Webisode 57DHYAFZZFLHX March 26 2026 Peter Magyar challenges Orban in Hungary on April 12 2026

In Webisode 57DHYAFZZFLHX         1 Hungary       Peter Magyar challenges Orban in Hungary on April 12 2026      Peter Magyar leader of the opposition TISZA party arrives at his election campaign tour in Balassagyarmat Hungary        2 United States        3 Alaska       4 California        5 New York          6 Tennessee                7 Virginia         8 United Kingdom        9 France          10 Ukraine        11 Russia        12 Iran        Headlines       Main Content

1 Hungary       Peter Magyar challenges Orban in Hungary on April 12 2026      Peter Magyar leader of the opposition TISZA party arrives at his election campaign tour in Balassagyarmat Hungary    Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization      Reuters        February 25 2026    Reuters in Budapest       March 25 2026         The Hungarian center right opposition Tisza party has widened its lead over the Prime Minister Viktor Orban Fidesz in March a poll showed on ‌Wednesday ahead of an April 12 election where the veteran nationalist is ‌seeking election again    Orban seeking to retain his 16 year grip on power is facing a strong challenger for the first ​time in a parliamentary vote with the outcome having major implications not only for Hungary but for Europe and its far right political forces    The poll published by new site h v g dot hu showed Tisza gaining ground while the Fidesz support was stagnating despite numerous voter pleasing measures announced by the government ‌after three years of economic ⁠stagnation    Tisza which was only launched in 2024 has widened its lead over Fidesz to 23 percentage points among decided voters up from a ⁠20 point lead in a February survey pollster Median said    Led by former government insider Peter Magyar Tisza had the support of 58 percent of decided voters up from 55 percent a month ago    Fidesz was ​supported ​ by 35 percent unchanged from February    When looking at the ​entire population Tisza was supported by ‌46 percent while Fidesz was backed by 30 percent according to the survey conducted between March 17 and 20    Median expects high turnout at the election as 89 percent of respondents said that they would cast a vote    At the last election in 2022 turnout was 70 percent    It is possible that we will see a record high turnout Endre Hann head of Median said in ‌a podcast by h v g dot hu    The far right Our Homeland Mi Hazank ​party was supported by 4 percent of decided voters down ​from 6 percent in February    Parties ​must win at least 5 percent to get seats    Pollster Median has one of ‌the strongest track records of accurate forecasts ​in Hungary    It ​correctly predicted the Orban landslide victory in the last election four years ago though it slightly overstated opposition support  

2A United States     RFK Junior          Takeaways From an Inside Look at the Centers for Disease Control the CDC        Many current and former employees say the actions of Health Secretary RFK Junior are undermining the agency role in safeguarding public health    Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization            The New York Times          March 23 2026       When Trump announced that he was choosing RFK Junior to lead the Department of Health and Human Services he promised to let RFK Junior who had amassed a large following while spreading falsehoods about vaccines go wild on health    Since his confirmation in February 2025 RFK Junior has tried to do exactly that    He has taken particular aim at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calling it the most corrupt agency at HHS and maybe the government    At least twenty four hundred people or eighteen percent of the CDC staff have been fired or have resigned since January 2025    The critics of RFK Junior say that his goal is to dismantle the United States vaccination programs in which the CDC plays a key part    Communications were hijacked     An early directive was that all public communications by agency staff had to be reviewed before it was released        You had a whole new layer of people with no public health experience no government experience and no scientific knowledge and they did not know what to do    And so everybody was told Do not engage    You cannot even get on the phone    The CDC public communications would be taken over by political appointees    We had a very stringent scientific process for vetting information that would get published on the CDC website    Everything was checked and double checked    And for political appointees to take over the means of communication is devastating and also dangerous    Now some things are correct and some are not which means that you cannot trust any of it    Amid a measles outbreak RFK Junior promoted unproven remedies instead of vaccines After a child in Texas died of the measles the health secretary downplayed the outbreak as not unusual in cabinet meetings and television appearances even though it was the largest since the disease was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000     Even as the outbreak grew RFK Junior was still just praising the doctors who were giving snake oil treatments like budesonide a corticosteroid and clarithromycin an antibiotic to kids with measles and saying how they saved hundreds of lives which was absolute garbage    We were asked to add those treatments to the measles guidelines    We managed to mitigate that by including the words on the guidelines but saying that none of these were proven    Giving people the wrong medicines delayed lots of care for lots of kids    RFK Junior replaced the CDC vaccine experts with people who share his views In June RFK Junior fired all 17 voting members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices  who set the CDC vaccine recommendations    He replaced them with people who had far less expertise but shared his views on vaccination    The new committee went on to change several longstanding vaccine recommendations for flu hepatitis B and MMRV measles mumps rubella and varicella    I did not want to be part of any machine that they were going to use to spread false information about vaccines or to take vaccines away    This month a federal judge temporarily halted the RFK Junior reconstitution of ACIP and the changes he made to the childhood vaccine schedule saying that he had violated the Administrative Procedure Act and calling the changes by the health secretary to vaccine recommendations arbitrary and capricious    The agency has been left without a permanent director for most of the past year CDC employees told me that the agency has been largely leaderless since Trump took office    

