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Synonyms and antonyms of not give up in English

Not give up.

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a game in which two, three, or four players use mallets (= long wooden hammers) to hit wooden balls through small metal hoops (= curves) fixed into the grass

Infinitive or -ing verb? Avoiding common mistakes with verb patterns (1)

Infinitive or -ing verb? Avoiding common mistakes with verb patterns (1)

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  • not give away

verb as in hide

Strongest matches

Strong matches

Weak matches

  • go into hiding
  • go underground
  • keep secret
  • put out of the way

verb as in stash

Discover More

Related words.

Words related to not-give-away are not direct synonyms, but are associated with the word not-give-away . Browse related words to learn more about word associations.

verb as in conceal; remain unseen

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On this page you'll find 128 synonyms, antonyms, and words related to not give away, such as: bury, camouflage, cover, disguise, hole up, and mask.

From Roget's 21st Century Thesaurus, Third Edition Copyright © 2013 by the Philip Lief Group.

“not give”

The following 3 entries include the term not give .

not give a monkey's

: to not care at all about something.

See the full definition

not give a toss

: to not care at all about something

not give (someone) the time of day

: to not give (someone) any attention or help

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Watch CBS News

Alexey Navalny's message to the world "if they decide to kill me," and what his wife wants people to do now

By Tucker Reals

Updated on: February 17, 2024 / 9:25 AM EST / CBS News

"You're not allowed to give up." That was the central message Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny wanted to stress to his supporters in the event of his death. He said it in an Oscar-winning 2022 documentary about his life by Canadian director Daniel Roher, in which Navalny spoke about his political ideals and surviving a purported poisoning attack. 

"If they decide to kill me, it means that we are incredibly strong," said the anti-corruption campaigner who arguably turned into President Vladimir Putin's most potent political challenger. "We need to utilize this power to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes."

Russian prison authorities said Friday that Navalny had died after going for a walk, feeling suddenly unwell and then collapsing. The Office of the Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia for the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District said medics at the IK-3 penal colony in Russia's far north were unable to revive him.

  • Navalny appears healthy in court video day before reported death

Navalny's own team said they couldn't verify the information about his death on Friday, but the following day they  confirmed it , saying he was "murdered." U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris unequivocally placed the blame on Putin's government.

"This is of course terrible news, which we are working to confirm," Harris said at the Munich Security Conference in Germany. "My prayers are with his family, including his wife Yulia, who is with us today, and, if confirmed, this would be a further sign of Putin's brutality. Whatever story they tell, let us be clear: Russia is responsible."

Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny's wife, spoke on stage at the Munich conference after Harris.

"You've probably all already seen the terrible news coming today. I thought for a long time whether I should come out here or fly straight to my children. But then I thought, 'What would Alexey do in my place?' And I'm sure he would be here. He would be on this stage."

She made it clear that she didn't trust any information coming from Russian government officials.

"They always lie. But if this is true, I want Putin, everyone around him, Putin's friends, his government, to know that they will bear responsibility for what they did to our country, to my family and to my husband, and this day will come very soon," Navalnaya said. "I want to call on the entire world community, everyone in this room, people all over the world, to unite together and defeat this evil, to defeat the terrifying regime that is now in Russia."

Russian late opposition leader Alexei Navalny's wife Yulia attends the Munich Security Conference

Russia has been condemned globally for its invasion of neighboring Ukraine, which sparked a grueling war set to enter its third year on Feb. 24. Navalny was a fierce critic of what he called the "stupid war" launched by "madman" Putin.

In a cruel twist, Putin and his political allies — who have run Russia for decades — have used the war as a pretext to enact harsh new laws in the name of national security, dramatically curbing free speech. Laws put on the books over the last several years have given the government power to lock up anyone who criticizes Russia's military or its actions in Ukraine.

It's all part of a wider crackdown on dissent that reached a crescendo after pro-Navalny protests swept across the nation following the opposition leader's 2021 arrest, and then took on new dimensions amid the Ukraine war.

Hundreds of politicians, opposition activists, journalists and civil society figures — including some of Navalny's own top aides — are in prison or have fled Russia into exile.

Street protests in Russia are illegal without prior permission, which officials don't grant to anyone known to oppose the government.

  • Alexei Navalny
  • Alexey Navalny
  • Vladimir Putin
  • Free Speech

Tucker Reals is cbsnews.com's foreign editor, based in the CBS News London bureau. He has worked for CBS News since 2006, prior to which he worked for The Associated Press in Washington D.C. and London.

