Teacher shot by 6-year-old student files $40 million suit

• April 3, 2023

By Denise Lavoie

RICHMOND, Va. — A first-grade Virginia teacher who was shot and seriously wounded by her 6-year-old student filed a lawsuit Monday seeking $40 million in damages from school officials, accusing them of gross negligence for allegedly ignoring multiple warnings on the day of the shooting that the boy had a gun and was in a “violent mood.”

Abby Zwerner, a 25-year-old teacher at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia was shot in the hand and chest on Jan. 6 as she sat at a reading table in her classroom. She spent nearly two weeks in the hospital and has had four surgeries since the shooting.

The shooting rattled the military shipbuilding community and sent shock waves around the country, with many wondering how a child so young could get access to a gun and shoot his teacher.

The lawsuit names as defendants the Newport News School Board, former Superintendent George Parker III, former Richneck principal Briana Foster Newton and former Richneck assistant principal Ebony Parker.

Michelle Price, a spokesperson for the school board, Lisa Surles-Law, chair of the school board, and other board members did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on the lawsuit. The former superintendent did not immediately return a message seeking comment left on his cellphone.

A message left on a cellphone listing for Ebony Parker was not immediately returned.

The Associated Press couldn’t immediately find a working phone number for Newton. Her attorney, Pamela Branch, has said that Newton was unaware of reports that the boy had a gun at school on the day of the shooting.

No one, including the boy, has been charged in the shooting. The superintendent was fired by the school board after the shooting, while the assistant principal resigned. A school district spokesperson has said Newton is still employed by the school district, but declined to say what position she holds. The board also voted to install metal detectors in every school in the district, beginning with Richneck, and to purchase clear backpacks for all students.

In the lawsuit, Zwerner’s attorneys say all of the defendants knew the boy “had a history of random violence” at school and at home, including an episode the year before, when he “strangled and choked” his kindergarten teacher.

“All Defendants knew that John Doe attacked students and teachers alike, and his motivation to injure was directed toward anyone in his path, both in and out of school, and was not limited to teachers while at the school,” the lawsuit states.

School officials removed the boy from Richneck and sent him to another school for the remainder of the year, but allowed him to return for first grade in the fall of 2022, the lawsuit states. He was placed on a modified schedule “because he was chasing students around the playground with a belt in an effort to whip them with it,” and was cursing staff and teachers, it says. Under the modified schedule, one of the boy’s parents was required to accompany him during the school day.

“Teachers’ concerns with John Doe’s behavior (were) regularly brought to the attention of Richneck Elementary School administration, and the concerns were always dismissed,” the lawsuit states. Often after he was taken to the office, “he would return to class shortly thereafter with some type of reward, such as a piece of candy,” according to the lawsuit.

The boy’s parents did not agree to put him in special education classes where he would be with other students with behavioral issues, the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit describes a series of warnings school employees gave administrators in the hours before the shooting, beginning with Zwerner, who went to the office of assistant principal Ebony Parker between 11:15 a.m. and 11:30 a.m. and told her the boy “was in a violent mood,” threatened to beat up a kindergartener and stared down a security officer in the lunchroom. The lawsuit alleges that Parker “had no response, refusing even to look up at (Zwerner) when she expressed her concerns.”

At about 11:45 a.m., two students told Amy Kovac, a reading specialist, that the boy had a gun in his backpack. The boy denied it, but refused to provide his backpack to Kovac, the lawsuit states.

Zwerner told Kovac that she had seen the boy take something out of his backpack and put it into the pocket of his sweatshirt. Kovac then searched the backpack but did not find a weapon.

Kovac told Ebony Parker that the boy had told students he had a gun. Parker responded his “pockets were too small to hold a handgun and did nothing,” the lawsuit states.

Another first-grade boy, who was crying, told a teacher the boy “had shown him a firearm he had in his pocket during recess.” That teacher then contacted the office and told a music teacher, who answered the phone, what the boy told her about seeing the gun.

The music teacher said that when he informed Parker, she said the backpack had already been searched and “took no further action,” according to the lawsuit. A guidance counselor then went to Parker’s office and asked permission to search the boy for a gun, but Parker forbade him from doing so, “and stated that John Doe’s mother would be arriving soon to pick him up,” it states. About an hour later, the boy pulled the gun out of his pocket, aimed it at Zwerner and shot her, the lawsuit states.

