Lea Salonga Is Never Getting Tired of Sondheim
Lea Salonga Is Never Getting Tired of Sondheim
Nobody doubted that Lea Salonga could sing.
She had won a Tony Award at the age of 20 for her breakout role as the besotted Vietnamese teen Kim in “Miss Saigon,” and sung her heart out as Éponine, and later Fantine, in Broadway productions of “Les Misérables.” She provided the crystalline vocals of not one but two Disney princesses: the warrior heroine of 1998’s “Mulan” and the magic carpet-riding Princess Jasmine in 1992’s “Aladdin.”
But could the singer handle Sondheim — a composer heralded for creating some of the most challenging, idiosyncratic work seen on the American stage — on Broadway? Could she inhabit a character like Momma Rose, the monstrous, pathologically ambitious stage mother from “Gypsy”? Or Mrs. Lovett from “Sweeney Todd,” the butcher/baker who breaks down the marketing challenges of hawking pies filled with human meat, in a Cockney accent, no less?
“Some of it’s hard,” Salonga admitted.
But she is doing all that and more in “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends,” currently playing at the Ahmanson Theater here in Los Angeles after a 16-week run in London’s West End. Scheduled to begin previews on Broadway at the Samuel J. Friedman Theater next month, the show features more than three dozen songs from some of Sondheim’s biggest musicals, including “West Side Story,” “Gypsy,” “A Little Night Music” and “Into the Woods.” The tribute revue also stars Bernadette Peters, who, no stranger to Sondheim, put her own indelible stamp on the character of Momma Rose in 2003.
Salonga, Peters said, “has one of the great Broadway voices, and she just brings down the house.”
For Salonga, “I’m getting the chance to sing some of the most incredible lyrics ever written. I’m getting to dip, not just a toe, but my entire body, into this incredible work.”
“Nobody was surprised how terrific she was as a performer,” said the show’s producer Cameron Mackintosh, who also cast Salonga in “Miss Saigon” and “Les Misérables.”
“The real surprise was how funny she is,” he continued. “There weren’t that many laughs in ‘Miss Saigon’ or ‘Les Miz,’ obviously, so I didn’t know that side of her.”
The show marks Salonga’s return to the Center Theater Group in L.A., where she last appeared in David Henry Hwang’s 2001 revival of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Flower Drum Song.”
In many ways, that show was a leap of faith for her. The 1958 original hadn’t aged particularly well, with its mail-order brides and a musical tribute to diversity titled “Chop Suey.” And by that time in her career, Salonga could be choosy.
“There was no one, particularly at that time *******, who had achieved the combination of artistic and commercial success on Broadway that Lea had,” Hwang said. “We were really lucky to get her.”
Salonga’s career has been like that: a combination of breakout performances (the first Asian Éponine and Fantine on Broadway) and leaps of faith, like “Flower Drum Song” and her recent role in “Here Lies Love,” which recast the tale of Imelda Marcos as a disco musical.
“I never thought I’d see that story on Broadway,” Salonga said.
In the process, she’s opened doors for others in the theater, as both an advocate, speaking out against racial discrimination in Hollywood and on Broadway, and as an example.
“She’s obviously been a big voice for diversity in casting from the very beginning,” said Matthew Bourne, the Tony-winning director of “Old Friends.” “But she’s also been an icon and inspiration for so many of the younger members of our cast.”
On a recent morning, Salonga was in a restaurant overlooking the Ahmanson Theater, talking about some of her earliest days as a child star in her native Philippines, her breakout roles on Broadway, and her reunion with Mackintosh for “Old Friends.”
“Quite a few of us had done ‘Les Miz’ for him,” Salonga recalled. “So I think he just wanted the show to be populated with people he knew, and that he knew would be good.”
Salonga first met Mackintosh in 1988, and was chosen to play Kim in the West End production of “Miss Saigon” after an extensive talent search. “Cameron likes to think he discovered her,” Bourne said with a laugh. “And in many ways, he did.”
But Salonga was already a star in the Philippines by the time Cameron came calling, having appeared in “The King and I” at 7 and as the star of “Annie” at 9. Concerned about whether Salonga, then 17, would be able to handle the pressure of singing in venues like London’s 2,000-seat Drury Lane Theater, Cameron asked her what sorts of crowds she had played for.
Three weeks earlier, she told him, she had opened for Stevie Wonder.
“At which point I said to myself, ‘Cameron, shut up,’” Mackintosh recalled.
“Miss Saigon” went on to become one of the world’s most popular musicals, playing for 10 years in London and securing Salonga a Laurence Olivier Award for best actress in a musical. But when the show was slated to come to Broadway in 1991, it ignited a firestorm for its yellowface casting of the Welsh actor Jonathan Pryce in the role of the Engineer.
Salonga also came under fire from the Actors’ Equity Association, which felt that the part of Kim should go to an Asian American.
In the end, Salonga and Pryce were brought over for the Broadway run, both winning Tonys in the process. Salonga became the first Asian actress to win the award. “I was on cloud nine that night,” she said.
“And after Jonathan Pryce’s casting, which definitely was controversial, every single actor that got to play that role was of Asian descent,” she continued. “So that was a big victory for Asian actors.”
One of the most vocal protesters against the yellowface casting in “Miss Saigon” was Hwang, who even wrote a play about it, “Yellow Face,” which opened at the Mark Taper Forum in 2007 and played on Broadway last fall. When Hwang asked Salonga to star in his revival of “Flower Drum Song” in 2012, it was with that history in mind.
“We’ve talked about it,” he said. “But she was a very young actress who blew the part away both in London and the U.S. And none of my objections to ‘Saigon’ and the casting of Jonathan Pryce had a lot to do with Pryce personally, and certainly not Lea, so there wasn’t much to talk about.”
“One of the good things we did talk about was how ‘Miss Saigon’ created a cohort of performers of Asian ancestry who got experience on Broadway and learned how to command a Broadway stage,” he added. “A huge number of actors who we ended up casting in ‘Flower Drum Song,’ including Lea, had cut their teeth there.”
A decade later, in 2021, Salonga teamed up with Hwang again for #StopAsianHate, an online movement that arose in response to an upswell of anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic.
“I remember seeing the news about a ********* lady who was attacked in front of an apartment building in Manhattan, and the doorman didn’t even try to help her,” she said. “So I thought it was important for me, for all of us, to speak out when one of us is attacked.”
In 2023, the Broadway production of “Here Lies Love” offered Salonga the chance to tell a story close to her heart: the rise and fall of Imelda Marcos and the beginnings of the People Power Revolution in the Philippines. The show also marked the first time Salonga got to play a ********* on Broadway, headlining an all-********* cast.
“I’ve played Vietnamese, Japanese, ********, French twice,” she said. “Never *********. Our stories never made it to Broadway until then.”
Later that year, Mackintosh called upon Salonga to co-star in the West End production of “Old Friends.” “There was only a handful of people I thought could possibly co-star with Bernadette,” he said.
“Steve writes about the human condition,” Peters said. “So you have to get to the heart of it all. But if you follow the map of what he writes, because he really has thought out everything so well, it’s all there.”
Among Salonga’s concerns: doing justice to Mrs. Lovett’s Cockney accent in front of a house full of Londoners. She had performed the role of the serial killer’s accomplice and romantic partner in productions of “Sweeney Todd” in Manila and Singapore in 2019, but Drury Lane was something else.
“In London, I did not give myself any breathing room,” she said. “I needed to make sure I nailed it every day.”
“I’m a Londoner, and actually a real Cockney as well,” Bourne, the director, said. “And her accent is very good, and gets better and better. But that’s Lea, though. She gets better and better at everything she does.”
After her run in Los Angeles and New York, Salonga will return to the Philippine musical stage for the first time in six years to do, yes, more Sondheim, starring as the Witch in “Into the Woods,” a role she played there three decades ago.
“I’m getting to do all kinds of Sondheim now,” she said. “If I could just do Sondheim until the day I die, I’d be happy.”
“The goal isn’t to be 100 percent perfect at everything you do,” she continued. “That’s not it at all. It’s to be a good human, to be a responsible, disciplined, excellent performer. That’s a reputation I like to think I have. And I’d like to keep it that way! That I’m someone you can rely on to put on a good show.”
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Oscars Rewind: How ‘American Beauty’ Lost Its Luster
Oscars Rewind: How ‘American Beauty’ Lost Its Luster
It was March 2000, and everything was coming up roses for “American Beauty.”
There were the box office receipts (more than $350 million worldwide, not adjusted for inflation, against a budget of roughly $15 million, according to the data site Box Office Mojo). The rave reviews (“a hell of a picture,” Kenneth Turan wrote in The Los Angeles Times). The three Golden Globes.
“It was bizarre, because I expected it to be a little art house movie,” Alan Ball, who won an Academy Award for writing the screenplay, said in a recent phone conversation from his home in Los Angeles. “I think that’s all that any of us expected it to be.”
“I had no idea it was going to become what it became,” said Annette Bening, who played a materialistic wife in Ball’s satire about a suburban family whose father, Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), quits his office job and becomes obsessed with his teenage daughter’s best friend.
Then, even more laurels: Five Oscars, including best picture, director (Sam Mendes), original screenplay (Ball), cinematography (Conrad L. Hall) and actor (Spacey).
“I’m a little bit overwhelmed,” a wide-eyed Mendes said in his acceptance speech, as he joined the ranks of Delbert Mann, Jerome Robbins, Robert Redford, James L. Brooks and Kevin Costner as the only filmmakers to win the academy’s top directing honor for their feature directorial debut.
“I had a flask in my pocket,” Ball said, recalling the moment. “That was the only way I could kind of deal with it.”
Critics agreed that the film was a refreshing break from the typical high-concept Hollywood movie mold: After a decade dominated by ******* dramas like “Shakespeare in Love” and “Titanic,” it represented a triumph for riskier filmmaking. In an age of prosperity, when unemployment in America hovered around 4 percent, the movie served as an outlet for the malaise of middle-class suburbanites unfulfilled by their comfy jobs and gorgeous houses in affluent neighborhoods.
“It was kind of a trope to talk about the hidden underbelly, like, ‘Oh, people aren’t actually happy with perfect lives, they’re actually secretly dissatisfied,’” said Gabriel Rossman, an associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose research addresses culture and mass media.
So when you look on a list of the 100 greatest films of the 1990s, you’d expect to find “American Beauty” … first, fourth, 10th?
