Chris Hedges's Blog, page 503

Nobel Prize-Winning Author V.S. Naipaul Dies at 85

LONDON — V.S. Naipaul, the Trinidad-born Nobel laureate whose celebrated writing and brittle, provocative personality drew admiration and revulsion in equal measure, died Saturday at his London home, his family said. He was 85.

His wife, Nadira Naipaul, said he was “a giant in all that he achieved and he died surrounded by those he loved having lived a life which was full of wonderful creativity and endeavor.”

Naipaul was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2001 “for having united perceptive narrative and incorruptible scrutiny in works that compel us to see the presence of suppressed histories.”

In an extraordinary career spanning half a century, the writer traveled as a self-described “barefoot colonial” from rural Trinidad to upper class England, picked up the most coveted literary awards and a knighthood, and was hailed as one of the greatest English writers of the 20th century.

Naipaul’s books explored colonialism and decolonization, exile and the struggles of the everyman in the developing world — themes that mirror his personal background and trajectory.

Although his writing was widely praised for its compassion toward the destitute and the displaced, Naipaul himself offended many with his arrogant behavior and jokes about former subjects of empire.

Among his widely quoted comments: He called India a “slave society,” quipped that Africa has no future, and explained that Indian women wear a colored dot on their foreheads to say “my head is empty.” He laughed off the 1989 fatwa against Salman Rushdie as “an extreme form of literary criticism.”

The critic Terry Eagleton once said of Naipaul: “Great art, dreadful politics,” while Caribbean Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott complained that the author’s prose was tainted by his “repulsion towards Negroes.”

C. L. R. James, a fellow Trinidadian writer, put it differently: Naipaul’s views, he wrote, simply reflected “what the whites want to say but dare not.”

Vidiadhar Surajprasad Naipaul — Vidia to those who knew him — was born on Aug. 17, 1932 in Trinidad, a descendant of impoverished Indians shipped to the West Indies as bonded laborers.

His father was an aspiring, self-taught novelist whose ambitions were killed by lack of opportunity; the son was determined to leave his homeland as soon as he could. In later years, he would repeatedly reject his birthplace as little more than a plantation.

“I was born there, yes,” he said of Trinidad to an interviewer in 1983. “I thought it was a great mistake.”

In 1950, Naipaul was awarded one of a few available government scholarships to study in England, and he left his family to begin his studies in English literature at University College, Oxford.

There he met his first wife, Patricia Hale, whom he married in 1955 without telling his family.

After graduation, Naipaul suffered a period of poverty and unemployment: he was asthmatic, starving and depending on his wife for income. Despite his Oxford education, he found himself surrounded by a hostile, xenophobic London.

“These people want to break my spirit … They want me to know my place,” he wrote bitterly to his wife.

Naipaul eventually landed a radio job working for BBC World Service, where he discussed West Indian literature and found his footing as a writer. His breakthrough came in 1957 with his first published novel “The Mystic Masseur,” a humorous book about the lives of powerless people in a Trinidad ghetto.

Naipaul caught the eye of book reviewers, and in 1959 he won the Somerset Maugham Award with the story collection “Miguel Street.”

In 1961, Naipaul published “A House for Mr. Biswas,” which was widely acclaimed as a masterpiece. That novel, about how one man’s life was restricted by the limits of colonial society, was a tribute to Naipaul’s father.

In the years that followed, Naipaul was to travel for extensive periods to pen journalistic essays and travel books. He flew three times to India, his ancestral home, to write about its culture and politics. He spent time in Buenos Aires, Argentina to write about its former First Lady Eva Peron, and went to Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia for books about Islam.

Years before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Naipaul devoted attention to Islamic radicalism. Naipaul’s nonfiction often provoked much anger, and many were offended by his views about Islam and India — Rushdie, for example, thought Naipaul was promoting Hindu nationalism.

He also continued to publish award-winning novels. “The Mimic Men” won the W.H. Smith Award in 1967, and in 1971 “In a Free State,” a meditation on colonialism in Africa, was awarded the Booker Prize. Naipaul received a knighthood in 1990, and in 2001 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.

As his literary stature grew, so did his reputation as a difficult, irascible personality. Naipaul was a private man and did not have many friends, but his personal life entered the public domain when the American writer Paul Theroux, a one-time friend whose relationship with Naipaul turned sour, published a stinging memoir about Naipaul in 1998.

“Sir Vidia’s Shadow” described Naipaul as a racist, sexist miser who threw terrifying tantrums and beat up women.

Naipaul ignored Theroux’s book, but he did authorize a candid biography that confirmed some of Theroux’s claims. The biography, published in 2008, devoted chapters to how Naipaul met and callously treated his mistress, an Anglo-Argentine woman who was married and about a decade younger than he was. It recalled Naipaul’s confession to The New Yorker that he bought sex and was a “great prostitute man,” and recorded Naipaul’s frank and disturbing comments on how that destroyed his wife, Hale, who died of breast cancer in 1996.

“It could be said that I had killed her,” he told biographer Patrick French. “I feel a little bit that way.”

Two months after Hale died, Naipaul married his second wife, Pakistani newspaper columnist Nadira Khannum Alvi. Naipaul’s later books lost their playful humor, and some say much of their appeal.

He spent much of his time living quietly in an isolated cottage in Wiltshire, in the English countryside.

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Jill Lawless in London contributed to this story.