2B United States        RFK Junior        Trump to Delay Nominating New CDC Director The administration has yet to find a candidate who aligns with Health Secretary RFK Junior agenda while avoiding his unpopular stance on vaccines    Under federal law the White House has until midnight on Wednesday to nominate a replacement for former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Susan Monarez    Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization            The New York Times          March 25 2026        The White House plans to delay naming a candidate to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention an agency that has been roiled by a string of high level departures and has had three different leaders since Trump returned to the White House according to people familiar with the situation    Under federal law the White House has until midnight on Wednesday 210 days since the exit of the previous director to nominate a new candidate    But the administration faces a formidable challenge in finding a nominee who aligns with Health Secretary the RFK Junior Make America Healthy Again agenda while avoiding his unpopular stance on vaccines    The White House has yet to find someone who fits with the Trump mission and can also win Senate confirmation according to a person familiar with the situation    The administration has a short list of several candidates some of whom are staunch vaccine advocates    The Health Department said on Wednesday that Doctor Jay Bhattacharya who directs the National Institutes of Health and has been running the CDC in an acting capacity will continue to oversee the CDC by performing the delegable duties of the CDC director until the agency has a permanent director     Doctor Bhattacharya said he intended to name new leaders for the CDC institutes to replace those who had been fired or had resigned over the previous year    Hundreds of employees have been laid off programs have been shuttered and a gunman who was fixated on the coronavirus vaccine fired a barrage of bullets at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta last summer killing a policeman    The CDC is also facing lawsuits    Last week a federal judge put the CDC revised and shorter childhood vaccine schedule on hold    In the case which was brought by six medical organizations the judge ruled that RFK Junior and his advisers had made arbitrary and capricious changes to the schedule that were not backed up by scientific evidence    The administration has indicated it will appeal the decision    The CDC director must be confirmed by the Senate a requirement that lawmakers added in 2022    Last March the White House withdrew its first pick to lead the agency Doctor Dave Weldon a Republican and former congressman when it became clear that his views against vaccines would not pass muster with the Senate    The nomination of Doctor Casey Means the White House pick for surgeon general has also stalled as two Republicans Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine have expressed qualms about her statements on vaccines  

3 Alaska        A Critical Political Season Could Decide if Alaska Is a Failed Petrostate A governor who spent two terms cutting services to preserve the oil funded annual checks to Alaskans is leaving office    Voters must now decide what comes next for the Alaska faltering fiscal model    Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization            The New York Times        March 25 2026        Juneau Alaska takes pride in providing services that some larger cities would shy away from  child care and housing assistance arts grants three libraries two public pools an arboretum a ski area and a pledge that all 250 miles of borough roads will be plowed if possible within 48 hours after a snowstorm ends    But the system that has made that possible  a steady flow of revenue from oil production  is cracking like Arctic ice in spring not just in Juneau the capital of Alaska but across the state    Even with the war in Iran sending oil prices sky high the oil dependent model that has financed generous public services while giving Alaskans annual checks from a Permanent Fund can no longer keep both promises    And a political year that will include a wide open race for governor and one of the most watched Senate contests in the country could help decide the future of what has become known in some circles as a petrostate for its public reliance on oil production on the brink    The petrostate has not quite failed yet said Joseph Geldhof a Juneau lawyer but it will if something does not change    Anything that increases global oil prices is good for the finances of Alaska and state economists expect that the Iran war will mean a revenue bump of at least five hundred million dollars this fiscal year as well as a similar windfall next year if the fighting continues    But that money is essentially already accounted for to fill existing budget gaps and short term war gains will not solve either the immediate problem for Alaska residents  rising gas prices hit them hard too  or the long term supply and demand fundamentals such as the spread of electric vehicles in Europe and China the freeing up of supply from Venezuela and the long term decline in production along the North Slope of Alaska    Governor Mike Dunleavy a Republican who has spent nearly eight years cutting state government services to protect the Permanent Fund dividend of Alaska is leaving office this year with one of the lowest approval ratings of any governor  according to recent polls    The crowded race to succeed him coincides with the Senator Dan Sullivan bid for election again against a formidable Democratic challenger former Representative Mary Peltola    A man who runs the local power company was pessimistic that the state had learned any lessons from the boom and bust cycles of an oil  dependent economy    