Absent?
In the context of the modern era — post-9/11, post-economic ******, amid political upheaval — beating up on the film “is so painfully easy that it seems unfair,” the film critic Stephanie Zacharek wrote in Time in 2019.
So what happened?
“I think the culture decided that it was an ‘important’ movie, despite the fact that it was made for less than $15 million by a young studio in the same spirit as an independent film,” Mendes wrote in an email. “It was freighted with all that awards stuff, and so the only place it could travel after that was towards backlash.”
Of course, there is another glaring factor: Spacey’s fall from grace after being accused of ******* misconduct by more than a dozen men and teenage boys dating back 20 years — he was acquitted of ******* assault charges in 2023 — that made the 42-year-old Lester’s lust for the 17-year-old Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari) look no longer daring or edgy but, well, icky.
That was certainly part of it, said Chris Cagle, an associate professor of film history and theory at Temple University in Philadelphia, but the shift in critical opinion began well before the lawsuits.
“Oscar movies often are seen as kind of middlebrow,” he said. “That’s not necessarily a bad thing — middlebrow could just be a way in which a mass-market movie is able to do something different, expansive or experimental — but nonetheless, middlebrow films tend to maybe get derision from people who see them as gauche or dated.”
Movie opinions don’t necessarily match up with the politics or economics of a time *******, but those elements can be a factor. And in September 1999, when DreamWorks released the film in theaters in the United States, that climate was ***** times. The economy was thriving. Employment was plentiful.
To put it simply: It’s much easier to indulge a fantasy of quitting your job when you have a job to quit.
Which meant a film about giving in to your urges — to ditch your dead-end office gig, to cheat on your spouse, to run away from your weird, embarrassing parents — hit the spot.
“Everybody had a way in,” said Dan Jinks, a producer on the film.
So when terrorists crashed a pair of planes into the World Trade Center towers in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001 — and the markets subsequently plunged into a yearslong recession after the 2008 financial crisis — the film experienced a rapid fall from the grace.
Suddenly, a man complaining about his boringly perfect life and office job seemed rather quaint.
Mendes said that, in the wake of the attack, he too re-evaluated his work.
“For at least a decade after 9/11, I was embarrassed by how much of the movie felt self-satisfied — a form of navel-gazing,” he said.
Then came the #MeToo movement in 2017 and a culture-wide reorientation around the way we view ******* assault.
The 17-year-old Angela character who seemed so ********* liberated in 1999? Now, amid a more nuanced understanding of ******* abuse, it is clear that, though she presented herself as confident and in control, she was being taken advantage of.
Another factor: a growing acceptance of homosexuality, with Vermont becoming the first state to legalize civil unions in 1999 and the Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage across the country in 2015.
In his Oscars acceptance speech for best picture, Jinks asserted that homophobia was among the serious issues the film “dealt with,” referring to the fact that the Burnhams’ virulently homophobic neighbor, Colonel Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper), turns out to be a gay man. But nowadays, a contributor to the feminist film criticism blog Screen Queens wrote, the bar for onscreen representation of L.G.B.T.Q. characters is far higher.
“The homophobe-is-secretly-gay trope has been done to death and we’ve all finally realised recently that it is actually, in itself, extremely homophobic,” reads the less-than-rosy reappraisal, which was published in 2020.
But not all re-evaluation has been negative.
In a 2019 retrospective in The Guardian for the movie’s 20th anniversary, the critic Guy Lodge acknowledged the film’s shortcomings but wrote that “American Beauty,” with its “pristinely art-directed yin-yang of sadness and sarcasm,” was worth a closer look.
“Twenty years on, ‘American Beauty’ isn’t as clever as we thought it was, though it’s inadvertently aged into a kind of wounded, embattled wisdom,” he wrote.
Mendes had a similar epiphany when he rewatched the film with his children more than a decade after its release.
“They pointed out to me what a profoundly weird and unusual movie it is,” he said. “It’s such a strange combination of different viewpoints and aesthetics — American and European, gay and straight, comic and serious, poetic and cartoony.
“I still like it a lot,” he added, “but it feels very linked to the person I was in the ’90s.”
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She’s Trying to Stay Ahead of Alzheimer’s, in a Race to the Death
She’s Trying to Stay Ahead of Alzheimer’s, in a Race to the Death
Soon, Irene Mekel will need to pick the day she dies.
She’s not in any hurry: She quite likes her life, in a trim, airy house in Castricum, a Dutch village by the sea. She has flowers growing in her back garden, and there is a street market nearby where vendors greet villagers by name. But if her life is going to end the way she wants, she will have to pick a date, sooner than she might like.
“It’s a tragedy,” she said.
Ms. Mekel, 82, has Alzheimer’s disease. It was diagnosed a year ago. She knows her cognitive function is slowly declining, and she knows what is coming. She spent years working as a nurse, and she cared for her sister, who had vascular dementia. For now, she is managing, with help from her three children and a big screen in the corner of the living room that they update remotely to remind her of the date and any appointments.
In the not-so-distant future, it will no longer be safe for her to stay at home alone. She had a bad fall and broke her elbow in August. She does not feel she can live with her children, who are busy with careers and children of their own. She is determined that she will never move to a nursing home, which she considers an intolerable loss of dignity. As a Dutch citizen, she is entitled by law to request that a doctor help her end her life when she reaches a point of unbearable suffering. And so she has applied for a medically assisted death.
In 2023, shortly before her diagnosis, Ms. Mekel joined a workshop organized by the Dutch Association for Voluntary End of Life. There, she learned how to draft an advance request document that would lay out her wishes, including the conditions under which she would request what is called euthanasia in the Netherlands. She decided it would be when she could not recognize her children and grandchildren, hold a conversation or live in her own home.
But when Ms. Mekel’s family doctor read the advance directive, she said that while she supported euthanasia, she could not provide it. She will not do it for someone who has by definition lost the capacity to consent.
A rapidly growing number of countries around the world, from Ecuador to Germany, are legalizing medical assistance in dying. But in most of those countries, the procedure is available only to people with terminal illness.
The Netherlands is one of just four countries (plus the ********* province of Quebec) that permit medically assisted death by advance request for people with dementia. But the idea is gaining support in other countries, as populations age and medical interventions mean more people live long enough to experience cognitive decline.
The Dutch public strongly supports the right to an assisted death for people with dementia. Yet most Dutch doctors refuse to provide it. They find that the moral burden of ending the life of someone who no longer has the cognitive capacity to confirm their wishes is too weighty to bear.
Ms. Mekel’s doctor referred her to the Euthanasia Expertise Center, in The Hague, an organization that trains doctors and nurses to provide euthanasia within the parameters of Dutch law and connects patients with a medical team that will investigate a request and provide assisted death to eligible patients in cases where their own doctors won’t. But even these doctors are reluctant to act after a person has lost mental capacity.
Last year, a doctor and a nurse from the center came every three months to meet with Ms. Mekel over tea. Ostensibly, they came to discuss her wishes for the end of her life. But Ms. Mekel knew they were really monitoring how quickly her mental faculties had declined. It might seem like a tea party, she said, “but I see them watching me.”
Dr. Bert Keizer is alert for a very particular moment: It is known as “five to 12” — five minutes to midnight. Doctors, patients and their caregivers engage in a delicate negotiation to time death for the last moment before a person loses that capacity to clearly state a rational wish to die. He will fulfill Ms. Mekel’s request to end her life only while she still is fully aware of what she is asking.
They must act before dementia has tricked her, as it has so many of his other patients, into thinking her mind is just fine.
“This balance is something so hard to discover,” he said, “because you as a doctor and she as your patient, neither of you quite knows what the prognosis is, how things will develop — and so the harrowing aspect of this whole thing is looking for the right time for the horrible thing.”
Ms. Mekel finds this negotiation deeply frustrating: The process does not allow for the idea that simply having to accept care can be considered a form of suffering, that worrying about what lies ahead is suffering, that loss of dignity is suffering. Whose assessment should carry more weight, she asks: current Irene Mekel, who sees loss of autonomy as unbearable, or future Irene, with advanced dementia, who is no longer unhappy, or can no longer convey that she’s unhappy, if someone must feed and dress her.
More than 500,000 of the 18 million people in the Netherlands have advance request documents like hers on file with their family doctors, explicitly laying out their wishes for physician-assisted death should they decline cognitively to a point they identify as intolerable. Most assume that an advance request will allow them to progress into dementia and have their spouses, children or caregivers choose the moment when their lives should end.
Yet of the 9,000 physician-assisted deaths in the Netherlands each year, just six or seven are for people who have lost mental capacity. The overwhelming majority are for people with terminal illnesses, mostly *******, with a smaller number for people who have other nonterminal conditions that cause acute suffering — such as neurodegenerative disease or intractable depression.
Physicians, who were the primary drivers of the creation of the Dutch assisted dying law — not Parliament, or a constitutional court case, as in most other countries where the procedure is legal — have strong views about what they will and will not do. “Five to 12” is the pragmatic compromise that has emerged in the 23 years since the criminal code was amended to permit physicians to end lives in situations of “unbearable and irremediable suffering.”
A Shock
Ms. Mekel, petite and brisk, had suspected for some time before she received a diagnosis that she had Alzheimer’s. There were small, disquieting signs, and then one big one, when she took a taxi home one day and could not recognize a single house on the street where she had lived for 45 years, could not identify her own front door.
At that point, she knew it was time to start making plans.
She and her best friend, Jean, talked often about how they dreaded the idea of a nursing home, of needing someone to dress them, get them out of bed in the morning, of having their worlds shrink to a sunroom at the end of a ward.
“When you lose your own will, and you are no longer independent — for me, that’s my nightmare,” she said. “I would kill myself, I think.”
She knows how cognition can slip away almost imperceptibly, like mist over a garden on a spring morning. But the news that she would need to ask Dr. Keizer to end her life before such losses happened came as a shock.
Her distress at the accelerated timeline is not an uncommon response.
Dr. Pieter Stigter, a geriatric specialist who works in nursing homes and also as a consultant for the Expertise Center, must frequently explain to startled patients that their carefully drawn-up advance directives are basically meaningless.
“The first thing I tell them is, ‘I’m sorry, that’s not going to happen,’” he said. “Assisted dying while mentally incompetent, it’s not going to happen. So now we’re going to talk about how we’re going to avoid getting there.”
