Jay Bhattacharya, a top Trump administration health official and an outspoken critic of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, will lead the CDC on an acting basis, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe personnel moves.
Bhattacharya, who will continue his role as director of the National Institutes of Health, replaces Jim O’Neill, who had served as the CDC’s acting director. O’Neill, who had also served as the deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, will be nominated to run the National Science Foundation after he declined a potential ambassadorship to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, two of the people said.
The installation of Bhattacharya at the CDC is the latest move by the White House and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to shake up HHS’s leadership team ahead of the midterms, as the Trump administration seeks to stabilize a department rattled by internal fights and controversial messages.
The New York Times first reported that Bhattacharya would serve as the acting head of CDC, which is charged with protecting Americans from health threats and issues recommendations on vaccines and other public health matters. Trump officials have said they are planning to find a full-time CDC director, a post that requires Senate confirmation. Susan Monarez, who was confirmed as CDC director in July, was ousted less than a month later after clashing with Kennedy over his plans to change vaccine policies.
Bhattacharya, a Stanford University physician and economist, rose to prominence during the pandemic by arguing that the government’s response to the outbreak was too harsh, a stance that put him at odds with public health leaders who said his proposals would imperil the most vulnerable Americans. He co-wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, which was published in October 2020 and called for an end to coronavirus shutdowns. The declaration drew rebukes from government officials — a clash that ultimately boosted his profile and helped draw the support of Kennedy, a fellow critic of the government’s pandemic response.
“The CDC peddled pseudo science in the middle of a pandemic,” Bhattacharya wrote on X in 2024, criticizing agency leaders’ past claim that widespread masking could end the coronavirus outbreak.
As CDC’s acting head, Bhattacharya is poised to oversee the agency’s vaccine recommendations, which have emerged as a political flash point as Kennedy has worked to roll them back over the objections of public health leaders. A KFF poll published this month found that 47% of U.S. adults now trust CDC for reliable information on vaccines, down from 85% in early 2020.
Bhattacharya has said he supports vaccination for childhood diseases.
“I think the best way to address the measles epidemic in this country is by vaccinating your children for measles,” Bhattacharya said at a Senate hearing this month.
Bhattacharya and other NIH leaders in January also published a commentary in the journal Nature Medicine that criticized the public health response to the pandemic led by other agencies.
“Many of the recommended policies, including lockdowns, social distancing, school closures, masking, and vaccine mandates, lacked robust confirmatory evidence and remain the subject of debate regarding their overall benefits and unintended consequences,” they wrote. “Where enforced, vaccine mandates contributed to decreased public confidence in routine voluntary immunizations.”
SEOUL — A South Korean court is set to issue its verdict Thursday in the insurrection case against the country’s impeached president, who declared martial law in an alleged power grab in late 2024, and now faces the death penalty or life imprisonment if convicted.
The impeached president, Yoon Suk Yeol, has been on trial for his failed attempt to install a military-led government in the democratic country late one night in December 2024. Yoon is charged with numerous crimes, including organizing an insurrection — which under South Korean criminal law carries possible sentences of life imprisonment, with or without labor, or death.
Prosecutors have requested the death sentence.
The case marks a pivotal moment in South Korea’s relatively young democratic history, which dates to 1987 after a democratic uprising toppled a brutal military-led government under Chun Doo-hwan. Chun was sentenced to death in 1996 after being convicted on similar insurrection charges for seizing power during a coup in 1979. On appeal, the sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and he was later pardoned.
Yoon’s conviction would uphold the rule of law and reaffirm the nation’s democratic system and principles, democracy advocates and experts say.
“The conviction of an ex-president demonstrates that no one is above the law,” said Andrew Yeo, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution’s Center for Asia Policy Studies in Washington, adding: “The conviction of Yoon through the judicial process reflects South Korea’s democratic resilience.”
If convicted, Yoon, too, ultimately could be spared execution.
South Korea has not carried out an execution since 1997 and is widely regarded as a country where, for all practical purposes, the death penalty is banned.
A death sentence for Yoon, nonetheless, would be highly symbolic as delivering accountability for a head of state who went rogue and attempted to use military force to halt operations of the legislature, seize control of the National Election Commission and arrest political opponents.
“In practical terms, a death sentence would almost certainly remain symbolic, but the symbolism would be immense,” said Hannah Kim, a political scientist at Sogang University in Seoul. “It would reflect a judicial judgment that a ‘palace coup’ led by the constitutional guardian of the state is not just political misconduct, but a direct attack on constitutional sovereignty and the democratic order.”
A lesser sentence of life in prison would still convey the seriousness of Yoon’s actions but would reflect “a degree of pragmatism among the justices,” Yeo said, especially in a deeply polarized country still reeling from the fallout of the declaration of martial law.
Jeong Hye-won (center) and other protesters celebrate on April 4, 2025, in Seoul after the removal of Yoon from power by South Korea’s Constitutional Court.
Two top aides to Yoon have been convicted on charges related to the decree of martial law. Former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo was sentenced last month to 23 years in prison for his role. Han is appealing the ruling. And former Interior Minister Lee Sang-min last week was sentenced to seven years in prison. He is also appealing the ruling, according to national media reports.
