Hundreds of Hezbollah pagers explode across Lebanon injuring thousands | The Excerpt
On Wednesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: At least nine people were killed, and thousands injured, including Hezbollah fighters, when pagers exploded in Lebanon. Hezbollah has blamed Israel as tensions continue along the Lebanon-Israel border. Paste BN Democracy Reporter Erin Mansfield breaks down polling from the nonpartisan World Justice Project on whether or not Americans will accept election results. Grassroots organizations in Georgia are working to register voters of color to push back against what they call voter suppression efforts. Paste BN Sports Columnist Nancy Armour explains how footage for Simone Biles' Netflix documentary could be the smoking gun in Jordan Chiles' medal appeal. STI rates are skyrocketing among older Americans.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Wednesday, September 18th, 2024. This is The Excerpt. Today, why did pagers explode across Lebanon? Plus, we take a look at polling around American's willingness or lack thereof to accept this fall's election results, and how footage from a Netflix documentary may help gymnast Jordan Chiles in her Olympic medal appeals process.
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At least nine people were killed and nearly 3000 injured, many of them Hezbollah fighters when the handheld pagers they used to communicate exploded. Lebanon's Health Minister said yesterday a senior Lebanese security source and another source told Reuters that Israel's Mossad spy agency planted explosives inside 5,000 pagers imported by Hezbollah months before yesterday's detonations. Iran-backed Hezbollah has vowed to retaliate against Israel. Though Israel's military has declined to comment on the blasts.
The incident came just hours after Israel's security cabinet released a statement vowing to return tens of thousands of displaced residents of Israel's northern areas to their homes. Hezbollah, long Israel's enemy has repeatedly fired missiles at Israeli territory since Hamas's October 7th attacks causing many residents to flee south. Israel has for months warned that it could launch a military operation to drive Hezbollah away from its border. The situation along Israel's northern border with Lebanon has fueled fears of a regional conflict that could bring in the United States and Iran. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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Nearly only half of Republicans and a quarter of Democrats said they will not accept presidential election results this fall if their candidate loses. I spoke with Paste BN Democracy Reporter, Erin Mansfield to learn more. Hello, Erin.
Erin Mansfield:
Hi, how are you Taylor?
Taylor Wilson:
Good, good. Thanks for hopping on today. So I want to start here, Erin, what does this data tell us about Republicans and Democrats and whether they'll accept election results this fall?
Erin Mansfield:
So this was a poll of about a thousand households conducted back in June, but what essentially it tells us is that there is a pretty sizable chunk of our electorate who are not prepared to accept a loss of their candidate come November 5th. So it was higher on the Republican side, but it was by no means zero on the Democratic side. What the World Justice Project found was that 46% of Republicans would not accept the results of the presidential election if the Republican lost. In this case, of course, Donald Trump.
They found that about 27% of Democrats would not accept the result if their candidate lost less, but still a significant amount. And then what was probably the most striking question, "Okay, you not accept the results as illegitimate, but are you going to, quote, "take action" to overturn them?" They found that 14% of Republicans and a little under 11% of Democrats said they would in fact take action to overturn them. It's not totally clear what that means. It's going to end up being in the eye of the people who hear that question and how they interpret it. But what we have is a sizable amount of our country who is not ready to accept defeat come November.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, as you mentioned Erin, we don't know exactly what kind of action we're necessarily talking about here, but are there concerns about political violence after the November election? What does polling tell us on this point?
Erin Mansfield:
So there are concerns about political violence separately in a different survey done by the Public Religion Research Institute and released last week, they found that about one in six Americans does support political violence. And among Republicans, that was about one in four, and among Republicans who favor Donald Trump, that was about one in three. We are seeing just a very different year than we might've expected eight years ago.
Taylor Wilson:
This other poll, Erin also asked folks specifically about corruption as it pertains to the electoral process. What did we learn really on this question?