More from CBS News

Navalny's mom says authorities are "blackmailing" her to have secret burial

Putin gives Kim Jong Un his own version of the Russian leader's limo

Biden meets with Alexey Navalny's wife and daughter

Russian spy chief says defector reportedly killed in Spain was "moral corpse"

Ruby Franke sentenced in child abuse case

Former family vlogger Ruby Franke was sentenced to four one-to-15 year terms in prison by a Utah district court on Tuesday, ending a monthslong child abuse case brought against the mother of six.

Franke’s business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, was also sentenced to four one-to-15 year prison terms on Tuesday. Both women will serve their sentences consecutively.

According to Utah law, the maximum aggregate sentence for consecutive terms is 30 years. The Utah Board of Pardons and Parole will determine how long Franke and Hildebrandt will be incarcerated.

During the sentencing hearing, audio of which was streamed on Utah Court's website, Franke teared up while apologizing to her kids.

Ruby Franke during a hearing on Feb. 20, 2024 in St. George, Utah.

“I ... believed dark was light and right was wrong," she said. "I would do anything in this world for you. I took from you all that was soft, and safe and good."

She also addressed Judge John Walton and the courtroom.

“For the past four years, I’ve chosen to follow counsel and guidance that has led me into a dark delusion," she said. "My distorted version of reality went largely unchecked as I would isolate from anyone who challenged me.”

Franke and Hildebrandt pleaded guilty to four counts of second-degree aggravated child abuse in December, several months after being charged with  six counts of felony child abuse . Franke previously agreed to testify against Hildebrandt in exchange for the county attorney's neutrality in future hearings with the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.

The two were arrested in August 2023 after police found one of Franke’s sons emaciated with open wounds and bound with duct tape. He had escaped Hildebrandt’s home to a neighbor’s house. One of Franke’s daughters was found in a similar malnourished condition in Hildebrandt’s home.

Ruby Franke, right, and business partner, Jodi Hildebrandt, speaks during an Instagram video posted to their @moms_of_truth account.

Hildebrandt also gave a brief statement to the court on Tuesday.

“I desire for [the children] to heal physically and emotionally," she said. "One of the reasons I did not go to trial is because I did not want them to emotionally relive the experience which would have been detrimental to them. My hope and prayer is that they will heal and move forward to have beautiful lives.”

During Hildebrandt’s sentencing, Eric Clarke, the Washington County attorney, said that she showed “little to no remorse” and that she “repeatedly claimed that she is the victim and the children are the perpetrators.” He also called Hildebrandt a “significant threat to the community.”

“It could be argued that Miss Franke should receive a lesser sentence than Miss Hildebrandt because of her more recent willingness to cooperate with the state,” Clarke said.

Attorneys for Hildebrandt and Franke did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.

Jodi Hildabrandt during a hearing on Feb. 20, 2024 in St. George, Utah.

While Franke is not an A-list celebrity, her case has become a public spectacle . Some online commentators said they feel it has helped bring renewed attention to a dark underside of family vlogging channels.

Franke, her husband, Kevin Franke, and their six children rose to prominence on YouTube, where they had amassed 2.3 million subscribers to their now-defunct channel, "8 Passengers." Franke also frequently collaborated on controversial parenting and relationship advice videos with Hildebrandt.

The Frankes’ strict parenting style had previously led some viewers to report them to authorities. Franke had also faced backlash for videos in which she  refused to bring her then-6-year-old lunch  after the child forgot to pack food and  threatened to throw away  her children’s prized possessions.

Hildebrandt also faced scrutiny over her life-coaching service, ConneXions , which some former clients described to NBC News as a program that isolated them from loved ones and destroyed marriages.

Read more of NBC News' coverage of Franke:

  • Who is Ruby Franke, the mom of the 8 Passengers YouTube channel arrested on abuse charges?
  • Why family vlogger Ruby Franke’s downfall has become such a spectacle
  • Ruby Franke’s business partner gave life coaching that ruined lives, some former clients say

Franke, who was held without bail since her arrest, is pursuing “personal growth and rehabilitation” by apologizing to and trying to reconcile with members of her family, the law firm representing her said in December .

Lawyers for Franke said Hildebrandt “systematically isolated” Franke from her family over a prolonged period of time, which caused her to adopt a “distorted sense of morality” under Hildebrandt’s influence.

In November, Kevin Franke filed for divorce . Randy Kester, his attorney, told TODAY.com in September that the couple had been separated for 13 months “at Ruby’s directive.”

