Hurricane Helene hit Florida as a category 4 storm Thursday night, killing at least 21 people in four states. The storm has caused widespread damage in Florida, and power outages and flooding throughout several states in the south.
Helene began as a tropical storm earlier this week, but was upgraded to a category 4 hurricane before it reached the U.S.The storm first made landfall in Florida’s sparsely populated Big Bend region before moving up the Gulf Coast. It brought maximum sustained winds of 140 mph and record-breaking storm surges to the state.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]As the storm made landfall in Perry, Florida, on Thursday Florida Governor Ron DeSantis cautioned residents to expect the worst: “When Floridians wake up tomorrow morning, we’re going to be waking up to a state where very likely there’s been additional loss of life and certainly there’s going to be loss of property,” he said during a press conference late Thursday.
Read more: See the Path of Storm Helene After it Left Trail of Destruction
On Friday morning, DeSantis reported two storm-related deaths in the state, and added that there were 1.24 million customers without power across the state. A spokesperson for Georgia Governor Brian Kemp told AP that 11 people have died in the state, and dozens more are trapped in their homes. Millions in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and Florida are without power due to the storm. As the system moved up the coast of Florida and into Georgia and the Carolinas on Friday morning, it had been downgraded to a tropical storm.
The National Hurricane Center warned of catastrophic and life-threatening flash and urban flooding, including numerous significant landslides, in the southern Appalachian region on Friday. Flooding is also expected in Northwestern, northern, and southeast Florida on Friday.
This week, Vice President Kamala Harris explicitly reached out to business leaders with a major economic address in Pittsburgh—and new polling results show growing support for the Harris-Walz ticket among CEOs.
As we previously wrote for TIME, polling data from approximately 60 top CEOs in attendance at our Yale CEO Caucus this month reveals that business leaders are increasingly optimistic about the economy.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]But what is even more revealing is what these polling results show about how CEOs are thinking about politics. While some of the top line results have been previously covered by the New York Times and CNN, among others, we are revealing here, for the first time, the full set of results.
Across a group of CEOs that had no discernible partisan leaning (37% of our respondents self-identified as Republican, 32% identified as Democratic, and 32% identified as independents) the polling revealed that 80% of CEOs surveyed expect Harris to win, and only 20% expect former President Donald Trump to win.
This is the most lopsided vote we’ve ever had, after informally asking this same “who do you expect to win” question of our Yale CEO Caucus every presidential election year over the last several cycles. While our straw poll in both prior presidential elections, in 2016 and 2020, revealed CEOs were expecting Trump to lose both times, the margin was far less than 80-20.
Read more: Kamala Harris Rolled Out An Ambitious Economic Plan. Here’s What’s In It
Furthermore, while CEOs expected Trump to lose every time he has been on the ballot, that marked a significant break from longstanding CEO prediction bias toward Republicans—making the predictions for Harris all the more noteworthy. Previously, CEOs had expected George W. Bush to win both times he was on the ballot, and the CEOs slightly favored Mitt Romney’s chances over incumbent President Barack Obama in 2012.
What our polling results also revealed is that most business leaders, across parties, are by and large horrified by Trump’s leadership model and his incendiary rhetoric. Fully 87% of our respondents believe Trump should apologize for false statements about Haitian immigrants in Ohio abducting and eating pets, and 94% of respondents believe hate speech is inciting increasing political violence. Furthermore, when asked, “is either candidate a threat to democracy,” 73% of our respondents picked Trump, while 4% picked Harris, 8% said both, and 15% said neither.
The polling data also reaffirmed CEOs’ substantive disagreement with Trump’s proposed economic policy platform, with several expressing concerns that Trump would undermine Fed independence while pitting business leaders against each other and reigniting inflationary pressures. In particular, CEOs expressed nuanced opposition to Trump’s proposed universal 10% tariffs. While 56% of CEOs believe we need to protect vital U.S. industries from unfair foreign competition through tariffs, they distinguished between protecting against genuinely unfair foreign competition and all-tariffs-all-the-time. Some CEOs also expressed skepticism that tariffs should be an end goal in and of themselves, believing that the threat of tariffs is far more effective than the real thing.
CEOs expressed their opposition to not only protectionism but also isolationism. Several CEOs reiterated their beliefs that access to global markets and free trade depend on the U.S. being a reliable, trustworthy participant in the international community, and the need to continue supporting Ukraine in its fight for freedom.
This fresh polling data from our Yale CEO Caucus, which is consistent with prior reports that not a single top 100 CEO is supporting Trump this election cycle, reaffirms that the message from Corporate America heading into the presidential election is loud and clear: they overwhelmingly believe that Harris is a trustworthy, patriotic, stable leader and a constructive problem solver, even if they do not agree with her on all fronts. CEOs are not isolationist, not protectionist, and not xenophobes, and they depend upon the rule of law and want a President who respects that rule of law. After seeing how the first Trump term drove wedges between corporate constituents, as he shredded the harmonious fabric of American life, the choice for them is clear.
This story contains spoilers for Grey’s Anatomy.