In both cases, the court deemed the declaration of martial law an act of insurrection, which legal experts said was a key determination that could seal Yoon’s conviction Thursday.
Yoon is facing eight separate trials stemming from his decree, but the insurrection case to be decided Thursday is the most consequential. Last month, a Seoul court sentenced him to five years in prison for abuse of power, obstruction of justice and falsifying documents, meaning Yoon will not go free even if acquitted.
For many South Koreans, Yoon’s insurrection trial may feel familiar.
Yoon is expected to stand in Courtroom 417 of the Seoul Central District Court, the same room where Chun, wearing a light blue prison jumpsuit, was sentenced to death nearly 30 years ago.
During their sentencing request last month, prosecutors argued Yoon deserved the harshest possible penalty, citing the need to stop “history from repeating itself.” They referred to Chun’s case and South Korea’s authoritarian past.
Yoon has denied all charges and contends that martial law was a legitimate exercise of the president’s emergency powers. Yoon has said that he declared martial law to confront the opposition-controlled National Assembly, which he said was paralyzing his administration through repeated efforts to impeach top officials. He has denied that the brief deployment of troops to the National Assembly was an act of insurrection.
Yoon’s late-night decree on Dec. 3, 2024, made in a televised address, prompted thousands of protesters to mass outside the National Assembly and demand a return to democratic governance.
As soldiers and police surrounded the National Assembly complex, lawmakers scaled the walls to bypass them. In defiance of the decree’s ban on political activity, they voted to reverse Yoon’s decision. And despite a gag order on the press, reporters from traditional and independent media alike flooded the scene and delivered live reports.
Yoon lifted his order six hours later, but the incident shocked and outraged the nation — now a thriving democracy where political protests and marches of all stripes are a weekly occurrence — and it spurred South Korea’s most harrowing political crisis in decades.
Yoon was impeached with his presidential powers suspended less than two weeks later, and ultimately removed from office.
Yoon, formerly the nation’s top prosecutor, was a divisive president during his more than 2½ years in power. Rather than seeking to unify the deeply divided nation, Yoon instead appealed to his conservative base, exacerbating polarization and often deadlocking with opposition lawmakers.
South Korean presidents are often disgraced. Nearly every president since South Korea’s democratization has become embroiled in scandals involving corruption, bribery, embezzlement, or abuse of power.
Yoon’s downfall, however, stands apart even by South Korean standards, as the first democratically elected president to impose martial law and the first sitting president to face a criminal investigation.
U.S.-mediated talks between Moscow and Kyiv in Geneva, Switzerland, broke off on Wednesday without any significant progress or indication that Russia was ready to step back from its maximalist demands for subjugating Ukraine.
The head of the Russian delegation, Vladimir Medinsky, tersely said the talks had been “difficult but businesslike” and had ended after just two hours of discussions on Wednesday following longer conversations the previous day.
The reappearance of Medinsky, known to be a hard-line aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as head of the Kremlin’s delegation had signified that Russia was digging in its heels on core demands — including significant cuts to the Ukrainian military, the dismantling of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government and guarantees for Ukraine’s neutrality, analysts said.
Moscow has insisted that these steps are required to address what it describes as the “root causes” of the war. Ukraine’s position is that Russia’s invasion was unprovoked and that Moscow should end its illegal war of aggression and remove its troops that are occupying Ukrainian territory.
Russian analysts said Moscow’s demands encompassed a far wider spectrum of issues than the territorial swaps proposed by President Donald Trump’s administration as a path to end the war.
“As long as there is an armed anti-Russia on Ukrainian territory, there can be no peace,” said Sergei Markov, a pro-Kremlin political analyst. “I don’t think anyone had any big hopes that the talks would end in success. The positions are very, very far from each other.”
“The idea of territorial swaps for peace is not Russia’s idea,” Markov added. “It is Trump’s.”
Proponents of territorial exchanges envision that Russia would withdraw from some areas it occupies in Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine withdrawing its military from parts of the heavily fortified Donbas area, which Putin has failed to capture during four years of full-scale war.
Zelensky’s administration has previously said it could agree to withdraw troops from the Donbas area. But Kyiv has said it would agree to a pullback only if the region becomes a demilitarized zone and if the United States first provides legally watertight security guarantees.
Zelensky told reporters on Wednesday that the talks on “political” issues such as Russian demands for Ukraine to withdraw its forces from “the east” were “not easy” and that differences remain. But Zelensky also sought to put a positive spin on some of the trilateral discussions between Russia, the United States and Ukraine in Geneva, saying they had been “constructive” on ways to monitor any potential ceasefire.
Zelensky appealed again at the Munich Security Conference over the weekend for U.S.-backed guarantees before he signs on to any deal with Russia to end the war. “Those guarantees answer the main question: how long there will be no war again,” he said then.
