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For coronavirus cases “in the U.S. 38% of those hospitalized are under 35.”
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Some college students on spring break have ignored the public health warnings to not congregate in large groups, but experts say young people are vulnerable to coronavirus, too. The CDC reported that between mid-February and mid-March, 20% of the hospitalizations for coronavirus were for patients age 20-44 and 18% were age 45-54. The CDC cautioned that the data is preliminary and limited.
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false
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Coronavirus, Marco Rubio,
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"With plenty of college students congregating for spring break, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., warned on Twitter that coronavirus is not only afflicting the elderly. ""We only have 3 months of information on #Covid_19,"" Rubio tweeted March 19 to his 4 million followers. ""We have created the perception that younger people have nothing to worry about. We now need to stop saying that. In the U.S. 38% of those hospitalized are under 35. In France half of those in the ICU are under 65."" We only have 3 months of information on #Covid_19We have created the perception that younger people have nothing to worry about. We now need to stop saying that.In the U.S. 38% of those hospitalized are under 35.In France half of those in the ICU are under 65. Rubio’s overall point that younger people are vulnerable has merit. But his U.S. number is wrong. For the record, his numbers on France were correct. The head of France’s national health agency said March 15 that 50% of people in intensive care are under 60 or under age 65. But we wanted to focus on the U.S. numbers. Experts warn that U.S. hospitalization data is preliminary, which means the numbers could change in the coming weeks as testing becomes more widespread. One day before Rubio’s tweet, the CDC reported there were 508 patients known to have been hospitalized as a result of coronavirus. The hospitalizations represented 12% of U.S. cases between Feb. 12 and March 16. The data did not include an age group breakdown specific to those under 35. What the CDC did report was that 20% of those hospitalized were ages 20-44, and 18% were 45-54. If we add up those two age groups, we get a total of 38%. We asked Rubio’s spokespersons if that was the 38% he was referencing, but we did not get a response. Major news outlets including the New York Times and NPR used that 38% statistic to point out that younger populations are also vulnerable to coronavirus. That’s an important message amid spring break, as some college students have ignored the recommendations to avoid large gatherings and have poured onto beaches in Florida, leading many counties or cities to close beaches. The CDC data shows that the elderly have the highest fatality rate. The March 18 report by the CDC states that the figures are based on preliminary data and include several limitations, including that data on age and outcomes, including hospitalization, were missing for between 9% and 53% of the cases. Also, further follow-up is needed to determine the outcomes among active cases and data on other risk factors, including if patients had underlying health conditions. ""At the current point, the data is too fluid to have confidence in the accuracy of any statement regarding how COVID-19 affects different age groups,"" said Volker Mai, a University of Florida epidemiologist. However, Mai said, it’s important to clear up any misperception that young people are immune from the disease. Younger populations are at risk of contracting COVID-19, especially young people with underlying conditions. ""Since we are just at the start of the epidemic here, we don’t have enough data to make strong conclusions about age-specific risk of serious illness and/or death in the U.S. yet,"" said Cindy Prins, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Florida, in an email. The reason, Prins said, is a lack or lag in testing Rubio tweeted ""in the U.S. 38% of those hospitalized are under 35."" We could not find any current data that matches Rubio’s tweet. It is possible that he was citing widely reported data that included people up to age 54. The CDC reported that 20% of the hospitalizations were ages 20-44 and 18% were 45-54. But the data is preliminary, so it’s challenging to draw conclusions at this stage about the ages of people hospitalized. Rubio’s office didn’t get back to us but we have to wonder if the mistake in his tweet amounted to a simple transcription error. Rubio does have a point that younger people are vulnerable to coronavirus — it’s not only older people who have been hospitalized. But because the data point is wrong."
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5138
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Man returns to Fort Dodge to help others with mental illness.
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It takes an unusual mind to dream up a place like Freedom Pointe.
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true
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General News, Iowa, Mental health, Fort Dodge
|
Among the soda tower, the tables of puzzles and games, and the incongruous cabinet of stuffed penguins — it’s a long story — you’ll find a place for mental health support, not from doctors or professionals but from those who have been through mental illness themselves. The unusual mind running it all is Randy Hoover, who started Freedom Pointe with help from Ken Hays, former Webster County community services director, and Bob Lincoln, CEO of the 22-county mental health region called County Social Services. Hoover was a college graduate with a double major in education and psychology, and was working as a teacher when his own mental illness sent him running from everything he knew in Iowa. “I ran away from home — that’s the only way to put it,” Hoover told The Messenger. “You know the fight or flight syndrome; I picked flight. I ran away from my job, from my wife and a bunch of kids.” Hoover graduated from Prairie Community High School, before it was Prairie Valley, and got his college education at Buena Vista. Hoover ended up in North Carolina; without consciously meaning to, he found his way to within 10 miles of his daughter. “I stayed with her for a while. She convinced me to go to the doctor,” Hoover said. The doctor diagnosed him with borderline personality disorder. “When I asked what that was, she gave me the symptoms of, you feel like you have no value,” Hoover said. “You feel like you don’t belong anywhere. You feel like no one wants you; like everyone will leave you before it’s done. And it has a lot of suicidal ideations connected to it. “I’ll be honest, I usually go through that about three times a day. Thinking, let’s just end it, and not worry about other people. But then you think about, like they say, suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” Hoover tried different medications, but the only real treatment for borderline is therapy, he said. This was 15 years ago, and he never lost contact with that doctor. “I talk to her almost every day on the phone yet,” Hoover said. “She says, I understand you, I want to help you. You’re doing good things, and you can’t do that if you’re not in a good place yourself. She has made a big impact in my life.” Hoover had a long road back to recovery. A group at a church raised money to send him back to Fort Dodge, and bought him food. He made it home, got divorced, and lived in his van for some time, eating just a can of green beans every day. Eventually he was convinced to visit the peer support center that was available at the time. He didn’t think it would be for him, but once he was there he changed his mind. “I listened to them talk and I realized — they have the same thoughts I do. So I talked to them, I got a therapist up here. And they helped me through.” Later in life, this experience would inspire him to say yes to starting Freedom Pointe. “I know what it was like out there for me. I was out there and no one was even paying attention. Nobody cared — or that’s what I felt,” he said. “Some of the people in the center just got my attention. Suddenly I had friends again.” Irene Blair, the now-retired director of the Webster County Community Services Department, offered Hoover a job at the center. By this point, he had rented an apartment and was working at the Rabiner Treatment Center. Some years later, Bob Lincoln spoke with Hoover about starting a new program. “I said, ‘I suppose I could give it a try,’” Hoover said. “We spent a lot of time putting things together. We started meeting down at the library, in one of their conference rooms. I think we met three days a week. Then we had to get out of there because you can only use it so many times. “We moved to Snell-Crawford Park, and met in the shelter house. We all became really good at croquet.” After this, Theresa Naughton of Lifeworks asked Hoover if he would like to have his own space, he said. Freedom Pointe isn’t affiliated with Lifeworks, but as of today it has shared a building with the organization for about a year and a half. “I will be honest, I’m not sure if Freedom Pointe would even be where it is if it wasn’t for Theresa Naughton,” he said. “We talk, and she has given me a lot of advice. Sometimes I listen. Sometimes, no I want to do it this way. It’s wrong, but it’s more fun.” Hoover has never been about following the well-worn path. “What is the famous poem, the road less traveled,” he said. “I had someone tell me once the biggest mistake you can make in life is the mistake of omission. Not trying. He said you’ve got to try. At least if you failed, you failed trying.” Freedom Pointe has game nights and activities, and keeps a space for people to meet. Members of the organization get out into the community to give others a helping hand. “The idea that, if you get people together, we all kind of help each other,” he said. “We do one-on-ones. We go out, we listen to them, we help them with forms they need to fill out, we get them to doctor appointments, we help them go to the grocery store to get groceries. “We’re working on a pilot prevention program with Amerigroup. I was told the average hospital stay for a mental health issue costs Amerigroup $28,000. We’re willing to take much less than that to try to prevent people. In the three years we’ve been going, no one connected to us has been committed, and no one has even gone to the emergency room for mental health issues. “We’re not therapists. We help them get to either Berryhill or Community Health. Both those places are really good.” The idea is to make sure people get to the resources that are available. Hoover also keeps track of the group’s successes. There’s a bag full of rocks at the center; each one represents a suicide that was stopped. “It has 18 in it now,” Hoover said. “One of those rocks is me. Theresa was the one who stopped that one.” The center sees about 83 clients, Hoover said. It gets paid for about eight of them. In both funding and finding the best ways to help, mental health work is not easy. Hoover jokes that he wouldn’t have taken it on if he’d known it would be this much work — but the truth, he said, is that he did it because of how much having peer support helped back when he was trying to get back on his feet. “When Bob offered me the chance to open it back up, I jumped at the chance, because I thought we have to do something,” he said. “I think sometimes it’s possible the reason I do this is very selfish; it’s to help me.” Hoover has remarried in the years since returning to Fort Dodge. He still loves walking the trails outdoors, at Dolliver Park, Ledges State Park, or elsewhere around the state. “I enjoy writing short stories,” he said. “I have written I bet close to 500 or 600 short stories. I never had any published, because I don’t even try. I just write them for me.” Although he’s thought of retiring, Hoover said his work keeps him from just sitting at home with nothing to do. And, of course, making a difference is important to him. “It is a lot of work, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world. It is so cool to know you are making a difference in people’s lives. And by doing that, knowing that they’re making a difference in mine.” ___ Information from: The Messenger, http://www.messengernews.net
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12876
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If you have a family, the current minimum wage easily qualifies you for food stamps.
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"Patrick said that in Texas, ""if you have a family, the current minimum wage easily qualifies you for food stamps."" Our finding is that a household of two or more residents including a single full-time minimum-wage worker would clearly qualify for SNAP as would a household of four or more with two full-time minimum-wage workers. A three-person household with two such workers would gross too much to qualify."
|
true
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Food, Poverty, Workers, Texas, John Patrick,
|
"Pitching for a bump in the minimum wage, a labor leader suggested a hike could save all Texans money by elevating low-income workers who’d no longer need government help. We don’t know about that. But we flipped on the Texas Truth-O-Meter after John Patrick, president of the Texas AFL-CIO, said at a January 2017 Capitol press conference: ""If you have a family, the current minimum wage easily qualifies you for food stamps."" Really? ""Food stamps"" is an outdated term referring to food benefits available to income-eligible residents through the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Beneficiaries purchase food and groceries using electronic benefit transfer cards. Nationally on average in 2015, about 45.8 million people in 22.5 million households monthly participated in SNAP, according to the federal government, and because benefits are available to most low-income households, participants represent a broad cross-section of the nation's poor. A November 2016 U.S. Department of Agriculture report states that in the year, 55 percent of SNAP households with children included people with jobs. Still, the average gross income of participating households was $786 a month, the report says, which breaks out to $9,432 a year. We asked the Texas AFL-CIO for the basis of Patrick’s claim. By email, spokesman Ed Sills said a full-time minimum-wage Texas worker earns $7.25 an hour (identical to the federal minimum). Multiplied over 2,000 work hours in a year, that’s an annual income of approximately $14,500. The labor group’s use of 2,000 hours in a work year contrasts with the 2,087-hour work year used by the federal government in its data assumptions. Using that figure, a single full-time worker would earn $15,130 in a year. Sills otherwise said that according to maximum monthly income limits posted by the state, a family could easily qualify for SNAP with a single worker earning the minimum wage. He pointed out the relevant chart, posted on a Texas Health and Human Services Commission web page titled ""SNAP Food Benefits."" We proceeded to crunch the figures, which mostly supported Patrick’s claim, though we also noticed Patrick hadn’t said if he was thinking solely of families with one full-time minimum-wage worker; Sills told us by phone that he believed so. A twist Then came a twist causing us to realize the commission-posted figures were out of date. We recognized as much when Christine Mann, a commission press officer, responded to our inquiry about Patrick’s claim by providing SNAP-eligibility household income thresholds lower than the thresholds on the agency’s SNAP food benefits web page--which Mann told us would be updated. Mann later provided a commission web link to the up-to-date income eligibility figures. For our part, we spotted the same income-eligibility numbers on a USDA web page that describes the figures as in effect for the fiscal year running through September 2017. Mann’s response also indicated that qualifying for SNAP is more complicated than simply grossing less than a particular threshold. ""Eligibility for SNAP is based on household size, the countable amount of gross and net income for all mandatory household members, and allowed deductions"" for items including shelter, utilities, child care and medical expenses, Mann wrote. Agency confirmation Mann otherwise told us that a single minimum-wage full-time worker in a household of two to three people would draw monthly gross income of $1,255.70. In support of Patrick’s claim, that amount runs short of the up-to-date income thresholds to qualify for SNAP of $1,736 a month for a two-person household or $2,184 a month for a three-person household. Bigger households with a single full-time minimum-wage worker would qualify too, we calculated, as would households of four or more with two full-time minimum-wage workers. We identified one exception: A household of three with two full-time minimum-wage workers, which would have a combined gross monthly income of $2,511.40, would earn too much to qualify for SNAP at the qualifying gross-income threshold of $2,184 a month for a household of three. We separately asked the Austin-based Center for Public Policy Priorities, which says it advocates for conditions enabling every Texan to be healthy, well-educated and financially secure, to assess Patrick’s statement. By email, Oliver Bernstein described calculations like our own; he said the claim holds up. Our ruling Patrick said that in Texas, ""if you have a family, the current minimum wage easily qualifies you for food stamps."" Our finding is that a household of two or more residents including a single full-time minimum-wage worker would clearly qualify for SNAP as would a household of four or more with two full-time minimum-wage workers. A three-person household with two such workers would gross too much to qualify. – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
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7873
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Thailand cancels flights to holiday island as storm threatens.
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Thailand canceled flights to a popular tourist island, battened down beachside resorts and evacuated offshore oil rigs as the first tropical storm in nearly 30 years menaced its southern shores on Thursday.
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true
|
Environment
|
Tropical storm Pabuk approached southern Thailand with winds of up to 65 kph (40 mph), bringing high waves and gusty winds ahead of its expected landfall on Friday. Bangkok Airways canceled all flights to and from popular holiday destination Koh Samui, potentially stranding tourists. Media also reported that ferry services to and from the island were suspended. The Thai Meteorological Department warned of heavy downpours and strong winds in several provinces, including those with popular island destinations such as Samui, Phuket and Krabi. Some hotel operators reported a few early checkouts and said they were prepared. “Since the morning we have prepared sand bunkers and we have barricaded glass windows. We have also prepared first aid kits, torches, water, food and fuel for the hotel’s power generator,” said Ampawan Taopheng, manager of Lub D Koh Samui on Chaweng Beach. She added that other hotel operators had made similar preparations. PTT Exploration and Production Pcl also said it had suspended operations at Bongkot and Erawan, two of the country’s biggest gas fields in the Gulf of Thailand. “Our immediate and urgent task is to do everything in our power to ensure safety and wellbeing of staff,” the company said.
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37879
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"A CNN chyron indicated that COVID-19's global death toll was approaching ""three million"" people on April 26 2020, transposing the rate of reported cases with the rate of deaths worldwide."
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CNN ‘Global Death Toll Approaches Three Million People’ Chyron Error
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true
|
Fact Checks, Viral Content
|
On April 27 2020, a screen capture purportedly of CNN showing anchor Wolf Blitzer with a chyron reading “GLOBAL DEATH TOLL APPROACHES THREE MILLION PEOPLE” circulated on social media, often marked with question marks, circles, and an arrow:On the right side of the screen was a column titled “CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC,” with two sections — “GLOBALLY” and “IN THE UNITED STATES.” Under the top column, “GLOBALLY,” were two figures:Beneath that was “IN THE UNITED STATES,” and the following counts:On first glance, it appeared that if the chyron was unaltered, someone transposed the number of global cases with the number of global deaths — which was in fact 206,055, versus a total case rate globally of 2,964,543.On April 26 2020, an unmarked version of the same image was shared to Reddit’s r/funny, with the additional commentary, “CNN is getting a bit ahead of themselves”:CNN is getting a bit ahead of themselves. from funnyAs a benchmark, we visited Google’s page tracking confirmed cases of and deaths from COVID-19 as of 4:49 PM EST on April 28 2020; those figures were updated very regularly:Between the air date of the segment and when we visited the page, the numbers had changed as follows:We located a non-working link to a transcript on CNN.com, which we were able to view via Google’s temporary cached page:According to the once-visible transcript on CNN.com, the segment aired on April 26 2020, beginning at 6:00 PM EST (3:00 PM PST, as seen in the screenshot). We archived Google’s cache of the CNN transcript here, and the cache contained the specific verbiage of the chyron:THE SITUATION ROOM Global Death Toll Approaches Three Million People; Georgia Reopens Salons, Gyms, Bowling Alleys And Tattoo Parlors As The State Death Toll Rises; Maryland Governor Says, Hundreds Called Asking About Ingesting Disinfectant Following Trump Remarks; Wisconsin To Remain Shut Down Until At Least May 26th; White House Adviser Says U.S. Faces Great-Depression-Era Unemployment; California Eases Social Distancing in Areas As Cases Exceed 42,000. Aired 6-7p ET Aired April 26, 2020 – 18:00 ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.Presumably, the bolded text at the top of the page consisted of transcriptions of the segment’s chyrons between 18:00 and 19:00 on April 26 2020 (“Aired 6-7p ET”):It’s also worth noting that while the transposed figures seen in the chyron were visible on the screen, they did not match the figures as reported by Blitzer during the segment. Arrows, circles, and other markings on one iteration of the image strongly suggested CNN was, whether deliberately or carelessly, misreporting the statistics in the segment in question.However, the transcript began:Aired April 26, 2020 – 18:00 ETTHIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)[18:00:00]WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. I’m Wolf Blitzer in Washington. This is a special edition of The Situation Room.Around the world right now, nearly three million people — 3 million people — have been infected by the coronavirus. And more than 205,000 people have died. More than a quarter of those deaths happened right here in the United States. The number of Americans dead from this virus is now more than 54,000. By the way, it was exactly one month ago today that the death toll here in the United States was just over 1,000.At the same time, more states are preparing to crack open the doors to their economies, doors that were slammed shut weeks ago when the pandemic hit. Stay-at-home orders expire tomorrow morning in a few states where restaurants and some stores will be allowed to open under strict safety rules. But officials at the White House tell CNN that social distancing directives are not going away any time soon.Throughout the transcribed segment, the only other mention of millions outside the quoted portion above were unemployment numbers. The words “death” or “deaths” appeared a total of eight times, four of which occurred in the quoted portion; the remaining mentions did not involve global or in the United States’ death counts.A screen capture of a chyron from CNN reading “Global Death Toll Approaches Three Million People” appeared to be authentic and unaltered, as indicated by a cached version of a CNN transcript for “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer” on April 26 2020. That transcript was accessible only through Google’s cache and an archive, but the reporting in the segment did not match the chyron, nor did it match the statistics shown on the side of the screen. Also, if CNN had been attempting to mislead the public deliberately, it was unlikely to include the then-accurate global death count of 206,055 alongside the transposed figure nearing three million.Comments
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31907
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"John Kasich said if women can't be trusted to ""keep their legs closed,"" then they are unfit to choose abortion."
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Earlier Newslo fabrications included claims that Chris Christie thought that a female Viagra would spread “lesbianism” (and separately, that he voted down a gender pay parity bill for religious reasons), an Alabama politician tried to mandate saliva-based “hunger tests” for food stamp recipients, Ted Cruz said he’d run as a Democrat if something affected Hillary Clinton’s campaign, Mike Pence said if abortion was legal in cases of rape women would try to “get raped” in order to obtain an abortion, the father of Brock Turner lamented the absence of punishment for the victim in his son’s sexual assault case, and that televangelist Pat Robertson claimed that David Bowie did not die, but was kidnapped by demons.
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false
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Junk News, abortion, fake quote, john kasich
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On 15 December 2016, Politicops published an article appearing to report that Ohio governor John Kasich said that if a woman couldn’t be trusted “to keep her legs closed” than she was unfit to decide whether or not to have an abortion: Recently, Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich vetoed the so-called “heartbeat bill,” a measure that would have banned all abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, or before many women even know that they are pregnant. At the same time, Kasich signed a bill banning abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, with exceptions only for saving a pregnant woman’s life or preventing the “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” “At the risk of sounding discriminatory, which is not at all my goal here, but at the risk of sounding like that, there is no way women should be allowed control over whether or not they are going to have abortions,” Kasich told the Ohio Daily Star. “Women are wonderful beings, they are kind, loving, incredible and a whole other plethora of adjectives could be used to describe them, but at the end of the day, I’m sorry to have to say this, but the honest truth is that women used to be all those things. The women of today are mainly opportunists and gold diggers, who typically get pregnant due to unsafe sex, or to get their partners to marry them … That’s that, if a woman these days is not intelligent enough to keep her legs closed when they’re supposed to be closed, if she doesn’t have the foresight to make sure she doesn’t get herself in a situation where she might be pregnant, then there is no way a woman like that can or should be entrusted with the decision of having an abortion. … Women in this country really need to learn to either keep their legs closed or their other orifices open,” the governor concluded. As with all items published by Politicops, (and its related sites Religionlo, Politicalo, and Newslo), the article began with a reference to a debate over proposed abortion restrictions in the state of Ohio. But articles from Newslo and its sister sites typically start off with a paragraph of fact-based information before launching into fabricated details, and all subsequent “quotes” from John Kasich were pure fabrications. Newslo‘s roster of fake news sites often circulate via the lesser-known Politicops domain on social media, and all include a function allowing readers to “show facts” or “hide facts.” But all Newslo-linked articles display by default in “hide facts” mode, ensuring most readers view articles unaware of the significant appended embellishments:
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15905
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"In states that have private-sale background checks for handguns ""49 percent fewer women are shot and killed."
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"Haas said in states with comprehensive background checks for handguns, ""49 percent fewer women are shot and killed."" She supports that statement by pointing to figures examining a narrower group of female firearms victims -- those killed in domestic violence situations. But figures examining the broader group of victims she cited in her statement -- women in general -- show 38 percent fewer women were shot and killed in the states with private-sale background checks on handgun sales. That’s not quite high as the figure she cited, but it still represents a lower rate of gun homicides of women in states with comprehensive background checks. But experts cautioned against reading too much into that correlation. They noted that there may be other factors beyond background checks that led to that result."
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mixture
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Crime, States, Women, Guns, Virginia, Lori Haas,
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"Closing a loophole in state law that allows some Virginians to buy firearms without going through a background check is a matter of life and death to women, according to Lori Haas, state director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. Haas was among a number of gun control advocates who spoke at a news conference last month in favor of a series of bills aimed at tightening state firearm laws. Haas has compelling experience with gun violence: Her daughter, Emily, was grazed twice in the head during the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech that left 32 dead and 17 wounded. Her brief remarks touched on background check laws. All states require licensed gun dealers to conduct a background check before selling a firearm to make sure the prospective buyer does not have a criminal record or disqualifying mental condition. But Virginia and 32 other states don’t require background checks for firearms bought through an unlicensed seller -- someone who isn’t in the routine business of selling guns. Haas backed a bill that would have narrowed that exception. In states that run background checks for privately-sold handguns, ""49 percent fewer women are shot and killed,"" she said. Since Haas spoke, the General Assembly has scuttled major gun control bills, including the loophole closer. But background checks for all gun buyers is a perennial issue before the legislature and we wondered whether Haas’ statement was correct in terms of the number she used and the cause and effect of background check laws on women’s lives. She told us the figure came from Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy group founded by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. The numbers The group issued a report last September examining firearm homicides of women by intimate partners -- current and former husbands, as well as boyfriends. It found that from 2008-2012, the rate of such murders was 46 percent lower in 14 states that had background checks for some or all private handgun sales when compared with the rest of the nation. Stacey Radnor, a spokeswoman with Everytown, said the group also found that the level of non-gun intimate partner homicides of women was much less stark -- only 4.3 percent lower in the states with private-sale background checks for handguns. We should note, however, that Haas’ statement focused on a broader definition of victims. She cited ""women"" without any reference to whether they were domestic violence victims. So to examine her exact statement, we needed to find figures on gun murders deaths of all women, which are not in Everytown’s report. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention compiles fatality data based on information from death certificates filed in each state. We looked at the 14 states that had background checks on private handgun sales during the 5-year period Everytown references. Those states are California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania. Three other states have in recent years added private-sale background checks: Colorado, Delaware and Washington. We found those firearms homicide figures of women for all but three states with small populations -- Rhode Island (which requires a background check for private handgun sales) as well as Vermont and Wyoming (which do not). The CDC withholds the number of firearms homicides of women in those states because they are so few in number. But given the small size of each state’s population, it wouldn’t affect the overall trend line for the 47 other states where the information was available. We found that in states with private-sale background checks, the rate of firearm homicides of females age 18 and over was 1.0 per 100,000 women. In the states that didn’t extend background checks to private handgun sales, the homicide rate was 1.6 per 100,000 women in that age group. That means there were 38 percent fewer firearms homicides of women in the states with private-sale background checks for handguns than the rest of the nation, lower than Haas’ statistic but still a significant figure. In Virginia, the rate was 1.4 per 100,000 women. We should note some states without background checks on all handgun sales bucked the trend of lower firearms violence against females. Minnesota, which has no requirement for background checks on private handgun sales, had a rate of 0.6 firearms homicides for every 100,000 women. That was one-third the rate of North Carolina, which requires a background check of anyone seeking to buy a handgun. Cause and effect Two analysts we contacted urged caution in interpreting a correlation in lower rates of gun violence to private-sale background checks. ""Making causal claims is always riskier,"" Jacquelyn White, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, said in an email. ""States that require background checks may also be more likely to support other efforts that contribute to the well-being of their residents. Remember, correlation is not causation. There may be other factors, such as a more enlightened commitment to creating healthy and safe communities, that result in an array of programs and policies that reduce domestic violence."" Gary Kleck, a criminology professor at Florida State University, said Everytown’s figure ""takes no other account of any other factors that affect homicides."" ""States do not randomly pass gun laws -- those that pass gun laws are different in many ways from those that do not,"" Kleck, who has studied the impact of background checks on homicide rates, said in an email. ""For obvious political reasons, it’s easier to enact stricter gun laws in states with fewer gun-owning voters. Thus, states that extended background checks to private gun transfers had lower gun ownership rates even before those laws were passed. Likewise, states with stricter gun laws are more urban, less likely to be Southern or Western (and thus culturally different), more politically liberal etc. You can’t isolate the effect of a gun law without controlling for other violence-related factors."" Our ruling Haas said in states with comprehensive background checks for handguns, ""49 percent fewer women are shot and killed."" She supports that statement by pointing to figures examining a narrower group of female firearms victims -- those killed in domestic violence situations. But figures examining the broader group of victims she cited in her statement -- women in general -- show 38 percent fewer women were shot and killed in the states with private-sale background checks on handgun sales. That’s not quite high as the figure she cited, but it still represents a lower rate of gun homicides of women in states with comprehensive background checks. But experts cautioned against reading too much into that correlation. They noted that there may be other factors beyond background checks that led to that result."
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10838
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New guidelines urge every pregnant woman to get early testing for risk of Down syndrome
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"This story reports on a new American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) recommendation that all pregnant women, regardless of their age, be offered screening for Down syndrome. This represents a departure from previous guidelines, which stated that only women 35 and older be offered testing. The new guidelines involve the use of less invasive techniques, a combination of a blood test and a new kind of ultrasound. This story does a good job of describing what is involved with the new screening and why it is being promoted, and featuring a woman who chose testing. However, the story lacks balance by not presenting the evidence to support the new screening, by not mentioning the potential harms, and by not quoting experts with differing views, or a woman who chose not to be tested. The story does state that the new recommendations represent a departure from existing guidelines and does state that the availability of the new ultrasound may be limited to academic or large city hospitals. The story also mentions amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling and the quadruple screen as alternatives. The story should have also pointed out that no screening remains a viable option. By accurately presenting the prevalence of Down syndrome, the story avoids disease mongering. Furthermore, the story does quote multiple experts, but the story should have quoted experts with differing opinions on the value of the new screening recommendations in order to provide some much needed perspective. However, the story does not describe the strength of the available evidence. The story states that the new screening protocol is much more accurate, but there is no evidence presented to support these claims. Furthermore, although the story does state the ""accuracy rate"" for the new twofold screening protocol with and without the addition of the quadruple screen, there is no comparison to existing screenings such as amniocentesis. Furthermore, the more important information to give consumers would be the positive predictive value of the screening, or the probability of Down syndrome given a positive test result. This is especially important when the prevalence of Down is so low, causing most positive test results to be false positives. The story also does not mention potential harms of treatment, such as anxiety from positive test results and the possibility that patients will fail to follow up on a positive initial screen. The story also fails to define the potential harm of providing false reassurance – the risk of false negative results, which is failing to identify an affected infant, which would be of concern to women who are seeking accurate answers. Finally, although the story does mention the cost of amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling, the story does not mention the cost of the new twofold screening protocol. This is important information for consumers given that insurance may not cover the screening yet."
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mixture
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"Although the story does mention the cost of amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling, the story does not mention the cost of the new twofold screening protocol. This is important information for consumers given that insurance may not cover the screening yet. Although the story does state the ""accuracy rate"" for the new twofold screening protocol with and without the addition of the quadruple screen, there is no comparison to existing screenings such as amniocentesis. Furthermore, the more important information to give consumers would be the positive predictive value of the screening, or the probability of Down syndrome given a positive test result. This is especially important when the prevalence of Down is so low, causing most positive test results to be false positives. The story does not mention potential harms of treatment, such as anxiety from positive test results and the possibility that patients will fail to follow up on a positive initial screen. It also fails to define the potential harm of providing false reassurance – the risk of false negative results, which is failing to identify an affected infant, which would be of concern to women who are seeking accurate answers. The story does not describe the strength of the available evidence. The story states that the new screening protocol is much more accurate, but there is no evidence presented to support these claims. Why not provide details on the test's sensitivity, specificity, false negatives, etc.? By accurately presenting the prevalence of Down syndrome, the story avoids disease mongering. However, the story devalues the quality of the lives of people with Down syndrome by implying that all women would want to know in advance in order to terminate the pregrancy. The story does quote multiple experts. The story should have quoted experts with differing opinions on the value of the new screening recommendations in order to provide some much needed perspective. The story could have been much improved by the addition of quotes from researchers who may have concerns about the broad use of testing or by interviews with women who chose not to be tested. The story does mention amniocentesis, chorionic villus sampling and the quadruple screen as alternatives. The story should have also pointed out that no screening remains a viable option. News stories should include the perspective of someone who chose to forego testing. The story does state that the availability of the new ultrasound may be limited to academic or large city hospitals. The story does state that the new recommendations represent a departure from existing guidelines. Because the story quotes multiple experts, the reader can assume the story does not rely on a press release as the sole source of information."
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12653
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"Since 2012,"" city of Austin ""property taxes have gone up almost 30 percent while incomes have only risen 4 percent."
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"Troxclair said: ""Since 2012,"" city of Austin ""property taxes have gone up almost 30 percent while incomes have only risen 4 percent."" Both percentages, we found, have flaws enfeebling this admittedly difficult comparison. In our attempt to be precise, we estimate that city taxes on homesteads in 2016 were up around 8 percent to 11 percent from a few years before with Austin’s median family income in 2015 about 9 percent higher than the city’s median family income in 2012 (though this also almost certainly doesn't reflect income changes for the same specific families). Upshot: City taxes mostly were up, but largely to a lesser degree than Troxclair suggested. Also, the cited regional income figures reflected lesser gains for families than Austin-only estimates available from the Census Bureau."
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false
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City Budget, City Government, Families, Texas, Ellen Troxclair,
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"An Austin City Council member declared that city property taxes have lately surged with family incomes failing to keep up. Ellen Troxclair, who represents District 8 in Southwest Austin, told Lauren Petrowski of Austin’s Fox 7 on a February 2017 edition of ""Good Day Austin"" that she wants the city this year to ""move the needle"" versus the local cost of living. In the interview, Troxclair touted her affordability action plan, which was set aside by the council a week later. Troxclair: ""Since 2012, property taxes have gone up almost 30 percent—"" Petrowski: ""Wow."" Troxclair: ""—while incomes have only risen 4 percent. So people are really struggling to stay in the city."" Let’s gauge the proclaimed tax changes, then the described changes in income. City taxes up? By email, Troxclair aide Alice Claiborne said the nearly 30 percent statistic was derived by comparing the city property tax bill on a median-valued non-senior homestead as reported in the city budget for 2016-17 with the bill on a median-valued residence as stated in the city’s 2011-12 budget. The budget for fiscal 2011-12, which began in October 2011, states: ""The median property tax bill is estimated at $879 per year"" on a median-priced residence. The 2016-17 city budget estimated the city property tax bill on that year’s median-valued non-senior homestead at $1,132.96--which was 29 percent greater than the noted 2011-12 figure. Yet, we noticed, that comparison looked at different classifications of property. Single-family residences sweep in stand-alone homes, townhouses, condominiums, row houses and mobile homes regardless of who lives there. ""Homestead"" refers to an owner-occupied residence that can qualify for tax breaks. In 2016, according to the Travis Central Appraisal District, Austin had 183,423 single-family residences; 130,253 Austin property owners claimed a homestead exemption. By email, a city budget official, Ed Van Eenoo, advised that at the council's direction, the estimated tax bill in the 2016-17 budget was limited to non-senior homesteads, meaning those properties affected by increased exemptions adopted by the council. He confirmed that was a change from the 2011-12 budget. To reach a balanced comparison, we asked for the appropriate 2011-12 figure to compare with the 2016-17 tax estimate. Van Eenoo replied that the city tax tab for the median-value non-senior homestead in 2011-12 was $967.02. The 2016-17 tax bill for that type of homestead was 17 percent--not 29 percent--greater. Homestead tax changes Even so, we realized, that percentage doesn’t reflect actual changes in city-levied taxes for any given property. For starters, increases in the median-valued homestead were influenced by new and more valuable homes landing on the tax roll. Beyond that factor, we wondered how much more actual homeowners faced in 2016-17 city taxes compared with what the homeowners paid in 2011-12. To gauge that, we turned to Marya Crigler, chief appraiser for the appraisal district, which appraises local properties for taxation purposes. We asked Crigler to focus on city taxes on specific homesteads occupied by the same owner or owners in the period so we could see how each homeowner fared by 2016. Crigler emailed us tax data for eight geographically dispersed Austin homesteads whose owners in 2011-12 had paid city taxes of $967, which was then the bill for the city’s median non-senior homestead. Results: Seven sampled properties faced higher taxes in 2016 than 2011 or 2012, but the differences varied widely, from 3 percent to 24 percent—and one homestead, in East Austin east of U.S. 183, faced 4 percent less in taxes for 2016 than 2012. On average, the taxes levied in 2016 were 11 percent higher than the taxes levied in 2011 and 8 percent up from 2012. Location mattered. Among the homesteads, the smallest tax differences showed up on suburban properties, the biggest on urban-core homesteads in East Austin and west of MoPac Boulevard, the spreadsheet shows. Crigler also emailed us a chart showing that by TCAD’s calculations, the $1,137 in city taxes due on a median-value homestead in 2016 was $124 or 12 percent greater than the $1,013 due on a median-value homestead in 2012. Significantly, Crigler said, the 2016 figures take into account the curbing effect on tax bills from state homestead appraised-value limits plus the local homestead tax exemptions approved by the council that year. So, Austin’s homestead property taxes were almost universally higher in 2016 than five years previous. But for the most part, homeowners weren’t socked as hard as Troxclair's ""almost 30 percent"" suggests. Van Eenoo, when we asked, had no quibble with Crigler’s figures. Michael Searle, Troxclair’s chief of staff, questioned our focus on homesteads rather than single-family dwellings. ""I would say that looking only at homesteads gives a narrow picture,"" Searle emailed. We tried to check on changes in taxes on median-value single-family dwellings. Van Eenoo said, though, the finance staff did not have a 2016 figure comparable to the 2011-12 budget’s figure. He said the council in 2016 directed it to focus on taxes on homesteads, enabling members to track the effect of the council-adopted increases in homestead tax exemptions. Family incomes Next, we turned to Troxclair’s claim about minimal changes in local incomes. Claiborne and Searle told us city staffers gave Troxclair the figures she relied on to gauge changes in Austin’s median family income. The provided figures suggest a median family income of $78,671 for 2017—which would be up $3,771, or 5 percent, from the presented median family income in 2011 of $74,900. The projected 2017 figure would be up $2,771, 3.7 percent, from Troxclair’s cited 2012 median family income of $75,900. Asked about those income figures, the city demographer, Ryan Robinson, told us that he wasn’t familiar with a 2017 projection, but the figures for previous years reflected data covering families in the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos region, not just Austin, that are annually put together by the U.S Department of Housing and Urban Development. Robinson pointed us to a HUD website where we spotted the median family income figures provided by Troxclair’s office for fiscal 2016 and fiscal 2011 and 2012. So, median family incomes in the Austin area—extending beyond Austin and Travis County to include Bastrop, Caldwell, Hays and Williamson counties—escalated nearly 4 percent from 2012 to what’s projected for 2017. But that’s a regional figure. We endeavored to seek Austin-only numbers. Austin-only income changes And to our inquiry, a U.S. Census Bureau spokeswoman, Jewel Jordan, pointed us to its estimates of median family incomes in Austin alone, which were based on the bureau’s American Community Survey results for 2011 through 2015. That research suggests bigger jumps in median family income among Austin residents. According to the bureau, Austin’s 2015 median family income of $76,629 was up nearly 13 percent from the $68,023 median family income of Austin residents in 2012 and up 20 percent from the $63,672 median family income of Austinites in 2011. In the same years, the number of Austin families escalated from 66,158 in 2011 and 66,474 in 2012 to 73,928 in 2015 (a three-year, 11 percent increase). Next, we adjusted the dollar figures for inflation: Median Family Incomes for Austin in 2015 Dollars YEAR AMOUNT INCREASE/DECREASE ($s) % CHANGE % CHANGE from 2012 2011 $67,090 na na na 2012 $70,222 $3,132 4.7 na 2013 $72,757 $2,535 3.6 3.6 2014 $76,754 $3,997 5.5 9.3 2015 $76,629 ($125) (0.2) 9.1 na=Not applicable SOURCES: American FactFinder, American Community Survey, 1-Year Results, 2011-2015, U.S. Census Bureau and CPI Inflation Calculator, Bureau of Labor Statistics (accessed March 16 and 22, 2017) For our part, we also wondered if—just as an influx of higher-value housing arguably dampened existing homeowners’ property tax bites—a portion of the indicated family income gains reflected new residents filling new higher-wage jobs rather than workers in Austin at the start of the period soaking up pay gains. Unfortunately, we didn’t divine a way to figure that out. We noticed otherwise that the Census Bureau’s Austin surveys suggest slightly favorable changes: In 2011, about 26 percent of Austin families had incomes of less than $35,000 while in 2015, that share was down to 21.6 percent. Conversely, in Austin in 2011, 15.8 percent of families had incomes of $150,000 or more while in 2015, 18.8 percent of families were at that level. Troxclair, informed of the bureau’s city-specific income estimates, didn’t defend her reliance on HUD’s regional figures. She noted that city staff had provided her with the regional figures in response to her request for the ""average increase in income in Austin"" over recent years. City staff comments By email, Van Eenoo, the city’s deputy chief financial officer, confirmed that a colleague had submitted the regional figures to Troxclair’s office without clarifying they weren’t city-only numbers. He further said city staff had calculated the region’s median family income for 2017 by applying the 10-year compound annual growth rate to HUD’s 2016 figure. Van Eenoo, asked why it makes sense to rely on HUD’s regional estimates, noted they’re more up to date than the bureau’s city-specific estimates. Notably too, Van Eenoo said, the HUD data series is the ""official data series used to determine eligibility for a wide range of affordable housing programs. We therefore have often relied on the HUD data series because it is the most current official government data series and tracks with other evaluations of housing affordability, whereas relying on the ACS data would require us to make independent projections of income two years into the future in order to compare income versus current property tax levels."" We sought his comment on the bureau figures showing median family incomes in Austin trailing the regional HUD estimates; Van Eenoo said city staff hadn’t researched that in depth. Our ruling Troxclair said: ""Since 2012,"" city of Austin ""property taxes have gone up almost 30 percent while incomes have only risen 4 percent."" Both percentages, we found, have flaws enfeebling this admittedly difficult comparison. In our attempt to be precise, we estimate that city taxes on homesteads in 2016 were up around 8 percent to 11 percent from a few years before with Austin’s median family income in 2015 about 9 percent higher than the city’s median family income in 2012 (though this also almost certainly doesn't reflect income changes for the same specific families). Upshot: City taxes mostly were up, but largely to a lesser degree than Troxclair suggested. Also, the cited regional income figures reflected lesser gains for families than Austin-only estimates available from the Census Bureau. – The statement is not accurate."
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33436
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Muslim nurses working in the UK may refuse to wash their hands to preserve their modesty under Islamic law.
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Can Muslim nurses working in the UK refuse to wash their hands?
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false
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Uncategorized, ASP Article, jewsnews, muslims
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On 20 October 2014, several blogs picked up a rumor claiming that Muslim nurses in the UK could refuse to wash their hands, as the practice conflicts with Islamic (i.e., sharia) law. The story spread with alacrity, sparking outrage on social media sites. The rumor hinged in part on its immediacy, and most iterations included language specifying a very recent change to healthcare guidelines in the United Kingdom: While UK medical officials are taking a few steps to limit the nurse’s exposure to patients, this is still gross and shouldn’t be allowed. If washing their hands in public violates their religion, they have the freedom to pursue a different career path. To allow this type of egregious neglect of basic hygiene puts people unnecessarily at risk for developing an infection. Hopefully common sense will prevail and this allowance will be overturned. One more reason to be thankful we don’t have a healthcare system like Britain’s. Our attempts to locate recent changes to UK healthcare regulations permitting Muslim nurses to refuse to wash their hands turned up empty, but a blog post from April 2014 made an identical claim: Muslim nurses in the UK were just granted the right to practice medical procedures — without washing their hands first. The demand first derived from Islamic Sharia Law. Muslim nurses feared that washing their hands in the operating room, “compromises their modesty.” Of course, medical experts argued that not practicing proper sanitation before a procedure compromises the safety of patients instead. None of the accounts in circulation referenced any news reports, updated regulations, or even unsubstantiated personal experience to support the claim. The only remotely similar account appeared in the UK media in 2010, and that item focused not on Muslim nurses and operating room hygiene, but rather on a Christian hospital worker’s complaint that her crucifix necklace had been unfairly banned (due to its sharp edges) while other religious garb (such as hijabs) had not. Near the end of that article, March 2010 hospital uniform guideline updates were addressed with an emphasis on accommodating religious issues regarding modesty in dress without impacting patient care: The revised rules, issued on March 26, make clear that staff can wear uniforms with long sleeves as long as they roll them up securely above their elbows to wash and when they are on the wards. They add that staff who want to cover up completely when dealing with patients will be able to use special disposable ‘over-sleeves.’ ‘We have considered the implications of this possibility but concluded that the overall purpose of the guidance, to ensure patient safety by adherence to good hand hygiene, is not prejudiced by the additional dress options that have now been identified.’ Another article published in March 2010 reiterated that some guidelines were expanded to clarify the intersection of religious dress and infection control standards (including “good hand hygiene”): Christine Beasley, Chief Nursing Officer at the Department of Health, said: “The revised guidance re-enforces the vital importance of good hand hygiene in the fight against infection.” The General Medical Council has said that female Muslim doctors must be prepared to remove their veil to treat patients effectively as religious clothing must not be a barrier to good care. The guidelines say women can wear the hijab which covers the head and hair but not the face. So, while official UK healthcare guidelines were modified in 2010 to accommodate religious dress, the change was not recent to 2014, nor did it permit Muslim nurses to refuse to wash their hands for religious reasons.
