A police officer walks by the nose of Pan Am flight 103 in a field near the town of Lockerbie, Scotland where it lay after a bomb aboard exploded, killing a total of 270 people, Wednesday, Dec. 21, 1988. (AP Photo/Martin Cleaver)

Dear Commons Community,

 U.S. and Scottish authorities said yesterday that the Libyan man suspected of making the bomb that destroyed a passenger plane over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 is in U.S. custody.  As reported by the Associated Press.

Scotland’s Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service said in a statement that “the families of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing have been told that the suspect Abu Agela Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi is in U.S. custody.”

The U.S. Justice Department confirmed the information, adding that “he is expected to make his initial appearance in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.” It gave no information on how Mas’ud came to be in U.S. custody.

Pan Am flight 103, traveling from London to New York, exploded over Lockerbie on Dec. 21, 1988, killing all 259 people aboard the plane and another 11 on the ground. It remains the deadliest terror attack on British soil.

The U.S. Justice Department announced new charges against Mas’ud in December 2020.

“At long last, this man responsible for killing Americans and many others will be subject to justice for his crimes,” William Barr, the attorney general at the time, said at a news conference.

In 2001, former Libyan intelligence officer Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was convicted of bombing the flight. He is to date the only person convicted over the attack. He lost one appeal and abandoned another before being freed in 2009 on compassionate grounds because he was terminally ill with cancer.

He died in Libya in 2012, still protesting his innocence.

A breakthrough in the investigation came when U.S. officials in 2017 received a copy of an interview that Mas’ud, a longtime explosives expert for Libya’s intelligence service, had given to Libyan law enforcement in 2012 after being taken into custody following the collapse of the regime of the country’s leader, Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

In that interview, U.S. officials said, Mas’ud admitted building the bomb in the Pan Am attack and working with two other conspirators to carry it out. He also said the operation was ordered by Libyan intelligence and that Gadhafi thanked him and other members of the team after the attack, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case.

While Mas’ud is now the third Libyan intelligence official charged in the U.S. in connection with the Lockerbie bombing, he would be the first to stand trial in an American courtroom.

The Crown Office in its statement added that “Scottish prosecutors and police, working with U.K. government and U.S. colleagues, will continue to pursue this investigation, with the sole aim of bringing those who acted along with al-Megrahi to justice.”

It is incredible that the Lockerbie bombing occurred thirty-four years ago!.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Michelle Goldberg, has an analysis of Senator Kyrsten Sinema leaving the Democratic Party entitled,  Kyrsten Sinema Is Right. This Is Who She’s Always Been.  Here is an excerpt. 

“In the self-congratulatory video that Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona made to announce that she was leaving the Democratic Party and becoming an independent, she didn’t mention any disagreements with her former caucus about issues. Instead, she framed the move as a step toward self-actualization. “Registering as an independent, and showing up to work with the title of independent, is a reflection of who I’ve always been,” she said.

It’s true: This is who she’s always been. The content of Sinema’s politics has changed over time, from Green Party progressivism to pro-corporate centrism. Her approach to elected office as a vehicle for the refinement of the self has not.

In Sinema’s 2009 book “Unite and Conquer: How to Build Coalitions That Win — and Last,” she described giving up shrill partisanship, which was making her unhappy, for a vaguely New Age ethos that prized inner tranquillity. One chapter was called “Letting Go of the Bear and Picking Up the Buddha,” with the bear representing fear and anger. “Picking up the Buddha (becoming a super centered political actor) makes you a stronger, more effective you,” she wrote. “To be your most fabulous political self, you’ll need to learn to recognize the bear and learn to let go of it in your work.”

Transcending fear and anger is an excellent spiritual goal. But becoming a more centered and fabulous person is a political project only when it’s directed toward aims beyond oneself. With Sinema, it’s not remotely clear what those aims might be, or if they exist. (Another chapter in her book is “Letting Go of Outcomes.”) Announcing her new independent status, Sinema wrote an essay in The Arizona Republic and gave interviews to outlets including Politico and CNN. Nowhere have I seen her articulate substantive differences with the Democrats, aside from her opposition to tax increases. Instead, she spoke about not fitting into a box, being true to herself, and wanting to work, as she told Politico, without the “pressures or the poles of a party structure.”