Zwerner suffered permanent bodily injuries, physical pain, mental anguish, lost earnings and other damages, the lawsuit states. It seeks $40 million in compensatory damages.

Last month, Newport News prosecutor Howard Gwynn said his office will not criminally charge the boy because he is too young to understand the legal system and what a charge means. Gwynn has yet to decide if any adults will be charged.

The boy used his mother’s gun, which police said was purchased legally. An attorney for the boy’s family has said that the firearm was secured on a high closet shelf and had a lock on it

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​ Orange County Register 

Game Day: March Madness stars march on

• April 3, 2023

Editor’s note: This is the Monday, April 3, edition of the “Game Day with Kevin Modesti” newsletter. To receive the newsletter in your inbox, sign up here.

Good morning. Raise your hand if you knew that the most talked about basketball players in America during the Final Four were going to be Caitlin Clark and Lamont Butler. I didn’t think so.

In other sports news:

Anthony Davis’ 40 points led the Lakers to a win in Houston, putting them within a half game of the sixth-place Warriors.
Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani and rookie Logan O’Hoppe homered and the Angels got more sharp starting pitching to beat the Athletics.
Hard-luck hitting wasted a sharp outing by Noah Syndergaard in his Dodgers debut against Arizona.
The Kings clinched a playoff spot as Alex Iafallo scored twice versus Vancouver.
The Ducks lost a lead and a season-high eighth game in a row in Calgary.
Angel City FC got its first NWSL victory of  the season on Katie Johnson’s late header.
UCLA’s third-ranked softball team swept No. 6 Stanford to move into first place in the Pac-12.
Justin Ashley beat Austin Prock at the NHRA Winternationals in Pomona for his second straight top-fuel win.
And China’s Ruoning Yin, 20, won the L.A. Open by one stroke, her first LPGA tour victory.

Back to Clark, the Associated Press national player of the year whose record-setting scoring in the tournament led Iowa to yesterday’s women’s championship game, and Butler, whose buzzer-beater on Saturday put San Diego State in tonight’s men’s title game.

The NCAA tournaments have a way of introducing us to the stars and creating new ones.

Clark’s amazing 2023 run ended with a one-sided loss to LSU in Dallas, where she was upstaged first by Jasmine Carson’s 21 first-half points off the bench and then by Final Four Most Outstanding Player Angel Reese’s all-around play.

That the game ended with Reese taunting Clark didn’t detract from either woman’s performance and gave old and new fans of women’s college basketball at least two personalities to look forward to watching next season, since neither is eligible for the WNBA draft until 2024.

Butler’s story is different, few fans having heard of the career 7.0-points-a game scorer before his heroics for San Diego State against Florida Atlantic put the Aztecs in the final against Connecticut tonight in Houston.

Few fans outside Riverside County, that is. And even at that, as columnist Mirjam Swanson says in her piece about Butler in today’s papers, the guard has a way to go to eclipse the Clippers’ Kawhi Leonard as the most famous San Diego State player from Moreno Valley and a Riverside high school.

Swanson talked yesterday with Butler’s mother, Carmicha, and father, Lamont Sr., and with Tim Cook, the Life Pacific University (San Dimas) coach whose son Austin played with Butler in AAU.

Butler, from Riverside Poly, where he broke Reggie Miller’s school career scoring record, comes off as a likable person shaped by the large family and coaches and teammates who rallied around him after his older sister Asasha Lache Hall was murdered in March 2022.

“His pedigree is part of what makes it really special,” Cook said. “He’s a really special young man. He treats people the right way, he plays with a smile, he plays the right way and he’s just so easy to root for.”

None of the individuals on the men’s All-America first, second and third teams named by the Associated Press for 2023 made it to the Final Four, let alone starred there. But Lamont Butler did.

Just as nice, this isn’t the end for Butler, as it isn’t for Clark and Reese. He’s eligible to play on for San Diego State next season, because he’s a junior and not considered a candidate for the NBA draft.

The NCAA men’s and women’s tournaments were merely the introductions.

TODAY

Angels and Reid Detmers visit Seattle, which the left-hander dominated in both meetings last season (6:40 p.m., BSW).
Dodgers give Michael Grove a start in the first of two against the Rockies at Dodger Stadium (7:10 p.m., SNLA).
San Diego State plays in its first NCAA men’s basketball final against Connecticut in Houston (6:20 p.m., Ch. 2).

