmers in Damasak and other parts of Mobbar district returned to work their land last year, armed with seedlings provided by the government.  Salisu was one of them.  Then a major flood struck in September, collapsing a key dam and submerging about 40% of Maiduguri's territory. Thirty people were killed and more than a million others were affected, authorities said.  Farms that feed the state were ruined, including Salisu's. His hopes for a good rice harvest were washed away. Now he lines up to get food at a Damasak food hub.  “Since Boko Haram started, everything else stopped here," he said. “There is nothing on the ground and there are no jobs.”  Maryam Abdullahi also lined up at a WFP hub in Damasak with other women, waiting for bags of rice and other food items she desperately needs for her family of eight. Her youngest is 6 years old.  The donations barely last halfway through the month, she said, but she still waited in the scorching heat.  What little money she has she uses to buy yams to fry and sell to sustain her family, but it’s nowhere enough. Her only wish is to be able to get a “proper job” so she and her children would feel safe, she said.  “We either eat in the morning for strength for the rest of the day or ... we eat only at night,” Abdullahi said. 

The Great Mosque, in all its majestic grandeur, is less enticing if you're an American woman who somehow finds herself inside it.

Israel’s counterattacks on Iran underscore high stakes in Middle East.

Everything is at stake. Everything is at stake with nuclear weapons. While working as a nuclear war planner for the Kennedy administration, Daniel Ellsberg was shown a document calculating that a U.S. nuclear attack on communist countries would result in 600 million dead. As he put it later: “A hundred Holocausts.” That was in 1961. […]

The United Nations continues to be virtually paralyzed – and remains politically impotent amidst two raging conflicts—as Russia and Israel keep defying the world body. The killings of civilians and the destruction of cities, particularly by Israel, are devastating and continue despite repeated warnings from the UN, its humanitarian agencies, the International Criminal Court (ICC), […]

Kremlin denies Putin spoke with Trump over de-escalation in Ukraine

X-ray videos of Japanese eels swallowed whole by dark sleeper fish have revealed how the eels can make a daring escape from being digested

During a fight between two male mice, one will often run to a female mouse to distract their aggressor, a bait-and-switch strategy that could help abate social conflicts

Pilocytic astrocytomas are the most common pediatric brain tumors, typically presenting as low-grade neoplasms. We report two cases of pilocytic astrocytoma with atypical tumor progression. Case 1 involves a 12-yr-old boy with an unresectable suprasellar tumor, negative for BRAF rearrangement but harboring a BRAF p.V600E mutation. He experienced tumor size reduction and stable disease following dabrafenib treatment. Case 2 describes a 6-yr-old boy with a thalamic tumor that underwent multiple resections, with no actionable driver detected using targeted next-generation sequencing. Whole-genome and RNA-seq analysis identified an internal tandem duplication in FGFR1 and RAS pathway activation. Future management options include FGFR1 inhibitors. These cases demonstrate the importance of escalating molecular diagnostics for pediatric brain cancer, advocating for early reflexing to integrative whole-genome sequencing and transcriptomic profiling when targeted panels are uninformative. Identifying molecular drivers can significantly impact treatment decisions and improve patient outcomes.

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HARI SREENIVASAN: Let’s turn to the continuing fallout and reaction to the Harvey Weinstein story.

Yesterday, Weinstein resigned from the board of his production company following numerous revelations of sexual harassment and several allegations of assault.

More than three dozen women have said Weinstein harassed them. While Weinstein has admitted to behaving inappropriately, he has said he didn’t physically assault anyone.

One of those women is Katherine Kendall. She was a 23-year-old actress who met Weinstein in 1993. She alleges that he invited her to his apartment in New York, where, she says, he took off his clothes and asked for a massage.

As other actresses began coming forward about their painful experiences, she also went public with her own story.

She joins me now from Los Angeles.

First, thanks for joining us.

And I don’t want to relive something that’s painful for you, but you are taking a public stance on it.

For people who don’t know your story, what happened?

KATHERINE KENDALL, Actress/ Photographer: Well, I was you know, a young actress, and I had had a formal meeting at the Miramax office earlier that day.

And then, at the end of the meeting, which I thought went really well, he invited me to come to screenings. He said: “Welcome to the Miramax family. You know, come to premieres, screenings, et cetera. In fact, there’s one this afternoon. Would you like to come?”

And I said, “Sure.”

And I ended up going to see a movie with him. It ended up just being a movie, not a screening, but the film “Red Rock West.” And, you know, that’s right when I had this sort of sinking feeling that something wasn’t going right.

And then, after the movie, we walked for a few blocks. And he said he needed to go up to his apartment to get something, and would I just come with him real quick? And I sort of said no, and we went back and forth on that for a minute. It was sort of a negotiation with him always, trying to sort of stand my ground, but then be convinced it was OK.