Tens of Thousands Attend Arab-Led Rally Against Israeli Bill

TEL AVIV, Israel — Members of Israel’s Arab minority led a mass protest in central Tel Aviv on Saturday night against a contentious new law that critics say marginalizes the state’s non-Jewish citizens.

The rally marked further fallout from the explosive Nation-State law and came a week after thousands of Druze, also members of the Arab minority, packed the same city square last week.

Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence defined the country as a Jewish and democratic state and the government says the recently passed bill merely enshrines the country’s existing character. But critics say it undercuts Israel’s democratic values and sidelines the country’s non-Jewish population, namely the Arab community that makes up 20 percent of the country.

One clause downgrades the Arabic language from official to “special” standing.

Israeli media reported tens of thousands of Jews and Arabs attended the protest. Some Arab protesters waved Palestinian flags and others held signs reading “equality.” Some knelt and preformed Muslim prayers.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted footage on Twitter of protesters waving the Palestinian flags. “No better testament to the necessity of the Nation State law,” he wrote.

Ayman Odeh, an Arab member of the Israeli parliament, told The Associated Press: “This is the first time that tens of thousands of Arabs have come to Tel Aviv with Jewish democratic groups. They came to say this is not the end of the demonstrations, but the first serious demonstration against the Nation State law.”

Many Jewish Israelis, including top retired security officials and politicians, have also harshly criticized the law.

Omar Sultan, from the Arab city of Tira in central Israel, said he was protesting to send a message to Netanyahu.

“This law is against us, against the Arabic language, against peace, against our future in this land, we are the real people of this land, we can’t agree on this law,” he said.

Israel’s Arab citizens enjoy full citizenship rights but face discrimination in some areas of society like jobs and housing. They share the ethnicity and culture of the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and often identify with Palestinian nationalism, rather than Israeli.

Tens of thousands of Druze, also members of the Arab minority, packed the same square in the heart of Tel Aviv, Israel’s cultural and commercial center, last week. The Druze are followers of a secretive offshoot of Shiite Islam and are considered fiercely loyal to the state and serve in Israel’s military, unlike most of the country’s other Arab citizens.

Over the years, members of the Druze community have risen to prominence in the military and in politics. Some Druze have said they feel betrayed by the law and several Druze military officers recently said they would stop serving in response to it, sparking fears of widespread insubordination.

Wildfire Victims Among Those Stung by Trump’s Trade War

SANTA ROSA, Calif. — Add this to the challenges facing California wildfire victims: tariffs.

The import tariffs imposed by President Trump are adding thousands of dollars to the cost of building homes. That especially squeezes homeowners who seek to rebuild quickly after losing their houses to natural disasters, such as the wildfires scorching parts of California.

The Trump administration’s tariffs have raised the cost of imported lumber, drywall, nails and other key construction materials. One building association official said the tariffs could raise the price of a typical new home in California by up to $20,000, and it could be more for individual homes being custom-built on short order.

That could be enough to keep some people with inadequate homeowners insurance from rebuilding or force them to consider a smaller house.

Other factors also are making home construction more expensive, including a shortage of workers and increased demand that has pushed up the price of materials produced in the U.S. The difference with the tariff-related cost increase: It’s a direct result of a governmental policy change.

“This comes at a bad time if you’ve just had your neighborhood swept up in a firestorm,” said Jock O’Connell, an international trade adviser at Beacon Economics in California.

Wildfires have destroyed thousands of homes in California over the past two years, including 1,200 so far this year.

It’s not just wildfire victims in the West who have to deal with higher construction costs. Last year, Hurricane Harvey flooded 300,000 structures in Texas.

Trump has imposed the import tariffs on a range of goods as a way to strike back at trading partners he says have not treated the U.S. fairly. His move has set off a trade war, with other nations raising tariffs on U.S. goods in retaliation.

Tariffs now are just over 20 percent on imported Canadian lumber and 25 percent on steel imported from certain nations as well as on a long list of goods from China.

Rob Dietz, chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, said typically the price of labor, interest rates and the availability of land are the main variables determining the cost of new home construction, with the price of materials and local fees also having an effect.

“Now, lumber and labor are the top two,” he said.

The U.S. imports about one-third of its softwood lumber, mostly from Canada. Among other things, it’s used to build the wood framing for new houses.

California Building Industry Association President Dan Dunmoyer said contractors tell him that the tariffs alone could add $8,000 to $10,000 to the lumber costs for a typical single-family home and about the same amount for steel products such as nails, other fasteners and wire mesh.

Tariffs also are boosting the cost of appliances, drywall and solar panels, which will be required on all new homes in California starting in two years.

Asked for comment about the impacts of the tariffs on building materials, White House spokeswoman Lindsay Walters did not respond directly. In an email, she said, “Instead of retaliating, China should address the longstanding concerns about its unfair trading practices.”

APM Homes is rebuilding 50 houses destroyed by fire last October in the Coffey Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa, north of San Francisco. Project manager John Allen said rebuilding costs have not risen as much as the building association predicts, but said they could in time.

Even relatively small price increases can hit homeowners hard, Allen said. “They’re already maxing out their insurance,” he said.

Insurance policies are another potential obstacle for homeowners wanting to rebuild and faced with rising construction costs.

Many homeowners have policies that do not guarantee rebuilding a home at today’s replacement cost but rather an amount tied to an outdated estimate or the value of the mortgage.

