(NEW YORK) — Couples kissed. Others cheered and waved balloons as fireworks burst into the night sky and confetti fell to welcome the start of 2020 in New York City’s Times Square.
In one of the globe’s most-watched New Year’s Eve spectacles, the crowd counted down the last seconds of 2019 as a luminescent crystal ball descended down a pole. Throngs of people cheered and sang along to the X Ambassadors’ soul-stirring rendition of John Lennon’s “Imagine” just before midnight.
About 3,000 pounds (1,360 kilograms) of confetti showered the sea of attendees, many of whom were also briefly rained on earlier in the evening as they waited in security pens for performances by stars including rap-pop star Post Malone, K-pop group BTS, country singer Sam Hunt and singer-songwriter Alanis Morissette.
The frenzied moment of celebration came after many hours of waiting for much of the crowd.
Eric and Aileen Sanchez-Himes brought their son and nephew from Framingham, Massachuetts, to experience what they consider a “bucket list item.” Eric packed granola bars and water in his coat in case they got hungry. They arrived at 10:30 a.m.
“I grew up in New York, in Brooklyn and the Bronx and I’ve never done this and this was the first time for us and what better year than 2020 to do this,” Aileen said.
Mathieu Plesotsky, 25, visiting from Hesse, Germany, said he wanted to be a part of the spectacle after watching it for years on TV. He arrived in Times Square at 1 p.m. with his girlfriend and bopped along to the performers while waiting for the ball to drop.
“We’ve just stayed, stand, tried not to pee, danced to the Village People,” he said.
Ever since the NYPD tightened security and began cracking down on public drinking years ago, Times Square on New Year’s Eve has been an endurance contest as much as a raucous celebration.
Many people arrive before noon to get a spot close to the action. Alcohol is banned. Spectators enter through a security screening gauntlet to enter pens they cannot leave, including to use the bathroom, if they hope to return.
The weather can be brutal.
When revelers rang in 2018, it was only 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 12 Celsius). For the dawn of 2019, rain poured throughout the evening, leaving puddles on the performance stages.
The weather seemed perfect Tuesday, until it wasn’t. Rain, which wasn’t in the forecast, briefly drenched the crowd just before 8:30 p.m.
Still, the celebration was a once-in-a-lifetime experience for many.
“It was a dream, I wanted to do it so this year a lot of people helped me to get here so I’m here, and I’m thankful for that,” said Mariemma Mejias, 48, who flew to New York for the festivities from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Amanda Camacho, 25, from Heredia, Costa Rica, said she and her mother spent their evening in the security pens “talking to people and meeting people and sharing,” Camacho said.
“We met people from Korea, we met people from Guatemala that were actually here just for New Year’s Eve, so it has been pretty cool,” she said.
While giddiness was expected to prevail at the televised event, some important global issues will be driven home, as well.
The Associated Press presented a news reel highlighting the most memorable events of 2019.
High school science teachers and students, spotlighting efforts to combat climate change, were to help press the button that begins the famous 60-second ball drop and countdown to 2020, followed by 3,000 pounds (1,360 kilograms) of confetti.
Thousands of police officers were on hand for the festivities, plus more than 1,000 security cameras, helicopters and drones equipped with thermal-imaging and 3D-mapping capabilities and super-zoom lenses.
Christina Genovese and Jessica Vanich, friends from Buffalo, New York, said the security line was about 30 minutes long when they arrived at 10:30 a.m.
“It’s not as cold as Buffalo so we’re OK,” Genovese said.
Aubrey Fannin, who traveled from Kirkland, Washington, with her friend Kennedy Bryne, is optimistic for 2020.
“This is our year,” Fannin said moments after the clock struck midnight. “This is the world’s year. Let’s do it.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — Charging that Iran was “fully responsible” for an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq, President Donald Trump ordered about 750 U.S. soldiers deployed to the Middle East as about 3,000 more prepared for possible deployment in the next several days.
No U.S. casualties or evacuations were reported after the attack Tuesday by dozens of Iran-supported militiamen. U.S. Marines were sent from Kuwait to reinforce the compound.
Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Tuesday night that “in response to recent events” in Iraq, and at Trump’s direction, he authorized the immediate deployment of the infantry battalion from the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. He did not specify the soldiers’ destination, but a U.S. official familiar with the decision said they will go to Kuwait.
“This deployment is an appropriate and precautionary action taken in response to increased threat levels against U.S. personnel and facilities, such as we witnessed in Baghdad today,” Esper said in a written statement.
Additional soldiers from the 82nd Airborne’s quick-deployment brigade, known officially as its Immediate Response Force, were prepared to deploy, Esper said. The U.S. official, who provided unreleased details on condition of anonymity, said the full brigade of about 4,000 soldiers may deploy.
The 750 soldiers deploying immediately were in addition to 14,000 U.S. troops who had deployed to the Gulf region since May in response to concerns about Iranian aggression, including its alleged sabotage of commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf. At the time of the attack the U.S. had about 5,200 troops in Iraq, mainly to train Iraqi forces and help them combat Islamic State extremists.
The breach of the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad on Tuesday was a stark demonstration that Iran can still strike at American interests despite Trump’s economic pressure campaign. It also revealed growing strains between Washington and Baghdad, raising questions about the future of the U.S. military mission there.
“They will pay a very BIG PRICE! This is not a Warning, it is a Threat. Happy New Year!” Trump tweeted Tuesday afternoon, though it was unclear whether his “threat” meant military retaliation. He thanked top Iraqi government leaders for their “rapid response upon request.”
American airstrikes on Sunday killed 25 fighters of an Iran-backed militia in Iraq, the Kataeb Hezbollah. The U.S. said those strikes were in retaliation for last week’s killing of an American contractor and the wounding of American and Iraqi troops in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base that the U.S. blamed on the militia. The American strikes angered the Iraqi government, which called them an unjustified violation of its sovereignty.
While blaming Iran for the embassy breach, Trump also called on Iraq to protect the diplomatic mission.
“Iran killed an American contractor, wounding many,” he tweeted from his estate in Florida. “We strongly responded, and always will. Now Iran is orchestrating an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. They will be held fully responsible. In addition, we expect Iraq to use its forces to protect the Embassy, and so notified!”
Even as Trump has argued for removing U.S. troops from Mideast conflicts, he also has singled out Iran as a malign influence in the region. After withdrawing the U.S. in 2018 from an international agreement that exchanged an easing of sanctions for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program, Trump ratcheted up sanctions.
Those economic penalties, including a virtual shut-off of Iranian oil exports, are aimed at forcing Iran to negotiate a broader nuclear deal. But critics say that pressure has pushed Iranian leaders into countering with a variety of military attacks in the Gulf.
Until Sunday’s U.S. airstrikes, Trump had been measured in his response to Iranian provocations. In June, he abruptly called off U.S. military strikes on Iranian targets in retaliation for the downing of an American drone.
Robert Ford, a retired U.S. diplomat who served five years in Baghdad and then became ambassador in Syria, said Iran’s allies in the Iraqi parliament may be able to harness any surge in anger among Iraqis toward the United States to force U.S. troops to leave the country. Ford said Trump miscalculated by approving Sunday’s airstrikes on Kataeb Hezbollah positions in Iraq and Syria — strikes that drew a public rebuke from the Iraqi government and seem to have triggered Tuesday’s embassy attack.
“The Americans fell into the Iranian trap,” Ford said, with airstrikes that turned some Iraqi anger toward the U.S. and away from Iran and the increasingly unpopular Iranian-backed Shiite militias.
The tense situation in Baghdad appeared to upset Trump’s vacation routine in Florida, where he is spending the holidays.
Trump spent just under an hour at his private golf club in West Palm Beach before returning to his Mar-a-Lago resort in nearby Palm Beach. He had spent nearly six hours at his golf club on each of the previous two days. Trump spoke with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi and emphasized the need for Iraq to protect Americans and their facilities in the country, said White House spokesman Hogan Gidley.