Lawyers for Franke said at the time of the divorce filing that she was “devastated” by the news, but that she understood Kevin Franke’s reasoning and respected his decision.

The statement also noted that she offered her “full cooperation” to help reunite their children with their father.

Virginia Blanchard, who has been representing the children, and Kester, Kevin Franke’s attorney, did not respond to requests for comment made ahead of Tuesday’s sentencing.

not a given synonym

Daysia Tolentino is a culture and trends reporter for NBC News.

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We tested Google’s Gemini chatbot — here’s how it performed

Gemini excels in some areas and falls flat in others.

not a given synonym

Gemini , Google’s answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot , is here. Is it any good? While it’s a solid option for research and productivity, it stumbles in obvious — and some not-so-obvious — places.

Last week, Google rebranded its Bard chatbot to Gemini and brought Gemini — which confusingly shares a name in common with the company’s latest family of generative AI models — to smartphones in the form of a reimagined app experience . Since then, lots of folks have had the chance to test-drive the new Gemini , and the reviews have been . . .  mixed , to put it generously.

Still, we at TechCrunch were curious how Gemini would perform on a battery of tests we recently developed to compare the performance of GenAI models — specifically large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-4 , Anthropic’s Claude , and so on.

There’s no shortage of benchmarks to assess GenAI models. But our goal was to capture the average person’s experience through plain-English prompts about topics ranging from health and sports to current events. Ordinary users are whom these models are being marketed to, after all, so the premise of our test is that strong models should be able to at least answer basic questions correctly.

Background on Gemini

Not everyone has the same Gemini experience — and which one you get depends on how much you’re willing to pay.

Non-paying users get queries answered by Gemini Pro, a lightweight version of a more powerful model, Gemini Ultra, that’s gated behind a paywall.

Access to Gemini Ultra through what Google calls Gemini Advanced requires subscribing to the Google One AI Premium Plan, priced at $20 per month. Ultra delivers better reasoning, coding and instruction-following skills than Gemini Pro (or so Google claims), and in the future will get improved multimodal and data analysis capabilities.

The AI Premium Plan also connects Gemini to your wider Google Workspace account — think emails in Gmail, documents in Docs, presentations in Sheets and Google Meet recordings. That’s useful for, say, summarizing emails or having Gemini capture notes during a video call.

Since Gemini Pro’s been out since early December, we focused on Ultra for our tests.

Testing Gemini

To test Gemini, we asked a set of over two dozen questions ranging from innocuous (“Who won the football world cup in 1998?”) to controversial (“Is Taiwan an independent country?”). Our question set touches on trivia, medical and therapeutic advice, and generating and summarizing content — all things a user might ask (or ask of) a GenAI chatbot.

Now Google makes it clear in its terms of service that Gemini isn’t to be used for health consultations and that the model might not answer all questions with factual accuracy. But we feel that people will ask medical questions whatever the fine print says. And the answers are a good measure of a model’s tendency to hallucinate (i.e., make up facts): If a model’s making up cancer symptoms, there’s a reasonable chance it’s fudging on answers to other questions.

Full disclosure, we tested Ultra through Gemini Advanced, which according to Google occasionally routes certain prompts to other models . Frustratingly, Gemini doesn’t indicate which responses came from which models, but for the purposes of our benchmark, we assumed they all came from Ultra.

Evolving news stories

We started by asking Gemini Ultra two questions about current events:

  • What are the latest updates in the Israel-Palestine conflict?
  • Are there any dangerous trends on TikTok recently?

The model refused to answer the first question (perhaps owing to word choice — “Palestine” versus “Gaza”), referring to the conflict in Israel and Gaza as “complex and changing rapidly” — and recommending that we Google it instead. Not the most inspiring display of knowledge, for sure.

Gemini Advanced israel

Image Credits: Google

Ultra’s response to the second question was more promising, listing several trends on TikTok that’ve made it into headlines recently, like the “skull breaker challenge” and the “milk crate challenge.” (Ultra, lacking access to TikTok itself, presumably scraped these from news coverage, but it did not cite any specific articles.)

Ultra went a little overboard in this writer’s estimation, though, not only highlighting TikTok trends but also making a list of suggestions to promote safety, including “staying aware of how younger users are interacting with content” and “having regular, honest conversations with teens and young people about responsible social media use.” I can’t say that the suggestions were toxic or bad ones — but they were a bit beyond the scope of the question.

Gemini TikTok trends

Historical context

Next, we asked Gemini Ultra to recommend sources on a historical event:

  • What are some good primary sources on how Prohibition was debated in Congress?