In a survey of a group of Californians who lost homes in fires last year, Roadmap to Recovery, a project of insurance customer advocacy group United Policyholders, found that two-thirds of the respondents did not have enough insurance to cover the full cost of rebuilding. The majority of that group was short by at least $100,000.

Those are the homeowners most affected by the tariffs on construction material and the other factors boosting the cost of rebuilding.

California lawmakers, reacting to reports of wildfire victims with insurance coverage inadequate to rebuild, gave final approval this week to a consumer protection bill. It would require insurers to tell homeowners every two years how much it will cost to replace their home at current prices, giving homeowners a chance to boost their coverage.

Rising construction costs already are affecting some of Debbie and Rick Serdin’s neighbors in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park neighborhood.

They said one neighbor is replacing a two-story house with a single-story model because their insurance coverage wasn’t enough to rebuild the home they had. Others are selling their lots, taking their insurance checks and looking to start over somewhere else.

The couple had to tap their insurance policy’s coverage on their home’s contents and are using a large home construction company instead of an independent contractor to make their rebuild affordable for them. Their two-story home was first bought by Rick’s mother more than 30 years ago.

Debbie Serdin, a veterinary technician whose husband works at The Home Depot, said she has been watching construction prices rise for neighbors who have waited to start the rebuilding process.

“Don’t put it off,” she said. “The longer you wait, the more it’s going to cost.”

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Mulvihill reported from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

Revisiting the Horror of Charlottesville 2017

Editor’s note: On the eve of the first anniversary of the infamous Charlottesville, Va., demonstration, and as Washington, D.C., prepares for Sunday’s “Unite the Right 2” rally, Truthdig is reposting Michael Nigro’s exclusive audio photo essay from Aug. 12, 2017.

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Look and listen to photojournalist Michael Nigro’s exclusive audio photo essay of the terrors he witnessed firsthand in Charlottesville, Va. Warning: Many of the photographs contain graphic imagery.

PHOTO ESSAY | 32 photosWhite Supremacist Rally Turns Deadly in Charlottesville

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.—American culture has always contained rotten seeds of racism aching to root white supremacy permanently into the landscape. For more than eight months, President Donald Trump has been watering this pseudo-patriotic movement, nurturing it with his violent rhetoric.

The “alt-right” is in full bloom now. Its members are empowered by Trump, as evidenced by the events in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday.

The protest that brought throngs of torch-wielding white supremacists to the streets of Charlottesville was dubbed “Unite the Right” and consisted of a “who’s who” of racist groups. Participants identified as anything from neo-Nazis to KKK members, and included former Klan leader David Duke, who declared outright that the event was intended to fulfill Trump’s promises.

Members of white supremacist groups, left, clash with anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville, Va., on Saturday. (Michael Nigro)

The violence started early between alt-right marchers and counterprotesters. The former came armed with AR-15s, Glock sidearms, baseball bats, pepper spray, tear gas and flagpoles with metal spear tips.

It was clear from the beginning that the police force, which consisted of local and state officers as well as the National Guard, were taking a laissez-faire approach to law enforcement.

“The police are going to incite a race riot,” Hawk Newsome, president of Black Lives Matter New York, told me in the middle of an early afternoon skirmish. And he was right; their inaction helped create conditions for the violence that ensued.

At one point, fights broke out in front of the Charlottesville police station, where at least a dozen officers stood by the entrance doing nothing but watching like hockey referees during a brawl.

Metal poles were used to beat protesters, and the police stood by. Alt-right members deployed pepper spray, and the police stood by. Blood poured from injured people’s large gashes, and the police did nothing.

I’ve been to protests in which someone simply steps off a curb and gets arrested. Why was the alt-right granted such leeway? During one of my livestreams from Saturday’s event, a whole phalanx of white supremacists pushed against a line of riot police. The police did nothing.

And then, things got worse.

White nationalists and counterprotesters face off Saturday during a “Unite The Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va. (Michael Nigro)

Various counterprotest groups converged on Water Street in Charlottesville and began a peaceful march through an area known for its cuisine. The marchers, numbering in the hundreds, made an impromptu route change to round the corner and head up 4th Street.

I decided to run ahead and set up my camera so I could shoot down the narrow street. But then, behind me, the unmistakable screech of tires on asphalt. The sound was so brief, however, that all urgency normally associated with it was negated. So I didn’t turn around. I simply, and rather casually, took a step to my right.

That’s when my second camera, which was harnessed across my shoulder and resting against my hip, was obliterated by the front end of a silver Dodge Challenger. The car was now accelerating toward throngs of human beings.

My body was intact. But other bodies quickly became airborne. Horizontal. Upside down. Nothing looked or sounded natural. I heard terrified screams, and resonant, hollow thuds of bodies being broken by a car frame of fiberglass and steel, which was rocketing into them at approximately 50 mph.

Two other cars, inconveniently halted because the march was blocking the road, were at the base of the hill, waiting for the demonstration to pass. They were rear-ended. Hard. A young woman flipped from the Challenger’s hood into and across the other cars. She was terribly injured.

These two cars prevented the Challenger from going forward and plowing into the hundreds of other marchers. This, no doubt, had been the driver’s intent.

The Challenger reversed aggressively up the hill, sending those who were able to scatter into alleys and private driveways. And then the car was gone.

One person—32-year-old Heather Heyer of Charlottesville— died, 19 were injured. This was unmistakably a homegrown act of domestic terrorism.