BETWEEN THE LINES

UConn is favored over San Diego State by 7½ points this morning. According to a list posted at betfirm.com, that matches the biggest spread for an NCAA men’s basketball title game since 1999, when, coincidentally, UConn was a 9½-point underdog and upset Duke. Since 1985, underdogs by 7 or more in the NCAA final are 6-3 against the spread (4-5 on the scoreboard).

280 CHARACTERS

“People hating on Angel Reese or Caitlin Clark. Stop. Unapologetically confident young women should be celebrated NOT hated. Get used to it.” – ESPN broadcaster Holly Rowe (@sportsiren) tweeting about the LSU and Iowa basketball players.

1,000 WORDS

Dangerous drive-through: Driver J.R. Todd has the body explode off his funny car as he races in the opening round of eliminations in the NHRA Winternationals at In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip in Pomona yesterday. Todd wasn’t injured. Photo is by Will Lester of the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin and SCNG.

TALK BACK

Thanks for reading. Send suggestions, comments and questions by email at [email protected] and via Twitter @KevinModesti.

Editor’s note: Thanks for reading the “Game Day with Kevin Modesti” newsletter. To receive the newsletter in your inbox, sign up here.

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​ Orange County Register 

Activision Blizzard to settle DOJ esports salary claims

• April 3, 2023

By Emily Birnbaum and Cecilia D’Anastasio | Bloomberg

Video game company Activision Blizzard agreed to a settlement with the Justice Department ensuring the company doesn’t suppress the wages of esports players even if it is acquired by Microsoft Corp.

The agreement, which the Justice Department filed in federal court in Washington Monday, comes after a long investigation into Activision’s efforts to limit compensation for players in professional esport leagues it owns and operates. The US is asking the court to approve the settlement, which would prevent the Santa Monica-based company from ever imposing a similar tax on its esports teams.

“Video games and esports are among the most popular and fastest growing forms of entertainment in the world today, and professional esports players  — like all workers — deserve the benefits of competition for their services,” said Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division.

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Activision Blizzard in a statement said it believes that the salary agreements, which it suspended under pressure from the Justice Department in 2021, were “lawful” and “did not have an adverse impact on player salaries.”

“We remain committed to a player ecosystem with fair pay and healthcare,” said Activision Blizzard spokesperson Joe Christinat.

The Justice Department is asking the court for a consent decree that ensures Activision Blizzard is not allowed to enforce a “competitive balance tax,” which penalized teams for paying esports players above a certain threshold set by the company. The department opened its probe into esports leagues last year.

​ Orange County Register 

LA County supervisor withdraws controversial proposal to ‘depopulate’ jails

• April 3, 2023

A controversial proposal to depopulate and decarcerate Los Angeles County jails collapsed Monday after its main proponent, Supervisor Hilda L. Solis, withdrew the plan that blindsided and drew sharp criticism from law enforcement stakeholders.

The sweeping proposal, also backed by newly elected Supervisor Lindsey P. Horvath, was scheduled to be discussed at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting. However, Solis took the item off of the board’s agenda.

“Los Angeles County is subject to numerous federal consent decrees and settlement agreements, including those regarding the treatment provided for incarcerated people with mental health needs and severe overcrowding in county jails, including Men’s Central Jail,” Solis said in a statement. “They are expensive and getting into compliance is becoming more challenging as the population becomes more complex; and the conditions in the jails, as we have long known, are horrid and inhumane

“Nonetheless, since the motion was published, my office has received concerns from a variety of stakeholders — those who feel the motion is not doing enough and those who feel it is doing too much. To that end, I will be referring the motion back to my office so that I can continue to gather input from all stakeholders.

The goal now, she said, is to “balance the needs of public safety while also getting into compliance with our federal obligations. And in that process, I ask that county departments and agencies help us with meeting the need of our most vulnerable.”

County Supervisor Hilda L. Solis. (Photo by Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

The plan aimed to declare a “humanitarian crisis” in the jails and advocate for or instruct several county agencies to evaluate, create and expand programs that would keep more people out of a jail, even after they are convicted of misdemeanors and some felonies.

“To depopulate and decarcerate is a monumental task, and the Board is committed to redress historical wrongs, deeply rooted in systemic racism and prejudice, and reverse status quo responses to poverty, mental health and medical needs, and substance use dependencies,” the supervisors wrote in their motion.

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The Los Angeles County Police Chiefs Association says it was blindsided by the proposal, only learning about it on Friday.