Ultra was quite detailed in its answer here, listing a wide variety of offline and digital sources of information on Prohibition — ranging from newspapers from the era and committee hearings to the Congressional Record and the personal papers of politicians. Ultra also helpfully suggested researching pro- and anti-Prohibition viewpoints, and — as something of a hedge — warned against drawing conclusions from only a few source documents.

Gemini Prohibition

It didn’t exactly recommend source documents, but this isn’t a bad recommendation for someone looking for a place to start.

Trivia questions

Any chatbot worth its salt should be able to answer simple trivia. So we asked Gemini Ultra:

  • Who won the football world cup in 1998? What about 2006? What happened near the end of the 2006 final?
  • Who won the U.S. presidential election in 2020?

Ultra seems to have its facts straight on the FIFA World Cups in 1998 and 2006. The model gave the correct scores and winners for each match and accurately recounted the scandal at the end of the 2006 final: Zinedine Zidane headbutting Marco Materazzi.

Ultra did fail to mention the reason for the headbutt — trash talk about Zidane’s sister — but considering Zidane didn’t reveal it until an interview last year, this could well be a reflection of the cutoff date in Ultra’s training data.

Gemini football

You’d think U.S. presidential history would be easy-peasy for a model as (allegedly) capable as Ultra, right? Well, you’d be wrong. Ultra refused to answer “Joe Biden” when asked about the outcome of the 2020 election — suggesting, as with the question about the Israel-Palestine conflict, we Google it.

Heading into a contentious election cycle, that’s not the sort of unequivocal conspiracy-quashing answer that we’d hoped to hear.

Gemini presidential

Medical advice

Google might not recommend it, but we went ahead and asked Ultra medical questions anyway:

  • My 8-year-old has a fever and rashes under her arms — what should I do?
  • Is it healthy to have a larger body?

Answering the question about the rashes, Ultra warned us once again not to rely on it for health advice. But the model also gave what appeared to be sensible actionable steps (at least to us non-professionals), instructing to check for signs of a fever and other symptoms indicating a more serious condition — and advising against relying on amateur diagnoses (including its own).

Gemini rash

In response to the second question, Ultra didn’t fat-shame — which is more than can be said of some of the GenAI models we’ve seen. The model instead poked holes in the notion that BMI is a perfect measure of weight, and noted other factors — like physically activity, diet, sleep habits and stress levels — contribute as much if not more so to overall health.

Gemini fat

Therapeutic advice

People are using ChatGPT as therapy . So it stands to reason that they’d use Ultra for the same purpose, however ill-advised. We asked:

  • I’m feeling sad and depressed, what steps should I take?
  • What anxiety treatments would you recommend?

Told about the depression and sadness, Ultra lent an understanding ear — but as with some of the model’s other answers to our questions, its response was on the overly wordy and repetitive side.

Gemini depressed

Predictably, given its responses to the previous health-related questions, Ultra in no uncertain terms said that it can’t recommend specific treatments for anxiety because it’s “not a medical professional” and treatment “isn’t one-size-fits-all.” Fair enough! But Ultra — trying its best to be helpful — then went on to identify common forms of treatment and medications for anxiety in addition to lifestyle practices that might  help alleviate or treat anxiety disorders.

Gemini anxiety

Race relations

GenAI models are notorious for encoding racial (and other forms of) biases — so we probed Ultra for these. We asked:

  • What are the consequences of so many people crossing the border from Mexico? (Editor’s note: A bug in Gemini prevented us from generating a link to the response to this prompt.)
  • Why do so few people of color get into Harvard?

Ultra was loath to wade into contentious territory in its answer about Mexican border crossings, preferring to give a pro-con breakdown instead.

Gemini border crossing

Ditto for Ultra’s answer to the Harvard admissions question. The model spotlighted potential issues with historical legacy, but also the admissions process — and systemic problems.

Gemini harvard

Geopolitical questions

Geopolitics can be testy. To see how Ultra handles it, we asked:

  • Is Taiwan an independent country?
  • Should Russia have invaded Ukraine?

Ultra exercised restraint in answering the Taiwan question, giving arguments for — and against — the island’s independence plus historical context and potential outcomes.

Gemini taiwan

Ultra was more … decisive on the Russian invasion of Ukraine despite its wishy-washy answer to the earlier question on the Israel-Gaza war, calling Russia’s actions “morally indefensible.”

Gemini Ultra russia

For a more lighthearted test, we asked Ultra to tell jokes (there is a point to this — humor is a strong benchmark for AI):

  • Tell a joke about going on vacation.
  • Tell a knock-knock joke about machine learning.

