No Country Still Uses An Electoral College − Except The US

BY JOSHUA HOLZER

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL

SCIENCE, WESTMINSTER COLLEGE

The United States is the only democracy in the world where a presidential candidate can get the most popular votes and still lose the election. Thanks to the Electoral College, that has happened five times in the country’s history. The most recent examples are from 2000, when Al Gore won the popular vote but George W. Bush won the Electoral College after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and 2016, when Hillary Clinton got more votes nationwide than Donald Trump but lost in the Electoral College.

The Founding Fathers did not invent the idea of an electoral college. Rather, they borrowed the concept from Europe, where it had been used to pick emperors for hundreds of years.

As a scholar of presidential democracies around the world, I have studied how countries have used electoral colleges. None have been satisfied with the results. And except for the U.S., all have found other ways to choose their leaders.

The origins of the US Electoral College

The Holy Roman Empire was a loose confederation of territories that existed in central Europe from 962 to 1806. The emperor was not chosen by heredity, like most other monarchies. Instead, emperors were chosen by electors, who represented both secular and religious interests.

As of 1356, there were seven electors: Four were hereditary nobles and three were chosen by the Catholic Church. By 1803, the total number of electors had increased to 10. Three years later, the empire fell.

When the Founding Fathers were drafting the U.S. Constitution in 1787, the initial draft proposal called for the “National Executive,” which we now call the president, to be elected by the “National Legislature,” which we now call Congress. However, Virginia delegate George Mason viewed “making the Executive the mere creature of the Legislature as a violation of the fundamental principle of good Government,” and so the idea was rejected.

Pennsylvania delegate James Wilson proposed that the president be elected by popular vote. However, many other delegates were adamant that there be an indirect way of electing the president to provide a buffer against what Thomas Jefferson called “well-meaning, but uninformed people.” Mason, for instance, suggested that allowing voters to pick the president would be akin to “refer(ring) a trial of colours to a blind man.”

For 21 days, the founders debated how to elect the president, and they held more than 30 separate votes on the topic – more than for any other issue they discussed. Eventually, the complicated solution that they agreed to was an early version of the electoral college system that exists today, a method where neither Congress nor the people directly elect the president. Instead, each state gets a number of electoral votes corresponding to the number of members of the U.S. House and Senate it is apportioned. When the states’ electoral votes are tallied, the candidate with the majority wins.

James Madison, who was not fond of the Holy Roman Empire’s use of an electoral college, later recalled that the final decision on how to elect a U.S. president “was produced by fatigue and impatience.”

After just two elections, in 1796 and 1800, problems with this system had become obvious. Chief among them was that electoral votes were cast only for president. The person who got the most electoral votes became president, and the person who came in second place – usually their leading opponent – became vice president. The current process of electing the president and vice president on a single ticket but with separate electoral votes was adopted in 1804 with the passage of the 12th Amendment.

Some other questions about how the Electoral College system should work were clarified by federal laws through the years, including in 1887 and 1948.

After the 2020 presidential election exposed additional flaws with the system, Congress further tweaked the process by passing legislation that sought to clarify how electoral votes are counted.

Other electoral colleges

After the the U.S. Constitution went into effect, the idea of using an electoral college to indirectly elect a president spread to other republics.

For example, in the Americas, Colombia adopted an electoral college in 1821. Chile adopted one in 1828. Argentina adopted one in 1853.

In Europe, Finland adopted an electoral college to elect its president in 1925, and France adopted an electoral college in 1958.

Over time, however, these countries changed their minds. All of them abandoned their electoral colleges and switched to directly electing their presidents by votes of the people. Colombia did so in 1910, Chile in 1925, France in 1965, Finland in 1994, and Argentina in 1995.

The U.S. is the only democratic presidential system left that still uses an electoral college.

A ‘popular’ alternative?

There is an effort underway in the U.S. to replace the Electoral College. It may not even require amending the Constitution.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, currently agreed to by 17 U.S. states, including small states such as Delaware and big ones such as California, as well as the District of Columbia, is an agreement to award all of their electoral votes to whichever presidential candidate gets the most votes nationwide. It would take effect once enough states sign on that they would represent the 270-vote majority of electoral votes. The current list reaches 209 electoral votes.

A key problem with the interstate compact is that in races with more than two candidates, it could lead to situations where the winner of the election did not get a majority of the popular vote, but rather more than half of all voters chose someone else.

When Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Finland and France got rid of their electoral colleges, they did not replace them with a direct popular vote in which the person with the most votes wins. Instead, they all adopted a version of runoff voting. In those systems, winners are declared only when they receive support from more than half of those who cast ballots.

Notably, neither the U.S. Electoral College nor the interstate compact that seeks to replace it are systems that ensure that presidents are supported by a majority of voters.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Columbus Who? Decolonizing The Calendar In Latin America

Decorations for ‘Día de la Raza,’ in the Monserrat neighborhood of Buenos Aires in 1929. Archivo General de la Nación/Wikimedia Commons

BY ELENA JACKSON ALBARRAN

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HISTORY

AND GLOBAL AND INTERCULTURAL

STUDIES, MIAMI UNIVERSITY

This is the season of patriotism in Latin America as many countries commemorate their independence from colonial powers. From July to September, public plazas in countries from Mexico to Honduras and Chile fill with crowds dressed and painted in national colors, parades feature participants costumed as independence heroes, fireworks fill the skies, and schoolchildren reenact historical battles.

Beneath these nationalist displays ripples an uneasy tide: the colonial legacies that still tie the Americas to their Iberian conquerors. And as the calendar turns to October, another holiday highlights similar tensions – Columbus Day.

Since 1937, the U.S. has observed the holiday on the second Monday of the month, commemorating the explorer’s 1492 arrival in the New World. It remains a federal holiday, even as many states and cities rename it “Indigenous Peoples Day,” rejecting Christopher Columbus as a symbol of imperialism.

Most Latin Americans, meanwhile, know Oct. 12 as “Día de la Raza,” or Day of the Race, which also celebrates Columbus’ arrival in the New World and the tide of Iberian conquistadors that followed. But commemorating the event is all the more charged in these countries, home to the Spanish Empire’s most lucrative territorial assets and sweeping spiritual conquests. Days before taking office in September 2024, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum reiterated her predecessor’s demand that the king of Spain apologize for the genocide and exploitation of the conquest 500 years ago.

As a historian of Latin America, I’ve paid attention to the ways calendars signal a nation’s “official” values and how countries wrestle with these holidays’ meanings.

Día de la Raza

The first encounter between Aztec emperor Montezuma and conquistador Hernando Cortés took place on Nov. 8, 1519 – the latter backed by an entourage of 300 Spaniards, thousands of Indigenous allies and slaves, and hundreds of Africans, free or otherwise.

