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Austria to ease virus rules after vaccine mandate begins

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Austria to ease virus rules after vaccine mandate begins
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VIENNA (AP) — Austria plans to loosen coronavirus restrictions in February after the country’s national vaccine mandate, the first of its kind in Europe, takes effect on Tuesday.

Starting Feb. 5, restaurants will be allowed to remain open until midnight, as opposed to 10 p.m., Chancellor Karl Nehammer said at a Saturday news conference.

In addition, rules effectively barring unvaccinated people from stores and restaurants will be phased out. Starting Feb. 12, proof of vaccination or recovery will no longer be required to enter shops. A week later, on Feb. 19, entry into restaurants will be allowed for all who can prove vaccination, recovery or a negative coronavirus test.

Nehammer also said last week that lockdown restrictions for vaccinated people, which have been in place since November, will end on Monday.

The announcement Saturday comes in spite of record-high new infection numbers in recent days, fuelled by the omicron variant. On Friday, Austria reported 34,748 new cases. As of Thursday, the Alpine nation’s 7-day rate of infections stood at 2,381.2 per 100,000 inhabitants, about 10 times as high as the rate at the start of January.

Still, Nehammer said the low rate of patients now hospitalized for the virus means additional steps toward normalcy are possible. Officials in Austria expect the omicron wave to peak in the first week of February.

Austria has seen over 14,000 virus deaths in the pandemic.

For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.

Copyright © 2022 The Washington Times, LLC.

Barty wins drought-breaking Australian Open women’s title

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Barty wins drought-breaking Australian Open women’s title
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MELBOURNE, Australia — Ash Barty will no longer need to overthink the 1970s when she prepares for the Australian Open.

The top-ranked Barty recovered from 5-1 down in the second set to beat University of Virginia product Danielle Collins 6-3, 7-6 (2) in the final on Saturday night, ending a 44-year drought for Australians at their home Grand Slam.

The pressure is off the 25-year-old Aussie, who has made a remarkable career comeback after taking time off – missing every Grand Slam tournament in 2015 and ‘16 – and briefly flirting with taking up a professional cricket career after three first-round exits at the majors in 2014.

The usually reserved Barty let out a yell of sheer delight when she finally ensured she was the first Australian singles champion here since Chris O’Neil won the women’s title in 1978.

“Yeah, it was a little bit surreal,” she said. “I didn’t quite know what to do or what to feel, and I think just being able to let out a little bit of emotion, which is a little bit unusual for me, and being able to celebrate with everyone who was there in the crowd, the energy was incredible tonight.”

Barty now has Grand Slam singles titles on three surfaces, adding the hard court at Melbourne Park to her win on grass at Wimbledon last year and on clay at the 2019 French Open. She joins Serena Williams as the only active players on the women’s tour with majors on all three surfaces.

“This is just a dream come true for me,” she said. “I’m just so proud to be an Aussie.”

Evonne Goolagong Cawley, a tennis icon with seven Grand Slam singles titles and a trailblazer for Indigenous athletes from Australia, was a surprise guest to present the champion’s trophy to Barty, who is part of a new generation of stars with Aboriginal heritage.

“Very lucky to be able to give her a hug in some of the biggest moments in my life,” Barty said. “To be able to experience that together on such a big occasion, on such a beautiful court, and in a tournament that means so much to both of us – it was really nice to have her there just as someone to lean on when I wasn’t really sure what to do.”

O’Neil was involved in the night, too, after carrying the trophy into the stadium for the pre-match ceremony.

Barty hadn’t dropped a set and had only conceded one service game through six matches, against American Amanda Anisimova in the fourth round.

The 28-year-old Collins was the fourth American to take on Barty in four consecutive rounds. Barty had beaten Anisimova, Jessica Pegula and 2017 U.S. Open runner-up Madison Keys in straight sets.

Collins spent much longer on court than Barty in her previous six matches, having to come back from a set and break down to beat Danish teenager Clara Tauson in the third round. She was hampered by a sore back, which prevented her from sitting down in changeovers during her matches.

Barty took the first set after saving a break point in the fifth game and then breaking in the next.

Collins hit back quickly, unloading with her powerful ground strokes and relying on her high-intensity game, breaking Barty‘s serve in the second and sixth games to take a 5-1 lead.

She twice served for the set and twice was within two points of taking her first Grand Slam final to a deciding set.