Police officers work to secure the scene after a car plowed into a crowd of marchers and counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Va. (Michael Nigro)

The alt-right has always been lurking in America in one form or another. But now it is more obvious, and it is unleashed. It is muscular. It is ugly. It is not theoretical.

It is extreme nationalism far more pronounced and far more aggressive than, perhaps, some of us care to imagine (or, in some cases, care to admit).

But we should admit it. We should resist it and call it out at every turn. Because Trump is cultivating a garden of hate.

Security Heightened for Charlottesville Anniversary Weekend

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.—Police blocked off streets and mobilized hundreds of officers for the anniversary of white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Va. The security measures alarmed activists but reassured others who said they have painful memories of last year’s chaos.

Local and state authorities framed the weekend’s heightened security as a necessary precaution.

Late Saturday morning, when many businesses in a popular downtown shopping district were beginning to open, law enforcement officers outnumbered visitors. Concrete barriers and metal fences had been erected, and police were searching bags at two checkpoints where people could enter or leave.

Nearby, dozens of officers carrying helmets and with gas masks strapped to their belts stood watch in the park where hundreds of white nationalists gathered last summer at a rally planned in part to protest the city’s plans to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee. The event descended into violence, with clashes erupting between attendees and counterprotesters.

Some community activists were concerned that this year’s heavy police presence could be a counterproductive overreaction.

An independent investigation of the rally violence, led by a former federal prosecutor, found the chaos stemmed from a passive response by law enforcement and poor preparation and coordination between state and city police.

Lisa Woolfork, a University of Virginia professor and Black Lives Matter Charlottesville organizer, said police are mounting a “huge, overwhelming show of force to compensate for last year’s inaction.”

“Last year, I was afraid of the Nazis. This year, I’m afraid of the police,” Woolfork said. “This is not making anyone that I know feel safe.”

But some business owners and downtown visitors said Saturday they were comforted by the security measures.

“It’s nice that they’re here to protect us,” said Lara Mitchell, 66, a sales associate at Ten Thousand Villages, a shop that sells artwork, jewelry, and other items.

Kyle Rodland, 35, took his young sons to get ice cream downtown late Saturday morning.

Rodland said he felt much safer than last year, when he left town with his family and stayed with his parents after seeing people armed with long rifles walking around outside his home.

Saturday marked the anniversary of a march by torch-toting white supremacists a day ahead of the larger event in downtown. The group paraded through the University of Virginia’s campus, shouting racist and anti-Semitic slogans.

On Saturday morning, the university hosted a “morning of reflection and renewal,” with musical performances, a poetry reading and an address from University President James Ryan.

Ryan recalled how a group of students and community members faced off against the white supremacists near a statue of Thomas Jefferson on campus, calling it a “remarkable moment of courage and bravery.”

Later Saturday evening, students and activists planned to hold a “Rally for Justice” on campus.

Other events were also planned throughout the weekend, including on Sunday, the anniversary of the violence that erupted on the streets of Charlottesville.

After authorities had forced the clashing crowds of white supremacists and counterprotesters to disperse, a car plowed into a crowd, killing 32-year-old counterprotester Heather Heyer.

James Fields Jr., 21, of Maumee, Ohio, is charged in state court with murder in Heyer’s killing and also faces separate hate crime charges in federal court.

The day’s death toll rose to three when a state police helicopter that had been monitoring the event and assisting with the governor’s motorcade crashed, killing two troopers.

Jason Kessler, the primary organizer of last summer’s rally, sued the city of Charlottesville after it refused to issue him a permit for another event this weekend. However, Kessler dropped his lawsuit last week and vowed to forge ahead with plans for a “white civil rights” rally Sunday in Washington, D.C.

On Wednesday, Gov. Ralph Northam and the city both declared states of emergency, citing the “potential impacts of events” in Charlottesville during the anniversary weekend. The state’s declaration allocates $2 million in state funds and authorizes the Virginia National Guard to assist in security efforts.

The city closed downtown streets and public parks and restricted access to a downtown “security area,” where visitors were prohibited from wearing masks or carrying certain items, including skateboards, catapults, glass bottles, bats and knives.

Virginia State Police Superintendent Gary Settle said more than 700 state police will be activated during the weekend.

How ‘Suicidal’ Employee Could Steal Plane at Sea-Tac Airport Probed

OLYMPIA, Wash.—Investigators worked to find out how a “suicidal” airline employee stole an empty Horizon Air turboprop plane, took off from Sea-Tac International Airport and crashed into a small island in the Puget Sound after being chased by military jets that were quickly scrambled to intercept the aircraft.

The Friday night crash happened because the 29-year-old man was “doing stunts in air or lack of flying skills,” the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department said. The man, who was believed killed, wasn’t immediately identified.

The man was suicidal, and there was no connection to terrorism, Ed Troyer, a spokesman for the sheriff’s department, said on Twitter.

Video showed the Horizon Air Q400 doing large loops and other dangerous maneuvers as the sun set on the Puget Sound. There were no passengers aboard. Authorities initially said the man was a mechanic, but Alaska Airlines later said he was believed to be a ground service agent employed by Horizon. Those employees direct aircraft for takeoff and gate approach and de-ice planes.

The plane was pursued by military aircraft before it crashed on Ketron Island, southwest of Tacoma, Washington. Troyer said F-15 aircraft took off out of Portland, Oregon, and were in the air “within a few minutes” and the pilots kept “people on the ground safe.”

The sheriff’s department said they were working to conduct a background investigation on the Pierce County resident.