Early Monday, Supervisors Kathryn Barger and Janice Hahn said they would not support the proposal, while Horvath and Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell could not be reached for comment.

“This board has taken steps to divert people from our jails safely, but Men’s Central Jail continues to be overcrowded and dangerous for both our inmates and our deputies,” Hahn said in a statement Monday. “That being said, I have concerns with this proposal and its potential impact on public safety, and I cannot support it. Any plan to reduce the population of our jails needs to be decided in partnership with law enforcement, our deputy district attorneys, and our courts.”

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

​ Orange County Register 

Newport Beach lifeguards mark 100 years watching over the beach

• April 3, 2023

Newport Beach Chief Lifeguard Brian O’Rourke analyzed a dramatic photograph of 13 swimmers struggling in the ocean, swept out to sea in a massive rip current.

“They are getting pulled off their feet, watching the shore slip away… they are getting tired and exhausted,” O’Rourke said. “Fear and panic is setting in and the drowning process is starting to begin. These people are going to drown pretty quickly.”

While the photo was taken decades ago, it’s a scene that has played out time and time again — and if it weren’t for lifeguards in situations such as this, countless lives would be lost to the unpredictable, unforgiving sea each year as people flock to the coast.

Newport Beach lifeguards are marking 100 years of service along the city’s shoreline and it has been a chance to reflect on the department formed in 1923 and to celebrate successes and pivotal moments in its long history.

Before 1923, there was no lifeguarding service in the city, but as more people started showing up to the shore and tragedies occurred as beachgoers tested the waters, unaware of the ocean’s dangers, its need became obvious.

“People would go out in these waters, these massive rip currents and they would die out here,” O’Rourke said during a presentation recently to city officials. “And there was a community on the beach who said, ‘We need to provide a service to protect these beaches.’

“They went into a preventive-action mode,” he said. “They went out and stopped these tragic events from happening.”

Retired lifeguard Mike Brousard, who wrote  “Warm Winds and Following Seas: Reflections of a Lifeguard in Paradise,” recounted a pivotal moment in Newport Beach’s lifeguarding history when, in 1925, a fishing boat overturned in massive surf.

Hawaiian Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku, a regular surfer at Corona del Mar before the rock jetty destroyed the wave, along with Newport Beach’s first lifeguard Antar Deraga and fellow lifeguards Thomas Sheffield and Charles Plummer and a few others rushed to help.

Kahanamoku grabbed his surfboard and saved seven people. Other lifeguards retrieved their boards and saved another five. Their use of surfboards and paddleboards helped spawn the idea of using rescue boards, still done to this day.

“After that, Newport got a lot more serious about having lifeguards on their beaches,” Brousard said.

Much of O’Rourke’s early-day research for his city presentation came from the book “The Tide Has Changed,” written in 1968 by a woman whose daughter nearly drowned in front of her in West Newport, saved by lifeguards.

“The knowledge and skills of these early guards has been passed on through every generation of lifeguards and through the ranks, all the way into modern-times here,” O’Rourke said. “After 1923, lifeguard services started to get creative in how they were protecting the beaches.”

The first female lifeguard was hired in 1929, but not much is known about her, other than her first name Hilda, O’Rourke said, and that “she was a really great swimmer and people really liked her.”

As visitors started flocking to Newport Beach in the ’40s and ’50s, the lifeguard department expanded, more towers were built and patrol vehicles with two-way radios were added.

In 1958, the first rescue boat was put into service.

“This was a game changer for lifeguards,” O’Rourke said, noting that the population was “exploding” on the beaches. “People came from all over the place. The first rescue boat in the first decade saved thousands of people.”

The first lifeguard headquarters built in 1965 cost a “whopping” $7,000 and included a dispatch and observation area to watch over the beach.

While the lifeguard program started as part of the Fire Department, it branched out to be its own emergency services department in 1958. It rejoined the Fire Department in 1995.

Jim Turner, a longtime Newport Beach lifeguard chief who started his career in 1973 and retired from the department in 2014, said merging back with the Fire Department to become a cohesive part of the city’s emergency response was a key moment.

Lifeguards today are called on for swift-water rescues and train along the Fire Department for other scenarios that may need ocean or water skills.

While many beaches are simply stretches of sand, Newport Beach’s coastline is unique, Brousard said. One of the most dangerous areas is known as the Wedge, a wave that can get up to 30-feet tall on a summer south swell.

“That is the most unusual wave maybe on the West Coast, the angle of the jetty refracts this thing into a monster,” Brousard said.