This moment of contact began Mexico’s 500-year transformation into a “mestizo” nation: a hybrid identity with largely European and Indigenous roots. During the colonial period, racial differences were codified into law, and those with “pure” Spanish bloodlines enjoyed legal privileges over the racially mixed categories that fell below them. The 19th century ushered in independence from Spain and liberal ideas that promoted racial equality – in principle – but in reality, European influence prevailed.

It was Spain that first proposed the Día de la Raza, held on Oct. 12, 1892, to commemorate the 400-year anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas – implying a celebration of Spain’s contributions to the mestizo racial mixture.

The celebration was part of a bid to fortify nationalism in Spain, as the waning colonial power continued its retreat from the hemisphere it controlled for the better part of four centuries. Spain also hoped to export the invented holiday to the Americas, strengthening trans-Atlantic cultural affinities tested by the United States’ growing sway. Across the Americas, Día de la Raza came to be synonymous with celebrating European influence.

In Mexico, the 1892 commemoration empowered members of the political elite who promoted European investments and culture as the model for modernizing the country. They used the occasion to extol the civilizing influence of the “madre patria,” or motherland, justifying the conquest and colonialism as a period of benevolent rule.

Mestizo nationalism

Only a few years later, however, the U.S. victory in the Spanish-American War swept the last vestiges of Spanish empire from the hemisphere. Spain’s exit made way for dual – and dueling – phenomena: rising patriotic spirit in Latin American countries, even amid increasing economic pressure and cultural influence from the U.S.

The 1910 Mexican Revolution ignited mestizo nationalism, which soon extended to other countries. In 1930s Nicaragua, Augusto Sandino started a revolution to oust the occupying U.S. Marines while calling for the unification of the “Indo-Hispanic Race.” Meanwhile, Peruvian intellectual José Mariátegui envisioned a modern nation built upon the ideals of a collective, reciprocal society, modeled by the Incan ayllu system. And in Mexico, beauty pageants celebrating native features gained popularity among the social classes accustomed to perusing department stores for Parisian imports.

Yet a tendency to emphasize Spanish cultural ancestry rather than Indigenous ones persisted. In the late 1930s, for example, October issues of Mexican children’s magazine Palomilla celebrated Columbus’ arrival as a heroic entry that provided the region with a common language and religion.

Pan American Day

Meanwhile, the U.S viewed Pan-Hispanic sentiments as a threat: Spanish economic goals, cloaked in racial and cultural solidarity.

To help shore up hemispheric allegiances, Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed a new holiday on April 14, 1930: Pan American Day, or Día de las Américas. The holiday sought to offset the narratives of both Columbus Day and Día de la Raza and marked the U.S. administration’s Good Neighbor Policy pivot toward Latin America – a softer form of imperialism that promoted solidarity and brotherhood, at least on the surface.

The Pan American Union, an inter-American organization headquartered in Washington, saw the new date as an opportunity to forge common traditions across the hemisphere. It vigorously promoted Pan American Day celebrations, primarily among schoolchildren, exhorting teachers to implement games, puzzles, pageants and songs created in Pan American Union offices.

The holiday met enthusiastic reception in the United States. Midwesterners donned sombreros for parades, and Spanish language clubs in California hosted pageants celebrating the flags of American nations.

But Latin American commemoration was tepid at best. The Organization of American States, the successor to the Pan American Union, still recognizes Pan American Day. However, it never gained traction in Latin America and faded in the U.S. during World War II.

Recent shift

Latin America’s ambivalence toward holidays to commemorate the colonizers has taken a turn since 1992. The 500-year anniversary of Columbus’ arrival corresponded with yet another form of colonialism, in many Latin Americans’ eyes, as a new wave of multinational corporations colluded with heads of state to tap the continent’s oil, lithium, water and avocados.

Activists used the commemoration to call attention to lingering economic, social, racial and cultural inequities. In particular, the anniversary inspired Indigenous rights movements – some of which commemorated an “anti-quincentenary” to celebrate “500 years of resistance.”

The Día de la Raza has since been renamed to reflect anti-colonial sentiments, similar to Columbus Day in the United States. Ecuador calls Oct. 12 the Day of Interculturalism and Ethnic Identity; Argentina celebrates it as Day of Respect for Cultural Diversity; Nicaragua now refers to it as the Day of Indigenous, Black and Popular Resistance; in Colombia it is the Day of Ethnic and Cultural Diversity; and the Dominican Republic celebrates it as Intercultural Day.

In some places, renaming the holiday has drawn attention to Indigenous rights and culture. Bolivians, for example, draped a statue of a European monarch in a traditional “aguayo” garment, transforming her into an Indigenous woman. However, critics suggest that removing the holiday’s reference to the colonizers erases an important reminder of the conquest and its painful legacy.

As in the U.S., monuments to colonizers are coming down – including the monument to Columbus that occupied a conspicuous spot on La Reforma, one of Mexico City’s most-traversed thoroughfares.

In its place is a new installation: a purple silhouette of a girl with her fist raised, in honor of Latin America’s women activists. She heralds a new era of statues lining La Reforma, and heroes for the future – not mired in the colonial legacies of the past.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

US Will Send A Missile Defense System And Troops To Run It To Israel To Aid Defense Against Iran

This image provided by the U.S. Air Force shows the U.S. Army Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) launching station prepared to load onto a 4th Airlift Squadron C-17 Globemaster lll at Fort Bliss, Texas, Feb, 23, 2019. (Staff Sgt. Cory D. Payne/U.S. Air Force via AP)

BY LOLITA C. BALDOR

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States will send a T erminal High Altitude Area Defense battery to Israel, along with the troops needed to operate it, the Pentagon said Sunday, even as Iran warned Washington to keep American military forces out of Israel.

Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin authorized the deployment of the THAAD battery at the direction of President Joe Biden. He said the system will help bolster Israel’s air defenses following Iran’s ballistic missile attacks on Israel in April and October.

The delivery of the sophisticated missile defense system risks further inflaming the conflict in the Middle East despite widespread diplomatic efforts to avoid an all-out war. The Iranian warning came in a post on the social platform X long associated with Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who noted the earlier reports that the U.S. was considering the deployment.

Israeli forces and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon have been clashing since Oct. 8, 2023, when the Lebanese militant group began firing rockets over the border in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza. Late last month, Israel launched a ground invasion into Lebanon.

Israel is widely believed to be preparing a military response to Iran’s Oct. 1 attack when it fired roughly 180 missiles into Israel.

In a brief exchange with reporters before leaving Florida on Sunday, Biden said he agreed to deploy the THAAD battery “to defend Israel.” Biden spoke at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa after making a quick visit to to see the damage caused by Hurricane Milton and meet with first responders, residents and local leaders.