The direct talks between Russia and Ukraine have stalled for weeks over core differences, namely territorial concessions, control of Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, which is occupied by Russia in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, and questions about Western guarantees for Kyiv, according to two European diplomats who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
“So far the Russian position is no boots on the ground from NATO allies, so there are outstanding points: territory, security guarantees and the future of the Zaporizhzhia plant,” one of those diplomats said. “Those are the big sticking points, so we need to see if it really happens.”
In meetings with U.S. officials late last year, Ukraine’s chief European backers were encouraged by the U.S. interest in playing a role in securing a settlement to the war. France and Britain have led a coalition of allies planning ways to provide Ukraine with a U.S.-backed bulwark against future attack, including with some European troops and air or sea power.
Still, the Trump administration appeared to want to sign a deal before fully committing, while Kyiv has maintained it needs the Western protection baked into any settlement, the diplomats said. Russia, meanwhile, has ruled out any presence of Western soldiers in Ukraine.
Zelensky, who met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the weekend, has stressed Kyiv’s refusal to cede territory in the east that Russia does not militarily control and said Ukraine could only hold elections if there is a ceasefire.
Analysts said it was clear the Kremlin had no intention of making any concessions.
“As long as Putin is in power, Russia isn’t paralyzed by widespread protests, and there is at least some money left in the budget for weapons, the war will continue,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, in a post on X. “The Kremlin will not make significant concessions even if faced with a protracted financial and economic crisis.”
“That means there will be no final settlement either now or in the foreseeable future,” Stanovaya added. “Negotiations may intensify, a short-term ceasefire is possible, and documents may even be signed. But overall, this simulation of negotiations can only lead to the simulation of a ceasefire and the simulation of a settlement.”
Russia has been facing increasing economic pressure after the U.S. administration imposed tough new sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil, in October.
The measures caused Russian oil revenue to plummet as Moscow was forced to accept discounts of more than $20 per barrel on its exports. Economists have warned of a nonpayment crisis as the economy grinds to a halt amid high inflation and high interest rates of 15.5% imposed by the Central Bank.
Analysts say there are concerns in the Kremlin that Moscow could face a narrowing window to reach an advantageous deal because the Trump administration could grow distracted as midterm elections near — and then potentially could be weakened by the results.
Stephen Colbert isn’t backing down in an extraordinary public dispute with his bosses at CBS over what he can air on his late-night talk show.
On The Late Show Tuesday, Colbert said he was surprised by a statement from CBS denying that its lawyers told him he couldn’t show an interview with Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico — which the host said had happened the night before.
He then took a copy of the network statement, wrapped it in a dog poop bag, and tossed it away.
Colbert had instead shown his Talarico interview on YouTube, but told viewers why he couldn’t show it on CBS. The network was concerned about FCC Chairman Brendan Carr trying to enforce a rule that required broadcasters to give “equal time” to opposing candidates when an interview was broadcast with one of them.
“We looked and we can’t find one example of this rule being enforced for any talk show interview, not only for my entire late-night career, but for anyone’s late-night career going back to the 1960s,” Colbert said.
Although Carr said in January he was thinking about getting rid of the exemption for late-night talk shows, he hadn’t done it yet. “But CBS generously did it for him,” Colbert said.
Not only had CBS been aware Monday night that Colbert was going to talk about this issue publicly, its lawyers had even approved it in his script, he said. That’s why he was surprised by the statement, which said that Colbert had been provided “legal guidance” that broadcasting the interview could trigger the equal time rule.
“I don’t know what this is about,” Colbert said. “For the record, I’m not even mad. I really don’t want an adversarial relationship with the network. I’ve never had one.”
He said he was “just so surprised that this giant global corporation would not stand up to these bullies.” CBS is owned by Paramount Global.
Colbert is a short-timer now at CBS. The network announced last summer that Colbert’s show, where President Donald Trump is a frequent target of biting jokes, would end in May. The network said it was for economic reasons but others — including Colbert — have expressed skepticism that Trump’s repeated criticism of the show had nothing to do with it.
This week’s dispute with Colbert also recalls last fall, when ABC took late-night host Jimmy Kimmel off the air for a remark made about the killing of conservative activist founder Charlie Kirk, only to reinstate him following a backlash by viewers.
As of Wednesday morning, Colbert’s YouTube interview with Talarico had been viewed more than five million times, or roughly double what the comic’s CBS program draws each night. The Texas Democrat also reported that he had raised $2.5 million in campaign donations in the 24 hours after the interview.
Republicans think patients should be shopping for better healthcare prices. The party has long pushed to give patients money and let consumers do the work of reducing costs. After some GOP lawmakers closed out 2025 advocating to fund health savings accounts, President Donald Trump introduced his Great Healthcare Plan, which calls for, among other policies, requiring providers and insurers to post their prices “in their place of business.”
The idea echoes a policy implemented during his first term, when Trump suggested that requiring hospitals to post their charges online could ease one of the most common gripes about the healthcare system — the lack of upfront prices. To anyone who’s gotten a bill three months after treatment only to find mysterious charges, the idea seemed intuitive.
“You’re able to go online and compare all of the hospitals and the doctors and the prices,” Trump said in 2019 at an event unveiling the price transparency policy.
