Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at Background Briefing.org. I'm Ian Masters,

and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We will begin with today's critical congressional election in New York's third district of

Queens and Long Island that could weaken the GOP's slim hold on the House and be seen as a

referendum on Biden or Trump, depending who wins the seat to replace the disgraced Republican George

Santos. Joining us on an election day that was hit by a late winter storm is Lawrence Levy,

the Executive Dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, and a former

opinion writer for Newsday where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist

for editorials on suburban politics and policy.

We will discuss his article at CNN.

George Santos was a disaster.

Here's what the race to succeed him looks like.

Then with voting underway in Indonesia today where it is February the 14th in an election that could see a former general with blood on his hands who represents the nation's corrupt oligarchy win the presidency.

We will speak with Thomas Papinsky, a professor of government and director of the Southeast Asian program at Cornell University

and a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

His work studies comparative politics and political economy with a focus on emerging market

economies in Southeast Asia.

Then finally we'll examine further the likelihood of General Proboa, who was banned from the US for decades,

becoming Indonesia's next leader, and discussed the history of genocide at the hands of the military,

as well as the role of the US in aiding and abetting the slaughter of two million Indonesians in 1965 to 66.

Joining us is Joshua Oppenheimer, an award-winning filmmaker based in Copenhagen, best known

for his Oscar-nominated films, The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, which profile

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