Trump is under pressure from some in Congress to take a hard-line approach to Iranian aggression, which the United States says included an unprecedented drone and missile attack on the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry in September. More recently, Iran-backed militias in Iraq have conducted numerous rocket attacks on bases hosting U.S. forces.
Sen. Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican and supporter of Trump’s Iran policy, called the embassy breach “yet another reckless escalation” by Iran.
Tuesday’s attack was carried out by members of the Iran-supported Kataeb Hezbollah militia. Dozens of militiamen and their supporters smashed a main door to the compound and set fire to a reception area, but they did not enter the main buildings.
Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, blamed Iran for the episode and faulted Trump for his “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.
“The results so far have been more threats against international commerce, emboldened and more violent proxy attacks across the Middle East, and now, the death of an American citizen in Iraq,” Menendez said, referring to the rocket attack last week.
By early evening Tuesday, the mob had retreated from the compound but set up several tents outside for an intended sit-in. Dozens of yellow flags belonging to Iran-backed Shiite militias fluttered atop the reception area and were plastered along the embassy’s concrete wall along with anti-U.S. graffiti. American Apache helicopters flew overhead and dropped flares over the area in what the U.S. military called a “show of force.”
The embassy breach was seen by some analysts as affirming their view that it is folly for the U.S. to keep forces in Iraq after having eliminated the Islamic State group’s territorial hold in the country.
A U.S. withdrawal from Iraq is also a long-term hope of Iran, noted Paul Salem, president of the Washington-based Middle East Institute.
And it’s always possible Trump would “wake up one morning and make that decision” to pull U.S. forces out of Iraq, as he announced earlier with the U.S. military presence in neighboring Syria, Salem said. Trump’s Syria decision triggered the resignation of his first defense secretary, retired Gen. Jim Mattis, but the president later amended his decision and about 1,200 U.S. troops remain in Syria.
Trump’s best weapon with Iran is the one he’s already using — the sanctions, said Salem. He and Ford said Trump would do best to keep resisting Iran’s attempt to turn the Iran-U.S. conflict into a full-blown military one. The administration should also make a point of working with the Iraqi government to deal with the militias, Ford said.
For the president, Iran’s attacks — directly and now through proxies in Iraq — have “been working that nerve,” Salem said. “Now they really have Trump’s attention.”
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Associated Press writers Matthew Lee, Darlene Superville and Sagar Meghani contributed to this report.
Six states passed laws in 2019 banning abortions once a “fetal heartbeat” is detected, which can be as early as six weeks into pregnancy. While most of these new laws were challenged in court and are temporarily blocked, the trend has continued: another 10 states introduced similar bills in 2019 and more are expected this year.
The sudden success of these measures is not an accident. They are the result of a concerted new strategy by abortion opponents, researchers have found.
Instead of focusing on religious or women’s health concerns, supporters of Georgia’s “heartbeat” bill advanced their arguments by “co-opting the legal successes of progressive movements” such as the civil rights movement and the LGBT rights movement, according to a new study, published in Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters.Throughout the testimony surrounding the bill, Georgia state lawmakers and community members argued that fetuses are a class of persons entitled to protection under the law, just like black Americans and LGBT Americans.
“If you think back to the same sex marriage debate, the state of Massachusetts recognized the franchise of marriage more expansively in Massachusetts than the minimum requirement of federal law,” argued bill sponsor and Georgia State Rep. Ed Setzler in a quote mentioned in the study. “This is walking that same tradition.”
The idea that fetuses deserve rights is not a new concept, but it was once considered a fairly fringe idea. When the first “heartbeat” bill appeared in Ohio in 2011,anti-abortion groups were dividedover whether to support it. But since President Donald Trump got elected and tipped the balance of the Supreme Court, abortion opponents have embraced the strategy.
“We were surprised at the references to particular progressive victories, including things like the passage of the 14th Amendment [and] same sex marriage,” says Dabney Evans, an associate professor at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health and co-author of the study, which maybe the first systematic analysis of the political language around early abortion bans in the United States. She and other researchers examined the testimony and legislative debate advocating for Georgia’s six-week abortion ban last March.
So-called “heartbeat” bills have been controversial in part because they seek to ban abortions at a stage when many women do not yet know they are pregnant, which reproductive rights advocates say means they ban nearly all abortions. Doctors likeDr. Jen Gunter have also notedthat, despite the frequently used “heartbeat” language, the cardiac activity measured at six weeks comes from a cluster of cells called the fetal pole rather than from something that looks like a heart.
Evans and her co-author, Subasri Narasimhan, a post-doctoral fellow at Emory’s Center for Reproductive Health Research in the Southeast, noted several examples of legislators and community members “misrepresenting medical science” in their support of the Georgia bill. But the arguments went further, the study says, explaining that the Georgia bill’s supporters were effectively “foreshadowing their legal strategy for a future claim before the U.S. Supreme Court.”
The study outlines three major arguments that the bill’s supporters used to advance their argument. They first asserted that a “heartbeat” was a sign of life and therefore personhood. Then lawmakers and community members said that if fetuses were living, they were a “vulnerable” class of people who deserve rights and protections. And finally, the study explains, the bill’s supporters said that Georgia should be allowed to expand rights and protections to this new group as a matter of states’ rights.
In the Georgia legislature, Setzler, the bill’s sponsor, cited theDred Scott v. Sanforddecision to imply that the Supreme Court had similarly ruled incorrectly inRoe v. Wade.“A 7-2 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in 1857 said Dred Scott was property, he wasn’t a person,” Setzler said during a committee hearing in March. “The same Supreme Court, by a 7-2 decision, that didn’t recognize Dred Scott, didn’t recognize the humanity of a child in the womb and it’s our opportunity to fix that.”
Another state legislator balked at the comparison and referenced the Three-Fifths compromise as a time when legislators dangerously intervened to decide who was human. But Setzler was undeterred:“Can you help me, through this bill, fully recognize them so it’s not three fifths of a person but a full person?” he asked.
The researchers called these comparisons “false equivalencies,” but added that they add a new dimension to the anti-abortion advocates’ playbook. While previous debates over abortion might have included religious language or restrictions on what providers must do in the name of women’s safety, the study found very little religious rhetoric, and concerns about women’s health were largely brought up by the bill’s opponents.
“In the recent past, anti-abortion advocates have responded by co-opting the language of women’s health and science, focusing most recently on women’s health protection,” the researchers wrote. “While not abandoning this explanatory position, current anti-abortion efforts like HB 481 appear to be layering on a protectionist argument for unborn persons.”
Pro-abortion advocates who fought Georgia’s bill — including those nowchallenging it in court— have argued that this and other heartbeat bills would actually harm precisely the communities that civil rights laws are designed to protect. An abortion ban, they say, will disproportionately hurt people of color and LGBT people in Georgia who already face barriers to accessing health care.
As is standard practice, the study does not include the names of participants it quotes, but all of the material the researchers analyzed comes frompublicly available videosof committee hearings and legislative sessions. TIME reviewed the videos to match Setzler’s quotes with those mentioned in the study.
While Evans and Narasimhan only studied the arguments around Georgia’s abortion ban, they believe their findings will be useful to researchers, community members, activists and legislators in many other states. That’s in large part because many of the “heartbeat” bills being considered around the country are based onmodel legislationfrom a group called Faith2Action, which says it provides “the largest network of pro-family organizations.”
“In public health, often people examine the outcomes of policy or legislation, but the process itself is often overlooked,” Narasimhan says. Here, the process is still ongoing as many state legislatures will reconvene this month, and Narasimhan expects other states to make similar arguments to those made in Georgia.
The study also provides a learning opportunity for voters, she added. “This is part of the democracy that we live in,” she says. “This legislative debate is public record. Our analyzing it in this systematized way is bringing forth information into the public record as well and allowing people to hear and see what these debates look like and what tactics are being used for things that will ultimately impact them.”