For over 20 seasons, Grey’s Anatomy has pulled on the heartstrings of millions of viewers who tune in to watch surgeon Meredith Grey and a cast of characters navigate countless dangerous and dramatic scenarios, medical and personal. With over 430 episodes, Grey’s has become the longest running primetime medical drama of all time for a reason: the bombs never stop dropping (or literally exploding) in the haunted halls of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The first few seasons of the series are among its most watched, thanks to the unparalleled chemistry between the original five interns introduced in season 1. But Grey’s has much more to offer past Meredith, George, Cristina, Alex, and Izzie’s first months on the job, and plenty of the later seasons are well worth a watch. We decided to look back through the Grey’s archives, poring over stunning cliffhangers and wrenching cast sendoffs, to rank all 20 seasons and determine which one is the very best. To do so, we considered the number of standout episodes, the cast, and the seasons’ finales.
Here, every season of Grey’s Anatomy, ranked.
The series’ first season without Cristina Yang is a bummer for many reasons, the biggest being that in an unthinkable twist, Derek Shepherd is killed off before the finale. While it proves to be a necessary reset for the series, his abrupt death undermines many of the season’s bigger plot developments. For most of season 11, Meredith and Derek were having very real arguments about ego, ambition, and work-life balance and it briefly seemed like they weren’t going to make it. He even kissed another woman! But everything is tied up too neatly and then he’s fatally hit by a semi-truck. What comes after is a slog to watch: a two-part episode that speeds through the next nine months, in which Meredith is MIA, so we spend a lot of unnecessary time with Ben and Bailey discussing their marriage in bed.
This is a mish-mash of a season in which Amelia Shepherd’s character is completely rewritten when she discovers that she’s had a benign brain tumor for years and it’s greatly impacted her behavior and decision-making. Mostly, this season is ranked so low because Arizona Robbins and April Kepner were written off after having wonderful, complicated arcs that did not seem to be anywhere close to resolved. (Lucky for us they make guest appearances later on in the series, but still!)
This is a boilerplate season with a few standout episodes. Among them is “The Sound of Silence,” directed by Denzel Washington, in which a newly widowed Meredith is attacked by a patient and has to have her jaw wired shut. Over the powerful episode, Meredith is forced to finally confront the anger she’s been carrying in the aftermath of Derek’s death. There’s also “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” which takes the doctors outside of the hospital to Meredith’s house for a dinner party for the ages, where an unexpected (and unwelcome) familiar face shows up. This season is also Callie’s last—and her sendoff is complicated by a nasty custody battle against Arizona over their daughter after the orthopedic surgeon decides to move to New York City.
Meredith falls for the wrong guy, her sister Maggie’s latest crush and Owen’s arch nemesis, Nathan Riggs. After so much buildup to their eventual courtship, its quick dissolution in the matter of a few episodes is disappointing. But for Jackson and April fans, this season is huge: they have serious conversations about their relationship after the birth of their daughter Harriet in the season 12 finale.
After committing insurance fraud, Meredith, Alex, and Richard are fired, setting up a season in which fan favorite doctors are not really involved in hospital shenanigans for a few episodes. This gives plenty of time to Amelia and Link and their blossoming relationship and allows necessary growth for Jo after a season of heartbreak (more on that later). The season also draws on the deep well of nostalgia associated with the series through the episode “My Shot,” in which several of Meredith’s old patients come to her defense as the medical board contemplates revoking her license. But it’s ultimately a low-ranked season because Alex is written off out of nowhere, just as Jo is learning to love herself again.
The newest group of residents (more on them later) are up to some crazy antics in this 10-episode season (reduced in length due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes). Though Meredith’s only in half the season, she’s doing important work over in Boston, potentially undoing Derek’s legacy as she continues to work on her groundbreaking Alzheimer’s research. Her controversial findings set the stage for a big showdown against Catherine Avery.
Grey’s has seen several rounds of new residents across the years and the batch introduced in season 19 are perhaps the best since the OGs. There’s Simone Griffith, Lucas Adams, Benson Kwan, Mika Yasuda, and Jules Millin, all doctors who wound up at Grey Sloan as a last resort. Their drama is juicy and they are funny to boot. This season also sees more Addison (who popped up in season 18 as well) in thrilling episodes about abortion care. Also, Meredith leaves Seattle (!) for Boston so her daughter can attend a more challenging school.
The COVID-19 season of Grey’s was divisive. The pandemic was still going strong in the outside world, did we really need to see our favorite fictional doctors suffer, too? Meredith spends much of the season in a hospital bed hooked up to a ventilator after testing positive for COVID-19. But there was plenty of necessary joy in season 17, too. Stuck between living and dead, Meredith dreamed of her “afterlife beach,” where she was reunited with old friends and lovers. Chief among them: McDreamy. The show managed to keep Ellen Pompeo and Patrick Dempsey’s scenes a secret, so when Derek arrived, years after his final appearance in season 11, it was the best kind of surprising twist. More beloved (and deceased) characters—Mark Sloane, Lexie Grey, and George O’Malley—also made appearances.
The interns finally become residents (except for George, who failed his exam) in season 4, which also sees the introduction of Meredith’s half-sister Lexie. With Burke gone, Erica Hahn becomes chief of cardio and starts getting close with Callie. Meredith and Derek are still in the throes of their will-they-won’t-they dynamic, culminating in the season finale when Meredith builds the iconic house of candles to profess her commitment to him. While this season has plenty of standout moments, there’s some charm lost after the original five interns are pulled in different directions.