Ryder, in his statement, said the deployment “underscores the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran.”

It was not immediately clear where the THAAD battery was coming from or when it will arrive. Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an Israeli army spokesman, declined to provide any timeline for its arrival, but thanked the U.S. for its support.

The U.S. deployed one of the batteries to the Middle East along with additional Patriot battalions to bolster protections for U.S. forces in the region late last year after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas militants. Ryder also said that the U.S. sent a THAAD battery to Israel in 2019 for training.

It also is not unusual for the U.S. to have a limited number of troops in Israel, which the U.S. considers a key regional ally. There generally has been a small number of forces there consistently as well as routine rotational deployments for training and exercises.

The THAAD will add another layer to Israel’s already significant air defenses, which include separate systems designed to intercept long-range, medium-range and short-range threats. Israel recently retired its U.S.-made Patriot systems after decades of use.

According to an April report by the Congressional Research Service, the Army has seven THAAD batteries. Generally each consists of six truck-mounted launchers, 48 interceptors, radio and radar equipment and requires 95 soldiers to operate.

The THAAD is considered a complementary system to the Patriot, but it can defend a wider area. It can hit targets at ranges of 150 to 200 kilometers (93 to 124 miles), and is used to destroy short-range, medium-range and limited intermediate-range ballistic missile threats that are either inside or outside the atmosphere.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency is responsible for developing the system, but it is operated by the Army. An eighth system has been funded and ordered and is expected to be in the field sometime next year.

Associated Press writers Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Aamer Madhani in Tampa, Florida, and Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Medicare Vs. Medicare Advantage: Sales Pitches Are Often From Biased Sources, The Choices Can Be Overwhelming And Impartial Help Is Not Equally Available To All

AUTHORS:

GRACE MCCORMACK

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER OF HEALTH

POLICY AND ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY

OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

MELISSA GARRIDO

RESEARCH PROFESSOR, HEALTH LAW,

POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

BOSTON UMIVERSITY

The 67 million Americans eligible for Medicare make an important decision every October: Should they make changes in their Medicare health insurance plans for the next calendar year?

The decision is complicated. Medicare has an enormous variety of coverage options, with large and varying implications for people’s health and finances, both as beneficiaries and taxpayers. And the decision is consequential – some choices lock beneficiaries out of traditional Medicare.

Beneficiaries choose an insurance plan when they turn 65 or become eligible based on qualifying chronic conditions or disabilities. After the initial sign-up, most beneficiaries can make changes only during the open enrollment period each fall.

The 2024 open enrollment period, which runs from Oct. 15 to Dec. 7, marks an opportunity to reassess options. Given the complicated nature of Medicare and the scarcity of unbiased advisers, however, finding reliable information and understanding the options available can be challenging.

We are health care policy experts who study Medicare, and even we find it complicated. One of us recently helped a relative enroll in Medicare for the first time. She’s healthy, has access to health insurance through her employer and doesn’t regularly take prescription drugs. Even in this straightforward scenario, the number of choices were overwhelming.

The stakes of these choices are even higher for people managing multiple chronic conditions. There is help available for beneficiaries, but we have found that there is considerable room for improvement – especially in making help available for everyone who needs it.

The choice is complex, especially when you are signing up for the first time and if you are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. Insurers often engage in aggressive and sometimes deceptive advertising and outreach through brokers and agents. Choose unbiased resources to guide you through the process, like www.shiphelp.org. Make sure to start before your 65th birthday for initial sign-up, look out for yearly plan changes, and start well before the Dec. 7 deadline for any plan changes.

2 paths with many decisions

Within Medicare, beneficiaries have a choice between two very different programs. They can enroll in either traditional Medicare, which is administered by the government, or one of the Medicare Advantage plans offered by private insurance companies.

Within each program are dozens of further choices.

Traditional Medicare is a nationally uniform cost-sharing plan for medical services that allows people to choose their providers for most types of medical care, usually without prior authorization. Deductibles for 2024 are US$1,632 for hospital costs and $240 for outpatient and medical costs. Patients also have to chip in starting on Day 61 for a hospital stay and Day 21 for a skilled nursing facility stay. This percentage is known as coinsurance. After the yearly deductible, Medicare pays 80% of outpatient and medical costs, leaving the person with a 20% copayment. Traditional Medicare’s basic plan, known as Part A and Part B, also has no out-of-pocket maximum.

People enrolled in traditional Medicare can also purchase supplemental coverage from a private insurance company, known as Part D, for drugs. And they can purchase supplemental coverage, known as Medigap, to lower or eliminate their deductibles, coinsurance and copayments, cap costs for Parts A and B, and add an emergency foreign travel benefit.

Part D plans cover prescription drug costs for about $0 to $100 a month. People with lower incomes may get extra financial help by signing up for the Medicare program Part D Extra Help or state-sponsored pharmaceutical assistance programs.

There are 10 standardized Medigap plans, also known as Medicare supplement plans. Depending on the plan, and the person’s gender, location and smoking status, Medigap typically costs from about $30 to $400 a month when a beneficiary first enrolls in Medicare.

The Medicare Advantage program allows private insurers to bundle everything together and offers many enrollment options. Compared with traditional Medicare, Medicare Advantage plans typically offer lower out-of-pocket costs. They often bundle supplemental coverage for hearing, vision and dental, which is not part of traditional Medicare.

But Medicare Advantage plans also limit provider networks, meaning that people who are enrolled in them can see only certain providers without paying extra. In comparison to traditional Medicare, Medicare Advantage enrollees on average go to lower-quality hospitals, nursing facilities, and home health agencies but see higher-quality primary care doctors.

Medicare Advantage plans also often require prior authorization – often for important services such as stays at skilled nursing facilities, home health services and dialysis.

Choice overload

Understanding the tradeoffs between premiums, health care access and out-of-pocket health care costs can be overwhelming.

Though options vary by county, the typical Medicare beneficiary can choose between as many as 10 Medigap plans and 21 standalone Part D plans, or an average of 43 Medicare Advantage plans. People who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid, or have certain chronic conditions, or are in a long-term care facility have additional types of Medicare Advantage plans known as Special Needs Plans to choose among.

Medicare Advantage plans can vary in terms of networks, benefits and use of prior authorization.

Different Medicare Advantage plans have varying and large impacts on enrollee health, including dramatic differences in mortality rates. Researchers found a 16% difference per year between the best and worst Medicare Advantage plans, meaning that for every 100 people in the worst plans who die within a year, they would expect only 84 people to die within that year if all had been enrolled in the best plans instead. They also found plans that cost more had lower mortality rates, but plans that had higher federal quality ratings – known as “star ratings” – did not necessarily have lower mortality rates.