Patients who have cared for their own parents with dementia may specify in their advance directive that they do not wish to reach the point of being bedridden, incontinent or unable to feed themselves. “But still then, if someone is accepting it, patiently smiling, it’s going to be very hard to be convinced in that moment that even though someone described it in an earlier stage, that in that moment it is unbearable suffering,” Dr. Stigter said.
The first line people write in a directive is always, “‘If I get to the point I do not recognize my children,’” he said. “But what is recognition? Is it knowing someone’s name, or is it having a big smile when someone enters your room?”
Five-to-12 makes the burden being placed on physicians morally tolerable.
“As a doctor, you are the one who has to do it,” said Dr. Stigter, a warm and wiry 44-year-old. “I’m the one doing it. It has to feel good for me.”
Conversations about advance requests for assisted death in the Netherlands are shadowed by what many people who work in this field refer to, with a wince, as “the coffee case.”
In 2016, a doctor who provided an assisted death to a 74-year-old woman with dementia was charged with violating the euthanasia law. The woman had written an advance directive four years earlier, saying she wished to die before she needed to enter a care home. On the day her family chose, her doctor gave her a sedative in coffee, and then injected a stronger dose. But during the administration of the medication that would stop her heart, the woman awoke and resisted. Her husband and children had to hold her down so the doctor could complete the procedure.
The doctor was acquitted in 2019. The judge said the patient’s advance request was sufficient basis for the doctor to act. But the public recoil at the idea of the woman’s family holding her down while she died redoubled the determination of Dutch doctors to avoid such a situation.
A Day Too Late
Dr. Stigter never takes on a case assuming he will provide an assisted death. Cognitive decline is a fluid thing, he said, and so is a person’s sense of what is tolerable.
“The goal is an outcome that reflects what the patient wants — that can evolve all the time,” he said. “Someone can say, ‘I want euthanasia in the future’, but actually when the moment is there, it’s different.”
Dr. Stigter found himself explaining this to Henk Zuidema a few years ago. Mr. Zuidema, a tile setter, had early-onset Alzheimer’s at 57. He was told he would no longer be permitted to drive, and so he would have to stop working and give up his main hobby, driving a vintage motocross bike with friends.
A gruff, stoic family man, Mr. Zuidema was appalled at the idea of no longer providing for his wife or caring for his family, and he told them he would seek a medically assisted death before the disease left him totally dependent.
His own family doctor was not willing to help him die, nor was anyone in her practice, and so his daughter Froukje Zuidema found the Expertise Center. Dr. Stigter was assigned to his case and began driving 30 minutes from his office in the city of Groningen every month to visit Mr. Zuidema at his home in the farming village of Boelenslaan.
“Pieter was very clear: ‘You have to tell me when,’” Ms. Zuidema said. “And that was very hard, because Dad had to make the decision.”
When he grasped that the disease might impair his judgment, and thus cause him to overestimate his mental competence, Mr. Zuidema quickly settled on a plan to die within months. His family was shocked, but for him the trade-off was clear: “Better a year too early than a day too late,” he would say.
Dr. Stigter pushed Mr. Zuidema to define what, exactly, his suffering would be. “He would say, ‘Why is it so bad to get old like that?’” Ms. Zuidema recalled. “‘Why is it so bad to go to a nursing home?’” She said the doctor would tell her father, “ ‘Your idea of suffering is not the same as mine, so help me understand why this is suffering, for you.’ “
Her reticent father struggled to explain, and finally put it in a letter: “I don’t want to lose my role as a husband and a father, I do not want to be unable to help people any longer … Suffering would be if I could no longer be alone with my grandchildren because people did not trust me any longer: even this thought makes me crazy … Do not be misled by a moment in which I look happy but instead look back at this moment when I am with my wife and children.’”
The progress of dementia is unpredictable, and Mr. Zuidema did not experience a rapid decline. In the end, Dr. Stigter visited each month for a year and a half, and the two men developed a relationship of trust, Ms. Zuidema said.
Dr. Stigter provided a medically assisted death in September 2022. Mr. Zuidema, then 59, was in a camp bed near the living room window, his wife and children at his side. His daughter said she sees Dr. Stigter “as a real hero.” She has no doubt her father would have died by suicide even sooner, had he not been confident he could receive an assisted death from his doctor.
Still, she is wistful about the time they didn’t have. If the advance directive had worked as defined in the law — if there had been no fear of missing the moment — her father might have had more months, more time sitting on the vast green lawn between their houses and watching his grandchildren kick a soccer ball, more time with his dog at his feet, more time sitting on a riverbank with his grandson and a lazy fishing line in the water.
“He would have stayed longer,” Ms. Zuidema said.
Her sense that her father’s death was rushed does not outweigh her gratitude that he had the death he wanted. And her feeling is widely shared among families, according to research by Dr. Agnes van der Heide, a professor of end-of-life care and decision making at Erasmus Medical College, University Medical Center Rotterdam.
“The large majority of the Dutch population feel safe in the hands of the doctor, with regards to euthanasia, and they very much appreciate that the doctor has a significant role there and independently judges whether or not they think that ending of life is justifiable,” she said.
For five to 12 to work, doctors should know their patients well and have time to track changes in their cognition. As the public health system in the Netherlands is increasingly strained, and short of family practitioners, that model of care is becoming less common.
Ms. Mekel’s physician, Dr. Keizer, said his lengthy visits to patients were possible only because he is mostly retired and not in a hurry. (In addition to his half-time practice, he writes regular op-eds for Dutch newspapers and comments on high-profile cases. He is a bit of an assisted-dying celebrity, and, Ms. Mekel confided, the other older women at the right-to-die workshops were envious when they learned that he had been assigned as her physician.)
Now that he is clear on her wishes, the tea parties are paused; he will resume the visits when her children tell him there has been a significant change in her awareness or ability to function — when they feel that five to 12 is close.
An Intolerable Price
Ms. Mekel is haunted by what happened to her best friend, Jean, who, she said, “missed the moment” for an assisted death.
Although Jean was determined to avoid moving to a nursing home, she lived in one for eight years. Ms. Mekel visited her there until Jean became unable to carry on a conversation. Ms. Mekel continued to call her and sent emails that Jean’s children read to her. Jean died in the nursing home in July, at 87.
Jean is the reason Ms. Mekel is willing to plan her death for sooner than she might like.
Yet Jean’s son, Jos Van Ommeren, is not sure that Ms. Mekel understands her friend’s fate correctly. He agrees that his mother dreaded the nursing home, but once she got there, she had some good years, he said. She was a voracious reader and devoured a book from the residence library each day. She had loved sunbathing all her life, and the staff made sure she could sit in the sun and read for hours.
Most of the last years were good years, Mr. Van Ommeren said, and to have those, it was worth the price of giving up the assisted death she had requested.
For Ms. Mekel, that price is intolerable.
Her youngest son, Melchior, asked her gently, not long ago, if a nursing home might be OK, if by the time she got there she wasn’t so aware of her lost independence.
Ms. Mekel shot him a look of affectionate disgust.
“No,” she said. “No. It wouldn’t.”
Veerle Schyns contributed reporting from Amsterdam.
Audio produced by Tally Abecassis.
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How to Watch the ‘S.N.L.’ 50th Anniversary Special
How to Watch the ‘S.N.L.’ 50th Anniversary Special
“Saturday Night Live” is celebrating its golden anniversary this weekend with a star-studded special in its Studio 8H at 30 Rock. You have questions? We have answers.
When is the big ‘Saturday Night Live’ anniversary special?
“SNL50: The Anniversary Special,” a three-hour event celebrating a half-century of comedy sketches, celebrity hosts, musical guests, standup monologues, fake commercials, performers losing it on national television, driving cats that get into car accidents and whatever the heck “Tiny Horse” is about, will be shown Sunday at 8 p.m. Eastern on NBC and Peacock. And yes, it is airing live.
When did ‘S.N.L.’ broadcast its first episode?
Back when it was simply called “Saturday Night” — because, at the time, ABC had a variety series called “Saturday Night Live” — the NBC show made its debut on Oct. 11, 1975.
So ‘Saturday Night Live’ is celebrating its 50th anniversary on a Sunday months before its actual 50th anniversary?
Well, it is currently the 50th season of “S.N.L.” Running the special on a Sunday night in February mirrors a strategy from 2015, when “S.N.L.” held its 40th anniversary show, and gives “SNL50” its own lane on a Presidents’ Day weekend following the hoopla of the Grammys and the Super Bowl, and ahead of the Oscars (March 2). Airing in prime time allows the special to reach a wider viewership and to wrap up in time for Tom Hanks to get his beauty rest.
Who are some of the other celebrities scheduled to appear?
You can expect venerated “S.N.L.” alums, veteran hosts and friends of the show including Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy, Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, Chevy Chase, Amy Poehler, Steve Martin, Chris Rock, Maya Rudolph, Martin Short and Robert De Niro, according to NBC.
Who were some of the guests who appeared in the 40th anniversary special?
The 2015 celebration included sketches and tribute segments featuring Robert De Niro, Martin Short, Maya Rudolph, Chris Rock, Steve Martin, Amy Poehler, Chevy Chase, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Eddie Murphy and Adam Sandler.
Aren’t those just the same names but in a different order?
Well, OK. Once you’re in the “S.N.L.” family, you’re in the family. But “SNL50” will also feature appearances from performers who have taken their places in the show’s pantheon more recently, like Ayo Edebiri, Pete Davidson, Bad Bunny, Quinta Brunson, John Mulaney and Pedro Pascal.
What else can we expect?
To be honest, we don’t know because NBC hasn’t said and segments are likely being written and rewritten at this very moment. The 40th anniversary special favored big ensemble pieces — like Weekend Update, “The Californians” and “Celebrity Jeopardy!” — that allowed for a wide range of performers to participate.
This year, you should get to see more of Tracy Morgan (who in February 2015 was still recovering from his injuries after his luxury van was hit by a tractor-trailer in June 2014). Presumably, there will be no cameo this time from Kanye West. But we’ll hopefully hear more fully from Murphy, who made a brief but long-awaited return to the stage of Studio 8H on the last anniversary special and has since hosted an episode.
And it’s likely that “S.N.L.” will pay tribute to key players who have died in recent years, like the Weekend Update anchor Norm Macdonald.
What if three consecutive hours of celebrating ‘S.N.L.’ still isn’t enough for me, a die-hard fan who owns a bootleg recording of Hanks’s first hosting gig in 1985?