The aircraft was stolen about 8 p.m. Alaska Airlines said it was in a “maintenance position” and not scheduled for a passenger flight. Horizon Air is part of Alaska Air Group and flies shorter routes throughout the U.S. West. The Q400 is a turboprop aircraft with 76 seats.

Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor said the man “did something foolish and may well have paid with his life.”

The man could be heard on audio recordings telling air traffic controllers that he is “just a broken guy.”

An air traffic controller called the man “Rich,” and tried to convince the man to land the airplane.

“There is a runway just off to your right side in about a mile,” the controller says, referring to an airfield at Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

“Oh man. Those guys will rough me up if I try and land there,” the man responded, later adding “This is probably jail time for life, huh?”

Later the man said: “I’ve got a lot of people that care about me. It’s going to disappoint them to hear that I did this … Just a broken guy, got a few screws loose, I guess.”

Flights out of Sea-Tac, the largest commercial airport in the Pacific Northwest, were temporarily grounded during the drama.

White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Saturday morning that President Donald Trump is “monitoring the situation.” He’s currently at his New Jersey golf club.

The U.S. Coast Guard sent a 45-foot (14-meter) vessel to the crash scene. Video showed fiery flames amidst trees on the island, which is sparsely populated and only accessible by ferry.

No structures on the ground were damaged, Alaska Airlines said.

Alaska Air Group CEO Brad Tilden said in a statement early Saturday morning that the airline was “working to find out everything we possibly can about what happened.”

The airline was coordinating with the Federal Aviation Administration, the FBI and the National Transportation Safety Board, he said.

Royal King told The Seattle Times he was photographing a wedding when he saw the low-flying turboprop being chased by two F-15s. He said he didn’t see the crash but saw smoke.

“It was unfathomable, it was something out of a movie,” he told the newspaper. “The smoke lingered. You could still hear the F-15s, which were flying low.”

Gov. Jay Inslee thanked the Air National Guard from Washington and Oregon for scrambling jets and said in a statement “there are still a lot of unknowns surrounding tonight’s tragic incident.””

“The responding fighter pilots flew alongside the aircraft and were ready to do whatever was needed to protect us, but in the end the man flying the stolen plane crashed,” Inslee said.

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Associated Press writers Keith Ridler in Boise, Idaho, and Mike Balsamo in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Facing Indictment, GOP Rep. Chris Collins Won’t Seek Re-Election

NEW YORK—In an about-face, U.S. Rep. Chris Collins is ending his re-election bid days after the Republican was charged with insider trading.

Collins released a statement Saturday morning saying he will suspend his campaign and fill out the rest of his term. Collins was indicted Wednesday on charges he used inside information about a biotechnology company to make illicit stock trades. He had said later that day he would remain on the ballot despite the indictment and fight the charges.

“I have decided that it is in the best interests of the constituents of NY-27, the Republican Party and President Donald Trump’s agenda for me to suspend my campaign for re-election to Congress,” the statement said.

He went on to say he will fill out his term and “continue to fight the meritless charges brought against me.” He has denied any wrongdoing.

Wednesday’s indictment charges Collins and two others, including his son, with conspiracy, wire fraud and other counts.

Prosecutors say the charges relate to a scheme to gain insider information about a biotechnology company headquartered in Sydney, Australia, with offices in Auckland, New Zealand.

Jessica Proud, a spokeswoman for the New York state Republican party, said no decision has been made about a possible replacement for Collins on the ballot. She said the party is weighing its options.

Deadnamed

Update, Aug. 10, 2018: This story was updated to reflect that an arrest was made in the non-fatal shooting of a 23-year-old transgender woman.

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Aea Celestice, a black transgender woman living in Jacksonville, Florida, has the most basic of plans for the next chapter of her life: She hopes to get out of town before someone kills her.

Celestice, 32, has good reason to worry. Over the past six months, four black trans women in the city have been shot, three of them fatally.

Celine Walker, 36, was shot to death in her room at an Extended Stay America hotel near the University of North Florida on the night of the Super Bowl, Feb. 4. On June 1, Antonia “Antash’a” English, 38, was killed outside an abandoned home north of downtown. And on June 24, Cathalina James, 24, was gunned down in a room at a Quality Inn on the city’s south side.

The cases have left Celestice and others in Jacksonville’s transgender community rattled but it’s been the handling of the investigations by authorities that’s stirred outrage. In public statements and official documents, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office has repeatedly identified the victims as men, refusing to call them by the names they chose to use in their lives.

While an arrest has been made in the shooting of a 23-year-old trans woman, all three murders remain unsolved, and the insistence on referring to transgender women as men has left Celestice wondering just how much effort is being made to find the killer or killers. She wonders whether anyone outside of her community cares.

“There doesn’t seem to be a concern for anybody,” Celestice said. “I guess other people have other things going on in their lives than being concerned about a trans woman getting murdered.”

Studies show that transgender women are disproportionately likely to be victims of violent crime, not just in Jacksonville, but nationwide. Yet most local law enforcement agencies persist in handling these cases much like the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, or JSO.

The transgender community has a word for calling a trans person by the name they no longer use, one that conveys a double meaning when it involves murder. It’s known as “deadnaming.”

Across the nation, ProPublica found, some 65 different law enforcement agencies have investigated murders of transgender people since Jan. 1, 2015. And in 74 of 85 cases, victims were identified by names or genders they had abandoned in their daily lives. Our survey found that arrests have been made in 55 percent of the killings of transgender people nationwide in the last three and a half years. The overall clearance rate for murders in the U.S. is only slightly higher, at 59 percent.