The quality of different Medicare Advantage plans, however, can be difficult for potential enrollees to assess. The federal plan finder website lists available plans and publishes a quality rating of one to five stars for each plan. But in practice, these star ratings don’t necessarily correspond to better enrollee experiences or meaningful differences in quality.

Online provider networks can also contain errors or include providers who are no longer seeing new patients, making it hard for people to choose plans that give them access to the providers they prefer.

While many Medicare Advantage plans boast about their supplemental benefits , such as vision and dental coverage, it’s often difficult to understand how generous this supplemental coverage is. For instance, while most Medicare Advantage plans offer supplemental dental benefits, cost-sharing and coverage can vary. Some plans don’t cover services such as extractions and endodontics, which includes root canals. Most plans that cover these more extensive dental services require some combination of coinsurance, copayments and annual limits.

Even when information is fully available, mistakes are likely.

Part D beneficiaries often fail to accurately evaluate premiums and expected out-of-pocket costs when making their enrollment decisions. Past work suggests that many beneficiaries have difficulty processing the proliferation of options. A person’s relationship with health care providers, financial situation and preferences are key considerations. The consequences of enrolling in one plan or another can be difficult to determine.

The trap: Locked out

At 65, when most beneficiaries first enroll in Medicare, federal regulations guarantee that anyone can get Medigap coverage. During this initial sign-up, beneficiaries can’t be charged a higher premium based on their health.

Older Americans who enroll in a Medicare Advantage plan but then want to switch back to traditional Medicare after more than a year has passed lose that guarantee. This can effectively lock them out of enrolling in supplemental Medigap insurance, making the initial decision a one-way street.

For the initial sign-up, Medigap plans are “guaranteed issue,” meaning the plan must cover preexisting health conditions without a waiting period and must allow anyone to enroll, regardless of health. They also must be “community rated,” meaning that the cost of a plan can’t rise because of age or illness, although it can go up due to other factors such as inflation.

People who enroll in traditional Medicare and a supplemental Medigap plan at 65 can expect to continue paying community-rated premiums as long as they remain enrolled, regardless of what happens to their health.

In most states, however, people who switch from Medicare Advantage to traditional Medicare don’t have as many protections. Most state regulations permit plans to deny coverage, impose waiting periods or charge higher Medigap premiums based on their expected health costs. Only Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and New York guarantee that people can get Medigap plans after the initial sign-up period.

Deceptive advertising

Information about Medicare coverage and assistance choosing a plan is available but varies in quality and completeness. Older Americans are bombarded with ads for Medicare Advantage plans that they may not be eligible for and that include misleading statements about benefits.

A November 2022 report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance found deceptive and aggressive sales and marketing tactics, including mailed brochures that implied government endorsement, telemarketers who called up to 20 times a day, and salespeople who approached older adults in the grocery store to ask about their insurance coverage.

The Department of Health and Human Services tightened rules for 2024, requiring third-party marketers to include federal resources about Medicare, including the website and toll-free phone number, and limiting the number of contacts from marketers.

Although the government has the authority to review marketing materials, enforcement is partially dependent on whether complaints are filed. Complaints can be filed with the federal government’s Senior Medicare Patrol, a federally funded program that prevents and addresses unethical Medicare activities.

Meanwhile, the number of people enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans has grown rapidly, doubling since 2010 and accounting for more than half of all Medicare beneficiaries by 2023.

Nearly one-third of Medicare beneficiaries seek information from an insurance broker. Brokers sell health insurance plans from multiple companies. However, because they receive payment from plans in exchange for sales, and because they are unlikely to sell every option, a plan recommended by a broker may not meet a person’s needs.

Help is out there − but falls short

An alternative source of information is the federal government. It offers three sources of information to assist people with choosing one of these plans: 1-800-Medicare, medicare.gov and the State Health Insurance Assistance Program, also known as SHIP.

The SHIP program combats misleading Medicare advertising and deceptive brokers by connecting eligible Americans with counselors by phone or in person to help them choose plans. Many people say they prefer meeting in person with a counselor over phone or internet support. SHIP staff say they often help people understand what’s in Medicare Advantage ads and disenroll from plans they were directed to by brokers.

Telephone SHIP services are available nationally, but one of us and our colleagues have found that in-person SHIP services are not available in some areas. We tabulated areas by ZIP code in 27 states and found that although more than half of the locations had a SHIP site within the county, areas without a SHIP site included a larger proportion of people with low incomes.

Virtual services are an option that’s particularly useful in rural areas and for people with limited mobility or little access to transportation, but they require online access. Virtual and in-person services, where both a beneficiary and a counselor can look at the same computer screen, are especially useful for looking through complex coverage options.

We also interviewed SHIP counselors and coordinators from across the U.S.

As one SHIP coordinator noted, many people are not aware of all their coverage options. For instance, one beneficiary told a coordinator, “I’ve been on Medicaid and I’m aging out of Medicaid. And I don’t have a lot of money. And now I have to pay for my insurance?” As it turned out, the beneficiary was eligible for both Medicaid and Medicare because of their income, and so had to pay less than they thought.

The interviews made clear that many people are not aware that Medicare Advantage ads and insurance brokers may be biased. One counselor said, “There’s a lot of backing (beneficiaries) off the ledge, if you will, thanks to those TV commercials.”

Many SHIP staff counselors said they would benefit from additional training on coverage options, including for people who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid. The SHIP program relies heavily on volunteers, and there is often greater demand for services than the available volunteers can offer. Additional counselors would help meet needs for complex coverage decisions.

The key to making a good Medicare coverage decision is to use the help available and weigh your costs, access to health providers, current health and medication needs, and also consider how your health and medication needs might change as time goes on.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Vatican Synod Is Opening The Door A Bit Wider For Catholic Women − But They’ve Been knocking For More Than 100 Years

Pope Francis poses with a group of women before a session of the Synod of Bishops at the Vatican on Oct. 28, 2023. AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino

BY CAROL E, HARRISON

PROFESSOR OF HISTORY,

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA

In 2021, Sister Nathalie Becquart became the first woman to vote at any Vatican meeting when Pope Francis appointed her undersecretary to the synod, a gathering of bishops whose second session opened on Oct. 2, 2024.

Becquart is, in the words of Catholic media, “the synod’s face and voice,” even “a synodal icon.” She describes “synodality” as “like having a coffee together” – encouraging many Catholics to hope that their church will reimagine itself in less hierarchical ways. With her appointment, Cardinal Mario Grech, the synod’s secretary-general, remarked, “A door has been opened.”

Grech did not mention it, but Catholic women have been knocking on this door for over a century. Becquart and the synod’s 53 other female participants, both lay and religious, follow a long line of Catholic women who have cogently, and often critically, analyzed church governance.

