certainty

US president says suspect was turned in by someone ‘close to him’ and that he hopes he gets ‘the death penalty’.

United States President Donald Trump has said that “with a high degree of certainty” that the gunman in the killing of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk has been caught.

Trump said on Friday that a minister, who is also linked to law enforcement, turned in the suspect to authorities. “Somebody that was very close to him,” Trump said.

Trump told Fox & Friends that he hoped the suspect got “the death penalty”.

The FBI and state officials on Thursday released photos and a video of the person they believe is responsible. Kirk was shot as he spoke to a crowd gathered in a courtyard at Utah Valley University in Orem.

The president said he was informed of the suspect’s arrest “five minutes before I walked in” the studio, praising local authorities for their coordination. “They did a great job, everybody worked together. It all worked out,” he said.

Trump paid tribute to Kirk, calling him “the finest person” who was “like a son” to him. He said Kirk was “a brilliant guy” who helped him win the election with TikTok and energised young voters. “I’ve never seen young people go to one person like they did to Charlie,” Trump added.

The suspect is “28 or 29”, according to Trump.

More to come …

It’s been more than 2,000 days since Covid-19 appeared in late 2019 growing to more than 700 million cases and at least 7 million deaths globally. Like many other people who were infected by Covid-19, I have long thought about its origins and where we go next.

As someone who had been a lawyer admitted to practice before the Supreme Courts of the US, New York and Massachusetts, and as chief legal counsel of President Jimmy Carter’s White House Conference on Families, looking at Covid-19 from an international law perspective by the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt”, it’s clear to me that no country has proven where the disease originated.

Under international law the principle of onus probandi,serious matters like lethal modalities such as nuclear, chemical and biological weapons or allegations of lethal pathogenic origins require the highest standard of “proof beyond a reasonable doubt”. It is also why the complaining party, not the accused, that bears the burden of proof.

That’s also why the WHO Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens explicitly requires the proof “beyond a reasonable doubt” gold standard, not the lower “preponderance of the evidence” test that something is merely more likely true than not. And it’s why the WHO panel operates under the legal principle of in dubio pro reo, a presumption of innocence until the accusing party proves otherwise.

Applying these standards, the required burden of proof level has not been met in even one case as the US and some allies have falsely accused Wuhan as being the origin of Covid-19.

China, in fact met its primary obligations under the WHO International Health Regulations, including timely notification to WHO of unusual pneumonia cases in December, 2019; sharing viral genome sequencing with WHO in December, 2019; and facilitating the WHO-China joint investigation during 2021.

I also find it unpersuasive that the “beyond a reasonable doubt” test was met since there were multiple independent reports, including wastewater and antibody blood testing of varying levels of credibility, of Covid-19  being present in Europe and the Americas prior to December 1, 2019. Since there is substantial evidence that Covid-19 appeared earlier on in numerous venues far beyond China, it has to be a case of “where there’s smoke, there’s fire”. For example, consider:

In Italy, multiple studies based on the presence of antibodies in blood samples found Covid-19 as early as October, 2019.

In France, the analysis of thousands of blood samples detected Covid-19 antibodies in 13 cases from November, 2019 to January, 2020.

In the Americas, signs of Covid-19 based on the presence of antibodies in blood samples were found in Brazil in November, 2019 and in the US in early December, 2019.

To me, however, the most convincing evidence is that after so much time has passed and so much money has been expended, no Western intelligence agency has been able to find Covid-19s origin with a high level of confidence; therefore not “beyond a reasonable doubt”.

Beginning with 2020, without the legal proof threshold being met, a handful of lawsuits outside the US, were filed against China over Covid-19 . All have been unsuccessful. In the US, a greater number of cases yielded only two Pyrric victories among numerous defeats whose massive judgments in cases that are mere political theater, clogged an understaffed, overburdened  judicial system, but not one cent will ever be collected because under international law, these judgments will be uncollectable. There are several reasons for these disparities.

Legally, other nations have more respect for the longstanding doctrine of sovereign immunity governing one nation or its political subdivisions suing another. Consequently, such cases are also more difficult to file there.  The doctrine, which must be music to Donald Trump’s ears, can be traced back to the English common law doctrine: rex non potest peccare or “the king can do no wrong”.

The US is the most litigious country globally, having the highest number of cases filed annually. One of the reasons is an unusual feature of the American legal system that allows litigants to bring cases without paying their lawyer, unless their lawyers are successful, in which case the lawyers take a negotiated percentage of the judgment, usually upwards of 40%.

