deep

I sat stock-still on a bench fashioned from a fallen silver birch, scanning the woods for a sudden movement or a flash of blue. Deer and kingfisher visit this secluded copse and its stream, and I hoped to spot at least one of them. There was a rustle in the undergrowth, but it was only a more familiar winter visitor: a cheery robin.

It was a chilly day for wildlife-watching, but that didn’t matter to me – I was inside a sizzling sauna, gazing out of a large picture window. In fact, I was soon sweating so much, I nipped out to the icy-cold shower to cool off. The next time I overheated, I braved a plunge in the cold-water tub.

For over an hour Tuesday night, Presidential Trump vied with pugnacious Trump.

The White House had promised a conciliatory and uplifting State of the Union address, which stood to reason. It’s one thing to inveigh against the mess Trump said he inherited a year ago and another to laud the job he claims to have done cleaning it up.

FULL COVERAGE: State of the Union »

Gone, then, was the wreckage, the ruin and the dystopian “American carnage” he deplored in the glowering speech at his inauguration. Instead, Trump offered a vision of hopefulness and light — for a time, anyway.

“This is our new American moment,” he said loftily in the early moments of his address. “There has never been a better time to start living the American dream.”

But those grace notes were soon overshadowed by an increasingly harsh tone, as though the president couldn’t or didn’t care to contain his more ad-libbed and aggressive self.

He needled Democrats over the partial dismantling of the Affordable Care Act, one of his predecessor’s proudest achievements. He resurrected the controversy over the national anthem and the dissent of kneeling black athletes.

When he spoke of immigration, perhaps the touchiest issue facing a gridlocked Congress, he placed it in a dark frame, with talk of gang violence, of alien intruders stealing jobs and a suggestion of unending “chain” migrants — aunts, uncles, cousins and other family members — leaching taxpayer dollars.

In his closest approximation to an olive branch, Trump said he would support a proposal offering a path to citizenship for 1.8 million children — so-called Dreamers — who were brought to America illegally by their parents. But only, he said, if Democrats would agree to a border wall and other changes in legal immigration they consider anathema.

The result was groans and hisses and boos from that side of the House chamber.

The annual speech to Congress is one of Washington’s most carefully choreographed set pieces, and for portions of it Trump hewed closely to a familiar script

He assayed the state of the union, pronouncing it “strong.” He outlined an ambitious agenda — which lawmakers will mostly ignore — crowed about his achievements, made a feint in the direction of bipartisanship and saluted a large number of invited guests who served as props representing different bullet points (immigration, a strong military, the opioid addiction crisis) of his speech.

It was all terribly conventional, but only to a point.

There were many long sections that could just have easily been delivered at one of Trump’s roisterous “Make America Great Again” campaign rallies, down to the moment when the ranks of Republican lawmakers broke into a lusty chant of “USA! USA!” as the president, chin out, approvingly took in the scene.

The contrast to the last time Trump stood in the well of the House was striking.

Eleven months ago, he delivered a more subdued performance, earning plaudits and generating widespread talk of a presidential turning point or, in that most overused expression, a pivot toward a more staid and conformist style of governance.

Then, days later, Trump was back to tweeting about a “bad (or sick)” President Obama bugging Trump Tower, a figment that roused his political base but instantly banished any Democratic goodwill or notions of presidential normalcy.

Trump has shattered political convention in so many ways that it is difficult to enumerate them all. One of the most significant is this: Although the economy is perking smartly along and Americans tell pollsters they feel better about their financial well-being than they have in years, the president has gotten very little credit.

Indeed, his approval rating stands at a historical low for a chief executive this early in his term, severing the long-standing correlation between economic good times and voter satisfaction.

His speech Tuesday night, with its prime-time prominence and audience reaching in the tens of millions, offered a chance to address that problem. “Over the last year, we have made incredible progress and achieved extraordinary success,” Trump said, reeling off a number of favorable economic statistics.

But much of the address seemed aimed at a far narrower audience.