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5672
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Ebola outbreak spreads to 3rd province in eastern Congo.
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Congo’s year-long Ebola outbreak has spread to a new province, with two cases, including one death, confirmed in South Kivu, according to the government health ministry.
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true
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Africa, Health, General News, Ebola virus, International News
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The movement of the potentially deadly disease to a new province highlights the difficulties that health workers in Congo face in controlling the outbreak. Two new patients tested positive in the Mwenga area of South Kivu, adding to North Kivu and Ituri provinces where there are confirmed cases of the disease, according to the health ministry. The new cases are “a 24-year-old woman and her 7-month-old child,” said Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, the director of Congo’s National Institute for Biomedical Research, in a statement released on Friday. The mother and her child had visited Beni, in North Kivu province, which is the center of the outbreak. They returned to South Kivu province where they fell sick with Ebola. The mother died Thursday and her child is being treated by a response team, said Muyembe’s statement. The local Ebola response team has identified more than 120 people who may have been infected with the Ebola virus by contact with the woman and her child. Those people will be vaccinated to reduce the risk that they will get Ebola. The Ebola outbreak in eastern Congo has killed 1,808 people out of 2,765 confirmed cases, according to the new report. The current outbreak, which started on Aug. 1 last year, is the second largest in history. The spread of confirmed cases to a third province shows that health workers have struggled to contain the outbreak, despite the use of a vaccine. Many people in eastern Congo do not trust doctors and other medics. An average of 81 new cases of Ebola are confirmed each week, according to the World Health Organization, which issued an update on the outbreak Friday. WHO said that its appeal for $287 million to fund the public health part of its campaign to control this outbreak has only received $15 million so far. Earlier this week, doctors announced positive news that two new drugs appear to be effective at saving lives of those who fall ill with Ebola. Muyembe and other scientists announced that preliminary results from a trial in Congo found two drugs — made by Regeneron and the U.S. National Institutes of Health — seem to be saving lives. Researchers said more study is needed to nail down how well those two compounds work. The drugs are antibodies that block Ebola. In the trial, significantly fewer people died among those given the Regeneron drug or the NIH’s, about 30%, compared to those who received another treatment. There is less danger that Ebola will spread through Goma, the capital of North Kivu province with more than 2 million inhabitants, because about 200 contacts and suspected cases have been identified and have received proper medication, said Muyembe. He said people arriving in Goma are being monitored at the city’s entry points. Health officials have also vaccinated tens of thousands of people in Congo and surrounding countries in an attempt to stop the outbreak, but the virus has now continued to spread for more than a year. Response efforts have been repeatedly hampered by attacks on health workers and continuing mistrust among the affected communities; many people in the region don’t believe the virus is real and choose to stay at home when they fall ill, infecting those who care for them. ___ Maliro contributed to this report from Beni, Congo. ___ Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa
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24527
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In some states, it is still legal to deny a woman coverage because she's been the victim of domestic violence.
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Michelle Obama claims that domestic violence counts as a pre-exisiting condition in some states
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true
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National, Health Care, Michelle Obama,
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"In his effort to pass a health care overhaul, President Barack Obama has enlisted help from a close ally — his wife, Michelle. On Sept. 18, 2009, the first lady gave a speech about the importance of health care reform to women, and cited several reasons she thinks the current system is gender-biased. This line caught our attention: ""Women are affected because, as we heard, in many states, insurance companies can still discriminate because of gender,"" she said. ""And this is still shocking to me. These are the kind of facts that still wake me up at night. ... In some states, it is still legal to deny a woman coverage because she's been the victim of domestic violence."" Health reform bills under consideration by Congress would prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-exisiting conditions, an issue we've already explored ; we've also examined how pregnancy can sometimes be a basis to deny coverage, and how pre-exisiting conditions already lead to health care rationing by private health insurers. But we'd never heard domestic abuse could count as a pre-existing condition, so we decided to look into the claim. The issue first came to light in 1994, when a Pennsylvania woman was denied health, life and mortgage disability insurance because of domestic violence, according to the Women's Law Project. That group, along with the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, began advocating for legislation to expressly prohibit the practice. Since then, most states, including Pennsylvania, have adopted laws prohibiting the practice. But, as Mrs. Obama said in her speech, denying coverage due to a history of domestic abuse is still legal in some states. Those states are Idaho, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming, and the District of Columbia, according to the National Women's Law Center. The claim has become a popular talking point for groups supporting health care reform such as the Service Employees International Union. (It's been discussed so much recently that Arkansas, which had no prohibition, this year passed a law prohibiting discrimination against domestic violence victims.) A Huffington Post story about the laws last week prompted several states and insurance companies to say that the laws have been changed or that the companies don't treat domestic violence as a pre-existing condition. The North Carolina situation is a matter of some disagreement. Although the Women's Law Center says the practice is still allowed, state officials say they interpret the laws to mean it is not. Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney told the Jackson Free Press that he wanted to explore whether insurance companies were taking advantage of the law: ""I've got to get some of my lawyers to do some research on this, but we have only six mandated (conditions that must be covered) in our state statues, and we have 25 or more optional coverages, but domestic abuse doesn't seem to be one of them. ... The whole situation is bad. Let's say a woman works with a company that had Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and she gets beat up in her house and Blue Cross says 'we're not covering you because getting beat up is your pre-existing condition.' That's terrible."" Meanwhile, Wyoming Department of Insurance staff attorney James Mitchell told the Huffington Post that state law does not expressly prohibit insurers from using domestic abuse as grounds to deny coverage, though he'd found no cases of the practice in his state. Mitchell's response raises an important point: Just because it's legal in some states for insurance companies to cite domestic violence as a pre-existing condition, it doesn't mean that insurance companies are actually taking advantage of the loophole. Back in the 1990s there was evidence that the practice was widespread. In 1994, a House Judiciary Committee panel conducted an informal survey and found that eight of the 16 largest insurers in the country used domestic violence as a factor in deciding coverage. And a year later, the Insurance Commission of Pennsylvania reported that a formal survey showed that 24 percent of accident, health and life insurers took domestic violence into account when deciding whether to issue and renew insurance policies. But that data is more than 10 years old, so we asked Lisa Codispoti, senior counsel for the National Women's Law Center, if insurance companies are still denying health care coverage based on domestic violence history. Examples are hard to come by, she said, because people who get coverage through an employer don't usually face exclusions about pre-existing condititions. Only people who apply for individual coverage would, she said. ""It's such a small number of people who apply for individual insurance,"" she said. ""And it's not like insurance companies have to tell you why you're being denied coverage."" Indeed, underwriting standards are private, said Nancy Durborow, health projects coordinator for the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, making it difficult for groups such as hers to find out how widespread the practice still is. ""This is very secretive stuff,"" she said. A spokesman for the association representing insurance companies told us he's not aware of any insurers that deny women coverage based on history of domestic abuse. And the group supports a proposal by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners that would fully prohibit the practice. ""No one should be denied coverage because they are victims of domestic abuse,"" said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans. We find that the first lady is correct that ""in some states, it is still legal to deny a woman coverage because she's been the victim of domestic violence."" Putting aside the disputed North Carolina law, there still are several other states — including Mississippi and Wyoming — that have no specific laws prohibiting the practice. It's important to note that we couldn't find this was happening on a widespread basis — or even just a little bit."
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24363
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"Hank Gilbert Says a careless attitude and ""poor oversight by the Texas Department of Agriculture"" led to deaths and illnesses traced to a Texas peanut plant."
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Hank Gilbert says agency's inadequate oversight allowed salmonella-related deaths, illnesses
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mixture
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Agriculture, Consumer Safety, Texas, Hank Gilbert,
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"East Texas Democrat Hank Gilbert, running a second time for state agriculture commissioner, blasted out of the chute with a dramatic claim about the agency he wants to head. Gilbert, hoping to deny Republican Commissioner Todd Staples a second term, said Dec. 14: ""A careless, lackadaisical attitude has already resulted in the deaths of eight and more than 600 cases of illness nationally thanks to poor TDA oversight at the former Peanut Corporation of America factory in Plainview."" He was referring to eight (the count actually reached nine) deaths due to salmonella poisonings traced to the corporation's since-shuttered Plainview peanut plant. We wondered if Gilbert accurately characterized the department's role in ensuring safe food processing plants. It turns out that a department inspector did visit the offending Peanut Corporation of America plant in 2005, 2006 and 2008 and also checked a box on a form filed after each visit stating that the plant had a license required by the state health department to operate. But the Lubbock-based inspector, who was visiting the plant to certify it as organic, has admitted to making false assumptions about its health certification on each inspection. When his actions came to light in the wake of the salmonella crisis, he was fired. The inspector, Gaylon Armonett, told the Associated Press the reason he checked ""yes"" the first time was that a plant manager told him an application for state health licensing had been completed and was in the hands of officials at the company's headquarters. Armonett said he checked ""yes"" in the succeeding years because he assumed the license was granted. ""It's an inadvertent mistake,"" Armonett said, ""and I'm sorry for it."" Agriculture department spokesman Bryan Black suggested it wasn’t the department’s responsibility to police any plant’s cleanliness. ""Local and state health departments are responsible for protecting consumers from food-borne illnesses,"" Black said. ""TDA certifies products and processes to national organic standards and has strict protocols in place."" The Texas Department of State Health Services confirmed that firms like the peanut plant that manufacture food for sale to the public must have a state-issued food manufacturer license. The agency has said it didn’t know of the Plainview plant until the salmonella outbreak. The plant closed in February. ""We never received an application for a license,"" DSHS spokeswoman Allison Lowery said. ""As you can understand, it would be very difficult for us to know about a company when it fails to license with us."" Lowery continued: ""As soon as we were aware of the problems... we immediately ordered the company to close this plant and recall all products made there. We also quickly took over the recall after we got no response from the company to our recall order. And we assessed $14.6 million in administrative penalties against the company."" In his statement about the peanut plant, Gilbert overstates the agriculture department's role; it's not the primary agency responsible for policing such facilities for health hazards. Still, its inspector admittedly slipped up in this case. If he'd flagged the Plainview plant for lacking the required food manufacturer license, it might have been shut down or its conditions improved. That could have prevented the 2009 illnesses and deaths."
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9292
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New Harvard research finds walnuts may help slow colon cancer growth A walnut-enriched diet may cause beneficial genetic changes in animal cancer cells, affecting inflammation, blood supply and growth of tumors
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Mice are not people. Yet many medical research headlines about mouse studies extend the implicit promise that whatever is discovered may cure diseases in humans. This release tries to correct that by mentioning “animal study” in the sub-headline and in its first sentence. That’s more than many releases would do, but the main headline (not the subhead) is what appears in search results about this release, and we still worry most people will assume the wrong implicit promise. The study discussed here is about the biochemistry surrounding certain genetic changes in mice fed walnuts while growing colon cancer tumors. It appears the mouse tumors grew more slowly in the mice fed the equivalent of a human diet of two ounces of walnuts per day. The study is trying to unpack the mechanism of that impact. And apart from the headline, it mostly does a satisfactory job of communicating the results of the study in a responsible, measured way. But let’s remember that these findings in mice are many years away from any human application. And yet a public relations company connected to the California Walnut Commission is very eager to make sure you — probably not a cancer scientist, but definitely a human potential walnut consumer — are aware of what happened in these mice. Yes, the study carries tantalizing information about the way the walnut diet appears to influence the genetics of colon tumors — in the mice — but it will take much more investigation before it yields the kind of results that warrant a headline, “New Harvard research finds walnuts may help slow colon cancer growth.” According to the National Cancer Institute, colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer worldwide and the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States. If something as simple as eating walnuts could reduce that risk or slow down cancer progression, it would matter quite a bit.
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true
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colon cancer,Harvard,walnuts
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In this very narrow discussion of a small study in mice, the suggestion is that someday maybe walnuts (or some nutritional element of walnuts) could help people by slowing the growth of colon cancer. But while the study doesn’t mention how much (or how little) such a therapy might cost, we think this criterion is Not Applicable here for two reasons: 1. the cost of walnuts is generally well known, and 2. the research is at early enough stage — and the release establishes the preliminary nature of the study — that it’s hard to know what any walnut-related therapy might cost. Furthermore, while the criteria of cost is integral to what we all agree is good reporting about health outcomes, incorporating information about the potential cost of walnuts — or any other foodstuffs — in a release about a study that’s so preliminary might actually reinforce the suggestion of a useful therapy. Including that info wouldn’t improve anyone’s understanding of the importance of the research. The research on a small group of mice showed slowing of the growth of colon cancer tumors. The research proved that tumors in mice fed walnuts had “10 times the amount of total omega-3 fatty acids, including plant-based alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), in the tissue compared to the mice fed the control diet.” Although the quantification here is limited, we’ll give the story credit for accurately reporting the outcomes in broad strokes. The detailed results of what happened in a mouse study have limited use for the average human reader anyway. But while the release does not state that the mouse study could lead to prevention for humans, we’re worried that a normal reader may see the suggested effects of an enhanced walnut diet — increased anti-inflammatory activity, reduced angiogenesis, increased protective lipid content — and assume that these affect actual cancer outcomes. Set aside the major caveat that it is an animal study for a moment — the release says that walnuts “may” slow the growth of colon cancer. It also equally may not. The limited study did not appear to investigate potential harms, and the release didn’t comment on them. For humans, consumption of too many calorie-dense walnuts could precipitate weight gain. But the equivalent of two ounces a day doesn’t sound like it could be very harmful. We’ll rate this Not Applicable. While the main headline was not upfront about the fact that the study involved mice, the body of the release itself was carefully worded and did a fair job of describing the evidence. It’s always helpful to see “animal” in the very first sentence of a study involving mice. microRNAs are a complicated topic, as are changes in gene expression, which is at the root of the questions that the study addressed. The release adequately describes the evidence drawn from the work but does so sparsely. The eight-page paper is reduced to an eight-paragraph release, only three paragraphs of which actually convey an explanation of the work. What the release offers is acceptable by our standards but more information, properly couched, could aid readers in assessing the study’s true value. There was no disease mongering. Funding sources were identified, netting this release a Satisfactory rating, but when a fundor is integrally related to the substance of the research, that mention belongs higher up in the story or release, rather than tagged onto the end, allowing readers to consider the context of the funding early in their reading of the material. The release discusses the chemistry of inflammation and the growth of tumors in the mice. It briefly mentions “diet and lifestyle changes” as means to reduce risk, but does not discuss what specific changes are shown to be helpful. It also does not discuss screening and polyp removal, arguably the best-supported intervention for catching colon cancer before it spreads. We accept that walnuts are widely available. There has already been research on the potential protective influence of omega-3 fatty acids for inflammation. The release clearly explained the novelty of this specific mouse study investigating underlying chemistry and how it may work. While we aren’t happy with the headline, we think this release squeaks by because the main text is accurate and we applaud the first sentence clearly labeling it an “animal study.” The release clearly avoids any sensationalized verbiage, a feat to be lauded in cases like this when an inference of a simple activity — like eating nuts — might lead a reader to jump to wrong conclusions.
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37927
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A dancer at a Las Vegas strip club may have infected several customers with COVID-19 after a performance.
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Was There a Potential COVID-19 Outbreak at a Las Vegas Strip Club?
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false
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Disinformation, Fact Checks
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A typically-false post from the “satirical” blog World News Daily Report (WNDR) got a bigger boost than usual online after being shared by an entrepreneur.The post delivered a characteristically lurid “story” about a COVID-19 outbreak involving a strip club in Las Vegas:Helen “Bunny” Lagrande, 26, and eighteen clients of the Red Baron, a local Las Vegas strip club, have been hospitalized after a Friday night performance.Lagrande performs her squirting show 3 times a week but it appears that she lost control that night and accidentally sprayed several clients.“Usually she doesn’t squirt as far, it just drips down onto the stage, but this time it went up 30 feet in the air, hit the ceiling fan and covered the whole floor,” Red Baron patron Zoe Pitt told reporters.While WNDR’s output typically circulates around social media anyway, this post got extra traction after David Grutman, who has founded various restaurants and nightclubs in Miami, shared it to Twitter on August 19 2020. It has now been shared thousands of time.Besides the outlandish quotes and made-up details — for example, the “story” is attributed to KCWQ, which is actually a television station in Palm Springs, not Las Vegas — WNDR’s post carries its standard disclaimer for readers willing to scroll to the bottom of the page:World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website – even those based on real people – are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle.Comments
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17678
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"In ""reality,"" there have ""been no problems whatsoever"" with the Texas voter ID law."
|
"Abbott said there were ""no problems whatsoever"" with the voter ID law leading up to the 2013 Texas elections. As Speaker Wright and some fellow Texans could attest, none is not correct. News stories reveal various if rare experiences that could be construed as problems, such as voters having to scramble to get the proper ID. There also was a surge in provisional (largely uncounted) ballots, though we did not determine whether the ID law was key to that. This claim has an element of truth but overlooks the overriding reality that there were some problems. The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."
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false
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Elections, Texas, Greg Abbott,
|
"On the eve of the 2013 general election, a Republican candidate for governor of Texas in 2014 suggested the state’s mandate requiring voters to present photo identification at the polls was proving no big squeeze. Critics including Democrats had said the requirement, implemented for the first time in the November elections, would deter voters lacking an accepted ID, especially the elderly, minorities and the indigent. But a Nov. 4, 2013, Associated Press news story quoted Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott, who has defended the 2011 law in court, as saying critics failed to make their case. ""I haven't ever seen anything that was overhyped as much as some partisan efforts to overhype concerns about this,"" Abbott said, ""when, in reality, there has been no problems whatsoever."" Not a one? Speaker Wright's ID Hector Nieto, a spokesman for the pro-Democratic Lone Star Project, disputed Abbott’s statement after bringing it to our attention. By email, Nieto noted news reports indicating the ID hurdle affected Sandra Watts, a Nueces County state district judge, and Jim Wright, the former U.S. House speaker. According to an Oct. 22, 2013, news account by KIII-TV, Channel 3 in Corpus Christi, Watts said she had to check a box swearing she was who she said she was when her name on her ID did not match her name on voting records. (Abbott and Wendy Davis, the Democratic state senator running for governor, similarly reported having to do the same, according to subsequent news reports.) Wright, 90, saying his driver’s license had expired, said he had to dig up a copy of his birth certificate before the Department of Public Safety would grant him a free personal identification card enabling him to vote on Election Day, Nov. 5, according to a Nov. 4, 2013, Fort Worth Star-Telegram news story. Under the law, whose implementation was delayed by legal challenges, voters going to the polls are expected to present a photo ID issued by the DPS (a driver's license, personal ID card, concealed handgun license or election identification certificate) or the federal government (a passport, military ID or a citizenship or naturalization certificate). News accounts generally upbeat Mindful that Abbott piped up before Election Day, we considered solely news stories completed by that time. This means that, like Abbott, we were limited to considering how the ID mandate affected voters in the state’s ""early voting"" period, which ran from Oct. 21 through Nov. 1. By email, Abbott spokesman Jerry Strickland pointed out news stories indicating no problems with the ID law. Among them, a Nov. 4, 2013, Waco Tribune-Herald story quoted Kathy Van Wolfe, the McClennan County elections administrator, as saying: ""I haven’t had any of my polling places call me because there was a problem."" Similarly, other newspapers mostly reported smooth sailing, though officials also cautioned against sweeping conclusions by suggesting the 2013 ballot was unlikely to drive high turnout, meaning casual voters (including those less likely to carry appropriate IDs) were not expected at the polls. Statewide, voters were mostly considering proposed constitutional amendments and local propositions, though Houston had a mayoral election. In a Nov. 2, 2013, news story, the Houston Chronicle said that according to officials in Harris County and elsewhere, the ID mandate had not prevented anyone from voting. The Chronicle noted ""minor instances of confusion"" around the state and quoted the Harris County clerk, Stan Stanart, as saying the ID law caused no real problems; seven voters had to cast provisional ballots, which wouldn't be counted unless the voters proved their identities and were registerd to vote in the county. ""Two of the seven showed up without a photo ID, two had out-of-state IDs, and the other four had IDs that were long expired,"" Stanart told the paper. ""In the big picture, that's not much when you consider more than 80,000 people voted"" locally. Steve Raborn, elections administrator for Tarrant County, told the Star-Telegram for an Oct. 28, 2013, news story: ""We’ve really had no complaints, concerns or issues. But it’s only a small test given the low turnout,"" Raborn said. ""Voters who turn out for these constitutional amendment and bond elections are frequent voters. They know the drill."" The 2014 ballot will feature races for a range of offices topped by the U.S. Senate. An Oct. 27, 2013, news story in the Dallas Morning News reported ""hiccups"" at the polls, otherwise quoting Toni Pippins-Poole, the Dallas County elections administrator, as saying that many voters had to sign affidavits, swearing they were who they said they were, but no voter had been deterred from casting a ballot. On Oct. 29, 2013, the Dallas newspaper said on its Trailblazers blog that at least one in seven of more than 6,800 early voters had cast ballots after signing affidavits. The blog post said: ""Election officials are taking pains to minimize the hassle. At polling locations in Dallas County, voters also have the option of updating their information in the voter registration database so it matches their photo identification going forward. But at the least, there’s an extra minute or two of inconvenience for some voters."" In an Oct. 31, 2013, news story, the San Antonio Express-News quoted the Bexar County elections administrator, Jacque Callanen, as saying that local voting had been mostly uneventful. The story also said: ""That's not to say there haven't been some disgruntled voters -- three, to be exact. Callanen said they had voter registration certificates but no photo IDs and grew irate when asked to take additional steps to vote."" A couple days earlier, an Express-News news story quoted a Rice University political scientist, Mark Jones, as saying that the requests that voters affirm their identities wasn’t overly complicated. Jones said: ""If no one is denied the right to vote, and the sole impact is they have to check a box ... that's unlikely to resonate outside of the (Democratic Party) faithful. For me, the voter ID law's principal impact is the impact you can't see: the person who does not turn out because they lack documentation."" An Austin American-Statesman news story posted online Oct. 28, 2013, quoted election officials in Travis, Hays and Williamson counties as saying the ID law wasn’t keeping women from voting. The story quoted Jason Barnett, Williamson County’s elections administrator, as saying he taught election workers to look at the ""totality of circumstances"" to determine voters' identities when names weren’t identical on IDs and voter registration cards. ""It's not a complicated process,"" Barnett said. Joyce Cowan, the Hays County elections administrator, said the law hadn't brought troubles. ""We have not had major problems,"" Cowan said. An Oct. 26, 2013, El Paso Times news story reported no local problems with the ID law, also quoting an early voter, Jose Rodriguez, as saying the law didn't inconvenience him. Challenges for the elderly Informed of the tenor of these news stories, Nieto emailed us links to an Oct. 22, 2013, news report by KLTV-TV, Channel 7 in Tyler, stating that Elizabeth Pottinger, 96, would have to vote by mail--which does not require an ID to be presented--because she lacked the documents needed to obtain an ID that would be accepted at the polls. Nieto also pointed out a Sept. 21, 2013, news story by KTRK-TV, Channel 13 in Houston, stating that Dorothy Card, 84, of Lufkin, had failed to present the documents needed to get a DPS ID card. State law permitted her to vote by mail, the story said, but Card said voting at the courthouse had been her Election Day routine for years. Ultimately, the story said a DPS spokesperson, not identified, had assured the station that Card would be issued an ID card without more difficulties. Turnout and provisional ballots on rise Next, we wondered if there was an effect on turnout or the prevalence of provisional ballots--the kind that an adult can submit with the understanding that it won’t be counted unless they soon resolve the issue that prevented them casting a regular ballot. Turnout in the early-voting period was up from 2011, the last time the state had a comparable low-key general election. In 2013, nearly 284,000 Texans voted early in person, as opposed to by mail, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s office, accounting for 3.3 percent of the state’s more than 8.5 million registered voters. In contrast, the office says, 156,317 voters, or 2 percent of 8 million registered voters, voted early in 2011. The number of provisional ballots cast also was up compared to 2011, according to information emailed to us by Jeff Hillery, a spokesman for the Texas Secretary of State’s office. According to the state, 131 provisional ballots were cast in the 2011 early-voting period. In the 2013 early-voting period, 398 provisional ballots--or 200 percent more than in 2011--were submitted. As in 2011, most counties fielded no provisional ballots, according to this information, while Medina County had the state’s most provisional ballots: 92. But that county didn’t have voter ID troubles, according to its elections administrator, Patricia Barton. Only two of the provisional ballots cast during early voting came from individuals lacking proper IDs, Barton told us by phone, and both were ""cured""--meaning the voters returned with proofs of identity that meant their ballots would be counted. Barton said the remaining provisional ballots came from individuals who were not registered to vote or not registered in the county. In Austin and Travis County, four of 31 provisional ballots collected during early voting involved individuals lacking an accepted ID, Dana DeBouviers, the county clerk, said by telephone. State official: Provisional ballots not problems Hillery suggested by email that provisional ballots aren’t ""problems"" at the polls. ""A problem would be if the correct process wasn’t followed during the election,"" Hillery said, adding that the agency ""had very few reports of any confusion or issues on what the acceptable forms of ID were."" Hillery stressed, too, that provisional ballots were an option mandated by the federal Help American Vote Act of 2002. ""All voters who show up at the polls are offered at least the opportunity to vote provisionally,"" Hillery said, which ""means that no voter is turned away from the polls because of the need for an acceptable form of photo ID. Here in Texas, if a voter shows up at the polls with an expired driver’s license or without any of the seven acceptable forms of ID, they will at least get a provisional ballot—meaning that they can still exercise their right to vote under the available circumstances. The voter then has a reasonable amount of time (six days; seven in this last election) to cure their vote and have it counted after going to the county registrar’s office and showing an acceptable form of photo ID to prove who they are. It’s also important to note that not every provisional ballot is necessarily the result of the photo ID requirement."" Our ruling Abbott said there were ""no problems whatsoever"" with the voter ID law leading up to the 2013 Texas elections. As Speaker Wright and some fellow Texans could attest, none is not correct. News stories reveal various if rare experiences that could be construed as problems, such as voters having to scramble to get the proper ID. There also was a surge in provisional (largely uncounted) ballots, though we did not determine whether the ID law was key to that. This claim has an element of truth but overlooks the overriding reality that there were some problems. Mark the statement . – The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."
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9510
|
How Probiotics May Help Depression
|
Depression and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) are both common conditions in the US. Consequently, so any treatment that can effectively manage both conditions is an attractive one. This story about a new study looking at probiotics for depression does a good job identifying the strengths and limitations of the research, such as the small patient size and short duration of the study. Readers get additional insights about the meaning and implications of the findings from an independent expert who was not associated with the study. This is particularly helpful in this instance since the research was funded by Nestle, and readers may be more likely to interpret the results with skepticism. However, we think the story would have been stronger if it had dug into the measured benefits a bit more: How were symptoms measured–and by how much did they decrease? People hear a lot about probiotics and it’s important they be tested systematically and in controlled trials. It’s just as important that media coverage highlights the limitations of the trials–and this story did.
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true
|
depression,Probiotics
|
Readers aren’t given information about how much the probiotic might cost. The story states that twice as many people in the probiotic group experienced a decrease in depression scores when compared to the placebo group (64% vs. 32%). However, readers aren’t told the magnitude of the decrease in depression scores (did their depression decrease a little bit or a whole lot?). This is important information to include as it speaks to the efficacy of the probiotic supplement as a potential treatment for depression. We also wanted to know more about how symptoms were measured, and if researchers used a clinically validated tool to do so. For use of probiotics as a potential treatment for IBS, the story does discuss that no significant differences were found in improvement of symptoms between the groups. The story states that no serious side effects of the probiotic were reported, and this is sufficient for Satisfactory rating. Ideally it would have provided additional information about what would constitute a “serious” side effect. With the way the story is worded, it’s possible that other side effects were reported by study participants. This is important information to have in order to compare to other treatments for depression or IBS. The research study was a randomized controlled trial, which is considered the gold standard in study design, and the story does a good job of not overstating the research findings. It notes that the evidence is insufficient to recommend probiotics as a treatment for depression, and that larger independent trials are needed to confirm the findings. There is no disease mongering. There is a discussion early in the story that the research was funded by Nestle. The story also incorporates opinions from a research scientist who was not involved with the study who provides additional insights about the study’s findings. The story does address another type of probiotic, lactobacilli, noting that previous research has found the type of probiotic used in the current research, bifidobacteria, to be better at improving gastrointestinal symptoms. Although it appears close to the end, the story does state that the probiotic used in the study is not commercially available. The story does a good job of establishing where the true novelty of the research lies, which is in the study population used (individuals without IBS and depression or anxiety). By incorporating perspectives from an independent expert, the story does a good job of not relying solely on a news release.
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19847
|
"Rick Scott Says the Congressional Budget Office ""said if you’re going to buy your own policy with these (health care) exchanges you’ll be paying 10 percent more ... about $2,100 more for a family."
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"Scott said that the Congressional Budget Office said people would pay 10 percent more for policies on the exchange, ""so about $2,100 more for a family."" What he doesn’t say is that these policies will have to offer comprehensive coverage. So people will pay more, but they’re also get more benefits. Additionally, the federal government will offer subsidies to many of these people to cut the cost. It’s also important to remember the CBO’s ""apples-to-apples"" comparison. According to the agency, people in the individual market will actually pay less for the required amount of benefits under the Affordable Care Act than they would for those same benefits under old policies."
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false
|
Health Care, Florida, Rick Scott,
|
"Add this to the list of qualms Florida Gov. Rick Scott has with the nation’s health care law. He says it will lead to increased premiums. How? Through the part of the law that creates an online marketplace for individuals who do not receive insurance from their employers. Known as a health exchange, the idea is consumers can compare plans to get the best deal. After the Supreme Court upheld the law, Scott announced he would not to set up the required exchanges, which means the federal government will step in to do it. Scott -- who built his fortune running the nation’s largest hospital chain and his political cred leading an attack group opposed to health reforms -- says these exchanges ""don’t work"" and will lead to bigger bills for families. ""If it was such a great idea the private sector would do it,"" Scott said on Fox News on July 2. ""And we know the Congressional Budget Office said if you’re going to buy your own policy with these exchanges you’ll be paying 10 percent more, or a family will. So about $2,100 more for a family. So you’re going to pay more with these exchanges."" We’re familiar with Scott’s comments, which have roots in this 2009 report from the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan research agency. Origins of this talking point The CBO report, produced Nov. 30, 2009, examined how the law would affect health care premiums for people who purchase insurance through an employer-based group market (both large and small businesses) and for individuals. As Scott said, CBO expected the average premium per person in new individual policies would rise 10 percent to 13 percent in 2016 compared with where it was before the law took effect. In this market, average premiums per policy in this market would be about $5,800 for single policies (a $300 increase) and $15,200 for families (a $2,100 increase -- just like Scott said), according to CBO (pages 5 and 6). If only the report ended there. Subsidies and expanded coverage More than half the 32 million people expected to seek their own coverage in 2016 (57 percent) would be eligible for subsidies that would reduce their premiums by 50 to 60 percent, the CBO said. (The subsidies are to be allocated according to a fee schedule that links a person’s income with the federal poverty level.) Scott’s comments also don’t account for an important change with these individual policies. People will pay more, but it will be for a bigger swath of benefits. The law requires insurance companies to offer an ""essential health benefits"" package that would mirror benefits people get through employer plans. These new policies have to cover services such as maternity care, prescription drugs, and treatment for mental and substance abuse. In an ""apples to apples"" comparison, CBO found that premiums for new ""essential health benefits"" packages would actually be 7 to 10 percent less than equivalent insurance under the old law. A small market Scott was specific when he described who would be affected by CBO’s projections. But he didn’t include an important qualifier: People purchasing their own health insurance comprise less than one-fifth of the market. According to CBO, people in the individual market could make up about 17 percent of the insurance market in 2016. The biggest share, about 70 percent of the market, belongs to people who receive coverage in the large-group market. Health insurance premiums for the 134 million people in this larger, employer-based classification could decrease by zero to 3 percent in 2016. As for the small group market, which is comprised of businesses with 50 or fewer workers, their premiums would stay mostly the same, either increasing 1 percent or dropping 2 percent. Our ruling Scott said that the Congressional Budget Office said people would pay 10 percent more for policies on the exchange, ""so about $2,100 more for a family."" What he doesn’t say is that these policies will have to offer comprehensive coverage. So people will pay more, but they’re also get more benefits. Additionally, the federal government will offer subsidies to many of these people to cut the cost. It’s also important to remember the CBO’s ""apples-to-apples"" comparison. According to the agency, people in the individual market will actually pay less for the required amount of benefits under the Affordable Care Act than they would for those same benefits under old policies."
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10698
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Progress Toward Blood Test for Down Syndrome
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This thoroughly reported and carefully written story avoids giving pregnant women false hope of an easier way to detect genetic anomalies while still presenting some compelling information about a new blood test. Pregnancy can be anxiety inducing because of the sheer number of tests already required of women: frequent blood tests, ultrasounds, and amniocentesis in many cases. Add to that the barrage of stories about the way diet and environmental conditions may be affecting in utero development at any given point and one can understand why women might want a simpler solution to find out whether their child might have a genetic disorder. Overall, we think if more stories approached screening the way this story did there would be fewer people demanding the latest over-hyped test from their doctor. This is a “hope for the future” level test that may be inching its way to market. It’s not available now and won’t be in the immediate future – and the story makes that clear.
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true
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WebMD
|
We’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt for again leaning on an independent expert who says the technology is likely prohibitively expensive. While no dollar estimate is given, we think this is good enough for now. As with the harms, the story does quantify the benefits in one way. It says, “It could help avoid up to 98% of these screening procedures, according to the study, which appears in BMJ.” It also says, “The new study included 753 pregnant women who were at high risk for having a child with Down syndrome. Of these, 86 women were determined to be pregnant with a child with Down syndrome.” The story does quantify potential harms in one way by noting, “There were no false-negative results with the new test.” We wish the story also spoke about false positives. False positives are certainly part of the stress and harms from any screening test that need to be considered. In this case, it appears the false positives were low but not negligible. The story adequately describes the study design. The story does avoid disease monitoring, but we wish it had included some of the data from the paper about the frequency of Down syndrome and even some of the other disorders. The LA Times blog piece managed to do this in much less space. The story provides a wealth of outside experts who provide great commentary and context about the study’s findings. We wish more stories about screenings had quotes like these: “In a year or two, this test may be available, but it won’t replace existing technologies, it will nudge its way into our armamentarium of available methodologies,” says Mark I. Evans, MD, director of Comprehensive Genetics in New York City, and an obstetrician/gynecologist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, also in New York City. “The bad news is that prenatal diagnosis is not just about Down syndrome…Down syndrome represents about 50% of what we find, and this new test can help with that, but it may also give women a false sense of reassurance.” The story tries to do a good thing by explaining at the very end that the new test is not a diagnostic test, as amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling are. Rather, it’s a screening test. The distinction – and the significance of that – could have been made more clearly, but we give the story the benefit of the doubt. The story leans on an independent expert to say that the test is “not ready for prime time….in a year or two, this test may be available.” The story does not establish the test’s novelty, and this is largely because it does not provide the proper context. The study itself says, “In the past 20 years maternal age has been combined with ultrasonographic examination of the fetus and biochemical measurement of various proteins or hormones in the maternal circulation to improve identification of high risk pregnancies. This combined approach of screening can now identify more than 90% of affected fetuses, but there is still a need for invasive testing in 3–5% of the population.” This means that as many as 95% of all women would not need invasive testing to begin with, so this test is only potentially a breakthrough for a small minority of women. BMJ actually makes the novelty question easy to answer by breaking it down this way: What is already known on this topic: Non-invasive prenatal detection of fetal trisomy 21 is achievable by massively parallel sequencing of maternal plasma DNA Its diagnostic performance and practical feasibility in the clinical setting has not been tested on a large scale. What this study adds: Among high risk pregnancies clinically indicated for invasive prenatal diagnosis, non-invasive detection of fetal trisomy 21 can be achieved with the use of multiplexed massively parallel sequencing of maternal plasma DNA at 100% sensitivity and 97.9% specificity, giving a 96.6% positive predictive value and 100% negative predictive value. The sequencing test could be used to rule out trisomy 21 among high risk pregnancies before proceeding to invasive diagnostic testing to reduce the number of cases requiring amniocentesis or chorionic villus sampling.” The story does not rely on a news release.
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17935
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The very first meal on the surface of the moon was the Holy Communion.
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Facebook post recognizes little-known space fact
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true
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Georgia, History, Pop Culture, Religion, Space, Facebook posts,
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"Occasionally a claim comes across our desks here at PolitiFact Georgia that seems to touch all bases -- this one has God, politics and even men landing on the moon. The claim hinted at political ramifications and a possible government cover-up. And it was broadcast as a viral Facebook post. What more could a fact-checker ask for? So let’s go back a bit, to 1969 and man’s first landing on the moon, a feat that seemed almost magical to anyone watching and listening. ""Not many people know it but on July 20, 1969, Buzz Aldrin took communion on the moon. The very first meal ever taken on the moon was the blood and body of Christ!"" the Facebook post read. We had heard about astronauts partaking of freeze-dried food and dehydrated drinks. And we knew about the Apollo 8 crew on Christmas Eve 1968 reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon, an event heard by millions. But the Holy Communion claim was new to us. We decided to do some exploring of our own. The Facebook post about Aldrin led to a post on the JesusLovesYou.org website, a member of the Greater Good Network of websites. The sites promote numerous nonprofit organizations for contributions. That post references Aldrin’s comments on the experience: ""I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute [they] had requested that I not do this,"" Aldrin said. ""NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O’Hare (sic), the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon Christmas (Eve in 1968). I agreed reluctantly."" So, is that why we hadn’t heard about the moon service? Did NASA, under pressure from an atheist activist, try to keep the Christian observance a secret? Our research on this claim led to several sources about the holy meal, but we wanted to hear directly from Aldrin himself. Aldrin was part of the Apollo 11 space mission that put the first people on the moon on July 20, 1969. He was the second person to walk on the moon, following fellow astronaut Neil Armstrong. The moonwalker is currently on a tour promoting his newest book, ""Mission to Mars: My Vision for Space Exploration."" We tracked down his tour publicist at National Geographic Books, but unfortunately,we were unable to schedule an interview by press time. Aldrin is now consulting for the U.S. government about the future of the country's space program and how to make space more accessible to everyday people The Communion event was re-enacted during Episode Six of the HBO-television miniseries ""From the Earth to the Moon."" The one-season, 12-episode miniseries ran in 1998. It was a dramatized portrayal of the Apollo manned space program’s expeditions to the moon. But in a Guideposts article after the 1969 mission, Aldrin confirmed that the religious meal took place inside the Eagle spacecraft once it landed on the moon. ""I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup,"" Aldrin said. ""It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements."" He then recited a Bible verse, John 15:5. NASA history also mentions Aldrin’s Communion service. In his memoirs, Aldrin notes that Armstrong did not participate in the Communion service. Aldrin also expressed second thoughts about his religious observance. ""Neil watched respectfully but made no comment to me at the time,"" Aldrin wrote. ""Perhaps, if I had it to do over again, I would not choose to celebrate communion. Although it was a deeply meaningful experience for me, it was a Christian sacrament, and we had come to the moon in the name of all mankind -- be they Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, agnostics, or atheists."" Aldrin initially wanted his Communion service broadcast on the air with the rest of his comments and biblical reading. But NASA decided against that idea. It was conducted during ""radio silence,"" which means that only he and Armstrong witnessed it. There was no communication between the spacecraft and Mission Control in Houston during radio silence. Atheist activist Madalyn Murray O’Hair had already sued NASA over the 1968 Bible reading in space. O’Hair said the reading violated the legal separation of church and state. ""Although O’Hair’s ideas did not represent mainstream America at that time, her lawsuit was a nuisance and a distraction that NASA preferred to live without,"" Aldrin wrote. (The case was eventually rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court.) So during radio silence, Aldrin read his Bible verse and took his Communion. Aldrin kept his on-air comments more general. He asked for a few moments of silence ""to invite each person listening in, wherever and whomever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours, and to give thanks in his or her own way."" To sum up, a Facebook post claimed that NASA astronaut Buzz Aldrin took Communion on the moon. Several sources, including NASA records and Aldrin’s memoirs, include accounts of the Communion service. PolitiFact also discovered that Aldrin’s church, outside of Houston, still celebrates the lunar Communion service each year on the Sunday closest to the July 20, 1969, moon landing."
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13031
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While many urban areas across the country saw a sharp increase in crime over the last year, the Philadelphia Police Department successfully lowered part one crimes.
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Did major crimes drop in Philly compared to other cities in 2016?
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true
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Crime, Pennsylvania, Jim Kenney,
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"Mayor Jim Kenney’s administration recently released a report stuffed with the good news that happened during his first year in office. It notes how the DNC was better for local businesses than the pope and contains plenty about the soda tax and the upcoming education initiatives it will fund. But the report first discusses crime, consistently one of the biggest concerns for Philadelphians who flirt with leaving the city. ""While many urban areas across the country saw a sharp increase in crime over the last year,"" the report reads, ""the Philadelphia Police Department successfully lowered part one crimes and increased drug seizures."" So what’s part one crime, and did Philly’s part one crime rate drop? And did other cities have difficulty keeping their overall crimes rates low? We decided to check. And for fun we’ll look into how this year’s change in the crime rate compares to the years of former Mayor Michael Nutter. First, Philly’s crime rate. Part one crimes are defined by the Uniform Crime Reporting Act as forcible rape, homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft and arson. The mayor’s report states that of part one crimes as of Dec. 11, homicide is down 1 percent, burglaries are down 14 percent, reports of rape down 10 percent and robberies down 8 percent. The administration said it obtained its data from the Uniform Crime Reporting Act. If you look at year-to-date statistics directly from the police department on Dec. 11, they’re slightly different. Homicide, for instance, was up 2 percent. But either way, part one crime was down 1 percent on Dec. 11 and violent part one crime was down about 5 percent, according to statistics from the police. The decrease follows a years-long trend for Philadelphia. Under the Nutter administration, violent crime decreased about 20 percent from when he took office in 2008 to the end of 2015. Most of the decrease took place in his last four years, but Philly experienced a slight decrease in violent crime in his first year before slight increases the next three years. Not every city can tell the same story as Philadelphia about a reduction in crime and violent crime this year. Throughout 2016, national publications have hyped a rise in violent crime, particularly murder rates, for reasons unclear to experts. Among big cities that have experienced a surge in violent crime are Dallas, Chicago and Los Angeles. As of last week, Dallas’ part one crime rate had increased .1 percent and Los Angeles’ 5.4 percent. Nearby big cities like New York and Baltimore have seen a decrease in part one crime, like Philadelphia, according to statistics from their police departments. A recent study by the Brennan Center looked at 21 of the 30 largest U.S. cities and compared projections of crime rates from 2016 to 2015, based on numbers it collected in September. It found the projected crime rate up 1.3 percent overall, a projection the Brennan Center described as ""nearly unchanged,"" the violent crime rate up 5.5 percent and the murder rate up 13.1 percent. The Brennan Center notes most of the fluctuations in the crime rate fall within expected ranges and there has been no national wave of crime. The main reasons for stories about an unclear increase in murder and violent crime nationally are outliers like Chicago and San Antonio, which have seen their murder rates go up about 47 percent and 50 percent, respectively, this year. For overall crime rate, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Antonio, Charlotte and Oklahoma City were the only cities with increases in crime above 4 percent. Philadelphia is one of 13 of the 21 cities to experience a reduction in total crime and one of eight to see a reduction in violent crime."