But amid low compliance and other struggles in implementing the policy since it took effect in 2021, the available price data is sparse and often confusing. And instead of patients shopping for medical services, it’s mostly health systems and insurers using the little data there is, turning it into fodder for negotiations that determine what medical professionals and facilities get paid for what services.
“We use the transparency data,” said Eric Hoag, an executive at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota, noting that the insurer wants to make sure providers aren’t being paid substantially different rates. It’s “to make sure that we are competitive, or, you know, more than competitive against other health plans.”
Not all hospitals have fallen in line with the price transparency rules, and many were slow to do so. A study conducted in the policy’s first 10 months found only about a third of facilities had complied with the regulations. The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services notified 27 hospitals from June 2022 to May 2025 that they would be fined for lack of compliance with the rules.
The struggles to make healthcare prices available have prompted more federal action since Trump’s first effort. President Joe Biden took his own thwack at the dilemma, by requiring increased data standardization and toughening compliance criteria. And in early 2025, working to fulfill his promises to lower health costs, Trump tried again, signing a new executive order urging his administration to fine hospitals and doctors for failing to post their prices. CMS followed up with a regulation intended to up the fines and increase the level of detail required within the pricing data.
So far, “there’s no evidence that patients use this information,” said Zack Cooper, a health economist at Yale University.
In 2021, Cooper co-authored a paper based on data from a large commercial insurer. The researchers found that, on average, patients who need an MRI pass six lower-priced imaging providers on the way from their homes to an appointment for a scan. That’s because they follow their physician’s advice about where to receive care, the study showed.
Executives and researchers interviewed by KFF Health News also didn’t think opening the data would change prices in a big way. Research shows that transparency policies can have mixed effects on prices, with one 2024 study of a New York initiative finding a marginal increase in billed charges.
The policy results thus far seem to put a damper on long-held hopes, particularly from the GOP, that providing more price transparency would incentivize patients to find the best deal on their imaging or knee replacements.
These aspirations have been unfulfilled for a few reasons, researchers and industry insiders say. Some patients simply don’t compare services. But unlike with apples — a Honeycrisp and a Red Delicious are easy to line up side by side — medical services are hard to compare.
For one thing, it’s not as simple as one price for one medical stay. Two babies might be delivered by the same obstetrician, for example, but the mothers could be charged very different amounts. One patient might be given medications to speed up contractions; another might not. Or one might need an emergency cesarean section — one of many cases in medicine in which obtaining the service simply isn’t a choice.
And the data often is presented in a way that’s not useful for patients, sometimes buried in spreadsheets and requiring a deep knowledge of billing codes. In computing these costs, hospitals make “detailed assumptions about how to apply complex contracting terms and assess historic data to create a reasonable value for an expected allowed amount,” the American Hospital Association told the Trump administration in July 2025 amid efforts to boost transparency.
Costs vary because hospitals’ contracts with insurers vary, said Jamie Cleverley, president of Cleverley and Associates, which works with healthcare providers to help them understand the financial impacts of changing contract terms. The cost for a patient with one health plan may be very different than the cost for the next patient with another plan.
The fact that hospital prices might be confusing for patients is a consequence of the lack of standardization in contracts and presentation, Cleverley said. “They’re not being nefarious.”
“Until we kind of align as an industry, there’s going to continue to be this variation in terms of how people look at the data and the utility of it,” he said.
Instead of aiding shoppers, the federally mandated data has become the foundation for negotiations — or sometimes lawsuits — over the proper level of compensation.
The top use for the pricing data for healthcare providers and payers, such as insurers, is “to use that in their contract negotiations,” said Marcus Dorstel, an executive at price transparency startup Turquoise Health.
Turquoise Health assembles price data by grouping codes for services together using machine learning, a type of artificial intelligence. It is just one example in a cottage industry of startups offering insights into prices. And, online, the startups’ advertisements hawking their wares often focus on hospitals and their periodic jousts with insurers. Turquoise has payers and providers as clients, Dorstel said.
“I think nine times out of 10 you will hear them say that the price transparency data is a vital piece of the contract negotiation now,” he said.
Of course, prices aren’t the only variable that negotiations hinge on. Hoag said Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota also considers quality of care, rates of unnecessary treatments, and other factors. And sometimes negotiators feel as if they have to keep up with their peers — claiming a need for more revenue to match competitors’ salaries, for example.
Hoag said doctors and other providers often look at the data from comparable health systems and say, “‘I need to be paid more.’”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.
Regardless of frequently repeated claims, voter fraud is exceptionally rare, and the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE America Act, would only prevent an extremely small number of ineligible votes. While the GOP claims the SAVE Act is an attempt to preserve voter integrity, they know statistically that this will create difficulties for certain classes of voters who often vote for Democrats. Studies have shown, for example, that documentation requirements will place a disproportionate burden on communities of color and those with low incomes. Restrictions on vote by mail are likely to suppress the vote from hourly and shift workers, the elderly, those with disabilities, and people who do not have easy access to transportation to the polls. In this same vein, not allowing people to vote by mail forces them to vote in person, where in some places they may have to deal with voter intimidation and harassment (threats from others, long lines without water, etc.). For years, Republicans have pursued harsh penalties for poll workers — a move that may discourage participation by volunteers and slow down voting on Election Day, which may deter some folks from voting (again, long election lines).