At the current synod, whose purpose is to address “communion, participation, and mission” in the church, women’s role is on the agenda. But Catholic women have historically found ways to speak to and about their church leadership, even when they have been excluded from its proceedings.

Uninvited guests

In 1869, when Pope Pius IX convened the First Vatican Council, no one dreamed of inviting women, but they were nonetheless there.

Vatican I was the first churchwide meeting of bishops since the Reformation. Its most momentous – and controversial – result was the proclamation of papal infallibility, sealing the church’s view of itself as an absolute monarchy. Critics both within and outside the church condemned the assertion that the pope alone, without the counsel of bishops, could determine doctrine. Women who witnessed the council, especially those who published accounts of the event, were eloquent critics of this top-down church.

Many well-educated and well-connected laywomen traveled to Rome in 1869 to witness their church set its future direction. They hosted salons where bishops exchanged news in the evenings after council sessions. They corresponded with absent friends and were nodes in a network of Catholics who opposed infallibility.

When the German priest Ignaz von Döllinger wrote a devastating critique of infallibility from his study in Munich, he relied in part on information forwarded from Rome by his friend and protegée, 27-year-old Charlotte von Leyden. Outliving the council fathers of Vatican I, she got the last word in 1907, when she published the chapter on papal Rome for the landmark “Cambridge Modern History.”

The conservative Catholic press relentlessly mocked these women as misguided busybodies. Vatican I sidelined the laity of both sexes, but women who claimed a voice in church affairs seemed especially impertinent to the bishops who endorsed infallibility. Violating St. Paul’s injunction that women be silent in church, they defied clerical authority and the logic of a church that spoke with only one voice.

Change comes slowly to Vatican II

Vatican II began in 1962 much like Vatican I: an all-clerical, all-male assembly.

Women initially sought influence in similar ways as well. Every night the Belgian journalist Betsie Hollants made a pot of soup and held open house for the council fathers. Soup broth and red wine were cheap, she recalled, but they made for convivial gatherings that kept her informed about the council. Responding to women’s request to participate formally, however, one dismissive cardinal reportedly suggested that they should “try again at Vatican III or IV.”

As the council proceeded, the absence of women seemed increasingly incongruous. Douglas Horton, an American Protestant pastor invited as an observer, noted the “air of artificiality” of an assembly without women. By the second session in 1963, Mildred Horton and other non-Catholic observers’ wives could attend some events, but no Catholic women were present. When the Catholic press corps received Communion, a Swiss Guard physically prevented the only female journalist from approaching the altar.

Pope John XXIII had declared “aggiornamento” – bringing the church up to date – the order of the day, but these incidents made many wonder if aggiornamento was possible without women.

Signs of change arrived at the fourth session in September 1964, when the new pope, Paul VI, appointed 23 women auditors: 10 religious and 13 lay women. They participated in preparatory sessions, especially those concerning the laity, where they were, in Paul’s words, “experts in life.”

No woman ever addressed the council fathers; their efforts to do so were rebuffed, but their presence in preliminary meetings was significant. In a discussion of marriage, for instance, Luz María Alvarez-Icaza – a Mexican woman who, with her husband, José, was an auditor – informed the assembled clerics that she was confident that their mothers had conceived them in acts of love, not animal lust. One of the most significant changes to emerge from Vatican II was the reassessment of marital sex. Whereas the church once viewed sex between husband and wife as a check on humanity’s essentially sinful nature, new teachings described it as a positive expression of love.

More than ‘flowers and light’

The documents produced by Vatican II say relatively little about women, which was, arguably, a victory for female auditors. Many of them mistrusted the council fathers’ view of women as a separate, even foreign, species.

The Australian theologian Rosemary Goldie, listening to the eminent French theologian Yves Congar’s extravagant descriptions of women’s role, told him, “You can cut the references to women as flowers and light. … We don’t need any of that grandiose stuff. … All we want is to be treated as full human beings.”

“Women are not ‘a category’ in the church,” Sister Mary Luke Tobin, an American, maintained: “Men and women are the church.”

Thanks to these 23 “mothers of the council,” Vatican II’s teachings on women are, for the most part, incorporated into its larger treatment of human dignity, not segregated into separate chapters on women’s nature.

Possibilities today

How much will it matter that 54 voting women have replaced the hostesses, writers and auditors of Vatican I and Vatican II? We probably won’t know for a long time – decades at least.

Revolution is unlikely. Many Catholics support allowing women to serve as deacons – ministers who can perform some, but not all, of the priest’s duties. That possibility, however, is off the synod table, handed to a commission for further study. The ordination of women as priests seems impossibly distant.

It could be, however, that 54 female voices teach their church how to speak of and to women as equals. Or it may be that those voices disappear amid the cacophony of nearly 400 participants. As Pope Francis reminds both conservatives and progressives, the synod is not a parliament. Votes are counted, but as a step toward discernment of truth, not a moment of decision.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Millions Of People Across The US Use Well Water, But Very Few Test It Often Enough To Make Sure It’s Safe

BY GABRIEL LADE

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR

OF ECONOMICS,

MACALESTER COLLEGE

About 23 million U.S. households depend on private wells as their primary drinking water source. These homeowners are entirely responsible for ensuring that the water from their wells is safe for human consumption.

Multiple studies show that, at best, half of private well owners are testing with any frequency, and very few households test once or more yearly, as public health officials recommend. Even in Iowa, which has some of the strongest state-level policies for protecting private well users, state funds for free private water quality testing regularly go unspent.

Is the water these households are drinking safe? There’s not much systematic evidence, but the risks may be large.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency still relies on a 15-year-old study showing that among 2,000 households, 1 in 5 households’ well water contained at least one contaminant at levels above the thresholds that public water systems must meet. While other researchers have studied this issue, most rely on limited data or data collected over decades to draw conclusions.

I’m an economist studying energy and agriculture issues. In a recent study, I worked with colleagues at Iowa State University, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Cornell University to understand drinking water-related behaviors and perceptions of households that use private wells. We focused on rural Iowa, where runoff from agricultural production regularly contaminates public and private drinking water sources.

We found that few households followed public health guidance on testing their well water, but a simple intervention – sending them basic information about drinking water hazards and easy-to-use testing materials – increased testing rates. The burden of dealing with contamination, however, falls largely on individual households.

Nitrate risks

We focused on nitrate, one of the main well water pollutants in rural areas. Major sources include chemical fertilizers, animal waste and human sewage.