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20981
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Ohio’s Planned Parenthood operations received millions of taxpayer dollars via federal grants in 2010 and 2011.
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Ohio Right to Life says millions of federal aid went to the state's Planned Parenthood affiliates
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true
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Abortion, Ohio, Ohio Right to Life,
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"Ohio and several other states across the country this year have passed laws to restrict abortion rights, including legislation to defund Planned Parenthood, a nonprofit organization that provides health care services, including abortions. Ohio lawmakers, who already have passed a late-term abortion ban and other anti-abortion measures this year, have just begun hearings on Senate Bill 201, which is designed to defund Planned Parenthood and other family planning centers. The day before the first Senate hearing on SB 201, Ohio Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, promoted the proposed law as a key component of its agenda. ""Ohio’s Planned Parenthood operations received millions of taxpayer dollars via federal grants in 2010 and 2011,"" a Dec. 5 news release from Ohio Right to Life said. Ohio Right to Life went on to say that Planned Parenthood has performed more abortions annually as its federal funding has increased. It lauds the bill as one that will direct funding away from abortion providers and calls the hearings on the bill a step toward making 2012 a ""groundbreaking year for Ohio's pro-life movement."" PolitiFact Ohio decided to examine Ohio Right to Life’s claim about public funding of Planned Parenthood, in light of its underlying contention that the funding of the agency supports abortion. We asked Michael Gonidakis, executive director for Ohio Right to Life, for specifics on the taxpayer money Planned Parenthood has received. Gonidakis said state agencies disbursed the federal grants, authorizing more than $1.6 million in 2010 to Planned Parenthood locations in Ohio and more than $1.7 million this year. He also provided a memo the nonpartisan Ohio Legislative Service Commission prepared detailing state agencies’ disbursement of federal grants to Planned Parenthood branches in Ohio. LSC compiled the information for Rep. Kristina Roegner, a Republican from Hudson who is a primary sponsor on companion legislation introduced in the House to defund Planned Parenthood. Roegner’s office confirmed the memo’s authenticity. Tara Broderick, president and chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of Northeast Ohio, said the organization does receive federal grant money. But none of that money pays for abortions, she said. ""A huge myth,"" Broderick said. ""Absolutely I can say taxpayer money is not used for abortion services,"" she said. Planned Parenthood must sign an agreement affirming it will not use taxpayer money to provide, promote or refer abortion services, said a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Health, which distributes the bulk of federal grant money that Planned Parenthood receives. Additionally, an audit is performed to account for the organization’s use of government dollars, Broderick said. According to Planned Parenthood, the vast majority of its clients receive health care services such as Pap tests, birth control and treatment for sexually transmitted diseases. Less than 4 percent of Ohio Planned Parenthood clients received an abortion, the organization stated. Nationally, Planned Parenthood performed 332,278 abortion procedures in 2009, the most recent year data was available. Those procedures made up 3 percent of the organization’s services, according to a Planned Parenthood fact sheet that was last updated in October. Gonidakis, of Ohio Right to Life, acknowledged that the federal Hyde Amendment and state law prohibits tax dollars for paying for abortions. ""However, the significant public dollars Planned Parenthood does receive keeps them afloat and pays for pretty much their entire operations,"" he said in an e-mail. Not true, said Broderick, of Planned Parenthood of Northeast Ohio. She said the federal dollars make up 16 percent of the branch’s budget. So where does that leave us? Ohio Right to Life is correct to say that Planned Parenthood locations in Ohio have received millions in federal grants. But the connection between Planned Parenthood’s federal funding and its abortion services is not as direct as Ohio Right to Life’s news release implies. Federal law bars Planned Parenthood from using taxpayer money for abortions, and the agency must certify to the state that it does not do so. The money that would be redirected by S.B. 201 is used to provide other health services. Ohio Right to Life’s claim about funding for Planned Parenthood is accurate. That the money cannot be used for abortions and that abortion procedures make up a small percentage of Planned Parenthood services are additional pieces of information that provide the full picture."
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9911
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New Ways to Detect Ovarian Cancer
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"Ovarian cancer is one of the most difficult cancers to find and treat early. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that there are no good screening tests and that the symptoms are vague and easily attributed to other causes. This story reports on new recommendations being issued by a group of cancer advocates to make women aware of the symptoms and urge them to get treatment if these symptoms come on suddenly and persist for two weeks or more. This story does accurately describe the symptoms and explains why this may be important, but does very little to actually inform the viewer. The story does not comment on the strength of the available evidence to support whether early intervention in women with this combination of symptoms results in better outcomes. The story does not comment on potential harms of the recommendations. The story should have discussed the very high numbers of women who will have these symptoms but not have ovarian cancer. Given that these symptoms are very vague, this is a big concern. The story continually refers to the combination of symptoms as if it is truly ""new"" information. The truth is, these symptoms have been known for a long time. What is novel is that advocacy groups have formalized recommendations on evaluating women with these symptoms and seemed to have organized a campaign to raise awareness. Finally, although the story mentions the survival rate for early versus late stage ovarian cancer, this is not adequate information on the benefit of treatment. The story should have provided more information on what percentage of women with these symptoms will indeed have ovarian cancer and what percentage will not. Although it may not yet be known what the benefit is of intervening in women with these symptoms, the story could have commented on this."
|
false
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"For the same reasons above, costs are also not applicable. However, the costs of the diagnostic tests that would occur as a result of these recommendations could have been acknowledged. Although the story mentions the survival rate for early versus late stage ovarian cancer, this is not adequate information on the benefit of treatment. The story should have provided more information on what percentage of women with these symptoms will indeed have ovarian cancer and what percentage will not. Although it may not yet be known what the benefit is of intervening in women with these symptoms, the story could have commented on this. The story does not comment on potential harms of the recommendations. The story should have discussed the very high numbers of women who will have these symptoms but not have ovarian cancer. Given that these symptoms are very vague, this is a big concern. The story does not comment on the strength of the available evidence to support whether early intervention in women with this combination of symptoms results in better outcomes. The story does not exaggerate the prevalence or seriousness of ovarian cancer. The story does not quote any experts other than the medical correspondent. Other clinicians or experts could have been very valuable in explaining how these new recommendations fit with existing clinical practice. Although the story mentions in passing a simple exam, ultrasound and a blood test as alternatives, this is not enough information. Because this story concerns a grouping of symptoms as a sign of ovarian cancer, availability of treatment is not applicable in this case. The story continually refers to the combination of symptoms as if it is truly ""new"" information. The truth is, these symptoms have been known for a long time. What is novel is that advocacy groups have formalized recommendations on evaluating women with these symptoms and seemed to have organized a campaign to raise awareness. There is no way to know if the story relied on a press release as the sole source of information."
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26753
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The United States is “actually screening fewer people (for the coronavirus than other countries) because we don't have appropriate testing.
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The CDC has stopped publicly reporting the number of tests it’s administered. So far, the United States has lagged behind other nations in terms of coronavirus testing. It has recently taken steps to ramp up its testing capabilities. Until recently, the U.S. had insisted that only the CDC’s test could be used — despite flaws in some early kits — and that only certain patients could get tested.
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true
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National, Public Health, Pundits, PunditFact, Coronavirus, Lou Dobbs,
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"Fox Business host Lou Dobbs, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump and his allies, challenged the president’s top health official recently on the administration’s handling of the 2019 coronavirus outbreak. Dobbs criticized Health and Human Secretary Alex Azar over a lack of transparency in the agency’s handling of COVID-19, which has infected nearly 91,000 people globally across 73 countries and led to more than nine American deaths. ""There’s a better ratio of testing for the coronavirus in other countries than we maintain here,"" Dobbs said during the March 2 interview on his TV show. ""We’re actually screening fewer people because we don’t have appropriate testing."" Azar countered that the Trump administration has taken recent steps to roll back regulations and increase the availability of diagnostic test kits to ""hundreds and thousands and millions."" The United States is set to significantly expand its testing capabilities in the coming days and weeks, but Dobbs is correct that the country has lagged behind other nations so far. ""It is true that diagnostic capacity in the U.S. has been lower than in some other countries, but that is changing,"" said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. It’s hard to pinpoint how many people have been tested for the coronavirus, both in the U.S. and around the world. The World Health Organization doesn’t track the number of tests administered in each country, and the numbers that are available are constantly updating. In a statement to PolitiFact, a Fox News spokesperson representing Dobbs cited data from the WorldOMeter, a real-time tool that ""shows estimated current numbers based on statistics and projections from the most reputable official organizations,"" according to its website. Using estimates derived from official government sources, the WorldOMeter says at least eight countries — South Korea, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Finland, Vietnam and Turkey — have given more tests relative to the size of their populations than the United States. That lines up with experts’ analyses and with what multiple news outlets have reported. Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said South Korea ""has screened at least thousands, and Guangdong, China, has screened at least hundreds of thousands,"" citing a WHO report on the outbreak in China, where the virus was first detected. South Korea ramped up testing by building drive-thru screening clinics for speedy assessments, according to local reports. Other countries, like Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Italy have also conducted thousands of diagnostic tests. ""We have done nothing like what other countries have done,"" Lipsitch said, noting that the U.S. had, until recently, limited not only the number of labs that were allowed to conduct tests on suspected cases, but also the number of patients that were eligible to be screened. It’s difficult to say just how far behind the U.S. has fallen, due to the murkiness around the number of administered tests. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stopped releasing a public count of tests on March 2. The administration’s public statements haven’t cleared it up. On Feb. 29, the CDC reported testing 472 Americans. A day later, Azar told ABC News the U.S. had tested over 3,600 people. And a spokesperson for HHS, Azar’s agency, told us on March 3 that the CDC had tested samples from more than 1,200 patients. ""I don't know how to track U.S. tests any more,"" Lipsitch said. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar speaks at the White House about the coronavirus on Feb. 28, 2020, in Washington. (AP/Vucci) The CDC stopped posting testing data as more state and local public-health labs have been brought into the fold, said Nancy Messonnier, a top CDC official, said during a March 3 briefing. ""With more and more testing done at states, these numbers would not be representative of the testing being done nationally,"" she said. An HHS spokesperson told us that the department doesn’t know how many additional tests have been administered by those state and local labs, adding that those labs can now test up to 15,000 people and are expected to be able to test as many as 75,000 people by March 6. The U.S. test count should rise into the millions as IDT, a commercial manufacturer, and other commercial and academic labs begin producing their own tests soon, according to HHS. The government’s initial testing effort was hindered by flaws with the CDC’s early test kits and restrictions that had limited which labs could run the tests and which patients could be tested. When the first U.S. coronavirus was detected, the country brushed aside the WHO test used by other nations and leaned on the CDC to develop and mass produce a more complicated test capable of detecting other viruses in addition to the coronavirus, according to reports. The test kits went out in early February. But some state labs that received them reported that flaws in the tests were triggering inconclusive results. Those states had to ship samples out to the CDC’s offices in Atlanta for results until the CDC fixed the problem weeks later. Since then, the Food and Drug Administration has given labs and hospitals across the country the go-ahead to administer their own tests before the FDA finishes reviewing them, so long as those tests are proven to work. That should lead to more testing, experts said. The CDC also modified its screening criteria to expand testing for some people with severe respiratory symptoms who did not travel to China or come into known contact with a coronavirus patient. Previously, travel to China or exposure to the virus were preconditions for screening. Adequate testing is essential to getting an accurate count of U.S. cases, experts said. Testing is also key for treating patients and identifying people who might be infected but don’t show symptoms, said Richard Watanabe, professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California. ""The latest data suggests the incubation period for COVID-19 can be as long as a couple of weeks,"" Watanabe said. Despite the recent acceleration, Lipsitch said U.S. testing is happening ""very slowly and at a level that is still paltry"" compared with some other countries. Dobbs said that the United States is ""actually screening fewer people (for the coronavirus than other countries) because we don’t have appropriate testing."" Experts told us that to date, the United States has lagged behind other countries, though numbers are imprecise. An error with the CDC’s early test kits contributed to the United States’ relatively low screening numbers. The administration has taken steps to make testing more widely available. With that additional information."
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3148
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AP Exclusive: PG&E’s history with blackouts signaled trouble.
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The state senators grilling the CEO of Pacific Gas & Electric Corp. were upset — like millions of other Californians, some spent days in the dark when the nation’s largest utility shut off power during windstorms this fall.
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true
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Wildfires, AP Top News, San Francisco, General News, Bill Johnson, Fires, Business, California, Science, U.S. News, Weekend Reads
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The lawmakers demanded that the executive explain why blackouts intended to prevent downed power lines from sparking deadly wildfires caused so much trouble of their own. The explanation CEO Bill Johnson offered the Capitol hearing room: Several smaller outages that PG&E triggered in the year before its debacle began in mid-October went well, giving his company misplaced confidence. “I think we got a little complacent that we had figured it out,” Johnson testified last month. PG&E had not figured it out. An Associated Press review shows widespread problems with the four “public safety power shutoffs” the utility started rolling out in 2018, a year before massive blackouts paralyzed much of California in recent months. Interviews and documents obtained under public records requests reveal persistent failures and broken promises that in some cases compromised public safety. Even as PG&E assured regulators it was fixing the problems, the utility kept making many of the same mistakes, further undermining trust after its outdated equipment and negligence has been blamed for fires that killed nearly 130 people during 2017 and 2018. Communication, a foundation of emergency management, was poor. PG&E’s notifications of impending outages were haphazard at times, with some sent after the power was already out. Telecommunications companies, water providers and emergency managers did not always receive the early word they needed. “We were surprised that PG&E provided no advanced warning to us,” an official with the city of Oroville’s drinking water provider wrote state regulators about a June outage. PG&E made important information hard to get. It was slow to distribute electronic maps showing who would lose power, making it harder for emergency responders to know exactly where to send resources. The utility also balked at providing the addresses of medically needy customers to local officials who planned to check on them in person. Breakdowns afflicted even basic technology. In a region that’s home to Silicon Valley and its thousands of computer programmers and engineers, PG&E had not prepared the website where it posted outage updates for a crush of customers, so it crashed. Tech experts from the state had to intervene. The sound quality of some calls PG&E hosted during shutoffs was so poor that emergency responders and legislators had a hard time understanding updates. Even then, not everyone was invited. “In the future, AT&T requests that it and other communications providers be included on any conference calls providing real time information,” the telecommunications giant protested to regulators after the June shutoff. These and other early failures weren’t widely recognized as harbingers of the issues that would overwhelm PG&E come mid-October, partly because the outages affected rural areas with less political and economic clout. While the headline-making shutoffs affected more than 2 million people across much of PG&E’s 70,000-square-mile service territory, the four initial blackouts affected tens of thousands in Northern California’s Sierra Nevada foothills and famed wine valleys. They hit in October 2018 and then in June, September and early October of this year. Among those who saw trouble building were regulators at the California Public Utilities Commission. The first shutoff was chaotic and the next three were not going according to the guidelines regulators had passed. Commission staff met more frequently with PG&E starting in the spring, using advice and persuasion rather than mandating changes. “We, as the state, never got to the point where we had complete confidence in PG&E’s ability to execute,” said Elizaveta Malashenko, the top California regulator overseeing blackouts. Malashenko, deputy executive director of safety and enforcement policy, told the AP that the commission didn’t act more aggressively because it has to balance punitive intervention with giving utilities a chance to self-correct. “There needs to be some basic operational assumption that you can set up a conference call,” Malashenko said. Some critics faulted regulators for not doing enough. The utilities commission, a sprawling bureaucracy with a complex rule-making process, was “not aggressive enough early in setting clear requirements and standards,” said Melissa Kasnitz, legal director for the Center for Accessible Technology, which advocates for people with disabilities. PG&E promised to fix a range of problems promptly, and an executive said it worked hard to deliver. In many ways, that didn’t happen. Not only did the problems continue throughout the smaller shutoffs, but they were replicated on a huge scale starting with the mid-October shutoffs. The problems galled local officials, who vented deep frustration that a utility they often work closely with kept failing them. After all, they are the ones dealing with a shutoff’s consequences. They must dispatch ambulances, run jails and water plants, direct traffic through darkened intersections, set up community shelters and much more. “It’s almost as if it’s intentional disregard of all the warnings we gave them,” said Napa County Supervisor Diane Dillon, whose district north of San Francisco has experienced nearly every shutoff. ___ Sixteen million people — more than the population of nearly any U.S. state — depend on PG&E for power. The shutoffs were an inconvenience for some and extremely costly for others. For society’s most frail, they brought questions of life and death. Those who rely on medical devices in their homes were particularly vulnerable. “PG&E did nothing to help us who depend on electricity to run our life support,” recounted Grace Lin, a polio survivor who needs a ventilator to breathe and uses an electric wheelchair. “It’s not like we could simply grind our teeth and tough it out by holding our breath.” Lin said she was confused by the notifications PG&E sent ahead of the first shutoff that affected her San Francisco Bay Area home on Oct. 9. The company website they referred to for updates was frozen. Lin considered herself lucky that she had the means to evacuate 20 miles away, to a quadriplegic friend’s house that had electricity. PG&E could identify “medical baseline” customers such as Lin based on billing records. Local officials working to identify everyone who might need help repeatedly asked PG&E to share its list, so no one was overlooked. Regulators said PG&E promised it would release medical baseline addresses during a shutoff. Yet when each of the first four hit, PG&E insisted that locals sign a legal agreement not to disclose the addresses, causing delay and uncertainty that regulators said could risk lives. On the eve of the first massive power outage, Malashenko of the utilities commission was urgently emailing company officials in frustration. “This issue has been discussed many times over the last several months” yet “has once again become an issue with PG&E,” she wrote on Oct. 8. Malashenko said state officials also pushed PG&E to improve in other areas. Starting in April, they met at least weekly with PG&E, pointing out needed improvements and stressing that aspects of the utility’s preparation was inadequate. PG&E argued that the commission’s own privacy rules meant it couldn’t share the addresses without a non-disclosure agreement, spokesman Jeff Smith explained. Resolving the problem took an order that the commission’s executive director sent three hours before the first massive blackouts began. Other groups of vulnerable Californians endured shutoffs without the help they needed. “A lot of them don’t have support, a lot of them don’t have family,” Betty Briggs, 84, said of her elderly neighbors in the well-touristed Napa Valley town of Calistoga. “It makes it very difficult, and it puts them in danger.” Briggs can get around without help, but her husband requires 24-hour care due to dementia. He lives nearby at Cedars Care Home, where seven residents in their 80s and 90s experienced three shutoffs before mid-October. The outages created anxiety for people reliant on routine, as well as practical problems. Beds and wheelchair lifts require electricity. So does the heat and air conditioning. When the freezer got too warm, staff tossed 30 days of backup food. Owner Irais Lopez still hasn’t restocked fully. “Now, we only buy small quantities,” Lopez said, “because we don’t know what will happen.” ___ At PG&E’s high-rise headquarters in downtown San Francisco, the emergency operations center springs to life with each shutoff. Employees in different colored vests that distinguish their expertise cluster around banks of computer monitors showing real-time updates. Maps track wind speed and direction, as well as which circuits are down. Conversation hums in the background. This is where decisions are made and answers can be found — and local officials said they felt they had little access to either. Fed up with communication gaps, one hard-hit county requested a presence at PG&E headquarters during the September shutoff. Regulators required that the utility hold seats in its emergency operations center for local representatives, but a lawyer for Sonoma County instead spent her day in a conference room several locked doors away. “There was just a lack of understanding on behalf of PG&E of why local government needs timely information,” said Petra Bruggisser, a deputy county counsel. PG&E already had a shaky reputation in its Northern and central California territory. The company spent three years in bankruptcy starting in 2001, after California’s attempt to deregulate its power market went awry. Maintenance failures led to a natural gas pipeline blast near San Francisco in 2010 that killed eight people. PG&E was found criminally liable and paid a $1.6 billion fine. In late 2017, its equipment was suspected of starting the Tubbs Fire that killed 22 people and destroyed more than 5,600 buildings. The utility revealed in spring 2018 that it would start using power shutoffs when fire danger was high and extreme winds blew. PG&E then began to explain what to expect, sending millions of emails to update its customer contact files, running advertising in multiple languages and holding hundreds of meetings with community leaders, public safety agencies and residents. The California Public Utilities Commission started writing guidelines for how utilities should roll out “de-energization.” The guidelines were published as a 176-page document in June. By that point, PG&E had again filed for bankruptcy protection, crushed by liabilities for fires in 2017 and 2018, including the Camp Fire that nearly wiped out the town of Paradise and killed 85 people. The utility now has a market value of about $6 billion — a drop of $30 billion in just over two years — and is working with the state and a federal judge to emerge from bankruptcy by June 30. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said he expects PG&E’s entire 14-member board of directors, including Johnson, its CEO, to step down before the state will approve the utility’s plan to regain its financial footing. “PG&E’s recent management of the public safety power shutoffs did not restore public confidence,” the Democratic governor warned the company in a Dec. 13 letter. “Instead, PG&E caused extreme uncertainty and harm for Californians who rely on power for their health care and their livelihood.” PG&E said Johnson was not available for an interview. The utility’s point man on the shutoffs told AP that he believes Johnson, while testifying before lawmakers last month, was referring to its ability to kill and safely restore power to an extremely complex electrical grid. Sumeet Singh, a vice president who oversees PG&E’s community wildfire safety program, listed a litany of ways the utility is investing in fixes that he said will lessen the need for future shutoffs. Those include trimming more vegetation near power lines and burying some lines in areas most at risk of igniting. Singh also acknowledged that the utility had some struggles during the early shutoffs but that it strove to improve and disputed any characterization that it did not succeed in some ways. He cited how quickly the utility restored power as one improvement, along with the timeliness and accuracy of customer notifications. “Did we hit the mark on every single improvement? No. Do we have more work to do? Yes,” Singh said. Power shutoffs are likely to be a feature of life in California for years to come. PG&E must invest billions in infrastructure upgrades, and communities are spreading into lands once populated by trees and brush. Regulators promise to be watching closely. “If we have an outcome that doesn’t meet the public expectation and what we need to run as a state,” said Malashenko of the utilities commission, “that means that we need to rethink our approach and try something different and drive to a better outcome.” In November, the commission launched an investigation into whether it should sanction PG&E for violating shutoff protocols. PG&E said it will need to improve how it reacts after it shuts off the power. “I think we thought the big event was turning off the power,” Johnson told lawmakers. “And I think we focused on that as the main event instead of the impact of that, right, on the people it affected.” ___ Pritchard reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press journalists Terence Chea and Eric Risberg in Calistoga and Adam Beam in Sacramento contributed to this report. ___ Contact Pritchard at https://twitter.com/lalanewsman.
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10995
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FDA approves breast cancer test
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"The story reports on a recently approved genetic test for predicting a woman’s risk of breast cancer recurrence. The story does mention that the test is not ""foolproof"", and there is always the risk of false positives and false negatives. However, this test is only used as a guidepost in assessing whether or not to have more or less treatment after breast cancer surgery, usually in the form of chemotherapy. The story gives no indication if this test will widely available, but makes claims that it ""could save lives"" and might make ""all the difference"". There is no evidence this test could save lives. Even if a woman chooses additional treatment (i.e. chemotherapy and/or hormone therapy), there is no guarantee she will live longer. Cancer can still recur, despite having the test and subsequent treatment, so having this genetic screening may not make that much of a difference. It would be the treatment itself that may or may not make a difference for an individual woman. The story states that this test ""could improve the treatment"" for women with breast cancer, but it does not state how or what treatment options would be improved. It is true the test could help tailor treatment, but the treatment options are still the same. The choice of less, not more treatment based on the results of the test is also important, but not mentioned. If fact, many women might take this test in order to feel comfortable with a decision for less treatment. The story fails to mention the anticipated cost of this test, which is a significant oversight. The cost of gene assays already on the market are typically between $3000-4000 and are only covered by some private health insurers and by Medicaid in a few states. Thus, this new genetic test may not be financially feasible for many women. Because these women would not have has access to this test—at least initially—the story should not include an anecdote claiming the test ""made all the difference"". This is misleading and may cause unnecessary distress for women who feel they are at a disadvantage in their treatment."
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false
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"The story fails to mention the anticipated cost of this test, which is a significant oversight. The cost of gene assays already on the market are typically between $3000-4000 and are only covered by some private health insurers and by Medicaid in a few states. Thus, the newer genetic test may not be financially feasible for many women. There is no quantification of the benefit of this test, that is the specificity of measuring what it is supposed to measure , i.e. the risk of breast cancer recurrence. In other words, the story didn't explain how good a test it is. The story does mention that the test is not ""foolproof"", and there is always the risk of false positives and false negatives. However, this test is really used as a guidepost in assessing whether or not to have more or less treatment after breast cancer surgery, usually in the form of chemotherapy. Cancer can still recur, despite having the test and subsequent treatment. Ideally the story should have explained the rate of false positives and negatives. Nonethless, we'll give the story the benefit of the doubt on this criterion. There is no evidence presented in the story regarding the validation of this test. Approval for this test was based on a study of 302 patients whose were under 61 years with stage I and II disease and who did not have metastases. Positive predictive value was 23% at 5 years and 29% at 10 years; negative predictive value was 95% at 5 years and 90% at 10 years. The story engages in test mongering. The story really missed the mark in that really the value of these tests is to identify those who can safely forego chemotherapy (predicting those who will not get recurrence). The story makes claims that it ""could save lives"" and might make ""all the difference"". There is no evidence this test could save lives. Even if a woman chooses adjuvant treatment (chemotherapy or hormone therapy) there is no guarantee she will live longer. While gene assays may be beneficial for individualizing the decision process following breast cancer therapy, they do not save lives. In fact, a woman at low-risk of a recurrence may decide not to have additional therapy and, thus, she would not reap any potentially life-extending benefits from chemotherapy. Additionally, not every woman has access to these tests and to make a claim that will ""make all the difference"" is misleading and may cause distress for women who may feel that are at a disadvantage in their treatment. The story provides interviews with Dr .Gutman a member of the FDA's In Vitro Diagnostic Device Evaluation, but not an oncologist, and a cancer researcher at Dana-Farber. The story also includes a patient who used the test; however, her personal testimony may bias someone in favor of the test. The story states that this test ""could improve the treatment"" of women with breast cancer, but it does not state how and what the treatment options are. The choice of less, not more, treatment based on the results of the test is an option (and the reason some women opt for this test). This is not mentioned in the story. Also the story did not mention that there is another gene test, e.g. oncotype that is also available (albeit without FDA approval and many of the same caveats mentioned above) The story gives no indication if this test will be widely available. The test is first of a particular kind to be approved by the FDA to predict whether existing cancer will metastasize (spread to other parts of a patient's body). Gene assays to help predict breast cancer recurrence have been available for a few years. The test is designed to predict recurrence for stage I or II breast cancer recurrence or metastasis in women with lymph node negative disease. We can't be sure if the story relied solely or largely on a news release."
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9146
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Study confirms benefits of fennel in reducing postmenopause symptoms
|
This news release from the North American Menopause Society makes a brief study of fennel in reducing menopause symptoms sound like the final word on the subject — but we’ve seen many other situations where a larger study debunks a short-term small scale study. The release describes results of a small, 10-week pilot study of 79 Iranian women designed to credibly assess the value of the licorice-like herb in reducing hot flashes, insomnia and other symptoms of menopause. Although the release includes a cautionary quote at the end calling for further study to support the investigators’ claim of benefit, the headline is far too optimistic for a small pilot study. The release lacks numbers to put the claims in context; cost information and potential harms are also left out. As a result, it will be tough for the intended audience of journalists, or other readers, to determine whether fennel is a truly effective and safe short- or long-term treatment choice. The use of herbal and other non-traditional medicines for treating post-menopausal symptoms has experienced a surge of interest among women whose concerns about hormone therapies are real and understandable. Fennel, a so-called phytoestrogen, has been known anecdotally and in some observational studies to reduce the discomfort of menstrual cramps and has also been taken for menopause symptoms. Thus, news releases and articles about studies that attempt to put some scientific rigor behind alleged benefits will find eager audiences. Many women suffer from menopause symptoms but avoid taking estrogen supplements because of side effects, cost, or concern about risks. Also, some simply want a little symptom relief from what they regard as a normal aging process. Something as “simple” as a harmless over-the-counter herbal supplement for symptoms seems ideal, doesn’t it? But because it is difficult for consumers to make an informed choice about safely or effectively taking fennel on the basis of a small pilot study, any news release about it or story derived from it, needs to be approached with caution as well as curiosity.
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mixture
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fennel,menopause,North American Menopause Society
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Fennel supplements are sold in brick and mortar stores and online. Costs are easily established and should have been addressed in the release along with equivalent doses used in the pilot study. We found 100 mg fennel seed capsules selling on Amazon.com for $9.58 for 100 capsules. It’s not clear that there is a standard way to assess fennel potency. Is the fennel simply ground up and made into a 100 mg tablet? What should a consumer look for when trying to buy it? The release doesn’t offer any guidance. We were disappointed to read only very vague terms such as “significant statistical difference” and “improved menopause symptoms” used to describe improvements in hot flashes, sleeplessness, vaginal dryness, and anxiety. The release could have done better on this score had it told us something about the scales used to measure improvement (What was the minimum and maximum score for hot flashes? The improvement in sleeplessness went from what to what?) and the absolute difference from the beginning of the trial to completion of the trial. The jury remains out about the potential long-term effects of what some refer to as endocrine disrupters. Readers of this release are told there were no “serious” side effects, but not what the side effects were. Nor was there any mention of the ongoing scientific debate about the safety of phytoestrogens. Concerns have been raised about tumor promotion in estrogen-sensitive tumors from phytoestrogens (although plant estrogen is actually very weak compared to estrogen used for pharmacologic purposes). Readers of the release are told the study was “randomized, triple-blind, placebo-controlled,” but the release contains no specific information about how the treatment and placebo groups compared, or the amount and concentration of fennel given in the treatment group. In addition, a 10-week trial is a very short time-frame for evaluating symptoms which can wax and wane over several years. The release should have acknowledged this. No mongering of menopause symptoms here. While menopause is a normal phenomenon of aging sometimes symptoms can be severely bothersome. The release provides some interesting context on the use of alternative and complementary medicine for treating menopause symptoms. The release doesn’t tell us who funded the study. According to the Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials, the study was funded by Tehran University. The release cites hormone therapy (HT) as the most effective treatment for symptoms, while noting concerns about HT’s potential side effects. A broader discussion about managing hot flashes (the most bothersome symptom for most women) by avoiding alcohol and spicy foods, wearing layers, and other interventions would have been helpful. We’ll rate this Not Applicable since most readers will likely be aware that fennel can be purchased and that supplements are available. However, as noted above, it’s not clear at all how 100 mg doses are formulated. The news hook here is that results of this study are billed as “confirmation” of benefits — an overstatement — but also that the study is one of the first undertaken with scientific rigor. It’s hard to say if that is so, but the release makes a reasonable case, albeit based on a very brief trial. The release doesn’t employ sensational language. However, we do have concerns with the headline, as noted above, since it overstates the findings.
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2022
|
Calories on menus don't affect kids' food choices.
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Requiring fast-food restaurants in New York City to post calorie counts on menus did little to cut the number of calories children and teens consumed, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
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true
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Health News
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They found that children and adolescents noticed the calories posted on the menu but the calorie counts made little difference in what they chose to order. The researchers said taste was the most important factor the children and teens gave for their menu selections. The study, published online in the International Journal of Obesity, challenges the notion that calorie labeling affects purchasing behavior of teens or parents buying food for their children. “It means we’re going to have to rethink what other sorts of interventions might be more effective,” Dr. Brian Elbel of NYU, who led the study, said in a telephone interview. Mandating calorie counts on restaurant menus is part of President Barack Obama’s new healthcare law is included in the White House’s push to reduce rates of obesity, which is one of the biggest health challenges facing the United States. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says two-thirds of American adults and 15 percent of children are overweight or obese. In some states, the childhood obesity rate is above 30 percent. U.S. first lady Michelle Obama, spearheading an administration initiative on child obesity, has urged food manufacturers to re-package food so that it is healthier for kids. BETTER-INFORMED CONSUMERS New York became the first U.S. city to try to attack the U.S. obesity epidemic by requiring fast-food restaurants to list the calories of their foods on menus in 2008. The hope was that better-informed consumers would make better food choices. Researchers at New York University wanted to see how effective the city’s law is at getting parents and young people to think twice about ordering high-calorie foods. The team gathered restaurant receipts and surveyed 427 parents and teenagers at fast-food restaurants both before and after mandatory labeling began in July 2008. They focused on four of the largest chains in New York: McDonald’s, privately held Burger King, Wendy’s and Yum Brands Inc’s KFC. They compared this to food purchased at restaurants in nearby Newark, New Jersey, which did not have mandatory labeling. The researchers found that after labeling began, 57 percent of New York teens surveyed said they noticed the calorie information and 9 percent said this information influenced their food choices. “What we didn’t see is any change in the number of calories before and after labeling started,” Elbel said. “We also didn’t see any changes in the number of calories for choices parents were making for their kids.” The foods teens bought amounted to about 725 calories per meal and the food parents bought for their children were about 600 calories per meal. The study found that most teens underestimated the amount of calories they had purchased, some by up to 466 calories. Elbel said the study was not big enough to predict how food labeling would work as it is rolled out in the new health law.
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28637
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"Large corporations routinely take out ""dead peasant"" life insurance policies on low-level employees to be paid out as executive bonuses."
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While corporate-owned life insurance was once a reasonably common practice in big business, the Pension Protection Act of 2006 removed its primary function as a tax loophole. And although the proceeds of such policies previously paid out after the deaths of low-level employees on occasion funded executive salaries, their primary purpose was not to generate corporate profits based upon higher worker mortality rates. Increased scrutiny in the early 2000s (and corresponding litigation) led to the decreased use of dead peasant insurance policies after 2006.
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mixture
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Politics
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In April 2002, the Wall Street Journal published an article titled “Companies Profit on Workers’ Deaths Through ‘Dead Peasants’ Insurance,” describing what was then a little-known practice wherein large companies purchased corporate-owned life insurance (or COLI) policies on low-level employees in order to garner tax breaks and profit from their deaths (even if those employees had long since ceased working for the companies that took out the policies). That article addressed the more colorful name by which the practice had become more widely known in subsequent years, “dead peasant insurance,” and how it grew to become common after regulatory changes in the 1980s: The practice is as widespread as it is little-known. Millions of current and former workers at hundreds of large companies are thus worth a great deal to their employers dead, as well as alive, yielding billions of dollars in tax breaks over the years, as well as a steady stream of tax-free death benefits. Nestle USA has policies covering 18,000 workers, Pitney Bowes Inc. has policies covering 23,000, and Procter & Gamble Co. has 15,000 covered workers, spokespeople for these companies confirm. The coverage is called broad-based insurance, or corporate-owned life insurance, usually shortened to COLI. For years, companies could insure only key personnel deemed essential to the business. But a loosening of state rules in the 1980s allowed for an explosion in a new kind of COLI that covers rank-and-file workers — known in the insurance industry as janitors insurance or, in at least one instance, dead peasants insurance. “I want a summary sheet that has … the Dead Peasants in the third column,” one of Winn-Dixie Stores Inc.’s insurance consultants wrote in a 1996 memo. Winn-Dixie wouldn’t comment on the memo. The article focused in part on the 1992 death of former retail employee Felipe M. Tillman, aged 29, and a policy for $339,302 paid out to the parent company of the music store that briefly employed him. According to the piece, a lawsuit filed by the deceased’s relatives exposed the fact that “CM Holdings used $168,875 of the death benefit on Mr. Tillman for executive compensation.” However, executive compensation was only one use for such insurance policies cited by the companies interviewed about COLI payouts, as insurance funds were applied in a number of ways to company expenses of varying descriptions. A case involving Winn-Dixie’s use of COLI policies was pivotal in drawing attention to the issue, and Tillman’s brother testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance about the issue in 2003: The abuse of EOLI policies first gained national public attention in a case involving the Winn-Dixie supermarket chain. Winn-Dixie purchased EOLI policies on approximately 36,000 employees and systematically borrowed against the cash value of the policies to fund the premiums. The income tax savings to Winn-Dixie from deducting the interest payments and related fees were projected to be substantially in excess of potential benefit to Winn-Dixie from maintaining the EOLI program. The Internal Revenue Service disallowed the deduction of the interest and fees under the sham transaction doctrine, arguing that Winn-Dixie’s purchase of the EOLI policies lacked economic substance and a valid nontax business purpose, and the Tax Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit agreed. Winn-Dixie was not alone in maintaining EOLI policies on a broad base of employees. While Congress and the I.R.S. continued to challenge the deductibility of interest and fees incurred in connection with EOLI policies, the public was becoming increasingly concerned with the ghoulish nature of employers profiting from the death of their employees. On October 23, 2003, Spencer Tillman, a former NFL football player who became a sports analyst for CBS, testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance regarding the insurance policy that Camelot Music maintained on the life of his brother, Felipe. Felipe was a low-level employee of Camelot Music who had not worked for Camelot Music for many years prior to his death. Unbeknownst to Felipe or his family, Camelot Music maintained an insurance policy on Felipe’s life that paid Camelot Music approximately $340,000 upon Felipe’s death. Felipe’s family did not receive any portion of the insurance proceeds. Congress responded to the public’s growing discomfort with EOLI policies by enacting I.R.C. §101(j). Interest in dead peasant insurance policies was spurred by the release of Michael Moore’s 2009 film Capitalism: A Love Story. That documentary featured interviews with the family of a woman who once worked as a cake decorator for Walmart and died of asthma complications while in her twenties. Her family maintained that they did not receive any portion of the insurance proceeds paid out to Walmart after her death: That segment was one of the most powerful scenes in the film, and its details were among the most memorable. However, Moore clarified that Walmart had long discontinued the practice of obtaining life insurance policies on rank and file employees years earlier following a larger lawsuit initiated by families of deceased employees insured by that giant retail chain. While many viewers inferred that such policies presented a frightening incentive in regard to employee mortality rates, the larger view of the life insurance schemes amounted to a debate about corporate tax loopholes: Discount retailing giant WalMart cannot sue its insurers just because it gambled and lost $1.3 billion on getting a tax break from thousands of insurance policies it took out on employees, according to a brief filed by the insurers in the Delaware Supreme Court. WalMart is contending in an appeal that it was entitled to rely on its expert insurance brokers to warn the company of the inherent dangers of buying COLI policies. WalMart has asked the high court to revive its bad-faith and breach-of-duty claims against its insurers, which the Delaware Chancery Court had dismissed. Such policies lost their attraction for corporations long ago but disputes over liability for the tax consequences continue for companies in a position similar to WalMart’s. In 2006 (three years before the release of Capitalism: A Love Story), Walmart settled a class-action lawsuit brought by families of employees insured under COLI policies in the 1980s and 1990s: WalMart employees in Oklahoma won a decisive victory when a federal judge gave final approval to a $5.1 million settlement of a class action that alleged the retailer benefited from “Dead Peasant Insurance” policies it wrongfully enacted. “Corporate-owned life insurance policies were products offered by life insurance companies, they were common and well-intentioned but are no longer available at WalMart. With regard to the settlement, it’s the best possible resolution under the circumstances,” company spokesman John Simley said.
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130
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Reynolds American files for FDA review of e-cigarette.
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British American Tobacco Plc unit Reynolds American Inc said on Friday it had filed for a review of its Vuse e-cigarettes by the U.S. Food and Drug administration, giving it a lead over its main rival Juul Labs Inc.
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true
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Health News
|
The FDA has set a May 2020 deadline for e-cigarette makers to submit a formal application to keep their products on the market amid its efforts to curb the use of e-cigarette among teens. Reynolds, whose Vuse e-cigarettes deliver nicotine via a cartridge-based vapor system, said it had provided the health regulator with over 150,000 pages of documentation, including information on the composition, design and manufacturing process associated with its product, as well as safety data. The company said it had also worked with a team of more than 100 people to prepare the filing, including multiple regulatory experts and scientists. U.S. regulators are exploring ways to monitor the manufacturing and marketing of e-cigarettes following a rise in use of these products among teens, and a recent outbreak of a mysterious lung illness linked to vaping that has claimed at least 29 lives. Vaping devices such as Juul’s, which vaporize liquid containing nicotine, have borne the brunt of the regulatory crackdown globally. The Trump administration also outlined plans in September to remove all flavored e-cigarettes from store shelves, pointing the finger at sweet flavors that had drawn millions of children into nicotine addiction.
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41066
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Mosquitoes kill 2,740 people every day.
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This appears to be an overestimate. Mosquitoes are responsible for no more than around 700,000 deaths per year, or 1,900 a day.
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false
|
online
|
26,383 people die of cancer each day. 24,641 die of heart disease every day. This is an underestimate for all cardiovascular disease deaths, but close to the daily figure of those who die from coronary heart disease specifically. 4,300 people die of diabetes every day. Suicide is the cause of death for around 3,000 people per day Suicide is the cause of death for around 2,000 people per day. Mosquitoes kill 2,740 people every day. This appears to be an overestimate. Mosquitoes are responsible for no more than around 700,000 deaths per year, or 1,900 a day. Humans kill 1,300 fellow humans every day. Snakes kill 137 people every day This is an underestimate. Snakes kill around 378 people per day. Claim 1 of 8
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6068
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Officials: 2 new cases of Legionnaires’ in suburban Chicago.
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Public health officials are worried an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease at a suburban Chicago retirement home appears to be spreading with two new cases in the nearby community.
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true
|
Chicago, Health, General News, Legionnaires disease, Illinois, Public health
|
Legionnaire’s is a flu-like illness contracted when infected water vapor is inhaled. The elderly and people with weakened immune systems can be particularly susceptible. The Illinois Department of Public Health reported 12 cases at Covenant Assisted Living in Batavia through August. The two new cases were reported in recent days. State officials say the retirement home plans to clean its water systems, including cooling towers that release water drops into the air. The agency’s director, Dr. Ngozi Ezike, says there could be additional cases, even with corrective measures. Illinois reported over 500 cases of Legionnaires’ disease in 2018.