I did go into his apartment. Once there, we talked for a long time about art and movies. And I felt like he was treating me like an intellect.

And I felt like the meeting was going really well, and sort of continued. I didn’t feel unsafe once I was in there. And, at one point, then, he got up to go to the bathroom. And he came back in a robe and asked me to give him a massage.

And I was extremely uncomfortable. And I was like, oh, God, no, I’m not comfortable with that. And we went back and forth on that.

And then he went back to the bathroom again, and came back this time completely naked. And, you know, that changed it entirely for me, too. It just took it to the next place. It was completely disorienting. And I was scared, you know? I was really scared.

And then it became sort of a cat-and-mouse game of, like, how am I going to get out of there?

And I’m — it’s hard to make sense of what someone is trying to do to you when they’re fully naked, and they’re…

HARI SREENIVASAN: Yes.

KATHERINE KENDALL: You know, I’m 105 pounds. He’s a large man standing between me and the door.

And, I mean, I felt very resolute, like, I will definitely get out of here somehow. But I’m not — I’m not sure — I’m not sure what’s going to happen here. You know, a lot was going through my head.

And he said, well, if you won’t give me a massage, will you at least show me your breasts? And it was just — you know, it was, all in all, an extremely humiliating experience for me.

And even though I got away, I felt like something had still — like something horrible had just happened to me.

HARI SREENIVASAN: You know, in the immediate aftermath, did you tell someone about it? Because you have said before that you felt ashamed…

KATHERINE KENDALL: I did.

HARI SREENIVASAN: … even though you were the victim.

KATHERINE KENDALL: I did.

It’s really interesting how that happens. And I think — you know, I’m older now, and I have done some work on myself. And I have learned that a lot of people feel that way.

It’s — it’s not — it wasn’t just me. But the just me feeling that this is my fault, this must have only happened to me, there’s something wrong with me, is so common when someone perpetrates against you.

HARI SREENIVASAN: What were the…

KATHERINE KENDALL: And I did. I told my mom.

And I told some good friends. But, you know, one of the things that happened was, I didn’t want them to tell anybody. You know, people wanted to help me, but they didn’t know how, and I didn’t want them to try too hard, because I didn’t want it to backlash.

I was scared. And I think that it’s important to remember that we don’t really come from a culture that supports women in talking about sexual harassment, in my — in my experience, that is. And, you know, I just haven’t felt like it was something I was going to get support on…

HARI SREENIVASAN: You know, how long…

KATHERINE KENDALL: … in the bigger picture.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Yes.

How long did this feeling last? Or, I guess, what are the longer-term ripple effects here? Did it shake your confidence in your abilities?

KATHERINE KENDALL: I think it did. I think it did. I think it did.

I think it made me feel like, wow, you know, that was a wash. He wasn’t interested at all in what I had to say, or, you know, he didn’t see any talent there or intellect there. He was assessing the situation the whole time for something else.

And I think that — that did hurt. You know, I wish it didn’t.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Yes.

KATHERINE KENDALL: But he had produced so many movies that I thought were wonderful. And it was — it’s hard when someone has made art that you love, and how do you stay attached to liking their art, but feeling conflicted about them?

And, yes, I think it does have long-term effects. I think you tuck it away. And then, for me, also, I realized that it came back when I would see his name or see him in person. I would start to sort of tremble all over again.

I mean, I wouldn’t think about him on a daily basis or anything for years, and then I would see him, and I would think, oh, I don’t feel well. I got to get out of here.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Right.

KATHERINE KENDALL: You know, it would bring up so much emotion.

And the most recent one was the woman in New York, the Italian model. I felt so, so enraged when I saw what happened there, and that they sort of — the police had him, and that then he got away. And then she was being dragged through the press as somebody who just, you know, wanted a payout, et cetera.

HARI SREENIVASAN: You know, in the wake of that, there was — a friend of yours had tweeted, “At some point, all the women who have been afraid to speak out about Harvey Weinstein are going to have to hold hands and jump.” This was back in 2015.

And from your Twitter account, you said, “Agreed.”

It seemed like you almost had the opportunity to come forward.

What made you want to come forward now? Has this become a turning point in the industry?

KATHERINE KENDALL: This is a turning point. It’s a turning point.

There are so many times when I thought about it, and then felt like — there were times when I thought about it and said, well, I have nothing to lose, I will just do it. And then I thought, I — I just didn’t have the strength or the courage yet.

And I think somebody like Jodi Kantor doing the story for The New York Times, the fact that she thought it was a story at all was startling to me and made me feel like, wow, something is going to be done.

And I knew she had told me — I mean, they were looking for women that this had happened to, because they’d been hearing rumors for so long that it happened to so many people. And she had told me other people were coming out.