4 California        San Francisco Killed 8th Grade Algebra    Now It is Set to Come Back    The San Francisco school board approved a plan to restore algebra as an option at all middle schools more than a decade after it was removed over equity concerns    Photo of the hands of a child holding a pencil over an algebra worksheet    The decision to stop offering algebra in middle school frustrated some families in the San Francisco Unified School District    Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization            The New York Times          March 25 2026        The San Francisco school board narrowly approved a plan on Tuesday evening to bring back eighth grade algebra across all the public schools of the district 12 years after the system stopped offering it    The course was removed from middle schools under the rationale that many students  especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds  would benefit from having more time to master foundational math before tackling algebra in high school    But the plan did not work    The number of students enrolled in advanced high school math declined and wide racial gaps remained    Meanwhile many parents enrolled their children in summer and after school math courses to keep them accelerated often paying out of pocket    For years San Francisco tried to achieve equity not by raising the floor but by lowering the ceiling said a Stanford University economist who studied the policy with colleagues    It is a problem we see nationally he added    The 4 3 vote followed a lengthy board debate about how to reflect the desire of a community for more choices while ensuring that students succeed in the math courses they enroll in    For decades middle school algebra has been an important step on the way to being accepted into a selective college    Taking Algebra I in eighth grade allows students to proceed to geometry in ninth grade Algebra II in 10th precalculus in 11th and finally calculus during the senior year of high school  a crucial marker of rigor for college admissions offices    In San Francisco the loss of eighth grade algebra prompted a lawsuit and a 2024 ballot initiative in which voters overwhelmingly demanded that algebra return to middle schools    Anger over math also contributed to a roiling political movement in the Bay Area and beyond    Some voters were deeply disappointed with actions of left  leaning school districts during the Covid 19 pandemic  long school closures and they argued equity policies that sacrificed academic rigor    We are the center of technological innovation in the United States and we cannot teach our kids math? said a founder of Grow SF an advocacy group that supports accelerated learning    It upended existing political alliances and got tens of thousands of people paying attention    The new class of elected officials in the city of San Francisco including school board members and Mayor Daniel Lurie tend to strongly support eighth grade algebra    Reinstating the class could help the San Francisco district reverse enrollment declines that reduce funding said the school board president    Families want to see a public school system that offers rigorous coursework he said    This is absolutely an instructional strategy    But it is also a retention tool to bring families to our district and demonstrate we will not only take care of your children but we will teach them too    The district superintendent will present a plan to the school board that would make algebra an eighth grade elective in 19 schools intended to be taken concurrently with regular eighth grade math    Any eighth grader would be able to enroll in algebra but high  achieving students would be automatically placed in the course with the ability to opt out  a policy meant to increase access for underrepresented demographic groups    For families who do not want their children to lose an elective period there will be an option to enroll in algebra as the only eighth grade math course but only if the student meets eligibility requirements    Another two schools will participate in a pilot program in which all middle school students will take an accelerated math sequence covering Math 6 7 8 and Algebra I over a three year period    Students in the study who skipped Math 8 and enrolled in algebra were more likely to have to repeat algebra in ninth grade but that effect was diminished for students with a higher base line level of achievement    The results suggest the opportunity for a quick win in education at a relatively low cost he added    Simply making rich academic content more broadly available is an appealing strategy    He noted that at least nine states are moving toward automatically enrolling high achieving students in advanced course work including Texas North Carolina and Washington  

5 New York         also Virginia and Kentucky         It Begins as a Tick Bite and Can Be Devastating    And It is Spreading    The incidence of alpha gal syndrome appears to be growing significantly    Patients who are bitten can develop a severe allergy to red meat and a few have died    Most cases of alpha gal syndrome are believed to start with a bite from the lone star tick    Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization            The New York Times        March 25 2026         A decade ago a man named Scott knew of only one person stricken with a tick borne ailment called alpha gal syndrome  the husband of the cousin of his wife    The list has since grown in his corner of Long Island His sister who was bitten this past summer has it    So does the best friend of his sister   Then there is the mother of a boy on the baseball team of his son    The phlebotomist at the Lab company office where he gets blood drawn has it    And yes Scott has alpha gal too    Once regarded as a rarity  the disease which involves an allergy to red meat that develops after a tick bite has emerged as a significant health menace with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating that as many as 4 hundred fifty thousand people nationwide may have had it in the past 15 years    An alpha gal expert at the University of Virginia School of Medicine who has explored the potential link to heart disease    If somebody makes alpha gal antibodies even if they have never had a bad reaction should we be talking about dietary modification? he asks    Virginia is one of more than a dozen states that track positive alpha  gal blood tests    Between the start of tracking in September and early March eight thousand four hundred eighty two Virginians had positive alpha gal tests according to the Virginia Department of Health    That averages to about 50 a day    Kentucky with about half the population of Virginia has logged about thirty suspected cases a day    Since May the health authorities have learned of eight thousand eight hundred sixty four Kentucky residents who tested positive    In New York the state health authorities do not track cases    But the New York City Health Department does although the lone star tick has only a minor presence in the city    The Health Department knows of two hundred eighty suspected cases since 2024    It is a different story on Long Island    In Suffolk County between three thousand eight hundred and eighteen thousand  people had alpha gal from 2010 to 2022 based on CDC estimates    That corresponds to as much as 1 point 2 percent of the population    In some pockets that is probably an undercount    On one L shaped block in suburban Farmingville full of swimming pools and encroaching deer three neighbors said they have alpha gal syndrome all diagnosed within the last two years  

