“Ukraine’s Orthodox worshippers have always celebrated Christmas on January 7 — but that will change for many this year, with the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) for the first time allowing its congregations to celebrate on December 25.
This move creates a dividing line with Russia, which celebrates on January 7, and is likely to widen a rift between Ukraine’s two feuding churches.
In 2018, the OCU split from the similarly named Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which is seen as politically linked to Moscow and is facing public demands for its closure amid accusations that it is a hotbed of fifth columnists — that is, people who support and secretly help the enemies of the country they live in.”
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“According to Yevstratiy, already before the invasion, more than a third of Ukrainians wanted to change to the Gregorian calendar. “The numbers are probably higher now, and we are having an experiment to try to understand what worshippers really want,” he said.
“We are not moving the day of Christmas,” he added. “This will be an additional day of worship,” with celebrations held in accordance with the official Julian church calendar.
In the meantime, the church will “consider what to do in the future, and we will observe closely how many congregations take up the opportunity to celebrate on December 25,” Yevstratiy continued.”
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“Political differences underpin the the split between the churches of the predominantly Orthodox nation: Western-oriented OCU churches offered support to the Maidan protesters of 2014, which toppled Viktor Yanukovych, Moscow’s viceroy in Ukraine. Over recent years, the church been a strong advocate of Ukrainian statehood and sovereignty.
The Russian-tied UOC claimed in May to have ended its subordination to Moscow’s Metropolitan Kirill, a vociferous supporter of Russian President Vladimir Putin — although few believe the split is sincere. The church’s spokesperson, Metropolitan Klyment, dismissed as a political stunt the OCU’s decision to allow its congregants to celebrate on December 25, claiming it as evidence of how the rival church is not a religious institution but a political organization eager to do the government’s bidding.”
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“The Kyiv-headquartered UOC dismisses the charge that its decision to allow congregations to celebrate Christmas on December 25 has anything to do with politics. Instead, it is merely responding to “numerous requests and taking into account the discussion that has been going on for many years in the church and in society.””
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“The Gregorian calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory in 1582; the Julian calendar, established by Julius Caesar, harks back to 46 B.C.”
“While this political stalemate is notably historic, it can also feel a bit inside baseball. It got me wondering how Republican voters are feeling about the party and its leadership as a whole. It’s a bit too early to have polling on this week’s dramatics, but some recent surveys have captured the general mood of Republicans heading into the vote for speaker. In a late November poll from Deseret News/HarrisX, Republicans were pretty evenly split on whether they thought McCarthy should continue to be a party leader: Thirty-five percent said he should maintain his role as a leader, 33 percent said the party should move on from McCarthy, and 32 percent said they were unsure or didn’t know. This ambivalence about McCarthy stood in contrast to Republicans’ feelings toward other party leaders, which were much more cohesive. Most Republicans said that former President Donald Trump should remain a leader and that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ought to be replaced. Similarly, in another poll from November fielded by The Economist/YouGov, 39 percent of Republicans said McCarthy should remain a leader in the House, but a slim majority (51 percent) said they either didn’t know or didn’t care.
It’s not that McCarthy is wildly unpopular among Republicans, but he’s not exactly a fan favorite, either. In that Economist/YouGov poll, 45 percent of Republicans viewed McCarthy favorably, compared to 31 percent who viewed him unfavorably — not great, but not as bad as, say, McConnell, who had a 55 percent unfavorable rating amongst his party. A CNN/SSRS poll in December found McCarthy’s net approval was +30 points among Republicans, the second-lowest same-party net favorability among all first-time potential speakers in nearly three decades. That same poll also found 15 percent of Republicans had “never heard of” McCarthy, while 28 percent had no opinion of him. And the GOP rank and file’s relatively lukewarm feelings for McCarthy may be emboldening right-wing dissenters to continue their crusade against his speakership — polling suggests voters won’t be fussed too much whether McCarthy is speaker or not.”
“Life expectancy in the United States dropped last year to its lowest since 1996, extending a downward trend that began in 2020, according to new data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The latest figures from the CDC, which leave expected U.S. lifespans well below those in other large, wealthy nations, reflect the federal and local governments’ ongoing struggle to meet the demands of concurrent public health crises.
The Covid-19 pandemic has had “a domino effect,” said Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, by “exacerbating the already very severe problem that we have in overdose deaths.”
The two crises, the Covid-19 pandemic and rising drug addiction and overdoses, are “a wake-up call” for government, added Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “It clearly is what’s cutting into the health of our communities, unlike almost anything we’ve seen before.””
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“The ongoing politicization of the U.S. Covid response has negatively impacted many Americans’ decisions about vaccination and other mitigation measures. Roughly 14 percent of Americans and 36 percent of people 65 and over have received the latest booster, according to the CDC.
At the same time, Volkow believes the pandemic drove social changes that made people more vulnerable to taking drugs as a way of escaping. The pandemic also made it harder to get help. “Resources that were able to support people in the past were no longer available,” she said.”