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742
|
Tropical storm warning issued for Bahamas; 1,300 still missing.
|
A tropical cyclone was forecast to move across the northwestern Bahamas in the coming days, potentially bringing more rain and wind to islands already devastated by Hurricane Dorian, the U.S. National Hurricane Center warned on Thursday.
|
true
|
Environment
|
The Miami-based hurricane center issued a tropical storm warning for islands including hurricane-hit Abacos and Grand Bahama, saying the system could become a tropical depression or storm before making landfall as early as Friday. Hurricane Dorian slammed into the Bahamas on Sept. 1 as a Category 5 storm, one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record to hit land, packing top sustained winds of 185 miles per hour (298 km per hour). The tropical cyclone was not expected to bring anywhere near that level of devastation, but was capable of winds of 30 miles per hour and 2 to 4 inches of rain through Sunday, according to the hurricane center. Aid groups rushed shelter material to residents living in the shells of former homes or whose homes had been stripped of their roofs. “We’re seeing plastic tarps go out all over the islands, and that’s extremely important because now you’ve got another tropical storm coming,” said Ken Isaacs, vice president of programs for U.S. relief organization Samaritan’s Purse. The prime minister of the Bahamas, Hubert Minnis, on Wednesday said the official death toll was 50 but was expected to rise. Former Prime Minister Hubert Ingraham said he believed “hundreds” were dead on Abaco “and significant numbers on Grand Bahama,” the Nassau Guardian newspaper reported on Thursday. Minnis said there were problems coordinating aid due to the level of devastation and he was trying to remove “bureaucratic roadblocks.” With 1,300 people still missing, according to the Bahamian government, relief services are focused on search and rescue as well as providing life-sustaining food, water and shelter. Officials have erected large tents in Nassau to house those made homeless by Dorian and plan to erect tent cities on Abaco capable of sheltering up to 4,000 people. A flood of aid has caused bottlenecks at docks and airports, creating “a lot of delays” in relief supplies, said Nat Abu-Bonsrah of the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, the global humanitarian organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Due to a shortage of functioning vehicles and facilities on Grand Bahama, the group turned to church members to lend their cars and kitchens for its program providing hot meals to over 400 people a day in Freeport. “We’ve not been able to reach them as much as we want,” he said of efforts to get hundreds of hygiene kits to survivors. Groups like Samaritan’s Purse, with their own aircraft or logistics chains, said they had not encountered issues with coordination or government red tape. “I think we’re accomplishing our mission, any roadblocks we have right now are our own,” said Dennis Clancey, a field operations manager for relief group Team Rubicon, which has deployed mobile medical units to treat patients.
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4018
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Clock is ticking on NY deadline for student vaccinations.
|
When New York lawmakers revoked a religious exemption for mandatory school vaccinations, the change sent thousands of the state’s parents scrambling to get their kids shots — or get them out of the classroom entirely.
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true
|
AP Top News, Immunizations, Religion, Health, Measles, General News, New York, Buffalo, Health care industry
|
Lawmakers did away with the exemption in June amid the nation’s worst measles outbreak since 1992. More than 26,000 children in public and private schools and day care centers had previously gone unvaccinated for religious reasons, according to the state Health Department. Now time is running short. Unvaccinated students have 14 days from the start of school to prove they received the first dose of each immunization, and they must make appointments for the next round within a month. Most schools reopen just after Labor Day. Some parents opposed to vaccinations are choosing to pull their kids from school rather than comply. “Those that are choosing to vaccinate, it’s not because their beliefs have changed,” said Jina Gentry, a Buffalo mother of four who will home-school her children rather than have them vaccinated. She said not everyone has the means or time to do the same. At the private Aurora Waldorf School in suburban Buffalo, parents of 21 students said they would not be attending this fall, rather than rush to vaccinate, said administrator Anna Harp, who oversees about 175 students from preschool to eighth grade. “Some families have told us that they plan to home-school, and a few said that they were moving out of New York,” Harp said. “Several families have told us that they plan to return once their children’s immunizations are up to date.” New York became the fourth state, along with California, Mississippi and West Virginia, to eliminate religious and personal-belief exemptions for vaccines. Maine will remove them in 2021. All states allow medical exemptions. More than 1,200 cases of measles have been confirmed in 30 states this year, more than three-quarters of them linked to outbreaks in New York and New York City, the Centers for Disease Control reported. Many of the New York cases have been among unvaccinated people in Orthodox Jewish communities . Resistance to vaccinations remains, despite scientific evidence that they are both safe and effective. The state Health Department will audit schools to assure compliance with the new law and require unvaccinated students without a valid medical excuse to leave school, spokeswoman Jill Montag said. Schools already submit annual surveys about immunization coverage and are subject to spot checks to confirm their answers. Schools that violate the rules could face fines. “We do not anticipate having any problems securing compliance,” Montag said in an email. Before the statewide law change, the New York City Health Department closed 12 schools that could not prove students were vaccinated following an April emergency order. Like many parents, Gentry’s view on vaccines does not stem from formal religious teachings but rather personal beliefs, including that God created people with natural immunity against diseases. A literacy coach for Buffalo Public Schools, she said her full workday will now be followed by lessons with her kids before and after dinner. “It’s a huge change and it’s definitely life altering,” she said. Among her biggest concerns, she said, is that her kids are now “segregated from people.” Leslie Danesi said her 15-year-old daughter, who was captain of her school’s basketball team and was to be president of the student council, will be home-schooled this year and miss out on those opportunities. “Those are big things for a 15-year-old,” said the mother of six who lives in the town of Greece, near Rochester. She said she views her children as gifts from God, and they should not be subject to forced injections. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1905 that states have the right to enforce compulsory vaccination laws. Opponents have filed at least two unsuccessful lawsuits. A hearing for one drew more than 1,000 people to the Albany County Courthouse.
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2069
|
Military suicide prevention efforts fail: report.
|
Efforts to prevent suicides among U.S. war veterans are failing, in part because distressed troops do not trust the military to help them, top military officials said on Thursday.
|
true
|
Health News
|
Poor training, a lack of coordination and an overstretched military are also factors, but a new 76-point plan lays out ways to improve this, Colonel John Bradley, chief of psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, told a conference. Bradley said a team of experts spent a year interviewing troops who had attempted suicide, family members and others for the report and plan, presented last month to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who is due to report to Congress in 90 days. “They tell us again and again that we are failing,” Bradley told a symposium on military medicine sponsored by the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and the Henry M. Jackson Foundation. Each branch of the services — the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines — rushed to create a suicide prevention program, but there was no coordination. The report recommends that the defense secretary’s office take over coordination of suicide prevention efforts. On-the-ground prevention training often failed because those running the sessions did not understand their importance, Bradley said. “They are mocked and they are probably harmful,” he said. According to the report, available here 1,100 servicemen and women committed suicide in 2005 to 2009 -- one suicide every day and a half. The Army's suicide rate doubled in that time. About 1.9 million U.S. service men and women have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We have done all the right things but despite all the things we have done, suicide rates have risen, particularly in the Marines and Army,” said Colonel Charles Hoge of Walter Reed. “A large percentage of our servicemen, our veterans, do not come in to get help,” he added. “It is not just the perception that they will be treated differently or somehow that it will affect their career, but it is also distrust in the system and distrust that mental health professionals can help them,” Hoge added. “They don’t trust us. They believe we speak with forked tongues,” Bradley said. Most of the suicides are among young, white males, the experts said. “Marines are young, they are confident, they are aggressive,” said Lieutenant General Richard Zimmer of the U.S. Marine Corps. “They are the last ones to raise their hand and say they have a problem.” And troops who seek mental health services can lose their security clearances, their weapons and can be taken away from duties vital to their careers, Hoge and Bradley said. When they return home from war, the skills that kept them alive under fire make them dysfunctional in civilian society, Hoge said. “There are messages that the warrior gets when they back here that they are crazy,” he said. In addition, all the services are overstretched, the report said. “The force is out of balance,” Bradley said. “The force is fatigued. Anyone who doesn’t believe that has their eyes closed.” Hoge said physical demands can also affect the mind. Troops often operate on just 3 or 4 hours a sleep a night for extended periods. “They often have pain, chronic pain,” he said. “They have gone through all these events, including concussions. It is clear there are physical changes that happen.” Bradley said the report calls for skills-based training for commanders, troops and their families.
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7231
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Celebrities launch pot brands as California legalizes drug.
|
Country singer Willie Nelson, the children of the late reggae icon Bob Marley and comedian Whoopi Goldberg are just a few of the growing number of celebrities publicly jumping into the marijuana industry and eyeing the California pot market, which is expected to explode after voters legalized the recreational use of weed.
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true
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Willie Nelson, Medical marijuana, Entertainment, Celebrities, Business, California, Bob Marley, Whoopi Goldberg, U.S. News
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Regulators are still scrambling to get California’s recreational pot market launched and are racing to issue licenses to growers and sellers by early 2018. Still to be decided is who will receive the first licenses to grow, distribute and sell recreational marijuana. Growers already cleared to sell medical marijuana in California could be the first in line. Analysts say brands already established in legal medical marijuana dispensaries — including celebrities who partner with approved California growers — will have a leg up when the first licenses are issued. Several pot-loving celebrities are in prime positions because of their fame and backstory with the drug, including Marley’s children. The late Jamaican singer was at the vanguard of the global legalization movement. Backed by a Seattle venture capital firm, Marley’s oldest daughter launched Marley Natural in 2014. Cedella Marley says California is now the world’s largest legal cannabis market since voters approved Proposition 64 in November. Marley Natural products already are available in California medical dispensaries. There is enormous opportunity for growth in the state, Cedella Marley said in an email interview. “It also carries enormous cultural significance and influence, so it will be an important place to help people understand the herb the way my dad enjoyed it,” she said. Bob Marley’s youngest son, Damian Marley, runs a competing operation, Stony Hill, and recently joined with another weed company to buy a vacant 77,000-square-foot prison for $4.1 million in Coalinga, in California’s Central Valley. They turned it into a marijuana factory. All uses of pot remain illegal under federal law, keeping most banks and Wall Street companies out of an industry that could grow from $6 billion to $50 billion in the next decade, according to the financial services firm Cowen & Co. Nonetheless, Wall Street has taken notice. Beer and spirit companies have warned investors that legal weed could threaten profits. Boston Beer Co., brewer of Samuel Adams, and Brown-Forman Corp., distiller of Jack Daniels, say they fear consumers will cut down on drinking and start using marijuana more as it becomes legal in more locales. In California, the new marijuana law calls for nearly 20 types of licenses, including permits for farmers; delivery services that will take pot to a buyer’s front door; testing labs; distributors; and dispensary operators at the retail level. But because the drug is still illegal under federal law, the U.S. Patent and Trademark office won’t issue trademarks to protect marijuana brands. So marijuana companies and their advocates have turned to state lawmakers for help. Rob Bonta, a Democratic assemblyman from Alameda, has introduced a bill that would grant cannabis companies state trademarks. It also would ban marijuana billboards near freeways and provide money to develop standards for testing impaired drivers. Law enforcement officials have taken no position on it even though they opposed the legalization of recreational pot. Hezekiah Allen, head of the California Growers Association, a marijuana farmers’ trade group, said California has a mature marijuana marketplace in which consumers expect high-quality pot and have more than price and quality in mind when shopping. “California consumers are interested in how their products were grown, how workers were treated,” Allen said. Celebrities who have associated themselves with social causes that also sell weed will stand out in California, he said. Few stars have invested so publicly — and heavily — in the marijuana industry as Calvin Broadus, better known as rapper Snoop Dogg. He has branded his own line of bud called Leafs by Snoop, created a marijuana news website and launched a $25 million venture capital fund for pot investing called Casa Verde, Spanish for “greenhouse.” In turn, Casa Verde has invested $10 million into Eaze, a marijuana delivery service. Snoop Dogg and other deep-pocketed celebrities investing in the industry are paving the way for broader acceptance, advocates argue. “They’re helping to legitimize marijuana,” said Cheryl Shuman, founder of the Beverly Hills Cannabis Club. “Marijuana is fast becoming cool and glamorous.” Some 26 states and Washington, D.C., have legalized the medical use of marijuana, and polls show a majority of Americans support repealing the federal ban on marijuana.
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5296
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Minnesota lawmakers: Tax drug makers over opioid crisis.
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Lawmakers and activists are making a push to force drug companies to pay more of the costs of the opioid crisis, and they got a boost Wednesday from a cousin of the most famous Minnesotan to die from the addictive drugs, the late rock star Prince.
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true
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Health, Minnesota, Prince
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Chazz Smith told a rally of over 80 people in the Capitol rotunda that his younger cousin had everything, yet opioids still took his life in 2016 . Authorities blamed counterfeit pills laced with fentanyl that looked like generic Vicodin. Smith said Prince’s death shows the power that addiction can hold on anyone. “We’ve lost legends, we’ve lost potential legends, and that’s a shame,” Smith said. The rally preceded a hearing before a House health and human services committee on a bill to require manufacturers and wholesalers that sell or distribute opioids in Minnesota to pay registration fees ranging as high as $500,000 for the biggest companies. The current fee is just $235. The measure is a different approach from the “penny a pill” tax that passed the Senate last year but stalled out in the House amid industry opposition. It would raise about $20 million annually to fund prevention, treatment and education programs, and to support county child protection agencies that have been swamped by the crisis. Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan told the gathering that passing the bill is a priority for Democratic Gov. Tim Walz. Bill sponsors said at a news conference that the industry should pay its fair share for a crisis that it helped create. They pointed out that more than 400 people died of opioid overdoses in Minnesota in 2017, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. “In communities across the state, it appears that this opioid crisis that we’re in really has no end in sight,” said Rep. Liz Olson, a Duluth Democrat. “Without this swift legislative action, there indeed might not be an end. Parents have lost children, teachers have lost students, our first responders are asked to respond to impossible situations, and no other family deserves to go through this.” Other leading sponsors include Rep. Dave Baker, a Republican from Willmar, and Sen. Chris Eaton, a Brooklyn Park Democrat, who have both lost children to opioid overdoses. Baker’s son, Dan, 25, died in 2011 of a heroin overdose after becoming addicted to opiate pain pills for a back injury. Eaton’s daughter, Ariel, was 23 when she died of a heroin overdose in 2007. “I don’t want other families to go through the trauma that I did,” Eaton said. Sen. Julie Rosen, a Republican from Vernon Center, said the manufacturers and distributors have been “kicking and screaming a little bit” but now tell her they want to be part of the solution. “I asked them, ‘What does that look like?’ and I have not received an answer,” she added. “We’re spending billions on an issue you helped create,” Rosen said. “I don’t think we’re asking for a whole lot for the amount that they are shipping and manufacturing for the state of Minnesota, and the amount of deaths that we have.” The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, also known as PhRMA, opposed last year’s bill. While the trade group says it supports ”an extensive set of policy recommendations ,” including measures to curb overprescribing, it opposes this year’s bill as well. “Unfortunately, what’s being proposed — taxing legitimately prescribed medicines that patients rely on for legitimate medical needs to raise revenues for the state — ignores evidence-based solutions, sets a dangerous precedent and ultimately won’t help patients and families,” Nick McGee, the trade group’s director of public affairs, said in an email to The Associated Press.
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2522
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Makers of fraudulent breast implants on trial in France.
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Five French executives went on trial on Wednesday to jeers from victims for supplying women with hundreds of thousands of substandard breast implants and triggering a global health scare.
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true
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Health News
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More than 300,000 women around the world were fitted over a decade with implants from the French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP), and the trial includes 5,000 civil plaintiffs and 300 lawyers. PIP’s founder and long-time chief executive, 73-year-old Jean-Claude Mas, has admitted filling the implants with an unapproved homemade recipe made of industrial-grade silicone gel. Mas and four PIP executives, including the chief financial officer, are charged with aggravated fraud and risk maximum prison terms of five years each, plus fines, for selling the implants around the world from 2001 to 2010, when they were ordered off the market. Mas himself was in court an hour before the start of proceedings, which were mostly taken up with opening day legal arguments. “He bears the enormous weight of this trial on his shoulders,” Mas’s lawyer Yves Haddad said. A vast exhibition building close to PIP’s former premises has been set up as a makeshift courtroom to accommodate the huge crowds expected for the trial, due to last until mid-May. Mas arrived at court under police escort and faced a crush of cameras as the trial began in the southern city of Marseille. “Bastard!” shouted someone in the audience of some 300 victims as Mas appeared live on a giant video screen. Of the more than 5,000 individual lawsuits filed against PIP - once the world’s third-largest supplier of breast implants - and its executives, 220 have come from women outside France. A French woman who alleges that one of her PIP implants began to leak four years after its insertion said outside the courtroom that victims were both scared and angry. “We had foreign bodies put inside us that were flawed ... we could have maybe died from it. The anger is because we were tricked,” said Tomassine Catalano. “It’s frightening.” Leaving court, Mas sought to defend himself against such charges. “For 30 years I made prostheses,” he told journalists. “I did my best to protect them (women).” The scandal - revealed after inspectors pursuing a tip-off discovered vats of industrial-grade silicone outside the PIP factory in 2010 - sparked worldwide panic when the government recommended removal of the implants due to an abnormally high rupture rate. Health experts say no link has been established between PIP implants and breast cancer, but in the months after the scandal broke, plastic surgeons around the world reported a flood of removal requests from worried patients. Half the French women with PIP implants, or nearly 15,000, have already opted for removal, whether because of rupture or as a precaution, according to the government. Mas was released in October from eight months in detention following a failure to post bail. He told police that 75 percent of PIP’s implants had contained the homemade gel, which was never been approved by regulators, although he denies it was unsafe. He and the other executives deny the charges. Investigators estimate that Mas’s formula allowed PIP to save nearly $1.6 million in one year alone. When Mas told the court he lived on a modest monthly retirement income of 1,800 euros, hoots erupted from the spectators, prompting the judge to warn that the next person to disrupt proceedings would be thrown out. Minutes before the trial began, a court in Paris rejected a defense request to have the case thrown out. Mas and PIP’s former chief financial officer, Claude Couty are separately implicated in a civil case over fiscal fraud that has yet to reach trial. Mas is also under investigation for manslaughter following a complaint from the mother of a French woman with PIP implants who died of cancer in 2010. ($1 = 0.7616 euros)
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28465
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A rapist may sue a victim for custody of a child in 31 states, but in no states may victims seek child support from rapists.
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What's true: Some states do not have laws to prevent the perpetrators of rape from seeking custody and visitation of children conceived during that act. What's false: No laws restrict rape victims from seeking child support from their rapists.
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mixture
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Politics Legal
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A meme long circulated via social media holds that in 31 states it is legal for a rapist to sue his victim for custody of a child conceived during a sexual assault, but in no states do rape victims have legal standing to sue their attackers for child support: The latter claim was the more straightforward, asserting that in all 50 states a victim of rape cannot sue her rapist for child support. We were unable to find any law expressly prohibiting such an action in any state, although objections to the structure and efficacy of mandated child support in rape cases remains controversial. For example, a June 2015 article reported on a case involving a teenaged rape victim who was compelled to seek support in family court, effectively commanding her to maintain a relationship with her attacker: [Lawyer Wendy] Murphy has been representing a victim who was [14] when she was raped by a 20-year-old, who was then convicted. The convicted assailant was then remanded to family court to pay child support for the baby that resulted from the rape, a court decision that Murphy is still fighting in appellate court in Massachusetts. “It’s an unconscionable thing to have your own government, in the name of justice, force you into an 18-year relationship with your attacker in family court,” Murphy said of her client’s experience. She also said convicted rapists should be forced to pay restitution in criminal court, not child support in family court. A 2013 legal paper noted that “victims of sexual violence hide from their abusers, and child support orders and proceedings [frequently triggered by requests for social assistance] necessarily renew contact between rapist and victim.” The paper further explained that “a dangerous absent parent may react to the child support notification by renewed violence or by asserting rights to custody and visitation, which would seriously harm the mother and child.” In a preface, the paper noted that conditions differ from state to state with respect to the burden of proof placed upon rape victims in cases involving child support due to various requirements with respect to social programs and assistance (known sometimes as paternity “cooperation requirements”): All states accept official documentation, often in the form of records from birth certificates and documentation from medical professionals or law enforcement. The majority of states provide that sworn statements of third parties with knowledge of the circumstances leading to good cause may substantiate the claim. A minority of states, however, articulate polarized approaches, outlining either a more achievable “permissive” approach, or requiring more demanding “restrictive” standards. The minority permissive approach allows for both third–party statements and applicant corroboration, while the minority restrictive approach will not accept anything other than official documentation. This Note argues that states must craft evidentiary requirements that are compatible with victim behavior following sexual assault to properly protect rape victims seeking welfare benefits from the danger of continued contact with their rapist through child support enforcement. The majority and minority restrictive approaches are too limited, as they require the rape victim to have reported or disclosed her rape in order to receive benefits, despite the realities of victim behavior. No aspect of that preface suggested that victims of rape “cannot” seek child support, only that laws in some states are structured in a manner that effectively discourage or present difficult-to-surmount barriers to such action. The primary claim, that 31 states allow a rapist to sue a victim for custody and visitation rights, is far murkier. Unrelated actions decided upon by the Supreme Court in the mid-1990s have upheld state authority over federal authority in cases pertaining to rape. A possible source for the “31 states” assertion appears to be a 31 August 2012 item published by The Atlantic titled “31 States Allow Rapists Custody and Visitation Rights.” That piece referenced a 2010 law journal article about what might be called a legal loophole, while observing that between 2010 and 2012, several states had amended their laws: In a paper published in the The Georgetown Law Journal in 2010 — when the number of states without such laws [specific to rape and child custody] were even greater — [lawyer Shauna] Prewitt argued that the absence “stems from the images and other societal rhetoric that depict the prototypical raped woman as hating her unborn child and as viewing her rape pregnancy as continuing her rape trauma.” In her CNN piece, she blames it on “ignorance”: Some believe that women don’t raise children conceived from rape, others can’t fathom a rapist wanting parental rights. That 2012 reporting hinted at one factor pertaining to the claim’s accuracy: the passage of time. In 2016, CNN reported that additional states had implemented legislation to address circumstances where the law might not sufficiently protect a victim of rape from being forced to interact with the attacker: Seven states don’t have any laws preventing a rapist from claiming parental rights, but that’s not to say that these states are oblivious to the issue. Maryland, for one, has been working for years to pass a law that would allow a rape victim to terminate her attacker’s parental rights. Forty-three other states and the District of Columbia have legislation that offers at least some protection to prevent rape victims from facing their attackers over parental rights; eight of those laws were just adopted in 2016. But these legislative protections vary greatly. In 20 states and D.C., a rape conviction is required before a victim can request termination of parental rights. CNN’s coverage also alluded to another difficulty in precisely determining a rape victim’s vulnerability to custody challenges, namely that a rape conviction is necessary in order for the victim to request her attacker’s parental rights be severed. The piece observed that the requirement is problematic, as “the majority of sexual assaults don’t even make it to prosecution,” according to Bureau of Justice statistics: That means in nearly half the states that have legislation meant to prevent rapists from claiming parental rights, a victim is still vulnerable to having to face her attacker if there wasn’t a conviction in her case — and that’s if she reported it and if it was prosecuted. The article was footnoted with a state-by-state guide to rights granted to both victims and their attackers, laws which very rarely appeared to resemble one another. For instance, the burden of proof in the state of Michigan was “clear and convincing evidence that a child was conceived through sexual assault,” but the alphabetically-adjacent state of Minnesota “[did] not currently have any legislation protecting mothers who conceived their child through rape from facing their attackers over custody and visitation rights.” Whether those laws have changed since 2016 is unclear, and the details of such laws vary to a point where comparison between them is effectively impossible. The meme’s fundamental premise (that 31 states allow a rapist to sue a victim for custody and visitation rights) is somewhat flawed in the sense that we could not find any state with a law on its books expressly permitting the perpetrator of a rape, convicted or not, to subsequently re-traumatize his victim using the court as a weapon (as opposed to states that lack laws expressly prohibiting such conduct). Determining a specific number of states in which rapists are not prevented from seeking access to the children of their victims is virtually impossible due not only to rapidly changing laws, but also to broad differences in how such a legal barriers might be enacted in any given state.
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3367
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Tests: No carbon monoxide in baby deaths at housing complex.
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North Carolina’s state medical examiner’s office said Thursday that it found no sign of carbon monoxide poisoning in the deaths of two infants at a public housing community where the gas has forced evacuations.
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true
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U.S. News, Health, General News, North Carolina, Durham, Carbon monoxide poisoning, Poisoning, U.S. News, Public health
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The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner issued a news release Thursday saying that the two infants who lived in McDougald Terrace in Durham had tested negative for the gas. The release said that a determination about the causes of the infants’ deaths are pending an autopsy but that it it was releasing the information about the negative tests because of public health concerns. The deaths of the two babies at McDougald Terrace in November and December have been at the center of concerns about conditions at the complex. The medical examiner’s news release came a day after the authority’s chief executive officer Anthony Scott said at a news conference that Durham officials inspected 70 occupied apartments at McDougald Terrace and identified furnaces, hot water heaters and stoves that were emitting carbon monoxide and needed to be replaced in 28 of those units. The housing authority evacuated about 200 households from the complex and into hotel rooms last week, and it may need to evacuate the remaining 160 units depending on additional results from Wednesday’s inspections, Scott said. Carbon monoxide is a colorless, odorless and potentially poisonous gas that can cause illness and in cases of prolonged exposure, death, the Mayo Clinic explains. About a dozen other adults and children at the complex have been treated for exposure to carbon monoxide since mid-November, The News & Observer reported. McDougald Terrace was built in the 1950s and is Durham’s largest public housing community, the newspaper said. It has failed multiple federal inspections, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Scott said the low inspections scores show the housing authority’s properties “are in bad shape.” He added that decades of underfunding have contributed to the situation. The housing authority said it has reached out to local, state and federal partners for help in replacing the appliances, but does not yet have an estimate on how much the repairs will cost or how long they will take.
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4118
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Flu has killed 4 Utah children since October.
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Health officials say four children have died from the flu in Utah since October, and with a new strain of the illness, the threat may not subside for weeks.
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true
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Health, Utah, Flu, University of Utah, Infectious diseases
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The Salt Lake Tribune reports that Trahern W. Jones, a pediatric infectious disease fellow with the University of Utah School of Medicine and Primary Children’s Hospital, said Wednesday that emergency rooms and clinics have been swamped with flu cases. Utah Department of Health spokeswoman Jenny Johnson says the initial flu strain could still be in the community. Health officials would not confirm which strains caused the four pediatric deaths, or when or where they occurred. Northeast Utah has had the highest number of hospitalizations reported so far, with about 50 patients hospitalized this season in Daggett, Duchesne and Uintah counties. ___ Information from: The Salt Lake Tribune, http://www.sltrib.com
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8248
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UK PM Johnson orders Britons: you must stay at home.
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Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered Britons on Monday to stay at home to halt the spread of coronavirus, imposing curbs on everyday life without precedent in peacetime.
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true
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Health News
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All but essential shops must close immediately and people should no longer meet family or friends or risk being fined, Johnson said in a televised address to the nation. Johnson had resisted pressure to impose a full lockdown even as other European countries had done so, but was forced to change tack as projections showed the health system could become overwhelmed. Deaths from the virus in Britain jumped 54 to 335 on Monday as the government said the military would help ship millions of items of personal protective equipment (PPE) including masks to healthcare workers who have complained of shortages. “From this evening I must give the British people a very simple instruction - you must stay at home,” Johnson said in a televised address, replacing his daily news conference. They would only be allowed to leave their homes to shop for basic necessities, exercise, for a medical need, to provide care or traveling to and from work where absolutely necessary. “That’s all - these are the only reasons you should leave your home,” he said, adding that people should not meet friends or family members who do not live in their home. “If you don’t follow the rules, the police will have the powers to enforce them, including through fines and dispersing gatherings,” he warned. The new measures here would be reviewed in three weeks, and relaxed if possible. “These rules are not optional,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan said. The opposition Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn said he supported the measures, and police chiefs said the moves were sensible, and that they would be working with the government on how to enforce them. The government will close all shops selling non-essential goods, Johnson said, including clothing stores, as well as other premises including libraries, playgrounds and outdoor gyms, and places of worship. The British Retail Consortium said shop owners understood the gravity of the situation. The tougher tone followed evidence at the weekend that many were ignoring official guidelines about social distancing as they flocked to parks and beauty spots. Under the new measures, the government will stop all gatherings of more than two people in public who do not live together, and stop all social events, including weddings and baptisms but not funerals. Parks would remain open for exercise but gatherings would be dispersed, Johnson said. Later on Monday, Britain’s lower house of parliament is expected to approve emergency legislation giving authorities sweeping powers to tackle the outbreak, including the right to detain people and put them in isolation to protect public health. “Without a huge national effort to halt the growth of this virus, there will come a moment when no health service in the world could possibly cope; because there won’t be enough ventilators, enough intensive care beds, enough doctors and nurses,” Johnson said in his address. Earlier, in a letter pleading with him to increase PPE supplies, more than 6,000 frontline doctors warned they felt like “cannon fodder” and were being asked to put their lives at risk with out-of-date masks, and low stocks of equipment. Health Secretary Matt Hancock admitted there had been issues but promised action was being taken. He said the army would drive trucks throughout the day and night to get supplies to medical staff. “It’s like a war effort - it is a war against this virus and so the army have been incredibly helpful in getting those logistics so we can get the supplies to protect people on the front line,” he told the BBC, saying the health service now had 12,000 ventilators, 7,000 more than at the start of the crisis.
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3949
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Minnesota reports 8th flu death of season.
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Minnesota has reported another flu death, bringing the total to eight so far this season, the state Department of Health said Thursday.
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true
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Health, Flu, Minnesota
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The death is one more than the previous week. But no child deaths due to influenza have been reported since the flu season began, the department said. According to the Health Department’s weekly flu update , Minnesota hospitals admitted 117 influenza patients last week. So far, more than 500 people have been hospitalized for the flu in Minnesota this season. No school outbreaks were reported in the last full week of 2019 because of the holiday break. Nearly 300 school outbreaks have been reported so far this season. Clinics are reporting a surge of patients with flu-like symptoms, who represented nearly 6% of all clinic visits last week. That level of activity often is seen as the season approaches its peak, the Star Tribune reported. Most of the patients tested were infected with the B strain of the virus which, unlike previous seasons, emerged early in the current season. The B strain is more likely to affect children because fewer of them have been exposed to it in the past and had the chance to develop immunity. Only nine flu outbreaks have been reported in Minnesota in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities so far this season.
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33791
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Secret flights whisked bin Laden family members and Saudi nationals out of the U.S. immediately after September 11 while a general ban on air travel was still in effect, and before the FBI had any opportunity to question any of the passengers.
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These flights were screened by law enforcement officials, primarily the FBI. For example, one flight, the so-called Bin Ladin flight, departed the United States on September 20 with 26 passengers, most of them relatives of Usama Bin Ladin. Screening of this flight was directed by an FBI agent in the Baltimore Field Office who was also a pilot … The Bin Ladin flight and other flights we examined were screened in accordance with policies set by FBI headquarters and coordinated through working-level interagency processes. Although most of the passengers were not interviewed, 22 of the 26 people on the Bin Ladin flight were interviewed by the FBI. Many were asked detailed questions. None of the passengers stated that they had any recent contact with Usama Bin Ladin or knew anything about terrorist activity.
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false
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September 11th
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In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on America, the Federal Aviation Administration immediately ordered all flights in the United States grounded, and that ban stayed in effect until September 13. (Even then, for that first day commercial carriers were mostly either completing the interrupted flights of September 11 or repositioning empty aircraft in anticipation of the resumption of full service. New passenger flights did not generally resume until the 14th.) During that two-day period of full lock-down, only the military and specially FAA-authorized flights that delivered life-saving medical necessities were in the air. The enforcement of the empty skies directive was so stringent that even after the United Network for Organ Sharing sought and gained FAA clearance to use charter aircraft on September 12 to effect time-critical deliveries of organs for transplant, one of its flights carrying a human heart was forced to the ground in Bellingham, Washington, 80 miles short of its Seattle destination, by two Navy F/A-18 fighters. (The organ completed its journey after being transferred to a helicopter.) The claim that bin Laden family members (and other Saudis) were allowed to secretly fly out of the U.S. and back to Saudi Arabia while a government-imposed ban on air travel was in effect, all without any intervention by the FBI, has since been negated by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the “9/11 Commission”). In their final report, the commission noted: Three questions have arisen with respect to the departure of Saudi nationals from the United States in the immediate aftermath of 9/11: (1) Did any flights of Saudi nationals take place before national airspace reopened on September 13, 2001? (2) Was there any political intervention to facilitate the departure of Saudi nationals? (3) Did the FBI screen Saudi nationals thoroughly before their departure?First, we found no evidence that any flights of Saudi nationals, domestic or international, took place before the reopening of national airspace on the morning of September 13, 2001. To the contrary, every flight we have identified occurred after national airspace reopened. Second, we found no evidence of political intervention. We found no evidence that anyone at the White House above the level of [National Security Council official] Richard Clarke participated in a decision on the departure of Saudi nationals … The President and Vice President told us they were not aware of the issue at all until it surfaced much later in the media. None of the officials we interviewed recalled any intervention or direction on this matter from any political appointee. Third, we believe that the FBI conducted a satisfactory screening of Saudi nationals who left the United State on charter flights. The Saudi government was advised of and agree to the FBI’s requirements that passengers be identified and checked against various databases before the flights departed. The Federal Aviation Administration representative working in the FBI operations center made sure that the FBI was aware of the flights of Saudi nationals and was able to screen the passengers before they were allowed to depart. The FBI interviewed all persons of interest on these flights prior to their departures. They concluded that none of the passengers was connected to the 9/11 attacks and have since found no evidence to change that conclusion. Our own independent review of the Saudi nationals involved confirms that no one with known links to terrorism departed on these flights. The 9/11 Commission also expanded on the following points in footnotes to the section of the report quoted above: During the morning of September 11, the FAA suspended all nonemergency air activity in the national airspace. While the national airspace was closed, decisions to allow aircraft to fly were made by the FAA working with the Department of Defense, Department of State, U.S. Secret Service, and the FBI. The Department of Transportation reopened the national airspace to U.S. carriers effective 11:00 A.M. on September 13, 2001, for flights out of or into airports that had implemented the FAA’s new security requirements.After the airspace reopened, nine chartered flights with 160 people, mostly Saudi nationals, departed from the United States between September 14 and 24. In addition, one Saudi government flight, containing the Saudi deputy defense minister and other members of an official Saudi delegation, departed Newark Airport on September 14. Every airport involved in these Saudi flights was open when the flight departed, and no inappropriate actions were taken to allow those flights to depart. Another particular allegation is that a flight carrying Saudi nationals from Tampa, Florida, to Lexington, Kentucky, was allowed to fly while airspace was closed, with special approval by senior U.S. government officials. On September 13, Tampa police brought three young Saudis they were protecting on an off-duty security detail to the airport so they could get on a plane to Lexington. Tampa police arranged for two more private investigators to provide security on the flight. They boarded a chartered Learjet. The plane took off at 4:37 P.M., after national airspace was open, more than five hours after the Tampa airport had reopened, and after other flights had arrived at and departed from that airport. The three Saudi nationals debarked from the plane and were met by local police. Their private security guards were paid. and the police then escorted the three Saudi passengers to a hotel where they joined relatives already in Lexington. The FBI is alleged to have had no record of the flight and denied that it occurred, hence contributing to the story of a “phantom flight.” This is another misunderstanding. The FBI was initially misinformed about how the Saudis got to Lexington by a local police officer in Lexington who did not have firsthand knowledge of the matter. The Bureau subsequently learned about the flight.
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37766
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Listening to the album Qabalista by Selki Girl can cause an out-of-body experience.
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In June and July 2020, TikTok’s #witchtok community was awash in claims Selki Girl’s Qabalista “triggered astral projection” experiences. In one viral video, above, a user described intense sensations often reported in conjunction with out-of-body experiences, but did not “astrally project.” What seems likeliest is a type of synesthetic response to the music. Qabalista is widely available across streaming platforms for anyone who wishes to hear (or see, smell, touch, or taste) the music for themselves.
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unproven
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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In late June and early July 2020, a rumor on TikTok’s #witchtok hashtag held that the album Qabalista by Selki Girl “triggered astral projection” or other strange experiences; a video with hundreds of thousands of engagements involved one user relaying their experience:In the above clip, user @righteous_dragon explained that they did not believe the rumors about Selki Girl’s Qabalista, that it would “apparently make you do things like astral travel.” But the user listened to the album, describing a range of unexpected sensations — such as a presence in the room, a “flick” at the center of their forehead, and other feelings around their “third eye chakra.”Viewing the hashtag #qabalista showed a number of likely similar videos, in which users described their experience listening to the Qabalista album:Other IterationsWe located iterations of the rumor about Selki Girl’s Qabalista in Facebook groups, and it also appeared on Reddit’s r/Music:Selki Girl – Qabalista [Pop] This album is actually insane. Listen with lights off, eyes closed, headphones in and let your imagination run wild, it will take you on an emotional rollercoaster. from MusicTwitter users also discussed the claim, particularly as it related to astral projection, as did some on Instagram:my friend keeps sending me tiktoks about a album called qabalista that triggers astral projection… bout to grab my black tourmaline and find out— Kameshwari 🧞♀️ (@dhanistamoon) July 1, 2020Listening to Qabalista by @selkigirl while drunk took me to another dimension— 🥀 (@f411n1) June 30, 2020i found out abt qabalista thru a tiktok saying if u laid in the dark in complete silence listening with earbuds in it can make u astral project i highly recommend doing it for spooks— parker🥀 (@lisyongs) June 29, 2020thats so sexy are u sure it was astral projection? did u see ur body👁👄👁 and was ut on purpose IM ASKING QUESTIONS A LOT BUT IVE NEVER DONE IT SJDJDHH— ★ mimi || KTH1 (@wingsknj) June 28, 2020lights out headphones in #selkigirl #qabalista this will take you in a ride!A post shared by Britt (@baelian_bee) on Jun 29, 2020 at 8:55pm PDTSelki Girl herself shared a post about the album to Reddit’s r/druidism on March 30 2020. She said the album “documents [her] experiences with magick, ritual, gender expression, and transition over about a 13-month period of ritual actions spanning most of [2019],” and the :end result is a gapless 45-minute trip through western mysticism, as told from a working class, ground level perspective.”She advised fellow users to “grab your favorite pair of headphones, set your space, and close your eyes” before listening to the album:I was directed to repost here — I’m a transfemme producer from Chicago, just released an album about climbing the Tree of Life! Not looking for fans at this stage, just wanting to connect with likeminded folks. from druidismHas the Phenomenon Been Studied?You have likely encountered the concept of “astral projection,” whether in esoteric literature or in pop culture — such as Netflix’s The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.Defined simply, astral projection (also called an out-of-body experience, or “OBE”) is the disputed ability to separate one’s consciousness from their physical body:astral projection, noun : the ability of a person’s spirit to travel to distant placesA 2014 study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, “Voluntary out-of-body experience: an fMRI study,” involved a single subject and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) diagnostics. Its abstract summarized findings of the small experiment:The present single-case study examined functional brain imaging patterns in a participant that reported being able, at will, to produce somatosensory sensations that are experienced as her body moving outside the boundaries of her physical body all the while remaining aware of her unmoving physical body. We found that the brain functional changes associated with the reported extra-corporeal experience (ECE) were different than those observed in motor imagery. Activations were mainly left-sided and involved the left supplementary motor area and supramarginal and posterior superior temporal gyri, the last two overlapping with the temporal parietal junction that has been associated with out-of-body experiences. The cerebellum also showed activation that is consistent with the participant’s report of the impression of movement during the ECE. There was also left middle and superior orbital frontal gyri activity, regions often associated with action monitoring. The results suggest that the ECE reported here represents an unusual type of kinesthetic imagery.That research avoided the terminology “astral projection” or “astral travel,” referring to the woman’s claim instead as an “extra-corporeal experience (ECE. )” A separate section provided background for the subject, stating that the young woman was “surprised that not everyone could experience” astral projection:The participant was a right-handed woman, age 24, who was a psychology graduate student at the time of testing. She signed an informed consent approved by the University of Ottawa Research Ethics Board. The participant was in an undergraduate class that presented data on body representation hallucinations in patients that report experiences of their body outside their physical body. The participant spontaneously reported after class that she could have a similar “out of body” experience. She appeared surprised that not everyone could experience this. The participant described her experience as one she began performing as a child when bored with “sleep time” at preschool. She discovered she could elicit the experience of moving above her body and used this as a distraction during the time kids were asked to nap. She continued to perform this experience as she grew up assuming, as mentioned, that “everyone could do it.” This was often done before sleep onset as an aid to enter sleep.She described the experience as variable depending on her frame of mind. She was able to see herself rotating in the air above her body, lying flat, and rolling along with the horizontal plane. She reported sometimes watching herself move from above but remained aware of her unmoving “real” body. The participant reported no particular emotions linked to the experience. As an adult, the participant only infrequently “practiced” the experience; the experience does not occur spontaneously but is induced wilfully.The participant describes the experience in the following terms: “I feel myself moving, or, more accurately, can make myself feel as if I am moving. I know perfectly well that I am not actually moving. There is no duality of body and mind when this happens, not really. In fact, I am hyper-sensitive to my body at that point, because I am concentrating so hard on the sensation of moving. I am the one moving – me – my body. For example, if I ‘spin’ for long enough, I get dizzy. I do not see myself above my body. Rather, my whole body has moved up. I feel it as being above where I know it actually is. I usually also picture myself as moving up in my mind’s eye, but the mind is not substantive. It does not move unless the body does.”Researchers further noted that the subject’s ECE was self-reported — however, it correlated with unexpected activity in her brain:Also, because the ECE was private to the participant, we have to rely on the participant’s descriptions to interpret the results. With these caveats in mind, we find that the brain functional changes associated with the reported ECE were different than those observed in motor imagery. The results suggest that the ECE reported here represents an unusual type of kinesthetic imagery that shares some features of previously described out-of-body experiences and some features of more typical motor imagery.“Voluntary out-of-body experience: an fMRI study” was just one piece of research, and it involved an extremely small sample of one.However, earlier and far more notorious inquiry into whether humans could, at will, separate their consciousnesses from their physical bodies and “travel” occurred — and wasn’t declassified until fairly recently.The Central Intelligence Agency on Astral ProjectionFamously among adherents of esoteric subjects are several declassified CIA documents about the agency’s attempts to verify or debunk the existence of astral projection, OBEs, or ECEs.A 2017 Vice article, “The US Army Funded Astral Projection and Hypnosis Research in the 80s,” which began:Human consciousness is nothing but an intersection of energy planes that forms a hologram able to travel through spacetime—across the universe, and into the past, present, and future.I read about this idea in a CIA document about the US Army. Yes, the US Army. The institution that painstakingly crafts an image of commitment to pragmatic and logical objectives. When I was reading through the documents, I was certainly a bit surprised.According to the declassified CIA documents that I read, the US Army was extremely interested in psychic experimentation. From the late 1970s into the 80s, it even paid for intelligence officers to go on weeklong excursions to an out-of-the-way institute specializing in out-of-body experiences and astral projection.The documents were declassified as early as 2001, but they caught my eye when they appeared in a /r/conspiracy post earlier [in July 2017]. The psychic experimentation program, which was called “Project Center Lane,” interviewed Army intelligence officers in order “to determine attitudes about the possible use of psychoenergetic phenomena in the intelligence field,” according to the declassified CIA document from 1984.That reporting went on to summarize the contents of some of the documents its author reviewed, recounting resources dedicated to and results derived from the research. The “Monroe Institute,” founded by Robert Monroe, still exists:According to one of the declassified Army files, 251 Army intelligence candidates were selected for the first year of experimentation. Of those candidates, 117 were interviewed under the impression that they were taking a survey. The document gives no specifics about the survey itself, but does indicates that the interviewer asked fairly direct questions about “psychoenergetics.”“Individuals who had objections to the military use of psychoenergetics were not considered for the final selection,” the document reads. “Additionally, individuals who displayed an unreasonable enthusiasm for psychoenergetics, occult fanatics and mystical zealots were not considered for final selection.”Between 30 and 35 of the original 251 candidates were said to have “desired” traits, such as open-mindedness and intelligence, that made them suited for the program.Intelligence officers who were accepted to the program were sent to the Monroe Institute. Officers would then listen to the “Hemi-Sync” audio. After this, one of the institute’s research associates would guide intelligence officers into the astral plane, a psychic space in which the institute said that the officers supposedly could heighten their sensory experiences, heal their bodies, travel into the past or future, or even solve real-world dilemmas without the restraints of a physical body.Some of Monroe’s Hemi-Sync meditations — also rumored to trigger out-of-body experiences — are available on YouTube.One of several declassified CIA documents, titled “Astral Projection Caper” [PDF] and originally published in August 1973, is available at CIA.gov. A Wikipedia page for the US Army’s Stargate project outlines some of the decades-long experiments, and a number of additional declassified documents are available on CIA.gov here.Wikipedia’s introduction asserted the Stargate program was “declassified in 1995 after a CIA report concluded that it was never useful in any intelligence operation.” However, the security implications of any discoveries to the contrary seemed significant enough to consider whether all findings in the partly redacted documents were disclosed.Is Astral Projection Real? Do People Have Out-of-Body Experiences?It’s not uncommon to encounter articles or other content suggesting the subject is a matter of settled science, and that out-of-body experiences (or astral projection) has been debunked by science and the CIA.Irrespective of widespread skepticism, serious inquiry into the topic continues. Dr. Sam Parnia, an associate professor of Medicine at the NYU Langone Medical Center, is a well-known researcher into cardiopulmonary resuscitation and near-death experiences (NDEs).Parnia co-authored November 2019 research, titled “Abstract 387: Awareness and Cognitive Activity During Cardiac Arrest,” in the journal Circulation. Its background states:While 50% of cardiac arrest (CA) survivors report negative psychological outcomes including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety, 10% report a positive transformational outcome associated with recall of cognitive activity and 2-3% report external awareness during CPR. Though, often referred to using the poorly defined term of near-death experiences (NDE), this aspect of CA survivorship remains ill understood.A “Conclusion” section adds:External awareness and internal cognitive activity may occur during CA. However, it is unclear whether explicit recall sufficiently describes the entirety of cognitive processes during CA, or whether implicit memories may also form. In some survivors, memories lead to greater life-meaning and a positive transformation, which contrasts with negative psychological outcomes such as PTSD. In this context, in place of NDE a more appropriate term might be transformative experience of death (TED). Further studies, are needed to delineate the role of implicit and explicit learning and how cognitive activity during CPR may relate to brain resuscitation quality and overall psychological outcomes.Parnia was one of several authors of 2014 research in Resuscitation, titled “AWARE-AWAreness During REsuscitation-a Prospective Study.” That broader research examined simply the presence of conscious recall where it was not expected to occur, concluding that cardiac arrest “survivors commonly experience a broad range of cognitive themes, with 2% exhibiting full awareness,” which “supports other recent studies that have indicated consciousness may be present despite clinically undetectable consciousness.”Some patients in cardiac arrest appeared to demonstrate conscious awareness, despite clinical indication to the contrary.There is also the possibility of musical synesthesia or chromesthesia, during which the listener involuntarily experiences shapes, colors, or movement — or tastes or smells or physical sensations — while listening to music. While it is thought to be especially strong in some individuals, it is also possible that some musical works evoke the experience of synesthesia more than others.TL;DRIn June and July 2020, TikTok’s #witchtok community was awash in claims Selki Girl’s Qabalista “triggered astral projection” experiences. In one viral video, above, a user described intense sensations often reported in conjunction with out-of-body experiences, but did not “astrally project.” What seems likeliest is a type of synesthetic response to the music. Qabalista is widely available across streaming platforms for anyone who wishes to hear (or see, smell, touch, or taste) the music for themselves.Comments
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16213
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More people are losing their insurance (due to Obamacare) than are becoming newly insured.