To a greater degree than any recent president, Trump has used his time in office to appease the relatively narrow slice of the electorate — older, whiter, alienated, aggrieved — that placed him in power, opting not to reach out, bend and seek to broaden that coalition.

His uncompromising performance Tuesday night perfectly encapsulated that approach. Supporters found much to like and detractors plenty to reinforce their contempt.

It is too much to expect any single speech, much less one as politically freighted as the State of the Union, to instantly bridge such a yawning gap. If anything, though, Trump’s provocative remarks seemed likely to push warring Democrats and Republicans even further apart.

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@markzbarabak

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Nov. 25 (UPI) — Almost a year after the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime, the fate of the tens of thousands of people who were arbitrarily arrested or forcibly disappeared since the civil war began in 2011 remains unknown.

For their families, it is a deep, unhealed wound — a continuing tragedy that leaves them with little hope of learning what truly happened, let alone whether they will ever find their loved ones, dead or alive.

This is the case for Lina Salameh and her only son, Hicham, who would have turned 32 this year. He vanished without a trace after being arrested at a checkpoint in a Damascus southern suburb in 2015.

When the peaceful anti-regime protests broke out and soon escalated into a bloody civil war, the Salameh family decided to seek refuge in neighboring Lebanon. Two years later, Hicham was forced to return to Syria to renew his travel documents.

He was stopped at the Syrian border crossing, prevented from returning to Lebanon and instructed to go back to Damascus to have his case reviewed at a Military Intelligence branch.

His mother refused to let him go to the branch, fearing he would be arrested, and she rented a new house — away from their original home in the southern suburb of Maadamiyeh — to keep him out of sight of the security services.

But he was soon arrested at a checkpoint, and “since that day, we have never heard anything about him or his fate,” she told UPI in a telephone interview from Damascus.

Hicham’s ordeal and his family’s agony was only just beginning. The only piece of information came two years later, when a prisoner released from Saydnaya Military Prison called them to confirm that Hicham had been held with him in the notorious jail.

Despite rushing to the prison and paying pro-regime lawyer, who had promised to find out whether their son was actually in Saydnaya, and paying him between $600 and $1,000, Hicham’s family was never able to see or even locate him.

Others, claiming to have good connections with security officials, demanded $25,000 to secure his release. But the family did not have that much money.

“Anyway, these were all lies,” Lina Salameh said. Like many other families, she was a victim of manipulation and financial extortion.

The U.K.-based Syrian Network for Human Rights documented more than 181,000 people who were arbitrarily arrested and imprisoned or who forcibly disappeared between March 2011 and August 2025

Its founder, Fadel Abdul Ghany, said that Syria continues to face an overwhelming crisis of missing and detained persons and “the fact that these individuals are still listed as missing does not imply they are alive.”

Abdul Ghany said his network’s analysis and statements by the new authorities suggest that surviving detainees held by the former regime have largely been released, and that no official acknowledgment has been made of remaining secret detention sites.

“In practice, this means that the vast majority of those still missing are presumed to have been killed in detention or extrajudicially executed,” he told UPI.

Abdul Ghany said Syria’s new authorities established the National Commission for Missing Persons and the Transitional Justice Commission with “broad formal mandates, but their operational performance is hampered by serious structural deficits.”

He cited key obstacles, including the failure to clearly define investigative powers and the lack of sustainable funding, which undermine their capacity to “deliver meaningful truth, accountability, or reparations.”

The commission’s independence and impartiality emerge as another issue, deepening concerns about “victor’s justice” with the focus so far heavily concentrated on the crimes committed by the former regime “with far less visible progress in addressing violations committed by armed opposition groups, extremist organizations and other non-state actors,” he added.

“Political sensitivities, fear of destabilizing the transition and the weakness of records related to non-state actors have slowed efforts to address their crimes,” he said. “As a result, databases on non-state perpetrators remain incomplete or contested, and many victims of these actors continue to be excluded from emerging accountability frameworks.”

Bissan Fakih, a Middle East campaigner with Amnesty International based in Beirut, called for “a justice process that is inclusive of everyone.”