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has accused the Trump administration of dragging its feet in nuclear negotiations and warned that his country will soon show a new strategic weapon to the world as it bolsters its nuclear deterrent in face of “gangster-like” U.S. sanctions and pressure.
The North’s state media said Wednesday that Kim made the comments during a four-day ruling party conference held through Tuesday in the capital Pyongyang, where he declared that the North will never give up its security for economic benefits in the face of what he described as increasing U.S. hostility and nuclear threats.
Kim’s comments came after a monthslong standoff between Washington and Pyongyang over disagreements involving disarmament steps and the removal of sanctions imposed on the North.
“He said that we will never allow the impudent U.S. to abuse the DPRK-U.S. dialogue for meeting its sordid aim but will shift to a shocking actual action to make it pay for the pains sustained by our people so far and for the development so far restrained,” the Korean Central News Agency said, referring to the North by its formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Kim added that “if the U.S. persists in its hostile policy toward the DPRK, there will never be the denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and the DPRK will steadily develop necessary and prerequisite strategic weapons for the security of the state until the U.S. rolls back its hostile policy,” according to the agency.
However, Kim showed no clear indication of abandoning negotiations with the United States entirely or restarting tests of nuclear bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles he had suspended under a self-imposed moratorium in 2018.
He did issue a warning that there would be no grounds for the North to get “unilaterally bound” to the moratorium any longer, criticizing the United States for continuing its joint military exercises with rival South Korea and also providing the South with advanced weaponry.
“In the past two years alone when the DPRK took preemptive and crucial measures of halting its nuclear test and ICBM test-fire and shutting down the nuclear-test ground for building confidence between the DPRK and the U.S., the U.S., far from responding to the former with appropriate measures, conducted tens of big and small joint military drills which its president personally promised to stop and threatened the former militarily through the shipment of ultra-modern warfare equipment into (South Korea),” the KCNA quoted Kim as saying.
Some experts say North Korea, which has always been sensitive about electoral changes in U.S. government, will avoid engaging in serious negotiations for a deal with Washington in coming months as it watches how Trump’s impending impeachment trial over his dealings with Ukraine affects U.S. presidential elections in November.
Kim and President Donald Trump have met three times since June 2018, but negotiations have faltered since the collapse of their second summit last February in Vietnam, where the Americans rejected North Korean demands for broad sanctions relief in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.
Kim’s speech followed months of intensified testing activity and belligerent statements issued by various North Korean officials, raising concerns that he was reverting to confrontation and preparing to do something provocative if Washington doesn’t back down and relieve sanctions.
The North announced in December that it performed two “crucial” tests at its long-range rocket launch site that would further strengthen its nuclear deterrent, prompting speculation that it was developing an ICBM or planning a satellite launch that would provide an opportunity to advance its missile technologies.
North Korea also last year ended a 17-month pause in ballistic activity by testing a slew of solid-fuel weapons that potentially expanded its capabilities to strike targets in South Korea and Japan, including U.S. military bases there. It also threatened to lift a self-imposed moratorium on the testing of nuclear bombs and ICBMs.
(WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.) — The first phase of a U.S.-China trade agreement will be inked at the White House in mid-January, President Donald Trump announced Tuesday, adding that he will visit Beijing at a later date to open another round of talks aimed at resolving other sticking points in the relationship.
The so-called “Phase One” agreement is smaller than the comprehensive deal Trump had hoped for and leaves many of the thorniest issues between the two countries for future talks. Few economists expect any resolution of “Phase Two” before the presidential election in 2020.
And the two sides have yet to release detailed documentation of the pact, making it difficult to evaluate.
Trump said high-level Chinese government officials will attend the signing on Jan. 15 of “our very large and comprehensive Phase One Trade Deal with China.”
“At a later date I will be going to Beijing where talks will begin on Phase Two!” Trump said in his tweet. He did not announce a date for the visit.
China has agreed to boost its U.S. goods imports by $200 billion over two years, the U.S. Trade Representative said Dec. 13 when the deal was announced. That includes increased purchases of soybeans and other farm goods that would reach $40 billion a year.
China has also agreed to stop forcing U.S. companies to hand over technology and trade secrets as a condition for gaining access to China’s vast market, demands that had frustrated many U.S. businesses.
In return, the Trump administration dropped plans to impose tariffs on $160 billion of Chinese goods, including many consumer items such as smartphones, toys and clothes. The U.S. also cut tariffs on another $112 billion of Chinese goods from 15% to 7.5%.
Many analysts argue that the results are fairly limited given the costs of the administration’s 17-month trade war against China. U.S. farm exports to China fell in 2018 to about one-third of the peak reached six years earlier, though they have since started to recover.
Import taxes remain on about half of what the U.S. buys from China, or about $250 billion of imports. Those tariffs have raised the cost of chemicals, electrical components and other inputs for U.S. companies. American firms have cut back on investment in machinery and other equipment, slowing the economy’s growth this year.
A study last week by economists at the Federal Reserve found that all of the Trump administration’s tariffs, including those on steel and aluminum as well as on Chinese imports, have cost manufacturers jobs and raised their costs. That’s mostly because of retaliatory tariffs imposed by China and other trading partners.
Many experts in both the U.S. and China are skeptical that U.S. farm exports can reach $40 billion. The most the U.S. has ever exported to China before has been $26 billion. China has not confirmed the $40 billion figure.
Still, the agreement has helped calm concerns in financial markets and among many U.S. businesses that the trade war with China would escalate and potentially lead to a recession. The approval by the Democratic-led House of the Trump administration’s revamp of the NAFTA agreement has also reduced uncertainty around global trade.
Since the U.S.-China pact was first announced in October, the stock market has risen steadily and is on track to finish the year with its biggest gain since 2013. Most analysts now forecast that the economy will grow at a steady if modest pace in 2020, extending the current record-long expansion.
The Phase 1 deal has left some major issues unresolved, notably complaints that Beijing unfairly subsidizes its own companies to give them a competitive advantage in world markets.
The Trump administration argues — and independent analysts agree — that China uses the subsidies in an effort to gain an advantage in cutting-edge fields such as driver-less cars, robotics and artificial intelligence.
Another sticking point in future talks will likely involve rules around data flows, with China looking to require more foreign companies to keep data they use in China as opposed to stored overseas.
“It’s a very toxic brew and I don’t know that we’re really going to see much progress on it,” said Mary Lovely, a trade economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
(NEW YORK) — After a year of nirvana, investors may need to get ready for something a little more normal.
Markets are coming off a fabulous 2019, where stocks and bonds around the world climbed in concert. But for the next year — and decade, in fact — Wall Street is telling investors to set their expectations considerably lower.
It’s not calling for another crash like the U.S. stock market suffered just over a decade ago. Or for another run like the last 10 years, where the S&P 500 returned more than 13% on an annualized basis. A gain less than half of that may be more likely, both for next year and annually for the coming decade.
“People need to have a more realistic expectation of what returns are going to be,” said Greg Davis, chief investment officer at Vanguard. “That means investors who are saving for retirement or for college education will likely need to set aside more, because returns won’t be as generous as what we’ve seen over the last decade.”
It’s not because Wall Street sees the U.S. economy falling into a recession, at least not in 2020, even though that’s been a recurring fear for much of the last decade. Much of Wall Street expects the economy to chug modestly higher next year.
Instead, it’s a simple matter of math. Stocks and bonds don’t have as much room to rise after their stellar 2019, analysts say. Starting points matter, and investments began this year at a low point after recession worries pounded markets in December 2018. U.S. stocks will start 2020, meanwhile, close to their highest levels ever.
Wall Street has been busy trying to rein in expectations.
Vanguard forecasts U.S. stocks will return 3.5% to 5.5% annually over the coming decade. Even toward the top end of that range, it’s only half what the market has returned historically. Foreign stocks might offer a bit more, at roughly 7.5% annually, but U.S. bonds look set to offer only 2% or 3% annually over the next decade, according to Vanguard.