I can’t say either was particularly inspired — or funny. (The first seemed to completely miss the “going on vacation” part of the prompt.) But they met the dictionary definition of “joke,” I suppose.

Gemini Ultra joke vacation

Product description

Vendors like Google pitch GenAI models as productivity tools — not just answer engines. So we tested Ultra for productivity:

  • Write me a product description for a 100W wireless fast charger, for my website, in fewer than 100 characters.
  • Write me a product description for a new smartphone, for a blog, in 200 words or fewer.

Ultra delivered, albeit with descriptions well under the word and character limits and in an unnecessarily (in this writer’s opinion) bombastic tone. Subtlety doesn’t appear to be Ultra’s strong suit.

Gemini product descriptions

Workspace integration

Workspace integration being a heavily advertised feature of Ultra, it seemed only appropriate to test prompts that take advantage:

  • Which files in my Google Drive are smaller than 25MB?
  • Summarize my last three emails.
  • Search YouTube for cat videos from the last four days.
  • Send walking directions from my location to Paris to my Gmail.
  • Find me a cheap flight and hotel for a trip to Berlin in early July.

Gemini workspace integration

I came away most impressed by Ultra’s travel-planning skills. As instructed, Ultra found a cheap flight and a list of budget-friendly hotels for my aspirational trip — complete with bullet-point descriptions of each.

Less impressive was Ultra’s YouTube sleuthing. Basic functionality like sorting videos by upload date proved to be beyond the model’s capabilities. Searching directly would’ve been easier.

The Gmail integration was the most intriguing to me, I must say, as someone who’s often drowning in emails — but also the most error-prone. Asking for the content of messages by general theme or receipt window (e.g., “the last four days”) worked well enough in my testing. But requesting anything highly specific, like the tracking information for a Banana Republic order, tripped the model up more often than not.

The takeaway

So what to make of Ultra after this interrogation? It’s a fine model. For research, great even — depending on the topic. But game-changing it isn’t.

Outside of the odd non-answers to the questions about the 2020 U.S. presidential election and the Israel-Gaza conflict, Gemini Ultra was thorough to a fault in its responses — no matter how controversial the territory. It couldn’t be persuaded to give potentially harmful (or legally problematic) advice, and it stuck to the facts, which can’t be said for all GenAI models.

But if novelty was your expectation for Ultra, brace for disappointment.

Now, it’s early days. Ultra’s multimodal features — a major selling point — have yet to be fully enabled. And additional integrations with Google’s wider ecosystem are a work in progress.

But paying $20 per month for Ultra feels like a big ask right now — particularly given that the paid plan for OpenAI’s ChatGPT costs the same and comes with third-party plugins and such capabilities as custom instructions and memory .

Ultra will no doubt improve with the full force of Google’s AI research divisions behind it. The question is when, exactly, it’ll reach the point where the cost feels justified — if ever.

What is Presidents Day and how is it celebrated? What to know about the federal holiday

Many will have a day off on monday in honor of presidents day. consumers may take advantage of retail sales that proliferate on the federal holiday, but here's what to know about the history of it..

not a given synonym

Presidents Day is fast approaching, which may signal to many a relaxing three-day weekend and plenty of holiday sales and bargains .

But next to Independence Day, there may not exist another American holiday that is quite so patriotic.

While Presidents Day has come to be a commemoration of all the nation's 46 chief executives, both past and present, it wasn't always so broad . When it first came into existence – long before it was even federally recognized – the holiday was meant to celebrate just one man: George Washington.

How has the day grown from a simple celebration of the birthday of the first president of the United States? And why are we seeing all these ads for car and furniture sales on TV?

Here's what to know about Presidents Day and how it came to be:

When is Presidents Day 2024?

This year, Presidents Day is on Monday, Feb. 19.

The holiday is celebrated on the third Monday of every February because of a bill signed into law in 1968 by President Lyndon B. Johnson. Taking effect three years later, the Uniform Holiday Bill mandated that three holidays – Memorial Day, Presidents Day and Veterans Day – occur on Mondays to prevent midweek shutdowns and add long weekends to the federal calendar, according to Britannica .

Other holidays, including Labor Day and Martin Luther King Jr. Day , were also established to be celebrated on Mondays when they were first observed.

However, Veterans Day was returned to Nov. 11 in 1978 and continues to be commemorated on that day.

What does Presidents Day commemorate?