Let’s call it what it is: This is intentional voter suppression and an attack on our democracy.
Kent Kingan, Malvern
. . .
The League of Women Voters is absolutely correct in stating that the SAVE America Act, just passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, would add a burden on voters to present documentary proof of citizenship and voter eligibility, a burden that could be substantial for many, to solve a problem that does not meaningfully exist. However, the organization goes too far in stating that Pennsylvania already has safeguards to ensure only eligible citizens vote, because federal law requires voters to attest to their citizenship when they register and “[e]lection officials verify identity and eligibility.” I have been a judge of elections in Philadelphia for more than a decade. With the exception of voters who must present identification because they have not previously voted in my election division, the only means election officials have to verify the identity and eligibility of someone seeking to vote is to ask for their name and address, confirm that that name and address is in our poll book of eligible voters, and then compare their signature with the signature that appears in the poll book, which is a copy of a signature recorded at the time the person with that name and address registered to vote. For some people, the two signatures are an easy match. But for others — indeed, the majority — not so much. This is especially the case with respect to people who registered years ago. And the problem has compounded since we started using electronic poll books, and voters are signing what is essentially an iPad, usually using a finger. Should I prohibit a person from voting because their signature on Election Day does not match the signature they recorded at the time they registered? Should I tell them they can only vote by provisional ballot? If I do not, can I honestly say I have verified the identity and eligibility of that person?
Jeff Braff,Philadelphia
Join the conversation: Send letters to letters@inquirer.com. Limit length to 150 words and include home address and day and evening phone number. Letters run in The Inquirer six days a week on the editorial pages and online.
ARIES (March 21-April 19). Each group of people has its own little culture. Families, neighborhoods, workplaces, classrooms — all have rules worth learning, habits worth noticing, so you can decide to follow, bend or ignore them.
TAURUS (April 20-May 20). Today’s theme: the intelligence in repetition. Routines conserve energy. Sure, there are a lot of different ways to play the day, but grooves come with momentum of their own and require much less of you.
GEMINI (May 21-June 21). You can disagree without voicing it. And when you must voice it, you do so without provocation. That’s diplomacy: choosing negotiation over conflict, making agreements that protect everyone involved and presenting a unified front.
CANCER (June 22-July 22). You help others through their feelings. You wish your loved ones were spared every bad feeling. If you could take it on instead, you totally would. And you really want the good feelings to last. You’re a true, strong ally, and they feel it.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22). People process experiences at different speeds. Some reflect quietly, some act quickly and some need time to sort through emotions before they respond. Today, someone doesn’t respond in the way you would, but they are feeling something similar inside.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22). The job looks like it’ll be a real grind, but that’s OK. A grind has its benefits. The knife gets sharp, the stone is polished, and it’s how you make the coffee, the bread and, of course, the money.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 23). You’ll be proud of yourself for trusting in a slow accumulation process. Affection grows steadily. Savings add up. Work builds. Collections expand. Each careful decision stacks on the last. In a few months, you’ll have a tower of power.
SCORPIO (Oct. 24-Nov. 21). Your focus is your superpower. It’s not about doing more than anyone else but about doing the exact thing that matters. You learn fast, study deeply and work without distraction. Your attention carries more weight than words ever could.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21). You’re being pulled in two directions at once, which makes it more challenging to decide who and what should get your time. Just remember, there’s a third option: opt out and do what (SET ITAL)you(END ITAL) want.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19). An unrelentingly positive attitude can be as toxic as negativity because it negates certain inalienable realities, such as gravity, shadows and human imperfection. Aim for realism with a 20% pump of hope — a perfect recipe.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18). You’re no stranger to soft sales, attraction-based strategies, roundabout methods, paying your dues and various other routes to “manifesting.” But today’s most effective tactic for getting what you want is simpler: just ask.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20). Quiet is a sanctuary. Yes, the sacred wisdom that visits the wooded trail, the cathedral and the library is rather obvious. But chaos can be its own kind of enlightening hum. Your instinct will find truth between the vibrations.
TODAY’SBIRTHDAY (Feb. 18). Welcome to your Year of Dancing Lights, when fleeting moments sparkle into lasting wonder, taking forms such as lifelong friendship, gambles that pay for years and luck that fortifies your relationships and domestic life. Magic and serendipity are the norm. More highlights: playful romance, a creative success that feels almost fated and a paper deal or certificate that gives you financial security. Libra and Sagittarius adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 8, 27, 14, 39 and 5.
DEAR ABBY: I am 57 and have never been married. I have had many relationships (some good, some bad). Although in the past I experienced heartbreaks, I am now open to meeting someone new.
I recently ended a relationship with “Bill,” a man I met at a resort casino three years ago. I was happy in the beginning, until things started to take a turn.