Advocates say that not using the name and pronoun a person was known by can slow down an investigation during its most critical hours. People who knew the victim or who saw them in the hours before they were murdered might only have known them by their preferred name and gender.

Aea Celestice in her friend’s tattoo studio in Jacksonville (Gioncarlo Valentine / ProPublica).

“If Susie is murdered, don’t use ‘Sam,’” said Monica Roberts, an activist and journalist who tracks murders of transgender people. Roberts worries that deadnaming both prevents the community from identifying victims and fosters mistrust of police.

Police at the handful of agencies that routinely use victims’ preferred names and pronouns say not doing so can damage the agency’s relationship with the transgender community, or alienate friends and family.

“That might lose the cooperation of the friends and family — the people we need to solve the case,” said Detective Orlando Martinez of the Los Angeles Police Department.

In investigating the murders of Walker, English and James, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office says it has just followed its policy, which is to identify people based on a medical examiner’s report and whatever name and sex are listed on their state identification.

After Walker’s death, the sheriff’s office referred to her in reports and public statements as a man and released a male name to the media, one she hadn’t used in years. Friends and activists called the agency, asking officers to respect Walker and use her chosen name, but say they were told that wasn’t how the agency handled such cases.

Bailey Bolden, a transgender woman and friend of Walker’s, said JSO told her the agency can’t assume that a man with breast implants identifies as a woman. Bolden said she viewed both JSO’s refusal to call her friend “she” and her interaction with the agency as deeply disrespectful.

When ProPublica reporters emailed JSO to ask for press releases sent out about James’ murder and referred to her as a transgender woman, public information officer Melissa Bujeda corrected us. “The victim is listed as a male,” she said.

Members of Jacksonville’s LGBT community say investigators have taken a low-key attitude towards a series of murders that should trigger alarm in any city.

Jacksonville is the 12th most populous in the country, with one of the largest police forces. And yet, it is not doing what smaller cities with far fewer resources have done. For example, the New Orleans Police Department sent a liaison to a town hall with the LGBT community within two weeks of two murders of transgender women last year.

It took more than a month after the third murder for the sheriff’s office to hold a public meeting and that gathering came only after sustained pressure from advocates and trans women, including rallies, phone calls, vigils and meetings.

Investigators say they have no evidence the shootings are related. To many in Jacksonville, that misses the point, which is that the attacks have been targeted against a vulnerable group with few defenders.

For Celestice, simply being a black trans woman in the city right now feels unbearable.

“I have to get out of here,” she said. “I have a lot to offer, and it would be a shame if my life was cut short because someone decided that they wanted to kill me.”

Aea Celestice hopes to move out of Jacksonville. “I can’t maintain this existence much longer,” she said. (Gioncarlo Valentine / ProPublica)

Jacksonville is not unique. Transgender people are routinely misidentified by law enforcement officials in cities across the country.

If you watch a 2016 video on her Facebook page, you can see Amia Tyrae swaying to the tune of Beyoncé’s “Freedom.” Her eyelashes are meticulously sculpted and her lips, coated in light pink gloss, shimmer as she looks directly into the camera.

Earlier this year, Tyrae was shot to death at a motel in Baton Rouge. In reports provided to the media, police described Tyrae as a “transvestite” — an anachronistic term now widely considered a slur — and a man.

“It’s like a slap in my face,” said Alexis White, a transgender woman who described herself as Tyrae’s mother. In the transgender community, “mother” is a term of respect and devotion used for elders in the community, who often fill a familial role when people have been estranged from their birth families.

White said that hearing Tyrae described as a man was hurtful.

“Her name was Amia. She was a trans woman,” said White, “She was very sweet. She was loved by many.”

Don Coppola, a spokesperson for the Baton Rouge Police Department, said the department does not have a formal policy on how to identify transgender victims of crimes.

Pushed to explain how the department would refer to a transgender person, Coppola said police would use the person’s sex assigned at birth, noting “if it’s a male, it’s a male.”

Despite her close relationship with Tyrae, White said that the Baton Rouge Police Department never contacted her or other people she knows in the trans community to verify Tyrae’s identity.

When 24-year-old Ty Underwood was gunned down by a football player at Texas College in 2015, police reports initially noted that Underwood, who in Facebook photos has long dark hair and manicured nails, appeared to be female. Despite her appearance, and despite the fact that she had identified as a woman for years, the Tyler Police Department described her as a man throughout police records and in interviews with ProPublica.

In a supplemental police report, a detective noted that “there were no female breast (sic)” on Underwood, and later wrote that “the victim was a male dressed as a woman.” Records also show the Tyler Police Department referred to both Underwood and her friends as transvestites in internal documents describing the murder investigation.

The Dallas Police Department is one of the few local agencies that makes an effort to use preferred names and pronouns in order to build trust with the transgender community.

When Carla Flores-Pavon was found strangled to death in her apartment in Dallas in May 2018, Deputy Chief Thomas Castro of the Dallas police said the department made an effort to refer to her as “she” and “Carla” during their investigation.

“When we go out to the community and talk about somebody, we have to identify them by the way they identified,” Castro said, adding that it wouldn’t do the department any good to use a name that nobody knew her by.