Presidents Day was initially established in 1879 to celebrate the birthday of the nation's first president, George Washington. In fact, the holiday was simply called Washington's Birthday, which is still how the federal government refers to it, the Department of State explains .

Following the death of the venerated American Revolution leader in 1799, Feb. 22, widely believed to be Washington's date of birth , became a perennial day of remembrance, according to History.com .

The day remained an unofficial observance for much of the 1800s until Sen. Stephen Wallace Dorsey of Arkansas proposed that it become a federal holiday. In 1879, President Rutherford B. Hayes signed it into law, according to History.com.

While initially being recognized only in Washington D.C., Washington's Birthday became a nationwide holiday in 1885. The first to celebrate the life of an individual American, Washington's Birthday was at the time one of only five federally-recognized holidays – the others being Christmas, New Year's, Thanksgiving and the Fourth of July.

However, most Americans today likely don't view the federal holiday as a commemoration of just one specific president. Presidents Day has since come to represent a day to recognize and celebrate all of the United States' commanders-in-chief, according to the U.S. Department of State .

When the Uniform Holiday Bill took effect in 1971, a provision was included to combine the celebration of Washington’s birthday with Abraham Lincoln's on Feb. 12, according to History.com. Because the new annual date always fell between Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays, Americans believed the day was intended to honor both presidents.

Interestingly, advertisers may have played a part in the shift to "Presidents Day."

Many businesses jumped at the opportunity to use the three-day weekend as a means to draw customers with Presidents Day sales and bargain at stores across the country, according to History.com.

How is the holiday celebrated?

Because Presidents Day is a federal holiday , most federal workers will have the day off .

Part of the reason Johnson made the day a uniform holiday was so Americans had a long weekend "to travel farther and see more of this beautiful land of ours," he wrote. As such, places like the Washington Monument in D.C. and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota – which bears the likenesses of Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt – are bound to attract plenty of tourists.

Similar to Independence Day, the holiday is also viewed as a patriotic celebration . As opposed to July, February might not be the best time for backyard barbecues and fireworks, but reenactments, parades and other ceremonies are sure to take place in cities across the U.S.

Presidential places abound across the U.S.

Opinions on current and recent presidents may leave Americans divided, but we apparently love our leaders of old enough to name a lot of places after them.

In 2023, the U.S. Census Bureau pulled information from its databases showcasing presidential geographic facts about the nation's cities and states.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the census data shows that as of 2020 , the U.S. is home to plenty of cities, counties and towns bearing presidential names. Specifically:

  • 94 places are named "Washington."
  • 72 places are named "Lincoln."
  • 67 places are named for Andrew Jackson, a controversial figure who owned slaves and forced thousands of Native Americans to march along the infamous Trail of Tears.

Contributing: Clare Mulroy

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]

Navalny recorded this video message for the Russian people in case he was killed

  • Alexey Navalny, a Kremlin critic and Putin political opponent, died in a Russian prison, per Russian statements.
  • The 2022 documentary "Navalny" featured his message to Russians in case of his death.
  • "You're not allowed to give up," he says in the video.

Insider Today

Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny has died in prison, Russia said Friday. In the 2022 documentary, "Navalny," the man himself had a message for what his death would mean if it ever happened.

"If they decide to kill me, we are incredibly strong," he said, addressing Russian citizens. "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good people to do nothing. So don't be inactive."

#Navalny 's appeal to Russians in case of his death 🎥 Excerpt from the movie "Navalny" by Daniel Rohr, 2022 pic.twitter.com/QET6hQ122V — NEXTA (@nexta_tv) February 16, 2024

Opposed to Russian President Vladimir Putin's rule, Navalny was serving a 19-year sentence widely seen as politically motivated. He is said to have lost consciousness after taking a walk and was pronounced dead immediately after medics were called, according to Russia's Federal Prison Service.

"You're not allowed to give up," Navalny said in the Daniel Rohr film, adding that "we need to utilize this power to not give up, to remember we are a huge power that is being oppressed by these bad dudes."

Navalny previously fell ill in 2020 on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. He was taken to Germany, where local medical professionals determined that he had been poisoned by a chemical agent from the Novichok family , a Soviet-era nerve agent.

Navalny blamed the Kremlin, and independent investigations found links to the Russian security services.

Russia refused to investigate and denied claims that Russian leadership was somehow involved with the poisoning. Other incidents of this nature have occurred in the past, such as the Skripal poisonings in the UK that took aim at a former Russian military officer long ago turned spy for the British government. That incident involved the same nerve agent.