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"Cain said that ""more people are losing their insurance (due to Obamacare) than are becoming newly insured."" While it’s reasonable to ask questions about the limitations of the available data, there is wide consensus from five private-sector organizations that roughly 10 million more Americans are insured today than were before the law began operations in late 2013. That’s inconsistent with Cain’s claim."
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false
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Health Care, PunditFact, Herman Cain,
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"Herman Cain’s longshot 2012 Republican presidential bid may be long over, but he’s continued to opine on national affairs. Take, for example, his recent blog post titled, ""Nine facts Democrats don't want you to hear before you vote tomorrow."" The post, published Nov. 3, 2014, and forwarded to us by a reader, begins this way: ""As we all get ready to head to the polls tomorrow, Democrats want you focused on the Koch brothers (that evil, fang-toothed fictionalized version, not the real ones who are excellent and highly successful businessmen) and their ‘war on women’ crapola."" The post goes on to offer nine bullet-point items that ""Democrats do not want to talk about,"" including claims about the economy, home ownership, taxes, debt and foreign policy. On health care policy, Cain offers this: ""Obamacare is a failure! More people are losing their insurance than are becoming newly insured, and 51 percent of those enrolled in the exchanges say they will not re-up given the opportunity the next time around. Then there are the 29ers (people being limited to 29 hours a week because of Obamacare mandates) and the 49ers (not the San Francisco ones ... the businesses intentionally staying under 50 employees to avoid the coverage mandate). There are also thousands of doctors refusing patients with Obamacare coverage because they can’t cover their costs on the reimbursements, while thousands more doctors are retiring early."" That’s a lot to chew on, but we were especially interested in checking Cain’s claim that ""more people are losing their insurance (due to Obamacare) than are becoming newly insured."" (An inquiry to Cain’s staff was not returned.) We will start off with a big caveat: The data available on this question is imperfect. For starters, the most historically credible, long-term statistics for health coverage and uninsurance -- the annual figures published by the U.S. Census Bureau -- do not include the big surge in insurance signups that occurred during the first quarter of 2014, which was the deadline for obtaining insurance for 2014 under the Affordable Care Act. What remains is data compiled by the private sector. However, the figures for new signups are somewhat piecemeal, with a less certain historical track record than the Census data. And the figures for cancellations are even fuzzier. That said, we’ll look at the consensus of data compiled by private-sector organizations. These have been calculated on a net basis -- the number of newly covered Americans minus the number of Americans newly lacking coverage. For Cain to be right, this number would have to be negative -- more losses than gains. Is it? The polling company Gallup has been studying uninsurance rates every quarter in a reasonably real-time fashion. In its most recent study, covering the third quarter of 2014, Gallup found that 13.4 percent of Americans lacked health insurance. That’s down significantly from its 18 percent rate in the third quarter of 2013, before the health care exchanges began operations. (As a reminder, insurance-coverage gains from the health care law stem from several sources, including people who signed up for plans on the exchanges, people who were newly able to sign up for Medicaid coverage in the states that allowed it, and young adults under age 26 who were allowed to remain on their parents’ plan.) These Gallup numbers shows a decline in uninsured Americans of 4.6 percentage points since the law took full effect -- the opposite of the direction Cain suggests. All told, between October 2013 and June 2014, Gallup found that 10.3 million nonelderly adults gained health insurance coverage. It’s possible that this number has grown since the data cut off in June 2014. Gallup’s finding tracks with what other sources have found. The New England Journal of Medicine estimated that, through June, 10.3 million adults gained coverage. Also through June, the Commonwealth Fund estimated the number at 9.5 million. And over the same period, the Urban Institute offered an estimate of 8 million. An earlier study -- through March -- by the RAND Corp. estimated a net gain of 9.3 million American adults with health insurance. This is a high degree of similarity between five separate studies, pointing to a net increase of 9 million to 10 million through June. And there’s reason to believe that number could be higher. These estimates do not include children under 18, and it’s possible that additional Americans have gained insurance in the months since June. It’s certainly possible that some of the other elements of Obamacare, including employer mandates, will lead to further losses of coverage once they take effect. (The administration has delayed the start of employer contribution requirements.) And the administrative hassle of losing one’s former plan is undeniably a hassle, even if one ends up with a different plan later. But as of now, there isn’t any evidence to back up Cain’s claim that more people are actually losing coverage than gaining. Our ruling Cain said that ""more people are losing their insurance (due to Obamacare) than are becoming newly insured."" While it’s reasonable to ask questions about the limitations of the available data, there is wide consensus from five private-sector organizations that roughly 10 million more Americans are insured today than were before the law began operations in late 2013. That’s inconsistent with Cain’s claim, so"
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9828
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Spinal tap may predict Alzheimer’s years ahead
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This story is a good example of what an independent expert’s perspective can bring to a piece. Stories about predictive tests for Alzheimer’s Disease may play with the emotions of affected families. This story appropriately evaluated evidence, so that the current state of this research – what it might mean and what it does not yet mean – was crystal clear.
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true
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dementia
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No discussion of costs. Yes, we know that it’s too early to use this in clinical settings, but the story makes the case that this builds on research following patients for as long as 12 years. Any predictive test would hold appeal for many people – so cost ramifications are important to discuss even at this early stage. Both tests are available at the present time so that with a little bit of digging, the costs could have been provided. We’ll give the story a satisfactory grade for providing context for the projected benefits of the test: “A new study suggests that biomarkers found in cerebrospinal fluid (fluid that surrounds the spinal cord and brain and acts as a protective cushion) could predict who would develop Alzheimer’s disease 90% of the time among patients with mild cognitive impairment, a condition characterized by measurable memory problems. … Knowing which patient with mild cognitive impairment patients may go on to develop Alzheimer’s is vital information for researchers, who are looking for treatments for the fatal brain disease. The current thinking is that interventions will be most effective when given to a patient as early as possible.” But the story is quick to note that it’s too early to use this as a diagnostic tool in clinical settings. The story did make several stabs at touching on harms, reporting: “Some of the participants, who were originally found to be stable with mild cognitive impairment after about five years, went on to develop Alzheimer’s disease during the longer follow-up. That suggests that a five-year follow-up period is not long enough to determine how well biomarkers can predict which patients will develop Alzheimer’s disease, researchers say.” And it did end with this: “As scientists gain more insight into predicting Alzheimer’s, aging adults may struggle with the question of whether they want to know their risk, especially since there’s still no cure. Some people want to enroll in clinical trials as soon as they start showing symptoms; others would rather be ignorant of their status since there is no cure.” We think these could have been framed more clearly as potential harms, but we’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt on this one. The story did an adequate job explaining what the study found, what it might mean, but what it does not yet mean. There was no disease-mongering in the story. In fact, it explained that “not everyone with this condition is a good candidate for an Alzheimer’s trial.” One independent expert’s comments added needed perspective to the findings. That independent expert added this important reminder: “What I tell people is: If they’re worried about their thinking abilities, that they should make an appointment with a neuropsychology or a neurologist to get an evaluation,” Brinkman says. “The way we diagnose Alzheimer’s disease is by evaluating the behavior and the risk factor medical profile, not by looking at biological markers at this point.” Again, the independent expert’s perspective was important: “When these sorts of studies get published, Brickman and other doctors get phone calls from aging adults wondering whether they should be getting spinal taps to assess their risk. But it’s too early to use this as a diagnostic tool in clinical settings, says Brickman. Down the road, the “fantasy” is that asymptomatic people will be able to get a biomarker test to determine whether they’ll one day get Alzheimer’s, but that’s not possible right now, he adds.” The story was clear that: It’s clear that the story did not rely solely or largely on a news release.
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37856
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Woodstock occurred during a pandemic.
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Did Woodstock Occur ‘in the Middle of a Pandemic’?
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mixture
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Disinformation, Fact Checks
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On May 1 2020, the American Institute for Economic Research reported that Woodstock was held during a pandemic — information which, in a vacuum, could pass for a charming piece of late 1960s nostalgia.But this information does not exist in a vacuum. In”Woodstock Occurred in the Middle of a Pandemic,” AIER (side note: the “E” is for “economics,” not for “epidemiology”) claimed:In my lifetime, there was another deadly flu epidemic in the United States. The flu spread from Hong Kong to the United States, arriving December 1968 and peaking a year later. It ultimately killed 100,000 people in the U.S., mostly over the age of 65, and one million worldwide.Lifespan in the US in those days was 70 whereas it is 78 today. Population was 200 million as compared with 328 million today. It was also a healthier population with low obesity. If it would be possible to extrapolate the death data based on population and demographics, we might be looking at a quarter million deaths today from this virus. So in terms of lethality, it was as deadly and scary as COVID-19 if not more so, though we shall have to wait to see.“In 1968/69,” says Nathaniel L. Moir in National Interest, “the H3N2 pandemic killed more individuals in the U.S. than the combined total number of American fatalities during both the Vietnam and Korean Wars.”The item’s author quickly tied the claim about Woodstock taking place during a pandemic to the COVID-19 pandemic, continuing:Nothing closed. Schools stayed open. All businesses did too. You could go to the movies. You could go to bars and restaurants. John Fund has a friend who reports having attended a Grateful Dead concert. In fact, people have no memory or awareness that the famous Woodstock concert of August 1969 actually occurred during a deadly American flu pandemic that only peaked six months later.Immediately thereafter, AIER followed with a bracketed note indicating schools did in fact close. [*Note: an earlier version said no schools closed. But a reader pointed me to an academic article that says “23 [states] faced school and college closures” but implies that this was due to absenteeism. This further underscores how aware people were at the time of the disease; the stay-open practice was a deliberate choice. ]The paragraph was changed above and beyond the note, but we transcribed it in its original form — “nothing closed,” and “schools stayed open,” statements which by the author’s admission were not accurate. Right after the note, another paragraph was subtly altered — below is the original (A), then the amended version (B):(A) Stock markets didn’t crash because of the flu. Congress passed no legislation. The Federal Reserve did nothing. Not a single governor acted to enforce social distancing, curve flattening (even though hundreds of thousands of people were hospitalized), or banning of crowds. No mothers were arrested for taking their kids to other homes. No surfers were arrested. No daycares were shut even though there were more infant deaths with this virus than the one we are experiencing now. There were no suicides, no unemployment, no drug overdoses attributable to flu. (B) Stock markets didn’t crash. Congress passed no legislation. The Federal Reserve did nothing. Not a single governor acted to enforce social distancing, curve flattening (even though hundreds of thousands of people were hospitalized), or banning of crowds. No mothers were arrested for taking their kids to other homes. No surfers were arrested. No daycares were shut even though there were more infant deaths with this virus than the one we are experiencing now. There were no suicides, no unemployment, no drug overdoses.Overall, the article left a distinct impression little to no research went into the think piece before it was unleashed to be shared by science deniers.The story itself was one of a series of posts by AIER which could only be described as having the shared theme of “COVID-19 isn’t really that bad,” such as:AIER clearly opposed social distancing, quarantine, and other COVID-19 suppression strategies, and therefore predictably criticized the March 16 2020 Imperial College London report recommending suppression:Imperial College London’s COVID-19 Report, ExplainedThose details were important in the context of the item’s framing — AIER demonstrated a consistent and repeated editorial tendency to downplay COVID-19, which perhaps provided fodder for others to do the same.AIER noted that it referenced the 1969-1970 H3N2 pandemic, which killed around 100,000 Americans in total and around a million people worldwide. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:The 1968 pandemic was caused by an influenza A (H3N2) virus comprised of two genes from an avian influenza A virus, including a new H3 hemagglutinin, but also contained the N2 neuraminidase from the 1957 H2N2 virus. It was first noted in the United States in September 1968. The estimated number of deaths was 1 million worldwide and about 100,000 in the United States. Most excess deaths were in people 65 years and older. The H3N2 virus continues to circulate worldwide as a seasonal influenza A virus. Seasonal H3N2 viruses, which are associated with severe illness in older people, undergo regular antigenic drift.Chronologically, it is true that H3N2 was present in the United States when Woodstock was held in August 1969. So why wasn’t everyone practicing social distancing? It’s true that versions of physical or social distancing date back centuries:Is There ‘No Scientific Proof’ That Social Distancing Prevents the Spread of Coronavirus?Modern coordination of such measures on a larger level (versus the regional forms mentioned in our article above) are more novel:Susan Craddock, a professor at the Institute for Global Studies of the University of Minnesota told the WSJ that mortality rates for the 1968 pandemic were much lower than current mortality rates from COVID-19.Social distancing was also not an idea among public health officials at the time. “That concept was developed in the 2000s when there was concern about another avian influenza outbreak,” Arnold Monto, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan, told USA TODAY.“However, officials decided during the 2009 avian flu outbreak that the virus wasn’t severe enough to necessitate those measures. This time is very different,” he said.The practice of keeping social distance during pandemics and outbreaks of novel sickness and Monto’s statement aligned directly with AIER’s correction — some schools closed, and some social distance was kept. It was just less coordinated.Another factor was that the comparison wasn’t truly direct. COVID-19 was a novel coronavirus, not the first or only coronavirus to infect humans or jump species, but novel nonetheless. H3N2 (which is popularly called the Hong Kong flu) was a notably severe strain of influenza, remembered primarily for being deadlier than most seasonal flu, but not as deadly as the pandemic of 1918-1919:Did the Second Wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu Kill 20 to 30 Million, While the First Wave Killed 3 to 5 Million?H3N2 spread quickly, but resulted in “comparatively few deaths” worldwide:The outbreak was the third influenza pandemic to occur in the 20th century; it followed the 1957 flu pandemic and the influenza pandemic of 1918–19. The 1968 flu pandemic resulted in an estimated one million to four million deaths, far fewer than the 1918–19 pandemic, which caused between 25 million and 50 million deaths …… Although the 1968 flu outbreak was associated with comparatively few deaths worldwide, the virus was highly contagious, a factor that facilitated its rapid global dissemination.An April 2020 BioSpace.com comparison of H3N2 and COVID-19 (“The 1968 Pandemic Strain [H3N2] Persists. Will COVID-19?”) began:1968 was a bad year for flu but, as pandemics go, it was pretty mild. Scientists called the flu strain that hit the world H3N2. It’s still around. Globally, about one million people died until the outbreak faded during the winter of 1969-70. In the U.S., the death toll was approximately 100,000 – three or four times the average annual death toll for flu since 2010, according to CDC figures. Most of those deaths were among people age 65 or older.That piece went on to address a highly relevant element when comparing the 1968 pandemic with COVID-19 in 2020 — vaccines were still relatively novel at the time of that pandemic, and the trajectory of the earlier outbreak was far more sporadic:Edwin D. Kilbourne, (since deceased) professor of microbiology and immunology at New York Medical College, in a 2006 article comparing the influenza pandemics of the 20th century, found that outbreaks in Japan were small and scattered. Western Europe, including the United Kingdom, experienced increased illnesses but no increased death rates during the first year of the pandemic. The U.S., however, experienced high illness and death rates the first year, beginning on the West Coast where the virus was first introduced.“Researchers speculated that (H3N2’s) more sporadic and variable impact in different regions of the world were mediated by differences in prior N2 immunity. Therefore, the 1968 pandemic has been aptly characterized as ‘smoldering,’” Kilbourne wrote. Emphasizing that point, vaccination by Air Force cadets with the H2N2 vaccine reduced H3N2 infections by 54%. […]In the 1960s, vaccines were evolving. The 1968 H3N2 pandemic triggered the development of trivalent vaccines and of subunit vaccines, which decreased adverse reactions. About the same time, the U.S. began recommending annual flu vaccination for high risk individuals.In direct relation to AIER’s viral post on Woodstock’s conjunction with H3N2, it appeared that Reuters published a fact check specific to it. Text at the top of the page was quite revealing:Correction 2: Reuters Fact Check team initially rated this claim as True, and later revised that to Partly True. After listening carefully to feedback from readers and reviewing the timeline of the Hong Kong flu pandemic that started in 1968, we are correcting this verdict to Misleading.It is not unusual for fact check ratings to change when events progress chronologically (such as when the subject of a death hoax later dies, and a page is updated from “false” to “true”). What makes Reuters’ series of corrections so extraordinary for a fact check is that the events being changed took place half a century before they were investigated.Under that, the fact check’s corrections and clarifications continued:Note – this fact check does not aim to compare the responses to the Hong Kong flu and the current COVID-19 outbreaks. It is strictly assessing the primary claim shared in social media posts that “Woodstock occurred in the middle of a pandemic”. It does not attempt to verify or disprove the entire content of an article with that headline that was published on the website of the American Institute for Economic Research hereHere, Reuters attempted to clarify the scope of the fact check, placing it squarely as a chronological matter — in other words, not a one-to-one pandemic comparison. Reuters attempted “strictly assessing” the “primary claim” about the co-occurrence of Woodstock and the 1968-1970 pandemic before swapping the ratings out (twice. )Beyond that point, it is not expressly clear which fact check elements were newly added, and which appeared in the original version rated “true.” But one portion — possibly added when the rating was last changed — involved an email sent to Reuters by Woodstock co-producer Joel Rosenman about the relationship between the pandemic and the concert:Woodstock was not partying in defiance of pandemic containment measures, because at the time of Woodstock, there was no pandemic, and there were no containment measures to defy. In the months following the December-January peak of the pandemic, the flu all but disappeared. By mid-‘69, any preoccupation with the virus had given way to widespread unconcern. Media coverage had dwindled to virtually zero. As far as the nation was concerned, the pandemic was in the rear-view mirror. It was during this time, not during the pandemic months of the previous winter, that my co-producers, John Roberts, Artie Kornfeld, Mike Lang and I created Woodstock—without so much as a thought about ‘pandemic.’ It wasn’t until the next flu season, several months after Woodstock, that we all found ourselves in a horrifying déjà flu.AIER published a misleading and out-of-context claim not only that Woodstock was not only held during a pandemic, but that schools and businesses didn’t close at all during its duration. AIER appended their own unlabeled corrections alongside a “note,” and fact checkers revised their work to address the vital nuance in the claim. For a variety of reasons, the comparison was dishonest. One of those reasons was AIER’s unveiled editorial viewpoint in conflict with medical science, and many others were medical or historical in nature. However, Rosenman stepped forward to clarify the timing of Woodstock as it related to the pandemic, objecting to AIER’s dishonest — but nevertheless viral — claims.Comments
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11388
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Skin cancer drug said to show promise
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"Melanoma is the most deadly form of skin cancer. If caught early, it is highly treatable. If found in advanced stages, the 5 year survival drops significantly. This story reports on the results of a small pilot study showing a benefit in treating advanced stage melanoma using a new class of drug. This short story does a great job of informing the reader while using a minimum of words (only 343). The story adequately represents the availability and novelty of the new drug. The story accurately describes the strength of the available evidence by correctly describing the current study as ""small"" and ""preliminary."" The story does a good job of quantifying the benefits of treatment in absolute terms by providing the actual number of months with no new lesions for both the new drug group and the standard treatment group. Finally, the story does mention that ""there are very few drugs available for people with advanced melanoma."" However, the story could have elaborated on the available alternatives and how this new drug may fit in with the existing options."
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true
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"The story does not mention costs, but it is understandable that pricing may not be available with a drug so early in development. The story does a good job of quantifying the benefits of treatment in absolute terms by providing the actual number of months with no new lesions for both the new drug group and the standard treatment group. The story mentions that potential harms of the drug include a drop in white blood cells, back pain and fatigue. The story adequately describes the design of the current study. The story accurately describes the study as ""small"" and ""preliminary."" The story does not overstate the seriousness or prevalence of melanoma. The story quotes one independent expert in addition to a representative of the company. The story does mention that ""there are very few drugs available for people with advanced melanoma."" However, the story could have elaborated on the available alternatives and how this new drug may fit in with the existing options. The story clearly states that the drug is in very early stages of development and has not yet been submitted for approval. The story clearly states that the drug is new. There is no way to know if the story relied on a press release as the sole source of information."
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34937
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In January 2020, the Food and Drug Administration approved a nasal spray containing cocaine.
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The press release, and Merry Jane’s article, were accurate. In a Jan. 10 letter addressed to Cody Laboratories, a subsidiary of the Philadelphia-headquartered Lannett, the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research wrote:
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true
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Medical
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In January 2020, readers asked us about the accuracy of a story that claimed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved a new cocaine nasal spray for use as a local anesthetic. On Jan. 13, the cannabis and drug industry website Merry Jane published an article with the headline “A Cocaine Nasal Spray Just Received FDA Approval.” That article reported that: Medicinal cocaine has always been a thing, but now there’s an FDA-approved nasal spray aptly made with totally legal, pharmaceutical-grade white. On Monday, the pharmaceutical outfit Lannett Company announced that its new cocaine hydrochloride nasal spray product, dubbed Numbrino, cleared two Phase III, randomized, double-blind clinical trials. “The FDA’s approval of our cocaine HCl product, the first NDA approval to include full clinical trials in the company’s history, marks a major milestone in Lannett’s 70+ years of operations,” said Tim Crew, Lannett Company’s CEO, in a press release. “We believe the product has the potential to be an excellent option for the labeled indication. We expect to launch the product shortly …” The pharmaceutical company’s press release, also published on Jan. 13, read as follows: “Lannett Company, Inc. today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the New Drug Application (NDA), submitted under the 505(b)(2) regulatory pathway, for Cocaine Hydrochloride (HCl) Nasal Solution 4% (40 mg/mL), the company’s branded local anesthetic product … NUMBRINO® (cocaine hydrochloride) nasal solution is an ester local anesthetic indicated for the introduction of local anesthesia of the mucous membranes for diagnostic procedures and surgeries on or through the nasal cavities of adults.”
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38209
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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was in a car accident and later tested positive for cocaine.
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Nancy Pelosi in Fatal Car Accident, Tests Positive for Cocaine
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false
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Government
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A series of reports published by a self-described “satirical” website is behind false rumors that Nancy Pelosi was in a car accident and later tested positive for cocaine. The first report appeared at OurLandoftheFree.com on August 7, 2017, under the headline, “Nancy Pelosi In Critical Condition After Head-On Car Crash.” The report says the West Los Angeles Police Department said Pelosi drank a “ridiculous” amount of wine at an event before the crash: Sgt. Bruce Bahner says that Pelosi’s driver was sick so she decided to drive herself back to her 3.8 million dollar mansion, but with a blood alcohol content of 1.3 she didn’t get very far before she randomly accelerated, went off the road, and slammed into the side of a city bus. Pelosi was not wearing a seatbelt and flew through the windshield, slamming her head into the side of the bus. She is currently in intensive care at St. Myrtle’s Regional Hospital. The first hint that the report is a hoax is that there’s no such thing as the “West Los Angeles Police Department.” The LAPD has a West LA Community Police Station, but it’s not an exclusive police department. The website’s “About Us” page casts further doubt by stating that there’s no guarantee that its content is based in reality, and it should be considered satirical in nature. We’ve investigated many rumors about Nancy Pelosi from fake news websites, and this appears to the latest one. But after the initial report of Nancy Pelosi being in a car accident, the site published a series of follow-up articles. One claimed that a father of three died from injuries that he sustained in the crash. Another claimed that Pelosi tested positive for cocaine that was in her system at the time of the crash: Currently, she is slipping in and out of consciousness at St. Ulysses General Hospital where doctors made a shocking discovery: not only was her blood alcohol content more than four times the legal limit, but the toxicology report revealed that she also had large amounts of cocaine in her system. Like the original report, these follow-up reports are completely fabricated and shouldn’t be taken seriously. Comments
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5584
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UMass Amherst officials say 2 students have meningitis.
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Officials at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have issued a warning to the community after two students were diagnosed with bacterial meningitis.
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true
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Health, University of Massachusetts, Massachusetts, Meningitis
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One student was diagnosed with a variant of the disease on Oct. 24, and a second was diagnosed this past weekend. Both students are in stable condition and health workers are contacting people who may have been in touch with the infected students. Meningitis, which can cause inflammation around the brain and spinal cord, is typically caused by one of five variants — one of which had no vaccine until recently and isn’t covered under standard college vaccinations. UMass is offering the vaccination by appointment. University health officials are advising students to avoid contact with saliva, which can spread the disease.
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22237
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"The Republican budget plan ""says that 10 years from now, if you’re a 65-year-old who’s eligible for Medicare, you should have to pay nearly $6,400 more than you would today."
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President Obama says Republican Medicare plan would cost people $6,400 more in 10 years
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true
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National, Medicare, Barack Obama,
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"In his April 13, 2011, speech on his vision for America’s fiscal future, President Barack Obama quickly went on the offensive against the Republican deficit-cutting budget proposal championed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., a plan that passed the House in a partisan vote two days later. Obama was particularly critical of Ryan's controversial proposal to dramatically overhaul Medicare. While Medicare benefits would remain as they are now for people 55 and older, when those younger than 55 reach retirement, the traditional Medicare system would be replaced with ""premium support"" payments that would subsidize the purchase of private insurance plans. ""It’s a vision that says America can’t afford to keep the promise we’ve made to care for our seniors,"" Obama said. ""It says that 10 years from now, if you’re a 65-year-old who’s eligible for Medicare, you should have to pay nearly $6,400 more than you would today. It says instead of guaranteed health care, you will get a voucher. And if that voucher isn’t worth enough to buy insurance, tough luck – you’re on your own. Put simply, it ends Medicare as we know it."" This $6,400 figure has become a White House talking point and is sure to be repeated often as the 2012 campaign heats up, so we thought we'd better take a look. We'll begin by explaining how Obama arrived at the number. It's based on an analysis of the Ryan plan by the government's nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which concluded that those who get premium support payments in 10 years will end up paying substantially more for their health care than if Medicare is left as is. According to the CBO analysis (see page 20 -25), under the Ryan plan, the $8,000 premium support voucher in 2022 would cover 39 percent of the cost of the average private plan for a 65-year-old. Which means the plan actually costs about $20,500 and that beneficiaries would be on the hook for about $12,500 of the cost. The CBO also presented estimates for an ""alternative fiscal scenario"" –- which incorporates ""several changes to then-current law that were widely expected to occur or that would modify some provisions of law that might be difficult to sustain for a long period."" Under this scenario, the typical beneficiary who enrolled in traditional Medicare would pay about 30 percent of the cost of the average private plan in 2022, or about $6,150. In other words, the increased amount the 65-year-old would have to pay would be about $6,400. The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, which did an analysis of the CBO data, came up with the same numbers as Obama. So did the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Republicans don't contest that's what the CBO numbers are. But Obama left out an important fact, said Stephen Spruiell, a spokesman for the Republicans on the Committee on the Budget: ""Elsewhere in the letter, CBO makes clear that the comparison is making unrealistic assumptions in order to construct a future for Medicare under the status quo –- a future in which Medicare goes bankrupt, seniors suffer from reduced access to care, and the nation enters a debt crisis."" Indeed, the CBO clearly states that both of its scenarios, by keeping benefits largely as they are, would create ""pressures over the long term that would make them difficult to sustain."" Without Medicare reform, the CBO warned ""the government’s debt would skyrocket to levels unprecedented in the United States."" That would result in either rising tax rates or ""surging federal debt."" And that, in turn, might lead lawmakers to reduce Medicare benefits. Said Spruiell: ""Comparing our plan to save Medicare to an unsustainable status quo means comparing a real plan to a false reality. The president’s comparison is not valid, because he ripped the CBO number out of context and omitted the director’s clear warnings about the unsustainability of the status quo."" Gail Wilensky, who ran the Medicare program under President George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s, said the CBO also does not take into account the behavioral changes that Ryan's plan would likely encourage. Right now, she said, all the pressure is on the providers. But under the Ryan plan, more of the burden shifts to the consumers. If it is set up as it is for federal employees, there would be a wide range of plans, at a wide range of costs. And people will be able to shop around and change every year, Wilensky said. ""This gets people looking and being involved in a way that they haven't been,"" she said. Consumers will be highly motivated to migrate to cheaper plans, she said, and there will be more competition among providers. The CBO often gets it wrong when it comes to predicting behavioral change, Wilensky said. For example, she said, the Medicare part D prescription drug program has proven to cost about 40 percent less than government projections. The CBO did not predict the market competition caused by people using private drug plans, she said. ""So be cautious of the CBO numbers,"" she warned. So where does that leave us with Obama's claim that the Republican plan ""says that 10 years from now, if you’re a 65-year-old who’s eligible for Medicare, you should have to pay nearly $6,400 more than you would today""? That number is based on a CBO analysis of the Republican plan. Republicans rightly point out that the CBO warned that unless major reforms are made to the Medicare program, it could lead to skyrocketing public debt, which might ultimately lead to pressure on legislators to reduce Medicare benefits. In his speech, Obama used the lower of two CBO estimates of costs, one based on some anticipated changes in Medicare. And he did not argue for the status quo on Medicare. ""We will change the way we pay for health care -– not by the procedure or the number of days spent in a hospital, but with new incentives for doctors and hospitals to prevent injuries and improve results,"" Obama said. ""And we will slow the growth of Medicare costs by strengthening an independent commission of doctors, nurses, medical experts and consumers who will look at all the evidence and recommend the best ways to reduce unnecessary spending while protecting access to the services that seniors need. ""We believe the reforms we’ve proposed to strengthen Medicare and Medicaid will enable us to keep these commitments to our citizens while saving us $500 billion by 2023, and an additional $1 trillion in the decade after that,"" Obama said. ""But if we’re wrong, and Medicare costs rise faster than we expect, then this approach will give the independent commission the authority to make additional savings by further improving Medicare."" Whether that approach will succeed is a matter of political debate. Obama has accurately portrayed the consequences of the Republican plan, at least according to the CBO analysis. It's a long-term projection -- which always carries a degree of uncertainty, and some, like Wilensky, argue that the CBO fails to adequately account for the behavioral changes the plan would encourage, which might drive costs substantially lower. (We should note that some Democrats believe the CBO has consistently underestimated health care cost-saving initiatives contained in the controversial health reform law passed last year.) But the bottom line is that under the Republican plan, those who reach 65 in 10 years would pay more out of pocket for private health care. That's the idea, to reduce the cost of the Medicare program to the government. Republicans argue it the most responsible way to make the program fiscally sustainable. Obama argues that cost is too high and that savings can be achieved in other ways. Again, that's a matter of political debate. The CBO compared the Republican plan to the status quo and to a somewhat modified Medicare. The CBO says either scenario would cause crushing debt, and would likely encourage legislators to cut Medicare benefits in the future. Obama too, is proposing reform. Obama's figure is close to what the CBO estimated in one scenario -- the least costly one -- that the Republican plan would cost consumers in 10 years compared to what seniors pay today."
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4434
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Conservation program hopes to help people of all abilities.
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An environmental conservation program based in western Wisconsin plans to expand its work opportunities and environmental education program to people of all abilities.
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true
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La Crosse, Environmental education, Wisconsin, Neighborhoods, Environment
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WisCorps has hired someone with a visual impairment and another person with a physical disability to work on erosion control and planting in neighborhood parks, and building accessible gardens this summer, Wisconsin Public Radio (http://bit.ly/2s8XH2P) reported. WisCorps Executive Director Matthew Brantner said the group is being called the Inclusive Crew. “Whether it’s a physical barrier or just a barrier to entry into the workforce, we want to be able to remove that and get young people into the workforce and have young people of all abilities come in and conserve our state’s natural resources and revitalize our communities,” he said. The goal is to expand the concept to all of the program’s work crews by next summer, he said. More than 40 percent of people with disabilities in the state are unemployed, according to 2016 statistics. Inclusive Crew program coordinator Andrea Frisch says she hopes to make nature available to everyone. “Scientifically, there are studies that say spending time in nature you have better outcomes for stress management,” she said. “Some individuals with different disabilities, for example autism, being outdoors and doing nature activities helps people focus and helps people experience things that they wouldn’t typically experience.” ___ Information from: Wisconsin Public Radio, http://www.wpr.org
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31851
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MMA fighter Ronda Rousey has been found dead in her bathtub.
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The “USA Today News” article included an image of a large law enforcement presence in a residential neighborhood, a picture that appeared to come from a blog devoted to the television show House and did not depict any real event involving Ronda Rousey.
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false
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Junk News, death hoax, ronda rousey, usa today
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On 2 January 2017, the “USA Today News” web site reported that Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter Ronda Rousey had been discovered dead in her home following a routine wellness check: On the morning of January 2, 2017, Ronda Rousey was found in a bathtub in her Venice residence, dead. Despite an immediate medical response, EMT’s were unable to revive her. The cause of death is still unknown, however a preliminary autopsy has been confirmed to be underway. First responders told us that they discovered what appeared to be a needle used for drugs, as well as a bag of an ambiguous powdered substance. While no drug use has been substantiated, her mother had previously spoken to the media about Rousey’s previous depression & drug abuse. Rousey’s mother had this to say, “All of those who have criticized Ronda for taking a loss so to heart, for not just ‘shrugging it off’ don’t understand that what made Ronda so successful is that she cares DEEPLY about winning to an extent that I don’t believe the average person can wrap his/her head around.” After her last fight, where she lost to Amanda Nunes in less than one minute, Rousey went silent — no one has heard a thing from her on social media, or from interviews. Her whereabouts and status were completely unknown to the public until this tragic happening was uncovered by two police officers discovered her body on a wellness check. However, the report that Ronda Rousey was found dead on 2 January 2017 was merely fake news that appeared solely on the fly-by-night “USA Today News” web site and was reported neither by the legitimate USA Today news outlet nor any other credible source. “USA Today News” in no way resembles the actual USA Today web site:
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5098
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3 International Space Station astronauts land in Kazakhstan.
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An International Space Station crew including an American, a Briton and a Russian landed safely Saturday in the sun-drenched steppes of Kazakhstan.
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true
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Top News, Jeff Williams, International News, Kazakhstan, Science, Europe, Russia, Yuri Malenchenko
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The Soyuz TMA-19M capsule carrying NASA’s Tim Kopra, Tim Peake of the European Space Agency and the Russian agency Roscosmos’ Yuri Malenchenko touched down as scheduled at 3:15 p.m. local time (0915 GMT) about 90 miles (145 kilometers) southeast of Zhezkazgan in Kazakhstan. All descent maneuvers were performed without any hitches and the crew reported feeling fine as their ship slid off the orbit and headed down to Earth. Helicopters carrying recovery teams were circling the area as the capsule was descending slowly under a massive orange-and-white parachute. Support crew helped the trio get out of the capsule, charred by a fiery descent through the atmosphere, and placed them in reclining chairs for a quick check-up. Squinting at the sun, Peake said he felt “elated,” adding that “the smells of Earth are just so strong.” “I’d love some cool rain right now!” he said with a smile as he sat in scorching heat in his balky spacesuit. After a medical check-up, the crew will change their spacesuits for regular clothing and be flown separately to their respective bases. Maj. Peake, a 44-year-old former army helicopter pilot, has become a hero at home, helping rekindle an interest in space exploration. He was not the first Briton in space. Helen Sharman visited Russia’s Mir space station in 1991 on a privately backed mission and several British-born American citizens flew with NASA’s space shuttle program. But Peake is Britain’s first publicly funded British astronaut and the first Briton to visit the International Space Station. He performed the first British space walk and was honored by Queen Elizabeth II in her annual Birthday Honors List. He excited many at home by joining the 26.2-mile (42-kilometer) London Marathon — from 250 miles (400 kilometers) above the Earth, harnessed to a treadmill aboard the ISS with a simulation of the route through London’s streets playing on an iPad. Peake finished the race in 3 hours and 35 minutes, a record for the fastest marathon in orbit, according to Guinness World Records. The trio spent 186 days in space since their launch in December 2015. They have conducted hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science. “I’m going to miss the view definitely,” Peake said after landing. NASA said the data received would help in the potential development of vaccines and could be relevant in the treatment of patients suffering from ocular diseases, such as glaucoma. For Malenchenko, it was a sixth mission, and he logged up a total of 828 days in space, the second-longest accumulated time in space after Russian Gennady Padalka. Kopra has logged up 244 days in space on two flights. NASA astronaut Jeff Williams along with Russians Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin of Roscosmos will operate the station for three weeks until the arrival of three new crew members.
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9277
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Life Extension-supported study published in Lancet Neurology finds green tea extract improves cognition in Down Syndrome
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Life Extension is a health supplement company that helped support a double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled phase 2 trial looking at the benefits of epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), a constituent of green tea extract, in young adults with Down syndrome. For a news release provided by a company, the language used to describe its results is measured, with no touting of its products between the lines. The release is up-front about the company’s status as funder of the research and explains how the findings are novel. However, readers are given a somewhat bare bones description of the trial that uses vague wording and lacks numerical estimates of costs and benefits. We’re only told that participants in the therapy arm improved in “some measures” of cognition and behavior, while scoring “significantly better” on other assessments. There is no mention of the study’s limitations or the treatment’s adverse effects. We also would have liked more context on Down syndrome, such as existing therapy options, including other drugs already on the market. Down syndrome is the most common genetic chromosomal disorder and cause of learning disabilities in children, causing lifelong developmental delays. In some people, it can cause a number of health problems and conditions. Unfortunately, there is no cure or a single, standard treatment for Down syndrome. Treatments are individual, based on one’s physical and intellectual needs. Most interventions are therapies, ranging from physical/occupational to emotional/behavioral. According to the National Institutes of Health, some people with Down syndrome take amino acid supplements or drugs that affect their brain activity, but many recent clinical trials of these treatments were poorly controlled and revealed adverse effects. Newer, more specific psychoactive drugs have been developed, but no controlled clinical studies of these medications for Down syndrome have demonstrated their safety and efficacy. As a result, research providing an effective, non-toxic option to treat Down syndrome is newsworthy, especially if the study is already in the phase II clinical phase.
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mixture
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Down Syndrome,green tea extract,Life Extension
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The release doesn’t mention the cost of the green tree extract used in the study. By going to the manufacturer’s website we found that a bottle of Life Extension Decaffeinated Mega Green Tea Extract with 100 capsules — about a month’s supply – is priced at $22.50. The release doesn’t provide any context for understanding the clinical importance of the observed changes in memory, control, and adaptive behavior. Vague language (“some measures of cognition and behavior”) is used to describe the benefits experienced by subjects in the study. We are told that participants taking the supplement showed improvements in neuronal connectivity and had “scored significantly better on assessments of visual recognition memory, inhibitory control and adaptive behavior,” compared to those who took the rice flour pills. But we aren’t told the extent of the benefit, how long the benefits lasted and how many people even took the supplements out of the original 87 volunteers. And the use of the word “significantly” here could be confusing for readers, since it’s meant as “statistically significant” instead of the colloquial use of the term, which could mean “impressively” or “largely.” We are told that participants underwent a series of “assessments” for cognition and behavior, but we don’t know how these evaluations were conducted and what exactly these neuropsychological measures were. We think quantification of potential benefits and a description of the measurement tools used are necessary in a news release, which is why we are giving it an Unsatisfactory rating here. Although adverse effects were reported by by study participants (e.g bone and joint pain, headache, physical weakness and celiac disease), researchers commented in the study that these conditions were not related to treatment, since “no differences were noted in adverse effects between the two treatment groups.” But if there are no side effects, then a simple acknowledgement that “there were no adverse effects” would still be in order, and the release didn’t provide this. The news release does a good job mentioning the study inclusion criteria and pointing out that the study was a phase 2, randomized, controlled trial. It also gets points for drawing attention (a little obliquely) to some of the trial limitations when it calls for “further study in randomized controlled trials with larger sample sizes and durations.” The limitations identified in the study include the relative small study size and the acknowledgement that the “choice of their assessment instruments” could have caused them to have overlooked some of the supplement’s effects. There is no disease mongering in this news release. The news release makes it clear that the study was supported by Life Extension and discloses Life Extension’s involvement in an earlier pilot study. The two sources quoted in the news release have ties to Life Extension – a fact the news release also makes clear in their titles. We applaud the news release for disclosing this information, which is why we give it a Satisfactory rating here. Researchers point out in their journal article that there is no approved intervention to improve cognitive deficits in individuals with Down’s syndrome. General treatment approaches include early intervention and educational, physical, speech-language, occupational and emotional/behavioral therapies, according to the National Institutes of Health. Regarding drugs and supplements, the agency adds, “No controlled clinical studies of these medications for Down syndrome have demonstrated their safety and efficacy, however.” But the release contains none of this context and makes no mention of potential treatment alternatives. The news release could have been more explicit in pointing out that green tea extract supplements are easily available online or at the local health foods store. However, we give it here the benefit of the doubt, since it disclosed Life Extension’s support in this study. Furthermore, the availability of green tea is not in question. The news release does a satisfactory job providing context and detailing what this study brings to the current body of literature. An earlier pilot study supported by Life Extension looked at mice with a “Down-syndrome-life condition” and EGCG intervention. The current study is the first trial to show improvement in adaptive behavior and brain-related changes in young adults with Down’s syndrome, according to researchers. The news release then cautions that more research is needed to understand the correlation between EGCG and cognitive training intervention. For these reasons, we give the news release a Satisfactory rating here. The news release does not use unjustifiable, sensational language.