Erin Mansfield:
Yeah, so what they did was they went through several different subjects about the, quote, unquote, "integrity" of the electoral process and they broke down the answers by Republicans and Democrats. And there was a pretty stark difference in answers to questions like, "Are election officials trustworthy? Is the electoral authority impartial and effective?" And they found that it was pretty consistently lower among Republicans than among Democrats. The process free from corruption, 29% of Republicans said yes compared to 56% of Democrats. The place where it really flipped was that Republicans tended to believe that it was easier to vote conveniently than Democrats, or they were more likely to think that voting access is equal compared to Democrats. And that really fits what we see in our everyday lives in politics where we see that Republicans, one of their big lines this time around is, "Let's make it easier to vote and harder to cheat." And Democrats are constantly saying that Republicans are just making it harder to vote. So it very much lines up with what we already know, but it's pretty striking to see the numbers.
Taylor Wilson:
Striking, indeed. Erin Mansfield covers democracy for Paste BN. Thank you, Erin.
Erin Mansfield:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
To combat what they call voter suppression efforts in Georgia, grassroots organizations are working to register thousands of voters of color urging them to cast ballots early, show up in person and turn out in record numbers so there's little doubt who the winner is on election day. With Georgia in play in the battle for the presidency, they are determined to help voters understand and navigate what they call the state's restrictive election changes. The Republic controlled legislature adopted election changes in the wake of the 2020 election. Among other things, the changes signed into law by Republican Governor Brian Kemp require a photo ID to vote absentee by mail, cut the period to request an absentee ballot and limit the number of ballot drop boxes.
They also give more control over local election boards to the state legislature. One provision made it a misdemeanor to give away food or water to voters within a certain distance from a polling site. Voting rights advocates complain the changes or efforts to tamp down turnout, particularly among Black residents who make up about 30% of the state's population. Supporters of the law have said that they aim to protect against voter fraud and boost confidence in the integrity of the election system. You can read more with a link in today's show notes.
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If gymnast Jordan Chiles gets to keep her Olympic bronze medal, she might have Simone Biles and her Netflix documentary to thank. I spoke with Paste BN Sports Columnist, Nancy Armour for more. Hello Nancy, thanks so much for hopping on today.
Nancy Armour:
It is a pleasure to be here Taylor.
Taylor Wilson:
So Nancy, just take us back a few weeks to Paris, if you would. What happened with gymnast Jordan Chiles and Ana Bărbosu in this event, and what was the decision on that night?
Nancy Armour:
Jordan Chiles, who's American finished fifth initially in the floor exercise final. She had a score of 13.666, which put her behind two Romanians, Anna Bărbosu and Sabrina Maneca-Voinea, both of whom had a score of 13.7. Anna Bărbosu had a better execution score, so she was at that point in third place. However, Jordan's coach Cecile Landi filed what is known as an inquiry. It's basically an appeal of the difficulty score saying, "Hey, I wasn't given enough credit for X." In this case. They were questioning or they were saying, you didn't give us enough credit for this split leap. And the judging panel reviewed it and said, "You're right, you should have gotten more credit for it." And they added .10 to her score, which put her ahead of both of the Romanians. So Jordan was now third and the bronze medalist.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. So in the week of that night, Nancy, what happened to lead up to this appeals process that we're hearing about now?
Nancy Armour:
Yeah, so the Romanians were upset. Anna Bărbosu had, even though they knew that the results were not official yet, they never are until there's something on a scoreboard that says results are now official. She had begun celebrating on the podium. She was waving a Romanian flag, and then obviously when Jordan's inquiry was accepted and her score was changed, that all went away. So the Romanians were very mad. They felt as if something had been taken from Bărbosu, which was not the case, that this is just the rules of the sport. And they filed an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport. They made several different arguments, but eventually settled on the fact that Jordan's inquiry was not submitted in time. Because Jordan was the last person in the floor exercise final, she had 60 seconds for her coach to make a verbal inquiry. The Court of Arbitration for Sport decided that Jordan's inquiry had come in four seconds too late.
Taylor Wilson:
So we know Chiles is now formally appealing that decision. What's the process look like here, Nancy? What does all this entail and where do things stand right now?
Nancy Armour:
Well, I think the big thing to know is that when this appeal was filed, it laid out a couple of different avenues that there were wrongdoings in. But the biggest thing is that there was video evidence that was found after the Court of Arbitration for Sport hearing, which that's a whole other issue. But this video shows conclusively that Cecile Landi filed not just one, she did it twice within the 60-second span. She did it once at 49 seconds and once again at 57 seconds. I'm not great at math, but both of those are within 60 seconds. And so if the Court of Arbitration for Sport had seen this video, that should have changed the entire outcome of the case.