Until recently, Sinema has seemed to delight in the power an evenly split Senate gave her, which she used to benefit the financial and pharmaceutical industries. Negotiating the Inflation Reduction Act, she single-handedly stopped Democrats from closing the carried interest loophole, a provision that significantly cuts the tax bills of Wall Street investors. And Sinema insisted on narrowing the part of the law meant to bring down prescription drug prices, earning criticism even from Joe Manchin, the centrist West Virginia Democrat with whom she is frequently aligned.

“One of her deep flaws is that she doesn’t realize our actions have impacts every day on people who need our help,” said Ruben Gallego, a Democratic Arizona congressman who’d been considering a primary campaign against Sinema.”

It will be interesting how Sinema’s decision plays out in 2024 when she is up for reelection. If she runs as an independent that opens up the Arizona race for a three-way battle that will give an edge to Republicans.

Tony

Artemis I Mission

Dear Commons Community,

The Orion capsule  with no astronauts aboard  will splash down this (Sunday) afternoon after a 26-day journey that took it to the moon and back.

NASA launched the giant rocket toward the moon on November 26th. The rocket reached orbit and sent a small capsule  with no astronauts on board  to the moon. This was the beginning of Artemis I, a mission to test NASA’s ability to return astronauts to the moon 50 years after it last accomplished that feat.

Today, Artemis I will come to an end when that vehicle splashes back down in the Pacific Ocean.

The splashdown is expected 12:40 p.m. Eastern time. NASA Television will begin streaming coverage of the return at 11 a.m. Eastern time on Sunday.

NASA will hold a news conference at 3:30 p.m. Eastern time after the splashdown.

The primary goal of Artemis I was a crucial shakedown of NASA’s new space hardware, including Orion, a spacecraft for carrying astronauts to deep space, including lunar orbit. Orion is unoccupied this time, but it will take astronauts to the moon in the coming years.

During its nearly monthlong journey to and from the moon, Orion got within 80 miles of the lunar surface. It also extended its orbit tens of thousands of miles from the moon. If all goes well on Sunday, the mission will complete its most important objective: proving that the spacecraft can safely re-enter Earth’s atmosphere on the way back from the moon, and then splashing down under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean to the west of Mexico’s Baja Peninsula.

The Orion spacecraft will perform what NASA calls a skip re-entry. During the skip re-entry, the capsule will enter the upper atmosphere, oriented at an angle where the capsule generates enough aerodynamic lift to bounce back up out of the atmosphere. It will then re-enter a second time. It’s almost like throwing a rock that bounces off the surface of a pond before sinking. The maneuver allows more precise steering toward a landing site closer to the coast.

NASA officials argue that the moon missions are central to its human spaceflight program — not simply a do-over of the Apollo moon landings from 1969 to 1972.

“It’s a future where NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon,” Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, said during a news conference earlier this year. “And on these increasingly complex missions, astronauts will live and work in deep space and will develop the science and technology to send the first humans to Mars.”

For scientists, the renewed focus on the moon promises a bonanza of new data in the coming years. There is a particular interest in the amount of water ice on the moon, which could be used for astronauts’ water and oxygen supplies in the future and could provide fuel for missions deeper into space.

For those  of us old enough to remember,  this is like the 1960s when the United States first made major advances in the space race!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Citing inflationary pressures and slumping enrollment, Cazenovia College announced it will close in 2023. The move comes after the college missed a bond payment earlier this year.

The small, private liberal arts college in upstate New York announced on Wednesday that it would cease operations after the spring semester, citing financial concerns exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and inflation that irreparably harmed the nearly 200-year-old institution.

Cazenovia defaulted on a $25 million bond payment in October. Since then, questions have swirled about its fate. College officials remained tight-lipped, telling Inside Higher Ed earlier this fall only that “discussions continue to take place” on the outstanding bond payment. Now college leaders have made a clear decision about its future.  As reported by Inside Higher Education.

“We’re deeply disappointed that it has come to this,” Ken Gardiner, chair of Cazenovia’s Board of Trustees, said in a statement Wednesday announcing the forthcoming closure. “Considerable time and effort have been spent on improving the College’s financial position over the past several years. Unfortunately, the headwinds and market conditions were insurmountable, leading to a projected deficit of several million dollars for next year. As a result, the College won’t have the funds necessary to be open and continue operations for Fall 2023 and beyond.”