6 Tennessee       Nashville         The Single Family Home Gets Caught in a Political Vise Within the Senate housing bill lie the terms of an unusual debate Who gets to own  and live in  single family homes? Photo of a rental home community being built in Simpsonville Tennessee    One reporter attended the build to rent trade show in Nashville at the same time that a second reporter was tracking the housing legislation moving through Congress    Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization            The New York Times          March 25 2026        The landmark housing package that passed the Senate with broad bipartisan support this month is loaded with measures to make it easier to build housing faster and cheaper  a critical step toward dragging the country out of a punishing housing crisis    But there is one type of dwelling that the bill could create fewer of which is single family houses built as rentals    One of the provisions among the 40 bills that make up the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act would curb the role that institutional buyers play in the housing market and that includes the build for rent industry    The bill would set new restrictions on investors who own three hundred fifty or more single family rental homes requiring them to sell newly built units to individual owners after seven years or face stiff fines    Now with the legislation back in the House awaiting a vote critics are urging lawmakers to drop that build to rent restriction arguing it would counter the intent of the bill making it harder not easier to build homes when the country desperately needs them    That the bill treats one housing type as a special case shows how tethered lawmakers are to an ideal in which single family houses are owned by the people who live inside them  an American Dream requiring protection in federal law    The view against a lobbyist advocating for rental ownership of single family homes is that the occupant will accrue equity while paying down a mortgage the large investor profits excessively and the protections for tenants against challenges like excessive fees property neglect and eviction extend only as far as local rental laws permit    A rental lobbyist was a speaker at the IMN Build to Rent conference held last week at the Grand Hyatt in Nashville    It is normally consumed by wonky subjects like interest rates or property management software    This year however seemingly every panel featured a discussion on the bill and calls for the audience to write to their congressional representatives    The provision mandating sales offers some outs for the industry    Investors would have the option to extend a lease for up to three years beyond the seven year limit and would be obligated only to list the home on the market for 60 days    But the mood at the conference was grim    The build for rent provision was called catastrophic by rental lobbyists    The next stop after Nashville for a number of the participants is Washington DC to lobby Congress  

7 Virginia        Democrats Spend Big but Face Tough Fight in Virginia Gerrymandering Battle Republicans are cautiously optimistic about a statewide referendum now at the center of the United States gerrymandering war but Democrats have a huge cash advantage    Virginians for Fair Elections the main Democratic aligned effort to redraw congressional maps in Virginia has heavily out raised the main Republican aligned effort Virginians for Fair Maps    Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization            The New York Times        March 25 2026        The battle over congressional maps in Virginia the latest in the nationwide clash over redistricting in the middle of a decade in the lead up to the November 2026 midterm elections is intensifying with a statewide referendum only weeks away    Tens of millions of dollars have poured into the state to fund campaigns for and against the referendum which takes place on April 21 and will decide whether Democrats can redraw the map of Virginia to flip as many as four US House seats currently held by Republicans    The vast majority of the money has flowed in on the Democratic side    With early voting already underway the evidence so far points to surprisingly healthy turnout and a relatively close outcome potentially much closer than the California vote for redistricting was in November    The stakes are significant If Virginians approve an amendment that would allow redistricting Democrats could fight their way to a rough draw in the United States gerrymandering war    The Virginia delegation in the US House is currently made up of six Democrats and five Republicans the map proposed by Democratic leaders would give Democrats an advantage in 10 of the 11 districts of Virginia    Coupled with the new maps that voters in California approved in November the new Virginia seats would cancel out most if not all of the Republican redistricting gains made last year in states including North Carolina Ohio Missouri and Texas where President Trump and state Republicans kicked off the gerrymandering scramble in the middle of a decade    Florida Republicans may still redraw their Florida map to give their party more seats which could lead to a slight Republican advantage heading into the midterms    But the big wild card is that the US Supreme Court could vote to gut a key provision of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and if the ruling came in the spring it would almost certainly set off further rounds of redistricting before November          Even so the referendum might not be the final word    In January a circuit judge in rural Tazewell County ruling on one of several lawsuits brought by Republican leaders issued an order blocking the referendum vote    The decision was appealed and the Supreme Court of Virginia ordered that the referendum should go forward    But in making that ruling the court cautioned that it was not a final judgment expressing grave concern about the issues raised in the lawsuit regarding the procedural steps Democratic lawmakers had taken in their votes to put the amendment on the ballot    