From the 1990s, The US had been more politically divided. As part of this trend, American views on China were negatively affected and have severely deteriorated, accelerated by Covid-19. For example, Gallup found that about 41% of American had a favorable view of China in February, 2019, but by 2023 this number fell to 15%. Putting these facts together, it’s no surprise that the US has been the ground zero for quixotic  lawsuits seeking damages for Covid19.

US courts are governed by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act which accords foreign states broad immunity from lawsuits in US courts with several seemingly narrow exceptions. China, however, adheres to the principle of absolute sovereign immunity, and does not recognize the exceptions and abstains from appearing in US courts.

The exceptions, however, encouraged the conservative attorneys-general of red states Missouri and Mississippi to sue China. They were fully aware of China’s position and the futility of obtaining damages, beyond performing a political theater of the absurd that would further gum up an already understaffed judicial system.

Both officials belong to the National Association of Attorney Generals, which we jokingly call “National Association of Aspiring Governors” and both used the suits to waste taxpayers money to further their political careers, and in the case of the Missouri A-G, to help him become US senator.

The “justice is blind” mantra, at least in the case of Missouri, also fall on deaf ears. The 2-1 decision that turned on the narrow exceptions, smacks of political bias. At least one of the two judges allowing the exceptions to hold against China, perhaps both, should have recused themselves to avoid an appearance of impropriety; each was a Trump-appointee.

Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh, Jr., who wrote the majority opinion is first cousin of the notorious extreme right media commentator Rush Limbaugh. The latter, with an audience of more than 15 million, had said that “the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another weapon to bring down Donald Trump and it probably is a ChiCom (Chinese Communist) laboratory experiment that is in the process of being weaponized”. Judge Limbaugh had an unambiguous moral duty to recuse himself. but didn’t.

The cases have many flaws but I agree with the dissent in the Missouri case, written by the Chief Judge, not a Trump-appointee, that the exceptions did not apply to China.

The Covid-19 nightmare may be over but other pathogens with pandemic potential are literally waiting in the wings. Last year there were 17 global disease outbreaks, including Marburg virus. Mpox and H5N1 bird flu.

Experts warn that there is a 40 to 53% likelihood of another serious pandemic within 25 years.

Trump has already slashed the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) budget from $9.3 to 4.2 billion in 2026. At the same time WHO will (again) lose its largest contributor next year per orders of President Trump to the tune of $500 million to $1.3 billion. Combined, this will cripple the UN body and severely weaken global health surveillance, especially neutering WHOs Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network that relies heavily on American data-sharing and technical support. Trump has even forbidden the remaining experts who weren’t fired from the CDC, from co-authoring scientific papers with WHO staff.

Sadly, like the CDC. the WHO itself is destined to be in poor health, and may suffer terminal decline, causing needless deaths at home and abroad if the US continues down its selfish path. This churlish US action will undoubtedly severely increase the more than 14 million deaths forecast globally by 2030 as a consequence of savage 83% budget cuts to the US Agency for International Development and related US foreign aid programs.

China will assuredly pick up some of the slack, especially via its Belt and Road Initiative and its Health Silk Road but cannot unilaterally restore funding to previous levels. Other nations hopefully can pick up some of the shortfall.

Under international law, we may never know where Covid-19 came from. However, If we don’t want the past to be prologue and if we don’t follow philosopher George Santayana’s wise advice that those who don’t learn from the mistakes of history are bound to repeat them, we must prepare our new multipolar world for the health and other shocks that await us.

In 2012, Cassidy Krug competed in her first and last Olympics. Raised by two diving coaches, Krug was in diapers when she started dreaming of competing.

At 27 years old, she had a shot at the Olympic bronze medal but landed in seventh place instead. Krug decided to retire, something she’d already been considering for three years. But how do you move forward in life when diving is the only thing you’ve ever known?

Shelf Help is a wellness column where we interview researchers, thinkers and writers about their latest books — all with the aim of learning how to live a more complete life.

Krug tried to replace her passion for diving with a corporate career. But after seven years in advertising and brand strategy, she felt lost and without the purpose and motivation she’d once felt for her sport. Fascinated by the endless options of what to do next, Krug wrote “Resurface: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Biggest Transitions.”

The Times spoke with Krug about why we’re so resistant to uncertainty and what tools we can use to get comfortable with change.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Why do you think transitions are an important part of life?

Transitions are an important part of life because they’re an inevitable part of life. An author named Bruce Feiler estimates that we have three to five “lifequakes” in our lives — major shifts that change our habits, our identities, our communities and our sense of purpose. These shifts are even more frequent now that it feels like the pace of change in the world is speeding up. The more we can embrace change, rather than try to hold on to our old ways, the more set up we will be to adapt and move forward.

“During a transition, we often need to change our definition of success,” says Cassidy Krug, author of “Resurface: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Biggest Transitions.”