Of course, any prediction about where investments will end up is only a guess, no matter how educated. Many on Wall Street came into this year expecting only modest returns given all the worries about interest rates and a possible recession. Now, the S&P 500 is about to close out its second-best year of the last two decades.
But for bonds, the reasons for lower expected returns are easy to see. Bonds pay much less in interest than one or 10 years ago. The 10-year Treasury now has a yield of 1.92 %, versus 2.82% a year ago and 3.54 % a decade ago. For bonds to return more than their yields, rates will need to drop even lower.
Some banks along Wall Street have relatively healthy expectations for stocks in 2020 — but few if any are calling for a repeat of 2019’s surge for the S&P 500, which was at 28.9% as of Tuesday’s close. Bank of America Merrill Lynch sees the index ending 2020 at 3,300, which would be a 2.2% rise, for example. Goldman Sachs is more bullish, with a target of 3,400, but that would still be less than a fifth of this year’s gain.
Stocks are more expensive than a year ago on a host of different measures. One of the most commonly used is how a stock’s price compares to its profit over the preceding year. By that measure, the S&P 500 is trading at 21.1 times its earnings. That’s more expensive than at the start of the year, when it was at 16.5, or its average over the last two decades of 17.7, according to FactSet.
Low interest rates should help keep this price-earnings valuation high, analysts say. So will a U.S.-China trade conflict that’s hopefully no longer ramping higher, analysts say. The diminished threat of a recession should keep investors willing to pay relatively high price-earnings ratios. But the threat of policy changes in Washington, D.C., could act as a counterweight.
“There is a lot of nervousness around the elections,” said Lisa Thompson, equity portfolio manager at Capital Group. “The elections could provide some interesting opportunities for investors, particularly in the first half of the year.”
She’s the type of investor who sees volatile markets, where prices are swinging higher and lower, as “interesting opportunities” because she can use them to buy stocks she likes at lower prices.
President Trump has ushered in lower taxes and lighter regulations for businesses, which investors have seen as incontrovertible wins for investments regardless of their politics. Democrats running to unseat him, meanwhile, could reverse that momentum and target some industries in particular, such as health care. That could lead to big swings for stocks early in 2020 as Democratic candidates try to stand out in a winnowing field.
Even if the worst-case scenario were to come to pass, though, and the economy were to fall into a recession, many professional investors say they aren’t worried about a crash like 2007-09 where stock investors lost more than half their savings. Investors have remained hesitant to plow their money into stocks, even after this decade-long run, so fund managers say they don’t see grossly overvalued markets as there were just over a decade ago.
“When the cycle does end, we don’t see bubbles out there like in 2008, 2009,” said Saira Malik, head of equities at Nuveen. “I think people are nervous.”
DETROIT (AP) — Sorry, Latin teachers: Quid pro quo has got to go.
The centuries-old Latin phrase, which means an exchange of favors, leads a Michigan university’s 45th annual “List of Words Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness.”
Quid pro quo got new life during the impeachment of President Donald Trump. He repeatedly declared there was no “quid pro quo” with Ukraine over U.S. military aid to that country and an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden’s son.
“No quid pro quo was offered during the creation of this meticulously curated list of words,” said Rodney Hanley, president of Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie.
The school each year invites the public to nominate words and phrases that seem tired or annoying through everyday speech, news coverage and more. The latest list has more than a dozen, including “artisanal,” “influencer,” “living my best life” and “chirp.”
There’s “jelly,” short for jealous, and “totes,” a nod to totally. And in a baby boomer revolt, it’s apparently time to scratch “OK, boomer.”
“Boomers may remember, however, that generational tension is always present,” university wordsmiths said. “In fact, it was the boomers who gave us the declaration, ‘Don’t trust anyone over 30!’”
Finally, the list has “vibe/vibe check,” “mouthfeel,” “I mean,” “literally” and “curated.”
There now are more than 1,000 banned words or phrases in the Lake Superior archive. The late W.T. Rabe, who was public relations director, and faculty came up with the first list at a New Year’s Eve party in 1975.
“Since then, the list has consisted entirely of nominations received from around the world throughout the year,” the school said.
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The past year’s population growth rate in the United States was the slowest in a century due to declining births, increasing deaths and the slowdown of international migration, according to figures released Monday by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The U.S. grew from 2018 to 2019 by almost a half percent, or about 1.5 million people, with the population standing at 328 million this year, according to population estimates.
That’s the slowest growth rate in the U.S. since 1917 to 1918, when the nation was involved in World War I, said William Frey, a senior fellow at The Brookings Institution.
For the first time in decades, natural increase — the number of births minus the number of deaths — was less than 1 million in the U.S. due to an aging population of Baby Boomers, whose oldest members entered their 70s within the past several years. As the large Boomer population continues to age, this trend is going to continue.
“Some of these things are locked into place. With the aging of the population, as the Baby Boomers move into their 70s and 80s, there are going to be higher numbers of deaths,” Frey said. “That means proportionately fewer women of child bearing age, so even if they have children, it’s still going to be less.”
Four states had a natural decrease, where deaths outnumbered births: West Virginia, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.
For the first time this decade, Puerto Rico had a population increase. The island, battered by economic stagnation and Hurricane Maria in the past several years, increased by 340 people between 2018 and 2019, with people moving to the island offsetting natural decrease.
International migration to the U.S. decreased to 595,000 people from 2018 to 2019, dropping from as many as 1 million international migrants in 2016, according to the population estimates. Immigration restrictions by the Trump administration combined with a perception that the U.S. has fewer economic opportunities than it did before the recession a decade ago contributed to the decline, Frey said.
“Immigration is a wildcard in that it is something we can do something about,” Frey said. “Immigrants tend to be younger and have children, and they can make a population younger.”
Ten states had population declines in the past year. They included New York, which lost almost 77,000 people; Illinois, which lost almost 51,000 residents; West Virginia, which lost more than 12,000 people; Louisiana, which lost almost 11,000 residents; and Connecticut, which lost 6,200 people. Mississippi, Hawaii, New Jersey, Alaska and Vermont each lost less than 5,000 residents.
Regionally, the South saw the greatest population growth from 2018 to 2019, increasing 0.8% due to natural increase and people moving from others parts of the country. The Northeast had a population decrease for the first time this decade, declining 0.1% due primarily to people moving away.
Monday’s population estimates also offer a preview of which states may gain or lose congressional seats from next year’s apportionment process using figures from the 2020 Census. The process divvies up the 435 U.S. House seats among the 50 states based on population.
Several forecasts predict California, the nation’s most populous state with 39.5 million residents, losing a seat for the first time. Texas, the nation’s second most-populous state with 28.9 million residents, is expected to gain as many as three seats, the most of any state.
According to Frey’s projections on Monday, Florida stands to gain two seats, while Arizona, Colorado, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon each stand to gain a seat. Besides, California, other states that will likely lose a seat are Alabama, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and West Virginia.
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City’s counterterrorism czar expects Times Square to be “the safest place on the planet Earth” on New Year’s Eve.
Thousands of police officers will be on duty for Tuesday night’s festivities, along with specialized units armed with long guns, bomb-sniffing dogs and other measures.
For the first time, police drones are expected to keep watch over the big, confetti-filled celebration — a year late after rain grounded the department’s unmanned eye-in-the-sky last year.
This year’s forecast calls for some clouds, but no rain and none of the bitter cold that iced out spectators two years ago.
The NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism, John Miller, said stacking various security tools and techniques gives police “multiple chances to catch something coming through.”
“Times Square is probably going to be the safest place on the planet Earth on New Year’s Eve because nobody else puts that kind of effort into an event like this,” Miller said.
Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said there are no specific, credible threats to the event, which brings hundreds of thousands of people to midtown Manhattan and attracts millions of TV viewers. Post Malone, BTS and Alanis Morissette are scheduled to perform on stages in the heart of Times Square.
Shea said spectators should feel safe but encouraged them to remain vigilant and alert an officer or call a police hotline if they feel something is amiss.
“This is going to be one of the most well-policed, well-protected celebrations in the entire world and we’ll have another safe and enjoyable New Year’s Eve,” Shea said.