Collins led 30-0 in the seventh game of the set, but started to lose momentum when Barty jumped into a second serve and sent a return winner down the line. Two more powerful forehands earned her a breakpoint.

Collins went to the chair umpire to talk and got booed heavily by the crowd. The umpire asked fans to refrain from shouting during play, as a courtesy to both players.

When Collins lost the game, she got another chorus of boos.

Barty picked up the energy from an almost full house in Rod Laver Arena, despite government restrictions on ticket sales in the COVID-19 pandemic.

She won five of the next six games and dominated the tiebreaker.

“As an Aussie, the most important part of this tournament is being able to share it with so many people,” Barty said. “This crowd is one of the most fun I’ve ever played in front of. You relaxed me, forced me to play my best tennis.”

Barty was the top seed in Australia for a third straight year but her best run until Saturday was a semifinal loss to eventual champion Sofia Kenin in 2020.

Australian flags and the red, black and yellow Aboriginal flag were waved around the crowd. And Cathy Freeman, who carried both flags to celebrate her gold medal in the 400 meters at the Sydney 2000 Olympics – one of the defining images of those Games – was in the crowd, too.

Collins, whose previous best run at a major was a semifinal loss here three years ago, paid tribute to her longtime mentor Marty Schneider and her boyfriend Joe Vollen, who were in the stands for support.

“Thank you for believing in me,” she said, crying. “I haven’t had a ton of people believing me in my career.”

Collins, who was traveling without a coach, said she did everything she could to counter the world’s top-ranked player and only just came up short.

“I was pushed to the max, and I gave myself a chance there in the end,” she said. “So it was a great event for me. Accomplished some new things. Learned a lot of new things. Yeah, played against a great competitor tonight and it was a fun battle.”

Australia‘s drought in the men’s singles dates back to Mark Edmondson’s victory in 1976.

The host nation picked up another long-awaited trophy when wild-card entrants Nick Kyrgios and Thanasi Kokkinakis – the so-called Special Ks – finished off a fairly wild men’s doubles campaign by beating Matt Ebden and Max Purcell 7-5, 6-4. They were the first home-grown pairing to win it since 1997.

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More AP tennis: https://apnews.com/hub/tennis and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Copyright © 2022 The Washington Times, LLC.

Britannia, With Fewer Rules

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Britannia, With Fewer Rules
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“Every stage of the crisis has been characterized by the idea that Britain is a special case,” Mr. Sanghera wrote.

It was special, and sometimes for the best of reasons. When the vaccines debuted in the United States, millions of people chased them online. In Britain, the vaccine chased you. One day, a notification showed up on your phone, from the National Health Service, asking which day and vaccination center was convenient. The entire process was easier than buying an iPad online.

But England was often special in the worst way. For stretches of the pandemic it had the highest death rate in Europe. In March 2020, when Mr. Johnson contracted Covid after seeming to defy recommended precautions, The Irish Times described Mr. Johnson’s leadership as “another example of British exceptionalism backfiring in grand style, some might say, and a bad omen for Brexit, the U.K.’s other social distancing project.”

To date, England’s efforts to prevent death from Covid-19 have been more successful than those of the United States, on a per-capita basis, but lag most of Europe. In Germany, there have been 141 deaths per 100,000, in Spain 197. In England, the per capita death rate is 240.

Not the worst, and far from the best. The historian and podcaster Dan Snow argues that this showing flows from the U.K.’s faith in the power of vaccines, which is of a piece with England’s love of — and gift for creating — life-altering technology.

“The vaccine was a kind of tech optimism, it was the moonshot,” he said. “Like the U.S., we’re a country open to transformative technology and that makes sense because this is where the industrial revolution began. We start by fiddling around with looms and textiles and eventually there’s a man on the moon.”

This faith in the power of English minds to dig the country out of any mess is a variation on the theme of exceptionalism. Put another way, the English are different. Expecting them to trod the same path as the rest of Europe is folly.

Or as Mr. Snow put it, “The boring, social democratic solution of ‘Let’s slow down transmission, sit apart from each other, let’s not do whatever we want’ — to English ears, that all sounds a bit Dutch.”

Buy GameStop, Fight Injustice. Just Don’t Sell.

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Buy GameStop, Fight Injustice. Just Don’t Sell.
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“He provided a very clear thesis,” Mr. Gogna said, explaining that Mr. Gill’s work was an accessible contrast to other information — “charts, all these dizzying things” — out there. “It can be overwhelming,” he said, “and I think that’s designed to keep the normal people away.”