Also challenging? The rock groin jetties in West Newport that stick out like fingers in the sea.

“The swells push in there and hit the jetty, it’s a man-made rip current against the south side of the jetty,” he said. “They get some really gnarly rescue stuff going on there near the jetty.”

It’s one of the toughest places on the coast to lifeguard, he said. “You have to know what you’re doing there.”

Even the strongest, most trained swimmers have fallen victim to the sea.

Among them was Ben Carlson. In 2014, Newport Beach suffered its first death in the line of duty when Carlson died while doing a rescue in massive surf. The surf and current were so strong, his body was found half a mile away from where he went missing, O’Rourke said. The swimmer he went after survived.

A statue was erected in his honor.

“Ben forever watching over the water” at McFadden Square, O’Rourke described it. “This wasn’t just an incident that shocked our lifeguards, our department, but also this community.”

Following his death, Carlson’s family, friends and fellow lifeguards created the The Ben Carlson Memorial & Scholarship Foundation to continue his legacy of water safety, as well as give scholarships to budding lifeguards. The lifeguard headquarters were renamed the Benjamin M. Carlson Lifeguard Headquarters in 2015.

Carlson was also a key member of the junior lifeguard staff; the program was started in 1984 by Reenie Boyer, who was recruited from Huntington Beach to start Newport Beach’s version of the youth training.

The summer program has swelled through the years, with an estimated 1,500 children and 60 staff members participating.

“We’re not just doing preventative action, we’re educating the youth on how to come to the beaches … enjoy it safely,” O’Rourke said.

Another key moment in Newport Beach’s history not mentioned in O’Rourke’s presentation came in 2016, when Newport Beach lifeguards were the first in the county to respond to a major shark attack after swimmer Maria Korcsmaros was bitten off Corona del Mar by a great white shark.

Lifeguards Andy Matsuyama and Mike Ure happened to be doing boat training near Korcsmaros, who started waving her arm frantically in the air, blood turning the water red.

The attack – and the lifeguards’ swift response – helped agencies around the state and the country train for shark-encounter scenarios.

Turner, who took a job as chief lifeguard at Lake Mission Viejo following his retirement from Newport Beach, noted a few more milestones through the years: the transition from using a steel “can” buoy to molded plastic and high-density foam buoys to allow for multiple victim rescues by a single lifeguard; adding rescue boats that can pick up a dozen victims at a time; and the use of rescue watercraft that can go into the surf zones to help victims.

Technological advancements in forecasting surf has helped both staff the beaches in anticipation of dangerous conditions and alert the public to dangers, Turner added.

But while technology and tools may have changed, the goal has remained the same and always will: To save lives.

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These days, Newport Beach lifeguards protect an estimated 10 million visitors along the city’s 6.2 miles of ocean and 2.5 miles of bay beaches.

“It’s been a huge battle to gain credibility over the years,” Brousard said, noting that not long ago lifeguards had a stereotype of simply hanging out on the beach all day. “There’s a lot of days when it’s quiet. But when the surf is big and the crowd is big and the rips are going – you’re on the edge of exhaustion, going, ‘Do I have another rescue in me?’ It’s a unique, misunderstood profession.”

A centennial celebration is in the works for this summer at the new $5 million junior lifeguard building under construction near Balboa Pier.

​ Orange County Register 

Disney CEO Iger blasts DeSantis’ policies as ‘anti-business’

• April 3, 2023

By Thomas Buckley | Bloomberg

Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger came out swinging at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis saying his policies regarding the theme-park giant have been “not just anti-Florida, but anti-business.”

The executive, who spoke during the company’s annual meeting, responded to questions from investors about Disney’s political standing in Florida and its decision to oppose legislation that limits discussion of gender identity in state schools.

“A company has a right to freedom of speech just like individuals do,” Iger said.

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Disney has been in a high-profile fight in Florida over the past year. The Republican governor and state legislators replaced the board of a municipal district that provides services to the company’s theme parks in the state. The company plans to invest $17 billion in Florida over the next decade.

Iger likened the company’s stance to Civil Right-era protests.

“As long as I’m in the job I’m going to be guided by a sense of decency and respect,”  he said.

​ Orange County Register 

‘Middle Eastern or North African’ census category is ‘long overdue’, community members say

• April 3, 2023

When Mary Chammas applied to Cal State Fullerton in 2018, she identified as a White student on official forms since that is how those of Middle Eastern or North African descent are categorized.