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9319
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FDA approves new flu pill that can be taken after onset of symptoms
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This story is one of two we are reviewing that focuses on FDA’s approval of a drug designed to speed patient recovery from flu symptoms (the second story is from The New York Times). The drug is baloxavir marboxil, marketed under the trade name Xofluza. This ABC News story didn’t adequately address cost, potential harms, or the fact that Xofluza worked no better than oseltamivir (sold as Tamiflu) at reducing flu symptoms in a clinical trial. It also told readers that researchers think the drug “will reduce spread of the flu,” but didn’t point out that there is no evidence to show that as a possible benefit. Influenza is fairly common, as recent findings from the CDC make clear. That means that many people will likely have to make decisions about how to deal with the flu and flu symptoms in the coming year. Making an informed decision requires patients to have good information on costs and potential health risks associated with their treatment options — and that’s particularly true when new treatment options come onto the market. This story doesn’t adequately address those key issues.
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false
|
influenza
|
Costs are not addressed. As the New York Times reported in its second paragraph: The pill will cost $150, according to a spokeswoman for Genentech, which will sell Xofluza in this country. Genentech will offer coupons that lower the price to $30 for patients with health insurance and to about $90 for the uninsured. The story explains that Xofluza is designed to reduce the duration of flu symptoms by more than one day, which is more than the New York Times did — but it’s still not a quantified benefit. What’s more, while the NYT story made clear that clinical trial results showed the benefits to be comparable between Xofluza and Tamiflu, this story doesn’t mention the finding. Also, neither ABC News nor NYT reported that there was not a statistically significant difference for the Xofluza group when it came to study participants reporting they were feeling back to their usual state of health. Lastly, ABC News stated that “researchers believe the medication will prevent patients from spreading the flu”–but the story didn’t explain that there is no evidence to show this benefit exists. The story states that Xofluza is associated with “less side effects” than Tamiflu, but it doesn’t mention any potential harms. The company that markets Xofluza notes that its most common side effects include diarrhea, bronchitis, headache, nausea and common cold symptoms. Those potential side effects are worth mentioning. In addition, neither this story nor the NYT story noted that the drug should not be used by nursing mothers or women who are pregnant, given the lack of information about whether Xofluza can get into breastmilk or how it may affect prenatal health. The study mentions only that Xofluza was compared to a placebo in clinical trials. That’s not enough to give readers a sense of the quality of the evidence. No disease mongering here. And the story does provide some useful context about flu prevalence in the 2017-18 flu season. The story makes it clear when citing sources associated with the drug’s parent company. It also included one physician not connected to the drug. However, it didn’t disclose that this physician, Todd Ellerin, has significant relevant financial relationships with antiviral drug manufacturers. The story doesn’t mention that clinical trial results showed the benefits to be comparable between Xofluza and Tamiflu. That’s a fundamental oversight. Why does it matter? Well, for one thing, the cost of generic Tamiflu will be much lower than the cost of Xofluza (since there will be no generic on the market). The story tackles this head on: “The pill will be available across the U.S. in the coming weeks, according to the FDA.” The story addresses novelty directly, noting: “The medication is the first in a new class of antiviral medications that blocks an enzyme within the flu virus, which stops viral replication early in the influenza cycle, the FDA announced.” This is a close one. For the most part, the story seems to draw heavily from two news releases — the one issued by the FDA, and the one issued by Genentech (which markets Xofluza). However, the story does incorporate input from an independent source. That’s enough to put it over the top here.
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28399
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About 125 women took Mifepristone to terminate their pregnancies during a protest demanding the legalization of abortion in South Korea.
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We reached out to Women on Waves and Femidangdang for more information about the protest but did not receive a response prior to publication.
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mixture
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Politics
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In late August 2018, a number of pro-life web sites such as LifeNews.com published articles reporting that 125 women “took abortion pills to kill their babies” during a protest concerning the legality of abortion in South Korea: The accompanying photograph did depict a protest in South Korea, but the claim that 125 women took “abortion pills” during that demonstration in order to terminate their pregnancies as part of the demonstration does not appear to be accurate. The majority of participants in the protest were intended to simply take harmless vitamin pills. Activists in South Korea put out a call in August 2018 for 125 women to join them for a protest at Boshingak (a large pavilion at the center of Seoul) to demand the end of Clause 269, a portion of the South Korean legal code that criminalizes abortion, and to legalize the abortion drug Mifepristone. The protest, which was organized by the Korean feminist organizations Femidangdang and Baumealame in collaboration with Women on Waves, featured 125 women because that’s the number of women, according to the activists, who have abortions in South Korea every hour: Terminating a pregnancy is not a sin. It is not taboo. Right here in South Korea, where abortion is prohibited by law, we speak for women choosing to terminate pregnancies. Abortion is a right that must be secured no matter the social status of the woman. Society speaks of abortion as a decision that only promiscuous or unmarried women choose. Pregnancy is considered a just punishment that such women must bear. However, abortion is an operation that is most frequently enacted worldwide, and many women choose abortion for various reasons. According to the Korean Association of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, it is estimated that around 3000 surgical abortions are conducted within our country every day. This is three times the amount our government estimates. During the single hour that our performance is taking place, 125 South Korean women decide to terminate their pregnancy. Right at this moment, we speak of the women that choose abortion. 125 of us have come together to make the following demands to a country that imposes the responsibility of unwanted pregnancies upon women, and women only. The invitation for the event informed participants that while one activist would truly be taking the abortion drug Mifepristone, all 125 volunteers would be given harmless vitamins to take instead: What do you do? 125 women gather in front of the hospital and eat medicine together. The organizer activist eats a drug called mifepristone, a drug that stops pregnancy. The rest of the participants eat vitamin pills. 125명의 여성이 보신각 앞에 모여 다함께 약을 먹습니다. 주최 측 활동가는 임신중단 약물, ‘미프진(미페프리스톤)’ 알약을 먹습니다. 나머지 참가자는 비타민 알약을 먹습니다. A message posted to Twitter announcing the event also stated that all of the pills handed out by the event organizers would be vitamins, not actual abortion pills: We went through the sign-up process to find out more about the demonstration and noted that the sponsoring organization had stated on numerous occasions that the pills handed out to the 125 women participants would be nothing more than vitamins. In the event’s FAQ section, for instance, the activists wrote that “all the pills distributed by the organizer to the participants are vitamin D.” This event reportedly did feature at least one activist taking the drug Mifepristone. However, it’s unclear if she or any other activists who might have actually taken the drug were pregnant at the time of the protest. A portion of the FAQ section explained that while the protest trod the line of legality, authorities would not be able to tell who had taken the drug or whether any of protest participants were pregnant: Is this performance illegal? We all use the same medicine box. The general participant protects the activist by eating vitamins similar to Miffin. Organizer activists take actual pills but it is against the law to force them to be pregnant. You can not tell if an abortion actually happened, so eating these pills in public is not in violation of abortion law. Another section explained that medical staff would be on hand to provide aid to the participants: The activists who take myopin know the precautions in advance and the medical staff will be waiting for the situation on the spot.
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2570
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To stay fit during holidays bend, don't break routine: experts.
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Sticking to a fitness routine is not always easy, but holiday feasting, drinking and family can make it even harder.
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true
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Health News
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‘Tis the season, experts say, to bend your fitness routine so it does not break. “Consider the holidays a time to maintain fitness, not a time to set new goals or be ambitious,” said fitness expert Shirley Archer, author of “Fitness 9 to 5” and “Weight Training for Dummies.” The average American gains one pound (.45 kilograms) each year during the holiday season, Archer said, but it’s a fate you can avoid by being active when time allows. “Research tells us that you can get an effective strength training routine in as little as 15 minutes,” she said. “This is not ideal to build strength over time, but is sufficient to keep what you have during the holidays.” A bare-bones cardio workout can be accomplished by fitting short, 10-minute bouts of activity into your holiday plans. Danielle Hopkins, group fitness manager and instructor at an Equinox fitness center in New York City, tells her concerned clients to try to sweat at least 20 minutes a day. “I stress the importance of keeping to your routine. The main thing is putting it on your calendar,” said Hopkins, who said drinking too much makes it harder to make it to the gym. “Always make room. It’s pretty easy to do. If you’re traveling, bring your running shoes, or a jump rope, or look for a gym.” And rest assured that one night of over-indulgence won’t derail a year of work. “Everyone’s diet has a bit of wiggle room,” she said. “I think it’s good to imbibe a little, but be strategic about what you’ll allow. Have a little bit.” Constantly avoiding holiday temptation is tiring and in the end unsustainable, according to Gregory Chertok, a sports psychologist with the American College of Sports Medicine. When navigating holiday stresses, from family to poor food choices, Chertok, who is based in New Jersey, said a simple change in attitude can yield powerful results. “Embrace challenge rather than avoid temptation,” he said. “Avoidance over time can be pretty exhausting. Just like our physical muscles, our mental muscles can get exhausted. Will power requires replenishment.” He said studies show when people try too feverishly to control themselves, their will power wanes. “There are ways to keep your will power at a strong level, such as staying away from overly restrictive diets, planning the occasional indulgence and eating small frequent meals,” he added. Surrounding oneself with people of similar health and wellness inclinations can also facilitate positive choices. “We’re influenced very powerfully by others’ behavior,” Chertok said. He encourages his clients to allow for the occasional slip up. Being self-forgiving and self-compassionate leads to greater success. “People who set strict goals will self-chastise, self-criticize,” he said. “That doesn’t allow for high performance or self esteem. As human beings, we take care of ourselves when we feel worthy of self care.” Trainer Tracy Anderson, whose fitness DVDs include “Metamorphosis” and “Mini-Trampoline Workout” stresses consistency. “The most important thing is to become a consistent exerciser, where you go and have 30 minutes to one hour daily of focused work,” she said. “That is the number one best thing we can be doing.” But her advice for people fretting about the holiday season is to feed your soul. “One time a year is not toxic; in fact, it is the opposite,” she said from her New York home. “It feeds your soul so much that it helps your stress. I say eliminate the word diet from your vocabulary for three days before and after a holiday.” Archer echoes the sentiment and suggests enjoying the pleasures of the seasons. “All too soon, your routine will return and you can hit your fitness program with renewed commitment and enthusiasm,” she added.
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8033
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Swiss virus death toll hits 235 as official says worst case scenario `not yet materialized'.
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The death toll in Switzerland from coronavirus had climbed to 235 while total cases stand at 13,213, the health ministry said on Saturday, though officials said their worst fears have so far not materialized.
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true
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Health News
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The fatalities were up from 197 on Friday, with the number of confirmed infections increasing from 12,161. The Alpine country of 8.6 million people is deploying army medical units at hospitals to help in regions like Ticino, which borders hard-hit Italy, and has began tapping its strategic stockpile of pharmaceuticals to cover rising demand. The public has been urged to remain home, while gatherings of more than five people have been banned. Even so, officials said that there is additional capacity in intensive care beds and that while resources including strong painkillers are being stretched, the country’s medical system is holding up. “The worst-case forecasts that were made weeks ago have not materialized,” said Daniel Koch, head of the health ministry’s communicable disease division. Speaking at a news conference in Bern, he said currently 280 people are in intensive care. The country has more than 1,000 ventilators, including those deployed by the Swiss military at make-shift medical facilities set up to handle a possible deluge of patients. “That’s 280 people who are fighting for their lives,” Koch said. Still, “no ICU is overwhelmed. All still have capacity. We can ventilate more people, but we’re hoping that the population remains disciplined. That’s the only way to avoid a situation in which a lot more patients need to be ventilated.” Like other European countries, Switzerland is pumping money into its crisis-hit economy, and state-backed loans worth 20 billion Swiss francs ($21 billion) were made available on Thursday. By Saturday, about 15,930 companies had completed loan applications, the government said, as the jobless figure rose by 13,500 and 757,000 applications for shorter working hours were submitted, representing some 15% of the country’s total workforce. Finance Minister Ueli Maurer said the government was happy to help with loans, but that the money must be paid back and could not cover income losses. “We are not distributing federal money, but taxpayers’ money,” Maurer told SRF radio. “Many of those who pay taxes are now partially unemployed, their jobs are in question, and now we take the money away from them and distribute it somewhere where there are also problems.” ($1 = 0.9511 Swiss francs)
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27137
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Every U.S. president since 1976 has declared at least one national emergency.
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In short, although many Americans may not have been aware of it at the beginning of 2019, the United States has been under one or more states of national emergency continuously for the last four decades.
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true
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Politics
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In 1976, U.S. President Gerald Ford signed off on the National Emergencies Act (NEA), federal legislation that ended all previous national states of emergency and formalized the process by which the President can declare states of emergencies and undertake special powers during those emergencies. In general, the President may initiate a state of emergency by issuing a declaration (typically via executive order). An existing state of emergency can be terminated by the President himself, or by a joint resolution by Congress. The President can veto such a resolution, however, requiring both houses of Congress to then override the veto by a two-thirds vote. When President Donald Trump hinted in early 2019 his intention to bypass Congress and secure funding for building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border by declaring a national emergency — and then followed through on that plan — the subject of “national emergencies” suddenly became a hot topic of public discussion. Since the public tends to associate that term with dire threats such as terrorist attacks, epidemics, or the outbreak of war, many people were surprised to learn that several dozen national emergencies had been declared since the passage of the NEA in 1976 — as reflected in a viral social media post: According to the Brennan Center for Justice, at the time of President Trump’s declaration of a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States in February 2019, some 58 national emergencies had previously been declared by various presidents since 1979, with 31 of them still in effect as of February 2019. The gist of the social media post displayed above is therefore correct, in that every U.S. president since 1976 (excluding Gerald Ford, whose term ended in January 1977) has declared at least one national emergency, although we came up with some slightly different numbers. (Our tally based on the Brennan Center’s list has Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush each declaring one more emergency than stated above, and President Barack Obama declaring one fewer than stated.) In addition, the majority of those emergency declarations remain in effect as of this writing. The focus of these national emergencies has ranged from President Carter’s blocking Iranian government property after fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were taken hostage in Tehran in 1979 and President Reagan’s barring trade with Nicaragua in 1985, to President Clinton’s prohibiting transactions with terrorists who threatened to disrupt the Middle East peace process in 1995 and President Obama’s declaring an emergency over the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 2009.
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11019
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Nasal irrigation may prevent chronic sinus ailments; however, steam inhalation not effective
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In this randomized controlled study of 871 patients, researchers found a slight improvement (44.1% for users of nasal irrigation vs. 36.6% for those using another treatment method) based on a measurement of clinical and self-reported symptoms from patients with sinus infections who were given instructions in how to use a salt solution to wash the inside of their nostrils. Patient volunteers in the study were assigned to one of four groups: those receiving a nasal irrigation solution, steam, a combination of steam and nasal irrigation and “usual care” which referred to medications or referral, at the discretion of the physician. The study found that after six months there was a very modest decrease among nasal irrigation users in the use of over-the-counter medications (59.4% v. 68.0%) and those intending to seek medical consultation for symptom relief in the future. The release uses careful language throughout and doesn’t over-sell the benefits. But the release is lacking on data that would quantify the benefits as well as information on cost and harms. This matters because chronic sinus infections are a reason millions of people may be prescribed antibiotics, even though such medicines often do not help the symptoms. Reducing the use of antibiotics could help the world avoid the growth of resistant bacteria — which are a big threat. This study about alternatives of nasal irrigation (washing with salt solution) or inhaling steam is aimed at proving that people can feel better without as frequent of doctor visits and without antibiotics — which often are not effective and contribute to the resistance problem. But the study itself showed such modest improvement for patients that it didn’t contribute greatly to this desired outcome.
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mixture
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Journal news release
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The release does not mention cost. Normal saline can easily be made at home or purchased from a local pharmacy. The cost is low in both cases and it should have been mentioned in the story especially in contrast to the cost of antibiotics. The benefits information was pretty spare. We would have liked some numbers — rather than simply this sentence: “Patients who were instructed to use nasal irrigation showed improvement at 3 and 6 months, as measured by the Rhinosinusitis Disability Index. Steam inhalation did not appear to alleviate symptoms of sinusitis.” How much improvement? Is there a percentage or absolute number that could have been included? According to the published study, “By 6 months, significantly more patients maintained a 10-point clinically important improvement in the RSDI score with nasal irrigation (44.1% v. 36.6%); fewer used over-the-counter medications (59.4% v. 68.0%) or intended to consult a doctor in future episodes.” There is no mention of harms. While considered to be safe, there are risks to nasal irrigation that include a potential failure to seek appropriate medical attention as well as infection, headache and nosebleed, according this consumer fact sheet by the FDA. The release makes clear that this was a randomized controlled trial of about 871 patients who were followed for six months. We think this helps the reader judge the quality of the evidence. There is no disease mongering. This release does not make any comment on the study funders. According to the UK clinical trial registry, the study was sponsored by the University of Southampton (UK). The release talks about alternatives for sinus infections ranging from doctor visits and potential prescriptions to at-home use of nasal irrigation or steam inhalation. Nasal irrigation and steam are both widely available. The release does not make a claim for the novelty of this trial. However, the study itself states it is “one of few studies to address the effectiveness of brief advice to use nasal irrigation” and “the largest trial in any setting.” Both of those facts belonged in the release. There is no unjustifiable language. We would quibble with the use of the word “prevention” in the title, however. This research did nothing to study preventing sinus infections. It studied improving symptoms.
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11196
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In a new book, Kitty Dukakis credits electroconvulsive therapy for relieving her famously disabling depression
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The article describes one person’s experiences–a famous person’s experiences–with electroshock therapy for severe depression. Although her story is compelling and interesting, anecdotal story-telling is fraught with potential bias. The information is based on one person’s experiences without any objective or independent information. However, readers do get a sense of the natural history or burden of severe depression, which can be quite disabling. Readers also get a sense that treatment worked for this woman (her anecdotal experience would support the benefit reported in the scientific literature). However, because the story is anecdotal, the evidence that this treatment actually works is not provided, nor any information about whom it helps, in what situations, by how much, or for how long. Readers can also get a sense of disadvantages or harms of treatment, namely memory problems in this story. However, the story could be improved by actually reporting published harms of treatment and providing readers with estimates for how often these might occur.
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mixture
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The article does not mention costs of treatment. The story does not describe benefits in quantitative terms, although the story describes qualitative experiences anecdotally. There is no description of whom this might benefit or under what circumstances (those for whom other treatments have failed or for whom an immediate response is required) or by how much one might improve or for how long. The article describes memory problems as a harm of treatment, which are well-described, but without any quantitative context. The reader is not able to assess their relative importance. Another disadvantage of ECT is that effects are short-term, which could be deduced from the number of treatments reported anecdotally, although this was not explicit. Antidepressants are usually needed after ECT treatment, which may not be viewed as a typical harm of treatment, but this is not really described, and in fact, the anecdotal story makes it sound like the story-teller was able to stop antidepressants altogether (while this may be true, it may not have occurred right away). The list of harms could be longer and they include the risks of general anesthesia and death. The article does not describe any scientific evidence for use of ECT (for which there is good evidence of a benefit in selected people). This article would have been enhanced if the compelling personal story had been put into context with information about the treatments provided. There is a broad and cogent literature supporting the use of psychotherapy, medication, and ECT, but the reader of this story would not learn this without independent research. The personal account, although anecdotal and potentially biasing, does appropriately describe the disabling nature of severe depression. Personal situations and feelings are described, but they are reasonable descriptions of how depression can affect one’s life. And depression is highly prevalent in the general population. One excerpt that is questionable is the statement that this person wasn’t able to grieve over her father’s death until after she stopped antidepressants, implying that antidepressants prevented her from feeling grief, which is misleading. The story describes a treatment-refractory case and many people with depression respond adequately to psychotherapy, medication, or both. But overall, the description of the natural history seems appropriate. A major fault of the story is that it is purely anecdotal. It is one person’s experience, which is compelling and probably sells magazines, but maybe not the best range of information. Although this is a confessional, honest, and moving account, it is subjective. Commentary from unbiased experts would be a welcome addition, adding context into which to fit this story. The story describes very briefly one person’s experiences with other treatment options, namely antidepressants and/or depression counseling. For people with severe depression, antidepressants, or antidepressants together with depression counseling are other treatment options, although this is not explicitly stated in the story. It appears that the story-teller tried both of these options at some point or another. The article states electroshock therapy, or ECT, has been around since the 1930’s and also names an institution where such therapy was provided. The story states ECT has been around since the 1930’s, so this is not new. The story doesn’t rely on a news release; it’s an excerpt from a book.
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7521
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4 passengers dead aboard cruise ship anchored off Panama.
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Four passengers have died aboard a cruise ship now anchored off the coast of Panama and two people aboard the ship have tested positive for the coronavirus, the cruise line said Friday, with hundreds of passengers unsure how long they will remain at sea.
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true
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Panama Canal, Rotterdam, Health, General News, Flu, Latin America, Caribbean, Travel, Virus Outbreak
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Holland America Line said in a post on its Facebook page that more than 130 people aboard the Zaandam had reported flu-like symptoms. “Holland America Line can confirm that four older guests have passed away on Zaandam,” the statement said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with their families and we are doing everything we can to support them during this difficult time.” It did not identify the cause of death. The ship, which had been turned away from other ports and now is being denied passage through the Panama Canal, was receiving medical supplies and medical personnel from another Holland America ship, the Rotterdam, and the company planned to begin transferring healthy passengers to that ship. “Priority for the first guests to transfer will be given to those on Zaandam with inside staterooms and who are over 70,” the statement said. There are 1,243 guests and 586 crew on board the Zaandam. Late Friday, the Panama Maritime Authority said in a statement that 401 passengers not showing symptoms of the virus would be transferred to the Rotterdam. It said medical supplies were being delivered to the Zaandam until midnight and then the shipments would resume Saturday. The authority said the bodies of the virus victims would remain on the Zaandam until the liner arrives at its final destination. The Panama Maritime Authority “deeply regrets these deaths, as well as the complex situation the passengers and crew of the Zaandam cruiser go through,” the statement said. The authority’s administrator, Noriel Araúz, said earlier in the day that no one on either ship would be allowed ashore in Panama, which the Health Ministry said had 786 coronavirus cases, with 14 deaths, as of Friday. The Zaandam departed Buenos Aires, Argentina, on March 7. The ship was trying to get to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, after being denied permission to dock at its original destination of San Antonio, Chile, a week ago. The cruise line said no one had been off the ship since March 14 in Punta Arenas, Chile. On March 22, when a number of passengers began reporting flu-like symptoms, the ship instituted protective measures, including telling everyone to self-isolate in their cabins, the cruise line said. On Thursday, all passengers and crew received masks and instruction on how to use them. Neil Bedford said his parents, Kim and Chris Bedford from Bradford, England, left on March 4 for a flight to Argentina and boarded the ship three days later. “They were enjoying their time,” he told The Associated Press in a Twitter message. But on March 15, it was announced that the cruise was over and they were turned away from several countries. “The meals are delivered to their rooms three times during the day. I’m not sure if they are left outside for them to collect or if someone brings them into the room. The captain is making announcements once a day but everyone seems to be getting frustrated as it’s constantly bad news,” Bedford said. His parents are both in their 60s. “They are just growing increasingly concerned with what will happen to them,” he wrote. “There is a new ship alongside them, the Rotterdam, which the healthy will be evacuated to, but they will need testing first before that can happen. They are becoming terrified of being stuck onboard the ship.” Hayley Pillai Johnson, a medical student at Cambridge University in England, also posted on Twitter, asking questions about her grandfather and his wife. “We just want them home,” she wrote in a message. Her grandfather, Sethy Pillai, is a 90-year-old retired doctor. His wife, Hazel Pillai, is 75 and has diabetes. They are from Oxforshire in England, and she spoke with them Friday via WhatsApp as they were quarantined in their room. “They are scared now they have heard of the 4 deaths and never thought this would happen,” she wrote. “My grandma has a non-dry cough but no temperature, so has been counted in the ‘symptom category’. My grandpa feels tired and scared but is fine.” “Holland America needs to get all guests off this cruise, test them and go from there. We are worried sick about them, especially as the route through Panama Canal has not yet been confirmed and neither has the docking at Port Everglades.” The Zaandam had planned to pass through the Panama Canal en route to Florida, but after being inspected by Panamanian authorities, the request to use the canal was denied, said canal Administrator Ricauter Vásquez. The Health Ministry “did not give permission,” Vásquez told reporters Friday. “The ship is in territorial waters but has to remain isolated.” It was not immediately clear where either ship would go. The Rotterdam had not requested permission to pass through the Panama Canal. There are four doctors and four nurses on the Zaandam, according to cruise line statement, while the Rotterdam had two doctors and four nurses aboard. Holland America Line had announced March 17 that it was voluntarily suspending its cruise operations for 30 days “Due to the continued port closures and travel restrictions surrounding COVID-19 and in an abundance of caution.” At that point, the company said none of its passengers or crew had tested positive for the virus. The Seattle-based cruise line is owned by Miami-based Carnival Corp. ___ Associated Press writer Kathia Martínez reported this story in Panama City and AP writer Tamara Lush reported from St. Petersburg, Florida.
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30560
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A worker at a British dairy that produces Anchor Butter contaminated the company's products with HIV-infected blood.
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Though it is very rare, HIV can be spread by eating food that has been pre-chewed by an HIV-infected person. The contamination occurs when infected blood from a caregiver’s mouth mixes with food while chewing. The only known cases are among infants.
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false
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Food, aids, anchor butter, contaminated food
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Mere days after an identical rumor targeted the U.K.-based confectionery company Cadbury in February 2018, a flurry of social media posts spread the claim that a worker at a U.K. dairy “added HIV infected blood in the Anchor Butter production”: The name of the dairy where Anchor Butter is produced in England is actually Westbury Dairies, located in Wiltshire. A representative of Westbury’s parent company, Arla Foods UK, confirmed to us by email that the rumor is false. “Please be assured this is a hoax in very poor taste,” the company’s consumer relations department said. Unsurprisingly, a search of the BBC News web site turned up no articles or videos reporting that butter or any other dairy product in the U.K. was contaminated with HIV-infected blood, or that anyone was arrested by police for doing such a thing. Using a reverse-image search, we determined that the image used in the Anchor Butter meme was lifted either from a 2015 article about crime in London or an earlier (2014) article in the Evening Standard about Scotland Yard conducting police raids across London. Both the Anchor Butter and Cadbury memes were unoriginal updates of an internet hoax dating back several years. Among the other food and beverage items falsely alleged to have been contaminated with the virus that causes AIDS are pineapples, oranges, bananas, canned goods, and soft drinks, including Pepsi-Cola This is the guys who added his infected blood to Pepsi :)#Copied pic.twitter.com/4rf5m2a5XR — RKJockies (@rkjhaw) December 18, 2017 Because the specter of AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome), scares people, the rumor continues to mutate and thrive despite the extreme unlikelihood of HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) being transmitted in such a manner. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the virus cannot survive long outside a human host and only under the rarest circumstances has been passed from person to person via food: You can’t get HIV from consuming food handled by an HIV-infected person. Even if the food contained small amounts of HIV-infected blood or semen, exposure to the air, heat from cooking, and stomach acid would destroy the virus.
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10057
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Blue Breakthrough? Blue Food Dye Could Help Prevent Spinal Cord Injury
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"The lasting value of this TV news segment on rats, candy and spinal cord injury may be that it allows us to coin a term for a chronic, pernicious condition long affecting health and medical journalism but not previously identified: Blue M&M Syndrome. This condition may be diagnosed when a story on medical research has no reason to appear before a mainstream health audience absent some irresistibly funny/gross/wacky detail. In this case it’s the link between a chemical tested in rats with spinal cord injuries and blue M&Ms. But Blue M&M Syndrome is present in many widely reported stories about scientific studies done on insects, worms, rodents or primates. They often involve mating, a specific food, an unpleasant secretion, or some easily anthropomorphizable behavior such as stress, aggression, napping, or gaining weight. Studies like this are often scientifically significant, and should be reported for an audience of medical researchers and scientists. They are often cute or curious, allowing them to be reported in a wacky-news segment or a kicker. But they should not be done straight-faced in a forum where consumers reasonably expect useful, pertinent health information. This is especially true when the studies involve a profoundly disabling medical condition. What CBS has done is presented a story about spinal cord injury with no certain human application yet implied just the opposite. The fact that the study was done on lab rats does not appear until 2 minutes into a 3-minute segment. Viewers are never told human applicability is uncertain. In fact, the correspondent said this [emphasis ours]: So again, more work will be occurring with this. This has to be given within hours of the injury, but it holds a lot of promise for the people who suffer from spinal cord injuries. It’s not just the one injury that matters. It’s the secondary injury that really gets people. Last week the same news program did a segment, ""Walk On: New Device Helps Paraplegics Walk Again,"" which as its title suggests falsely implies a medical device could make the disabled rise from their wheelchairs. Now it’s a story on how blue M&Ms can prevent permanent disability following spinal cord injuries. Set aside the unfortunate coincidence that both stories offer similarly false hope to patients with the same serious physical disability. The point is this journalism is beyond careless. It’s beyond merely indulging trivia out of context to divert morning viewers. This is reckless, veering toward malicious."
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false
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"Since there is no clinical treatment, reporting costs is not possible. The segment makes no attempt to describe the benefits of the treatment specifically. The study suggests that rats with spinal cord injuries given the chemical intravenously were able to walk with a limp afterwards. The control rats were unable to walk at all. The story does cite the memorably photogenic side effect of the treatment on rats–that it turned paws, tail and eyes blue. But it treats that as if it is the only side effect. Is it? And, indeed, isn’t it incumbent on the network to explain that much can go wrong in the leap from animal research to humans? That is a huge potential unknown harm that was given no attention. This segment is based on a small study done with a few rats. This is a very low quality of evidence for a story purporting to have consumer health implications. The fact that this study was done on rats rather than people is not mentioned until 1:54 of a segment less than 3 minutes long. At no point does the correspondent state that no inference should be drawn about the applicability of the treatment to people. The story veers toward exaggerating the number of people who might be helped by this treatment eventually, by citing 12,000 spinal cord injuries per year. But the piece as a whole falls short of disease mongering, if just barely. No sources of information aside from the published research are used. The study itself reports, ""no effective treatment options [to prevent secondary injury] currently exist for patients with acute spinal cord injury."" But the story didn’t discuss that at all. There is no treatment based on this laboratory reasearch on rats. But the segment imples its potential applicability to humans with spinal cord injuries. The correspondent says the following; it clearly invites viewers to assume human treatment is available or imminent: So again, more work will be occurring with this. This has to be given within hours of the injury, but it holds a lot of promise for the people who suffer from spinal cord injuries. It’s not just the one injury that matters. It’s the secondary injury that really gets people. The story correctly presents the findings as new, and indicates they build upon a study published 5 years ago. There does not appear to be a press release associated with this segment."
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9251
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Continuing Developments In Medical Consensus On The Utility Of Peppermint Oil For Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)
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This news release about a brand of peppermint oil used to treat symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) disguises the company sponsorship of the only published trial of the product and appears intended to fool readers into believing that independent researchers concluded this brand is superior to other, less-costly brands of peppermint oil. Claims of benefits are vague. Harms are missing. Conflicts of interest are hidden. Two short sentences buried in a 20-thousand-word review of IBS published by Nature are misused to claim independent support for the company’s product. Irritable bowel syndrome is a serious condition that plagues millions. Those who suffer its effects yearn for effective treatments and no doubt would rush to try an over-the-counter product that was recommended by independent experts. However, this release slyly disguises a brief citation of a single company-sponsored trial as a pillar of an international review of IBS. It fails to mention that there is no evidence IBgard is any better than other forms of peppermint oil. The release leaves out any mention of company involvement and funding in the single trial of the product.
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false
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IM HealthScience,irritable bowel syndrome,peppermint oil
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The news release by the maker of IBgard notes that its product is available at “CVS/pharmacy, Walgreens and Rite Aid” and other stores, but it neglected to tell readers that the recommended doses would cost up to four times as much as generic peppermint oil capsules, with a monthly cost that could exceed $100 (6 capsules/day). (CVS lists IBgard at $22.99 for 48 capsules, or 63 cents each vs. 15 cents each for generic capsules.) The news release does not quantify the benefits of IBgard or generic peppermint oil. It makes vague statements about benefits or effectiveness without specifying what they are: “The published data showed that IBgard® demonstrated a statistically significant reduction in the Total IBS Symptom Score (TISS) in as early as 24 hours and at four weeks. The TISS represents a composite score of eight individual IBS symptoms.” Which symptoms were reduced? By how much were they reduced? How many patient volunteers were involved in the study? The release doesn’t say. A strength of the release is the inclusion of information on number-needed-to-treat (NNT). But lack of comparability in the outcomes measured in different studies makes comparison of NNT across treatments difficult. The release tries to make such comparisons nonetheless. The release does not mention any harms, even though the trial of IBgard that is highlighted in the release specifically tracked adverse events including indigestion, flatulence and reflux. The article summarizing that trial knocked other brands of peppermint oil capsules for causing heartburn, nausea, anal burning and “dose-dumping,” which is the sudden release, rather than slow release, of the drug in the capsule. This release not only fails to explain the quality of the Nature review article it highlights, it seriously misleads readers by disguising company-sponsored research. The release states that the panel of researchers that wrote the Nature article stated “peppermint oil…is beneficial in reducing IBS symptoms.” Actually, the Nature article merely quoted a five-year-old Cochrane review that briefly noted a handful of trials showing some benefits from peppermint oil, while criticizing the quality of those studies, including that none adequately concealed whether participants were receiving the active treatment or a placebo. Then the release claims that the Nature article authors concluded (emphasis added) that “A novel formulation of peppermint oil, designed to cause sustained release in the small bowel, was superior to placebo in causing a reduction in total symptoms.” Actually, that quote is merely a citation of the trial of IBgard funded and managed by the manufacturer and its own consultants. This section of the release conceals the source of the cited evidence and portrays the praise as coming from an independent source. The news release states that “one in six Americans experience Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).” That estimate is about twice as high as the range cited in the Nature article (between 5-10 percent or 1-in-20 to 1-in-10). The release does say that only doctors can diagnose IBS and that IBgard should be used only under medical supervision, even though this product and other brands of peppermint oil capsules are available without a prescription. The estimate of prevalence is inflated, but it is true that IBS should be diagnosed by a medical professional. Other more serious conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease (ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s) can mimic IBS symptoms. The news release fails to reveal that the trial of IBgard it highlights was funded by the manufacturer, IM HealthScience, and authored by two employees and a consultant. The release does not reveal that the expert it quotes, Brooks Cash, M.D., is the company consultant. The Nature review highlighted in the release refers to several other IBS treatments, including some drugs such as otilonium bromide and hyoscine, that act to reduce spasm, as does peppermint oil. The release doesn’t note these alternatives or several other drug, nutrition and behavioral approaches to managing IBS. The release notes that IBgard is for sale without a prescription at many pharmacies and other stores. The release implies that IBgard capsules are superior to other brands. However, the only trial it cites compared the company’s product to placebo, not other peppermint oil products, so any claims of novelty or superiority remain untested. The release improperly portrays citations of a single, company-sponsored trial as the “Latest in growing scientific and medical recognition of IBgard as an effective, safe, and well-tolerated option in the management of IBS.” This bullet point at the top of the release also goes overboard in suggesting that peppermint oil is the best treatment for IBS: “Builds on a previous review article where the lead author cited peppermint oil as the most effective option in management of IBS.” There is growing appreciation of the potential benefits of peppermint oil, but not of IBgard per se.
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41012
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A network of Canadian scientists are making excellent progress in Covid-19 research.
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At least one group of Canadian scientists has recently announced some progress in understanding Covid-19.
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true
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online
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Doctors in India have been successful in treating coronavirus with a combination of drugs (Lopinavir, Retonovir, Oseltamivir along with Chlorphenamine) and are going to suggest the same medicine globally. India’s ministry of health has advised that the anti-HIV drugs, Lopinavir and Retonovir, are used in some groups of Covid-19 patients. But it is unclear how successful this treatment has been. The other two drugs from the claim are not mentioned in their guidance. Researchers at the Erasmus Medical Center claim to have found an antibody against coronavirus. Researchers in the Netherlands have released research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, on an antibody against the new coronavirus. A 103 year-old Chinese grandmother has made a full recovery from Covid-19 after being treated for 6 days in Wuhan, China This has been widely reported in the media. Apple has reopened all 42 China stores. Correct. On 13 March 2020, Apple announced that it had reopened all 42 stores in mainland China after a closure of almost six weeks. Cleveland Clinic developed a Covid-19 test that gives results in hours, not days. The number of new cases in South Korea is declining. Italy is hit hard, experts say, only because they have the oldest population in Europe. Whilst it is true that an older population has contributed to a high number of deaths in Italy, it may not be the sole reason. Scientists in Israel are likely to announce the development of a coronavirus vaccine. Scientists in Israel and elsewhere are working on developing a vaccination to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, but it won’t be ready for the public for over a year. Three Maryland coronavirus patients fully recovered and are able to return to everyday life. Correct. On 13 March 2020, Montgomery County, Maryland confirmed that three residents who previously had the virus no longer tested positive. A network of Canadian scientists are making excellent progress in Covid-19 research. At least one group of Canadian scientists has recently announced some progress in understanding Covid-19. A San Diego biotech company is developing a Covid-19 vaccine in collaboration with Duke University and National University of Singapore. Tulsa County's first positive Covid-19 case has recovered. This individual has had two negative tests, which is the indicator of recovery. Correct, this patient has recovered according to official Tulsa County sources. Two negative tests is one of three official indicators of recovery among people with Covid-19 (who showed symptoms). All seven patients who were getting treated for Covid-19 at Safdarjung hospital in New Delhi have recovered. There is a news story reporting that seven patients in this hospital in New Delhi had recovered. However, these were not the only Covid-19 patients in the city. Plasma from newly recovered patients from Covid -19 can treat others infected by Covid-19. This is being used as a treatment in some countries, but clinical trials have not yet proved that this is effective. Claim 1 of 15
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10645
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Arthritis creams are probably better than goat tears
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"If you ever wondered about the evidence for those hot and/or smelly creams for arthritis pain, this column drove home a ""healthy skeptic"" perspective, emphasizing, for the most part, that ""there’s no good evidence that any over-the-counter rub or cream offers real relief for arthritis,"" according to one source. We say ""for the most part"" because it ended oddly, allowing some broad, vague, unsubstantiated and unquantified claims — ""seem to help some people…can give you temporary relief."" We also wish the column had given a glimpse of the regulatory oversight that allows claims like ""deep penetrating pain relief"" or ""proven clinical effectiveness in treating arthritis pain"" when the column itself kept repeating: ""no good evidence"" ""results that do exist have been far from convincing"" ""no better than placebo"" ""relief was minor and didn’t show up until four weeks of treatment"" ""the effect is usually either too fleeting or too mild to notice"" ""there’s no known pathway they could take to ease arthritis pain."""
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true
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"The story listed the cost per unit for all three creams. The story didn’t provide the numbers from a cited 1994 study on capsaicin benefits. Overall, the message of ""no good evidence"" was clear. But, confusingly, the story gave the last word to a rheumatologist who said some of these creams ""do seem to help some people…it can give you temporary relief."" If you’re going to do that, we think you need to provide numbers. How many people? How long is temporary? To end the story in this way – without numbers to back up this flip-flop of a message – was disappointing. The story was clear about lack of effectiveness overall – and that with the capsaicin cream, ""the burning sensation is often intolerable."" The story went right to the point: ""there’s no good evidence that any over-the-counter rub or cream offers real relief for arthritis, Altman says. Very few high-quality studies have ever investigated the products, he says, and the results that do exist have been far from convincing."" There was no disease-mongering of the pain of arthritis. Two expert sources in rheumatology were interviewed. The story danced around the topic of a placebo effect without ever directly addressing it. And it didn’t make any direct comparison with aspirin or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or with heating pads or other options. The over-the-counter availability of the creams is clear in the story. The story offered this context: ""Over the centuries, people have been willing to rub all sorts of things into their sore joints. Today, arthritis sufferers can choose from a wide range of over-the-counter creams with different approaches to relief."" By the end of the story it was clear that today’s creams may not offer much advancement over what’s been done with rubs through the centuries. It’s safe to assume that the story did not rely on a news release."
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15257
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A minor cannot get a tattoo without parental consent but can get an abortion without parental consent.
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"Rubio said ""a minor cannot get a tattoo without parental consent but can get an abortion without parental consent."" Rubio has a good argument for about 11 states, but that’s a minority. More commonly, parents by law need to be at least notified -- and in many cases give their consent -- for a minor to have an abortion. There is a significant exception, however: 37 states allow a minor to go through a judge without notifying parents. As for tattoos, most states either ban them for minors or require parental consent."