Because we go to the same places all the time, it was hard to break it off. I tried, but Bill would run back to me, and I always took him back, mostly because I felt guilty for hurting him. I finally ended things for good four months ago, after he did something very rude. A neighbor later told me that Bill was stalking me. Bill denies this, even though I have proof.
Abby, I am writing because, for some reason, I’m still drawn to him. He’s the only man in my life who ever told me he loves me. I’m afraid no one will ever love me the way he does. I know the stalking is a sign that he is mentally unwell, yet we keep bumping into each other, which has caused this pull to want to be with him.
I can’t afford therapy right now, so any advice you can give me to move beyond this “pull” I have for him would be appreciated.
— HEART RULING THE HEAD
DEAR HEART: Honey, if you no longer frequent the places you used to frequent together and keep running into him anyway, has it occurred to you that it’s happening BECAUSE HE’S STILL STALKING YOU? If you’re still going to the same places, it’s time to change your routine. This troubled individual may be the only person who has said “I love you,” but he won’t be the last if you open yourself to other relationships.
You say you can’t afford therapy, but please be aware that free or low-cost counseling is available from your county’s department of mental health services or a local college or university with a psychology department.
** ** **
DEAR ABBY: I’ve been talking to a famous pro wrestler who is having marriage problems. He has been hitting on me through Google Chat. I just want to be a supportive friend whom he can vent to. He says his wife “is getting too old for him,” if you know what I mean. They have a joint bank account, but he says it’s frozen. He has asked me for an Apple card. I told him no and to ask his extended family instead.
Abby, I need my money to help out my brothers and sister. I’d prefer he be like a friend or big brother to me. I need major advice, please, because it feels like my life is going out of control.
— UNCERTAIN IN IDAHO
DEAR UNCERTAIN: People must exercise caution when communicating with strangers online. “Famous pro wrestlers” usually have enough money that they aren’t reduced to hitting up women they meet on the internet for Apple cards. Your life will not “go out of control” unless you allow it to. Regain control by ghosting and blocking this person. He’s a scammer, and he, not you, should figure out his own financial problems.
Deep in South Africa’s wine country near the town of Robertson, past rows of tin shacks and up a gravel road where barefoot children play, sits a little piece of Russia.
The apricot-hued building with its curved dome proclaims its affiliation with the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church on a sign in Afrikaans. The interior is adorned with icons, rugs, and candle stands, things more familiar to a place of worship in, say, St. Petersburg than South Africa’s Western Cape. But the outpost is just one of hundreds of similar churches that have spawned across Africa.
The continent has long been a target for Russia. The Soviet Union supported decolonialization and aided new independent states during the Cold War while the West engendered mistrust with policies such as doing little to oppose apartheid in South Africa.
Now, faced with more sanctions over its war in Ukraine and a new geopolitical era, Moscow is trying to leverage its old, soft power ties again in the absence of any significant economic hard power.
Recent years have seen China dominate, becoming Africa’s biggest trading partner and investing in roads, railways, and ports. The broader aim might be diplomatic, to garner international support from a continent with 54 votes at the United Nations. The Kremlin and its proxies, though, are also leaning on African countries for recruits to bolster its army and the workforce making munitions it uses in Ukraine.
“Russia is trying to develop its policy of influence in all African countries,” said Thierry Vircoulon, coordinator of the Observatory of Central and Southern Africa at the French Institute of International Relations, known as IFRI. “They want to project the image of a great country that is friendly to all Africans.”
A Chinese destroyer and Russian and Iranian corvettes at Simon’s Town harbor in Cape Town on Jan. 9 ahead of multinational naval exercises.
President Vladimir Putin recently created a Kremlin department to coordinate Russia’s interactions and policies with nations personally selected by him. There will be a special team to look after Africa policy, two people familiar with the situation said.
Early on in its war against Ukraine, there were donations of a small amount of fertilizer and grains to African nations to help alleviate shortages caused by the full-scale invasion in February 2022. More recently, Putin ordered ships to sail around Africa, ostensibly to help countries such as Morocco and Senegal map out their stocks of fish.
What’s increasingly visible is the linguistic and cultural push. Russia has opened seven centers known as Russian Houses across the continent and plans more, holding talks over a new site in Namibia in early December. Russian, meanwhile, is being introduced at universities in cities including Abidjan in Ivory Coast and Harare in Zimbabwe.
In 2024, the foundation led by Putin’s daughter Katerina Tikhonova opened a lecture hall at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, to facilitate the teaching of the language.
More than 32,000 students from Africa are currently studying at Russian universities, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in December. Since 2020, the number of scholarships allocated to the African continent in Russia has nearly tripled, reaching more than 5,300 places. They are following in the footsteps of African leaders, many of whom had military or academic training in the USSR.
The Russian embassy in South Africa posted an advertisement for them in December and a politician in Lesotho facilitated sending students to Moscow-based Synergy University earlier in the year.
