Washington, D.C

Following transformative experience, Palmer woman advocates for donor rights in Washington, D.C.

Published

2 years ago

February 24, 2024

Following transformative experience, Palmer woman advocates for donor rights in Washington, D.C.

PALMER, Alaska (KTUU) – A Palmer woman is heading to the nation’s capitol next week to lobby legislators for donor registration funding and advocate for a bill aimed at protecting bone marrow and blood cell donors’ rights to job security.

Sandra Hinton, an administrator for Knik Charter School in Wasilla, registered as a bone marrow donor sometime in the late 2000s through the National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP). She can’t recall exactly what prompted her to register, only that it felt like something she needed to do.

“I got online and looked at it and I thought, ‘Well that’s easy, who wouldn’t want to do this for somebody?’ and so I signed up,” Hinton recalled.

She thought a lot about donating after she first registered, but when her phone didn’t ring for nearly a decade the idea left her mind.

“I actually forgot about it,” Hinton admitted. “And when I actually got the call, text, my phone blew up and I called back and I thought it was a joke.”

But it wasn’t a joke, Hinton was a 100% match with a young Florida man named Jonathan who had been diagnosed with leukemia. She traveled to Kansas City and underwent surgery. She never met Jonathan during this process — to her, he was a perfect stranger.

According to Hinton, donors can reach out to recipients after a one-year waiting period following the donation. After this time, donors can send recipients their contact information but it’s ultimately up to the recipients if they want to respond.

Jonathan responded.

“He came up [to Alaska] with his brother and his mom and dad, and we met in Denali,” Hinton said. “It was beautiful. It was the most amazing day of my life.”

Hinton said the meeting was an emotional one, as she and her husband embraced Jonathan and cried. She felt the same love for Jonathan that she would her own son.

Sandra Hinton and her husband embrace the recipient of her bone marrow donation after meeting for the first time in Denali.(Sandra Hinton (NMDP))

Because of her donation, Jonathan lived for another 18 months. Hinton said her beloved match died after contracting an infection in his port. It was a year and a half that Hinton said Jonathan didn’t take for granted — traveling to Spain to watch his favorite soccer team, ringing in a new year under the Eiffel Tower and visiting Alaska to meet the woman who saved his life.

“He got a lot of life in that 18 months,” Hinton said. “I wish it could be forever. I wish it could.”

Jonathan’s death didn’t take anything away from Hinton’s experience as a donor. She said she would do it again in a heartbeat if asked.

Since the donation Hinton has become an advocacy volunteer for NMDP, running drives locally to drum up donor registration numbers and educate the public on bone marrow and blood stem cell research. She will remain active on the registry list until she reaches the age limit of 61 years old.

While in Washington, D.C., Hinton and her team will meet with lawmakers to ask for their support in passing H.R. 3024, a bill titled the “Life Saving Leave Act” that would amend the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) to permit additional leave time for donors.

“This would ensure that somebody donating would have at least 40 hours that they would be able to take leave and not lose their job,” Hinton said.

According to research conducted by NMDP, approximately half of donors turn down the opportunity to donate due to the fear they will lose their jobs if they take off work.

Hinton and her team will also ask Congress for a $2 million funding increase for the C.W. Bill Young Transplantation Program to focus on donor recruitment efforts.

“There’s just so much to it and so many people need it,” Hinton said. “I can’t stop, you know, advocating for that, for helping people.”

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Washington, D.C

Storm Team4 Forecast: A chilly, gusty Sunday before a cool start to the week

Published

6 hours ago

April 19, 2026

Press Room

Storm Team4 Forecast: A chilly, gusty Sunday before a cool start to the week

4 things to know about the weather:

Chances of rain in the morning
Gusty Sunday
Chilly Monday
Temps will rise again through the work week

Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to check the weather radar on the go.

After a nice and warm Saturday, changes arrive for part two of the weekend.

The first half of your Sunday will have a chance for showers. Winds will pick up with our next system and are expected to gust to about 20-30 mph. Cooler air will settle in, and lows Sunday night fall into the 40s.

Highs temps Monday will reach only into the mid to upper 50s.

However, temperatures will rise through the week, so you won’t need your jackets every day.

QuickCast

SUNDAY:
Showers, then partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 30 mph
HIGH: Lower 60s

MONDAY:
Partly cloudy
Wind: NW 10-15 mph
Gusts @ 25 mph
HIGH: Upper 50s

Stay with Storm Team4 for the latest forecast. Download the NBC Washington app on iOS and Android to get severe weather alerts on your phone.

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Washington, D.C

‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington

Published

1 day ago

April 18, 2026

Press Room

‘It’s a twilight zone’: Iran war casts deep shadows over IMF gathering in Washington

The most severe energy shock since the 1970s, the risk of a global recession and households everywhere stomaching a renewed surge in the cost of living – hitting the most vulnerable hardest.