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mixture
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Abortion, States, Florida, Marco Rubio,
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"Teenagers getting inked is apparently subject to greater parental say than getting an abortion, according to U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio. In an Aug. 4 interview with Southern Baptist Convention President Russell Moore, Rubio joined other Republicans in criticizing Planned Parenthood amid the release of videos by an anti-abortion group that accuse the group of harvesting fetal tissue for profit. A day earlier, Florida’s Republican senator had been among those who voted to defund Planned Parenthood, a measure that failed to get the required 60 votes to advance. In his interview, Rubio raised concerns about nationwide access to abortions for minors: ""The idea that a minor can go get a tattoo,"" he said, before quickly correcting himself to say ""cannot get a tattoo without parental consent -- but can get an abortion without parental consent -- is just mind-shattering for the vast majority of Americans. ... People who believe that a young child, a minor, should be able to get an abortion easier than a tattoo -- they are the extremists."" We decided to check whether minors need their parents’ permission to get a tattoo, but don’t need permission to get an abortion. Parental consent laws First, the laws about parental consent for abortion and tattoos vary from state to state, so it’s not possible to make a blanket statement as Rubio did and apply it to the whole country. According to data through March 2015 compiled by the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 45 states have laws prohibiting minors from getting tattoos, with the majority of those states allowing it if there’s parental consent. For example, Florida law requires written, notarized consent of a minor's parent or legal guardian in order to tattoo a minor. Now let’s look at whether minors need their parents’ permission to obtain an abortion. There are two different categories of parental involvement: one is consent, which means a parent has to sign off on the abortion, while the other one is simply notification which can mean the parent receives a letter or a phone call about the abortion. According to Guttmacher Institute, a group that tracks abortion policy and statistics, a majority of states require consent and/or notification. In 38 states, minors either have to get consent and/or notify their parents, while in 12 states they don’t need either. We asked Alex Conant, a spokesman for Rubio, which states require parental consent for a tattoo but not for an abortion. Using information from Planned Parenthood about abortion laws and the National Conference of State Legislatures about tattoo laws, Conant pointed to seven states: State Abortion law for minors Tattoo law for minors California No parental involvement required It is a misdemeanor to tattoo anyone under age 18. Connecticut No parental involvement required Requires permission of parent or guardian. Hawaii No parental involvement required Requires written consent of parent or guardian Maine No parental involvement required It is illegal to tattoo anyone under age 18. Montana No parental involvement required Requires explicit in-person consent of the child's parent or guardian. New York No parental involvement required It is unlawful to tattoo the body of a child less than 18 years old. Vermont No parental involvement required Requires written consent of his or her parent or guardian. Sources: Planned Parenthood and the National Conference of State Legislatures Conant included two states that flat-out ban tattoos for minors: California and Maine. So that leaves five states that require parental consent for tattoos but have no parental involvement required for abortions. However, Rubio used the more narrow term of ""parental consent"" in his interview -- not ""parental involvement"" or ""notification."" There are some states that require only parental notification for abortion but do require consent for tattoos -- for example Florida. So that means that a Florida teenager doesn’t need her parents’ permission to get an abortion -- but does for a tattoo. State Abortion law Tattoo law Colorado Parental notification only Requires express consent from the minor's parent or guardian. Delaware Parental notification only Requires prior written consent of the adult parent or legal guardian. Florida Parental notification only Requires written, notarized consent of a minor's parent or legal guardian in order to tattoo a minor. Minnesota Parental notification only Requires written parental consent. South Dakota Parental notification only Requires signed consent form from the minor's parents West Virginia Parental notification only Requires prior written consent from a parent or guardian Source: Guttmacher Institute and National Conference of State Legislatures So in all, Rubio has a point for about 11 states. Complicating matters is that there is a way to avoid parental involvement. Since the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states may not give parents an absolute veto over whether their daughters have an abortion, 37 states that require parental involvement include a ""judicial bypass"" procedure. This allows a minor to receive court approval for an abortion without her parents’ knowledge or consent. Use of judicial bypass could increase the number of states where Rubio’s scenario would be valid. A spokeswoman for Americans United for Life, told PolitiFact that ""even in states with the most stringent parental consent requirements, a minor who can demonstrate (with the assistance of free counsel) to a court that she is either mature enough to make an abortion decision, or that obtaining parental consent is not in her best interest, can bypass the parental consent requirement."" However, it’s worth noting that, despite the existence of judicial bypass, a majority of pregnant minors who seek abortion report that their parents are aware that they are doing so, according to a literature review by Guttmacher in 2009. Helena Silverstein, a government and law professor at Lafayette College who wrote a book in 2007: ""Girls on the Stand: How Courts Fail Pregnant Minors,"" suggested that rather than compare parental consent for tattoos to abortion, it is more useful to compare other minors’ consent law as they relate to sexual and reproductive health. All states allow minors to consent to get treatment for sexually transmitted infections while 32 states allow minors to consent to prenatal care without their parents’ permission. J. Shoshanna Ehrlich, an expert on reproductive rights at the University of Massachusetts, was also skeptical of Rubio’s comparison. While it ""must suck to be 16 and wait until you are 18 to get a tattoo, you can postpone the decision,"" unlike abortion, she said. Our ruling Rubio said ""a minor cannot get a tattoo without parental consent but can get an abortion without parental consent."" Rubio has a good argument for about 11 states, but that’s a minority. More commonly, parents by law need to be at least notified -- and in many cases give their consent -- for a minor to have an abortion. There is a significant exception, however: 37 states allow a minor to go through a judge without notifying parents. As for tattoos, most states either ban them for minors or require parental consent."
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4814
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Feds: No more education, legal services for immigrant kids.
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The federal government has stopped paying for English-language courses and legal services at facilities that hold immigrant children around the country, imposing budget cuts it says are necessary at a time when record numbers of unaccompanied children are arriving at the border.
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true
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AP Top News, Language, General News, Immigration, Legal services, Education, Health, U.S. News
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The Health and Human Services department notified shelters around the country last week that it was not going to reimburse them for teachers’ pay or other costs such as legal services or recreational equipment. The move appears to violate a legal settlement known as the Flores agreement that requires the government to provide education and recreational activities to immigrant children in its care. But the agency says it doesn’t have the funding to provide those services as it deals with a soaring number of children coming to the U.S., largely from Central America. It’s now up to the various nonprofit and private organizations run facilities for the children to cover the cost of teachers, supplies, legal services and even recreational activities and equipment — if they can, or choose to. BCFS, a nonprofit provider in several Texas cities, said in a statement that it would continue providing services because not doing so would violate state licensing standards. It said it will use emergency funding from its parent organization. “The health and well-being of those in our care are of the utmost importance and we hope there is a rapid resolution to this funding issue,” spokeswoman Evy Ramos said. The government says it currently has 13,200 children in its care, and more are coming. The Border Patrol said Wednesday that 11,500 children crossed the border without a parent just last month. The kids are transferred to the care of Health and Human Services after the Border Patrol processes them. Health and Human Services contracts out their care and housing to nonprofits and private companies. “As we have said, we have a humanitarian crisis at the border brought on by a broken immigration system that is putting tremendous strain (on the agency),” spokeswoman Evelyn Stauffer said. “Additional resources are urgently required to meet the humanitarian needs created by this influx - to both sustain critical child welfare and release operations and increase capacity.” Health and Human Services is seeking nearly $3 million in emergency funding to cover more beds and provide basic care. An official at one of the shelter providers said the government notified them on May 30 that they wouldn’t be reimbursing costs of providing education and other activities. The providers pay for things like teacher salary upfront and are then reimbursed by the government. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter, said his employer was scrambling to figure out how it would cover the cost of teachers. The provider hasn’t laid anyone off, but worries about children who desperately need to learn English and be intellectually stimulated. Advocates are also worried about the ramifications of cutting recreational activities. Funding cuts may result in physical education coordinators from being let go and in a lack of adults who can supervise children playing outside. “The kids are inside 23 hours, and the hour they spend outside is a real lifeline for them,” said J.J. Mulligan, an attorney at the Immigration Law Clinic at University of California, Davis, who has visited and spoken to many of the children at the facilities. “Most of them come from Latin American countries where soccer is king, so the ability to play with their friends really brings them joy in dark circumstances.” In a memo to staff obtained by The Associated Press, Southwest Key interim CEO Joella Brooks said she was working with the government to figure out why the funding had ended and how it can continue to offer the services. Southwest Key is a nonprofit and the largest provider of shelters for immigrant children. “In the meantime, remember the service, encouragement and compassion you provide to these youth every day matters a great deal. Please continue to stay focused on taking good care of them,” Brooks wrote to her staff. U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Arizona, was critical of the cuts. “By eliminating English classes and legal aid that are critical to ensuring children successfully navigate the asylum process, the Trump Administration is essentially condemning children to prison and throwing away the key until their imminent deportation,” Grijalva, who represents a district on the border, said in a statement. ___ Gomez Licon reported from Miami. Associated Press journalist John Mone contributed to this report.
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5419
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Sumatran rhino is extinct in Malaysia as lone survivor dies.
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The Sumatran rhinoceros has become extinct in Malaysia, after the last of the species in the country succumbed to cancer.
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true
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Wildlife, Iman, General News, Rhinoceros, Malaysia, Science, Asia Pacific
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The Wildlife Department in eastern Sabah state on Borneo island said the rhino, named Iman, died of natural causes Saturday due to shock in her system. She had uterine tumors since her capture in March 2014. Department director Augustine Tuuga said in a statement that Iman, who reportedly was 25 years old, was suffering significant pain from growing pressure of the tumors to her bladder but that her death came sooner than expected. It came six months after the death of the country’s only male rhino in Sabah. Another female rhino also died in captivity in 2017 in the state. Efforts to breed them have been futile but Sabah authorities have harvested their cells for possible reproduction. “Despite us knowing that this would happen sooner rather than later, we are so very saddened by this news,” said Sabah Deputy Chief Minister Christina Liew, who is also environment minister. Liew said that Iman had escaped death several times over the past few years due to sudden massive blood loss, but that wildlife officials managed to nurse her back to health and obtained her egg cells for a possible collaboration with Indonesia to reproduce the critically endangered species through artificial insemination. The Sumatran rhino, the smallest of five rhinoceros species, once roamed across Asia as far as India, but its numbers have shrunk drastically due to deforestation and poaching. The WWF conservation group estimates that there are only about 80 left, mostly living in the wild in Sumatra and Borneo in Indonesia. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature identifies the Sumatran as well as the Black and Javan rhinoceros as being critically endangered. Both African and Sumatran rhinoceros have two horns, while the others have a single horn. Only about 24,500 rhinos survive in the wild with another 1,250 in captivity worldwide, the IUCN says. Of these, more than two-thirds are white rhinos. Rhinos are killed for their horns, which consist of keratin similar to human hair and nails and are used in traditional medicines in parts of Asia.
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9196
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Amgen Announces Repatha® (Evolocumab) Significantly Reduced The Risk Of Cardiovascular Events In FOURIER Outcomes Study
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This release reports on a large clinical trial that studied the use of the drug Repatha in patients with atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. Or, more accurately, it reports that the details of the results of that study will be revealed at a major scientific meeting more than a month from now. While the release does mention the potential harms of the drug, it fails to provide any real data on the benefits of the drug, nor does it mention that the drug is very expensive, with a list price of $14,100 annually. It contains no statements or information from researchers involved in the study. Our review of a related Reuters story suggests that Amgen’s efforts met with some success. Atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease is a serious, often fatal condition worldwide and new drugs that could treat it effectively would be a welcome improvement in clinical care. But this release is troubling in that it’s touting results to be presented at an upcoming scientific meeting, more than a month in the future, and it provides little, if any, substantive information for readers. It’s unusual to announce results and not include a source or a link to the results. When we contacted Amgen for copies of the study abstracts named in the release, the company declined, instead referring us to the American College of Cardiology (ACC), the sponsors of the upcoming meeting. The ACC informed us that the abstract for the FOURIER study is under embargo until the presentation time on March 17. It’s not unusual for sponsors of scientific meetings to have a strict media embargo on scientific study presentations. This early release strikes us as an effort to frame the discussion about the drug’s benefits in the trial without providing the required background needed for assessment.
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mixture
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Amgen,Repatha
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There is no mention of costs in this release. As noted above, the list price for Repatha is around $14,100 yearly. Based on a related Reuters story, perhaps fueled by this news release, some insurers have questioned the drug’s high price given that detailed evidence of its efficacy has been wanting. Readers deserve to know the costs of drugs being touted, especially when they are this expensive. The news release doesn’t quantify any results from the trials it mentions, saying only that the trials met their primary and secondary endpoints. One particular statement in the release — “Repatha was non-inferior to placebo for the effect on cognitive function.” — should win a prize for obfuscation, since it basically says that the effects of the drug in question were no worse than a placebo. This release is fairly explicit in detailing the contraindications and adverse effects that arose during earlier drug trials. It’s also explicit in its statements about what isn’t known about this drug and its usage: – The effect of Repatha on cardiovascular morbidity and mortality has not been determined. – The safety and effectiveness of Repatha have not been established in pediatric patients with HoFH (homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia) who are younger than 13 years old. – The safety and effectiveness of Repatha have not been established in pediatric patients with primary hyperlipidemia or HeFH (heterozygous familial hypercholesterolemia). But while the release mentions the side effect data from earlier studies, it doesn’t provide any hard numbers on side effect rates from the current trial under discussion. The statement that “the effect on cardiovascular morbidity and mortality has not been determined” appears to be at odds with the statement that Repatha “met its primary composite endpoint (cardiovascular death, non-fatal myocardial infarction (MI), non-fatal stroke, hospitalization for unstable angina or coronary revascularization) and the key secondary composite endpoint (cardiovascular death, non-fatal MI or non-fatal stroke).” If we’re confused, perhaps other readers would be, too. The study itself is described as a “multinational Phase 3 double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled trial in approximately 27,500 patients” which should provide high-quality evidence. However, the release really provides no evidence for readers, other than to state that the study reached its primary and secondary endpoints (as stated above), which offers little in the way of information readers could use to evaluate the drug’s usefulness. The release does not appear to commit disease mongering. It also provides statistics on the number of people suffering from heart disease. The release would have been stronger had it noted which fraction of this group would likely be eligible for — or require treatment with — this medication. It’s clear that the release was distributed by Amgen with only company officials quoted. The researchers involved in the study were not named, and the studies or abstracts not provided, so it is impossible to know if there are conflicts of interest. The release makes clear that study volunteers were already receiving “optimized statin therapy,” and it makes a brief reference to “statins or other currently approved lipid-lowering agents” as alternatives. The release states that Repatha combined with statin therapy was compared only to placebo with statin therapy — not to statins alone or other interventions used to limit atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. There is no mention of exercise or diet, although concerning the latter, the release does state that the drug is an “adjunct to diet.” It’s clear that Repatha is already on the market. The release refers to the trial as a “landmark,” but doesn’t tell us what’s new about this trial and its sub-analyses, or what makes it significant. The release does not appear to contain any unjustifiable language.
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2321
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New wave of water workouts attract the young and fit.
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While older, overweight or injured exercisers have always valued the cushioning effects of water workouts, a new wave of trendy, lively and high intensity group fitness classes is luring the young, the hip and the able-bodied into the pool.
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true
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Health News
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Aqua Zumba, boot camp, and synchronized swimming are among the classes experts say put every muscle through a range of motion even the fittest can’t approach on dry land. Lori Rose Benson of the YMCA of Greater New York said seniors populate daytime pool classes, but the evening attracts a younger, party-oriented crowd. Synchronized swimming, a class of elaborate strokes and stunts set to music, has become a favorite among Brooklyn hipsters, she said. Aqua Zumba, also called “pool party,” is popular with the younger crowd throughout the city. “Really, it depends on the time of day,” Benson said. “Aquatic exercise can have all the benefits of a really tough cardiovascular workout. It’s what you put into it.” Three times a week at an Equinox fitness center in New York City, swim coach Ellis Peters leads Aqua Boot Camp, an hour-long interval workout he said takes aim at every major muscle group. “I try to use every inch of the 25-yard (23-meter) pool,” Peters said of the class, which employs flotation devices in a fast-changing sequence of running, jumping jacks and core exercises. “We usually don’t do any one thing more than a minute,” said Peters. Moving through water is powerful, he added, because the resistance, or drag coefficient, is 12 times what it is in air and works on the body in all directions. “I can’t imagine a machine on land that would be able to duplicate the omni-dimensional resistance of the water,” he said. “It doesn’t exist.” Rhode Island-based Karen Kent said she plunged into pool workouts after asthma began to hamper her running style. “I couldn’t run much in my 20s,” said Kent, an aquatic expert who wrote the water exercise chapter for the American College of Sports Medicine’s group fitness handbook. She said even the most able-bodied like turning to water to relieve pressure and extend their range of motion. “Even really strong athletes want to come to water to stretch muscles back out,” she said. “Water offers another piece of fitness you can’t get on the ground.” The level of exertion feels less in the water, she added, so the right instructor can really ramp it up with deep water running and jogging intervals. Kent said the pool temperature for water workouts should be around 83 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit (28 to 29 Celsius), with air temperature about two degrees higher. That’s because unlike swimmers, who are comfortable in the high 70s (mid 20s), the exercisers’ heads are above the water line. “Swimming laps is different from doing exercise,” she said. “Every workout has something else to offer and a well-rounded athlete should do all of it.”
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4453
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Study: Genetic test predicts middle-aged obesity risk.
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Can a genetic test identify newborns at risk of becoming severely obese by middle age? Researchers say they have come up with one, and that it might allow interventions in childhood to avoid that fate.
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true
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Health, Obesity, Genetics, North America
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The test examines more than 2 million spots in a person’s genetic code, seeking variants that individually nudge a person’s obesity risk up by a tiny amount. The researchers drew on previously published data about those variants to create a risk score. A high score didn’t guarantee obesity, nor a low score rule it out. But middle-aged people with scores in the top 10 percent were 25 times as likely to be severely obese as those in the bottom 10 percent, scientists reported in a paper released Thursday by the journal Cell. Those two groups were separated by an average weight difference of about 29 pounds (13 kilograms), researchers said. Analysis showed the genetic propensity to obesity began having an effect on weight around age 3. Up to about age 8, “you might be able to make a difference in the kids who are born susceptible to obesity,” said one author of the study, Dr. Sekar Kathiresan of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. But it will take further research to see whether intervening would work, Kathiresan said. The results for middle age came from a study of about 288,000 people. Overall, the risk-score research included data from more than 300,000 people at various ages. Severe obesity was defined as a body mass index of 40 or more. Results show genetic inheritance “plays a large role in how heavy one gets,” Kathiresan said. The risk score probably takes about half of a person’s genetic propensity into account, he said, and it shows similar accuracy in predicting ordinary obesity, defined as a BMI of 30 or more. Even if one inherits a propensity for obesity, he said, “you still have control over your fate. You’re not fated to be obese, but it’s very clear those individuals who’ve inherited susceptibility have to work that much harder to keep the weight off.” Among study participants with the highest scores, he noted, 17 percent were of normal weight. Other analyses show that people who remain lean despite an inherited propensity for obesity tend to eat better and have more physical activity than others with a high score who got fat. “So you can do something about it,” he said. Ruth Loos, a professor of environmental medicine and public health who did not participate in the study, said the risk score explains more of people’s genetic tendency than previous studies did. But she doubted it would be useful in a doctor’s office. It is “never going to be a good predictor,” said Loos, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai in New York. She noted that in one test of the score’s predictive power, only 58 of the 371 subjects scoring in the top 10 percent ended up severely obese. And many other severely obese people didn’t score in the top 10 percent, she said. Simply asking about family history of obesity would probably work better, she said. The large role of lifestyle in obesity means a purely gene-based predictor will never be perfect, she said. Kathiresan, a cardiologist, said the risk score is best seen as a risk indicator, like high cholesterol. Most people with high cholesterol don’t get heart attacks, he said, but they do run a higher risk than others. Jason Boardman of the University of Colorado Boulder said genetic variants might affect body size indirectly, through an impact on lifestyles or other social and behavioral traits. Other research suggests the effect of genes on size depends on what kind of social and physical environment a person lives in, including such factors as access to unhealthy foods, he said in an email. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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5467
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Texas judge: Hospital can remove baby from life support.
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A Texas judge on Thursday sided with a hospital that plans to remove an 11-month-old girl from life support after her mother disagreed with the decision by doctors who say the infant is in pain and that her condition will never improve.
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true
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AP Top News, General News, Fort Worth, Health, Courts, Tinslee Lewis, U.S. News, Texas
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Trinity Lewis had asked Judge Sandee Bryan Marion to issue an injunction in Tarrant County district court to ensure that Cook Children’s Medical Center doesn’t end her daughter Tinslee Lewis’ life-sustaining treatment. Texas Right to Life, an anti-abortion group that is advocating for Tinslee, said the girl’s mother will appeal the judge’s decision. Doctors at the Fort Worth hospital had planned to remove Tinslee from life support Nov. 10 after invoking Texas’ “10-day rule,” which can be employed when a family disagrees with doctors who say life-sustaining treatment should be stopped. The law stipulates that if the hospital’s ethics committee agrees with doctors, treatment can be withdrawn after 10 days if a new provider can’t be found to take the patient. In a statement issued by Texas Right to Life, which opposes the “10-day rule,” Lewis said she was “heartbroken” over the judge’s decision. “I feel frustrated because anyone in that courtroom would want more time just like I do if Tinslee were their baby,” she said. The hospital said in a statement Thursday that in order to keep Tinslee alive, she’s on a constant stream of painkillers, sedatives and paralytics. She currently has severe sepsis, which isn’t uncommon when patients require deep sedation and chemical paralysis, it said. “Even with the most extraordinary measures the medical team is taking, Tinslee continues to suffer,” the hospital said. Efforts to find another facility to take her have been unsuccessful. The hospital said it has reached out to more than 20 facilities. Texas Right to Life and Protect TX Fragile Kids have also been trying to find a facility to take her. Prior to Thursday’s ruling, both sides agreed that if Marion denied the injunction request, the hospital would wait at least seven days before taking Tinslee off life-support. In her decision, Marion said the seven-day period would give the girl’s mother time to file a notice of appeal and a motion for emergency relief with a state court of appeals. Tinslee has been at Cook Children’s since her premature birth. The hospital said she has a rare heart defect and suffers from chronic lung disease and severe chronic high blood pressure. She hasn’t come off a ventilator since going into respiratory arrest in early July and requires full respiratory and cardiac support. Lewis testified at a hearing last month that despite her daughter’s sedation, she has a sense of the girl’s likes and dislikes, describing her as “sassy.” She said Tinslee likes getting her nails done but doesn’t like having her hair brushed. “I want to be the one to make the decision for her,” Lewis said about removing her daughter from life support. At the hearing last month, Dr. Jay Duncan, one of Tinslee’s physicians, described the girl’s complex conditions and Cook Children’s efforts to treat her, which have included about seven surgeries. The cardiac intensive care doctor said that for the first five months of Tinslee’s life doctors had hope she might one day at least be able to go home. But Duncan said there came a point when doctors determined they had run out of surgical and clinical options, and that treatment was no longer benefiting Tinslee. Duncan said last month that the girl would likely die within half a year, and noted the hospital has made “extraordinary” efforts to find another facility for her. “She is in pain. Changing a diaper causes pain. Suctioning her breathing tube causes pain. Being on the ventilator causes pain,” he said. Duncan said there had been “many, many” conversations with Tinslee’s family about her dire condition. Tarrant County Juvenile Court Judge Alex Kim issued a temporary restraining order to stop the removal of life support on Nov. 10. But Kim was removed from the case after the hospital filed a motion questioning his impartiality and saying he had bypassed case-assignment rules to designate himself as the presiding judge. After his removal, Judge Marion, who is chief justice of Texas’ Fourth Court of Appeals, was assigned to hear the request for an injunction in Tarrant County district court. The case has become a rallying point for Republicans in Texas, with the attorney general stating his opposition to the “10-day rule” and GOP state Rep. Tan Parker saying it “doesn’t fit with Texas values.” The 1999 law that shields from lawsuits doctors who follow the process of going through an ethics committee was crafted by a task force that included lawmakers, attorneys, doctors and anti-abortion groups. Supporters of the law passed when George W. Bush, a Republican, was governor include the Texas Alliance for Life, the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops and the Texas Medical Association. Supporters say the law provides a framework for doctors and hospitals to resolve differences and ensures that doctors can’t be forced to perform medical interventions that cause harm or suffering.
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41781
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Mr. Stone told Mr. Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with [WikiLeaks founder] Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that, within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
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Here we lay out the conflicting accounts of what Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, told the House Committee on Oversight and Reform at the Feb. 27 hearing, and what the president has said in the past.
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false
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Russia investigation,
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Michael Cohen gave public testimony under oath that contradicted past statements by President Donald Trump on WikiLeaks, Stormy Daniels and a proposed Moscow real estate deal, as well as Trump’s Vietnam War deferrals and his net worth.Here we lay out the conflicting accounts of what Trump’s former personal attorney told the House Committee on Oversight and Reform at the Feb. 27 hearing, and what the president has said in the past.A key unresolved issue in the special counsel’s investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election is whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks.Russia intelligence services hacked into the computer network of Democratic Party officials and released the hacked material to WikiLeaks and others “to help President-elect Trump’s election chances,” according to a U.S. intelligence report released in January 2017.In his opening statement, Cohen said he was in Trump’s office in July 2016 when Roger Stone, Trump’s informal adviser and longtime friend, was on speaker phone talking about WikiLeaks and its plan to publicly release emails damaging to Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.Cohen, Feb. 27: In July of 2016, days before the Democratic convention, I was in Mr. Trump’s office when his secretary announced that Roger Stone was on the phone. Mr. Trump put Mr. Stone on the speakerphone. Mr. Stone told Mr. Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with [WikiLeaks founder] Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that, within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect of “wouldn’t that be great.”Cohen’s statement directly contradicts Trump’s claim that he never spoke to Stone about WikiLeaks.In an interview last month with the New York Times, shortly after Stone was indicted by the special counsel’s office for lying to Congress, Trump had this exchange:Maggie Haberman, Times reporter, Jan. 31: Did you ever talk to him about WikiLeaks? Because that seemed —Trump: No.Haberman: You never had conversations with him.Trump: No, I didn’t. I never did.We should note that there is no evidence that Stone ever talked to Assange, although that doesn’t mean that Stone didn’t boast that he did. Stone, however, texted news organizations after Cohen’s opening remarks to say: “Mr. Cohen’s statement is not true.”However, the special counsel’s office alleges that on “multiple occasions” Stone “told senior Trump Campaign officials about materials possessed by Organization 1 and the timing of future releases,” as laid out in the indictment against Stone. The indictment refers to WikiLeaks as “Organization 1.” (See “Timeline of Russia Investigation” for more details on Russia’s influence campaign and WikiLeaks’ role in it. )The Trump Organization was actively pursuing a real estate project in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign, but the public didn’t learn about it until the Washington Post broke the story in August 2017 — about seven months into the Trump presidency.Trump signed a letter of intent with a Moscow-based developer, I.C. Expert Investment Co., on Oct. 28, 2015. Cohen and Felix Sater, a Trump business associate, led the Trump Organization’s negotiations with Russian officials until at least June 2016 — which was the same month when reports first surfaced that Russia had hacked the Democratic National Committee’s servers. At the time, the Trump campaign dismissed the hack as an inside job, not the work of Russia, and Trump issued numerous statements over the next several months saying he had no business dealings in Russia. In a July 27, 2016, interview with a CBS affiliate in Miami, Trump said, “I have nothing to do with Russia. I don’t have any jobs in Russia. I’m all over the world but we’re not involved in Russia.” A day earlier, he tweeted he has “ZERO investments in Russia.”Even after he became president — but before the public learned about the Trump Moscow project — Trump denied having any business dealings in Russia.“I have had dealings over the years where I sold a house to a very wealthy Russian many years ago. I had the Miss Universe pageant — which I owned for quite a while — I had it in Moscow a long time ago. But other than that, I have nothing to do with Russia,” Trump said in a May 2017 interview with NBC’s Lester Holt.In the NBC interview, and throughout the campaign, the president omitted any mention of his company’s pursuit of the Moscow project. That was done on purpose, Cohen testified.Cohen told the House oversight committee that Trump “knew of and directed the Trump Moscow negotiations throughout the campaign and lied about it.”Cohen, Feb. 27: In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me there’s no Russian business and then go on to lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie.Cohen continued to lie even after the Post broke the story about the Moscow project and it became public knowledge.In November, Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress when he told two congressional committees that the company’s pursuit of the project ended in January 2016 before “the Iowa caucus and … the very first primary.” In fact, he said in his guilty plea, the Trump Organization continued negotiations into June 2016 — a month before Trump was nominated at the Republican National Convention. After Cohen’s guilty plea in November, Trump falsely claimed that the Moscow project was “a very public deal” that “everybody knew about” and “was written about in newspapers.” Last month, Trump dismissed the Moscow project as a “very unimportant deal,” as he told the New York Times.“I had no money invested. It was a letter of intent, or option,” Trump told the Times. “It was a free option. It was a nothing. And I wasn’t doing anything. I don’t consider that even business. And frankly, that wasn’t even on my radar.”Cohen testified that the Moscow project was on Trump’s radar, “because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project.”“There were at least a half-dozen times between the Iowa Caucus in January of 2016 and the end of June when he would ask me ‘How’s it going in Russia?’ – referring to the Moscow Tower project,” Cohen said at the Feb. 27 House hearing.As we have written before, the president has denied that he had an affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford. He also denied, at least initially, knowing anything about the $130,000 that Cohen paid to Daniels in late October 2016 to prevent her from speaking out about the affair and damaging the campaign.The Wall Street Journal broke the story about the hush money payment on Jan. 12, 2018. The White House and Cohen denied the affair, without addressing the hush money payments. “These are old, recycled reports, which were published and strongly denied prior to the election,” the White House said in a statement to the Journal. Daniels — in a statement issued by Cohen on behalf of Daniels — said “rumors” about “hush money” payments are “completely false.”In early April, a reporter asked Trump directly if he knew anything about the payment. He answered, “No. No. What else?” Pressed if he knew where Cohen got the money, Trump said, “I don’t know.”But that false narrative was exposed on Aug. 21, when Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations for arranging — “in coordination and at the direction of” Trump — payments of $130,000 to Daniels and $150,000 to Playboy model Karen McDougal. In McDougal’s case, Cohen admitted to “causing” American Media Inc., owner of the National Enquirer, to pay McDougal for exclusive rights to her story of an extramarital affair with Trump with the express purpose of killing McDougal’s story and preventing it from influencing the election, according to the plea agreement. In his testimony before the House oversight committee, Cohen provided a copy of a $35,000 check that he received from Trump in August 2017 — one of 11 payments Cohen said he received as reimbursement for the $130,000 payment to Daniels. Trump signed that check 10 months before he denied knowing anything about the payment when asked about it in April 2018.Cohen, Feb. 27: As Exhibit 5A to my testimony shows, I am providing a copy of a $35,000 check that President Trump personally signed from his personal bank account on August 1, 2017 – when he was president of the United States – pursuant to the cover-up, which was the basis of my guilty plea, to reimburse me — the word used by Mr. Trump’s TV lawyer — for the illegal hush money I paid on his behalf.For his part, Trump has since acknowledged the payment to Daniels. Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, made that disclosure on May 2, 2018, and Trump confirmed it on Twitter the next day.But Trump has maintained that he “never directed Michael Cohen to break the law,” and he has rejected the government’s contention that it was a campaign finance violation. Trump called it a “simple private transaction,” not an illegal campaign contribution.During the 2016 campaign, Trump boasted that he was worth $10 billion. “The fact is, I built a net worth of more than $10 billion. I have a great, great company. I employ thousands of people. And I’m very proud of the job I did,” he said during an August 2015 debate.But, as we wrote at the time, outside estimates attested to Trump’s wealth, but placed the amount at between $3 billion and $4 billion.In his testimony, Cohen said Trump “directed us to inflate his net worth and inflate his assets,” providing the committee with portions of statements of financial condition for 2011 and 2013.“It was my experience that Mr. Trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes, such as trying to be listed amongst the wealthiest people in Forbes, and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes,” he said.Trump got five deferments during the Vietnam War, including one for bone spurs in his heels. But in his opening statement, Cohen challenged the diagnosis of bone spurs — suggesting it was a ruse to avoid going to war.Cohen, Feb. 27: Mr. Trump tasked me to handle the negative press surrounding his medical deferment from the Vietnam draft. Mr. Trump claimed it was because of a bone spur, but when I asked for medical records, he gave me none and said that there was no surgery. He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment. He finished the conversation with the following comment. “You think I’m stupid, I’m not going to Vietnam.”We have no idea what Trump told Cohen and, even by Cohen’s account, Trump did not directly say that the bone spur diagnosis was a fake. Cohen’s comment does, however, corroborate the account of two daughters of the podiatrist who diagnosed Trump with bone spurs. In December, they told the New York Times that their late father made the diagnosis as a courtesy to Trump’s father, Fred.“I know it was a favor,” one daughter, Dr. Elysa Braunstein, told the paper. She and “her sister, Sharon Kessel, 53, shared the family’s account for the first time publicly when contacted by The New York Times,” the paper wrote.In his response to Cohen’s testimony, the president criticized his former lawyer for lying “about so many different things.” But, he said, he was “actually impressed” that Cohen “said he saw no collusion” between the Trump campaign and the Russian government or its agents during the 2016 campaign.“I mean, he lied about so many different things, and I was actually impressed that he didn’t say, ‘Well, I think there was collusion for this reason or that.’ He didn’t say that. He said, ‘No collusion,'” the president said at a press conference in Vietnam, where he was meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. “And I was, you know, a little impressed by that, frankly.”Cohen didn’t exactly say there was “no collusion,” but he did say that he didn’t have any evidence of it.In his opening remarks, Cohen said, “Questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia. I do not. I want to be clear. But, I have my suspicions.”Later, asked by Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz if he was aware of any instances of Trump lying about colluding with the Russians, Cohen said he couldn’t answer the question — but again expressed his suspicions.“I’m not really sure that I can answer that question in terms of collusion,” he said. “I was not part of the campaign. I don’t know the other conversations that Mr. Trump had with other individuals. There’s just so many dots that all seem to lead to the same direction.”The Trump campaign issued a statement in response to Cohen’s testimony that relied heavily on the words of federal prosecutors who described Cohen as a liar. “As noted by the Southern District of New York, Cohen’s wide array of crimes were ‘marked by a pattern of deception that permeated his professional life’ and his ‘instinct to blame others is strong,'” the statement said.That is true. Those partial quotes come from a sentencing memo filed in December. But it is also true that the sentencing statement said Cohen provided “credible” information to the Southern District of New York.“With respect to Cohen’s provision of information to this Office, in its two meetings with him, this Office assessed Cohen to be forthright and credible, and the information he provided was largely consistent with other evidence gathered,” the memo stated.We can’t say whether Cohen’s version of events is correct in cases where it’s his word against Trump’s. In some instances, he provides evidence or his allegations are corroborated by other people or other evidence. But in other cases, Cohen provides no evidence at all. All we can do is lay out the facts and let others draw their own conclusions.
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6532
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Future is in doubt for cheaper versions of biologic drugs.
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They were the drugs that were supposed to save the U.S. tens of billions of dollars.
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true
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Rheumatoid arthritis, Health, General News, Arthritis, Business, U.S. News
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Called “biosimilars,” they are near-copies of complex and expensive biologic drugs to treat cancer, rare diseases and autoimmune disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and colitis. But U.S. sales have been so limited that their future is in doubt. Already, one company has scrapped nearly all its biosimilar development projects. Worst-case scenario? Drugmakers could abandon biosimilar development, and makers of original biologic drugs could keep raising their six-figure-a-year prices indefinitely. Two years ago, the independent policy research group RAND Health predicted biosimilars would save the U.S. roughly $54 billion from 2017 through 2026. That’s looking optimistic. “This is a make-or-break period,” said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, who led the Food and Drug Administration until April. “My fear is that some of the biosimilar-makers ... will say, ‘We’ll just go back to doing other things,’” and other drugmakers won’t enter the niche. Leigh Purvis, AARP’s director of health services research, says the original biologic drugmakers “could kill this market before it ever takes off, and we desperately need it.” THE PROMISE Biosimilars are akin to generic drugs, but true generics aren’t possible with biologic drugs. Pills are easily duplicated by mixing chemicals. Getting a generic version of a brand-name pill approved requires spending about $2 million and two years to conduct lab tests and show it’s chemically equivalent to the original medication. Manufacturing costs just pennies a pill. Biologic drugs, on the other hand, are made by manipulating living cells to produce a specific protein. They treat disorders often caused by faulty genes or immune systems, and they must be injected or delivered by infusion. The complex process needed to grow and purify the proteins means a copycat biosimilar will never be identical to the original drug. But it also can’t have “clinically meaningful” differences. Getting approval can take five to nine years of lab and patient testing, and cost over $100 million. A decade ago, Congress passed a law meant to encourage development of cheaper biosimilars. But the makers of the original biologic drugs have fought hard to block the new rivals, with stacks of successive patents, lawsuits and rebates to insurers. The result? Even drugmakers with the expertise and resources to produce biosimilars are mostly thwarted. In the U.S., that is. In Europe, monopoly-protecting patents generally don’t last as long as in the U.S. and government-run health systems have favored biosimilars in exchange for steep discounts. Biosimilars hit Europe in 2006. Now 54 are available at discounts up to 80 percent. In the U.S., the FDA has approved 24 biosimilars, nearly all since 2015. Just 11 of them are actually for sale, generally at 15% to 35% below the original drug’s price. Those discounts are easily matched by original biologic makers who prefer insurers give them a smaller piece of the pie than nothing. Biosimilars have been approved in the U.S. for five biologic best-sellers on the market as long as 22 years: Humira and Enbrel, for rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis and other autoimmune disorders, and the cancer drugs Herceptin, Rituxan and Avastin. However, their biosimilars can’t be sold in the U.S. due to litigation and multiple, monopoly-extending patents. The brands have monthly list prices of over $5,000 to nearly $13,000. Health plans pay much less, but even well-insured patients must pay a big portion — or the full price until they cover their plan deductible. HOW WE GOT HERE Drugmakers have been harnessing scientific advances to create targeted biologic drugs, many for cancer and rare conditions without good treatments. Their executives predicted insurers wouldn’t balk at high prices because the patient numbers aren’t big. But as more people took biologic drugs and companies increased prices 6% to 20% every year, insurers and middlemen called prescription benefit managers limited patients’ access. They also set high copayments for many patients. Biosimilars were seen as financial salvation. But given their limited sales to date, the FDA is trying to enable faster approval. In May, it issued guidelines to enable biosimilar-makers to show their products are interchangeable with an original biologic drug. Pharmacies then could substitute a biosimilar for a brand-name biologic, as happens routinely with generic pills. Cancer patient David Mitchell, who founded the advocacy group Patients for Affordable Drugs, says biologic drugmakers are exploiting the system, despite having at least 12 years of market exclusivity. “We have patients who say, ‘I’ve been taking this drug for 15 or 20 years and there’s still no generic,’” Mitchell notes. He says the group also hears frequently from patients on biologic drugs “who are struggling or can’t afford them.” Chuck Pope, a former machinist from Derry, Pennsylvania, has had rheumatoid arthritis since 2005 and took Enbrel for seven years. He said it prevented flare-ups of the joint-destroying autoimmune disorder, enabling him to keep working long hours. Then shoulder injuries forced him onto disability and cost Pope his employer’s “excellent insurance.” Pope said he can’t afford the thousands of dollars Enbrel would cost him under his Medicare plan. “My body’s just totally disintegrating because of the RA,” which causes irreversible damage, said Pope, 64. “Wouldn’t it be more logical to lower the price and have more people on the drug?” BIOSIMILAR BARRIERS Last year, the U.S. spent $126 billion on biologic drugs, only 2% of it on biosimilars, according to the health data firm IQVIA. Gottlieb, the recently departed FDA commissioner, blames the slow uptake partly on doctors hesitant to switch patients to unfamiliar alternatives. He also points to barriers erected by the companies behind name-brand biologic drugs. Their tactics include disparaging biosimilars as inferior, luring patients with coupons subsidizing their copayments, getting successive patents to extend their monopolies, and giving rebates to insurance plans which cover their biologic drugs but exclude rival biosimilars. A report released Wednesday by a biosimilars trade group estimated the U.S. health care system lost $7.6 billion in possible savings since 2015 due to patent walls delaying sales of approved biosimilars. Health plans are reluctant to take up biosimilars, because that would instantly end their big rebates, Gottlieb said. Such exclusionary contracts have stifled sales of Inflectra, Pfizer’s biosimilar of Johnson & Johnson’s $5 billion-a-year autoimmune disorder drug, Remicade. Since launching in November 2016, Inflectra’s U.S. sales totaled $438 million, though it’s priced 25% below Remicade’s $2,335-per-month list price. Pfizer is suing J&J for “unlawful conduct” that blocks competition. J&J says it simply offered rebate options health plans requested. In October, biosimilar versions of the world’s most lucrative drug, Humira, hit Europe. Humira, which treats psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune disorders, launched 17 years ago and brought maker AbbVie $20 billion in 2018 sales, two-thirds from the U.S. Seven drugmakers have Humira biosimilars approved or awaiting approval in the U.S., but none are expected soon. AbbVie sued each rival to block sales, claiming they would infringe Humira patents. All seven companies eventually settled, agreeing to pay AbbVie royalties so they can start selling biosimilar versions — in 2023. Boehringer Ingelheim, the last company to settle, had alleged AbbVie “improperly created a ‘patent thicket,’ comprising more than a hundred overlapping and non-inventive patents, for the sole purpose of extending its monopoly far beyond the expiration of its core patent for Humira in 2016.” AbbVie wouldn’t discuss Humira. But at a September conference, Chief Financial Officer William Chase said, “You’ve seen us execute very nicely with our legal strategy” to delay U.S. competition. Meanwhile, AbbVie has raised Humira’s U.S. monthly list price from $1,524 in 2009 to $5,174, according to figures from health data firm Elsevier. Makers of Avastin, Herceptin, Rituxan and Enbrel likewise raised their list prices 50% to 200% over that decade. DIM FUTURE? Drugmakers are obligated to maximize profits for shareholders, and hiking prices in the U.S., where they make the lion’s share of revenue, is a sure way of helping their bottom line. Price experts including Dr. Peter Bach of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York recently proposed scrapping biosimilars, saying they can’t succeed due to biologic drugs’ complexity and the nation’s for-profit health care system. They suggest that after biologic drugs have enjoyed their 12-year monopoly, their makers then sell them at cost plus a reasonable profit, set by an independent agency. Analyst Steve Brozak, president of WBB Securities, believes it will take another recession and a surge of unemployed, uninsured patients for the government to enact major changes to boost biosimilar use. Even if biosimilar access improves, few patients will see big savings, predicts Michael Kleinrock, research director at IQVIA. Insurers and prescription benefit managers will get those. “Many people will still have to pay up to their deductible” or out-of-pocket maximum, he says. Kleinrock sees bigger problems: Only about 20 biologic drugs have the billions in annual sales making it worthwhile to develop biosimilar rivals. And biosimilars of drugs created years ago will lose favor as improved, next-generation biologic medicines arrive. “If there’s less reward, there’s less incentive,” he says. ___ Follow Linda A. Johnson at https://twitter.com/LindaJ_onPharma ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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41947
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“We’re having tremendous plans coming out now - health care plans - at a fraction of the cost that are much better than Obamacare.”
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President Donald Trump boasted that “we’re having tremendous plans coming out now — health care plans — at a fraction of the cost that are much better than Obamacare.” No such cheap plans have come out yet, though the administration has proposed rules that would expand the sale of less expensive insurance with fewer benefits.