The college struck a similar tone in an email to graduates.

“This extremely difficult decision was the result of unchangeable business realities which were accelerated by the global pandemic. Leadership worked tirelessly over the past several years to come up with a solution, but ultimately the financial challenges were too great to ensure the long-term viability of the College,” President David Bergh wrote in a message to alumni Wednesday. “We remain committed to providing support and information to our students, faculty, staff and alumni. We will be providing updates on our website to assist with questions you may have as alumni going forward. We thank you for your support over the years.”

Despite the uncertainty at Cazenovia, outward signs until this week suggested that the college planned to remain open. Student recruiting sessions continued, and new faculty members were hired.

Pressed for more details on hiring, Cazenovia spokesperson Timothy Greene said the hires were made over the summer, when the college was still pursuing two possible paths forward.

“We’ve been working on two parallel paths, one regarding refinancing and the other regarding preparing teach out agreements as a worst-case scenario, as we are required to do. Discussions for refinancing continued up through yesterday when it was determined we did not have the resources needed to enroll students for fall 2023,” Greene said by email.

Officials did not answer questions about whether the university had considered a merger.

Cazenovia’s enrollment has trended downward in recent years, according to its Common Data Set. As of fall 2021, Cazenovia counted 746 total students, down from 1,042 just five years earlier. Enrollment declines appeared to strain the tuition-dependent college, though those woes did not show up in financial composite scores assigned by the Department of Education; Cazenovia’s most recent score was 2.2 on a 1.0-to-3.0 scale, with 1.5 indicative of financial responsibility. (Some critics have decried such scores as a flawed metric for financial health.)

Predictions on the viability of struggling institutions have varied in recent years.

In 2015, Moody’s Investors Service ominously predicted that college closures would triple in the coming years.

Cazenovia isn’t the only college to announce a closure this year—or even this week.

Quest College, a for-profit institution in San Antonio, abruptly shut down this week, giving students virtually no notice and leaving many without a clear backup plan. Quest College’s website has since been taken off-line. (Quest College officials did not respond to a request for comment.)

Other recent closures include Chatfield College, the San Francisco Art Institute, Marymount California University, Lincoln College and Judson College, to name a few. Some colleges, including Mills College and Bloomfield College, have been absorbed by other institutions via mergers.

Experts say that while closures are always difficult, there are good and bad ways to wind down a college. Doing things the right way means providing advance notice and offering students a path to transfer elsewhere, said Clare McCann, a higher education fellow at Arnold Ventures who has studied college closures. Precipitous closures, she said, are much more harmful to students.

In that sense, Cazenovia offers a contrast to Quest College. While Quest offered students no clear pathway, Cazenovia has entered into a teach-out agreement with nine New York institutions to absorb students beginning in the fall 2023 semester: Daemen University, Elmira College, Excelsior University, Hilbert College, Keuka College, LeMoyne College, the State University of New York College at Oneonta, Utica University and Wells College.

“We’ve seen a lot of institutions that closed without any warning to their students,” McCann said. “One thing we can say about this institution is that they’re not closing precipitously; they will help students transfer, so those students are going to be in a better academic situation than a lot of students who are affected by college closures. But that’s not what those students thought they were signing up for when they enrolled, and that is still going to be a big challenge for them.”

While closures can be a painful process, McCann noted that sometimes they are for the best. For example, she suggested it may be better for students if institutions running out of money shut down rather than provide low-quality academic offerings. If there aren’t adequate resources, she said, students may be better served elsewhere.

“I think small nonprofit colleges have been more resilient than a lot of people expected. They’ve found ways to get through hard times and survive, whether it’s on alumni donations or changes to their programs. But it’s also true that not every small institution is able to do that. And that may not always be the right choice. There are institutions that might not ever be able to recover from the enrollment declines that they’ve experienced, and rather than let the academics of an institution suffer, they may decide that the better option is a merger or closure,” McCann said.

As part of my dissertation in the mid-1980s, I studied the planning and decision making of small colleges that were in financial jeopardy.  I visited Cazenovia and met with then President Stephen M. Schneeweiss, who laid out his vision for solvency and even expanding his academic program from associate degrees to baccalaureate and graduate degrees. His plan worked for forty years and now has come to an end!