8 United Kingdom        The Man Leading the Green Party Surge in Britain         Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization            The New York Times          March 25 2026        One big winner of a United Kingdom Political crackup is a left populist environmentalist party which has surged in polling and tripled in membership since a change in leadership last September    In Britain that left populist party is the Greens under 43 year old Zack Polanski who has refocused the Green party message on affordability and economic inequality    The Nigel Farage noxious Reform Party has upstarts cannibalizing the old Conservative Party and the Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana new Your Party is poised to draw support from the left of unpopular Labor    As it happened Your Party has crashed and burned and the left flank of British politics now seems to belong to the Greens  who in the last election won only four seats in the six hundred fifty seat Parliament    Now they are neck and neck nationally with both Labor and the Tories depending on the poll    In some surveys the Greens are now the most popular party in Britain among all voters under the age of 50    Already in February behind a charismatic plumber and plasterer named Hannah Spencer they stormed to victory in a highly competitive off cycle election in a Manchester constituency called Gorton and Denton  which as recently as the 2024 general election was judged one of the Labor safest seats    In the aftermath the polling of the Greens surged again    This may all prove a bit illusory or only a Pyrrhic victory    Another national parliamentary election will not be held for years and the Farage right wing Reform party still leads the polls largely thanks to its strength among the old    Labor may well pivot and discard Keir Starmer as leader potentially reviving its fortunes along the way    And if an election were held today analysis suggests  the Greens might win only 56 seats or so  a huge jump from their current position but not exactly a dominant share in a 650 seat legislature    I think the climate crisis should be the Number One priority of everyone but you cannot tackle the climate crisis without tackling the affordability crisis and the inequality crisis    It is the same polluters who are destroying our environment who are extracting wealth from our economy to line their own pockets    One obvious connection is dirty air or toxic air  far too often it exists in places that are working class communities full of racial minorities    Another example is that in Britain we have some of the leakiest homes in Europe  they are energy inefficient    And so if we insulated everyone who needed it      And it would reduce bills for people which is literally addressing the cost of living crisis while reducing emissions in a climate crisis    And a last one I will mention is what we are seeing in Iran right now    We are literally seeing oil rain from the skies    And our biggest strategic vulnerability right now is our dependency on fossil fuels    There was a report out just this morning from the Climate Change Committee  an independent committee from the government  showing that going to net zero by 2050 would cost Britain less than a single oil shock    A single oil shock    It is incredibly dystopian the path we are on    And I think it is important that we all connect those dots  with the environment with internationalism and with peace  

9 France        Paris        The Trump Threats to Europe Put Its Leaders in a Double Bind Over Iran European politicians risk angering their voters if they join the war of America    Yet they could also face domestic upheaval if they take no action to reopen shipping routes that Iran has blocked and ease an energy crisis    Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization            The New York Times          March 26 2026       Trump in his latest broadside at Europe castigated its leaders for refusing to help keep open the Strait of Hormuz    They complain about the high oil prices they are forced to pay he said on social media last week but they reject a simple military maneuver that is the single reason for the high oil prices    However impulsive his outburst it pointed up a deeper truth  Trump has put The European leaders into a kind of double bind    The Iran de facto closure of the strategic waterway has set off a full  blown energy crisis across the Continent    With skyrocketing oil and gas prices angering voters throughout Europe the pressure is mounting on its leaders to take more forceful actions to reopen the shipping lanes    Yet at the same time The European political winds are blowing ever more fiercely against the war raising the stakes for leaders to take part    The military campaign is faulted by many Europeans especially on the left who say it is gratuitous illegal and now is threatening The European fragile growth    The leaders also remain haunted by the Iraq War which Britain supported to its lasting regret     Araud the former French ambassador to the United States said France could play a more meaningful role diplomatically in helping wind down the conflict    But he said Europe was hamstrung by three interlocking factors  The Trump distrust of Europe especially after its refusal to support the war The European fears that antagonizing the president could lead him to punish Ukraine and The Iran suspicion of Europe given its reluctance to confront him more openly    We could play the role of go between but Trump would rather have the Pakistanis  Araud said adding that the Iranians do not trust us either they think we are in the pocket of the Americans  