Streets in and around Times Square will be closed to car traffic hours before the ball drops and police cars and sand-filled sanitation trucks will be positioned to stop vehicles from driving into the crowd.
Everyone showing up for the confetti-filled festivities should expect to be wanded with metal detectors before being ushered to one of 65 viewing pens set up around Times Square to prevent overcrowding.
Backpacks, chairs and coolers are banned, as well as personal drones. And don’t think about popping champagne or lifting a Maddog 20/20 to ring in 2020. The NYPD says alcohol is strictly prohibited.
There aren’t any bathrooms, and anyone leaving won’t be allowed back to their original spot.
Some revelers are sure to end up featured on Ryan Seacrest’s “Rockin’ Eve” broadcast, especially if they’re wearing those kitschy “2020” glasses, but there’s a good chance everyone in Times Square will be caught on one camera or another.
Police will be monitoring more than 1,000 security cameras, along with feeds from police helicopters and the drones.
Several of the NYPD’s drones are equipped with thermal-imaging and 3D-mapping capabilities and strong camera lenses that can greatly magnify a subject.
Since last year’s New Year’s Eve rainout, they’ve been used at other big events in the city, such as the Women’s March and St. Patrick’s Day Parade.
Kaitlyn Kong thought she had been punched hard in the abdomen as she stood among thousands of people in downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, as the new year arrived a year ago. Her best friend, standing next to her, thought Kong had been stabbed as blood poured from a wound.
It wasn’t until Kong underwent an X-ray that she and hospital medical staff realized she had been shot after someone fired a gun into the air to celebrate the new year.
Although rare, people being shot by celebratory gunfire on New Year’s Eve and other holidays like the Fourth of July does happen, prompting law enforcement authorities to caution people that bullets fired into the air can endanger people’s lives.
Raleigh police Lt. Mario Campos said the city receives a small number of calls about gunfire during New Year’s Eve celebrations in the city but would not discuss what happened to Kong, saying it remains under investigation. Raleigh police said at the time that the shot could have been fired from several blocks away.
“Our message has always been not to do it because it’s dangerous and illegal in our city,” Campos said. “Bullets can travel a long distance. Any gunfire discharged into the air has to come down and land on something.”
A 9-year-old boy in Cleveland was wounded by a stray bullet last New Year’s Eve as he watched television inside his family’s home. The boy’s mother declined to be interviewed. Another 9-year-old boy in Atlanta was shot in the abdomen by celebratory gunfire early Jan. 1 while he and his family set off fireworks.
A 4-year-old boy was killed in 2010 in Decatur, Georgia, when an AK-47 round penetrated a church roof and struck him in the head as he sat next to his parents during a New Year’s Eve service.
Kong, then a senior at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, headed to downtown Raleigh with her friend for the city’s family-friendly First Night celebration. Kong, 23, said she was pointing her phone upward to capture video of fireworks as confetti floated down on the crowd when it suddenly felt as if she had been punched “super hard,” prompting her to clutch her friend’s shoulder, not able to speak.
Bystanders helped move her out of the crowd, and a police officer called for an ambulance while pressure was applied to the wound.
“I didn’t think it was that serious, but I was hurting a lot,” Kong said.
It turned out to be quite serious. The bullet entered her chest and penetrated a lung, her diaphragm and stomach before lodging near her hip. Kong underwent a four-hour surgery. She recovered enough to return to classes days later with some assistance. She graduated in May with a degree in environmental studies.
“If it had been any higher, it could have done some permanent damage, to say the least,” Kong said.
APThis photo provided by Allyson Cole shows Kaitlyn Kong at the First Night Raleigh celebration in Raleigh, N.C., on Dec. 31, 2018.
A 2004 study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said people struck by gunfire shot into the air are most likely to be hit in the head.
That’s what happened to Texas state Rep. Armando Martinez as he celebrated the new year at a friend’s home in Weslaco, Texas, on Jan. 1, 2017. He and his family had waited in the friend’s garage until gunfire had subsided to let off fireworks, he said.
Martinez told NBC News that his wife had just wished him a happy new year with a kiss when a .223-caliber round fell from the sky and penetrated his skull. It felt, he said, as if he had been “hit by a sledgehammer.”
“I was extremely lucky,” Martinez said. “My surgeons said if it went a couple more millimeters deeper, I may not have been able to have this conversation right now.”
Carl Leisinger III, a retired New Jersey State Police major and supervisor of the agency’s forensics laboratory, said a 9 mm round like the one that wounded Kong would typically leave the barrel at around 1,100 feet per second and then fall down at 200 to 300 feet per second. How far a bullet fired into the air travels sideways will depend on wind and other factors, he said.
“She’s very fortunate she didn’t die,” Leisinger said.
Kong said she plans to celebrate somewhere this New Year’s Eve, but not in downtown Raleigh.
“You can’t let it stop you from living your life,” she said. “Maybe I’m that kind of person.”
BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — The newly appointed chief of Colombia’s army says he is willing to meet with soccer star Juan Fernando Quintero to discuss his father’s disappearance more than 20 years ago.
Gen. Eduardo Zapateiro said during a military ceremony on Monday he “shares the pain” of Quintero’s family and added that he is willing to meet with the River Plate and Colombian national team midfielder to discuss his father’s final days.
Jaime Quintero was last seen in 1995 at an army base in the city of Carepa, which was then commanded by Zapateiro. According to Quintero’s relatives, Jaime was carrying out his compulsory military service, and disappeared after falling out with Zapateiro, who wanted to transfer him to another base due to his unruly behavior.
Following Zapateiro’s appointment as army chief last week, Quintero’s relatives gave interviews on local media in which they complained about the general’s promotion, saying he still had not answered questions on Jaime’s disappearance. Juan Fernando Quintero, who was 2 years old when his father went missing, took to Twitter on Monday morning, asking for a meeting with the general and saying that he had the right to know the truth about his father.
Zapateiro denies involvement in the disappearance of Jaime Quintero, and in a statement published yesterday the military cited investigations conducted by local courts, which blamed rebel groups for the crime.
According to Colombia’s National Center for Historical Memory, more than 80,000 people were forcibly disappeared in Colombia between 1958 and 2015, as the military and rebel groups fought for control of rural areas.
(SALT LAKE CITY) — When Nalini Nadkarni was a kid, she’d run home from school, climb into one of the eight maple trees in her parents’ backyard and spend an afternoon there with an apple and a book.
That time in the treetops set the tone for the rest of her life: She’s now a forest ecologist at the University of Utah who’s dedicated her career to studying rain forest canopies.
She’s also always looking for new ways to get people interested in science, from fashion made with nature imagery to science lectures at the state prison.
“I’ve tried for years and years to bring the science I do and understand to people outside of academia,” she said.
Her childhood memories made her particularly interested in reaching children. After her own 6-year-old daughter asked for a Barbie, Nadkarni decided to re-fashion the iconic dolls as a scientist-explorer in rubber boots rather than high heels.
“Lots of girls, and some little boys, love Barbie,” Nadkarni said. “It’s almost aspirational, they want to be Barbie.”
That was about 15 years ago. Nadkarni said Barbie-maker Mattel wasn’t interested in the idea then, so she decided to redo dolls herself, using gear she collected.
She scoured thrift stores and eBay for Barbie dolls and enlisted help from volunteer seamstresses. She called the creation “Treetop Barbie” and began selling them at cost on her website.
Last year, Mattel began working with National Geographic to create a new line of scientist Barbies. Nadkarni has a longstanding relationship with National Geographic, so when the non-profit reached out for help, she quickly agreed.
Nadkarni joined a team of female scientists advising Mattel as it made the line of dolls that includes a marine biologist, astrophysicist, photojournalist, conservationist and entomologist.
Sales began in the summer. As a thank-you, Mattel sent Nadkarni a one-of-a-kind doll with tree-climbing gear and full dark hair woven with strands of white that made the doll resemble the scientist.