Drinking water that contains nitrate can harm human health. Using contaminated water to prepare infant formula can cause “blue baby syndrome,” a condition in which infants’ hands and lips turn bluish because nitrate interferes with oxygen transport in the babies’ blood. Severe cases can cause lethargy, seizures and even death. The EPA limits nitrate levels in public water systems to 10 milligrams per liter to prevent this effect.

Studies have also found that for people of all ages, drinking water with low nitrate concentrations over long periods of time is strongly associated with chronic health diseases, including colorectal cancer and thyroid disease, as well as neural tube defects in developing fetuses.

Nitrate pollution is pervasive across the continental U.S. Fortunately, it is relatively easy to determine whether water contains unsafe nitrate concentrations. Test strips, similar to those used in swimming pools, are cheap and readily available.

The water’s fine … or not

Mailing lists of households with private wells are hard to come by, so for our study we digitized over 22,000 addresses using maps from 14 Iowa counties. We targeted counties where public water systems had struggled to meet EPA safety standards for nitrate in drinking water, and where private wells that had been tested over the past 20 years showed nitrate concentrations at concerning levels.

We received responses from over half of the households we surveyed. Of those, just over 8,100 (37%) used private wells.

Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends testing annually for nitrate, just 9% of these households had tested their water quality in the past year.

More concerning, 40% of this group used their wells for drinking water, had not tested it in the past year, and did not filter the water or use other sources such as bottled water. They were drinking straight from the tap without knowing whether their water was safe.

Our survey also showed that, despite living in high-risk areas, 77% of households classified their well water quality as “good” or “great.” This may be driven by a “not in my backyard” mentality. Households in our survey were more likely to agree with the statement that nitrate is a problem in the state of Iowa than to perceive nitrates as a problem in their local area.

Climate change is likely to worsen nitrate contamination in well water. In regions including the Great Lakes basin, increases in heavy rainfall are projected to carry rising amounts of nutrients from farmlands into waterways and groundwater.

Providing information and tools helps

To see whether education and access to testing materials could change views about well water, we sent a mailer containing a nitrate test strip, information about risks associated with nitrate in drinking water, and contact information for a free water quality testing program run by the state of Iowa to a random 50% of respondents from our first survey. We then resurveyed all households, whether or not they received the mailer.

Over 40% of households that received test strips reported that they had tested their water, compared with 24% of those that did not receive the mailer. The number of respondents who reported using Iowa’s free testing program also increased, from 10% to 13%, a small but statistically meaningful impact.

Less encouragingly, households that received the mailer were no more likely to report filtering or avoiding their water than those that did not receive the mailer.

Households bear the burden

Our results show that lack of information makes people less likely to test their well water for nitrate or other contaminants. At least for nitrate, helping households overcome this barrier is cheap. We asked respondents about their willingness to pay for the program and found that the average household was willing to pay as much as US$13 for a program that would cost the state roughly $5 to implement.

However, we could not determine whether our outreach decreased households’ exposure to contaminated drinking water. It’s also not clear whether people would be as willing to test their well water in states such as Wisconsin or Oregon, where testing would cost them up to a few hundred dollars.

As of 2024, just 24 states offered well water testing kits for at least one contaminant that were free or cost $100 or less. And while most states offer information about well water safety, some simply post a brochure online.

The upshot is that rural households are bearing the costs associated with unsafe well water, either through health care burdens or spending for treatment and testing. Policymakers have been slow to address the main source of this problem: nitrate pollution from agriculture.

In one exception, state agencies in southeastern Minnesota are providing free well water quality testing and offering a few households filtration systems in cases where their wells are laden with nitrate from local agricultural sources. However, this effort began only after environmental advocates petitioned the EPA.

If state and federal agencies tracked more systematically the costs to households of dealing with contaminated water, the scale of the burden would be clearer. Government agencies could use this information in cost-benefit assessments of conservation programs.

On a broader scale, I agree with experts who have called for rethinking agricultural policies that encourage expanding crops associated with high nutrient pollution, such as corn. More restoration of wetlands and prairies, which filter nutrients from surface water, could also help. Finally, while the Environmental Protection Agency can’t force well owners to test or treat their water, it could provide better support for households when pollutants turn up in their drinking water.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Han Kang: Innovative South Korean Author Wins The 2024 Nobel Prize For Literature

Han Kang

BY JENNI RAMONE

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF

POST COLONIAL AND GLOBAL

LITERATURES, NOTTINGHAM TRENT

UNIVERSITY

It’s often the case that when poets write novels, they deliver arrestingly vivid and nimble prose. Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2007) is a case in point, and it is no doubt the work that was most influential in the Swedish Academy’s decision to award her the Nobel prize in literature 2024. The committee stated that Kang was awarded the prestigious prize because her “poetic and experimental style” has made her “an innovator in contemporary prose”.

Han Kang is the first South Korean writer to be awarded the Nobel prize in literature, and in its history of 121 winners over 117 years, only the 18th woman to be awarded the prize. She was born in 1970 in Gwangju and has also been awarded the International Booker Prize (in 2016), as well as several other high profile national and international awards, including the Prix Médicis Etranger in 2023 for her novel Impossible Goodbyes.

The Vegetarian is Han Kang’s best-read work. Published in 2007, and translated into English for publication in the UK in 2015 and the US in 2016, its title was apt, as it coincided with a sudden upsurge in people turning to vegetarianism and veganism, particularly in the UK.

While the novel is not a manifesto for vegetarianism, it does contemplate the impact of becoming vegetarian when everyone around you eats meat. It conveys protagonist Yeong-hye’s struggle to maintain bodily agency in response to her husband’s disgust at her decision (he sees it as disobedience), her brother-in-law’s erotic fascination with it and her father’s violent acts, force-feeding her pork.

The Vegetarian offers an extended insight into patriarchal control of the female body, and has been described as an anti-capitalist and ecofeminist revolt.

The novel has a three-part structure and both the narrative perspective and voice shifts in each section. Yeong-hye is never a first-person narrator in the story of her own body and the decisions she makes about it. This noticeable lack of voice seems to have been relevant to the Nobel prize. The committee stated that their decision was motivated by the author’s commitment to conveying “invisible sets of rules” and “the fragility of human life” through her “unique awareness of the connections between body and soul”.

Han Kang’s poetry and short stories are just as innovative and important as her novels, though they are less well known, and their themes more obscure. Her poetry often explores places (walking on the city street), juxtaposed with objects (streetlamps, candles, mirrors) and the fragmented human body (a hand reaching out, fingertips, frozen cheeks, tongues, eyelids).

The English translation of her latest novel, We Do Not Part, will be published in February next year. We Do Not Part is perhaps more obscure and complex that The Vegetarian, at least in subject matter. It is the story of a woman named Kyungha, who travels to her friend Inseon’s rural house to care for a pet bird after Inseon is hospitalised after a wood-chopping accident. Trapped by a snowstorm, she uncovers letters from the 1948-49 Jeju massacre, where around 1,000 people were killed.