NBC has you covered: The network will have its own red-carpet coverage starting Sunday at 7 p.m., that will be shown on NBC, E! and Peacock. It will be hosted by ******* Geist and Leslie Jones, and feature the comedian Matt Rogers (“Las Culturistas”) as a correspondent.
Also, on the “S.N.L.” YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok channels, you can see the “Chicken Shop Date” host Amelia Dimoldenberg banter with the invited guests and hopefully catch Hanks when the night is young and he’s still full of beans.
NBC has also produced “Ladies & Gentlemen … 50 Years of ‘S.N.L.’ Music,” a fairly comprehensive documentary about the history of musical guests on the show, directed by Questlove and Oz Rodriguez. You can continue to watch it on Peacock, along with the documentary series “SNL50: Beyond Saturday Night,” which has episodes on cast members’ efforts to join “S.N.L.,” the “More Cowbell” sketch, the writers’ room and its notoriously strange 11th season (when Hanks made his hosting debut).
A stream of “SNL50: The Homecoming Concert,” which was held Friday night at Radio City Music Hall and featured Lady Gaga, Post Malone, Bad Bunny, Arcade Fire, the Roots, Bonnie Raitt, David Byrne and Brandi Carlile, among others, will also continue to be shown on Peacock.
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Horoscope for Sunday, February 16, 2025 – Chicago Sun-Times
Horoscope for Sunday, February 16, 2025 – Chicago Sun-Times
Horoscope for Sunday, February 16, 2025 Chicago Sun-TimesHoroscopes Today, February 16, 2025 USA TODAYYour Daily Couples Horoscope for February 16, 2025 Yahoo LifeHoroscope Tomorrow, February 17, 2025, read predictions for all sun signs Hindustan TimesAquarius, Daily Horoscope Today, February 16, 2025: Avoid engaging in debates or heated arguments The Times of India
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She’s Trying to Stay Ahead of Alzheimer’s, in a Race to the Death
She’s Trying to Stay Ahead of Alzheimer’s, in a Race to the Death
Soon, Irene Mekel will need to pick the day she dies.
She’s not in any hurry: She quite likes her life, in a trim, airy house in Castricum, a Dutch village by the sea. She has flowers growing in her back garden, and there is a street market nearby where vendors greet villagers by name. But if her life is going to end the way she wants, she will have to pick a date, sooner than she might like.
“It’s a tragedy,” she said.
Ms. Mekel, 82, has Alzheimer’s disease. It was diagnosed a year ago. She knows her cognitive function is slowly declining, and she knows what is coming. She spent years working as a nurse, and she cared for her sister, who had vascular dementia. For now, she is managing, with help from her three children and a big screen in the corner of the living room that they update remotely to remind her of the date and any appointments.
In the not-so-distant future, it will no longer be safe for her to stay at home alone. She had a bad fall and broke her elbow in August. She does not feel she can live with her children, who are busy with careers and children of their own. She is determined that she will never move to a nursing home, which she considers an intolerable loss of dignity. As a Dutch citizen, she is entitled by law to request that a doctor help her end her life when she reaches a point of unbearable suffering. And so she has applied for a medically assisted death.
In 2023, shortly before her diagnosis, Ms. Mekel joined a workshop organized by the Dutch Association for Voluntary End of Life. There, she learned how to draft an advance request document that would lay out her wishes, including the conditions under which she would request what is called euthanasia in the Netherlands. She decided it would be when she could not recognize her children and grandchildren, hold a conversation or live in her own home.
But when Ms. Mekel’s family doctor read the advance directive, she said that while she supported euthanasia, she could not provide it. She will not do it for someone who has by definition lost the capacity to consent.
A rapidly growing number of countries around the world, from Ecuador to Germany, are legalizing medical assistance in dying. But in most of those countries, the procedure is available only to people with terminal illness.
The Netherlands is one of just four countries (plus the ********* province of Quebec) that permit medically assisted death by advance request for people with dementia. But the idea is gaining support in other countries, as populations age and medical interventions mean more people live long enough to experience cognitive decline.
The Dutch public strongly supports the right to an assisted death for people with dementia. Yet most Dutch doctors refuse to provide it. They find that the moral burden of ending the life of someone who no longer has the cognitive capacity to confirm their wishes is too weighty to bear.
Ms. Mekel’s doctor referred her to the Euthanasia Expertise Center, in The Hague, an organization that trains doctors and nurses to provide euthanasia within the parameters of Dutch law and connects patients with a medical team that will investigate a request and provide assisted death to eligible patients in cases where their own doctors won’t. But even these doctors are reluctant to act after a person has lost mental capacity.
Last year, a doctor and a nurse from the center came every three months to meet with Ms. Mekel over tea. Ostensibly, they came to discuss her wishes for the end of her life. But Ms. Mekel knew they were really monitoring how quickly her mental faculties had declined. It might seem like a tea party, she said, “but I see them watching me.”
Dr. Bert Keizer is alert for a very particular moment: It is known as “five to 12” — five minutes to midnight. Doctors, patients and their caregivers engage in a delicate negotiation to time death for the last moment before a person loses that capacity to clearly state a rational wish to die. He will fulfill Ms. Mekel’s request to end her life only while she still is fully aware of what she is asking.
They must act before dementia has tricked her, as it has so many of his other patients, into thinking her mind is just fine.
“This balance is something so hard to discover,” he said, “because you as a doctor and she as your patient, neither of you quite knows what the prognosis is, how things will develop — and so the harrowing aspect of this whole thing is looking for the right time for the horrible thing.”
Ms. Mekel finds this negotiation deeply frustrating: The process does not allow for the idea that simply having to accept care can be considered a form of suffering, that worrying about what lies ahead is suffering, that loss of dignity is suffering. Whose assessment should carry more weight, she asks: current Irene Mekel, who sees loss of autonomy as unbearable, or future Irene, with advanced dementia, who is no longer unhappy, or can no longer convey that she’s unhappy, if someone must feed and dress her.
More than 500,000 of the 18 million people in the Netherlands have advance request documents like hers on file with their family doctors, explicitly laying out their wishes for physician-assisted death should they decline cognitively to a point they identify as intolerable. Most assume that an advance request will allow them to progress into dementia and have their spouses, children or caregivers choose the moment when their lives should end.
Yet of the 9,000 physician-assisted deaths in the Netherlands each year, just six or seven are for people who have lost mental capacity. The overwhelming majority are for people with terminal illnesses, mostly *******, with a smaller number for people who have other nonterminal conditions that cause acute suffering — such as neurodegenerative disease or intractable depression.
Physicians, who were the primary drivers of the creation of the Dutch assisted dying law — not Parliament, or a constitutional court case, as in most other countries where the procedure is legal — have strong views about what they will and will not do. “Five to 12” is the pragmatic compromise that has emerged in the 23 years since the criminal code was amended to permit physicians to end lives in situations of “unbearable and irremediable suffering.”
A Shock
Ms. Mekel, petite and brisk, had suspected for some time before she received a diagnosis that she had Alzheimer’s. There were small, disquieting signs, and then one big one, when she took a taxi home one day and could not recognize a single house on the street where she had lived for 45 years, could not identify her own front door.
At that point, she knew it was time to start making plans.
She and her best friend, Jean, talked often about how they dreaded the idea of a nursing home, of needing someone to dress them, get them out of bed in the morning, of having their worlds shrink to a sunroom at the end of a ward.
“When you lose your own will, and you are no longer independent — for me, that’s my nightmare,” she said. “I would kill myself, I think.”
She knows how cognition can slip away almost imperceptibly, like mist over a garden on a spring morning. But the news that she would need to ask Dr. Keizer to end her life before such losses happened came as a shock.
Her distress at the accelerated timeline is not an uncommon response.
Dr. Pieter Stigter, a geriatric specialist who works in nursing homes and also as a consultant for the Expertise Center, must frequently explain to startled patients that their carefully drawn-up advance directives are basically meaningless.
“The first thing I tell them is, ‘I’m sorry, that’s not going to happen,’” he said. “Assisted dying while mentally incompetent, it’s not going to happen. So now we’re going to talk about how we’re going to avoid getting there.”
Patients who have cared for their own parents with dementia may specify in their advance directive that they do not wish to reach the point of being bedridden, incontinent or unable to feed themselves. “But still then, if someone is accepting it, patiently smiling, it’s going to be very hard to be convinced in that moment that even though someone described it in an earlier stage, that in that moment it is unbearable suffering,” Dr. Stigter said.
The first line people write in a directive is always, “‘If I get to the point I do not recognize my children,’” he said. “But what is recognition? Is it knowing someone’s name, or is it having a big smile when someone enters your room?”
Five-to-12 makes the burden being placed on physicians morally tolerable.
“As a doctor, you are the one who has to do it,” said Dr. Stigter, a warm and wiry 44-year-old. “I’m the one doing it. It has to feel good for me.”
Conversations about advance requests for assisted death in the Netherlands are shadowed by what many people who work in this field refer to, with a wince, as “the coffee case.”
In 2016, a doctor who provided an assisted death to a 74-year-old woman with dementia was charged with violating the euthanasia law. The woman had written an advance directive four years earlier, saying she wished to die before she needed to enter a care home. On the day her family chose, her doctor gave her a sedative in coffee, and then injected a stronger dose. But during the administration of the medication that would stop her heart, the woman awoke and resisted. Her husband and children had to hold her down so the doctor could complete the procedure.
The doctor was acquitted in 2019. The judge said the patient’s advance request was sufficient basis for the doctor to act. But the public recoil at the idea of the woman’s family holding her down while she died redoubled the determination of Dutch doctors to avoid such a situation.
A Day Too Late
Dr. Stigter never takes on a case assuming he will provide an assisted death. Cognitive decline is a fluid thing, he said, and so is a person’s sense of what is tolerable.
“The goal is an outcome that reflects what the patient wants — that can evolve all the time,” he said. “Someone can say, ‘I want euthanasia in the future’, but actually when the moment is there, it’s different.”
Dr. Stigter found himself explaining this to Henk Zuidema a few years ago. Mr. Zuidema, a tile setter, had early-onset Alzheimer’s at 57. He was told he would no longer be permitted to drive, and so he would have to stop working and give up his main hobby, driving a vintage motocross bike with friends.