For Nadkarni, the company’s investment in the dolls reflects a broader cultural shift toward recognizing women in science, math and technology that could spark an appreciation for science even among kids who don’t end up entering the field.
Mattel said in a statement that the purpose of Barbie dolls for the last 60 years has been to “inspire the limitless potential in every girl,” pointing out that Barbie was portrayed in other science and math-based careers long before the new line, including as an astronaut in 1965.
“Barbie allows girls to try on new roles through storytelling by showing them they can be anything and, through our partnership with National Geographic, girls can now imagine themselves as an astrophysicist, polar marine biologist and more,” said Lisa McKnight, general manger of Barbie Dolls for Mattel.
It’s not known, though, how career Barbies might affect kids’ aspirations. A 2014 study by Oregon State University found that girls who played with the dolls told researchers they could do fewer jobs than boys — even if they played with a doctor Barbie.
The study didn’t examine the girls’ reasoning, but researchers speculated that Barbie might be an inherently sexualized doll, said associate professor Aurora Sherman, who worked on the paper.
Putting the same doll in a professional outfit likely won’t do much to change perceptions about what women can do, she said. But it might help to use it as a starting point for conversations about women in science and math.
“Its really going to depend on how that doll is experienced, and what adults are doing to drive home that message,” she said.
Barbie’s icon status gives the doll cultural sway, and the new dolls have the potential to normalize the idea of women in science and engineering, said Kris Macomber, a sociology professor at Meredith College in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Barbie sales have been increasing as the becomes available in different body shapes and careers, but there’s only so much a toy can do to change broader attitudes about what professions chosen by girls as they grow up, she said.
“Barbie does not hold all the power to change culture,” Macomber said. “But it does contribute.”
(BEIRUT) — Former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn, who is awaiting trial in Japan on charges of financial misconduct, has arrived in Beirut, a close friend said Monday. He apparently jumped bail.
It was not clear how Ghosn, who is of Lebanese origins and holds French and Lebanese passports, left Japan where he was under surveillance and is expected to face trial in April 2020.
Ricardo Karam, a television host and friend of Ghosn who interviewed him several times, told The Associated Press Ghosn arrived in Lebanon Monday morning..
“He is home,” Karam told the AP in a message. “It’s a big adventure.”
Karam declined to elaborate. Local media first reported Ghosn arrived in Lebanon, but didn’t offer details.
There was no immediate comment from Japan or from Lebanese officials.
Ghosn, 65, has been on bail in Tokyo since April and is facing charges of hiding income and financial misconduct. He has denied the charges. He had been under strict bail conditions in Japan after spending more than 120 days in detention.
Lebanon-based paper Al-Joumhouriya said Ghosn arrived in Beirut from Turkey aboard a private jet. AP has not been able to confirm those details or how he was able to leave Tokyo.
A house known to belong to Ghosn in a Beirut neighborhood had security guards outside with two lights on Monday night, but no sign otherwise of anyone inside. The guards denied he was inside, although one said he was in Lebanon without saying how he knew that.
Ghosn was arrested last year in Japan and has been charged with under-reporting his compensation and other financial misconduct. He denies wrongdoing and was out on bail. His trial had not started.
Ghosn’s lawyers say the allegations are a result of trumped-up charges rooted in a conspiracy among Nissan, government officials and prosecutors to oust Ghosn to prevent a fuller merger with Nissan’s alliance partner, Renault SA of France.
Ghosn, one of the auto industry’s biggest stars before his downfall, is credited with leading Nissan from near-bankruptcy to lucrative growth.
Even as he fell from grace internationally, Ghosn was still treated as a hero in Lebanon, where many had long held hopes he would one day play a bigger role in politics, or help rescue its failing economy.
Politicians across the board mobilized in his defense after his arrest in Japan, with some suggesting his detention may be part of a political or business-motivated conspiracy.
The Lebanese took special pride in the auto industry icon, who holds a Lebanese passport, speaks fluent Arabic and visited regularly. Born in Brazil, where his Lebanese grandfather had sought his fortune, Ghosn grew up in Beirut, where he spent part of his childhood at a Jesuit school.
His wife, Carole Nahas, is also of Lebanese heritage. In November,Ghosn was allowed to talk to his wife after an eight-month ban on such contact while he awaits trial.
Japanese Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Keisuke Suzuki visited Beirut earlier this month where he met with the Lebanese president and foreign minister.
CHICAGO (AP) — The Twitter user goes by Gigi, though sometimes Sophia, Emma or Leona. The occupation is listed at various times as teacher, historian, documentary writer and model. There’s been speculation about whether this person is really a woman — or even human. But bot or not, the account has gotten the attention of the president and his Twitter followers.
Just before midnight Friday, Trump retweeted a tweet from the user, then going by Surfermom77, that included the alleged name of the anonymous whistleblower whose complaint ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment by the House. Critics worry the move could invite retaliation against the individual.
The account highlights how the internet has given everyday Americans — and those posing as them — a direct line of communication to the president, even if people don’t always know who they are.
While anonymity on Twitter allows people in oppressive communities to speak online freely, it can also allow people to harass others or spread bogus claims without accountability. When those tweets get to the president, they can quickly be retweeted to millions.
Twitter’s rules permit bots and anonymous users as long as they refrain from online manipulation, racist imagery, violent threats or impersonation.
“It’s certainly something we know bad actors exploit as well,” said Cindy Otis, a disinformation expert and former CIA analyst. “The platforms that allow that policy need to be more diligent in making sure it’s not being exploited.”
For months Trump supporters and some conservative news outlets have published what they claim to be details about the whistleblower, including the person’s name and career history. Trump’s retweet marks the first time he has directly sent the alleged name into the Twitter feed of his 68 million followers.
The actual whistleblower’s identity has not been released or verified. The Associated Press typically does not reveal the identity of whistleblowers.
Social media analysts immediately raised questions about Surfermom77, noting that the account bore the hallmarks of a social media bot, an automated program that sometimes spread information online while appearing like a human.
Surfermom77 tweets more than most human users — 72 times a day on average for more than six years. Another clue? Profile photos were taken from stock photography galleries.
Following Trump’s retweet, the name on the profile changed from Sophia to Emma, then Leona and then to Gigi. The account’s handle changed, too, from Surfermom77 to LovelyGigi33. Whoever’s behind the account posted a new profile picture, replacing a stock photo of a woman in business attire with a photo of stilettos.
The user is a self-described Trump supporter and a California resident, according to the Twitter profile.
Attempts to reach the account user were unsuccessful Monday. The account’s direct messaging function was deactivated, and the profile had no email or phone contact. Phone calls to numbers matching the account’s original name and listed hometown weren’t returned. Twitter declined to speak publicly about the company’s efforts to verify the user’s identity, citing privacy and security concerns.
While Facebook has a policy banning posts that name the alleged whistleblower, Twitter does not. On Monday the account was briefly suspended by Twitter, only to be reinstated hours later. Twitter said the suspension was a mistake. On Saturday, the company had said the account hadn’t broken any of its policies.
“Twitter is extremely hesitant to suspend accounts even when they display very suspicious behavior,” said Nir Hauser, chief technology officer at VineSight, a technology firm that tracks online misinformation. “Apparently it’s a really high bar of suspicious activity.”
Proving an account is a bot or being used to manipulate other users can be difficult for online watchdogs. Otis said the rate with which Surfermom77 changed the account name and profile pictures suggest the account is run by a real person.
Facebook has a stricter policy, intended to avoid such scenarios, that requires users to provide a full name in order to create an account.
The whistleblower filed a complaint in August about one of Trump’s telephone conversations with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other dealings with the Eastern European nation. The complaint prompted House Democrats to launch a probe that ended with Trump’s impeachment earlier this month.
Trump insists he did nothing wrong in his dealings with Ukraine and has asserted that the whistleblower made up the complaint, despite its corroboration by other officials.
(TENGGULUN, Indonesia) — The young Balinese widow stared across the courthouse at the man who had murdered her husband and 201 others, and longed to see him suffer.