I don't want to say what's in their minds, but I think that there's no reasonable person who could say, "Oh no, you didn't make it in time." If you have video showing, and it's time span video showing, yes, she did make the verbal inquiry within the 60-second period. This is now before the Swiss Federal Tribunal. We don't know how long this is going to take. We don't know for sure yet if the Swiss Tribunal can say, "We accept this petition, we're sending it back to the Court of Arbitration for Sport." We don't know if they can say, "We're accepting this petition and actually we're throwing out the cast decision." Or, "We're saying that the Romanians don't have a case." We're not quite sure exactly what all this Swiss Federal Tribunal can do. We just know that the case is now in front of them. And Jordan's attorneys make a couple of very strong arguments.
In addition to the video, they say that the Court of Arbitration for Sport was sending emails and information about the case to either wrong or outdated email addresses. So the Americans did not find out until less than 24 hours before the hearing, which that's not good. The man who was the president of the arbitration panel actually represents the government of Romania in a different area of arbitration. He had disclosed that, but the Americans never got that disclosure, so they didn't actually know about that until after the hearing. So there are a couple of different procedural areas or avenues that Jordan's attorneys believe should get this decision thrown out.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah. So that video you mentioned, Nancy, curiously, it comes from a Netflix documentary. Can you talk through that a little bit?
Nancy Armour:
Yeah, so Simone Biles, who trains with Jordan Childs in Texas is doing a documentary about her Olympic journey. The first two episodes aired before the games, and they're going to have another two episodes that are released next month. So her video crew was on the floor. They'd gotten permission from the International Olympic Committee to film Simone and all of her teammates and get raw sound and all of these things. So when the Court of Arbitration for Sport released its decision, the filmmaker said, "We've got video." And Cecilia Landi, who was the coach of both Jordan and Simone said, "Can you look through it and see if there's anything that would show we made the in time?" And they do because Cecile was mic'd up for the documentary. That's how you can hear her saying, "Inquiry for Jordan. Inquiry for Jordan." It's because she's wearing these microphones for the Netflix documentary.
Taylor Wilson:
Wild. All right, great breakdown for us as always. Nancy Armour is a columnist with Paste BN Sports. Nancy, always a pleasure having you on. Thanks so much.
Nancy Armour:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
Meanwhile, video submitted Monday as part of Jordan Chile's appeal to the Swiss Federal Tribunal indicates a scoring inquiry for star Simone Biles routine in the floor final was never registered, likely costing the Olympic champion another gold medal. Biles won the silver. You can read more about that with a link in today's show notes.
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Sexually transmitted infections or STIs are skyrocketing among older adults at a faster rate than among other age groups. The rising STI rates for older adults can be explained in part by the comforts of 21st century life. Older adults are living and staying sexually active longer thanks to medical advances health experts say.
They're more likely to live in senior communities and have multiple partners, but are less aware than their younger counterparts about how to use prevention tools like condoms and regular STI screenings. Part of the problem is people in this population lack education experts say, the larger issue is that people of all ages are uncomfortable talking about sex, especially among older Americans, which makes it difficult to spread awareness about sexual health. Younger people have a greater number of STI cases, but experts say what's alarming is the rate at which STIs are increasing among adults aged 55 and older. From 2012 to 2022, chlamydia cases in this population more than tripled according to the CDC. During the same time, the agency's researchers also found gonorrhea cases more than quadrupled and syphilis cases increased sevenfold.
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Over the course of the summer Paste BN reporters visited six towns, all named Hope to gauge the mood of the voters. My colleague, Dana Taylor's visit to Hope Arkansas was among them and was featured in part one of this series on Hope in America, which aired last Sunday. For part two of the series, Paste BN Washington Bureau Chief, Susan Page joins Dana to share her insights on our latest poll with voters about Hope in America. You can find that episode right here on this feed beginning at 4 P.M. Eastern Time.
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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods. If you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.