In a sweltering hot Washington DC this week, the message at the International Monetary Fund meetings was chilling: things had been looking up for living standards around the world. But then came the Iran war.

“Some countries are in panic,” said the fund’s managing director, Kristalina Georgieva, addressing the finance ministers and central bank bosses in town for the IMF and World Bank spring meetings. “The sooner it [the Iran war] ends, the better for everybody.”

Such gatherings are not typically used to fight geopolitical battles. “You don’t get people shouting at one another at these things,” one senior figure remarked. But, as a record-breaking April heatwave swept the US capital, no one could ignore the mounting damage from the Iran war.

Those familiar with the mood over breakfast at a meeting of the G20’s representatives on Thursday, which included Donald Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and the outgoing US Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell – said the atmosphere in the room was sombre amid an open exchange of serious views.

“It is such a twilight-zone meeting,” said Mohamed El-Erian, a former IMF deputy managing director who is now chief economic adviser at the Allianz insurance group. “There are several shadows hanging over it: one is the shadow that comes from concern about the global economy as a whole.

“The second is that some countries are going to be particularly hard hit, and it’s mostly countries that very few people are talking about. But the third concern is the adding of insult to injury: the fact that the US, which started a war of choice, is going to be hit, but by a lot less than elsewhere in relative terms.”

Before Thursday’s breakfast, Rachel Reeves had started her day with an early-morning jog. Joined by her counterparts from Spain, Australia and New Zealand for a run down the iconic National Mall, she posted an Instagram selfie with a not-so-subtle dig: “Friends that run together – work together.”

A day earlier, the chancellor had told a CNBC conference that she thought “friends are allowed to disagree on things” as she criticised Trump’s Iran war as a “mistake” and a “folly” that had not made the world safer.

Rachel Reeves posted this image on Instagram from Washington DC on Thursday with the message: ‘Friends that run together – work together.’ Photograph: Rachel Reeves/Instagram

Speaking at a venue just steps away from the White House, before a one-on-one meeting with Bessent, she said this “fair message” was needed because UK families and businesses were feeling the pain from higher energy prices triggered by the conflict.

Those close to Reeves insist her meeting remained cordial. Britain and the US have significant shared interests in AI, financial services and trade. The chancellor also said the UK government had little time for the Iranian regime.

But with the IMF having warned on Tuesday that the Iran war could risk a global recession – in which Britain would be the biggest G7 casualty – it was clear Reeves had travelled to Washington ready to pick a fight.

“I’m struck by how vocal she has been and the words she used,” said one global financier. “We know the disagreement between Bessent and [European Central Bank president] Christine Lagarde earlier in the year. But that was in private.”

At a cocktail party held at the British ambassador’s residence for hundreds of diplomats and financiers – including the Bank of England’s governor, Andrew Bailey, the chief executive of Barclays, CS Venkatakrishnan, and dozens of senior figures – this transatlantic tension, weeks before King Charles’s US state visit, was a major topic of conversation.

The other, in the balmy residence gardens, was one of its former occupants, Peter Mandelson, as revelations about the former ambassador’s appointment threatened to further rock the UK government.

Before the war, the agenda for the IMF had been about global cooperation; the adoption of AI, jobs and work to eradicate poverty. Each of those tasks had now been complicated, but not least the task of countries working together.

For many at the meetings, the focus was on forging closer global cooperation without the world’s pre-eminent superpower.

“Everybody is talking about how you hedge against American decisions,” said David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary, who now runs the International Rescue Committee. “You can’t do without them, because they’re 25% of the global economy. But, in a lot of fora, they’ve pulled out.

“So everyone has to think, how does one structure international cooperation? The old west is not coming back. And so everyone has to figure out how to position themselves for that world.”

For those gathering in Washington, there was irony in the fact that they were meeting in the halls of institutions founded, under US leadership, to promote global cooperation after the second world war. The whole idea of the Bretton Woods institutions was to avoid the dire economic conditions and warfare of the 1930s and 1940s. Yet this year’s meeting was taking place amid these intertwining problems.

In their conversations about the best economic policy response to the shock of conflict, the economists also knew the real power to make a difference lay two blocks across town from the IMF and the World Bank – behind the security cordons and construction equipment blocking the White House from public view. “It is not clear they can do anything about it,” said El-Erian.

Still, with a booming economy driven by AI – including Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model, the topic of much conversation – most countries cannot afford to completely break off US ties.

“People want to find ways to insulate themselves from the mess. But, on the other hand, they admire the US private sector,” El-Erian said. “The best way I’ve heard it put, is: they want to go long the private sector and short the mess. But it’s almost impossible to do.”

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