And I thought, I can’t — when I watched Rose McGowan or any of the other actresses come forward, I just — or Ashley Judd — I just thought, they look strong to me, and I don’t want to be the one that stays silent.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Well, Katherine Kendall…

KATHERINE KENDALL: I want to stand beside them.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Katherine Kendall, thank you very much for speaking with us.

And, hopefully, there are other people that are empowered by you coming forward.

KATHERINE KENDALL: I hope so. Thank you.

The post Escaping Harvey Weinstein was a ‘cat-and-mouse game,’ says Katherine Kendall appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

Treat yourself to a Becky Lynch book signing, games with the Dropout stars, Kevin Smith’s Dogma, and so much more!

The former soldier Daniel Khalife has changed his plea to guilty and admitted escaping from Wandsworth prison.

Set in a near future where an unknown disease has ravaged American society, the story follows a civilian pilot living a solitary life on an abandoned Colorado airbase with his dog and a tough ex-Marine

HONG KONG — China's National Health Commission (NHC) published its first set of guidelines to standardise the diagnosis and treatment of obesity, with more than half of China's adults already overweight and obese, and the rate expected to keep rising.  The guidelines, made public on October 17, come as China experiences an upward morbidity trend of its overweight and obese population. The rate of overweight or obese people could reach 65.3 per cent by 2030, the NHC said.   "Obesity has become a major public health issue in China, ranking as the sixth leading risk factor for death and disability in the country," the guidelines said. China is facing a twin challenge that feeds its weight problem: In a modernising economy underpinned by technological innovation, more jobs have become static or desk-bound, while a prolonged slowdown in growth is forcing people to adopt cheaper, unhealthy diets.

Broll footage and soundbites from a Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation (RBFF) event at the George Bush Presidential Library on Thursday, April 14, 2016, in College Station, Texas. RBFF is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to increase participation in recreational angling and boating, thereby protecting and restoring the nation�s aquatic natural resources.

We are joined by U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory, Francesca Albanese, who says Israel is committing genocide on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Facing accusations of antisemitism from Israeli and U.S. officials, Albanese is in New York to present her report, titled “Genocide as colonial erasure,” which finds that Israel’s genocide is founded on “ideological hatred” and “dehumanization” and “enabled through the various organs of the state,” and recommends that Israel be unseated from the United Nations over its conduct. She argues that Israel’s attacks on U.N. employees, including the killings of at least 230 U.N. staff in Gaza, its flagrant violations of U.N. resolutions and international law and the unique status of “the first settler-colonial genocide to be ever litigated before [an international] court” justify this unprecedented measure. Israel’s continued impunity, Albanese warns, “is the nail in the coffin of the U.N. Charter.”

Retailers are increasingly targeting the "kidult" market as family finances are squeezed.

In a recent study, researchers from Helmholtz Munich and Augsburg University Hospital demonstrated that nocturnal heat significantly raises the risk of stroke.

A lawmaker revealed that only 12% of unsafe food imports have been removed from the market, according to government data. According to the data from

Nile Therapeutics Completes Dose Escalation in Ongoing Phase II Study

US President-elect Donald Trump urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to avoid any escalation in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine in a recent phone call.

A tram was set on fire in Amsterdam as tensions escalate following violence targeting Israeli soccer fans. Police investigate the unrest.

The incident involving Rashid Khan and Rahmanullah Gurbaz occurred during the third ODI between Afghanistan and Bangladesh at Sharjah Cricket Stadium on Monday, November 11.

Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, [2017]

Bristol : Policy Press, [2023]

Stier, Catherine, author

On July 22, Shivaji and his nine-year old son succeeded in their plan, making their getaway historic.

A day after India’s announcement, Beijing says a resolution has been reached over “relevant matters” on China-India border

It is a familiar situation: a compelling discussion develops on Tw­­itter, Facebook or Instagram - it could be about any topic - but instead of working constructively towards a common solution, the tone becomes increasingly aggressive. The rift between the differing opinions grows ever larger. Often, intercultural differences and lack of understanding are the root causes of the conflict. An international research team led by the University of Göttingen now wants to develop a "moderator" using artificial intelligence (AI) that can recognise hate messages in social media and intervene to de-escalate the situation. The Volkswagen Foundation will fund the project for four years from April 2021 with a total of around 1.5 million euros.

There has been a growing change in the style of communication in social media in recent years. This is particularly noticeable when it comes to questions of cultural identity. There is increasing conflict: users become emotional and attack each other; always anxious to emphasise what divides rather than what they have in common. A constructive exchange of information, facts and arguments takes place to a very limited extent. This leads to the well-known phenomena of filter bubbles and echo chambers in social media.

Marriott hotel’s 150th location in India comes with bunk beds in family rooms, a 24×7 wellness centre, a fully equipped spa and scrumptious local delights.

the Chinese coast guard using water cannons against Philippine vessels, further escalating tensions.