By January 2021, Mr. Gogna was “all in” on GameStop shares because he believed that the company would eventually pivot to a digital business. “Every pay period I literally buy as many shares as I can,” he said, speaking from a hospital in San Diego where his wife, a nurse, was in labor with their first child. Mr. Gogna said he had persuaded her to move her savings into GameStop as well. (She delivered a healthy baby.)

As he dug deeper, spending hours reading what other traders had posted about GameStop, Mr. Gogna became convinced that something far darker was going on. Several posts detailed what users were calling a plot by Wall Street, the Securities and Exchange Commission and a trade clearinghouse to create fake or “synthetic” GameStop shares.

The goal of the plot, according to the posts, was to help hedge funds pull off the short trade they couldn’t last year. Shorting a stock involves an investor’s borrowing shares from another and immediately selling them, hoping that their price will fall and that the investor can buy them back cheaply, return them and pocket the difference. The theories were circulating on a Reddit forum called Superstonk, which had been created in March, after GameStop had receded from the headlines, by die-hard fans of the company. There are detailed research papers called “due diligences” — DDs for short — laying out far-fetched theories about how various Wall Street actors were secretly manipulating GameStop and other meme stocks.

A core premise of the plot’s existence is that the short interest in GameStop — or the amount of shares held short — is higher than 100 percent. The only way to counter the plot is for individual traders to buy GameStop shares at any price to keep them from falling — the “mother of all short squeezes,” or MOASS. Mr. Gogna is among the traders who have pledged to “hold on for dear life,” or HODL, as the acronym goes.

Frank Partnoy, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said synthetic shares can exist because the same shares are often lent out to multiple short sellers at once, creating the impression that there are more shares than there really are. But, he added, “it’s not true that the S.E.C. would be involved, and it’s not easy to do something like this. And it also would be manipulative, so it would be illegal.”

The Superstonk discourse shows how the gospel of meme stocks has taken hold among a wide range of investors — from those who no longer buy into it, like Mr. Fritz, to others who accept it without question.

How Covid Got Gish Jen Thinking About China

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How Covid Got Gish Jen Thinking About China
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Gish Jen’s fans can take some solace when they finish one of her books: The characters might reappear in the next one they read.

The protagonist of her 1996 novel, “Mona in the Promised Land,” about the daughter of Chinese immigrants who converts to Judaism, first appeared as an infant in Jen’s 1991 debut, “Typical American.” A character from her 1999 story collection “Who’s Irish,” Duncan Hsu, is the focus of a story in her latest book, “Thank You, Mr. Nixon,” due out Tuesday from Knopf.

“It’s not like I sit down and say, well, what are they doing now?,” Jen said. “I’m interested in people changing. I myself have changed a lot.”

Jen, 66, the daughter of Chinese immigrants, is the author of nine books, and often explores the intergenerational dynamics of Chinese American families in her fiction.

Her nonfiction books, including “The Girl at the Baggage Claim” and “Tiger Writing,” center on what Jen sees as the fundamental difference between the “independent self” encouraged by highly individualistic societies in the West, and the “interdependent self” often found in Asian cultures. “Because I have an interdependent side — it’s not all of me, but part of me — I do have a sense of obligation to share what I know,” she said in a video interview this month.

The title story of “Thank You, Mr. Nixon” takes the form of a lighthearted letter written to the former president — who, in this scenario, is in hell — by a woman he met during his 1972 visit to China. In other interconnected stories, some written during the pandemic, others in previous years, readers meet a woman studying immigration law, and in a later story, one of her clients.

Jen discussed how China has influenced her work, what she has gotten out of nonfiction writing and why it’s important, even in fiction, to get the facts straight. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Tell me about the timeline of this book and how it fits in with the rest of your body of work.

I had gone to China in 1979 to visit family, and interestingly, even though I was not a writer then, I took extensive notes. The idea of being a writer had never crossed my mind, but I guess there was the writer in me.

I went back again to teach in 1981, teaching coal-mining engineers in Shandong. And then I went to Iowa, right after that, so I went pretty much straight from China to Iowa for my M.F.A.

When I was writing, I wasn’t thinking that I was trying to record history or anything like that — it was just there.