A gruff, stoic family man, Mr. Zuidema was appalled at the idea of no longer providing for his wife or caring for his family, and he told them he would seek a medically assisted death before the disease left him totally dependent.
His own family doctor was not willing to help him die, nor was anyone in her practice, and so his daughter Froukje Zuidema found the Expertise Center. Dr. Stigter was assigned to his case and began driving 30 minutes from his office in the city of Groningen every month to visit Mr. Zuidema at his home in the farming village of Boelenslaan.
“Pieter was very clear: ‘You have to tell me when,’” Ms. Zuidema said. “And that was very hard, because Dad had to make the decision.”
When he grasped that the disease might impair his judgment, and thus cause him to overestimate his mental competence, Mr. Zuidema quickly settled on a plan to die within months. His family was shocked, but for him the trade-off was clear: “Better a year too early than a day too late,” he would say.
Dr. Stigter pushed Mr. Zuidema to define what, exactly, his suffering would be. “He would say, ‘Why is it so bad to get old like that?’” Ms. Zuidema recalled. “‘Why is it so bad to go to a nursing home?’” She said the doctor would tell her father, “ ‘Your idea of suffering is not the same as mine, so help me understand why this is suffering, for you.’ “
Her reticent father struggled to explain, and finally put it in a letter: “I don’t want to lose my role as a husband and a father, I do not want to be unable to help people any longer … Suffering would be if I could no longer be alone with my grandchildren because people did not trust me any longer: even this thought makes me crazy … Do not be misled by a moment in which I look happy but instead look back at this moment when I am with my wife and children.’”
The progress of dementia is unpredictable, and Mr. Zuidema did not experience a rapid decline. In the end, Dr. Stigter visited each month for a year and a half, and the two men developed a relationship of trust, Ms. Zuidema said.
Dr. Stigter provided a medically assisted death in September 2022. Mr. Zuidema, then 59, was in a camp bed near the living room window, his wife and children at his side. His daughter said she sees Dr. Stigter “as a real hero.” She has no doubt her father would have died by suicide even sooner, had he not been confident he could receive an assisted death from his doctor.
Still, she is wistful about the time they didn’t have. If the advance directive had worked as defined in the law — if there had been no fear of missing the moment — her father might have had more months, more time sitting on the vast green lawn between their houses and watching his grandchildren kick a soccer ball, more time with his dog at his feet, more time sitting on a riverbank with his grandson and a lazy fishing line in the water.
“He would have stayed longer,” Ms. Zuidema said.
Her sense that her father’s death was rushed does not outweigh her gratitude that he had the death he wanted. And her feeling is widely shared among families, according to research by Dr. Agnes van der Heide, a professor of end-of-life care and decision making at Erasmus Medical College, University Medical Center Rotterdam.
“The large majority of the Dutch population feel safe in the hands of the doctor, with regards to euthanasia, and they very much appreciate that the doctor has a significant role there and independently judges whether or not they think that ending of life is justifiable,” she said.
For five to 12 to work, doctors should know their patients well and have time to track changes in their cognition. As the public health system in the Netherlands is increasingly strained, and short of family practitioners, that model of care is becoming less common.
Ms. Mekel’s physician, Dr. Keizer, said his lengthy visits to patients were possible only because he is mostly retired and not in a hurry. (In addition to his half-time practice, he writes regular op-eds for Dutch newspapers and comments on high-profile cases. He is a bit of an assisted-dying celebrity, and, Ms. Mekel confided, the other older women at the right-to-die workshops were envious when they learned that he had been assigned as her physician.)
Now that he is clear on her wishes, the tea parties are paused; he will resume the visits when her children tell him there has been a significant change in her awareness or ability to function — when they feel that five to 12 is close.
An Intolerable Price
Ms. Mekel is haunted by what happened to her best friend, Jean, who, she said, “missed the moment” for an assisted death.
Although Jean was determined to avoid moving to a nursing home, she lived in one for eight years. Ms. Mekel visited her there until Jean became unable to carry on a conversation. Ms. Mekel continued to call her and sent emails that Jean’s children read to her. Jean died in the nursing home in July, at 87.
Jean is the reason Ms. Mekel is willing to plan her death for sooner than she might like.
Yet Jean’s son, Jos Van Ommeren, is not sure that Ms. Mekel understands her friend’s fate correctly. He agrees that his mother dreaded the nursing home, but once she got there, she had some good years, he said. She was a voracious reader and devoured a book from the residence library each day. She had loved sunbathing all her life, and the staff made sure she could sit in the sun and read for hours.
Most of the last years were good years, Mr. Van Ommeren said, and to have those, it was worth the price of giving up the assisted death she had requested.
For Ms. Mekel, that price is intolerable.
Her youngest son, Melchior, asked her gently, not long ago, if a nursing home might be OK, if by the time she got there she wasn’t so aware of her lost independence.
Ms. Mekel shot him a look of affectionate disgust.
“No,” she said. “No. It wouldn’t.”
Veerle Schyns contributed reporting from Amsterdam.
Audio produced by Tally Abecassis.
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Sydney’s struggles continue, Victory march on in ALW
Sydney’s struggles continue, Victory march on in ALW
ROUND 16 OF THE A-LEAGUE WOMEN COMPETITION AT A GLANCE:
THEY SAID IT: “Mathematically we’re there (alive), but yeah it’s realistic that we won’t get in.” – coach Ante Juric concedes Sydney FC’s title defence is all but over following a 2-1 loss to Melbourne City – which leaves them last on the table.
WOMAN OF THE WEEK: Matildas striker Emily Gielnik was on a mission against Central Coast. Overlooked for Tom Sermanni’s latest Australia squad, the powerful striker scored both goals in a 2-0 win to shoot to the top of the golden boot race.
STAT ATTACK: At first glance, Brisbane Roar’s 0-0 draw with Western United was nothing worth writing home about. But remarkably, it was Brisbane’s first draw in 393 days.
BEAT THAT: Western Sydney midfielder Ena Harada scored a wonderful goal to put the Wanderers ahead against Newcastle. Harada caught Emma Dundas on the ball and nipped in before bursting forward and unleashing a wonderful, fierce strike.
BEAT THAT PART TWO: City’s Mariana Speckmaier scored a crucial equaliser against Sydney in style, just 24 seconds into the second half. Speckmaier won the ball just inside her own half and sprinted until just outside the 18-yard box before unleashing an unstoppable shot.
UNDER PRESSURE: Sydney FC coach Ante Juric faces a big task to help his defending champions avoid the wooden spoon. Who could have envisaged such a fall from grace?
UP NEXT: It’s a week off for the A-League Women competition due to the international break. When the action resumes, Central Coast open round 17 with a crucial match against Western Sydney on February 28. Canberra United will be aiming to upset runaway ladder leaders Melbourne City, with Newcastle Jets hosting Perth, and Western United up against Melbourne Victory. The final two games of the round will pit Wellington against Adelaide United and last-placed Sydney against Brisbane.
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Elden Ring Nightreign is the Roguelike Souls Fans Needed All Along | COGconnected
Elden Ring Nightreign is the Roguelike Souls Fans Needed All Along | COGconnected
Elden Ring Nightreign is an upcoming, standalone cooperative multiplayer rogue-lite action game set in the world of Elden Ring.
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She’s Trying to Stay Ahead of Alzheimer’s, in a Race to the Death
She’s Trying to Stay Ahead of Alzheimer’s, in a Race to the Death
Soon, Irene Mekel will need to pick the day she dies.
She’s not in any hurry: She quite likes her life, in a trim, airy house in Castricum, a Dutch village by the sea. She has flowers growing in her back garden, and there is a street market nearby where vendors greet villagers by name. But if her life is going to end the way she wants, she will have to pick a date, sooner than she might like.
“It’s a tragedy,” she said.
Ms. Mekel, 82, has Alzheimer’s disease. It was diagnosed a year ago. She knows her cognitive function is slowly declining, and she knows what is coming. She spent years working as a nurse, and she cared for her sister, who had vascular dementia. For now, she is managing, with help from her three children and a big screen in the corner of the living room that they update remotely to remind her of the date and any appointments.
In the not-so-distant future, it will no longer be safe for her to stay at home alone. She had a bad fall and broke her elbow in August. She does not feel she can live with her children, who are busy with careers and children of their own. She is determined that she will never move to a nursing home, which she considers an intolerable loss of dignity. As a Dutch citizen, she is entitled by law to request that a doctor help her end her life when she reaches a point of unbearable suffering. And so she has applied for a medically assisted death.
In 2023, shortly before her diagnosis, Ms. Mekel joined a workshop organized by the Dutch Association for Voluntary End of Life. There, she learned how to draft an advance request document that would lay out her wishes, including the conditions under which she would request what is called euthanasia in the Netherlands. She decided it would be when she could not recognize her children and grandchildren, hold a conversation or live in her own home.
But when Ms. Mekel’s family doctor read the advance directive, she said that while she supported euthanasia, she could not provide it. She will not do it for someone who has by definition lost the capacity to consent.
A rapidly growing number of countries around the world, from Ecuador to Germany, are legalizing medical assistance in dying. But in most of those countries, the procedure is available only to people with terminal illness.
The Netherlands is one of just four countries (plus the ********* province of Quebec) that permit medically assisted death by advance request for people with dementia. But the idea is gaining support in other countries, as populations age and medical interventions mean more people live long enough to experience cognitive decline.
The Dutch public strongly supports the right to an assisted death for people with dementia. Yet most Dutch doctors refuse to provide it. They find that the moral burden of ending the life of someone who no longer has the cognitive capacity to confirm their wishes is too weighty to bear.
Ms. Mekel’s doctor referred her to the Euthanasia Expertise Center, in The Hague, an organization that trains doctors and nurses to provide euthanasia within the parameters of Dutch law and connects patients with a medical team that will investigate a request and provide assisted death to eligible patients in cases where their own doctors won’t. But even these doctors are reluctant to act after a person has lost mental capacity.
Last year, a doctor and a nurse from the center came every three months to meet with Ms. Mekel over tea. Ostensibly, they came to discuss her wishes for the end of her life. But Ms. Mekel knew they were really monitoring how quickly her mental faculties had declined. It might seem like a tea party, she said, “but I see them watching me.”
Dr. Bert Keizer is alert for a very particular moment: It is known as “five to 12” — five minutes to midnight. Doctors, patients and their caregivers engage in a delicate negotiation to time death for the last moment before a person loses that capacity to clearly state a rational wish to die. He will fulfill Ms. Mekel’s request to end her life only while she still is fully aware of what she is asking.