10A Ukraine        and Moldovan Romanian Book Review           Loss and loneliness in a contemporary Moldovan classic ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization            The Kiev Independent        March 25 2026         ͏  ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ Our mission is to keep the truth about the Russian war against Ukraine visible  and that is only possible because people like you choose not to look away    Become a member today Kyiv independent        Loss and loneliness in a contemporary Moldovan classic The cover of The Summer My Mother Had Green Eyes by Moldovan Romanian author Tatiana Țîbuleac on an undated photo from North of France    From the early pages of The Summer My Mother Had Green Eyes we are swimming in the grief of the protagonist Aleksy   The story begins at a point in his late teenage years when he hated his mother more than ever and could have killed her with a thought    She is not a source of love and strength in his life    the woman who gave him life      but of utter repulsion and shame   The Moldovan Romanian author Tatiana Țîbuleac novel recently translated from Romanian by Monica Cure and published by Deep Vellum loses none of its unsettling power when read in English    The book is both unflinching in its emotional honesty and luminous in its prose    It is a reminder of the value of translation given that the themes of the novel such as the toll we allow grief to take on us the turmoil of adolescence  are universally relatable even if the original language kept it out of reach for many readers until now    At its core The Summer My Mother Had Green Eyes is a novel about loneliness  about how it is more often than not imposed on oneself and how once it takes hold it often becomes consuming    Aleksy at the start of the novel is looking forward to a summer trip with his friends Jim and Kalo to Amsterdam where he plans to take part in every conceivable form of debauchery   Even if I were to catch AIDS even if I were to drown under a bridge that had been my biggest dream since I was fourteen years old    The bravado of Aleksy is more for show than anything else    These are as he admits the only friends he has ever had      He has never had a girlfriend either    The anger that seems to animate his very breathing makes him think that normal initiation rites on the path to adulthood must be achieved through extremity as though anything less would fail to register    What he seeks is not fulfillment but annihilation of self in a world in which he feels painfully unseen    Underlying this performative recklessness is a diffuse but deeply felt sense of betrayal    The father of Aleksy has long been absent from his life leaving a void that his mother cannot entirely fill burdened as she is by the trauma of the death of his younger sister Mika    The precise circumstances of death of Mika remain deliberately vague leaving the reader to process only its catastrophic aftermath on the family    Aleksy confesses that he misses his sister intensely     As the novel progresses it becomes clear that the anger of Aleksy toward his mother is rooted in her inability to have managed the ordinary rhythms of life while dealing with her grief    I would have liked Mum to remember me at least once  her other child    I would have liked Mum to have sat next to me  she did not have to comfort me or ask me how I felt  and to have told me to get out of her sight for seven months and then we will see Aleksy explains    That would have been the honest way for an adult to deal with a boy asking himself to this day if he could have saved his sister from dying    Amid this ticking time bomb of familial resentment the mother of Aleksy persuades him to abandon his plans in Amsterdam and spend the summer with her in a village in the north of France    The urgency of her insistence is not immediately explained    Yet Aleksy ultimately yields his own plans to hers    What follows is one of the most powerful and original explorations of a mother child relationship in contemporary literature including the ways in which parents wrestle with how they have failed their children    The novel traces the many contours of the loneliness of Aleksy while granting over time a near equal weight to the loneliness of his mother as she begins to face the amount of years their family surrendered to her grief    If the death of a child buries a part of the parent with them the loss of the love of a living child exacts a quieter no less devastating toll    This realization of lost time comes when her own time has nearly run out    Death has claimed not only Mika and shattered the family but is also closing in on the mother of Aleksy    She brings him to northern France because she is dying of cancer and the doctors have made it clear this is her last summer on earth    After years of turning away from life she is now desperate for her own untimely end to carry some measure of meaning    How that unfolds is what makes the novel so interesting    Aleksy recalling this summer as part of a therapy exercise is confronted by words swarming over him like a bewitched wolf pack as he struggles to process it    The Summer My Mother Had Green Eyes is ultimately a testament to the redemptive power of engaging with memory and storytelling no matter how painful it may be    The recollections of Aleksy shaped by grief and anger become a means of better understanding himself and his mother of mapping the invisible contours of loss and loneliness that came to define his life    The Țîbuleac novel reminds us that even when love has been fractured even when time has been stolen by grief the human heart is capable of stitching together fragments of life into moments of beauty    As Aleksy himself observes Beautiful memories though they are few and faded take up more space than all the files of pus together because a single beautiful image contains emotions smells and memories that last for entire days    These memories are the most precious part of me  the shiny pearl born from the hollow shell    The green bud rising from the carcass     Note from the author   Hi this is Kate Tsurkan thanks for reading this article    I have written a lot about books from Ukraine and Russia but keep a look out as our book review section starts to expand to cover books from other countries in the region       If you like reading about this sort of thing please consider supporting The Kyiv Independent

10B Ukraine        With Over 550 Drones Russia Unleashes Daytime Attack on Ukraine The assault which came after overnight strikes across the country was one of the largest of the war the Ukrainian authorities said    Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization            The New York Times          March 25 2026        Russian forces on Tuesday unleashed one of the largest daytime assaults on Ukraine since the war began launching more than 550 drones and striking city centers across the country    Several people were killed and at least 40 others wounded according to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine    Apartment buildings hospitals and a UNESCO World Heritage site all sustained damage officials said    The unusual daytime strikes followed a more typical series of overnight attacks in which Russian forces launched 34 missiles and 392 attack drones    Those killed two people in the Poltava region one in Zaporizhzhia and another on a passenger train in Kharkiv according to the local authorities    Air raid alarms warning of new waves of attack drones in Ukrainian airspace started sounding around noon shuttering some businesses and sending people rushing for shelters in the middle of the workday    People covered in blankets lie on cots near two small tents    Some individuals look at phones    Sheltering during an air raid warning in Kyiv Ukraine on Tuesday    Soon explosions were reported in the cities of Lviv Ternopil Vinnytsia Ivano Frankivsk Zhytomyr Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro    This is utterly perverse  Zelensky said in his nightly address of the strikes which came as he had been pushing to get peace talks with Russia back on track    The scale of the attack today he added strongly indicates that Russia has no intention of really ending this war    The Ukraine Air Force called the daytime assault one of the most massive attacks of the war    Taken together with the drones deployed overnight Russia launched nearly 1000 attack drones in under 24 hours across Ukraine according to Air Force figures    Image A drone flies above leafless trees    A Russian attack drone above central Lviv Ukraine on Tuesday    While air defenses shot down most the Air Force said that 15 hits were recorded during the daytime strikes    In the central city of Ivano Frankivsk two people were killed and four others were injured the authorities said     Two maternity hospitals sustained damage as did about 10 residential buildings    One person was killed in Vinnytsia and 13 others injured according to the emergency services     It said more than 90 rescuers had been deployed to respond to strikes which damaged nine residential buildings    Video shared by the Ukraine public broadcaster showed a Shahed tearing into the historic center of Lviv in western Ukraine    At least 26 people were wounded according to Andriy Sadovyi the mayor    Firefighters were still working to extinguish blazes sparked by the strikes as night fell    Photo of A firefighting ladder extends to a damaged building as water is sprayed into a window lit by orange flames    Thick white smoke pours from the building    Firefighters working at the site of an apartment building hit by a Russian drone strike in Zaporizhzhia Ukraine on Tuesday  