Then I sat down during Covid and looked at some older stories, and you could see things happening. History is always there — we’re not aware of it, of course, no one is thinking, “I can only have this business because Nixon went to China.” (Laughs) This is the moment to reflect on what’s happened, especially as we enter a new phase of our relationship with China.

You’ve written about how the independent and interdependent aspects of yourself play off one another. How do you see that relationship affect your writing style or your preoccupations as a writer?

I am an economical and efficient writer. But I did not notice the economy in my own work. It was a professor of Chinese literature who noticed, and as soon as he said it, I was like, but of course. The Chinese love extreme economy — they’re very good in the short lyric and leaving a lot out.

I realized that for whatever reason — though I was born in the United States, I only speak English, I am fully, quote unquote, American — that aesthetic has stayed with me, the same way that an interest in mixed tone and interest in subtlety has stayed with me. But it is interesting to see these cultural holdovers, and if I could explain to you where I got that from — well, that would be another book.

What kinds of stories did you hear from your family when you were growing up?

It was quite a project getting established in the United States, and there was not a lot of time for storytelling. I don’t remember one minute of my childhood being dedicated to anything but getting through the day. My parents were not of an autobiographical cast of mind — in the world that you and I inhabit, it’s very important to self-narrate so that others can know you. But for them, there was a privileging of the unspoken — if something is important, you definitely don’t talk about it. It’s quite the reverse of the way that things work here.

I did try to get some stories out of my mother. She didn’t say a lot. But occasionally she would tell more than she meant to.

Many writers, particularly those from marginalized backgrounds, resist the expectation that they are “spokespeople” for whatever community they seem to represent. But you, at least in your nonfiction, seem more than willing to take on this explanatory role.

I think some people are afraid that if you take on this role, whether it’s as a nonfiction writer or as a “cultural ambassador” of some kind, that it will stick. But I feel more comfortable with it.

Also, I am established as a fiction writer — if my first book had been nonfiction, I don’t know if I could have moved out so easily. I’ve emerged from writing nonfiction not feeling stuck, but with a feeling of freedom. I’m sure that’s one of the reasons I wrote “The Resisters.” I went off in a very different direction. And now here I am, back on turf that maybe would seem more obviously Gish Jen. Then we’ll see what happens after that. So I think the nonfiction has helped me as a writer.

Many of your stories revolve around the differences in perspectives between generations — including how they view class and race. Do you ever worry about how your characters will be received by readers, particularly in a time of increased violence against Asian Americans?

One of the problems that minority writers face is: How many writers are there? If it’s just you, you’ve got to be pretty careful. As times change, and there are more voices, you can relax a little. But there is still a little voice in the back of my head that says, “I will go forth with what I feel to be true, but I must also be cognizant of how it may be read, and I must disarm the reader if I can.” My humor is a big part of that.

Now there’s enough out there that we can write whatever it is that we need to write. Some of it will be flattering and some of it will be unflattering, but all of it will be entirely human.

Your new book encompasses the 1970s through the present day. How do you see this book fitting in with other accounts of the time it covers?

Though it’s fiction, there’s a lot that is factually accurate, and I do feel a responsibility, especially when I am talking about arenas where there’s not a strong record, that if I was there, it’s important to get the facts straight: Were there mosquito nets or were there no mosquito nets? Did the ceiling fans rotate or not?

As best I can, I do try to nail those facts down. But in the end, I do see all those facts — all the very good work done by journalists and historians — I see them as the strings of the piano. It’s their job to make the strings and make sure they’re in tune. It’s my job to make the music.

Joni Mitchell joining Neil Young in protest over Spotify

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Joni Mitchell joining Neil Young in protest over Spotify
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NEW YORK (AP) — Joni Mitchell said Friday she is seeking to remove all of her music from Spotify in solidarity with Neil Young, who ignited a protest against the streaming service for airing a podcast that featured a figure who has spread misinformation about the coronavirus.

Mitchell, who like Young is a California-based songwriter who had much of her success in the 1970s, is the first prominent musician to join Young’s effort.

“Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives,” Mitchell said Friday in a message posted on her website. “I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.”

Following Young’s action this week, Spotify said it had policies in place to remove misleading content from its platform and has removed more than 20,000 podcast episodes related to COVID-19 since the start of the pandemic.

But the service has said nothing about comedian Joe Rogan, whose podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience” is the centerpiece of the controversy. Last month Rogan interviewed on his podcast Dr. Robert Malone, an infectious disease specialist who has been banned from Twitter for spreading COVID misinformation.