There’s a fun Meredith-DeLuca-Link love triangle going on this season, but the reason why it’s a cut above the rest of the back half of the series is because of Jo’s journey of self-discovery. The resident, who was left at a fire station as a newborn and raised in the foster care system, decides to find her birth mother. She ends up uncovering an awful truth about her past, and shuts out everyone in her life as a result. This is a backstory that’s told delicately and ends up having far-reaching consequences for the character. Simultaneously, Owen is dealing with baby mama drama as Teddy reveals she’s pregnant with his child just as he’s cozying up to Amelia again.
The start to season 6 ushered in a new era of Grey’s. With George dead and Izzie fired from the hospital, the original group of interns are truly over as we knew them. It’s just Meredith, Alex, and Cristina left at Seattle Grace. There’s also the Mercy West merger (hello Jackson and April!) and the introduction of Teddy as chief of cardio. The drama is much more insular (no bombs or ferry explosions) until the season’s gutting end, which is one of the series’ very best. Unfurling in two installments, the tense tearjerker of a finale centers on a shooting in the hospital, with consequences that reverberate for years to follow.
If you’re wondering how such a recent season made it so high up on this list, there’s one answer, and that’s Nick Marsh. Played by a very charming Scott Speedman, the transplant doctor that Meredith operates on in season 14 returns as the duo reunites in Minnesota. For the first time since Derek’s death, Meredith meets someone who can truly match her intellect, and supports her dreams. He’s also very patient with her. Finally, Meredith’s relentless streak of bad luck makes a turn for the better, and season 18 basically plays out like a rom-com for her and Nick. She also gets some much needed closure with Addison, who returns this season. Amelia also gets involved with someone new, Dr. Kai Bartley, a researcher on Meredith’s Parkinson’s project. Their relationship allows Amelia to explore her sexuality and gives her some refreshing clarity on what—and who—she wants in life.
This is a banger of a season with one of the best casts of the series, a mix of OGs and fresh faces like Jackson, April, Teddy, and the short-lived Henry. Standout episodes include the two-part “Dark Was the Night” and “Suddenly,” which finds Meredith helping the victims of a car crash after her daughter’s adoption looks like it’s about to fall apart. There’s also “If/Then,” a hilarious sliding doors episode that envisions an alternate reality as Meredith wonders what her life would look like if her mother didn’t have Alzheimer’s. But even the most gripping scenes of the season are nothing compared to its finale, the iconic plane crash episode that leaves Meredith, Derek, Cristina, Arizona, Lexie, and Mark stranded in the woods in dire conditions. Though Grey’s is never afraid to kill off their series regulars—it’s still horrific and shocking when Lexie dies crushed under a piece of the airplane not even halfway through the finale.
The trauma and financial implications of the plane crash touch nearly every episode of season 9. This is another turning point for the series: Callie and Arizona’s marriage falls apart after the latter’s leg is amputated following the crash, Jackson and April try to fight how they really feel about each other, and the hospital is put for sale due to the doctors’ lawsuit over being put on a faulty plane. But the season is not all doom and gloom as Bailey and Ben get married and Meredith and Derek have another baby. There are also new interns who have staying power as Jo Wilson, Stephanie Edwards, and Shane Ross start their first years at Seattle Grace.
The aftermath of the shooting in season 6 plays out in devastating turns for every character at the hospital. Perhaps the most affecting storyline is that of Cristina, who operated on Derek with a gun pointed to her head. The unlikely duo end up spending a lot of time together as Derek takes Cristina under his wing (much to Meredith’s confusion) and they even go fishing together, in the quiet and moving episode “Adrift and at Peace.” The doctors are all making huge life decisions this season: Callie has Mark’s baby and later marries Arizona, and Meredith and Derek get married in order to adopt their daughter. Also, we can never forget the musical episode “Song Beneath the Song” that finds almost every doctor singing along to the songs that the show made famous.
At the heart of Grey’s is a love story, and it’s never been between Meredith and Derek. It’s always been about the twisted sisters, and season 10 finds Meredith and Cristina at a crossroads: Meredith is struggling to balance work and motherhood, and Cristina is contemplating leaving Seattle for a new opportunity while juggling her relationship with Owen. They begin to grow apart and tensions start to rise that truly threaten the foundation of their friendship, leading to an epic fight where they yell at each other while being fitted for bridesmaids’ dresses. Their resolution is well-earned and ends with Cristina’s departure, a fitting goodbye between the two as they decide to dance it out one last time. This is also a huge season for Jackson and April—the former stops the latter’s wedding in a jaw-dropping twist, and April decides to leave her fiancée at the altar (poor Matthew) for the true love of her life.
The season that started it all. The pilot is perfect. There’s an electricity moving between every character and especially between Meredith and Derek, whose chemistry is immediately palpable and feels familiar, even though the two meet just before Meredith’s first day at Seattle Grace. Though there’s plenty of drama this season, it’s certainly quieter than everything that follows, and the patient stories are particularly compelling, from a rhythmic gymnast with a brain aneurysm to a pregnant woman with breast cancer. The first twist in the series arrives at the season’s end as Addison Montgomery Shepherd appears at the hospital and delivers the shocking line to Meredith: “And you must be the woman who’s been screwing my husband.”