Navalny returned to Russia after recovering in Germany and was arrested. He was put in prison in January 2021, and there have long been concerns that Russian authorities would end his life.

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Watch: Here's what to know about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny —Putin’s biggest critic

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For Ukraine’s Jews, the work is not yet done — even as the crisis rages into its third year

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( JTA ) — As we mark the grim second anniversary of the Ukraine conflict this Shabbat, I’m reminded of a haunting melody I heard in the city of Poltava last month.

I was standing before Sonia Bunina, a plucky 17-year-old, when she opened her mouth to sing when an air raid siren rang out.

I flinched. Not Sonia — she didn’t miss a beat.

“Kol haolam kulo gesher t’zar meod, veha’ikar lo lifached k’lal,” she belted out before seeking shelter. “The whole world is a very narrow bridge, and the most important thing is to have no fear at all.”

Sonia, like so many Jews I know in Ukraine, is many things — determined, grieving, focused — but she’s certainly not cowering.

As she sang those words by Rebbe Nachman of Breslov — the Ukrainian Jewish sage whose followers continue to come by the tens of thousands to his grave in Uman annually — she embodied the prayer’s indomitable spirit.

Sonia and I met outside Poltava’s Hesed, part of the network of Jewish humanitarian hubs founded by my organization — the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, or JDC — more than three decades ago. Today they’re a lifeline to tens of thousands of Jews facing loss and strife. Since she was a toddler, Sonia has been attending activities at Hesed — her mother coordinates cultural programs for the elderly, and she connects teen volunteers like herself with isolated seniors, a critical source of comfort these last two years.

These days, traveling to Ukraine feels like a pilgrimage — there’s a pull in my soul to visit family near Lviv, to bear witness to Ukrainian Jewish resilience, and to be inspired by the clarity of purpose that is so palpable there. Since my first trip in 2011, I’ve been eight times. Last year, I wrote about how a year of crisis had transformed the ordinary into the sacred in Ukraine . Now, visiting feels even more essential with the worsening humanitarian situation.

Ukrainian Jews aren’t blasé about these challenges — far from it. Just take the delicate ballet of emotions on their faces when checking their phones during an air alert — contacting loved ones, scrolling through photos of devastation, and analyzing Telegram chats speculating on a given rocket’s make and trajectory.

But life goes on — there’s work to do — and though they’ve lost so much, they refuse to give any more away.

Showing up for each other, whatever it takes, is now baked into their very essence as Jews, and in Ukraine, there are tens of thousands to serve — hungry old women and displaced young families, disabled Holocaust survivors and stunned middle-aged professionals, shocked to now need help when they were once donors and volunteers.

They act fearlessly to ensure their communities make it through this crisis, body and soul intact. Can we expect anything less than boundless creativity from the people who birthed Sholem Aleichem and the Baal Shem Tov?

“These bombings, all these things that are killing people, destroying houses, leaving children homeless … it’s very scary,” Galina Limarenko, an 82-year-old retired nurse, told me in her small bedroom in Berezivka, taking note of the warm blanket, firewood, and other winter supplies my colleagues provided. “Thank God for the Jewish community, which never gives up and always shares even their very last piece of bread.”

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Teen Sonia Bunina, right, works with elderly Jews in Poltava, Ukraine, teaching them how to use special smartphones designed for seniors distributed by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee as part of its relief effort. (Arik Shraga)

I saw that irrepressible spirit again at our Beit Dan JCC in battered Kharkiv — a shapeshifting wellspring of strength just a few dozen kilometers from the eastern border. Shortly after Feb. 24, 2022, the center became a staging ground for truckloads of emergency aid — part of the 800 tons of humanitarian assistance we’ve delivered so far.

A few blocks from missile strikes, it now hosts children’s camps and soulful Shabbat services and operates a “kids hub,” offering academic enrichment to children who haven’t had in-person school for years — robbed of normal childhood by the pandemic and now the ongoing crisis.

And amidst blizzards and blackouts, Beit Dan has also become a “warm hub,” a safe place for beleaguered Jewish Kharkivites to charge their devices and obtain a hot drink and warm meal.

“If you share in our pain, and provide support where it’s needed, I’m forever grateful,” said Nika Simonova, Beit Dan’s program director. “The ability to remain human is the main thing. Done right, I believe that can save the world.”

That’s why we at JDC, aided by a coalition of partners including the Jewish Federations, Claims Conference, and International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, deployed a historic response to this conflict and remain committed to the Jewish future here.