Rogan is one of the streaming service’s biggest stars, with a contract that could earn him more than $100 million.

Young had called on other artists to support him following his action. While Mitchell, 78, is not a current hitmaker, the Canadian native’s Spotify page said she had 3.7 million monthly listeners to her music. Her songs “Big Yellow Taxi” and “A Case of You” have both been streamed more than 100 million times on the service.

In a message on his website Friday, Young said that “when I left Spotify, I felt better.”

“Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information,” he wrote. “I am happy and proud to stand in solidarity with the front line health care workers who risk their lives every day to help others.”

There was no immediate response to a request for comment from Spotify.

Copyright © 2022 The Washington Times, LLC.

How Trump Coins Became an Internet Sensation

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How Trump Coins Became an Internet Sensation
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“For Black Hat people, I have bad news, because the A.I. is only going to get better and better at this,” he warned, adding that in the past, Stone Force “didn’t care a lot about compliance” because its ads were usually approved. Now it was considering hiring a dedicated compliance person to keep up with advertising rules, he said.

Rachel Edwards can’t remember where she first spotted the coin, but she thinks it was an ad on Facebook. Ms. Edwards, a mother of three from Alabama, said the coins immediately caught her eye — and so did the price, with a single coin costing nothing but shipping and handling.

“So I ordered five,” she said.

They arrived in about a week, packaged inside a simple padded envelope. The coins looked good, each in a protective plastic case, and she said they had enough heft to suggest they were real silver.

But there was something amiss.

“The bag they came in individually just had a sticker that said, ‘Made in China,’” she said.

Neil Segal, a dealer at Colonial Stamp and Coin in Kingston, N.Y., tested another Trump coin bought from the Raw Conservative Opinions Store. He used a device that detects precious metals.

He found no gold or silver. The coin was also magnetic, suggesting it was mostly made of iron.

Jack Batelic, a gold appraiser at PRS Gold Buyers in Newburgh, N.Y., tested the coin using a nitric acid solution. After he applied a blob to Mr. Trump’s gold-colored image, the area darkened, bubbled and then turned green.

“It’s paint,” he concluded.

What was it worth?

“Nothing,” he said.

Audio produced by Adrienne Hurst.

The Battle for the World’s Most Powerful Cyberweapon

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The Battle for the World’s Most Powerful Cyberweapon
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The Mexico example revealed both the promise and the perils of working with NSO. In 2017, researchers at Citizen Lab, a watchdog group based at the University of Toronto, reported that authorities in Mexico had used Pegasus to hack the accounts of advocates for a soda tax, as part of a broader campaign aimed at human rights activists, political opposition movements and journalists. More disturbing, it appeared that someone in the government had used Pegasus to spy on lawyers working to untangle the massacre of 43 students in Iguala in 2014. Tomás Zerón de Lucio, the chief of the Mexican equivalent to the F.B.I., was a main author of the federal government’s version of the event, which concluded that the students were killed by a local gang. But in 2016 he became the subject of an investigation himself, on suspicion that he had covered up federal involvement in the events there. Now it appeared that he might have used Pegasus in that effort — one of his official duties was to sign off on the procurement of cyberweapons and other equipment. In March 2019, soon after Andrés Manuel López Obrador replaced Peña Nieto after a landslide election, investigators charged that Zerón had engaged in torture, abduction and tampering with evidence in relation to the Iguala massacre. Zerón fled to Canada and then to Israel, where he entered the country as a tourist, and where — despite an extradition request from Mexico, which is now seeking him on additional charges of embezzlement — he remains today.

The American reluctance to share intelligence was creating other opportunities for NSO, and for Israel. In August 2009, Panama’s new president, Ricardo Martinelli, fresh off a presidential campaign grounded on promises of “eliminating political corruption,” tried to persuade U.S. diplomats in the country to give him surveillance equipment to spy on “security threats as well as political opponents,” according to a State Department cable published by WikiLeaks. The United States “will not be party to any effort to expand wiretaps to domestic political targets,” the deputy chief of mission replied.