Ever since that horrible night, when she realized amid the blackened body parts and smoldering debris that the father of her two little boys was dead, Ni Luh Erniati’s rage at the men behind the bombing had remained locked deep inside. But now, it came roaring out.
She tried to scramble over a table blocking her path to hit Amrozi Nurhasyim, whose unrepentant grin throughout the trial over Indonesia’s worst terrorist attack had earned him the nickname “The Smiling Assassin.” And then she felt hands pulling her back, halting her bid for vengeance.
What would happen a decade later between her and Amrozi’s brother — the man who had taught Amrozi how to make bombs — was unthinkable in that moment. Unthinkable that they would come face to face in a delicate attempt at reconciliation. Unthinkable that they would try to find the humanity in each other.
But inside that courthouse, and for years to come, Erniati wanted everyone associated with the 2002 bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali to be executed by firing squad. And she wanted to be the one to pull the trigger.
Her words to a reporter in 2012 were blunt: “I hate them,” she said.
“I always will.”
___
The practice of reconciling former terrorists and victims is rare and, to some, abhorrent. Yet it is gaining attention in Indonesia, the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation. While Islam in Indonesia is largely moderate, the country has battled Islamic militants since the Bali attacks. Last year, two families carried out suicide bombings at churches, and in October, a militant stabbed Indonesia’s top security minister.
The attacks have left Indonesia hunting for ways to prevent terrorism — and to heal from it.
Indonesia embraces a so-called soft approach to counterterrorism, where officials recruit former militants to try to change extremist attitudes in their communities, and jailed terrorists go through deradicalization programs. Last year, Indonesia’s government brought together dozens of former Islamic militants and victims for what was billed as a reconciliation conference. The results were mixed.
More quietly, over the past several years, there has been a growing alliance of former terrorists and victims brought together under the guidance of a group founded by the victim of a terrorist attack. Since 2013, 49 victims and six former extremists have reconciled through the Alliance for a Peaceful Indonesia, or AIDA. They have visited around 150 schools in parts of Indonesia known as hotbeds for extremist recruiters, sharing their stories with more than 8,000 students.
The hope is that if former terrorists and victims can learn to see each other as human, they can stop the cycle of vengeance. While reconciliation efforts have been launched after several large-scale conflicts — such as South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission — few attempts have been made in cases of terrorism.
“It’s difficult for everyone to go through this,” says Gema Varona, a Spanish researcher who studied reconciliation meetings between militants from the Basque separatist group ETA and their victims. “But it makes sense, because in terrorism, victims have been objectified. … So we need that empathy.”
Victims and perpetrators can learn to understand each other without legitimizing the violence, says Brunilda Pali, a board member of the European Forum for Restorative Justice.
“Understanding can help a lot,” she says. “But it doesn’t mean forgiving.”
For Erniati, there was nothing at first to understand. How could she possibly understand something so horrific?
And why would she want to?
___
Firdia Lisnawati–APPhotos of Gede Badrawan and his family are seen as Ni Luh Erniati and her son go through family albums in Bali, Indonesia on Thursday, April 25, 2019. Gede, Erniati’s late husband, was one of 202 people killed in the 2002 bombings in Bali’s nightclub district.
Erniati doesn’t remember the first time she spotted the handsome, quiet waiter with the wavy black hair. But she remembers how much she and her fellow waitresses at the Sari Club idolized him.
Unlike the other men who worked at the popular nightclub, Gede Badrawan didn’t flirt with customers. He only had eyes for Erniati.
Gede never asked her on a proper first date. They just fell into a relationship, and then into love, and a year later, into marriage. Two sons followed.
As a father, Gede was kind and doting. He took the family to play soccer at Kuta Beach, and to their favorite park. That park is the source of one of Erniati’s most precious memories: of her younger son Made taking his first steps and starting to tumble, and of Gede catching him.
Around 11 p.m. on Oct. 12, 2002, Erniati had just settled into bed when a blast shattered the stillness.
She thought it was an electrical explosion. She didn’t know that a suicide bomber had detonated himself inside Paddy’s Pub, across the street from the Sari Club. She didn’t know that seconds later, a van carrying a massive bomb and parked in front of the club had exploded. She wouldn’t know until a witness told her much later that Gede had been standing near the van.
Erniati overheard people outside talking about bombs and body parts. She told herself Gede would return home after his shift ended.
When he didn’t, she grew frantic. She wanted to search for him, but couldn’t leave their sons — aged 9 and 1 — home alone. So Erniati, a Hindu, prayed for Gede until a friend arrived to watch the boys. As she sped toward the club on another friend’s motorbike, she reassured herself: “My husband is alive. My husband is alive.”
When she got there, she knew instantly that he was not. The club was a wasteland. At the hospital, she saw bodies so mangled they were unrecognizable.
The bombings had been carried out by al-Qaida-affiliated Islamic militant group Jemaah Islamiyah. The attack killed mostly Western tourists.
It took four months before Erniati received confirmation that her husband was among the dead. When the forensics officer finally called, Erniati could manage only one question: “Exactly what condition is my husband’s body in?”
“We probably identified about 70% of him,” the officer replied. They had not found his head or his forearms or his abdomen or anything from the knees down.
For more than a year, Erniati continued to make Gede’s breakfast, carefully laying the food on the table every morning, and throwing it away every night. He had been stolen from her so suddenly that part of her still felt he would come home.
Her tears made Made cry, so she shut herself in the bathroom to weep alone. She pretended for years that his father was simply away for work. He was 9 before she told him the truth.
In the midst of her agony, she searched for answers. But there were none to be found.
___
More than 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) from Bali, on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, Ali Fauzi had received word of the carnage.
He was, he says, as stunned as the rest of the world. Though he was one of Jemaah Islamiyah’s most skilled bombmakers, and though three of his brothers had helped orchestrate the attack, Fauzi says he knew nothing of the plot.
He was raised in the east Java village of Tenggulun, which would become an epicenter of Islamic extremism. His radicalization, he says, was heavily influenced by his big brother Ali Ghufron. Ghufron, who often went by the alias Mukhlas, studied at an Islamic boarding school under the spiritual leader of Jemaah Islamiyah.
In 1994, the group sent Fauzi to a military-style camp in the Philippines, where he honed his knowledge of explosives. He became Jemaah Islamiyah’s chief bomb instructor, teaching countless men — including his brothers — how to construct lethal devices.
Everything unraveled after the bombs erupted in Bali.
His brothers Mukhlas, Amrozi and Ali Imron were charged with the attack, along with several other members of Jemaah Islamiyah. Fauzi found himself on a police wanted list and fled to the Philippines, where he says he was jailed for three years on a charge of illegally joining the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. He was then extradited to Indonesia.
Fauzi was never charged with the bombings, but he spent months in police detention in Jakarta. It was there that the kindness of a police officer who helped get him medical treatment began to chip away at his convictions about people he had long seen as the enemy.
Yet it wasn’t until a night years later, when he found himself staring at a Dutch man named Max Boon, that Fauzi truly understood the horror of his life’s work.
___
Boon was sitting in his hotel room, waiting for a former terrorist to knock on his door. He was terrified.
Four years earlier, a suicide bomber had detonated his devices in the Jakarta JW Marriott lobby lounge, where then-33-year-old Boon was attending a business breakfast. Police suspected the attack had been orchestrated by Jemaah Islamiyah.
Boon suffered burns to over 70 percent of his body. Doctors amputated most of his left leg and his lower right leg.
Yet the attack hadn’t shaken Boon’s belief in the goodness of humans. He believed that had the bomber met him before the Marriott attack, he might have realized Boon wasn’t his enemy.
Boon threw himself into peacebuilding efforts, working through the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at the Hague.
Fauzi, meanwhile, had been working to help deradicalize Islamic militants across Indonesia. Which is how he ended up shaking hands with Boon at a terrorism awareness conference in 2013.