Tony

Kyrsten Sinema

Dear Commons Community,

Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema shook up the US Senate a bit yesterday by announcing  that she is no longer a Democrat and has registered as an independent, but she does not plan to caucus with Republicans, ensuring Democrats will retain their narrow majority in the Senate.

Sinema, who has modeled her political approach on the renegade style of the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and has frustrated Democratic colleagues at times with her overtures to Republicans and opposition to Democratic priorities, said she was “declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington.”

The first-term senator wrote in the Arizona Republic that she came into office pledging “to be independent and work with anyone to achieve lasting results. I committed I would not demonize people I disagreed with, engage in name-calling, or get distracted by political drama. I promised I would never bend to party pressure.”

She wrote that her approach is “rare in Washington and has upset partisans in both parties” but “has delivered lasting results for Arizona.”

Democrats were set to hold a 51-49 edge in the Senate come January after the victory Tuesday by Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia’s runoff election. The Senate is now split 50-50, with Vice President Kamala Harris the tiebreaking vote for Democrats.

Sinema told Politico in an interview that she will not caucus with Republicans and that she plans to keep voting as she has since winning election to the Senate in 2018 after three House terms. “Nothing will change about my values or my behavior,” she said.

She is facing reelection in 2024 and is likely to be matched up with a well-funded primary challenger after angering much of the Democratic base by blocking or watering down progressive priorities such as a minimum wage increase or President Biden’s big social spending initiatives. She has not said whether she plans to seek another term.

Sinema’s most prominent potential primary challenger is Rep. Ruben Gallego, who has a long history of feuding with Sinema.

“When politicians are more focused on denying the opposition party a victory than they are on improving Americans’ lives, the people who lose are everyday Americans,” Sinema wrote. “That’s why I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington. I registered as an Arizona independent.”

It appears that this will have a small modest effect on legislation and other matters that come before the Senate.  Politically, it is probably a good move for her.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

When Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah) was asked yesterday if he would support Donald Trump in 2024, he responded: “Absolutely not.”

And that stands even if the former president wins the Republican nomination.  As reported by the Huffington Post.

“Look, I voted to remove him from office — twice,” Romney said to laughter at a Washington Post forum on climate change, referring to Trump’s two impeachments.

“It’s not just because he loses,” Romney emphasized, referring to the midterm election pratfalls of many high-profile candidates endorsed by Trump. “It’s also [that] he’s simply not a person who ought to have the reins of the government of the United States.”

Romney said it’s “not rocket science” why so many GOP candidates went down in defeat. It’s because they were picked or endorsed by Trump, whose backing was the “kiss of death” in the general election, he said.

The senator conceded, however, that Trump maintains a significant share of support from the Republican Party.

Romney has been hitting hard at Trump.

Earlier this week, he turned one of Trump’s favorite insults against fellow Republicans back on him. Romney called the former president a RINO — Republican In Name Only — for calling for the termination of the Constitution.

“Well, the Republican Party is the Constitution party,” Romney told reporters on Capitol Hill on Monday. “So when he calls to suspend the Constitution, he goes from being MAGA to being RINO.”

Late last month, he blasted Trump over his dinner at Mar-a-Lago with white supremacist Nick Fuentes and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West who recently said he sees “good things” in Hitler.

Romney called the meeting between Trump, Fuentes and Ye “disgusting.”

“I think it has been clear that there’s no bottom to the degree to which President Trump will degrade himself and the nation,” Romney told reporters at the time.

More Republicans have to get on aboard with Romney!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The House of Representatives gave final approval yesterday to legislation protecting same-sex marriages, a monumental step in a decades-long battle for nationwide recognition of such unions that reflects a stunning turnaround in societal attitudes.

President Joe Biden is expected to promptly sign the measure, which requires all states to recognize same-sex marriages, a relief for hundreds of thousands of couples who have married since the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision that legalized those marriages nationwide.

The bipartisan legislation, which passed 258-169, would also protect interracial unions by requiring states to recognize legal marriages regardless of “sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin.”  As reported by the Associated Press.