Martinelli tried a different approach. In early 2010, Panama was one of only six countries at the U.N. General Assembly to back Israel against a resolution to keep the Goldstone Commission report on war crimes committed during the 2008-9 Israeli assault on Gaza on the international agenda. A week after the vote, Martinelli landed in Tel Aviv on one of his first trips outside Latin America. Panama will always stand with Israel, he told the Israeli president, Shimon Peres, in appreciation of “its guardianship of the capital of the world — Jerusalem.” He said he and his entourage of ministers, businesspeople and Jewish community leaders had come to Israel to learn. “We came a great distance, but we are very close because of the Jewish heart of Panama,” he said.

Behind closed doors, Martinelli used his trip to go on a surveillance shopping spree. In a private meeting with Netanyahu, the two men discussed the military and intelligence equipment that Martinelli wanted to buy from Israeli vendors. According to one person who attended the meeting, Martinelli was particularly interested in the ability to hack into BlackBerry’s BBM text service, which was very popular in Panama at that time.

Within two years, Israel was able to offer him one of the most sophisticated tools yet made. After the installation of NSO systems in Panama City in 2012, Martinelli’s government voted in Israel’s favor on numerous occasions, including to oppose the United Nations decision to upgrade the status of the Palestinian delegation — 138 countries voted in favor of the resolution, with just Israel, Panama and seven other countries opposing it.

According to a later legal affidavit from Ismael Pitti, an analyst for Panama’s National Security Council, the equipment was used in a widespread campaign to “violate the privacy of Panamanians and non-Panamanians” — political opponents, magistrates, union leaders, business competitors — all “without following the legal procedure.” Prosecutors later said Martinelli even ordered the team operating Pegasus to hack the phone of his mistress. It all came to an end in 2014, when Martinelli was replaced by his vice president, Juan Carlos Varela, who himself claims to have been a target of Martinelli’s spying. Martinelli’s subordinates dismantled the espionage system, and the former president fled the country. (In November, he was acquitted by Panamanian courts of wiretapping charges.)

NSO was doubling its sales every year — $15 million, $30 million, $60 million. That growth attracted the attention of investors. In 2014, Francisco Partners, a U.S.-based global investment firm, paid $130 million for 70 percent of NSO’s shares, then merged another Israeli cyberweapons firm, called Circles, into their new acquisition. Founded by a former senior AMAN officer, Circles offered clients access to a vulnerability that allowed them to detect the location of any mobile phone in the world — a vulnerability discovered by Israeli intelligence 10 years earlier. The combined company could offer more services to more clients than ever.

‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic resentenced to 21 years in prison

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‘Tiger King’ Joe Exotic resentenced to 21 years in prison
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OKLAHOMA CITY — A federal judge resentenced “Tiger King” Joe Exotic to 21 years in prison on Friday, reducing his punishment by just a year despite pleas from the former zookeeper for leniency as he begins treatment for early-stage cancer.

“Please don’t make me die in prison waiting for a chance to be free,” he tearfully told a federal judge who resentenced him on a murder-for-hire charge.

Joe Exotic — whose real name is Joseph Maldonado-Passage — was convicted in a case involving animal welfare activist Carole Baskin. Both were featured in Netflix’s “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness.”

Wearing an orange prison jumpsuit, Maldonado-Passage, 58, still had his trademark mullet hairstyle, but the bleach-blonde had faded to brown and gray. 

Baskin and her husband, Howard Baskin, also attended the proceedings, and she said she was fearful that Maldonado-Passage could threaten her.

“He continues to harbor intense feelings of ill will toward me,” she told the judge.

Baskin said even with Maldonado-Passage in prison, she has continued to receive “vile, abusive and threatening communications” over the last two years. She told the judge she believes Maldonado-Passage poses an even more serious threat to her now that he has a larger group of supporters because of the popularity of the Netflix series.

Maldonado-Passage’s attorneys told the judge their client is suffering from stage-one prostate cancer, along with a disease that compromises his immune system, making him particularly vulnerable to COVID-19.

Stage-one prostate cancer means it has been detected early and hasn’t spread. Maldonado-Passage previously said that he planned to delay treatment until after his resentencing. Federal officials have said Maldonado-Passage will need up to eight weeks of radiation treatments and would be unable to travel during the treatments.

His attorney Amy Hanna told the judge he’s not receiving the proper medical care inside the federal prison system and that a lengthy prison sentence is a “death sentence for Joe that he doesn’t deserve.”

Prosecutors also told the judge Friday that Maldonado-Passage received a disciplinary write-up in September for being in possession of a contraband cellphone and unauthorized headphones that were not included in his pre-sentencing report. Palk added that Maldonado-Passage had four previous disciplinary write-ups, although he described those as “relatively minor and not violent.”