Boon had already been planning a project in which terrorism victims would share their stories with students in areas targeted by extremist recruiters. He invited Fauzi to stop by his room to discuss the idea.
Though Fauzi was not connected to the bombing that destroyed Boon’s legs, Boon knew his history. As he waited, a dark thought rattled him: What if Fauzi was coming to finish the job?
But as Fauzi listened to the Dutch man talk about peace, he felt his heart crack.
That Boon, who was of a different faith, could forgive those who had caused him such pain rocked Fauzi to his core. He stared at the handsome young man sitting before him, with no legs where legs should be. And for the first time, he truly understood what a bomb does to a body and to a life.
Fauzi began to cry, and wrapped Boon in a hug. Boon hugged him back. Fauzi quickly agreed to meet other victims.
At the airport the next day, Fauzi sailed through security. But Boon’s prosthetic legs set off the metal detector, forcing him to endure a pat-down. Boon turned to Fauzi and quipped: “So the former terrorist they let walk through, but the victim they have to control.”
The former bombmaker burst out laughing and a friendship was born.
They had found the humanity in each other. Boon could only hope that when the others met Fauzi, they would find the same.
___
Erniati was filling her plate at a hotel buffet when Fauzi first approached her. Her heart pounded. How had she gotten here?
Months earlier, Boon had met with Erniati and several other bombing victims to present his idea. Erniati had balked.
For 12 years, she had struggled to move beyond her anger. The executions of Amrozi, Mukhlas and another convicted perpetrator had brought her no relief. The prospect of sitting down with a former terrorist sounded crazy.
A few victims, however, agreed to meet Fauzi for AIDA’s pilot project. Afterward, their reviews were positive. Erniati warmed to the idea. Maybe he could answer her questions.
But now, staring at Fauzi inside the hotel where she and four other victims had gathered to meet him, she had no idea what to ask.
Fauzi’s heart was pounding, too. “Hello,” he said with a smile. “How are you?”
Erniati bristled. How could he smile after what he had done?
Her reply was curt: “I’m from Bali.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I apologize for what my brothers and my friends have done.”
But Erniati couldn’t get past his grin.
Fauzi saw the way the other victims were looking at him.
They hate me, he thought.
___
That night, Fauzi couldn’t sleep. He lay in bed, fretting over what to say to Erniati and the others at their first official meeting.
When they finally convened around a table, Fauzi felt like a defendant on trial. Then Erniati began to tell her story.
As Fauzi listened, his awkwardness morphed into anguish. The image of Erniati searching for Gede amid the smoking ruins, of her struggles to raise their sons alone, was unbearable.
Fauzi had long been proud of his skills as a bombmaker. But in that moment, he wished he could erase everything he’d ever known about bombs.
He began to weep. “I’m sorry,” he said through tears. “I’m very sorry.”
Erniati looked at Fauzi and felt something shift within her. He was in pain, just as she was. Their pain came from different places, but it was pain all the same.
What he said meant less to her than what he felt. To Erniati, apologies are just words. But the ability to understand another person’s suffering, she says, goes to the core of who you are.
The anger that had long suffocated her began to lift.
Fauzi excused himself to wash his tearstained face. When he returned, he told his own story, about his path in and out of radical ideology, and his commitment to peace.
His apologies, though, were not welcomed by all. One victim angrily rejected his words.
Fauzi understood. Were the situation reversed, he says, he doubts he would be as accepting as Boon and Erniati.
Over the next few years, Erniati and Fauzi grew closer. They visited schools with AIDA, sharing their story of reconciliation. Fauzi started a foundation called the Circle of Peace, which helps deradicalize extremists. Erniati was moved by his efforts, which seemed a genuine attempt to atone.
One day, Erniati asked Fauzi if she could see his home. It was a stunning request; The bombers had plotted the attack that killed her husband in a house not far away, and Mukhlas and Amrozi’s families live just across the street.
But she wanted to see how Fauzi lived. And so, with some trepidation, Boon and others from AIDA agreed. As their car rolled into Fauzi’s village, Erniati felt like she was entering a lion’s den.
When she arrived at Fauzi’s home, however, she found it reassuringly normal. There was laundry scattered around, just like at her house. Fauzi introduced her to his wife and children and showed her his goats.
When he had to break away to teach a class at Islamic school, he sent the group to a water park with his friend Iswanto, another former Jemaah Islamiyah militant. Erniati and Iswanto rode the rollercoaster together; for her, the ride was scarier than the one-time terrorist.
She and Fauzi became friends on Facebook. Fauzi sent Erniati a gem she had once mentioned was beautiful. She had it made into a necklace.
But she still couldn’t accept what his brothers had done.
___
Erniati stands barefoot on the verandah of her modest home, slicing scissors through black fabric as Hindu chants ring out from a nearby temple. This is how she has kept her family alive for 17 years, through a small garment company an Australian man set up for Balinese bombing widows.
Her colleague, Warti, swings by. Like Erniati, Warti’s husband was killed in the attack. Unlike Erniati, she has no desire to meet anyone associated with his killers. For her, all of that is best left in the past. To meet now, she says, would only cause her more pain.
“I don’t want to dwell and keep thinking about it,” she says.
Erniati understands this. She runs the Isana Dewata Foundation, an advocacy group for bombing victims, and knows everyone heals in different ways.
And reconciliation doesn’t help everyone. Karen Brouneus, a Swedish psychologist, studied the effects of Rwanda’s post-genocide, community-based court system, which focused on reconciliation. Her survey of 1,200 Rwandans found that those who participated in the courts had higher levels of depression and PTSD than those who didn’t.
Those who have studied reconciliation efforts say victims must never be forced into them. The victims in AIDA’s programs are all voluntary, Boon says. The foundation also carefully vets former extremists to ensure they have truly reformed, checking their background with Indonesian researchers and slowly getting to know them.
AIDA says the results of its efforts have been promising: Friendships have formed between former terrorists and victims. And after sharing their stories at schools, students’ attitudes toward violence changed significantly, includinga 68% decrease in those who agree they’re entitled to revenge if they or their family fell victim to violence.
Fauzi himself acknowledges that reconciliation wouldn’t work for every former militant.
“I realize that humans are different from one another,” he says. “So it’s not easy to take their hearts as a whole.”
The uniqueness of these bonds is something that Jo Berry understands intimately. In 1984, Berry’s father was killed in a bombing by the Irish Republican Army. In 2000, she asked to meet the man who planted the bomb, Patrick Magee, and the two became friends. Yet she has met plenty of former IRA activists she hopes to never meet again.
“It’s not like there’s one formula,” she says. “And that’s why I think it’s really hard.”
Erniati found that her warmth toward Fauzi did not carry over to his brothers. In 2015, she visited one of them, Ali Imron, in jail. He too apologized, but she wasn’t convinced.
Her feelings toward the executed Amrozi and Mukhlas are even more muddied.
When it comes to them, she says, she just wants to forget.
___
On a sunny morning in east Java, Erniati and Fauzi sit on his couch, nibbling dates. The smile that once enraged Erniati she now returns.
Outside, around a dozen ex-Jemaah Islamiyah militants prepare for a local bicycle race. Erniati smiles politely at them, but keeps her distance.
Fauzi still wrestles with guilt, but Erniati’s acceptance of him has lessened the sting.
Erniati continues to meet with former militants. She hopes her story can put them on the right path. Her sadness returns on occasion. But her anger is gone.
Later, she heads to lunch with Iswanto, the ex-militant with whom she’d ridden the rollercoaster years before. Along the way, he gestures toward a fenced-off enclosure on the side of the road.
This, he tells her, is the burial site of Amrozi and Mukhlas.
Erniati stares at the grassy plot. Someday, she says, she would like to place flowers on their graves and send up a prayer.
She will pray for God to forgive the men who killed her husband.
Not because she accepts what they did. But because if God can forgive them, even if she can’t, then maybe their spirits can help bring the world what Fauzi’s friendship helped bring her: peace.
___
Associated Press writer Niniek Karmini contributed to this report.