The first three seasons of Grey’s follow the OG Magic Five in their intern year (save for George) and represent a defining era for Seattle Grace. They are still screwing a lot of things up, but also undergoing plenty of change. In season 3. George’s dad dies, Izzie confronts her grief after losing Denny, Meredith drowns and nearly dies, Alex falls in love, and Cristina is left at the altar on her wedding day to Burke. Katherine Heigl won an Emmy for this season of the show and it’s easy to see why, as Izzie confronts several elements of her past, including the daughter she gave up for adoption as a teenager, this season.
Where were you when it was revealed that George was the unidentifiable man hit by a bus in the season 5 finale? This was a defining moment for the series, one that went down in the television history books as the episode ended with Izzie, who spent the season battling cancer, back in the dress she wore when Denny died, seeing George in his army uniform. Season 5 was full of these scenes that are foundational for the more than dozen seasons that follow, including Meredith and Derek’s Post-It note wedding. Plus, this is the beginning of Cristina and Owen’s tortured, years-long relationship.
Season 2 takes the top spot because it contains the best episodes of the series, a stacked cast, incredible guest stars, and, of course, introduced the world to “Chasing Cars” by Snow Patrol. Let’s start with those episodes: premiering after the 2006 Super Bowl to the series’ largest audience (a whopping 38 million viewers), the two-part installment of “It’s the End of the World” and “As We Know It” finds Seattle Grace on lockdown. That’s because there’s a patient with unexploded ammunition in his chest—and a terrified paramedic, played by Christina Ricci, has her hand inside, holding the homemade bazooka steady. So the bomb squad is brought in, led by Dylan Young (Kyle Chandler), who has to instruct the doctors on how to proceed without blowing up the entire hospital. And that’s not all season 2 has to offer, as Izzie falls hard for her patient, Denny, leading her to make a brash decision that threatens the jobs of her fellow interns. There’s even more: Addison, one of the series’ best characters, is brought on full-time and her presence makes clear that things between her and Derek are much more complicated than Meredith ever could have anticipated.
Marcellus Williams was executed by the state of Missouri on Tuesday, Sept. 24, despite concerns citing his potential innocence. Williams died by lethal injection shortly after 6 p.m. at a Missouri state prison in Bonne Terre, St. Francois County. He was 55 years old.
In the aftermath of his death, there has been widespread condemnation, especially since the execution was not supported by the prosecution nor the victim’s family.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Williams was convicted and sentenced to death in 2001 for the 1998 murder of Felicia Gayle, a social worker and well-known St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, who was killed in her home.
The St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office urged officials and courts to call off the execution over concerns regarding the trial’s jury selection (the vast majority of the jury was white) and potential racial bias—Williams was Black, while Gayle was white. Furthermore, DNA evidence did not tie Williams to the murder.
“Even for those who disagree on the death penalty, when there is a shadow of a doubt of any defendant’s guilt, the irreversible punishment of execution should not be an option,” St. Louis County’s Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell said in a statement, according to the New York Times.
Governor of Missouri Mike Parson and the Missouri state Supreme Court denied and rejected multiple efforts to prevent the execution, including clemency pleas from Williams’ lawyers, members of the victim’s family, and the prosecution, as well as letters from from The NAACP. and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
On Sept. 24, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a stay of execution.
In the aftermath of Williams’ execution there has been an outcry from the public due to the doubts over his conviction, especially since it was reported in August that a new development showed that the knife used in the murder was believed to have been contaminated by DNA from a prosecutor and investigator working on the case.
Williams’ poetry and writings have been shared virally on social media. One document, which has been corroborated by publications such as Newsweek, shows Williams’ handwritten “final statement” before his death, which reads, “All Praise Be to Allah in Every Situation!!!”
Many have also shared his poetry, which had been featured in multiple online journals and the Kansas City Star.
In the lead up to, and in the aftermath of Williams’ death, many advocates also have pointed to his story as not an isolated moment—but as indicative of a greater narrative of racial injustice in the criminal justice system.
Various criminal justice advocates and politicians are also calling for the end of the death penalty, including Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Missouri Representative Cori Bush, and Derrick Johnson, CEO of the NAACP.
“The state of Missouri and our nation’s legal system failed Marcellus Williams, and as long as we uphold the death penalty, we continue to perpetuate this depravity,” Bush said in a statement on Tuesday night after Williams’ execution.
Have you ever been taught by a teacher who couldn’t teach? We have, and it wasn’t the result of them lacking motivation and desire. Neither was it them missing a teacher-training course module on Friday afternoon one semester. These teachers, although well-intended, should be no where near children and education. They might have always wanted to become a teacher, but they lack the natural talent to be on—even an average one.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]It’s the same for managers and leaders. Just like bad teachers, we’ve all met too many examples of these during our careers—bullies, narcissists, micromanagers, and those who graduated cum laude in crass insensitivity. Insecurity lies at the heart of their incompetence, and they see their position as an exercise in authority and control, insisting and directing rather than delegating and trusting. They inflict their mediocrity on everyone in their care. We have both experienced leaders and managers who, in different ways, nearly succeeded in destroying our sense of self-worth and caused us to question our whole reason for being. With managers and leaders, the vast majority are unfit for their roles.