11 Russia             reported from United Kingdom   London           An American in Russia Is Linked to Neo Nazi Terror Cells Across Europe FBI    agents thought they had weakened an online hate group known as the Base    A string of European terrorism cases indicates it has resurged    A man with a long dark beard and wearing a black baseball cap    A screenshot of Rinaldo Nazzaro during an interview on the news channel Russia 24    Europol identified  Nazzaro as the man behind the Base a far right group operating mostly online    Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization            The New York Times        March 25 2026        Over the past 18 months investigators across Europe have dismantled a string of neo Nazi groups    Some were well organized and armed with guns and knives    Others appeared looser    In Britain a teenager was arrested and charged with plotting an attack to start a race war    These seemingly unrelated cases shared a thread    In each the authorities linked key figures to a far right group known as the Base which recruits online largely through white supremacist memes and propaganda    The message of the group is that multiculturalism has made Western society irredeemable    Recruits are urged to commit sabotage and murder to hasten its collapse    American law enforcement officials thought they had stifled the group years ago with a series of prosecutions     Its European resurgence is particularly concerning experts say because the goals of the Base align so squarely with the efforts of the Kremlin to conduct sabotage and undermine Western governments    The man behind the Base the authorities say is a fifty two year old American living in Russia far outside the reach of Western authorities    In recent years as Russia has waged war against Ukraine the Base has begun promoting violence against Ukrainian politicians government offices and infrastructure according to a report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue an international research organization    Steven Rai the author of that report said the Russian government may simply be giving the founder of the group safe haven    Another possibility is that the relationship extends beyond tacit approval he said with Russia offering more direct and covert forms of support    Rinaldo Nazzaro whom Europol identified in December as the man behind the Base has said the group promotes defense of self not terrorism or Nazism    He has repeatedly denied any relationship with the Russian security services    I do not know what the goals of the Russian intelligence services are he said in a 2021 email    He did not respond to a recent email    The Russian Embassy in London did not respond to a request for comment    Though all of the European arrests were made before any violence the cases represent a reversal of fortune for  Nazzaro a former contract counterterrorism analyst for the FBI    and Pentagon    In 2020 FBI    agents arrested several Base members    The immediate threat from the organization was thought to be diminished said a Justice Department senior adviser on domestic terrorism at the time     Nazzaro began losing credibility among far right figures who suspected that he was a Russian agent    They were blasting him as a spy said a former FBI agent who infiltrated the group in the United States    But  Nazzaro did not fade away    In November 2023 a British teenager contacted the Base on the Telegram messaging app    Hello I did not realize you guys were active the boy wrote according to a record of messages presented at his trial    Yeah we are still hanging on even if just barely came the reply    The boy later asked about the process of becoming a member    Over the following months he attempted to recruit others on Telegram    He hung recruitment posters in the village near his home in Northumberland in northeastern England    Investigators found explosive making materials a crossbow knives and a journal the boy kept    In it he wrote that he wanted to inspire others and to start a race war prosecutors said    He wrote that he would livestream an attack online    It is either death or capture by the enemy one journal entry said    The boy whose name is sealed because he is a minor was convicted last month of five terrorism offenses including membership of the Base    The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charge of preparing acts of terrorism    He is to be sentenced on Friday    Investigators in Spain Italy and the Netherlands say they have made arrests tied to the Base    The group is banned under terrorism laws in Britain  the European Union and Canada    They encourage murder and acts of terrorism and want to bring about the collapse of society through a race war with the end goal being a white supremacist utopia said a prosecutor in the British case    American officials have not designated the Base a terrorist organization    The US Constitution protects even hateful racist speech and the Supreme Court has ruled that the protection extends to speech generally advocating the violent overthrow of the government    Regardless  the Nazzaro home in Russia puts him out of reach of Western efforts to prosecute him    He traveled to Russia as a tourist European officials say  then started the Base in 2018 after moving there with his wife a native Russian    He has said he was attracted to the conservative culture of Russia    A lecturer in Russian politics at La Trobe University in Australia said the Base had a symbiotic relationship with the Kremlin    