How could changing capital gains taxes more revenue? Grace Enda and William G. Gale. 2020 1 14. Brookings. The rich benefit as Democrats retreat from tax on unrealized capital gains Greg Iacurci. CNBC. 2021 12 29. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/29/the-rich-benefit-as-democrats-forgo-tax-on-unrealized-capital-gains.html The Many Problems With Taxing
“By signing the bill, Biden will be forced to agree to a repeal of the Pentagon’s policy requiring troops to receive the Covid vaccine or face expulsion from the military.
The repeal is a victory for Republicans who pushed to do away with the policy during negotiations on a final defense bill. Conservatives have hammered the administration for forcing out thousands of military personnel and piling onto an already rough recruiting environment.
Rescinding the August 2021 mandate is a black eye for Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who still back the policy as a matter of health and readiness for the armed forces.”
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“The bill, however, doesn’t prohibit a new vaccine requirement in the coming months, meaning Austin could implement a new policy when the 2021 directive is repealed. Doing so, however, would spark a battle with the Republican-controlled House next year.”
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“Both parties roundly rejected Biden’s $813 billion military spending plan as too low to meet worldwide threats and counter the impacts of inflation on the Pentagon.
Instead, Congress endorsed that hefty $45 billion increase to Biden’s budget, which already would have boosted defense by about $30 billion over last year’s level. The final bill amounts to an increase of roughly $75 billion, or nearly 10 percent, from the previous year.
The additional money went toward buying more weapons as well as efforts to blunt the effects of inflation on Pentagon programs, troops and construction.
This marks the second straight year that Congress has significantly rewritten Biden’s budget. Defense legislation approved last year authorized an increase of $25 billion to the administration’s first proposal. It’s a pattern Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), who is set to chair House Armed Services next year, chalked up to Congress and the White House rarely seeing eye to eye on federal spending.”
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“Congress foiled one of the few major changes Biden proposed to the nuclear arsenal, keeping alive a sea-launched cruise missile first proposed by the Trump administration.
Proponents of canceling the developmental program criticized it as costly, destabilizing and redundant, because Biden kept low-yield nukes fielded by the Trump administration deployed aboard ballistic missile submarines. A 2021 report by the Congressional Budget Office estimated the missile will cost $10 billion through 2030.
But lawmakers ultimately authorized $45 million to continue the program after top military brass, including Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley, publicly expressed support for the weapon, in a split with Austin and other top civilians who argued the missile isn’t needed.”
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“Lawmakers also voted to require the Pentagon to keep most of its inventory of B83 nuclear gravity bombs, which Biden proposed retiring. The agreement prohibits retiring or deactivating more than 25 percent of the stockpile until the Pentagon provides Congress with a study on how it will field capabilities to strike hard and buried targets.”
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“Lawmakers authorized $32.6 billion to buy new ships, boosting the budget by $4.7 billion and ordering up three new hulls the Navy didn’t ask for.
The additions include a third unrequested Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, which the White House said it “strongly opposes” when the House approved it. Navy leaders have questioned whether a strained shipbuilding base can handle a rate of three destroyers per year. The bill also set a legal floor of 31 amphibious warships for the Navy, which the administration also opposes, arguing it would “unduly constrain” military planning.
Congress also threw a wrench into Navy plans to retire two dozen ships. The move was aimed at saving money but it also drew criticism on Capitol Hill because the plans would have scrapped some troubled littoral combat ships relatively early in their service lives.
The compromise bill ultimately bars the Navy from retiring a dozen warships it had planned to decommission, including five littoral combat ships and a Ticonderoga-class cruiser.
The legislation also crimps efforts by the Pentagon to retire dozens of aircraft. It jams up the administration’s plans to retire Navy EA-18G Growler electronic warfare jets, requiring the service to maintain a fleet of at least 158 aircraft through fiscal 2027. The bill similarly blocks efforts by the Air Force to retire some F-22 fighters through fiscal 2027.
Lawmakers also limited the Air Force’s ability to reduce its fleet of E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System planes below a certain level. Those restrictions would be eased if the service submits an acquisition strategy or awards a contract for its successor, the E-7 Wedgetail.
Lawmakers, meanwhile, boosted procurement for a swath of aircraft across the military services. Most notably, Armed Services leaders approved $666 million for eight Boeing F/A-18 Super Hornets the Navy didn’t seek in its budget, keeping the production line active.”
“Hey, remember the pandemic economy? How could you not, right? In early 2020, millions of people lost their jobs in the blink of an eye, through no fault of their own. In the United States, their subsequent attempts to get help from the government overwhelmed unemployment offices across the country, revealing the system to be fundamentally broken. The infrastructure was bad, the benefits insufficient, and the entire scheme next to impossible to navigate.