Research has shown that, from as long ago as 2014, 82% of managers lack the talent to be effective in their jobs, and the evidence has become more robust since, where engagement data (arguably the best proxy for management and leadership effectiveness) has barely moved in 10 years, and in the last year has dropped significantly.
Given the motivations of so many to climb the corporate ladder into top management and leadership positions, there is a huge disconnect. Our research into top performing leadership and management targets this disconnect, and our analysis revealed the talents that the very best leaders and managers possessed. We call them the “Five Talents That Really Matter.” In them, we captured and described these characteristic traits and dispositions as follows: Setting Direction, Harnessing Energy, Exerting Pressure, Building Connectivity and Directing Traffic. Having distilled these five talents from studying the very best leaders, and then assessing everyone else (58k and counting), the vast majority fall well short. Only 4% score in the top quartile. Forty eight score in the bottom quartile. Mediocrity clearly rules.
Read More: What I Learned About Leadership from Leading Leaders
In our research, we have seen a disproportionate weighting of leaders in a narrow set of attributes and traits, such as action orientation (a predisposition to act before fully thinking things through) and relationship building (connecting to people because of a mutual liking of each other). As strong as these attributes are, they seem to come at the expense of other important traits and dispositions, such as strategic thinking. These two findings combine to produce outcomes that lead to ineffective execution and project missteps.
An example of this occurs when leaders, because of the relationships they build, find it hard to performance manage team members by holding them to account for sub-standard work. Rather than terminate these employees, weaker leaders never address the performance issues and poor behavior and unacceptable performance is tolerated.
Why, then, do so many mediocre managers and leaders get promoted to the highest positions where they fail in large numbers?
Let’s frame our answer by making one thing clear: Exceptional leadership is rare. Mediocre and poor leadership is the norm.
In fact, organizational psychologist Tomas Chamorro-Premuzik argues that confident, rather than competent, people are more likely to be appointed. We agree but would take his argument a stage further going to the source—to the very top of the corporate food chain. Decision makers are usually more swayed by candidates they like. In our research, we factored differences between the individuals in our database and found that “likeability” was the main reason why so many (otherwise substandard) individuals succeed in being promoted or appointed. They didn’t need to be liked by everyone, but they were liked by the interviewer who owned the decision.
The typical face-to-face interviews (that are featured in nearly every selection process intended to evaluate external candidates) are a poor method for cutting through the congenial and charismatic fraud. Of the 48% of leaders sitting in the bottom quartile of our database, 31% measured strongest in relational connectivity—presenting themselves as positive, upbeat, friendly, and socially adept leaders, yet lacking so many other critically important aspects of leadership, without which success is beyond reach.
The problem is made worse by the fact that the constellation of leadership talents essential to top leadership performance are extremely difficult to detect from resumes and interviews. We also see the overwhelming majority of companies having no clue about identifying the characteristics of leadership that matter or developing questions to assess these characteristics accurately. CEO’s and hiring executives further argue that no candidate is perfect, often as an excuse to explain the deficiencies they see in the candidate in front of them, whom they then find poor reasons to appoint. When you don’t know what you are looking for, it’s remarkable how many people meet that standard.
From the candidate perspective applying for a top leadership position, the entire charade is eminently predictable and therefore easy to prepare for. While CEO’s and top executives wrack their brains to come up with difficult and esoteric questions, candidates know they’ll be asked to describe a difficult situation they faced and how they dealt with it, a tricky employee and how they “cured” them, a negative situation and how they turned it around, a time when they started in a minority of one, but still succeeded—the list goes on. Even though hiring managers also know this, they persist anyway.
Every failed executive came highly recommended by a search firm and received the support of referees vouching for their capabilities. Even the candidates who organizations know the most about—internal candidates—fail at a rate that is staggering. Crucially, if we conclude one thing about human judgment in candidate selection, it is that it’s exceptionally poor. Yet ask any executive to describe their hiring effectiveness, and the worst response we hear is that an executive is “pretty good.”
Hiring managers, recognizing these valid criticisms, make the most banal statement of all: “I don’t place an over-reliance on any one factor, I try to balance them all.” The average of 10 inaccurate data sources is an inaccurate conclusion, with the degree of inaccuracy magnified. Looking for the Five Talents not only has high validity, but it also ensures a very high level of fairness. It is fair by sex, race, disability, age, country of origin, first language, as well as industry, size of organization, and market maturity.
We all talk about the importance of getting hiring decisions right, but practices to achieve this are flawed. Placing high weighting on imperfect sources has created the leadership challenges that most organizations face—mediocre performance, lack of demographic diversity, too much focus on functional excellence at the expense of critical leaders, and an over-investment in management and leadership development (through programs and coaching) that fail to move the needle. It’s time for organizations to upgrade their entire hiring process. That begins by acknowledging that their current approaches are failing.