In debate ahead of the vote, several gay members of Congress talked about what it would mean for them and their families. Rep. Chris Pappas, D-N.H., said he was set to marry “the love of my life” next year and that it is “unthinkable” that his marriage might not be recognized in some states.

Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., said he and his husband should be able to visit each other in the hospital just like any other married couple and receive spousal benefits “regardless of if your spouse’s name Samuel or Samantha.”

Rep. David Cicilline, D-R.I., said that the idea of marriage equality used to be a “far-fetched idea, Now it’s the law of the land and supported by the vast majority of Americans.”

While the bill received GOP votes, most Republicans opposed the legislation and some conservative advocacy groups lobbied aggressively against it, arguing that it doesn’t do enough to protect those who want to refuse services for same-sex couples.

“God’s perfect design is indeed marriage between one man and one woman for life,” said Rep. Bob Good, R-Va. “And it doesn’t matter what you think or what I think, that’s what the Bible says.”

Rep. Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., choked up as she begged colleagues to vote against the bill, which she said undermines “natural marriage” between a man and a woman.

“I’ll tell you my priorities,” Hartzler said. “Protect religious liberty, protect people of faith and protect Americans who believe in the true meaning of marriage.”

Democrats moved the bill quickly through the House and Senate after the Supreme Court’s June decision that overturned the federal right to an abortion. That ruling included a concurring opinion from Justice Clarence Thomas that suggested same-sex marriage should also be reconsidered.

The House passed a bill to protect the same-sex unions in July with the support of 47 Republicans, a robust and unexpected show of support that kick-started serious negotiations in the Senate. After months of talks, the Senate passed the legislation last week with 12 Republican votes.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., presided over the vote as one of her last acts in leadership before stepping aside in January. She said the legislation “will ensure that “the federal government will never again stand in the way of marrying the person you love.”

The legislation would not require states to allow same-sex couples to marry, as the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision now does. But it would require states to recognize all marriages that were legal where they were performed and it would protect current same-sex unions if the Obergefell decision were overturned.

While it’s not everything advocates may have wanted, passage of the legislation represents a watershed moment. Just a decade ago, many Republicans openly campaigned on blocking same-sex marriages; today more than two-thirds of the public support them.

Democrats in the Senate, led by Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin and Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, slowly won over key Republican votes by negotiating an amendment that would clarify that the legislation does not affect the rights of private individuals or businesses that are already enshrined in current law. The amended bill would also make clear that a marriage is between two people, an effort to ward off some far-right criticism that the legislation could endorse polygamy.

In the end, several religious groups, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, came out in support of the bill. The Mormon church said it would support rights for same-sex couples as long as they didn’t infringe upon religious groups’ right to believe as they choose.

Conservative groups that opposed the bill pushed the almost four dozen Republicans who previously backed the legislation to switch their position. The Republicans who supported the bill in July represented a wide range of the GOP caucus — from more moderate members to Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry, the chair of the conservative hard-right House Freedom Caucus, and New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, the No. 3 House Republican. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy voted against the measure.

Thursday’s vote came as the LGBTQ community has faced violent attacks, such as the shooting earlier this month at a gay nightclub in Colorado that killed five people and injured at least 17.

“We have been through a lot,” said Kelley Robinson, the incoming president of the advocacy group Human Rights Campaign. But Robinson says the votes show “in such an important way” that the country values LBGTQ people.

“We are part of the full story of what it means to be an American,” said Robinson, who was inside the Senate chamber for last week’s vote with her wife and young son. “It really speaks to them validating our love.”

The vote was personal for many senators, too. The day the bill passed their chamber, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer was wearing the tie he wore at his daughter’s wedding to another woman. He recalled that day as “one of the happiest moments of my life.”

Baldwin, the first openly gay senator who has been working on gay rights issues for almost four decades, tearfully hugged Schumer as the final vote was underway. She tweeted thanks to the same-sex and interracial couples who she said made the moment possible.

“By living as your true selves, you changed the hearts and minds of people around you,” she wrote.

We have come a long way in opening up our society to everyone!

Tony

Brittney Griner

Dear Commons Community,

U.S. basketball star Brittney Griner was released by Russia from a penal colony in a negotiated prisoner-release deal, a U.S. official said. She is safe and in good spirits, according to President Joe Biden.