And, of course, there’s religion — a way of wielding influence going back to Christian missionaries in colonial times. In less than three years, the Russian Orthodox Church expanded to at least 34 countries in Africa from four, grew the number of clergy to 270 and registered 350 parishes and communities as of June 2024, the latest figures available from the church.
The geographical expansion might be the most significant in the Russian Orthodox Church’s history, Yuri Maksimov, chairman of the Africa Exarchate’s mission department, wrote in a 2025 academic paper.
The Russians attracted priests with better salaries, promises of church construction and rapid promotion, according to a study by Father Evangelos Thiani, an academic and Kenyan priest in the Greek Orthodox Church.
Russian orthodoxy welcomed Alexey Herizo, a Madagascan priest in the capital, Antananarivo, with “open arms.” He did online training with a seminary in Moscow, then practical training on site in 2023 for three months before being ordained as a deacon and then a priest within a few days.
That was after years of waiting for the Greek Orthodox Church to accept him, said Alexey, his religious name. The salaries provided by the Russian church allow us “to live decently, take care of our family’s health, and provide for our children’s education,” he said.
The church in Robertson affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church.
Expanding outreach
It’s hard to estimate the number of worshipers the church has now in communities where religion and social conservatism play a large role in everyday life. The church on the outskirts of Robertson, a town named after a Scottish protestant, switched to the Russian branch of the Orthodox faith in 2022. It’s now home to a small congregation of largely white, Afrikaans-speaking South Africans.
While Russian Orthodox churches in South Africa have mainly recruited from Afrikaans communities, with its conservative values appealing to elements of that group, they have also been seeking to add to their numbers with outreach programs to rural, Black communities.
The expansion is aimed at “trying to pull more countries into their orbit,” said Tom Southern, director of special projects at the Centre for Information Resilience, who has looked at the growth. “It’s like spiritual colonialism.”
Russia’s longstanding ties with Africa loosened following the collapse of communism as the country turned to the West. The continent came back into focus after Putin annexed Crimea in 2014 and relations with the United States and Europe soured.
A report by the European Parliament said Moscow has military cooperation agreements with 43 African countries and is a key supplier of arms. Wagner Group paramilitaries were active trying to fight rebels in places like Mali, though the group has since been disbanded and folded into the government’s Africa Corps. Companies linked with Wagner, meanwhile, had contracts across the continent in security, oil services, and gold mining.
African countries have vast economic and human potential and are playing an increasingly significant role in global politics, Putin said in a written address to the plenary session of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum conference in Cairo in December. Lavrov, his foreign minister, told the event that Russia plans to have trade missions operating in 15 African countries by the end of 2026.
A Russian warship in January joined naval exercises held off the coast of South Africa along with vessels from China, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. The Russian embassy said they focused on maritime security.
Russia’s renewed push into Africa lacks the financial resources of its geopolitical rivals, though. While China is sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest trade partner, Russia ranks 33rd and is superseded by the UAE, U.S., Japan, and eight European nations.
China has built infrastructure in nations from Cameroon to Kenya while the UAE and other wealthy gulf states have become major sources of foreign money in recent years. The European Union is the biggest investor in South Africa and 600 American companies operate in the country.
Putin hosted a Russia-Africa summit in 2019 attended by 43 heads of state, while the second one in 2023 attracted just 17. The Kremlin blamed the low attendance on “unprecedented pressure” from the U.S. and its allies.
There’s an increasing effort to counter that. With President Donald Trump upending the world order with trade tariffs, rivalry with China and more recently the capture of Venezuela’s president, Russia is trying to assert its narratives in Africa.
The state-owned Sputnik news service is hiring South African journalists and in 2026 plans to open a bureau in the country. It would be the second in Africa, following Ethiopia in early 2025, said Viktor Anokhin, who will run the operation. “Our main goal, as it always has been, is to provide an alternative source of news,” Anokhin said when called by Bloomberg. “A balanced offering.”
Recruiting manpower
Russia has sponsored disinformation campaigns and stoked instability in conflict-ridden nations, according to research groups including the European Council on Foreign Relations. The country is also accused of using Africans to aid its war effort in Ukraine.
One of them was Alabuga Start, a recruitment arm of Russia’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone in Tatarstan. It set itself a target of hiring thousands of African women between the ages of 18 and 22, saying they will work in fields such as hospitality and construction.
Most of the young women end up in a military equipment factory, according to the authors of three reports from organizations including the Institute for Science and International Security.
“African women typically don’t have access to as many opportunities in life, opportunities to get a well-paying job, opportunities to get an education, opportunities to travel,” said Spencer Faragasso, a senior research fellow at Washington-based ISIS. “The Alabuga Start program really provides on the surface all those benefits. But in reality, they’re working in a drone production factory.”
Alabuga didn’t respond to requests for comment, while the Russian embassy in South Africa said in August it had no evidence that the rights of those recruited by Alabuga were being violated, describing reports as “biased.”
On the battlefield, Ukraine estimates that more than 1,400 Africans are fighting for Russia. Kenya’s foreign minister said in November at least 200 Kenyans had been recruited to Russia’s military, often after being told they would work as security guards or drivers.