(Natalie Fong)

For this book, you interviewed people going through all kinds of life transitions, from changing careers to leaving prison. What did you find to be universal truths about these transitions?

There were two: that transitions take away our sense of community, and that during a transition, we often need to change our definition of success. Stanley — the man I interviewed who left prison after 20 years — told me that when he did, he lost the sense of camaraderie he felt while there. He also realized that he’d previously defined success by having a family and a stable job. When he left prison, he needed to redefine success to include the impact he’d had on other people’s lives while in prison. Though my experience was not the same, I also felt a huge loss of community and the need to redefine success while leaving diving.

In the book, you write that as humans, we are resistant to change and feel a need for certainty. Why are we so resistant to such an inevitable part of our lives, and how can we overcome this?

We often waver between the need for stability and a desire for change and growth. Right now, as a society, our expectations for certainty are ever-increasing. Twenty years ago, there were no dating apps that could assess my compatibility with a partner and no Yelp reviews that could predict if I’d like where I chose to eat dinner. Now with generative AI, there are many more avenues that market a false sense of security, and I think those avenues give us even more anxiety when it comes to the inevitable moments when we are uncertain. One way to fight that need for certainty is to put ourselves in difficult and uncertain situations. The ability to live in uncertainty is a muscle: The more we rely on external things to give us a sense of certainty, the less capable and the more anxious we feel when we don’t have those crutches around.

In the book, you write that a transition never ends. What do you mean by that?

I used to think of transitions as beginning, middle, end. Instead, psychologists use the phrases moving into, moving through, and moving out of to describe transitions, acknowledging that they rarely yield a clear-cut endpoint. My friend Nora, whom I write about in the book, expected that once she was in remission from cancer, she would move forward and thrive. In reality, she’s in remission, but she has brain fog, fatigue and lingering health issues that will change her life moving forward. The damaging and false expectation is that transitions end. Often, in reality, we don’t return to our previous state, and our transition instead ripples into our future — but that rippling change means ongoing growth and forward movement.

In Cassidy Krug’s “Resurface: A Guide to Navigating Life’s Biggest Transitions,” interviewees range from a cancer survivor to injured athletes to a man starting over after 20 years in prison.

(Cassidy Krug)

How can we move forward after leaving something important to us behind?

Rituals are a great way to honor what we’re leaving behind, commemorate how it shaped us and help incorporate the lessons from it into our evolving identities. Just like holding a funeral for a lost loved one, people find creative ways to honor different parts of their lives coming to a close. One woman I interviewed who struggled with infertility threw herself a menopause party complete with tampons wrapped in ribbons and women telling their first period and menopause stories. [Author] William Bridges said that change is something that happens to us, and transition is how we choose to react to that change. I think there’s a third step to that — how we interpret that transition — and rituals can help us do so in a way that moves us forward.

What would you recommend someone do when they’re paralyzed by the thought of an upcoming change?

Firstly, I’d recommend someone reframe their anxiety by spinning those fears into opportunities. “I’m afraid to leave this job because I don’t know what will happen” can become “If I leave, there will be so many opportunities open for me, and I’m going to have my own back.” Secondly, it’s important to start with something small and concrete. The idea of finding a new passion is paralyzing, but asking yourself what you’re interested in and finding a small step you can take in the direction of exploring that interest feels much more manageable.

What would you say to someone who’s not sure if they’re ready to make a big jump?

An author named Annie Duke wrote a book called “Quit” — in it, she writes that by the time a decision appears to be 50/50, it is probably better for your upcoming happiness if you move on. We have a societal bias towards grit, and every success story seems to be of someone who had an idea and then overcame obstacles and then succeeded. Stories forget to include all the things that person quit before they chose and invested in the right path. We don’t quit nearly as often as we should, so if you’re thinking about quitting something, do it.

Now that you’ve finished writing your book, you’re going through a period of transition again. How do you feel about it this time around?

There’s grief and loss associated with all transitions. Something I have to remind myself of with each transition I face is that there will be a period where I don’t know what’s next, and that’s normal. Things aren’t supposed to last forever, and I have to remind myself to breathe into the opportunity that temporariness brings, rather than the fear. I think many of us are overwhelmed by possibilities — there are many things we could do, but we don’t know which path to take. I’m in the aftermath of a project I felt so certain about, and my instinct is to wait for that certainty to hit me again before taking a step in any direction. But if I do that, I’ll be waiting forever. What I need to do is ask myself is, “What am I curious about? What is driving me?” and then invest time into exploring it — that is how I’ll figure out what my passion is going to be next.

(Maggie Chiang / For The Times)