While the Assad regime was responsible for a vast majority disappearing, it is important to recognize that armed groups in northwest Syria, including Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and the Islamic State, also were responsible, Fakih said.

“Their families are not in less agony. They also deserve answers,” she told UPI.

Despite the chaos in the first days after Assad’s fall, with families storming prisons to search for their loved ones, Faqih said there was “much evidence” about the missing people in documents found in jails, hospitals and government institutions.

“To date, we haven’t seen actual practical steps to start the search for the disappeared,” she said, noting that DNA testing has not yet begun, despite the excavation of dozens of mass graves across Syria.

She emphasized the need to ensure that existing evidence is protected and analyzed correctly, adding that there are “dozens, even hundreds, of witnesses to these crimes,” including former prison guards who also hold important information.

This evidence would be crucial for Lina Salameh and for the thousands of families who have been unable to find any trace of their loved ones — not even their names or identification cards — in any of the prisons, hospitals or government records.

For many years, she tried to stop thinking about her son and whether he had been tortured or killed with acid. However, she clings to the small hope that “he will come one day, knock on my door and I will be able to see him.”

Khaled Arnous, several of whose relatives and hundreds of others disappeared in war-torn Maadamiyeh on the outskirts of Damascus, said they were now all convinced that 99% of the missing had been killed and “became martyrs,” although no burial place for them is known.

Arnous, whose son was killed in 2013 during clashes and is body recovered, said he used to comfort his wife by saying, “At least we know where he is buried and can go pray at his tomb.”

He added: “We mostly felt that Assad’s fall, the end of his suppression, and the victory of the revolution somehow eased our pain,.”

He recalled that most of the arrests and killings under the former regime were arbitrary, targeting people from specific regions, even though they had nothing to do with the revolution and did not carry arms.

The arrest of several former Saydnaya prison officials and guards accused of severe human rights abuses, torture and extrajudicial executions has raised families’ hopes for justice.

“They should be tried for sure…. They should pay the price for what they did to our children, and feel the same pain.” Lina Salameh said. “Only God knows how much they tortured them and how they killed them.”

To Fakih, justice is not just possible. She said it is the duty of the Syrian government to achieve it for all the victims of the Syrian conflict.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV has called for “deep reflection” in the United States about the treatment of migrants held in detention, saying that “many people who have lived for years and years and years, never causing problems, have been deeply affected by what is going on right now.”

The Chicago-born pope was responding Tuesday to a variety of geopolitical questions from reporters outside the papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo, including what kind of spiritual rights migrants in U.S. custody should have, U.S. military attacks on suspected drug traffickers off Venezuela and the fragile ceasefire in the Middle East.

Leo underlined that scripture emphasizes the question that will be posed at the end of the world: “How did you receive the foreigner, did you receive him and welcome him, or not? I think there is a deep reflection that needs to be made about what is happening.”

He said “the spiritual rights of people who have been detained should also be considered,’’ and he called on authorities to allow pastoral workers access to the detained migrants. “Many times they’ve been separated from their families. No one knows what’s happening, but their own spiritual needs should be attended to,’’ Leo said.

Leo last month urged labor union leaders visiting from Chicago to advocate for immigrants and welcome minorities into their ranks.

Asked about the lethal attacks on suspected drug traffickers off Venezuela, the pontiff said the military action was “increasing tension,’’ noting that they were coming even closer to the coastline.

“The thing is to seek dialogue,’’ the pope said.

On the Middle East, Leo acknowledged that the first phase of the peace accord between Israel and Hamas remains “very fragile,’’ and said that the parties need to find a way forward on future governance “and how you can guarantee the rights of all peoples.’’

Asked about Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank, the pope described the settlement issue as “complex,’’ adding: “Israel has said one thing, then it’s done another sometimes. We need to try to work together for justice for all peoples.’’

Pope Leo will receive Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the Vatican on Thursday. At the end of November he will make his first trip as Pope to Turkey and Lebanon.

TORONTO — It was a game that started on Saturday and ended on Sunday, a World Series contest so packed with the rare, the historic and the dramatic that it couldn’t possibly be confined to one day.