BALTIMORE — The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday sued the owner and manager of the cargo ship that caused the Baltimore bridge collapse, seeking to recover more than $100 million that the government spent to clear the underwater debris and reopen the city’s port.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The lawsuit filed in Maryland alleges that the electrical and mechanical systems on the ship, the Dali, were improperly maintained, causing it to lose power and veer off course before striking a support column on the Francis Scott Key Bridge in March.
“This tragedy was entirely avoidable,” according to the lawsuit.
The collapse snarled commercial shipping traffic through the Port of Baltimore for months before the channel was fully opened in June.
“With this civil claim, the Justice Department is working to ensure that the costs of clearing the channel and reopening the Port of Baltimore are borne by the companies that caused the crash, not by the American taxpayer,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in written statement.
The case was filed against Dali owner Grace Ocean Private Ltd. and manager Synergy Marine Group, both of Singapore. The companies filed a court petition days after the collapse seeking to limit their legal liability in what could become the most expensive marine casualty case in history.
The ship was leaving Baltimore bound for Sri Lanka when its steering failed because of the power loss. Six members of a road work crew on the bridge were killed in the collapse. The men were working an overnight shift filling potholes on the bridge deck when it suddenly crumbled beneath them, sending them tumbling into the water.
“This accident happened because of the careless and grossly negligent decisions made by Grace Ocean and Synergy, who recklessly chose to send an unseaworthy vessel to navigate a critical waterway and ignored the risks to American lives and the nation’s infrastructure,” said Chetan Patil, the acting deputy assistant attorney general.
On Tuesday, the victims’ families declared their intent to file a claim seeking to hold the ship’s owner and manager fully liable for the disaster. Several other interested parties, including city officials and local businesses, have filed opposing claims accusing the companies of negligence.
The families are also calling for more robust workplace protections, especially for immigrant workers. All the victims were Latino immigrants who came to the United States in search of better-paying jobs and opportunities.
Ryan Routh, the gunman suspected of trying to assassinate Donald Trump this weekend at a golf course in Florida, was well known but not widely respected among the community of foreign fighters he tried to help in Ukraine. According to three of his contacts there, he spent much of his time in Kyiv over the past three years pushing a half-baked plan to recruit soldiers for the Ukrainian army from the war-torn nations of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“I have 40 or 50 men sitting around waiting for a logical place to fight,” he wrote in a message to one of his contacts in Ukraine in early July 2022, a few months into the full-scale Russian invasion. “Done digging trenches for the Ukrainians,” he added.
The offer of help was rejected, as were many of Routh’s apparent attempts to address the manpower shortage in the Ukrainian armed forces, according to correspondence with Routh that two of his contacts in Ukraine shared with TIME. In media interviews long before his arrest on Sunday, Routh talked openly about his recruitment efforts in Ukraine, including to the New York Times and Semafor.
His private messages, which have not been previously made public, date from the summer of 2022 to the fall of 2023, and include apparent lists of soldiers from the Arab world that Routh claimed to have recruited. “No recruitment from Syria or Iraq! I told you this before,” an official from the Ukrainian International Legion wrote in response to Routh’s offers of help in November 2022. “Those countries are banned and for good reason.”
Later that day, Routh wrote back: “How about afghanistan???”
One of his acquaintances in Ukraine says that Routh did have some success in recruiting fighters for a unit of the International Legion, a military force that Ukraine created at the start of the invasion to attract volunteers from around the world. But the commander of the 2nd International Legion, Colonel Ruslan Miroshnichenko, denied ever accepting any of Routh’s assistance.
“His actions and attitude very often were not meeting the official policy of Ukrainian armed forces in terms of recruitment to international legions,” Miroshnichenko said when reached by TIME on Monday.
Routh, 58, was arrested on Sunday after Secret Service officers spotted him lurking in the tree line around Trump’s golf course in Florida. The Republican presidential nominee was playing the fifth hole when one of the security officers fired at Routh. After his arrest, investigators found a loaded rifle with a scope that Routh had allegedly left behind as he fled the scene. During a court appearance on Monday, he was charged with federal gun crimes.
His views on the war in Ukraine were well documented in his social media posts and in a self-published book titled, “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War,” in which he expounds on geopolitics and denounces Trump as “brainless,” according to the Associated Press. At one point in the book, he reportedly writes of Iran, “You are free to assassinate Trump.”
The public defender assigned to Routh’s case on Monday did not respond to TIME’s request for comment.
People who knew Routh in Kyiv say that he was a frequent and eccentric presence in the center of the Ukrainian capital and among the city’s community of foreign military volunteers. One of them said Routh was “basically homeless” in Kyiv and sometimes stayed at the bases or barracks of Ukrainian military units that would allow him crash there.
Colonel Miroshnichenko described running into Routh on Kyiv’s Independence Square one day in the spring of 2022. He was “waving the American flag, smiling, cheering,” and he struck up a conversation with Miroshnichenko, apparently because the officer was wearing a military uniform. When Routh brought up his ideas on recruitment, the officer says he urged him to go through official military channels instead of “improvising schemes” for filling the ranks of the Ukrainian army.