But in reality, Chammas, who is Lebanese American, does not identify as White.

“We are not White. We don’t receive the same privileges when we speak our native tongues in public,” said Chammas.

The federal government is now considering adding a new category on federal surveys and the U.S. census to designate Middle Eastern or North African descent (MENA), a move Chammas says is “long overdue.”

The Biden administration’s proposal comes after several years of urging by Census Bureau officials to more accurately collect data as well as campaigning by MENA groups.

Now, the Office of Management and Budget, which sets the federal government’s standards on race and ethnicity reporting data, has five racial categories: American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander and White. The standards were last updated in 1997 when the reporting of mixed race was included.

OMB is accepting public comment on the proposed new identifier until April 12.

In the meantime, the Anaheim-based Arab American Civic Council is conducting information workshops at universities, mosques and churches across Orange County to raise awareness of the proposed change and encourage community members to share public testimony.

“While I was working in the community towards designating Little Arabia, our city officials asked us how many Arab Americans live here,” said Rashad Al-Dabbagh, the Arab American Civic Council’s founder and executive director. “I don’t know. We don’t have data about our community. We don’t have accurate numbers of our community.”

A separate category on federal forms, Al-Dabbagh said, will allow the community to avail of resources, such as small business loans specifically available to marginalized groups, and to ensure ethnic enclaves are not divided during the redistricting process.

For UC Irvine Ph.D. candidate Sarah Abolail, a MENA designation could have opened up more scholarships and grant opportunities as she continues her education. Abolail, an Egyptian American, said she found some funding options were only “catered to minorities that are officially recognized,” but given her categorization as White, she did not have access to them.

The MENA category, Abolail said, is “essential” because it will create more visibility for certain minority groups.

Aside from community data, a MENA category could ensure health care disparities among different racial and ethnic groups are better addressed, according to Rep. Lou Correa. The Anaheim Democrat last year urged the Department of Health and Human Services to include such a designation “across all HHS data collection and reporting activities;” HHS has not included it thus far as it uses OMB’s standards.

“There are some groups that are more disproportionately affected by certain medical challenges than others, and so this is where good data makes a difference,” Correa said. “The more categories you have to identify communities of interest, the better you are at making decisions as a government.”

Orange County, home to the biggest concentration of Vietnamese people outside of Vietnam, Little Arabia, large Korean and Chinese communities and an emerging Ukrainian populace, is always changing, Correa said, and it’s vital to capture individuality.

And the unique identity and needs of the large Iranian and Arab American communities, said Sen. Dave Min, D-Irvine, aren’t captured in the current census.

“As more and more families — including my own — move towards multiracial categories, these changes will also help ensure that we’re better understanding the demographic changes in the U.S. population,” Min said.

While Chammas welcomes the federal government’s move, she said MENA is still not as inclusive as a SWANA, South West Asian and North African, designation.

Spurred by her own experience when applying to Cal State Fullerton, Chammas worked with the chancellor’s office in 2021 to add SWANA as a racial category prospective students can check when applying to the 23 campuses within the Cal State system. Under that designation, students can choose the ethnicity that applies to them — including Armenian, Jordanian and Turkish — allowing the university system to track students’ racial and ethnic backgrounds more accurately, she said.

“The Middle East, it’s not even the middle of the east so geographically it’s inaccurate. It’s a colonial term (coined by the British),” Chammas said. “SWANA fully encompasses the entire region.”

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​ Orange County Register 

Russia blames Ukraine for bombing that killed pro-war blogger

• April 3, 2023

Russian authorities blamed Ukrainian intelligence agencies on Monday for orchestrating a bombing at a St. Petersburg cafe that killed a Russian military blogger who fervently supported Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, and they arrested a suspect.

Ukrainian authorities did not directly respond to the accusation, but President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in reference to the attack that he doesn’t think about events in Russia, and a senior Ukrainian official earlier described the bombing as part of Russia’s internal turmoil.

Vladlen Tatarsky, 40, was killed Sunday as he led a discussion at the cafe on the banks of the Neva River in the historic heart of Russia’s second-largest city, officials said. Tatarsky, who had filed regular reports from the front lines in Ukraine, was the pen name for Maxim Fomin. He had accumulated more than 560,000 followers on his Telegram messaging app channel.

The bombing, which also wounded more than 30 other people, was the latest attack inside Russia on a high-profile pro-war figure. Last year, a nationalist TV commentator was assassinated when a bomb exploded in her SUV outside Moscow.