And then, something remarkable happened: The federal government stepped in to shore things up. It added extra dollars to state unemployment benefits to make sure people could get by and pay their bills. It expanded the pool of people who were eligible for benefits, so workers such as freelancers and contractors could access them, too. While far from perfect, the extra efforts to help the unemployed made a real difference in people’s lives and played a part in the country averting a deeper and longer recession.
It felt, for a while, like maybe there would be momentum to finally address the issues in America’s unemployment system. So many people had experienced first-hand just what a disaster it was on a massive scale, from outdated administrative systems to inadequate benefits. It seemed obvious that this hybrid state-federal program that had left so much discretion up to individual states just didn’t work.
And then … America’s UI setup didn’t really get fixed, because it never does.”
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“As workers stare down the barrel of another potential recession — and the layoffs that would accompany it — the problems that dogged unemployment insurance before the pandemic, many of which have persisted for decades, remain. Most of the momentum to repair the system has dissipated.
Congress and the White House allocated $2 billion to the Department of Labor in 2021 to try to help states update their unemployment systems, combat fraud, and promote equitable access to benefits. But that funding and the accompanying efforts can only go so far, and they are aimed at administrative fixes, not policy fixes. The benefit amount a worker is entitled to, how long the benefits last, and the requirements to get them largely depend on which state that worker lives in. Many states are still digging themselves out from under the last crisis. Given the narrative that has taken hold around unemployment during this most recent economic recovery — that UI kept people out of the workforce, that too much government assistance contributed to inflation — it’s not clear what kind of appetite would exist in Congress to help workers if and when another recession hits.”
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“The point of unemployment insurance is to replace income for people who have lost their jobs and keep them attached to the labor market. It’s meant to be a support for the broader economy in times of economic downturn, too, and keep consumer spending going. If I lose my job and can’t pay my rent, it is a problem for me and for my landlord and for the sandwich guy I no longer buy from down the street.”
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“UI is financed through state and federal payroll taxes that are supposed to cover both administrative systems and the benefits themselves. Many states have kept those taxes quite low, leaving the system chronically underfunded and resulting in luck-of-the-draw situations for workers applying for UI, depending on where they live.
The average weekly benefit paid out in regular unemployment insurance nationwide was about $385 in the 12 months ending in September. But if you look at Mississippi, for example, the average benefit is in the low $200 range, while it’s now above $600 for Washington state.
These benefits do not move with inflation, either.”
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“Many UI offices are understaffed, are still dealing with pandemic-era backlogs, and are using outdated technologies to administer benefits. Or, they’ve updated their technologies and they’re intentionally designed to make the whole thing harder for workers to navigate, or the update was just bad.”
“For over a decade, scientists have been grappling with the alarming realization that many published findings — in fields ranging from psychology to cancer biology — may actually be wrong. Or at least, we don’t know if they’re right, because they just don’t hold up when other scientists repeat the same experiments, a process known as replication.
In a 2015 attempt to reproduce 100 psychology studies from high-ranking journals, only 39 of them replicated. And in 2018, one effort to repeat influential studies found that 14 out of 28 — just half — replicated. Another attempt found that only 13 out of 21 social science results picked from the journals Science and Nature could be reproduced.
This is known as the “replication crisis,” and it’s devastating. The ability to repeat an experiment and get consistent results is the bedrock of science.”
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“This is where the Transparent Replications project comes in.
The project, launched..by the nonprofit Clearer Thinking, has a simple goal: to replicate any psychology study published in Science or Nature (as long as it’s not way too expensive or technically hard). The idea is that, from now on, before researchers submit their papers to a prestigious journal, they’ll know that their work will be subjected to replication attempts, and they’ll have to worry about whether their findings hold up. Ideally, this will shift their incentives toward producing more robust research in the first place, as opposed to just racking up another publication in hopes of getting tenure.”
“The impeachment of Peru’s populist president has set off a political and constitutional firestorm, prompting nationwide protests against the government and creating a diplomatic rift with Mexico. Peru’s Congress has preliminarily backed a proposal that will allow for presidential and legislative elections in April 2024, two years ahead of schedule, according to the Associated Press.
Popular protests against the government have raged in Peru since lawmakers voted to remove President Pedro Castillo from office…Castillo, who emerged as the surprise winner of a heavily contested presidential election in July 2021, had already been the subject of two separate impeachment inquiries led by the opposition-controlled Congress over corruption allegations. After announcing he would dissolve the Congress and rule by decree, a move many observers decried as a “self-coup,” Congress moved expeditiously to remove Castillo from office, arrest him on corruption and treason charges, and install his vice president, Dina Boluarte, as president. The removal of Castillo immediately sparked nationwide protests, especially in the country’s interior and southern Andean regions where large sections of Peru’s indigenous and mixed-ancestry communities live.
Peru’s indigenous communities, which have largely felt neglected and dismissed by the political elite in the capital of Lima, have been at the forefront of these protests. To them, Castillo, who drew much of his electoral support from the interior and the Andean south, was a champion of indigenous interests, alleged corruption notwithstanding.”