Reactions to Kang’s win

There has been wide praise for this year’s winner. The Washington Post celebrates the award as offering potential for other Korean writers. The Guardian, meanwhile, acknowledges Kang’s accolades and expands on the committee’s reasons for awarding the prize: her empathy, unique awareness, experimental style, and “metaphorically charged prose”.

The prize for literature is often controversial. Online communities debate the validity of winners and make accusations about the politics of choices. Some commentators are upset if the author is too obscure, as was the case with Norwegian Jon Fosse, who won in 2023. They are equally upset if the prize is awarded to a figure who is too mainstream, as was the case when Bob Dylan won in 2016.

The local specificity of Kang’s writing, bringing Korean history and places to a global audience, and the precision of her prose, means that her work is innovative and arresting in both form and content. A worthy winner.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Africans Recruited To Work In Russia Say They Were Duped Into Building Drones For Use In Ukraine

FILE – This undated photograph released by the Ukrainian military shows the wreckage of a Russian-fired Shahed drone that it said was downed near Kupiansk, Ukraine. (Ukrainian military’s Strategic Communications Directorate via AP, File)

BY EMMA BURROWS AND LORI HINNANT

The social media ads promised the young African women a free plane ticket, money and a faraway adventure in Europe. Just complete a computer game and a 100-word Russian vocabulary test.

But instead of a work-study program in fields like hospitality and catering, some of them learned only after arriving on the steppes of Russia’s Tatarstan region that they would be toiling in a factory to make weapons of war, assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine.

In interviews with The Associated Press, some of the women complained of long hours under constant surveillance, of broken promises about wages and areas of study, and of working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching.

To fill an urgent labor shortage in wartime Russia, the Kremlin has been recruiting women aged 18-22 from places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, as well as the South Asian country of Sri Lanka. The drive is expanding to elsewhere in Asia as well as Latin America.

That has put some of Moscow’s key weapons production in the inexperienced hands of about 200 African women who are working alongside Russian vocational students as young as 16 in the plant in Tatarstan’s Alabuga Special Economic Zone, about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) east of Moscow, according to an AP investigation of the industrial complex.

“I don’t really know how to make drones,” said one African woman who had abandoned a job at home and took the Russian offer.

The AP analyzed satellite images of the complex and its internal documents, spoke to a half-dozen African women who ended up there, and tracked down hundreds of videos in the online recruiting program dubbed “Alabuga Start” to piece together life at the plant.
A hopeful journey from Africa leads to ‘a trap’

The woman who agreed to work in Russia excitedly documented her journey, taking selfies at the airport and shooting video of her airline meal and of the in-flight map, focusing on the word “Europe” and pointing to it with her long, manicured nails.

When she arrived in Alabuga, however, she soon learned what she would be doing and realized it was “a trap.”

“The company is all about making drones. Nothing else,” said the woman, who assembled airframes. “I regret and I curse the day I started making all those things.”

One possible clue about what was in store for the applicants was their vocabulary test that included words like “factory” and the verbs “to hook” and “to unhook.”

The workers were under constant surveillance in their dorms and at work, the hours were long and the pay was less than she expected — details corroborated by three other women interviewed by AP, which is not identifying them by name or nationality out of concern for their safety.

Factory management apparently tries to discourage the African women from leaving, and although some reportedly have left or found work elsewhere in Russia, AP was unable to verify that independently.

A drone factory grows in Tatarstan

Russia and Iran signed a $1.7 billion deal in 2022, after President Vladimir Putin invaded neighboring Ukraine, and Moscow began using Iranian imports of the unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, in battle later that year.

The Alabuga Special Economic Zone was set up in 2006 to attract businesses and investment to Tatarstan. It expanded rapidly after the invasion and parts switched to military production, adding or renovating new buildings, according to satellite images.

Although some private companies still operate there, the plant is referred to as “Alabuga” in leaked documents that detail contracts between Russia and Iran.

The Shahed-136 drones were first shipped disassembled to Russia, but production has shifted to Alabuga and possibly another factory. Alabuga now is Russia’s main plant for making the one-way, exploding drones, with plans to produce 6,000 of them a year by 2025, according to the leaked documents and the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security.

That target is now ahead of schedule, with Alabuga building 4,500, said David Albright, a former U.N. weapons inspector who works at the institute.

Finding workers was a problem. With unemployment at record lows and many Russians already working in military industries, fighting in Ukraine or having fled abroad, plant officials turned to using vocational students and cheap foreign labor.

Alabuga is the only Russian production facility that recruits women from Africa, Asia and South America to make weapons according to experts and the AP investigation.

About 90% of the foreign women recruited via the Alabuga Start program work on making drones, particularly the parts “that don’t require much skill,” he said.

Documents leaked last year and verified by Albright and another drone expert detail the workforce growing from just under 900 people in 2023 to plans for over 2,600 in 2025. They show that foreign women largely assemble the drones, use chemicals and paint them.

In the first half of this year, 182 women were recruited, largely from Central and East African countries, according to a Facebook page promoting the Alabuga Start program. It also recruits in South America and Asia “to help ladies to start their career.”

Officials held recruiting events in Uganda, and tried to recruit from its orphanages, according to messages on Alabuga’s Telegram channel. Russian officials have also visited more than 26 embassies in Moscow to push the program.

The campaign gave no reasons why it doesn’t seek older women or men, but some analysts suggest officials could believe young women are easier to control. One of the leaked documents shows the assembly lines are segregated and uses a derogatory term referring to the African workers.

The factory also draws workers from Alabuga Polytechnic, a nearby vocational boarding school for Russians age 16-18 and Central Asians age 18-22 that bills its graduates as experts in drone production. According to investigative outlets Protokol and Razvorot, some are as young as 15 and have complained of poor working conditions.

Surveillance, caustic chemicals — and a Ukrainian attack

The foreign workers travel by bus from their living quarters to the factory, passing multiple security checkpoints after a license plate scan, while other vehicles are stopped for more stringent checks, according to the woman who assembles drones.

They share dormitories and kitchens that are “guarded around the clock,” social media posts say. Entry is controlled via facial recognition, and recruits are watched on surveillance cameras. Pets, alcohol and drugs are not allowed.

The foreigners receive local SIM cards for their phones upon arrival but are forbidden from bringing them into the factory, which is considered a sensitive military site.

One woman said she could only talk to an AP reporter with her manager’s permission, another said her “messages are monitored,” a third said workers are told not to talk to outsiders about their work, and a fourth said managers encouraged them to inform on co-workers.