Friday’s court proceedings came about after a federal appeals court ruled last year that the prison term he’s serving on a murder-for-hire conviction should be shortened.

Supporters packed the courtroom, some wearing animal-print masks and shirts that read “Free Joe Exotic.” His attorneys said they would appeal the resentencing and petition for a new trial.

“The defense submitted a series of attachments that showed excessive government involvement in the creation of the offense for which he‘s been convicted,” attorney Molly Parmer told reporters after the hearing.

“We are going to continue our post-conviction litigation, but we did preview for the court the evidence we have through our post-conviction investigation.”

The former zookeeper was sentenced in January 2020 to 22 years in prison after he was convicted of trying to hire two different men to kill Baskin. A three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Maldonado-Passage that the court should have treated them as one conviction at sentencing because they both involved the same goal of killing Baskin, who runs a rescue sanctuary for big cats in Florida and had criticized Maldonado-Passage’s treatment of animals.

Prosecutors said Maldonado-Passage offered $10,000 to an undercover FBI agent to kill Baskin during a recorded December 2017 meeting. In the recording, he told the agent, “Just like follow her into a mall parking lot and just cap her and drive off.” Maldonado-Passage’s attorneys have said their client — who once operated a zoo in Wynnewood, Oklahoma, about 65 miles (105 kilometers) south of Oklahoma City — wasn’t being serious.

Maldonado-Passage, who maintains his innocence, also was convicted of killing five tigers, selling tiger cubs and falsifying wildlife records. 

Copyright © 2022 The Washington Times, LLC.

First Vulcan flight to carry DNA of ‘Star Trek’ creator, ashes of wife and chief engineer Scotty

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First Vulcan flight to carry DNA of ‘Star Trek’ creator, ashes of wife and chief engineer Scotty
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The DNA of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry will accompany the ashes of his wife and the actor who played chief engineer Scotty when the first Vulcan rocket lifts off in a mission dubbed the “Enterprise flight,” scheduled for later this year.

Celestis, a Houston-based space memorial services company, said this week that the ashes of Canadian actor James Doohan and actress Majel Barrett Roddenberry, who died in 2008, will accompany the DNA samples of her late husband. Gene Roddenberry’s ashes were scattered in space in 1997, six years after his death.

“We’re very pleased to be fulfilling, with this mission, a promise I made to Majel Barrett Roddenberry in 1997 that one day we would fly her and husband ‘Star Trek’ creator Gene Roddenberry together on a deep space memorial spaceflight,” said Charles M. Chafer, the CEO of Celestis.

They will be among more than 150 capsules that contain the cremated remains, DNA samples and messages of “Star Trek” fans who paid to be blasted into the final frontier after their deaths.

United Space Launch, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing that services government contracts, has agreed to accommodate the remains as part of an unrelated mission.

“What a fitting tribute to the Roddenberry family and the ‘Star Trek’ fans to be a part of the maiden flight of Vulcan, our next-generation rocket,” said Tory Bruno, president and CEO of the company based in Centennial, Colorado.

The maiden flight of the Vulcan Centaur rocket, delayed several times during the development of its BE-4 engine, has the primary purpose of launching Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander. The human remains of the Enterprise flight will come along as a “secondary payload.”

Officials said the rocket will rendezvous with the moon, continue into deep space and orbit around the sun with the remains. The launch date has not been scheduled.

The “Vulcan” rocket bears the same name as the planet and race of Mr. Spock, one of the television franchise’s most beloved characters.

Doohan was a World War II veteran who participated in the D-Day landing at Juno Beach, where he lost his right middle finger and took pains to conceal its absence throughout a decades-long acting career. A linguist who created the Vulcan and Klingon languages for the franchise, he died in 2005.

Majel Roddenberry, who acted under the name Barrett, appeared in every incarnation of “Star Trek” produced during her lifetime. She married Gene Roddenberry, a Texas native and a veteran television producer, in 1969 — the last year that the original “Star Trek” series aired. 

Later in her career, she produced the science-fiction television shows “Andromeda” and “Earth: Final Conflict,” based on notes from her late husband.

The launch comes as private space flight has increasingly become a popular option for wealthy celebrities.

Last year, 90-year old “Star Trek” actor William Shatner, who played Capt. James T. Kirk in the show, traveled into space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket.  

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