Investigators said they believe the bomb at the cafe was hidden in a bust of Tatarsky that a member of the audience gave him just before the explosion. A video showed him joking about the bust and putting it on a table next to him.

Russian authorities announced the arrest of Darya Trepova, a 26-year-old St. Petersburg resident seen on video presenting Tatarsky with the bust, and classified the case as an act of terrorism. Police had detained Trepova for participating in a rally against the war on Feb. 24, 2022, the day of the invasion, and she spent 10 days in jail.

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The Interior Ministry released a video showing Trepova telling a police officer that she brought the statuette that exploded to the cafe. When asked who gave it to her, she said she would explain it later. The circumstances under which Trepova spoke were unclear, including whether she was under duress.

According to Russian media reports, Trepova told investigators she was asked to deliver the bust, but didn’t know what was inside it.

The National Anti-Terrorist Committee, which coordinates counter-terrorism operations, said the bombing was “planned by Ukrainian special services,” noting Trepova was an “active supporter” of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

Navalny, the Kremlin’s fiercest foe who had exposed official corruption and organized massive anti-government protests, is serving a nine-year fraud sentence that he has denounced as a political vendetta.

Navalny associate Ivan Zhdanov warned that authorities could use the claim of involvement by political opponents as a pretext to extend his prison term. He also charged that Russian security agencies could be behind the explosion to cast Navalny’s supporters as an “internal enemy.”

According to Russian media reports, police tracked down Trepova using surveillance cameras, although she reportedly cut her long blond hair short to change her look and moved to a different apartment in an apparent attempt to escape.

Military bloggers and patriotic commentators compared the bombing to the August 2022 assassination of nationalist TV commentator Darya Dugina, who was killed when a remote-controlled explosive planted in her SUV blew up as she drove on the outskirts of Moscow.

Russian authorities blamed Ukraine’s military intelligence for Dugina’s death, but Kyiv denied involvement.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the attacks on Dugina and Tatarsky proved that Moscow was justified in launching what it describes as “the special military operation” in Ukraine.

Moscow has offered a series of explanations for the invasion, denounced by Ukraine and the West as an unprovoked act of aggression, while providing little if any evidence for the charges.

“Russia has faced the Kyiv regime, which has supported terrorist activities,” Peskov said in a conference call with reporters. “That is why the special military operation is being conducted.”

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the St. Petersburg millionaire restaurateur who heads the Wagner Group military contractor spearheading Moscow’s offensive in eastern Ukraine, said he owned the cafe and allowed patriotic groups to use it for meetings. He said he doubts the involvement of Ukrainian authorities in the bombing, saying it was likely launched by a “group of radicals” unrelated to the government in Kyiv.

Zelenskyy brushed off questions about the bombing.

“I don’t think about what is happening in St. Petersburg or Moscow. Russia should think about this. I am thinking about our country,” Zelenskyy told journalists.

While not claiming responsibility for various explosions, bombings and other attacks within Russia since the invasion began, Ukrainian authorities have often greeted them jubilantly and insisted on Ukraine’s right to launch such assaults.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak responded to the news of the bombing by casting it as a result of infighting in Russia.

“Spiders are eating each other in a jar,” he tweeted in English late Sunday. “Question of when domestic terrorism would become an instrument of internal political fight was a matter of time.”

On Monday, Podolyak said Russia has “returned to the Soviet classics,” pointing to its increasing isolation, the rise of espionage cases and an increase in political repression.

Last week, Russia’s security service announced the arrest of American reporter Evan Gershkovich on spying charges, the first time a U.S. correspondent has been detained on such accusations since the Cold War. His newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, has vehemently rejected the allegations and demanded his release.

Tatarsky was born in Ukraine’s industrial heartland of the Donbas and worked as a coal miner before starting a furniture trade business. When he ran into financial difficulties, he robbed a bank and was sentenced to prison.

He fled custody after a Russia-backed separatist rebellion engulfed the Donbas in 2014, weeks after Moscow’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. Then he joined separatist rebels and fought on the front line before turning to blogging.

While Russian authorities have silenced alternative voices by shutting down independent news outlets critical of the war and jailing critics of President Vladimir Putin, military bloggers have played an increasingly visible role. While strongly supporting the war, they also have frequently pointed out flaws in Russian military strategy and occasionally criticized the military brass.

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