Police who incorrectly describe the gender of murder victims often don’t have internal policies that account for transgender people. Tyler Police Department spokesperson Don Martin defended his department’s decision to call Ty Underwood a man, saying that the department uses whatever sex is listed on a victim’s government-issued ID.

But something as simple and critical as having the correct name and gender on a driver’s license or voter registration card can prove unattainable for many transgender people. A person who is carrying an ID that does not match their outward appearance faces a higher risk of violence or harassment.

Transgender women told ProPublica that common interactions like showing IDs at a bar, or to vote, can identify them as transgender to others — a process known as “getting clocked.” According to a 2015 survey of transgender people, nearly one-third of people who presented an ID that did not match their appearance reported being harassed, denied services or attacked.

Several women told ProPublica about job opportunities that disappeared after potential employers discovered they were transgender. Without a job, transgender people start falling through society’s cracks. They can lose access to medical care, become homeless, or be forced into sex work.

For those reasons, one of the biggest steps people take when they’re transitioning is to legally change their name and gender marker — the “M” or “F” on identity documents. But a patchwork of state and federal regulations can make those changes complicated and expensive — and for some, impossible.

Savannah Bowens, a 30-year-old transgender woman living in Jacksonville. Bowens is a pastor at her church and outspoken about the fight for respect in the transgender community. (Gioncarlo Valentine / ProPublica)

Bowens changed her name in 2017, after an employer noticed her old name on her driver’s license and called her into the office to question her about it. She decided then that she needed to legally update her identification.

“I don’t want to become a statistic,” Bowens said about potentially losing a job. “I don’t want to have to be that girl that people see walking the streets or prostituting.”

The consequences of getting clocked range from derogatory comments to death. In 2016, Dwanya Hickerson, a former sailor in the U.S. Navy, killed Dee Whigham, a 25-year-old nurse, by stabbing her 190 times in a hotel room in St. Martin, Mississippi. Hickerson, who admitted he had been chatting with Whigham online for several months before meeting in person, claimed he “lost it” after discovering she was transgender during sex.

Name and gender changes to official documents can sometimes require court orders or come with onerous restrictions. In some states, such changes are not available to those with felony convictions, or require genital surgery that people may not want or be able to afford. For transgender people who move to states other than the ones they were born in, changing official records can be a bureaucratic nightmare.

About half the states bar felons or other people with criminal histories from changing their names. Cost can also be a factor. Name changes run from $25 to $400, though many courts will also waive those fees for people who can’t afford them.

Those who go through the court process are by no means guaranteed the desired outcome. Judges have broad discretion to deny name and gender marker changes, and it’s not uncommon for them to do so. The Utah Supreme Court heard arguments this year from attorneys representing two transgender people who were not allowed to change their gender on official documents.

“It’s a very frustrating, disjointed legal system right now for gender marker changes,” said Arli Christian, the state policy director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, or NCTE.

The NCTE rates 11 states — Alabama, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming — as the hardest places for changing a gender marker on state IDs. In those states, doing so requires body-altering surgery or a court order from a judge. The process for getting a court order can often require proof of surgery, too.

According to Christian, judges more frequently deny requests to change genders on IDs than names.

“This is not a process that should be in the courts,” Christian said. “Judges are not experts in gender identity.”

In Jacksonville, one of the victims, Antash’a English, was described by police with her correct name, but was also described as a man. That’s because English had legally changed her name, but not her gender identification on official documents. Her fiancé, Robert Johnson, said that English had wanted to change her gender ID but she didn’t know it was possible without having genital surgery.

Just last month, a transgender woman was found dead in a parking lot in Orlando, Florida. The Orange County Sheriff’s Office press release described the victim as a man “wearing a wig” and “dressed as a female.” Local news outlets soon started publishing and broadcasting stories describing the victim as a “man dressed as a woman.” The trans community responded with anger.

Monica Roberts, the Texas journalist who has been chronicling the murders of trans women for years, was the first reporter to identify the name the victim lived by, Sasha Garden. In a post published on her blog, she condemned the local media coverage.

“As you probably guessed,” Roberts wrote, “Sasha was deadnamed and horribly disrespected by the local Orlando media.”

When ProPublica first contacted the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, spokesperson Jane Watrel said that the agency uses the name and sex listed on the victim’s state-issued identification when describing homicide cases. Watrel later clarified that, after speaking to Garden’s family, the department would begin using female pronouns to describe Garden during their investigation.

In a subsequent press release, Orange County Sheriff Jerry L. Demings wrote that the department did not intend to be insensitive and apologized.

In contrast, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office has not publicly acknowledged or apologized for misgendering and misnaming transgender victims, though in a recent interview with a local news station, Sheriff Mike Williams acknowledged that there had been a “lack of sensitivity” when referring to the victims.

In June, a few days after Cathalina James’ slaying, local activists and representatives from statewide advocacy organizations, gathered in Jacksonville City Hall to demand the city council do more to protect transgender women.

Top: Savannah Bowens speaks at a rally in support of the transgender community in Jacksonville, Florida, on June 27. Bottom: Signs at the rally bore names of some of the transgender women who were killed. Activists and members of the LGBT community have been concerned about the way the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office investigated the murders. (Aldrin Capulong / ProPublica)

“Every day I wake up, I put on my clothes, I step outside, I don’t know if I’m going to make it home safe. And if I make it home safe, I don’t know if I’m going to be in one piece or not,” said Paige Mahogany Parks, a local activist, imploring the city council to investigate why so many trans women had been murdered.