They must act before dementia has tricked her, as it has so many of his other patients, into thinking her mind is just fine.
“This balance is something so hard to discover,” he said, “because you as a doctor and she as your patient, neither of you quite knows what the prognosis is, how things will develop — and so the harrowing aspect of this whole thing is looking for the right time for the horrible thing.”
Ms. Mekel finds this negotiation deeply frustrating: The process does not allow for the idea that simply having to accept care can be considered a form of suffering, that worrying about what lies ahead is suffering, that loss of dignity is suffering. Whose assessment should carry more weight, she asks: current Irene Mekel, who sees loss of autonomy as unbearable, or future Irene, with advanced dementia, who is no longer unhappy, or can no longer convey that she’s unhappy, if someone must feed and dress her.
More than 500,000 of the 18 million people in the Netherlands have advance request documents like hers on file with their family doctors, explicitly laying out their wishes for physician-assisted death should they decline cognitively to a point they identify as intolerable. Most assume that an advance request will allow them to progress into dementia and have their spouses, children or caregivers choose the moment when their lives should end.
Yet of the 9,000 physician-assisted deaths in the Netherlands each year, just six or seven are for people who have lost mental capacity. The overwhelming majority are for people with terminal illnesses, mostly *******, with a smaller number for people who have other nonterminal conditions that cause acute suffering — such as neurodegenerative disease or intractable depression.
Physicians, who were the primary drivers of the creation of the Dutch assisted dying law — not Parliament, or a constitutional court case, as in most other countries where the procedure is legal — have strong views about what they will and will not do. “Five to 12” is the pragmatic compromise that has emerged in the 23 years since the criminal code was amended to permit physicians to end lives in situations of “unbearable and irremediable suffering.”
A Shock
Ms. Mekel, petite and brisk, had suspected for some time before she received a diagnosis that she had Alzheimer’s. There were small, disquieting signs, and then one big one, when she took a taxi home one day and could not recognize a single house on the street where she had lived for 45 years, could not identify her own front door.
At that point, she knew it was time to start making plans.
She and her best friend, Jean, talked often about how they dreaded the idea of a nursing home, of needing someone to dress them, get them out of bed in the morning, of having their worlds shrink to a sunroom at the end of a ward.
“When you lose your own will, and you are no longer independent — for me, that’s my nightmare,” she said. “I would kill myself, I think.”
She knows how cognition can slip away almost imperceptibly, like mist over a garden on a spring morning. But the news that she would need to ask Dr. Keizer to end her life before such losses happened came as a shock.
Her distress at the accelerated timeline is not an uncommon response.
Dr. Pieter Stigter, a geriatric specialist who works in nursing homes and also as a consultant for the Expertise Center, must frequently explain to startled patients that their carefully drawn-up advance directives are basically meaningless.
“The first thing I tell them is, ‘I’m sorry, that’s not going to happen,’” he said. “Assisted dying while mentally incompetent, it’s not going to happen. So now we’re going to talk about how we’re going to avoid getting there.”
Patients who have cared for their own parents with dementia may specify in their advance directive that they do not wish to reach the point of being bedridden, incontinent or unable to feed themselves. “But still then, if someone is accepting it, patiently smiling, it’s going to be very hard to be convinced in that moment that even though someone described it in an earlier stage, that in that moment it is unbearable suffering,” Dr. Stigter said.
The first line people write in a directive is always, “‘If I get to the point I do not recognize my children,’” he said. “But what is recognition? Is it knowing someone’s name, or is it having a big smile when someone enters your room?”
Five-to-12 makes the burden being placed on physicians morally tolerable.
“As a doctor, you are the one who has to do it,” said Dr. Stigter, a warm and wiry 44-year-old. “I’m the one doing it. It has to feel good for me.”
Conversations about advance requests for assisted death in the Netherlands are shadowed by what many people who work in this field refer to, with a wince, as “the coffee case.”
In 2016, a doctor who provided an assisted death to a 74-year-old woman with dementia was charged with violating the euthanasia law. The woman had written an advance directive four years earlier, saying she wished to die before she needed to enter a care home. On the day her family chose, her doctor gave her a sedative in coffee, and then injected a stronger dose. But during the administration of the medication that would stop her heart, the woman awoke and resisted. Her husband and children had to hold her down so the doctor could complete the procedure.
The doctor was acquitted in 2019. The judge said the patient’s advance request was sufficient basis for the doctor to act. But the public recoil at the idea of the woman’s family holding her down while she died redoubled the determination of Dutch doctors to avoid such a situation.
A Day Too Late
Dr. Stigter never takes on a case assuming he will provide an assisted death. Cognitive decline is a fluid thing, he said, and so is a person’s sense of what is tolerable.
“The goal is an outcome that reflects what the patient wants — that can evolve all the time,” he said. “Someone can say, ‘I want euthanasia in the future’, but actually when the moment is there, it’s different.”
Dr. Stigter found himself explaining this to Henk Zuidema a few years ago. Mr. Zuidema, a tile setter, had early-onset Alzheimer’s at 57. He was told he would no longer be permitted to drive, and so he would have to stop working and give up his main hobby, driving a vintage motocross bike with friends.
A gruff, stoic family man, Mr. Zuidema was appalled at the idea of no longer providing for his wife or caring for his family, and he told them he would seek a medically assisted death before the disease left him totally dependent.
His own family doctor was not willing to help him die, nor was anyone in her practice, and so his daughter Froukje Zuidema found the Expertise Center. Dr. Stigter was assigned to his case and began driving 30 minutes from his office in the city of Groningen every month to visit Mr. Zuidema at his home in the farming village of Boelenslaan.
“Pieter was very clear: ‘You have to tell me when,’” Ms. Zuidema said. “And that was very hard, because Dad had to make the decision.”
When he grasped that the disease might impair his judgment, and thus cause him to overestimate his mental competence, Mr. Zuidema quickly settled on a plan to die within months. His family was shocked, but for him the trade-off was clear: “Better a year too early than a day too late,” he would say.
Dr. Stigter pushed Mr. Zuidema to define what, exactly, his suffering would be. “He would say, ‘Why is it so bad to get old like that?’” Ms. Zuidema recalled. “‘Why is it so bad to go to a nursing home?’” She said the doctor would tell her father, “ ‘Your idea of suffering is not the same as mine, so help me understand why this is suffering, for you.’ “
Her reticent father struggled to explain, and finally put it in a letter: “I don’t want to lose my role as a husband and a father, I do not want to be unable to help people any longer … Suffering would be if I could no longer be alone with my grandchildren because people did not trust me any longer: even this thought makes me crazy … Do not be misled by a moment in which I look happy but instead look back at this moment when I am with my wife and children.’”
The progress of dementia is unpredictable, and Mr. Zuidema did not experience a rapid decline. In the end, Dr. Stigter visited each month for a year and a half, and the two men developed a relationship of trust, Ms. Zuidema said.
Dr. Stigter provided a medically assisted death in September 2022. Mr. Zuidema, then 59, was in a camp bed near the living room window, his wife and children at his side. His daughter said she sees Dr. Stigter “as a real hero.” She has no doubt her father would have died by suicide even sooner, had he not been confident he could receive an assisted death from his doctor.
Still, she is wistful about the time they didn’t have. If the advance directive had worked as defined in the law — if there had been no fear of missing the moment — her father might have had more months, more time sitting on the vast green lawn between their houses and watching his grandchildren kick a soccer ball, more time with his dog at his feet, more time sitting on a riverbank with his grandson and a lazy fishing line in the water.
“He would have stayed longer,” Ms. Zuidema said.
Her sense that her father’s death was rushed does not outweigh her gratitude that he had the death he wanted. And her feeling is widely shared among families, according to research by Dr. Agnes van der Heide, a professor of end-of-life care and decision making at Erasmus Medical College, University Medical Center Rotterdam.
“The large majority of the Dutch population feel safe in the hands of the doctor, with regards to euthanasia, and they very much appreciate that the doctor has a significant role there and independently judges whether or not they think that ending of life is justifiable,” she said.
For five to 12 to work, doctors should know their patients well and have time to track changes in their cognition. As the public health system in the Netherlands is increasingly strained, and short of family practitioners, that model of care is becoming less common.
Ms. Mekel’s physician, Dr. Keizer, said his lengthy visits to patients were possible only because he is mostly retired and not in a hurry. (In addition to his half-time practice, he writes regular op-eds for Dutch newspapers and comments on high-profile cases. He is a bit of an assisted-dying celebrity, and, Ms. Mekel confided, the other older women at the right-to-die workshops were envious when they learned that he had been assigned as her physician.)
Now that he is clear on her wishes, the tea parties are paused; he will resume the visits when her children tell him there has been a significant change in her awareness or ability to function — when they feel that five to 12 is close.
An Intolerable Price
Ms. Mekel is haunted by what happened to her best friend, Jean, who, she said, “missed the moment” for an assisted death.
Although Jean was determined to avoid moving to a nursing home, she lived in one for eight years. Ms. Mekel visited her there until Jean became unable to carry on a conversation. Ms. Mekel continued to call her and sent emails that Jean’s children read to her. Jean died in the nursing home in July, at 87.
Jean is the reason Ms. Mekel is willing to plan her death for sooner than she might like.
Yet Jean’s son, Jos Van Ommeren, is not sure that Ms. Mekel understands her friend’s fate correctly. He agrees that his mother dreaded the nursing home, but once she got there, she had some good years, he said. She was a voracious reader and devoured a book from the residence library each day. She had loved sunbathing all her life, and the staff made sure she could sit in the sun and read for hours.
Most of the last years were good years, Mr. Van Ommeren said, and to have those, it was worth the price of giving up the assisted death she had requested.
For Ms. Mekel, that price is intolerable.
Her youngest son, Melchior, asked her gently, not long ago, if a nursing home might be OK, if by the time she got there she wasn’t so aware of her lost independence.
Ms. Mekel shot him a look of affectionate disgust.
“No,” she said. “No. It wouldn’t.”
Veerle Schyns contributed reporting from Amsterdam.
Audio produced by Tally Abecassis.