12 Iran        In Iran War Cheap Drones Remain Wild Card Stopping The Iran production of drones is critical to opening the Strait of Hormuz and halting its attacks on Gulf nations    But can it be done? Excerpts edited by Residents Against Wood Smoke Emission Particulates a 501C3 nonprofit organization            The New York Times        March 25 2026        The first black and white surveillance image shows a simple factory complex on a tree lined road west of the Iranian city of Isfahan    In a second image the factory which United States Central Command said was manufacturing drones had been blown to pieces leaving shards of debris and blackened skeletal frames where buildings once stood    Central Command released the before and after images last week showing what it purported to be another major blow to The Iran defense industrial base while serving as a kind of promise to allies in the Persian Gulf that the barrage of Shahed attack drones targeting their population centers and energy infrastructure would eventually be stopped    It is a promise the United States might not be able to keep    The Shahed drones are cheap weapons made with off the shelf parts that can be assembled in a smaller workshop than the site near Isfahan University of Technology targeted by the United States    The problem with a technology like that is it is become democratized said a nonresident fellow at the Stimson Center an organization that analyzes global security who was previously chief of the Advanced Programs Division at the US Air Force Air Mobility Command    If it is relatively easy to do to bend aluminum to 3 D print a basic motorcycle engine then it is harder to track where it is coming from Iran will be able to produce more if this war continues        The goal for US and Israeli airstrikes is to destroy as many production facilities and weapon stores as possible to stop the threat from Iranian drones    The US is trying to hit the production sites but you have different ways to produce these frames    It is not necessarily very easily tracked    Decentralized production is possible    You do not need huge facilities for these  

March 26 2026 Headlines  The New York Times and The Guardian and others

The Trump Threats to Europe Put Its Leaders in a Double Bind Over Iran   The New York Times

March 25 2026 Headlines New York Times and the Guardian and others

We want peace  Iranians try to maintain semblance of normal life as conflict drags on   US Israel war on Iran   The Guardian

A Critical Political Season Could Decide if Alaska Is a Failed Petrostate   The New York Times

Air Canada CEO    Draws Scorn for Delivering Condolences Only in English   The New York Times

An American in Russia Is Linked to Neo Nazi Terror Cells Across Europe   The New York Times

And who is playing Madeline  The Lily Allen West End Girl could make sensational theatre   Stage   The Guardian

Cheap Drones Remain Wild Card in Iran war   The New York Times

Democratic rising star extends love after Hegseth pastor prays for his death   Democrats   The Guardian

Democrats Have Fundraising Edge in Virginia Redistricting Battle Ahead of April Referendum   The New York Times

Duffy to tell story of her kidnapping and rape ordeal in new Disney+ documentary   Duffy   The Guardian

For the Australia Farmers Fuel Crisis Comes at Worst Possible Time  The New York Times

Humans Had Dogs Before They Had Farming Ancient DNA Confirms   The New York Times

The Hungarian opposition Tisza party widens lead over the Orban Fidesz poll says

It Begins as a Tick Bite and Can Be Devastating    And It is Spreading      The New York Times

James Talarico Responds With Love To Criticism of Hegseth Pastor   The New York Times

Kate Marvel Prominent Climate Scientist Resigns From NASA   The New York Times

Matt Brittin Former Google Executive Named the New BBC Head   The New York Times

Melania Trump Appears With a Robot Saying More Children Should Be Educated by Them   The New York Times        Meta Lays Off 700 Employees While Rewarding Top Executives   The New York Times

One story from Ukraine – the Kiev Independent

Opinion   Chuck Schumer  What the SAVE Act Would Really Do   The New York Times

Opinion   Zack Polanski on the Rise of the Green Party of Britain   The New York Times

Russia Launches Daytime Attack on Ukraine With Over 500 Drones   The New York Times

San Francisco Killed 8th Grade Algebra    Now It is Set to Come Back      The New York Times

Senate Housing Bill Sparks Debate About Who Gets to Own Single Family Homes   The New York Times

Stephen Colbert Is Writing a New Lord of the Rings Movie   The New York Times

Stephen Colbert to write new Lord of the Rings film after end of the Late Show   Movies   The Guardian

Takeaways From an Inside Look at the CDC   The New York Times

The Guardian view on a significant week for European politics  progressives have some reasons to be cheerful   Editorial   The Guardian

Tracy Kidder Author of The Soul of a New Machine Dies at 80   The New York Times

Trump Administration Live Updates  Democrats Send Counteroffer to End DHS Shutdown   The New York Times        Trump Says He is Talking With Iran    But Iran Says He is Not    Here is Why      The New York Times        Trump to Delay Nominating New CDC Director   The New York Times        The Trump peace plan falls flat as he insists the war is almost over while increasing troop numbers   Donald Trump   The Guardian

USPS Plans to Impose 8  Surcharge to Offset Rising Transportation Costs Amid Iran War   The New York Times        What to Know About Democrat the Emily Gregory Win in Florida   The New York Times

With Their Voter Bill Stymied GOP Leaders Ponder a Plan B   The New York Times

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate debate postponed over Chris Taylor illness