Ms. Griner, a two-time Olympian, was serving time in Russia for a nine-year drug conviction for the possession and smuggling of less than a gram of hashish oil.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said that Ms. Griner was exchanged for Russian citizen Viktor Bout at Abu Dhabi Airport on Thursday. “The Russian citizen has been returned to his homeland,” the ministry said in a Telegram post. Mr. Bout is a suspected arms dealer.

The leaders of the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia conducted the mediation efforts to secure Ms. Griner and Mr. Bout’s exchange, the Persian Gulf countries said.

In July, Ms. Griner pleaded guilty to possessing the hashish oil and apologized for what she said was an honest mistake. Before being sentenced in August, she appealed to the court, saying she hoped the ruling “does not end my life here.”

U.S. officials said this morning that the Russian government made clear that the only route to securing the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner was through the release of a Russian national. As reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Ms. Griner was released  in a prisoner swap for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was convicted in 2012 to 25 years in prison for conspiring to sell weapons to people he believed represented Colombia’s FARC rebels, but were actually Drug Enforcement Administration agents.

Mr. Bout was released through an act of clemency approved by President Biden, one of the U.S. officials said.

One of the U.S. officials said of Mr. Bout, “Nothing can remove the stigma of his guilty conviction in the U.S. Justice system.”

U.S. officials said the Biden administration had sought the release of Paul Whelan, a former Marine held in Russia, but Moscow had “treated this situation differently from Brittney’s and rejected each and every one of our proposals for his release.”

“This was not a situation where we had a choice of which American to bring home. It was a choice between bringing home one particular American, Brittney Griner,” the official said.

The official said that choice had “become clear in recent weeks.”

A U.S. official said a senior U.S. government official “spoke at length” Friday with Mr. Whelan “to talk through today’s news.”

The official said another senior U.S. government official met in person with Mr. Whelan’s sister on Wednesday “to share and talk through at length the news about Brittney.”

“I will also emphasize that the president made clear to the Whelan family that when they are ready, he is eager to personally convey his commitment to Paul’s case, its resolution and to keep them informed of our efforts.”

Welcome back, Brittney!

Congratulations to the Biden administration for negotiating her release!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Reporters and editors at The New York Times began a one-day strike today, saying talks between their union and the company had dragged on and showed limited progress.

The contract between The Times and The New York Times Guild expired in March 2021, and about 40 bargaining sessions have been held since. Negotiators have failed to come to an agreement on salaries, health and retirement benefits, and other issues.

More than 1,100 employees signed a pledge to strike for 24 hours. The union negotiating the contract, which is part of the NewsGuild of New York, represents about 1,450 employees in the newsroom, advertising and other areas of the company. More than 1,800 people work in The Times’s newsroom.

In a statement last night, the union accused The Times of bargaining in bad faith.

“Their wage proposal still fails to meet the economic moment, lagging far behind both inflation and the average rate of wage gains in the U.S.,” the union said in its announcement that it would strike.

In a note to the newsroom, Joe Kahn, the executive editor of The Times, said he was disappointed with the union’s decision.

Daily business updates  The latest coverage of business, markets and the economy, sent by email each weekday. Get it sent to your inbox.

“Strikes typically happen when talks deadlock. That is not where we are today,” Mr. Kahn said. “While the company and the NewsGuild remain apart on a number of issues, we continue to trade proposals and make progress toward an agreement.”

Compensation remains the most contentious aspect of the negotiations. The Times has offered union members a 5.5 percent raise upon ratification of the contract, 3 percent raises in 2023 and 2024, and a 4 percent retroactive bonus to compensate for a lack of raises since the contract expired. The union has proposed a 10 percent raise upon ratification, 5.5 percent raises in 2023 and 2024, and an 8.5 percent retroactive bonus.

Other issues discussed during talks include return-to-work policies and the company’s performance rating system for employees. In a study it released in August, the union said the system was discriminatory.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Daily News pulled no punches with its front page yesterday reporting the 17 guilty verdicts against the Trump Organization for tax fraud.

“FRAUD.ORG,” the tabloid’s headline read atop an image of Donald Trump.

The former president himself wasn’t personally charged, but the conviction sullies his reputation and may widen the ongoing criminal investigation into his business practices. His company faces up to a $1.6 million fine.

FRAUD.ORG indeed!

Tony