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Zelensky warns days of guaranteed US support for Europe are over, as Kellogg says Europeans won’t be at table for peace talks
Zelensky warns days of guaranteed US support for Europe are over, as Kellogg says Europeans won’t be at table for peace talks
Ukraine’s president has warned the days of guaranteed US support for Europe are over, as he urged the continent to band together to create a united army and foreign policy.
Volodymyr Zelensky spoke in a week when a phone call between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US counterpart Donald Trump raised fears in Kyiv that it was being frozen out of negotiations, with the White House also downplaying the prospects of Ukraine joining NATO.
“A few days ago, President Trump told me about his conversation with Putin. Not once did he mention that America needs Europe at that table. That says a lot,” Zelensky said in a robust speech at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.
“The old days are over – when America supported Europe just because it always had,” he added.
Zelensky’s warning came just hours before Keith Kellogg, the Trump administration’s Russia-Ukraine envoy, told the same conference that Ukraine would be at the table for peace negotiations – but Europe would not be.
The Europeans’ positions would be taken into consideration, Kellogg said, adding that that’s one of the reasons he’s in Munich, to make sure the Europeans’ stances are understood. But they won’t be participants, the retired US general said.
Speaking to CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on stage at the security conference, Zelensky conceded that he was “not happy” that Trump’s first call was with Putin. The Ukrainian leader warned that it would be even “more dangerous” however if Trump meets with the Russian president before him.
Trump hasn’t provided any commitment to meeting Zelensky first, the Ukrainian president told CNN. The US president did however understand the need to “meet urgently” to discuss “concrete plans” to end the war, Zelensky added.
Push for a European army
The Ukrainian leader spoke the day after US Vice President JD Vance eviscerated America’s European allies at the security conference, in a speech that barely touched on the issue of Ukraine and a potential settlement with Russia.
“Yesterday here in Munich, the US vice president made it clear – decades of the old relationship between Europe and America are ending. From now on, things will be different, and Europe needs to adjust to that,” Zelensky said.
The Ukrainian president called for a united European army, as he acknowledged that the United States may not continue to provide military support as it once did.
“Let’s be honest – now we can’t rule out the possibility that America might say ‘No’ to Europe on issues that threaten it. Many leaders have talked about Europe that needs its own military – an Army of Europe,” he said.
Later in his speech, Zelensky accused Putin of playing a “game” by pursuing one-on-one talks with Trump and leaving Ukraine out of negotiations.
“Next Putin will try to get the US president standing on Red Square on May 9 this year, not as a respected leader, but as a prop in his own performance, we don’t need that,” he said.
Meanwhile, Zelensky also said he hadn’t let one of his ministers sign the first draft of an agreement with the US that would open up Ukraine’s mineral deposits in return for future military aid from Washington DC.
“The agreement is not ready to protect us or our interests,” he told reporters at the conference, noting that he did not see how the draft agreement provided security guarantees for Ukraine.
‘I told Trump that Putin is afraid of him’
In an exchange which prompted laughter from the crowd, Zelensky also admitted to having told Trump that Putin is afraid of him.
“I told Trump that Putin is afraid of him and he heard me. And now Putin knows,” Zelensky said wryly.
The Ukrainian president added that Putin appears to be the biggest influence on NATO and reiterated that peace talks on ending the conflict could not go ahead without Kyiv’s involvement.
“Right now, the most influential member of NATO seems to be Putin – because his whims have the power to block NATO decisions,” Zelensky said.
“Ukraine will never accept deals made behind our backs without our involvement. And the same rule should apply to all of Europe,” he added.
“No decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine. No decisions about Europe without Europe. Europe must have a seat at the table when decisions about Europe are being made,” Zelensky continued.
Earlier this week, NATO allies were left scrambling for direction after Trump’s administration signaled concessions to Moscow, upending the alliance’s approach to an almost three-year-old war.
US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth also poured cold water on the suggestion of NATO membership for Ukraine, and said that a return to the country’s pre-2014 borders, before Russia invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine, “is an unrealistic objective.”
Following Zelensky’s speech on Saturday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Europe “urgently needs a plan of action” concerning Ukraine, or risk other global players deciding its future.
“This plan must be prepared now. There’s no time to lose,” Tusk said in a post on X.
Daria Tarasova-Markina, Alex Marquardt and Sebastian Shukla contributed reporting
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We tested Monster Hunter Wilds on Steam Deck, don't bother, wait for GeForce Now support instead
We tested Monster Hunter Wilds on Steam Deck, don't bother, wait for GeForce Now support instead
Monster Hunter Wilds doesn’t run smoothly on the Steam Deck, so we’re hoping for GeForce Now support as soon as possible.
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#tested #Monster #Hunter #Wilds #Steam #Deck #don039t #bother #wait #GeForce #support
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Storm sweeping across eastern US brings heavy rain and threats of tornadoes, forces water rescues – CNN
Storm sweeping across eastern US brings heavy rain and threats of tornadoes, forces water rescues – CNN
Storm sweeping across eastern US brings heavy rain and threats of tornadoes, forces water rescues CNNSoutheast met with dangerous flooding while Northeast braces for snowstorms Fox NewsCatastrophic flash flooding event unfolds from Tennessee Valley into Appalachians Fox Weather At least 1 dead as brutal storms, flash floods wallop several southern states New York Post FIRST ALERT WEATHER DAY: Flash flooding threat continues through Saturday night WDBJ
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Pushy passengers attacked by furious fellow traveler over rude inflight behavior: ‘Garbage people’
Pushy passengers attacked by furious fellow traveler over rude inflight behavior: ‘Garbage people’
Hope you enjoyed your fight.
Travelers disembarking a no-frills airline got more than they bargained for when a deplaning dispute between passengers and a flight attendant spilled over into the terminal.
The budget liner brouhaha began brewing onboard, when a young couple with two children began expressing their displeasure with the speed of their fellow flyers at the end of a Hong Kong Airlines flight from Bali to Hong Kong — hurling insults and calling them “garbage people”.
A passenger can be seen raising his fist toward the furious father as he argues with a flight attendant while disembarking the plane. Jam Press
The drama continued as the unhappy customers moved onto the jet bridge, deliberately bumping into people and fussing about everyone being too slow, What’s The Jam reported.
They then escalated their argument to a crew member — which is when another passenger decided to get involved, attempting to dispense some swift sky justice to the ********** mom and dad.
In a video shared online, the irritated intervener can be seen shouting at the contemptuous couple — before lashing out at them physically.
The knight in shining armor tries to land a punch on the husband, who manages to dodge him, with the poorly-mannered pair then attempting to push the flight attendant out of the way so they can vacate the scene.
A flight attendant can be seen taking the heat from a pair of disgruntled parents. Jam Press
At this point, other passengers now get involved, trying to break up the argument — with one trying to calm the instigating couple down.
The video appeared online days ago — and was reportedly taken at some point within the last week.
No further details were available — including whether or not law enforcement were called to intervene.
Viewers of the crummy clip, which was widely circulated on ******** social media and in traditional media outlets, were quick to express their unhappiness with the couple’s behavior.
“Airlines should blacklist them in order to avoid any delay or return because of them in the future,” one wrote.
“Now having a child seems to be a reason to lose your temper casually,” another mused.
“The captain can ask them to get off the plane, flight safety is threatened,” someone else suggested.
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China’s central bank governor says stable yuan key to global financial stability
China’s central bank governor says stable yuan key to global financial stability
Pan Gongsheng, governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), during the Asian Financial Forum in Hong Kong, China, on Monday, Jan. 13, 2025.
Lam Yik | Bloomberg | Getty Images
China’s central bank governor said on Sunday a stable yuan currency has been key to global financial and economic stability and Beijing will continue to let the market play a decisive role in deciding the exchange rate.
People’s Bank of China Governor Pan Gongsheng told a conference in Saudi Arabia that while most currencies have fallen against the dollar, the yuan has remained stable.
“Recently, a number of factors have pushed up (the) dollar index, and non-dollar currencies have mostly depreciated. But RMB (yuan) has remained largely stable despite the high market volatility,” Pan said at AlUla Conference for Emerging Market Economies.
He also noted that China was increasingly prioritising consumption, implementing pro-consumption policies such as increasing household income and providing subsidies.
China has emphasised that boosting consumption is a top economic priority in 2025, moving away from an over-reliance on investment to stimulate domestic demand and address potential export challenges.
Pan also said in his speech that China will adopt a proactive fiscal policy and an accommodative monetary policy, and strengthen counter-cyclical policy adjustments.
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At least 18 people are dead after a stampede at New Delhi railway station in India – The Associated Press
At least 18 people are dead after a stampede at New Delhi railway station in India – The Associated Press
At least 18 people are dead after a stampede at New Delhi railway station in India The Associated Press‘Carried bodies on handcarts’, porters recall stampede horror The Tribune IndiaSeveral people killed after a stampede at New Delhi railway station in India YahooIndia: Stampede kills at least 18 people at train station DW (English)New Delhi railway station: Children dey among eighteen pipo wey die for station crush BBC.com
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DFES issues major bushfire warning for residents in Dunsborough, WA
DFES issues major bushfire warning for residents in Dunsborough, WA
Authorities have warned residents of Dunsborough in West Australia to leave now as a major bushfire threatens homes.
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Tornado Warning issued for several western GA counties as severe storms roll through
Tornado Warning issued for several western GA counties as severe storms roll through
A Tornado Watch is in effect for most of North Georgia.
The line of storms has already prompted tornado warnings in Georgia counties outside the Channel 2 Action News viewing area as it begins to move across north Georgia.
The watch remains in effect until 9 a.m.
[DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks]
Storms will weaken as they move into Georgia, however, an isolated tornado and/or damaging wind gust within the line of storms is possible.
TRENDING STORIES:
Don’t expect widespread flooding as the storm system will move through rather quickly, but Severe Weather Team 2 Chief Meteorologist Brad Nitz says isolated, brief flooding or flash flooding is possible.
Here’s a minute-by-minute look at what you need to know:
4:03 a.m.
Tornado Warning for Coweta, Heard, Meriwether, Pike and Troup County until 4:45am
3:57 a.m.
Severe Thunderstorm Warning issued for Carroll, Cobb, Coweta, Douglas, Fulton, Heard and Paulding counties until 4:45 a.m.
3:49 a.m.
Severe Thunderstorm Warning for Coweta, Heard, Meriwether and Troup counties until 4:30 a.m.
3:38 a.m.