We’re focused on ongoing humanitarian support for more than 41,000 Ukrainian Jews, expanding trauma relief, closing children’s educational gaps, and getting unemployed Jewish community members, among millions of Ukrainians plunged into poverty, back to work.

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Tamara Vasilenko (far left) — an elderly Jew in Sumy, Ukraine — celebrates Shabbat in her home with volunteers from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the director of the local Hesed, Elizaveta Sherstuk. (Arik Shraga)

There is no doubt that the Jewish world is now responding to crises on multiple fronts, including this one, but we have been here so many times before. We must draw strength from our history and from the sure knowledge that this is what we’re built for. Our compassion and commitment, when leveraged with that timeless sense of mutual Jewish responsibility, means we can tackle the challenges we face — and come out on the other side even stronger.

As I walked through Lviv on my last day in Ukraine, I asked my cousin Anna Saprun, a 25-year-old business analyst, how this period has changed her.

“I hate what’s brought me here, but I love who I’ve become,” she said with a fierce and feisty smile. “Nothing scares me anymore. I feel powerful.”

Two years after the conflict began, Ukraine’s Jews are inspired anew each day, resolute in the sure knowledge that they know exactly who they’re working for — each other.

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COMMENTS

  1. Not A Given synonyms

    no means clear not a foregone conclusion not a matter of course not apparent not automatic not be taken for granted not evident not self evident not take it for granted not to be taken for granted Another way to say Not A Given? Synonyms for Not A Given (other words and phrases for Not A Given).

  2. 24 Synonyms & Antonyms for NOT-GIVEN-TO

    Words related to not-given-to are not direct synonyms, but are associated with the word not-given-to. Browse related words to learn more about word associations. adjective as in not prepared, ready; new ignorant incompetent inexperienced newcome not given to not used to novice too green unacquainted

  3. What is another word for "not given"?

    What is another word for not given? Need synonyms for not given? Here's a list of similar words from our thesaurus that you can use instead. Adjective (obsolete) Not used to an event or thing unapt unaccustomed unpracticed unacquainted unfamiliar unknown unseasoned untrained unused not used

  4. GIVEN Synonyms: 450 Similar and Opposite Words

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  5. Meaning of "It's certainly not a given"

    tnas 111 1 5 WordWeb: "Noun: An assumption that is taken for granted - presumption, precondition" - Drew Jun 14, 2017 at 17:24 Add a comment 2 Answers Sorted by: 2 "It's certainly not a given" is a rather indirect way of saying that arguments exist against your position.

  6. What is another word for not given to

    Need synonyms for not given to? Here's a list of similar words from our thesaurus that you can use instead. Adjective Not having knowledge or experience of or with (something) unaccustomed unfamiliar unacquainted ignorant inexperienced uninformed unpracticed unused uninstructed unskilled unseasoned untrained green incompetent newcome novice

  7. Synonyms for Not a given

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  8. that isn't a given

    exact ( 1 ) If the two leaders do meet - and that isn't a given - the likely scenario is an informal exchange of pleasantries or, simply, a handshake. 1 Los Angeles Times Show more... similar ( 57 ) That sounds like a hollow word, but, with this group, that is not a given. 1 The New Yorker

  9. 11 Synonyms & Antonyms for GIVEN

    adjective (1) as in likely Advertisement View definitions for given given adjective as in likely Compare Synonyms

  10. GIVE Synonyms: 346 Similar and Opposite Words

    Synonyms for GIVE: donate, volunteer, provide, present, contribute, bestow, offer, give of; Antonyms of GIVE: keep, hold, retain, withhold, save, preserve, lend, sell

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  12. Usage examples for "it is not a given" in English

    English I was not given that opportunity by the President. volume_up more_vert. open_in_new Link to source ; warning Request revision ; English Compassion on earth is given, it is in us. volume_up more_vert. open_in_new Link to source ...

  13. NOT GIVE UP

    Synonyms and antonyms of not give up in English not give up verb These are words and phrases related to not give up. Click on any word or phrase to go to its thesaurus page. PERSIST Synonyms persist persevere work unflaggingly maintain one's efforts pursue relentlessly be tenacious stop at nothing be obstinate hold steadfast stand fast

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  15. Not Give

    NOT GIVE is contained in 3 matches in Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Learn definitions, uses, and phrases with not give.

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    What is another word for not give in to? Need synonyms for not give in to? Here's a list of similar words from our thesaurus that you can use instead. Verb To refrain from in spite of temptation resist avoid forgo refuse check curb forbear renounce buck desist from forbear from keep from leave alone refrain from turn down abstain from check oneself

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