“He was not affiliated with the armed forces of Ukraine in those days,” Miroshnichenko says. “This person, voluntarily, in the spring time of 2022, tried to recruit some foreigners to some military units. Perhaps he managed partially doing so. But he didn’t have any authority to do that. He did it himself. And his approaches often did not meet official Ukrainian military policy.”
A year and a half later, Routh was still attempting to reach senior Ukrainian officials and win their support for his recruitment strategy. By then, the tone of his exchanges with some recruiters and officers from the International Legion had grown increasingly tense, even hostile. In one message in early November 2023, Routh claims that the U.S. Secret Service, the very agency that arrested him on Sunday, could help vet the military records of the soldiers he wanted to recruit from Afghanistan and other countries.
“All of these soldiers worked with the US and coalition forces so their track record is easy to see,” he wrote. “All we need are Ukrainian visas, we can handle the rest.”
After receiving a firm rejection from a military recruiter in Ukraine, Routh answered sarcastically: “So you have plenty of soldiers…good deal…when do we win this war??”
Two people died in a missile attack on the Ukrainian Black Sea port city of Odesa, local officials said, as Moscow and Kyiv exchanged drone and missile attacks.
The Ukrainian air force said Sunday it shot down 10 of the 14 drones and one of the three missiles Russia launched overnight.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Oleh Kiper, Odesa’s regional governor, said the two who died in the suburbs of Odesa on Saturday night were a married couple, and that another person was wounded in the attack.
At least 41 people were wounded Sunday afternoon when a Russian aerial bomb struck a multistory residential building in Kharkiv, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said, adding that the guided bomb hit the 10th floor of the building, with the fire spreading across four stories. Twelve other buildings were also damaged, he said.
Meanwhile, the Russian Defense Ministry said that it downed 29 Ukrainian drones overnight into Sunday over western and southwestern regions, with no damage caused by the falling debris. It also said another Ukrainian drone was shot down Sunday morning over the western Ryazan region.
While Ukraine and Russia regularly launch overnight drone raids on each other’s territory, Ukrainian officials generally don’t confirm or deny attacks within Russia’s borders.
The latest attacks came after Ukraine made a new call Saturday on the West to allow it to use the long-range missiles they have provided to strike targets deep inside Russia, as Ukrainian forces struggle to hold back Russian advances in eastern Ukraine.
So far, the U.S. has allowed Kyiv to use American-provided weapons only in a limited area inside Russia’s border with Ukraine.
Kyiv officials argue the weapons are vital to weaken Russia’s ability to strike Ukraine and force it to move its strike capabilities further from the border.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to social media on Sunday to again appeal for a shift in the West’s policy on the use of long-range weapons, noting that Russia had launched “around 30 missiles of various types, more than 800 guided aerial bombs, and nearly 300 strike drones against Ukraine” this week.
“Ukraine needs strong support from our partners to defend lives against Russian terror — air defense, long-range capabilities, support for our warriors. Everything that will help force Russia to end this war,” Zelenskyy posted on X.
There’s a hidden gender gap when it comes to digestive problems, with women taking the lead in this unpleasant contest. While men are hardly immune to gastrointestinal woes, certain digestive problems are considerably more common in women. “Women aren’t broken—they’re just different,” says Dr. Jeanetta Frye, a gastroenterologist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. For one thing, she says, “women have more visceral hypersensitivity so they may feel gastrointestinal symptoms more intensely.”
Symptom sensitivity aside, there’s clear evidence that certain digestive disorders are more likely to affect women than men. Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)—a disorder that involves repeated bouts of abdominal pain and changes in bowel movements (diarrhea, constipation, or alternating bouts of the two)—is two to six times more common among women than men. Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, affects twice as many women as men, according to the American College of Gastroenterology.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]In addition, celiac disease—an autoimmune disorder that causes bloating, chronic diarrhea, constipation, gas, and other GI symptoms and is triggered by eating gluten—is diagnosed nearly twice as often in women as in men. And functional dyspepsia (a.k.a. chronic indigestion) is also more common in women. So is a lesser known brain-gut disorder called cyclic vomiting syndrome—characterized by recurrent episodes of nausea, vomiting, and dry heaving, separated by symptom-free periods in between, says Dr. David Levinthal, a gastroenterologist and director of the Neurogastroenterology and Motility Center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
Across the board, “disorders of gut-brain interaction are more prevalent in women than men,” Levinthal says, and the same is true of motility disorders like gastroparesis (delayed emptying of the stomach) and chronic constipation.
Why are women more susceptible to GI disorders? What is it about being born female that puts their digestive systems at risk? The answer is complicated and not completely understood.
This much is known: Reproductive hormones may play a role. “The female hormones estrogen and progesterone have a profound effect on the GI tract in terms of motility, pain sensitization, and how the brain delivers messages to the GI tract,” explains Dr. David Johnson, chief of gastroenterology at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk and past president of the American College of Gastroenterology. As a result, women may experience flare-ups of GI disorders at certain times of the month (such as during menstruation) or during pregnancy.
Read More: 15 Things to Say When Someone Comments on Your Weight
For another thing, “women have a more easily activated immune system than men do,” says Levinthal. This is significant because immune function, including inflammatory processes, plays a role in celiac disease and inflammatory bowel disease.