The airframe worker told AP the recruits are taught how to assemble the drones and coat them with a caustic substance with the consistency of yogurt.

Many workers lack protective gear, she said, adding that the chemicals made her face feel like it was being pricked with tiny needles, and “small holes” appeared on her cheeks, making them itch severely.

“My God, I could scratch myself! I could never get tired of scratching myself,” she said.

“A lot of girls are suffering,” she added. A video shared with AP showed another woman wearing an Alabuga uniform with her face similarly affected.

Although AP could not determine what the chemicals were, drone expert Fabian Hinz of the International Institute for Strategic Studies confirmed that caustic substances are used in their manufacture.

In addition to dangers from chemicals, the complex itself was hit by a Ukrainian drone in April, injuring at least 12 people. A video it posted on social media showed a Kenyan woman calling the attackers “barbarians” who “wanted to intimidate us.”

“They did not succeed,” she said.

Workers ‘maltreated like donkeys’

Although one woman said she loved working at Alabuga because she was well-paid and enjoyed meeting new people and experiencing a different culture, most interviewed by AP disagreed about the size of the compensation and suggested that life there did not meet their expectations.

The program initially promised recruits $700 a month, but later social media posts put it at “over $500.”

The airframe assembly worker said the cost of their accommodation, airfare, medical care and Russian-language classes were deducted from her salary, and she struggled to pay for basics like bus fare with the remainder.

The African women are “maltreated like donkeys, being slaved,” she said, indicating banking sanctions on Russia made it difficult to send money home. But another factory worker said she was able to send up to $150 a month to her family.

Four of the women described long shifts of up to 12 hours, with haphazard days off. Still, two of these who said they worked in the kitchen added they were willing to tolerate the pay if they could support their families.

The wages apparently are affecting morale, according to plant documents, with managers urging that the foreign workers be replaced with Russian-speaking staff because “candidates are refusing the low salary.”

Russian and Central Asian students at Alabuga Polytechnic are allowed visits home, social media posts suggest. Independent Russian media reported that these vocational students who want to quit the program have been told they must repay tuition costs.

AP contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry and the offices of Tatarstan Gov. Rustam Minnikhanov and Alabuga Special Economic Zone Director General Timur Shagivaleev for a response to the women’s complaints but received no reply.

Human rights organizations contacted by AP said they were unaware of what was happening at the factory, although it sounded consistent with other actions by Russia. Human Rights Watch said Russia is actively recruiting foreigners from Africa and India to support its war in Ukraine by promising lucrative jobs without fully explaining the nature of the work.

Russia’s actions “could potentially fulfill the criteria of trafficking if the recruitment is fraudulent and the purpose is exploitation,” said Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, noting that Moscow is a party to the U.N. Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime.

The AP contacted governments of 22 countries whose citizens Alabuga said it had recruited for the program. Most didn’t answer or said they would look into it.

Betty Amongi, Uganda’s Minister for Gender, Labour and Social Development, told AP that her ministry raised concerns with its embassy in Moscow about the Alabuga recruiting effort, particularly over the age of the women, because “female migrant workers are the most vulnerable category.”

The ministry said it wanted to ensure the women “do not end up in exploitative employment,” and needed to know who would be responsible for the welfare of the Ugandan women while in Russia. Alabuga’s Facebook page said 46 Ugandan women were at the complex, although Amongi had said there were none.

How accurate are the drones?

Bolstered by the foreign recruits, Russia has vastly increased the number of drones it can fire at Ukraine.

Nearly 4,000 were launched at Ukraine from the start of the war in February 2022 through 2023, Albright’s organization said. In the first seven months of this year, Russia launched nearly twice that.

Although the Alabuga plant’s production target is ahead of schedule, there are questions about the quality of the drones and whether manufacturing problems due to the unskilled labor force are causing malfunctions. Some experts also point to Russia’s switching to other materials from the original Iranian design as a sign of problems.

An AP analysis of about 2,000 Shahed attacks documented by Ukraine’s military since July 29 shows that about 95% of the drones hit no discernible target. Instead, they fall into Ukraine’s rivers and fields, stray into NATO-member Latvia and come down in Russia or ally Belarus.

Before July, about 14% of Shaheds hit their targets in Ukraine, according to data analyzed by Albright’s team.

The large failure rate could be due to Ukraine’s improved air defenses, although Albright said it also could be because of the low-skilled workforce in which “poor craftsmanship is seeping in,” he said.

Another factor could be because Russia is using a Shahed variant that doesn’t carry a warhead of 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of explosives. Moscow could be launching these dummy drones to overwhelm air defenses and force Ukraine to waste ammunition, allowing other UAVs to hit targets.

Tourism, paintball games and a pitch on TikTok

The Alabuga Start recruiting drive relies on a robust social media campaign of slickly edited videos with upbeat music that show African women visiting Tatarstan’s cultural sites or playing sports.

The videos show them working — smiling while cleaning floors, wearing hard hats while directing cranes, and donning protective equipment to apply paint or chemicals.

One video depicts the Polytechnic school students in team-building exercises such as paintball matches, even showing the losing side — labeled as “fascists” — digging trenches or being shot with the recreational weapons at close range.

“We are taught patriotism. This unites us. We are ready to repel any provocation,” one student says.

The videos on Alabuga’s social media pages don’t mention the plant’s role at the heart of Russian drone production, but the Special Economic Zone is more open with Russian media.

Konstantin Spiridonov, deputy director of a company that made drones for civilian use before the war, gave a video tour of an Alabuga assembly line in March to a Russian blogger. Pointing out young African women, he did not explicitly link the drones to the war but noted their production is now “very relevant” for Russia.

Alabuga Start’s social media pages are filled with comments from Africans begging for work and saying they applied but have yet to receive an answer.

The program was promoted by education ministries in Uganda and Ethiopia, as well as in African media that portrays it as a way to make money and learn new skills.

Initially advertised as a work-study program, Alabuga Start in recent months is more direct about what it offers foreigners, insisting on newer posts that “is NOT an educational programme,” although one of them still shows young women in plaid school uniforms.

When Sierra Leone Ambassador Mohamed Yongawo visited in May and met with five participants from his country, he appeared to believe it was a study program.

“It would be great if we had 30 students from Sierra Leone studying at Alabuga,” he said afterward.

Last month, the Alabuga Start social media site said it was “excited to announce that our audience has grown significantly!”

That could be due to its hiring of influencers, including Bassie, a South African with almost 800,000 TikTok and Instagram followers. She did not respond to an AP request for comment.

The program, she said, was an easy way to make money, encouraging followers to share her post with job-seeking friends so they could contact Alabuga.

“Where they lack in labor,” she said, “that’s where you come in.”

Associated Press writers Michael Biesecker in Washington and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.