“There’s no relationship with the JSO and the trans community as a whole,” she added.

Chloie Kensington, an activist and personal friend of English, said the city was mistreating trans women.

Pointing directly at the council members, Kensington vowed during the meeting, “I for one will march in every pair of damn stilettos I have to hold each and every one of you accountable.”

On June 27, JSO’s Twitter account put out a video of the car they said was driven by James’ killer. The post referred to her by the male name she was given at birth. It also said she was transgender and that she went by the name Cathalina.

A JSO spokesperson told ProPublica that the tweet was not a sign of a new policy. Using the victim’s gender and chosen name, according to the sheriff’s office, fell under the category of “additional details.”

But the pressure the trans community is putting on JSO may be having some effect. On Aug. 2, JSO announced the creation of a group of officers that will serve as liaisons to the LGBT community.

For Jacksonville resident Savannah Bowens, the transgender woman who changed her name after an employer questioned her about it, respect is worth the fight.

“There has to be somebody that says ‘I have had enough,’” she said.

“When I die? I don’t want to be called a male,” she went on. “That is not who I lived my life as, that is not my legacy, and I want to be respected as who I am. People knew me as Savannah. They knew me as she.”

Jury Backs Man Who Says Roundup Herbicide Caused Cancer

SAN FRANCISCO—A San Francisco jury on Friday ordered agribusiness giant Monsanto to pay $289 million to a former school groundskeeper dying of cancer, saying the company’s popular Roundup weed killer contributed to his disease.

The lawsuit brought by Dewayne Johnson was the first to go to trial among hundreds filed in state and federal courts saying Roundup causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which Monsanto denies.

Jurors in state Superior Court agreed the product contributed to Johnson’s cancer and the company should have provided a label warning of the potential health hazard. Johnson’s attorneys sought and won $39 million in compensatory damages and $250 million of the $373 million they wanted in punitive damages.

“This jury found Monsanto acted with malice and oppression because they knew what they were doing was wrong and doing it with reckless disregard for human life,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a member of Johnson’s legal team. “This should send a strong message to the boardroom of Monsanto.”

Monsanto has denied a link between the active ingredient in Roundup — glyphosate — and cancer, saying hundreds of studies have established that glyphosate is safe.

Johnson used Roundup and a similar product, Ranger Pro, as a pest control manager at a San Francisco Bay Area school district, his lawyers said. He sprayed large quantities from a 50-gallon tank attached to a truck, and during gusty winds, the product would cover his face, said Brent Wisner, one of his attorneys.

Once, when a hose broke, the weed killer soaked his entire body.

Johnson read the label and even contacted the company after developing a rash but was never warned it could cause cancer, Wisner said. He was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2014 at age 42.

“The simple fact is he is going to die. It’s just a matter of time,” Wisner told the jury in his opening statement last month.

But George Lombardi, an attorney for Monsanto, said non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma takes years to develop, so Johnson’s cancer must have started well before he began working at the school district.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says Roundup’s active ingredient is safe for people when used in accordance with label directions.

However, the France-based International Agency for Research on Cancer, which is part of the World Health Organization, classified it as a “probable human carcinogen” in 2015. And California added glyphosate to its list of chemicals known to cause cancer.

Hearings Set for Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh

WASHINGTON—Confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh will begin the day after Labor Day, Republicans announced Friday over Democratic objections that they are rushing the process without properly delving into his background.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he hopes to have President Donald Trump’s nominee confirmed to replace retired Justice Anthony Kennedy before the new court session begins Oct. 1. The Judiciary Committee will hold up to four days of review, with Kavanaugh to face questions on Day 2, Sept. 5, said, committee chairman Chuck Grassley.

Kavanaugh’s appearance will be followed by legal experts and people who know the judge.

The White House, which is determined to have Kavanaugh confirmed before the November elections, applauded the schedule announcement. But Democrats want access to more documents from Kavanaugh’s past as a judge and as an official in the George W. Bush administration.

Grassley said there’s “plenty of time” to review documents but now it’s time for Americans “to hear directly” from Kavanaugh.

“He’s a mainstream judge,” Grassley said. “He has a record of judicial independence and applying the law as it is written.”

So far, the committee has made public Kavanaugh’s 17,000-page questionnaire and his more than 300 court cases as an appellate judge. The panel has additionally received 184,000 pages from his work for President Bush in the White House counsel’s office and on independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s investigation of President Bill Clinton. However, most of those records are being held on a “committee confidential” basis, with just 5,700 pages released this week to the public.

Democrats say the Republicans are relying on the cherry-picked files being released by Bush’s lawyer, Bill Burck, who is compiling and vetting the documents, rather than the traditional process conducted by the National Archives and Records Administration.

The Archives has said its review of some 1 million pages of Kavanaugh records the committee requested will not be available until the end of October.

Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice, said it’s “jaw-dropping” that Grassley would hold the confirmation hearings before the documents are fully released.

“It means that the chairman is telling the American people that this hearing is barreling forward, no matter what, no matter how little information is available to the Senate and public or how many shortcuts the committee has to take,” she said.

The White House on Friday welcomed the news of a set date for confirmation hearings.

“With the Senate already reviewing more documents than for any other Supreme Court nominee in history, Chairman Grassley has lived up to his promise to lead an open, transparent and fair process,” said White House spokesman Raj Shah. “Judge Kavanaugh looks forward to addressing the Judiciary Committee in public hearings for the American people to view.”

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Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.