A report this month by All Eyes on Wagner, a nonprofit research group, said Russia has recruited from about 35 African countries and provided the names of about 300 Africans killed while fighting for Russia.
In South Africa, where fighting for a foreign military or assisting it is a crime, a daughter of former President Jacob Zuma is being investigated by the police for allegedly helping to recruit about 20 men for Russia’s military. She told them they were going on a bodyguard training course.
Separately, South Africa arrested and charged state radio presenter Nonkululeko Mantula and four men she allegedly recruited for the Russian military. Her trial is due to start in April. Bloomberg reported on Jan. 7 that Russia targeted South African video gamers as part of the recruitment drive, according to documents involving two men who left to fight.
South Africa, Kenya, and Botswana have announced investigations into how their nationals became involved in fighting for Russia. South Africa and Lesotho have publicly warned against accepting some job opportunities and scholarships in Russia.
Worshipers enter the Cathedral of St. Sergius of Radonezh on the outskirts of Johannesburg.
Religious leaders
The widening footprint of the church is symbolic of Russia’s desire to sway Africans to its cause.
In a 2022 news conference to celebrate the first year of work in Africa, Leonid Gorbachov, the then Patriarchal Exarch of Africa, said the church works with Russian government agencies and was in talks with the government about the exarchate’s needs.
“It is religious leaders in Africa who remain the most trusted and respected, with religion taking center stage in politics, elections and developmental concerns,” Father Thiani, the Kenyan priest and academic, wrote in the July 2024 paper published by Studies in World Christianity. “The use of religion for entering Africa is therefore an ideal form of Russian soft power.”
Churches now range from rural outposts in Kenya, Madagascar and the one in Robertson to the St. Sergius of Radonezh cathedral on the outskirts of Johannesburg, which is adorned with grand golden cupolas. Founded in 2003, it was — until the establishment of the Africa Exarchate — the only Russian Orthodox Church in sub-Saharan Africa.
The activities of the Russian Orthodox Church have raised concerns in a number of countries outside Africa.
The Czech government placed Patriarch Kirill of Moscow on its sanctions list in April 2023. It cited his support for the invasion of Ukraine, a country who’s church declared full independence from the Moscow patriarchate in 2022.
In Moldova, a former Soviet state with eyes on EU membership, the government has described the Moscow-linked church as a tool of Russian influence aimed at spreading propaganda and causing instability.
Priests spoken to by Bloomberg denied the church expansion in Africa was related to Russia’s political objectives.
Nicholas Esterhuizen, who runs the Saint John of The Ladder Church above a café in Cape Town, said ties with Russia were spiritual and “transcend the current political climate.”
“If the state is the problem, if the state is at war, why do you need to draw the church into the state? The president is not a leader of the church,” said Daniel Agbaza, a Russian Orthodox priest in Nigeria, where a new church is being built in Benue State. “Because it is called Russian does not mean that it is a Russian government church.”
DNA from gloves found a few miles from the Arizona home of Nancy Guthrie did not match any entries in a national database, authorities said Tuesday, the 17th day of her disappearance.
“There were no DNA hits in CODIS,” the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said, referring to the national Combined DNA Index System.
“At this point, there have been no confirmed CODIS matches in this investigation,” the department said, suggesting that other DNA samples had been put through the system.
CODIS is a storehouse of DNA taken from crime suspects or people with convictions. Any hits could identify possible suspects in Guthrie’s disappearance.
The sheriff’s department said it’s looking to feed DNA evidence into other “genetic genealogy” databases. It did not elaborate.
Investigators, meanwhile, were seen inspecting exterior cameras at a neighbor’s house Tuesday. Vehicles were also arriving and departing from Guthrie’s Tucson-area home while a thick line of news media watched from the street.
The 84-year-old mother of NBC Today co-anchor Savannah Guthrie was reported missing from her home on Feb. 1 after spending the previous night with family, police said. Her blood was detected on the porch.
A porch camera recorded video of a man with a backpack who was wearing a ski mask, long pants, a jacket and gloves. The FBI said the suspect is about 5 feet, 9 inches tall with a medium build.
Gloves were found about 2 miles from Guthrie’s home. The FBI has said that the gloves appeared to match those worn by the man in the video.
“There is additional DNA evidence that was found at the residence, and that is also being analyzed,” the sheriff’s department said.
In addition, the department said it’s working with experts to try to locate Guthrie by detecting her heart pacemaker.
Parsons Corp. said its BlueFly device, which weighs less than a pound and has a range of up to 218 yards, can detect signals from wearable electronics and medical devices. The company said the technology has been used from the air and on the ground in Arizona. It declined further comment about the search.
The sheriff’s department released numbers to show how the public is reacting to Guthrie’s disappearance and the appeal for any information. There were 28,000 phone calls from Feb. 1-16, a 54% increase over the same period a year ago. Not all calls were tips.
Savannah Guthrie posted an Instagram video Sunday in which she issued an appeal to anyone with information about what happened to her mother.
“It is never too late to do the right thing,” she said. “And we are here. And we believe in the essential goodness of every human being, that it’s never too late.”