What’s more, the gastrointestinal tract itself is longer in women, and that difference in length can affect transit time through the GI tract, Johnson says. In addition, women’s stomachs empty slightly more slowly than men’s do—“why that is isn’t known,” says Levinthal, but it may explain women’s greater susceptibility to gastroparesis. Research also suggests that the intestine’s nerve cells are more sluggish in women, which may be why IBS and gastroparesis are more common in women.
Another possible contributing factor has to do with psychological issues. “Anxiety and depression, which are more common in women than men, can worsen the severity of disordered gut function,” Levinthal says. “Feeling stressed or depressed or anxious is linked with how our guts work.” When you’re stressed out or anxious, you may be more likely to experience flare-ups of these GI disorders.
Regardless of gender, it’s important to “do everything you can to be proactive about your digestive health rather than just reactive,” Johnson says. That means staying well hydrated and consuming a healthy diet rich in plant-based foods (like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and seeds), and lean protein, and avoiding sugary, highly processed foods.
Read More: 9 Weird Symptoms Cardiologists Say You Should Never Ignore
In particular, “fiber helps good bacteria flourish in the gut,” Johnson says, which contributes to the health of the gut microbiome, the community of bacteria and other microbes that naturally live in the GI tract. Research has found a strong correlation between gut bacteria and the risk of GI disorders such as IBS, IBD, and others.
Being proactive about your gut health also means taking steps to manage stress, get plenty of sleep, and exercise regularly. “The more you move your body, the more your gut is moving, too,” says Dr. Samuel Akinyeye, a gastroenterologist at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. That movement is likely to help with many of these disorders.
If these measures don’t help sufficiently, there’s no reason to suffer alone. Medications and other treatments are available for all of these digestive disorders. “If you have symptoms you don’t understand, talk to a gastroenterologist,” Frye advises. “A lot of women are embarrassed to talk about their GI symptoms—I want them to feel empowered to discuss them. I tell my patients that it’s a safe space, and I’m not embarrassed to hear anything. This is why I’m here.”
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When President Biden entered the White House in 2021, before his administration had written any new regulations or signed landmark climate legislation into law, I wrote that his presidency had already advanced efforts to address climate change simply by sending a signal to the marketplace that fossil fuels are not the future.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]That signal was the result of policy plans, campaign pronouncements, and, finally, an executive order signed just days into his presidential tenure that called for officials across the government to make climate change central to policy making. And, almost immediately, companies responded, adjusting their strategic plans to account for a more climate-friendly policymaking outlook from Washington.
This year’s political cycle has offered little in the way of climate campaign promises or platforms. Indeed, some of the deepest discussion on climate and energy came during a few minutes in Tuesday’s presidential debate. While the discussion lacked details, it offered an interesting opportunity to evaluate where climate policy and, to a certain extent, the market may be going.
It’s worth starting with Vice President Kamala Harris. In 2019, she ran as a progressive with bold climate commitments—including a proposal for $10 trillion in climate spending and support for the Green New Deal policy platform. And so even some of the climate activists most skeptical of Biden were ready to rally around her in hopes that she would pursue ambitious new environmental programs.
In this week’s debate, she offered little new on climate. Instead, she emphasized continuity, touting the Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)—the most significant climate law in this country’s history—and calling for a continuation of investments in clean technology manufacturing. “We have invested in clean energy to the point that we are opening up factories around the world,” she said.
In other words, she painted herself as the climate continuity candidate rather than a crusader for a bigger policy agenda. Continuity may not necessarily be something that you can put on a T-shirt, but it would nonetheless aid the deployment of clean technologies. The Biden Administration has spent two years crafting the rules of the road to implement the IRA, including with the creation of programs that investors and developers now rely upon. Simply knowing that those rules will remain can help stabilize the market. That doesn’t necessarily mean that she will have nothing new to offer on climate if she were to serve as president. For one, some policy revisions might actually be helpful to improve implementation of the IRA.
She also promised continuity with regard to oil and gas, saying that “we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil.” The statement disappointed climate activists who would like to see her take an aggressive posture toward the industry. But it also offers some reassurance to energy observers that she doesn’t intend to wreak havoc on oil markets while the world remains in the throes of transition.
Former President Donald Trump meanwhile spoke with even less clarity about his climate plans. Indeed, he avoided talking about climate change when asked and instead used the opportunity to talk about his plans to impose tariffs on Chinese imports. “What they have given to China is unbelievable,” he said. “We’ll put tariffs on those cars so they can’t come into our country.”
It’s a telling answer. The Biden Administration is currently trying to thread a delicate needle with regard to China, hoping to incentivize the creation of a domestic clean energy supply chain in the long-term while relying on Chinese imports in the short term. Trump’s agenda would throw that out, rejiggering supply chains, capital investments, and strategic planning. All told, that would leave domestic clean technology deployment in a delicate place with products critical to the transition missing from the U.S. market
The climate discussion in the debate offered just a snapshot, skimming the surface of the relevant climate questions. But, nonetheless, watching it makes it easy to view Harris as a voice for continuity and Trump as a candidate eager to blow up the country’s climate and clean energy ambitions. Before any law is signed or regulation is promulgated, businesses will respond to those signals.