At 11 innings, it was the longest Game 7 this century, and it equaled the longest in more than a century. It was the first Game 7 that had a ninth-inning home run to tie the score and the first to feature two video reviews that prevented the go-ahead run from scoring.

“It’s one of the greatest games I’ve ever been a part of,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said after his team outlasted the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 to win its second straight World Series and end the longest season in franchise history, one that began in Japan and ended in Canada.

The victory made the Dodgers the first team to win back-to-back titles in 25 years and with that championship, Roberts’ third, he passed Hall of Famer Tommy Lasorda to become the second-most-decorated Dodger manager ever. He now trails only Walter Alston, another Hall of Famer, who won four World Series with the team.

Roberts, however, won his three titles over six seasons, something no Dodger skipper has ever done.

“It’s hard to reconcile that one,” said Roberts, whose jersey from Saturday’s game is on its way to Cooperstown, joining the cap the Hall of Fame requested after last year’s World Series win.

“I’m just really elated and really proud of our team, our guys, the way we fought. We’ve done something that hasn’t been done in decades. There was so many pressure points and how that game could have flipped, and we just kept fighting, and guys stepped up big.”

So did the manager.

Every move Roberts made worked, every button he pushed was the right one. Miguel Rojas, starting for the second time in nearly a month, saved the season with a game-tying home run in the top of the ninth while Andy Pages, inserted for defensive purposes during the bottom of the inning, ran down Ernie Clements’ drive at the wall with the bases loaded to end the threat.

In the 11^th he had Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitch around Addison Barger, putting the winning run on base. But that set up the game-ending double play three pitches later.

“Credit to him, man. Every single move he did this postseason was incredible,” said Tyler Glasnow, one of four starting pitchers Roberts used in relief Saturday. And he had a fifth, Clayton Kershaw, warming up when the game ended.

Added Dodgers co-owner Magic Johnson: “He did some coaching tonight. This was a great manager’s game from him. He’s proven how great a manager he is. He’s a Hall of Famer.”

Roberts asked Yamamoto, who pitched six innings Friday to win Game 6, to throw another 2 2/3 innings in Game 7. It worked; Yamamoto won that game too.

“What Yoshi did tonight is unprecedented in modern-day baseball,” said Roberts, who came into the postgame interview room wearing ski goggles and dripping of champagne. “It just goes down to just trusting your players. It’s nice when you can look down the roster and have 26 guys that you believe in and know that at some point in time their number’s going to be called.”

And Roberts needed all 26 guys. Although the Dodgers players wore t-shirts with the slogan “We Rule October” when they mounted a makeshift stage in the center of the Rogers Centre field to celebrate their victory early Sunday, October was only part of it. Their year started in Tokyo in March and ended in Toronto in November, making it the first major league season to begin and end outside the U.S.

“We really extended the season,” Max Muncy, whose eighth-inning homer started the Dodgers’ comeback, said with a grin after the team’s 179^th game in 226 days.

“Look back at the miles that we’ve logged this year,” Roberts said. “We never wavered. It’s a long season and we persevered, and we’re the last team standing.”

That, too, is a credit to Roberts, who has made the playoffs in each of his 10 seasons and went to the World Series five times, trailing only Alston among Dodger managers. His .621 regular-season winning percentage is best in franchise history among managers who worked more than three seasons. And he figures to keep padding those records.

“We’ve put together something pretty special,” said Roberts, who celebrated with his family on the field afterward. “I’m proud of the players for the fans, scouting, player development, all the stuff. To do what we’ve done in this span of time is pretty remarkable.

“I guess I’ll let the pundits and all the fans talk about if it’s a dynasty or not. But I’m pretty happy with where we’re at.”

On Sunday morning Glasnow, who missed the playoffs last season with an elbow injury, was pretty happy with where he was at as well.

“To be a part of the World Series is crazy,” he said, standing just off the infield as blue and gold confetti rained down. “You dream about it as a kid. To live it out, I feel so lucky. This group of guys, I’m so close to everyone. So many good people on this team. It’s just the perfect group of guys.”

The perfect manager, too.