Severe Thunderstorm Warning issued for Bartow, Cherokee, Cobb, Fannin, Floyd, Gilmer, Gordon, Paulding, Pickens and Polk County until 4:30 a.m.
3:26 a.m.
A Severe Thunderstorm Warning has been issued for Paulding, Haralson, Carroll, Douglas, Heard County and Polk counties until 4 a.m.
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Mac McClung's legendary Dunk Contest performance proves NBA doesn't need stars like Ja Morant to keep it alive – CBS Sports
Mac McClung's legendary Dunk Contest performance proves NBA doesn't need stars like Ja Morant to keep it alive – CBS Sports
Mac McClung’s legendary Dunk Contest performance proves NBA doesn’t need stars like Ja Morant to keep it alive CBS SportsNBA All-Star Saturday: Mac McClung thrills in dunk contest 3-peat with perfect night, dunk over car; Tyler Herro wins 3-point contest Yahoo SportsWho’s in NBA Slam Dunk Contest, 3-Point Shootout? Full list of participants at 2025 All-Star Saturday Night CBS Sports2025 NBA All-Star highlights: McClung goes perfect to 3-peat as Dunk Contest champ FOX Sports2025 AT&T Slam Dunk: How much does the winner get paid, and how to watch USA TODAY
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Colchester ****** victims honoured at basketball matches
Colchester ****** victims honoured at basketball matches
Neve Gordon-Farleigh
BBC News, Essex
ESSEX POLICE/ESSEX REBELS BASKETBALL
The four university students died when their car crashed into a building
Four students killed in a car ****** were honoured at a university as basketball matches resumed for the first time since the incident.
Makyle Bayley, 22, Eva Darold-Tchikaya, 21, Anthony “TJ” Hibbert, 24 and Daljang Wol, 22, died when a car crashed into a building on Magdalen Street, Colchester on 1 February.
Mr Hibbert and Mr Wol played for the Essex Rebels, who dedicated Saturday’s fixtures to the victims and held an applause in their memory.
University of Essex director of sport Dave Parry said: “We’ve lost four really loved members of our university and sporting community, who gave so much to their friends and others.”
Mr Bayley was a member of the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) basketball team, while Ms Darold-Tchikaya was a member of the Essex Blades dance club and other societies.
Dawid Wojtowicz/BBC
Saturday’s basketball fixtures at the University of Essex were dedicated to the victims
Dawid Wojtowicz/BBC
It was the first time matches had been played there since the incident
Last week, more than 1,000 people including students, staff and relatives of the victims attended a gathering.
Mr Parry described the deaths as “a terrible shock” and hoped the return of basketball matches would help to bring the community together.
He said: “We’ve had an incredible outpouring of support from all over the country, particularly from the basketball community.
“Clubs up and down the country have been sending us messages of support.
“It’s been a terrible couple of weeks and a tragic loss of such young talented lives and we will keep their memories in our hearts forever.”
Dawid Wojtowicz/BBC
Dave Parry said more than 1,000 people attended a gathering held at the university last week
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Auckland continue merry march towards Premier’s Plate
Auckland continue merry march towards Premier’s Plate
ROUND 19 OF THE A-LEAGUE MEN COMPETITION AT A GLANCE:
THEY SAID IT: “I think it was the turning point of the game. The majority of the game I felt we deserved the win.” – Macarthur coach Mile Sterjovski was left to rue a brilliant save from Wanderers goalkeeper Lawrence Thomas that denied a Harry Sawyer header. Macarthur would have led 2-0 in the 61st minute if the goal had gone in. Instead, they ended up losing 2-1.
MAN OF THE WEEK: Gabriel Cleur. The Wanderers defender scored his maiden A-League goal in his team’s 2-1 win over Macarthur – and boy was it a stunner. Cleur trapped an airborne pass, then let the ball bounce three times before unleashing a powerful half-volley from 26 yards out that curled past the keeper’s outstretched hand. It took 43 ALM games to break his goal duck, and it was definitely worth the wait.
TALKING POINT: Thanks to their 2-0 win over Western United and Adelaide’s loss to Newcastle, Auckland will end the week five points clear atop the A-League Men table and with the competition’s best defence. Just once has an expansion franchise won a premiership in its first season in the *********** top flight – a Western Sydney Wanderers side led by Tony Popovic in the 2012-13 campaign — and a New Zealand-based side has never done so. But with 10 games remaining, Steve Corica’s side look increasingly likely to lift silverware in year one.
STAT ATTACK: In scoring Saturday’s winner against Perth, Lawrence Wong became Melbourne City’s youngest ALM goalscorer at 17 years, 132 days – and the third-youngest ever in the league. He was the first player to graduate to a full professional contract with City after starting with the club’s school programs, and joined their academy as an 11-year-old in 2019.
BEAT THAT: With just a minute of regular time remaining in the opening half of Auckland’s win over Western, it looked like the sides would head into the main break locked at 0-0. That was until Guillermo May was afforded far too much time by the hosts’ defence to tee up a perfectly placed effort from nearly 30 yards out that just beat Matt Sutton’s outstretched glove and flew inside the far post.
UNDER PRESSURE: Time is running out for Wellington to get back in the finals mix. Their 1-0 loss to Melbourne Victory left them six points adrift of sixth spot. It’s now or never for the Nix, who face ladder leaders Auckland next. “It’s true we are running out of games, but the belief in the group is that we can definitely put a run of games together and get close to the six,” Wellington coach Giancarlo Italiano said.
UP NEXT: Round 20 begins with a battle of the cellar-dwellers, with Newcastle hosting last-placed Brisbane on Friday night. Auckland will be aiming to continue their build towards the Premier’s Plate when they host Wellington on Saturday, with Central Coast versus Western Sydney to come after that. The blockbuster match of the round is the Melbourne derby, with Victory up against City in a high-stakes battle on Saturday night. Sydney travel to Perth to take on the Glory on Saturday night, with Western United hosting Adelaide on Sunday.
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Tom Cruise & Ana De Armas Spark Dating Rumors After Their Surprise Valentine's Day Outing – Yahoo Entertainment
Tom Cruise & Ana De Armas Spark Dating Rumors After Their Surprise Valentine's Day Outing – Yahoo Entertainment
Tom Cruise & Ana De Armas Spark Dating Rumors After Their Surprise Valentine’s Day Outing Yahoo EntertainmentValentine’s Day date? Tom Cruise, 62, and Ana de Armas, 36, are all smiles as they are mobbed by fans during n Daily MailTom Cruise and Ana de Armas Step Out Over Valentine’s Day Weekend – E! Online E! NEWSTom Cruise, 62, and Ana de Armas, 36, are all smiles while spotted out together in London Page SixValentine’s Day date? Tom Cruise, 62, and Ana de Armas, 36, are all smiles as they are mobbed by fan Ohnotheydidnt Livejournal
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Discordant Trump team statements on Ukraine leave allies anxious – BBC.com
Discordant Trump team statements on Ukraine leave allies anxious – BBC.com
Discordant Trump team statements on Ukraine leave allies anxious BBC.comUkrainians are fearful any Trump-brokered ceasefire will be full of concessions and false promises CNNRepublicans struggle with unified response to Trump’s plan for Ukraine peace talks POLITICODiplomats in Munich Fear Trump Is Giving Up Leverage to Putin Before Talks With Ukraine The New York Times
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US presented Ukraine with a document to access its minerals but offered almost nothing in return – The Associated Press
US presented Ukraine with a document to access its minerals but offered almost nothing in return – The Associated Press
US presented Ukraine with a document to access its minerals but offered almost nothing in return The Associated PressUkraine rejects initial Trump request for half its mineral wealth The Washington PostZelenskiy says draft US minerals deal ‘does not protect’ Ukraine ReutersUkraine Rejects U.S. Demand for Half of Its Mineral Resources The New York Times
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Banks turns up the Heat to clinch Japan rugby thriller
Banks turns up the Heat to clinch Japan rugby thriller
Two tries by Wallabies fullback Tom Banks helped Mie Heat come from behind to beat Sagamihara Dynaboars 38-37 in a Japan Rugby League One thriller.
The Dynaboars had scored 34 unanswered points in Suzuka on Sunday to turn a 12-0 deficit into a 34-12 lead, before the 30-year-old Queenslander transformed the game, dotting down twice in 10 minutes.
Heat completed their stunning comeback when back-rower Ryota Kobayashi claimed the match-winning try in the 80th minute.
The result lifted Mie to eighth place on the league standings, although they are 20 points behind Saitama Wild Knights, after the competition leaders continued a remarkable sequence that has seen them beat Yokohama Eagles on 17 consecutive occasions since 2013.
Gold Coast-schooled Dylan Riley scored twice in the second half for the Wild Knights, who extended a one-point halftime advantage to an emphatic 51-36 win.
Former Wallabies boss Dave Rennie cut a frustrated figure on Saturday after his Kobe Steelers surrendered a 17-point halftime lead in their 25-20 loss to Spears Funabashi Tokyo-Bay.
The visitors were held scoreless in the second half as Wallaby Bernard Foley’s Spears overhauled the deficit to retain third spot in the competition.
Despite losing their past two games, Kobe remain in the playoff places, clinging to sixth spot thanks to seventh-placed Tokyo Sungoliath’s 43-33 loss to Brave Lupus Tokyo in another high-scoring Fuchu Derby.
Brave Lupus have won five of the eight meetings between the west Tokyo rivals since League One began, with the latest edition continuing the trend of points aplenty as the teams shared 11 tries and 76 points.
The derby has averaged 62 points per game in the past four years.
Verblitz continues to slide, despite another try from Joseph Manu, with the ex-State of Origin star’s fifth of his rugby union career going unrewarded in a 33-23 loss to Shizuoka Blue Revs.
Steve Hansen’s men have lost their past four games and dropped to 10th, just one above the relegation places.
Wallabies midfielder Samu Kerevi scored a try but was also yellow-carded for a no-arms tackle as bottom-placed Urayasu D-Rocks fell to their seventh defeat after a 44-22 loss to ****** Rams Tokyo.
Former *********** under-20 centre Semisi Tupou scored two tries for the winners, while All ****** TJ Perenara was also a try-scorer.
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NASA astronauts — from space — discredit Trump claims they’re stranded – Yahoo
NASA astronauts — from space — discredit Trump claims they’re stranded – Yahoo
NASA astronauts — from space — discredit Trump claims they’re stranded YahooView Full Coverage on Google News
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