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mixture
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Affordable Care Act, association health plans, health insurance,
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Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference, President Donald Trump boasted that “we’re having tremendous plans coming out now — health care plans — at a fraction of the cost that are much better than Obamacare.” No such cheap plans have come out yet, though the administration has proposed rules that would expand the sale of less expensive insurance with fewer benefits.Whether those plans would be “better” is a matter of opinion. For some, cheaper plans with fewer benefits would be “better” than those offered by the Affordable Care Act. For others, particularly those with medical conditions, a plan with less coverage wouldn’t be an improvement. The proposed changes also could increase the price of coverage for those who remain on the individual market and ACA exchanges.Trump issued an executive order on Oct. 12, 2017, instructing the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Treasury to consider proposing regulations to expand association health plans, short-term insurance and employer health reimbursement arrangements.The order said, “Expanding access to [association health plans] will also allow more small businesses to avoid many of the [Affordable Care Act’s] costly requirements,” and it noted that while short-term, limited-duration plans were already exempt from the ACA’s requirements, the plans could only offer coverage for less than three months.Association health plans are created by a group of employers, such as those in a similar trade, and short-term plans are, as the name says, those offered for a short period of time, such as a gap in coverage.The Department of Labor issued proposed regulations on association health plans in early January. The public-comment period ends March 6. Several agencies released proposed regulations on short-term plans on Feb. 21, with the public-comment period ending April 23. So no new health care plans are “coming out now,” as Trump said, but they’re certainly on the horizon.We don’t yet know if they will be “a fraction of the cost,” but the reason the plans would likely be cheaper than coverage on the individual market or ACA exchanges is because they wouldn’t be required to cover certain benefits. The plans also could vary pricing based on personal factors such as age and gender more widely than the ACA permits. And short-term plans could price premiums or deny coverage based on health status.Let’s take a closer look at the proposed rules.Right now, association health plans, or AHPs, that are sold to employers in the small-group market must follow small-group rules, and AHPs sold to individuals, such as the self-employed, must follow individual market rules. Under the ACA, the small-group and individual market plans must cover 10 essential health benefits and can only vary pricing based on age (limited to a 3:1 ratio), tobacco use, family size and geography.The 10 essential health benefits include: ambulatory, emergency, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, mental health and substance use disorder services, prescription drugs, rehabilitative services and devices, laboratory services, preventive care and chronic disease management, and pediatric services including dental and vision.Under the proposed rule, association plans could instead be subject to the large employer market rules, which don’t include coverage of the essential health benefits or the rules on how plans can be priced. The association health plans could be considered a single large group employer if members are in the same line of business or profession, or if the principle place of business is in the same region. So, association health plans could be sold across state lines, one of Trump’s stated goals.A summary of the proposed rule by the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute explains that association plans wouldn’t be able to use health status to price policies. “However, as a large group exempt from the ACA’s rating restrictions, AHPs could charge different premiums to small groups or individuals based on age, industry, gender, or other non-health factors.” And the plans wouldn’t have to cover the essential benefits. “For example, the rules appear to allow an AHP to offer a plan that covers maternity services to small employers and one that does not to self-employed individuals, because the separate classification would not be based on a health factor.”Kevin Lucia, project director, and Sabrina Corlette, research professor, at the Center on Health Insurance Reforms wrote in a Jan. 24 article for the Commonwealth Fund that “AHPs could design cheaper, skimpier plans.” So, Trump is right that the plans could be less expensive than those now sold through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces, such as on HealthCare.gov. But, Lucia and Corlette say, those cheaper plans could then drive up the price of insurance on the ACA marketplaces and individual market. Healthy people would sign up for the cheaper association plans, leaving an individual market with a greater percentage of high-cost individuals — which then leads to higher premiums.States have broad authority now to regulate association plans. They can require that plans cover certain benefits and meet financial and licensing standards, Lucia and Corlette explain.“Because of this broad authority, many states are positioned to limit the potential risks, including fraud, insolvency, and market segmentation, associated with a significantly expanded AHP market,” they say. But “questions remain” about how much states would be able to do that under the proposed rule.We asked Lucia about Trump’s statement in January that “millions and millions and millions of people will be signing up” for these association health plans. Lucia said during a briefing held last month by the Commonwealth Fund that the popularity of the plans would “largely depend on how these final regs come out and how much latitude the associations are given to escape state law or to set up benefits that are really skimpy and low priced.”Before the ACA, the association-plan market was “robust,” Lucia said. And there are “national issuers that are already signaling … that they are willing to play in this space.”Short-term plans, which don’t have to meet ACA requirements — including the essential health benefits, premium pricing restrictions, prohibitions on annual or lifetime benefit caps, and prohibitions against denying or pricing coverage based on health status — are limited to a duration of less than three months under an Obama-era rule that took effect in 2017. The Trump administration proposed rule would expand that to less than 12 months.These plans, as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services explains, are “designed to fill temporary gaps in coverage when an individual is transitioning from one plan or coverage to another form of coverage.” Under the ACA, people could buy these plans outside of the open-enrollment period for selecting coverage on the individual market, but the policies were not considered ACA-compliant plans. A person with short-term coverage would still be subject to the individual mandate penalty for not having insurance, because the plans weren’t considered to be adequate coverage.Before the Obama administration changed the maximum duration of these plans to less than three months, they could have been as long as nearly 12 months — the same time period the Trump administration advocates. But the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, signed into law in late December, eliminates the mandate penalty starting in 2019. So, next year those with short-term plans wouldn’t be subject to a penalty for having inadequate insurance coverage.The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation explains in an issue brief that short-term policies have lower premiums than ACA-compliant insurance policies “because short-term policies offer less insurance protection.” Senior Fellow Karen Pollitz wrote in the Feb. 9 brief: “A review of short-term policies offered on two websites, ehealthinsurance.com and agilehealth.com, shows it is not uncommon to find the cheapest short-term policy priced at 20% or less of the premium for the lowest cost ACA-compliant bronze plan in an area.”The Trump administration’s proposed rule acknowledges that since the short-term plans can be priced based on health status, the individuals who sign up for these plans “are likely to be relatively young or healthy.” And it says that allowing the purchase of such plans could affect “individual market single risk pools.”A risk pool is the group of people whose combined health care expenses determine premium prices. The American Academy of Actuaries explains: “Pooling risks together allows the higher costs of the less healthy to be offset by the relatively lower costs of the healthy.” The short-term plans could siphon off healthy individuals, leaving the individual market risk pool with a higher concentration of unhealthy, and therefore higher-cost, individuals.The administration estimates that in 2019, when there is no longer a penalty for not having ACA-compliant coverage, “between 100,000 and 200,000 individuals previously enrolled in Exchange coverage would purchase short-term, limited-duration insurance policies instead.”It also estimates that if 200,000 people enroll in short-term plans, the average monthly premium on the ACA exchanges in 2019 would be 10.6 percent higher, compared with what would have happened with no change in this policy or the individual mandate. Most of that increase, however, would be due to the elimination of the individual mandate, the proposed rule says.The Urban Institute estimated a much higher number would sign up for short-term plans under the administration’s proposed rule. It says in a Feb. 26 analysis that 4.2 million would enroll in the expanded short-term plans in 2019, with 2.5 million of those switching from some other type of insurance and the rest having been uninsured previously. (Overall, the analysis finds the number of uninsured would be higher under the Trump administration policies than it would have been under the ACA. )It also estimates a higher increase in premiums on the individual market in most states than the administration’s proposed rule. “The combined effect of eliminating the individual-mandate penalties and expanding short-term limited-duration policies would increase 2019 ACA-compliant nongroup insurance premiums 18.2 percent on average in the 43 states that do not prohibit or limit short-term plans.”Some states may regulate and limit the availability of short-term plans. “While only a small number of states have done so thus far,” the Urban Institute report says, “more could make such legal and/or regulatory changes and thereby significantly reduce or even eliminate the effects estimated here.”As we noted, some individuals may welcome an increased opportunity to buy cheaper insurance that doesn’t cover as many benefits as the ACA plans. They may consider a skimpier plan to be “better.” But if they do have health issues not covered by the short-term insurance, they’ll face higher out-of-pocket costs or unmet medical needs.The administration’s proposed rule acknowledges this, too, saying that “consumers who switch to such policies from [Affordable Care Act]-compliant plans would experience loss of access to some services and providers and an increase in out-of-pocket expenditures related to such excluded services, benefits that in many cases consumers do not believe are worth their cost. … Depending on plan design, consumers who purchase short-term, limited-duration insurance policies and then develop chronic conditions could face financial hardship as a result, until they are able to enroll in [ACA]-compliant plans that would provide coverage for such conditions.”The proposed rule asks for comments on such issues.Overall, the president is correct that these proposals could provide cheaper insurance for some, but whether the coverage is “better” is a matter of opinion. And cheaper plans that attract healthier individuals could then cause insurance to be more expensive for others.
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"First Lady Melania Trump posted a tweet that was arranged in a way that the first letters of each line spelled out the word ""HELP."
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The potential value of recyclable metals in discarded mobile phones, laptops and desktop computers in China will more than double to around $24 billion by 2030, environmental group Greenpeace forecast on Thursday.
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false
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Viral Phenomena, fake tweets, melania trump, trump administration
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China, the world’s largest mobile phone market, is trying to promote recycling of electronic waste, or e-waste, to improve its environment, cut costs and ease its dependence on foreign resource imports. In a report carried out with the China Association of Electronics for Technology Development, Greenpeace said rising consumption levels would take the potential economic value of recyclable metals in mobile phone and computer motherboards to 160 billion yuan ($23.96 billion) by 2030. That compares to 66.4 billion yuan in 2018 and a projected 81 billion yuan in 2020. If other electronic waste products are taken into account, the potential value would be higher, according to the report, which looked at a range of metals such as gold, silver, copper and iron. In tonnage terms, China’s e-waste is seen rising from 13 million tonnes in 2018 to 15.4 million tonnes in 2020 and 27.2 million tonnes in 2030, at an average annual growth rate of 10.4 percent. Industry research shows a tonne of discarded mobile phones - excluding the battery - contains more than 270 grams of gold, the report noted, illustrating that the gold content of this “sleeping mine” is much higher than in an average high-grade gold mine.
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2082
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More U.S. teens get vaccinated, CDC finds.
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More U.S. teens are getting recommended vaccines against certain cancers, meningitis and infectious diseases, government researchers reported on Thursday.
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true
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Health News
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More than 40 percent of girls have received at least one dose of the new vaccine that protects against a virus that causes cervical and other cancers, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than half have received a booster shot that protects against tetanus, whooping cough and diphtheria, the survey of 20,000 teens aged 13 to 17 said. “We can see that more parents of adolescents are electing to protect their children from serious diseases such as pertussis (whooping cough), meningitis, and cervical cancer but there is clear room for improvement in our system’s ability to reach this age group,” the CDC’s Dr. Anne Schuchat said. She pointed to recent outbreaks of whooping cough, especially in California, where state health officials say seven infants too young to be vaccinated have died and 3,000 cases have been reported. “Young infants are most vulnerable to serious complications from pertussis and can be infected by older siblings, parents or other caretakers,” Schuchat said in a statement. The survey found that 56 percent of teens aged 13 to 17 had at least one dose of tetanus-diphtheria-acellular pertussis vaccine, known as Tdap, an increase of 15 points since 2008. It found 54 percent of teens got at least one dose of meningococcal conjugate vaccine, up 12 points. This vaccine is aimed at teenagers who will go to new high schools or colleges and risk getting infected by the sometimes fatal bacteria in dorms or when they begin dating. The survey showed 44 percent of girls had received at least one dose of human papillomavirus, or HPV vaccine, an increase of seven percentage points. Only 27 percent of girls got all three doses of the vaccine, up nine points from 2008. HPV is the main cause of cervical cancer and also can cause throat, anal and penile cancers. “Completing the three-dose HPV vaccine series is very important to ensure protection against cervical cancer,” Schuchat said. “Visits for immunization can be a great opportunity to address other important preventive issues that all teens need.” Two HPV vaccines are licensed — Cervarix from GlaxoSmithKline and Gardasil from Merck & Co. Novartis and Sanofi make vaccines against meningitis and several companies make Tdap vaccines.
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8811
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Common drugs hasten decline in elderly: study.
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Elderly people who took commonly prescribed drugs for incontinence, allergy or high blood pressure walked more slowly and were less able to take care of themselves than others not taking the drugs, U.S. researchers said on Saturday.
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true
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Health News
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File photo shows the silhouette of an elderly man. Reuters/File They said people who took drugs that block acetylcholine — a chemical messenger in the nervous system critical for memory — functioned less well than their peers. “These results were true even in older adults who have normal memory and thinking abilities,” said Dr. Kaycee Sink of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, who led the study of 3,000 people of whom 40 percent were taking more than one anticholinergic drug. “The effect is essentially that of a three- to four-year increase in age. So someone who is 75 in our study and taking at least one moderately anticholinergic medication is at a similar functional level to a 78 to 79-year-old,” Sink said in an e-mail. Sink’s findings, presented at American Geriatrics Society Meeting in Washington, add to a growing body of research that suggests these so-called anticholinergic medications can hasten functional and cognitive declines in elderly people. Some of the most common such drugs in the study included the blood pressure drug nifedipine (sold as Adalat or Procardia), the stomach antacid ranitidine or Zantac, both with mild or moderate anticholinergic properties, and Pfizer Inc’s incontinence drug tolterodine or Detrol, which is highly anticholinergic. “The tricky part ... is that many useful drugs from many different classes of medications have anticholinergic properties,” Sink said. She said in many cases newer drugs are available that do not have these effects and said doctors should look out for them for elderly patients. Dr. Jack Tsao, a neurologist with the U.S. Navy, reported last month at a American Academy of Neurology meeting that elderly people who took anticholinergic drugs had a 50 percent greater rate of memory decline than people in a long-term study who did not take the drugs. Sink studied the effects of taking multiple anticholinergic drugs on walking speed, basic activities such as dressing, eating, taking care of personal hygiene, grooming, and harder activities like shopping, cooking and managing money on her test subjects whose average age was 78. The researchers found that the more anticholinergic drugs people had in their systems, the worse their physical function, based on reports from people in the study and on independent measures of their performance. In a separate study this month in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, Sink found that older nursing home residents who took drugs for dementia and incontinence at the same time had a 50 percent faster decline in function than those treated only for dementia. “I would encourage patients to bring in a list of everything they take (even over-the-counter medications) to their doctor and have them review it at least yearly,” Sink said. “Physicians should try to decrease anticholinergic burden whenever possible.”
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13595
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They were going to build the wall a while ago, not so long ago, like in '06. And they couldn't get environmental impact statements.
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"Trump said, ""They were going to build the wall a while ago, not so long ago, like in '06. And they couldn't get environmental impact statements."" The Secure Fence Act of 2006 called for the construction of an additional 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. While there were environmental concerns related to the construction, the Secretary of Homeland Security waived required environmental reviews in order to proceed with construction. Trump’s statement suggests a wall or barrier was not built due to inability to get environmental impact statements. Trump’s statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."
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false
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Immigration, National, Donald Trump,
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"Donald Trump may have confused people recently about whether he supports mass deportation. But there’s one thing he’s been consistent about: building a wall along the southern border. And having Mexico pay for it. In an interview aired Aug. 23, Fox News host Sean Hannity asked the Republican presidential nominee how long it would take to build the wall, from start to finish. ""Almost immediately,"" Trump answered. ""Now if you would believe it, you know, they were going to build the wall a while ago, not so long ago, like in '06. And they couldn't get environmental impact statements. Can you believe it? Okay. Now we got lucky because it was such a little wall, it was such a nothing wall, no, they couldn't get their environmental -- probably a snake was in the way or a toad or…"" We were curious about wall plans from a decade ago and whether environmental impact statements hindered its construction, as Trump’s statements suggest. Trump’s campaign did not respond to our requests for more information. But immigration experts referred us to the Secure Fence Act of 2006, signed into law by President George W. Bush. Secure Fence Act The act called for the construction 700 miles of additional fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. It also authorized the use of more vehicle barriers, checkpoints and lighting to deter illegal immigration, and the use of advanced technology such as satellites and unmanned aerial vehicles. Bush said the new law would make borders more secure and hailed it as ""an important step toward immigration reform."" The act also required the Department of Homeland Security to install at least two layers of reinforced fencing along some stretches of the border. That was amended, however, through the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008, which got rid of the double-layer requirement. Environmental impact statements So there was a 2006 law that sought to increase fencing around the border. But it didn’t face hurdles from environmental impact statements. That’s because the REAL ID Act of 2005, passed by Congress, gave the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to ""waive all legal requirements"" that may get in the way of construction of barriers and roads along the border. In 2008, then Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff, used his authority to waive environmental reviews. ""Congress and the American public have been adamant that they want and expect border security,"" said Chertoff in an April 2008 New York Times report. ""We’re serious about delivering it, and these waivers will enable important security projects to keep moving forward."" The secretary also waived requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act, according to Melinda Taylor, who directs an energy and environmental law center at the University of Texas and who co-wrote a paper on the environmental impacts of the border wall between Texas and Mexico. The waivers were not without controversy. ""The environment was certainly a major issue that opponents of the wall brought up,"" said Cassie Williams, spokesperson for Federation for American Immigration Reform, which favors reduced immigration. But DHS did not need an environmental impact statement because of the Congress-approved waiver, Williams said. In July 2008, DHS released an Environmental Stewardship Plan, analyzing potential environmental impacts of the fence and plans to mitigate them. While there were environmental concerns related to fence construction, ""it’s simply false that environmental requirements or issues impeded wall construction,"" said Denise Gilman, a clinical professor and director of the immigration clinic at the University of Texas School of Law. Gilman believes it’s appropriate to call the fencing a wall because it’s clear that it was supposed to keep people out. Segments built are generally 18-feet high, she said. Rebecca Hamlin, assistant professor of legal studies at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said environmental concerns were raised at the border, but believes money is what has halted additional construction, not environmental impact statements. A 2009 U.S. Government Accountability Office report noted that for fiscal years 2006 through 2009, the Secure Border Initiative program -- designed to secure borders and curb illegal immigration -- received about $3.6 billion. About $2.4 billion of that amount was allocated to complete about 670 miles of vehicle and pedestrian fencing along the roughly 2,000-mile border. That same report found that pedestrian fencing accounted for 140 of the miles Customs and Border Protection had completed by Oct. 31, 2008, averaging $3.9 million a mile. Vehicle fencing costs averaged $1 million a mile. ""The per-mile costs to build the fencing varied considerably because of the type of fencing, topography, materials used, land acquisition costs, and labor costs, among other things,"" the 2009 report said. Our ruling Trump said, ""They were going to build the wall a while ago, not so long ago, like in '06. And they couldn't get environmental impact statements."" The Secure Fence Act of 2006 called for the construction of an additional 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border. While there were environmental concerns related to the construction, the Secretary of Homeland Security waived required environmental reviews in order to proceed with construction. Trump’s statement suggests a wall or barrier was not built due to inability to get environmental impact statements. Trump’s statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."
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16248
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"Mary Burke Says Scott Walker ""gave $6 million in tax breaks to a corporation and told them that they can keep that money even if they lay off half their workforce."
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India’s ban on electronic cigarettes has been challenged in a court in the eastern city of Kolkata, marking the start of the first legal battle against the anti-vaping decision.
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mixture
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Economy, Infrastructure, Jobs, State Budget, Workers, Taxes, Wisconsin, Mary Burke,
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The Indian government banned the sale, import and manufacture of e-cigarettes this month and warned of an “epidemic” among young people. The move could dash the expansion plans of companies such as Juul Labs Inc and Philip Morris International (PM.N) in the country. Two separate challenges have been filed to the high court in Kolkata, by e-cigarette importer Plume Vapour and another company named Woke Vapors, according to court listing records publicly available online. A senior health ministry official in New Delhi said the government had been notified of the cases, which were heard by the court on Thursday and will next be heard on Monday. “We are confident of defending our decision,” the official added. Further details about the challenges were not immediately available. More than 900,000 people die each year due to tobacco-related illnesses in India, home to about 1.3 billion people. The government argues the e-cigarette ban is essential to protect people, especially young people, saying vaping can lead to nicotine addiction and push users toward consuming tobacco. Pro-vaping groups, however, say vaping is less harmful than smoking tobacco and that the ban will deprive millions of smokers of a safer solution to cut back on smoking. “This (ban) raises several important questions of constitutional law and is mindless, arbitrary and excessive,” said Abhishek Manu Singhvi, one of India’s most prominent lawyers, who is representing Plume Vapour. The ban includes a jail term of up to one year and a fine of 100,000 rupees ($1,411) for first-time offenders, though use of the device by individuals is not prohibited. India has 106 million adult smokers, second only to China in the world, making it a lucrative potential market for companies selling vaping products. Juul had plans to launch its e-cigarette in India and has hired several senior executives in recent months. Philip Morris had plans to launch its heat-not-burn tobacco device in India, Reuters has reported.
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818
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Planned Parenthood opts out of U.S. subsidies in fight over abortion referrals.
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Planned Parenthood said on Monday it was withdrawing from a federal program subsidizing reproductive healthcare for low-income women after the Trump administration banned participants in the program from referring women to abortion providers.
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true
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Health News
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Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the United States, said its move was spurred by a federal appeals court decision last month clearing the administration’s way to restrict Title X grants under a new policy critics have branded a “gag rule.” In addition to barring recipients from making abortion referrals, the policy requires financial and physical separation between facilities funded by Title X and those where actual abortions are performed. The rule, imposed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is part of a broad effort by the Republican president, his allies in Congress and numerous Republican-dominated state legislatures to curtail abortion access in recent years. Planned Parenthood, accounting for about one-fifth of all Title X funds granted, had vowed to cease accepting money from the program months ago, when HHS said it would start enforcing the new restrictions. The group said it would rely instead on private donations and emergency funds to make up the difference as best it could. Monday’s move marked a formal Title X withdrawal, to remain permanent unless Congress acts to overturn the restriction or legal challenges prevail in court. “Due to an unethical and dangerous gag rule, the Trump administration has forced Planned Parenthood grantees out of Title 10,” Alexis McGill, acting president and CEO of Planned Parenthood, told journalists on a conference call. Planned Parenthood is not alone. Legislatures in Maryland and Massachusetts preemptively adopted measures to opt out of Title X and provide state funding in its place if the new rule took effect. And governors of five other states - Hawaii, Illinois, New York, Oregon and Washington - have said they would do the same. So has Maine Family Planning, a nonprofit, sole recipient of Title X funds in that state. Congress appropriated $286 million in Title X grants in 2017 to Planned Parenthood and other health centers to provide birth control, disease screening and other reproductive health and counseling services to poor women. That funding already was prohibited from being used to pay for abortions, but abortion opponents have long complained that the money in effect subsidized Planned Parenthood as a whole, including its abortion services. The organization had been providing healthcare to about 40% of the 4 million people who rely on Title X funding annually, with 600 of its clinics receiving money from the program. Critics said Planned Parenthood’s action showed it was primarily focused on abortion. “In withdrawing from Title X, Planned Parenthood has made it crystal clear that abortion is its number one priority,” said Ashley McGuire, a senior fellow with the Catholic Association. Abortion has remained one of the most contentious issues in U.S. politics since the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision affirming a woman’s constitutional right to terminate her pregnancy. Opponents cite religious beliefs in decrying abortion as immoral, while the other side casts abortion restrictions as infringing on women’s private medical choices and control over their own bodies. Federal judges in Washington state, California and Oregon, among nearly two dozen states challenging the administration’s rule in court, issued preliminary injunctions against its enforcement earlier this year. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on June 20 lifted those injunctions, and the same court rejected emergency bids to overturn that decision in July. That allowed the restrictions to take effect while court cases proceed. The rule largely restored a restriction created in 1988 and upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1991, only to be suspended by the Clinton administration in 1993.
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2110
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Learning to relax, cope extends cancer survival.
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Working with a psychologist to reduce stress can help women whose breast cancer comes back survive longer, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
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true
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Health News
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They said reducing stress during breast cancer treatment can keep the immune system strong and improve a woman’s quality of life — and these two factors help women live longer. They found women who took part in a support group where they were taught to cope with their stress through relaxation techniques and problem solving lived an average of six months longer than other women. “If you have someone who can provide effective, research-supported ways to reduce your stress, not only will that affect your mental health. It will likely affect your symptoms and your recovery,” said Barbara Andersen, a psychology professor at Ohio State University in Columbus. The study is rare because while it makes sense that therapy might ease some of the stress of cancer treatment, few studies have shown it can boost a woman’s survival. The findings appear in the journal Cancer Clinical Research. The study included 227 women with newly diagnosed Stage II or III breast cancer. Women in the study got either a psychological assessment or therapy that helped them understand their stress, learn ways to cope with it, stay on their cancer treatment, improve communication with their doctor and generally feel better emotionally during their treatment and recovery. “It was far more than the popular notion of support groups of patients in a room talking about their troubles,” Andersen said in a telephone interview. “Certain patients talked about things that were stressful to them, but they also learned really effective ways to cope with that stress.” For example, women were taught relaxation techniques that helped lower stress levels. They were counseled on how to assess the individual strengths of people in their support network — knowing which people can be counted on for emotional support and which would be most reliable if the woman needed a ride to therapy. The support group met weekly for four months, than monthly for a total of a year. In prior findings from the study, the team found that women who had taken part in the support group had stronger immune systems and were 45 percent less likely to have their breast cancer come back after 11 years of follow up. The latest phase of the study looked at the group of women whose cancer did return. Of these 62 women, those who had gotten talk therapy were 59 percent less likely to die from their breast cancer during the study period. The survival benefit was above and beyond improvements in drug treatments. Andersen said these results “show enduring benefits” from the support group that had never before been considered or seen. “An intervention that increased survival would be incredibly valuable. It represents a new tool for improving the lives of women with breast cancer,” Sarah Gehlert of Washington University in St. Louis, who was not involved in the study, said in a statement. Andersen said most women with breast cancer would not be able to take part in such a support group at the moment, but she hopes the findings will encourage insurance companies to pay for them, and for hospitals to begin offering such services.
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39327
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The eRumor says that the American Stroke Associations suggests a simple three question test to give to someone who may be experiencing the symptoms of a stroke.
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Test to determine a whether a stroke is happening.
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true
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Health / Medical, Medical, Miscellaneous
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According to the website of the American Stroke Association (ASA) this eRumor is true. The American Stroke Association is a division of the American Heart Association. In an article published in February of 2003, the ASA says that a 60-second test can help determine whether someone may be experiencing a stroke. The three question test has been used by health care professionals as an initial way of determining whether someone may be experiencing a stroke. But a research project by North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, N.C. looked into the question of whether non-medical professionals could administer the short test and correctly identify the symptoms of a possible stroke. The conclusions was yes, that bystanders could be helpful in determining whether a person is experiencing a stroke. One of the reasons they looked into it was to see whether bystanders could be helpful to a 9-1-1 dispatcher in helping narrow down what is happening to a potential patient. The three questions given to the suspected stroke sufferers were: Can you raise your arms and keep them up?Can you smile?Can you repeat a simple sentence? The study found that when non-medical volunteers were asked by a telephone dispatcher to administer the test, they correctly identified the symptoms 96 percent of the time…especially the raising of the arms and the speaking of a simple sentence. They were less effective in evaluating whether there was facial weakness in a smile, probably because of not knowing what the person’s normal smile looked like. Doctors caution that this does not mean that citizens should try to diagnose stroke symptoms themselves.This study focused on citizens who were being given instruction over the telephone by emergency dispatchers. Any sign of weakness in the face, slurred speech, or weakness or numbness in the limbs should be evaluated by medical professionals immediately. If stroke victims are given proper help within 3 hours of the stroke, the ability to recover is greatly increased. CLICK HERE for more information posted on the the American Stroke Association website. updated 02/02/10 Comments
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29192
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President Trump cancelled Michelle Obama's school lunch program in October 2018.
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"What's true: The Trump administration relaxed some of the nutritional guidelines regarding school lunches established during the Obama administration. What's false: President Trump did not cancel Michelle Obama's school lunch program, and changes to the ""Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act"" were announced back in May 2017."
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false
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Politics, donald trump, michelle obama
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In October 2018, the message “Trump cancelled Michelle Obama’s school lunch program. The only meal some kids get” was shared by a number of individuals on Facebook: This message has been bouncing around Facebook for at least a year. The most popular example of this message that we could find was shared by “Tom Bones Malone” in October 2017, but even then the message was outdated and misleading. The phrase “Michelle Obama’s school lunch program” is a bit inaccurate as the former first lady didn’t sponsor or pass any legislation mandating the content of school lunches. However, she was certainly an advocate for a healthier lifestyle, and she pushed for better nutritional standards as part of the “Let’s Move” initiative, efforts which inspired the passage of the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act” by Congress. U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said of the bill’s passing that: “Today is a great day for kids throughout our country as they will soon have healthier, and more nutritious food in their schools. As we continue to focus on the twin issues of childhood obesity and hunger, we will increase access to good, quality meals in school cafeterias so the nutritional needs of our youngsters are better met. The President and First Lady have advocated strongly for passing the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, and, this bill, along with the resources and the powers provided under it, are going to allow USDA to be much more effective and aggressive in responding to obesity and hunger challenges for America’s kids.” However, as of this writing the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act” has not been “cancelled” — although the Trump administration did roll back a few of the nutritional guidelines for school lunches set by this Obama-era legislation. For instance, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act reduced portion sizes; placed limits on sugar and fat content; mandated fruit, vegetable, and whole grain servings; and prevented schools from serving flavored milk. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue signed a proclamation on 1 May 2017 which announced that some of those regulations would be relaxed: Schools won’t have to cut more salt from meals just yet and some will be able to serve kids fewer whole grains, under changes to federal nutrition standards announced [today]. The move by the Trump administration partially rolls back rules championed by former first lady Michelle Obama as part of her healthy eating initiative. As his first major action in office, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said the department will delay an upcoming requirement to lower the amount of sodium in meals while continuing to allow waivers for regulations that all grains on the lunch line must be 50 percent whole grain. Schools could also serve 1 percent flavored milk instead of the nonfat now required. “If kids aren’t eating the food, and it’s ending up in the trash, they aren’t getting any nutrition — thus undermining the intent of the program,” said Perdue, who traveled to a school in Leesburg, Va., to make the announcement. As of this writing, the Trump administration has not “cancelled” or repealed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. Rather, they have loosened its provisions by changing or delaying some of the school meal nutritional requirements established by that legislation.
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10267
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Quest for Vaccines to Treat Addiction
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Through its well-sourced coverage, the story conveys that vaccines probably won’t cure addictions as successfully as they prevent polio. There’s also a nice explanation of the science behind this technology and a summary of the challenges that remain to be addressed. However, we wanted to see a lot more detail on the data that have been presented so far, and, ideally, greater caution about the potential harms of these vaccines. Although they appear safe, more testing is required before we can be confident about their long-term effects. The search for an easy fix to addictions — a silver bullet — has a long, venerable, and disappointing history. The most effective treatments so far are substitution therapies, such as methadone, buprenorphine, and varenicline. “Blocking” therapies, into which category vaccines would fit, have only been marginally effective, if at all. The pace of development of effective treatments has accelerated in recent years, and vaccine research may one day yield additional options for people who are serious about kicking their habits and need more help. At this point, however, there’s not much reason to believe that this approach will be more successful than existing therapies. It’s more realistic to view vaccines as one among several potential options — not a panacea.
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true
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Wall Street Journal
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Although there was no discussion of costs, the article was clear in stating that vaccines are for the most part in an early stage of development, so this omission is understandable. We wanted to see better coverage of the data here. The story leads with an anecdote about a patient who kicked a pack-a-day smoking habit after treatment with a nicotine vaccine in a study. And later, the story says that smokers who received that vaccine were “about three times as likely to be off cigarettes 44 weeks after vaccination than subjects given a placebo.” The story should have provided the absolute rates of success reported in the study, which were only 16% for the treatment group compared with 6% for the placebo group, according to theheart.org. Elsewhere, the story describes an experimental anticocaine vaccine that was apparently very effective in a mouse study; it could have reported on phase II human data that is available for the TA-CD anticocaine vaccine that was also mentioned in the story. These data again suggest that only a minority of patients may benefit from the use of anti-addiction vaccines. The story states that “clinical trials have so far revealed no significant side effects” from vaccine treatments. However, we think the story should have included an important caveat: that these are early stage trials involving small numbers of patients that can’t provide conclusive evidence of safety. In addition, it should be recognized that addictions are chronic conditions and these vaccine treatments are likely to be long-term as well. Therefore, longer-term adverse effects should be expected, especially for a treatment that interferes with molecules closely related to the body’s natural chemical messengers. The story could have been a bit more circumspect on this point. The promise of this new vaccine technology is counterbalanced by coverage of the uncertainties. The story gives appropriate weight to the disappointing results reported in a number of early clinical studies, noting: “Failures have so far outnumbered successes.” The story adds that even in one of the successful vaccine studies, the benefits were not as robust as those seen with a smoking cessation drug that is already on the market. There also is no prospect for a vaccine to treat alcoholism, according to the story. The article should have been more direct about the limitations of mouse research, and there was not enough detail on the data published in the various studies reported on (a deficiency we address under the “Benefits” criterion). However, since the story was trying to present a broad overview of happenings in the field and wasn’t attempting to summarize any particular study, we’ll give the benefit of the doubt here and award a satisfactory. The story didn’t exaggerate the effects of substance abuse disorders or otherwise engage in disease-mongering. The sourcing of this story was good. We hear from academics, government researchers, and industry executives. Their voices provide balance and give texture to the coverage. It should be noted, however, that most of these experts have a vested interest in the field or the success of a particular treatment, whether because of industry ties or because they are leading experiments on a particular approach. Even the government experts might be biased by their provision of significant financial support for research in this area. It would have been nice to hear a comment about the vaccines from someone who is certifiably free of all potential conflicts. But we can’t justify docking points since there is no voice that is overly enthusiastic about the concept. The story compares the potential of vaccines with the benefits of existing medications for addiction–and notes that the available drugs might work better. We would like to have seen more ink given to the role of behavioral approaches in the management of addiction, which are supported by considerable evidence. However, the story does acknowledge that vaccines “would likely be used alongside psychological therapy.” We’ll call it good enough for a satisfactory. The article helpfully states that “It could be years, if ever, before any vaccines to treat addiction reach the market.” The article does a good job of describing how far along the various experimental vaccines mentioned in the article are in their development. Although the story could have provided more background on the history of anti-addiction vaccines (a heroin vaccine was explored in the 1970s), the treatments being explored now are different from anything currently available. So we don’t think this story overstates the novelty of the research. This story is not based on a news release.
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2385
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Tweaking an exercise routine to stay strong after 50.
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People turning 50 may want to consider tweaking their exercise routines because as they age stiffer joints, slower recovery from injury and the loss of lean body mass are among the perils facing the youngest baby boomers, fitness experts say.
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true
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Health News
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Studies have shown that even a 90-year-old can build muscle, so the half-century mark is a good time to retire joint-stressing high jumps and to start lifting dumbbells to build strength. Dr. Wayne Westcott, co-author of the book “Strength Training Past 50,” said maintaining lean body mass becomes harder with ageing. “The average man in good shape is about 85 percent lean weight, organs, blood, bones, muscles and skin, to 15 percent fat. The average healthy woman has a 75/25 ratio,” said Westcott, fitness research director at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, Massachusetts. “It’s more challenging with age but if you do strength training you can maintain your lean muscle to about age 70,” he said, adding that an older woman who doesn’t resistance train will lose up to 10 pounds of lean mass per decade. Westcott places equal value on cardiovascular training. “We recommend approximately 20 to 30 minutes of resistance exercises two to three times a week. Then try to have an equal amount of aerobic activity four to five days a week,” he explained. Westcott added that older adults, who are hitting the gym in increasing numbers, might want to avoid explosive, high velocity activities, such as high jumps. In 1990 there were 1.9 million health club members aged 55 and above, while in 2012 there were over 10 million, according to a 2014 report by the trade association IHRSA (International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association). Dr. Barbara Bushman of the American College of Sports Medicine said regular physical activity, rather than a sedentary lifestyle, has the potential to minimize the physiological changes that occur with age and inactivity, in addition to limiting the progression of chronic diseases. “Older adults can benefit from exercise, and although absolute improvements may be less than for younger adults, relative increases can be similar,” Bushman said, adding that older adults may take longer to make improvements. At 54, Florida-based fitness trainer and wellness coach Shirley Archer noticed that if she did not weight train she lost lean body muscle at a faster rate. She also found it harder to get it back. Happily for Archer, who has enjoyed running, cycling and hiking, her endurance activities remain unaffected by her aging. “I feel that I have not lost any endurance,” said Archer, author of the book “Fitness 9 to 5: Easy Exercises for the Working Week.” As people age, she explained, they lose muscle fibers that produce quick powerful bursts before fibers that are engaged in endurance activities such as running or cycling. She said that is why older athletes, who cannot physically compete against younger athletes when it comes to strength and power, can remain competitive in endurance sports. The ageing exerciser also faces longer warm-up and recovery times, as the body is stiffer and slower to heal, Archer said. And the burning of fewer calories means paying even more attention to diet. Staying hydrated is also important. “We need to be sure to hydrate even if we don’t feel particularly thirsty,” she said. “Hydration will keep all systems working much more efficiently — and even help keep our thinking clear.”
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10972
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New scan for skin cancers goes full-body route
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This was a well-done story about a new business strategy in medicine, direct to consumer diagnostic testing – in this case for skin cancer. It provided readers with a lot of information about approaches to skin cancer screening, including what they can do on their own, organizations that provide free screening, and how the medical professionals most closely associated with skin cancer screening view this new organization and its approach. While pointing out that screening is only as good as the person conducting the exam, it also highlights the fact that many people are not screened in accordance with current recommendations. However – there was no evidence presented for efficacy of the screening method use in this new facility or for traditional screens conducted by physicians. A particular flaw was the lack of discussion of harms associated with both false positives (increased surveillance and worry) and diagnosis of early cancers that would not progress, with a possible cascade of medical intervention and all that entails. Overall, the story was informative and successful in not being merely a shill for the new enterprise.
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true
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"The story included the costs of a Molesafe screening as well links to organizations offering no cost screening. To be more complete, there are three pieces of information the story could have included: the cost for yearly follow-up at Molesafe, whether or not Molesafe screening would be covered by some, most, or no insurance companies, and the estimated costs of such screening by a dermatologist. The story did not quantify the benefits that might be derived from increasing the number of people being screened for skin cancer. It did not include any discussion about the value of such screening in any of the settings mentioned. But it did provide some discussion around the information that fewer people are screened than recommendations would suggest and that this type of setting had the potential to increase the screening rate. The president of the American Society for Dermatologic Surgery expressed his concern that ""Dermatologists consistently do better than non-dermatologists"" which could be interpreted as a suggesting that MoleSafe screening could miss lesions. A false negative is one of the harms of screening. The story should have been more explicit on this. The story could have explained that the other harm of screening is a false positive, which in this case would be where something is diagnosed as a potential cancer and the individual goes for unnecessary follow-up and/or treatment. Although the clinician who is opening this clinic and stands to gain financially from its operation stated that the process ""is proven to detect melanomas and save lives,"" the story did not contain data supporting this claim. It should be available as this sort of clinic has been in operation for several years in New Zealand and Australia under the name MoleMap. If there is no evidence about the efficacy of this particular screening system, this should have been mentioned. The story did not engage in disease mongering. In fact, it alluded to the fact that not all cancers are dangerous. This is a concept that is not often mentioned. The reporter working on this story did an excellent job of obtaining comments from people with vested interest in the disease but without connection to the clinic at the heart of the story. The comments provided a very interesting perspective on how medical professionals view competition. The story mentioned screening by dermatologists and even included links to groups conducting free screening. In addition, a side bar included information that provided information a reader could use to do a first pass screening on their own. The story explained that the first Molesafe screening center is in the process of being opened in New Jersey. It also offer links to organizations offering free screening. The story was quite clear on this being a newly available clinical setting in the United States but one which has a longer history in New Zealand. Because of the number of sources used, we assume that the story did not rely solely or largely on a news release."
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13517
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"Marco Rubio Says ""Patrick Murphy is the only candidate to have voted against every measure to fund Zika."
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"Rubio, through a spokeswoman, said, ""Patrick Murphy is the only candidate to have voted against every measure to fund Zika."" Murphy, like most congressional Democrats, has opposed Republican-led efforts to conditionally fund anti-Zika efforts at less than what Obama has requested. But he has offered other solutions and voted against his party for two bills that would have allowed unspecified amounts of money to be repurposed for Zika programs. So the campaign was wrong to say he voted against ""every"" measure."
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false
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Congress, Public Health, Voting Record, Florida, Marco Rubio,
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"While the Senate bickers over Zika funding, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s campaign says Democratic challenger U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy has been playing partisan politics over the issue in the House. The same day the Senate failed to approve emergency public health funding to deal with Zika for the third time in three months, Rubio spokeswoman Olivia Perez-Cubas said Murphy has been an obstructionist. ""Patrick Murphy is the only candidate to have voted against every measure to fund Zika,"" she said on Sept. 7, 2016. (By ""only,"" she meant the only general election Senate candidate, comparing Murphy to Rubio.) That doesn’t sound like the position a Florida congressman facing a Zika outbreak would take in an election year, so we checked the record. We should note Rubio has supported high-level funding for Zika efforts, even co-sponsoring a bill with Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson. Perez-Cubas was speaking for Rubio, so we are putting Rubio on the Truth-O-Meter. It turns out Murphy has opposed plenty of Republican-backed funding proposals, but ""every"" is putting it too strong. He still has voted for some measures. Funding malaise President Barack Obama first asked Congress for $1.89 billion in funding in February 2016 to deal with a potential outbreak of Zika. The virus has been linked to cases of infant microcephaly, or babies born with abnormally small heads. There is no treatment or vaccine for the disease, so focus has been on prevention. There are at least 771 cases of Zika in Florida, including several local transmissions in the Miami area. But that count may not always be the most accurate. Murphy has been involved with other Zika-related bills, including acting as a cosponsor for a Democrat-favored measure (HR 5044) that provided the full amount Obama requested. Those bills have not left committees in the House. A deeply partisan Congress, meanwhile, has fought all year over finding the money for mosquito control, vaccine development, diagnosing the disease, public education campaigns and more. There have been several measures introduced to deal with the disease, but the main focus this summer has been on some legislative wrangling over appropriations bills. House Republicans on May 18 passed a measure (HR 5243) that would have provided $622 million for Zika. With Obama threatening to veto the measure, Murphy voted no on that one with other Democrats. It was not taken up in the Senate. The next day, Murphy voted yes for a bill (HR 4974) that would have allowed the White House to repurpose leftover funding to deal with the 2014 Ebola outbreak and use it for Zika. Rubio’s campaign said this bill didn’t count, because there was no specified dollar amount, and didn’t guarantee the money would be used for Zika, only that it could. But that’s splitting hairs, because HR 4974 still would have provided at least one option to fund Zika-related programs. Now it’s time for a civics lesson, because what the House did next wasn’t covered on Schoolhouse Rock. The House then passed another bill (HR 2557) that was originally about funding for transportation and other agencies. Instead, the bill became a vehicle for Zika funding using language from HR 5243, the Republican measure. The House wanted $622 million for Zika, but cut that money from other programs in order to stay budget-neutral, a process known as recission. The House also added provisions restricting contraception services that Democrats opposed. The Senate wanted $1.1 billion in new funding. The bill went to conference in June to iron out differences. The House agreed to $1.1 billion in funding, as long as about $700 million was found through cutting other areas. Murphy voted against final passage of HR 2577, and against adopting the conference report instituting the changes. The Senate is currently battling over the bill. Senate Democrats have so far blocked a vote three times in three months, wanting a ""clean"" bill with no contraception provisions and the full $1.89 billion originally requested. That’s not the end of the line, however. On June 16, Murphy voted for HR 5293, a bill that would allow the administration to shift money in the Defense Department to help with Zika efforts through that agency. Again, there was no set dollar amount or guarantee that’s how the money would be used, but it was another option in the Zika toolbox. It passed the House but is stuck in the Senate. ""Murphy did vote in favor of two efforts to transfer funds in support of Zika efforts and opposed the major effort in hopes of gaining more funding than the Republicans offered,"" said Steven Smith, a Washington University in St. Louis political science professor. Our ruling Rubio, through a spokeswoman, said, ""Patrick Murphy is the only candidate to have voted against every measure to fund Zika."" Murphy, like most congressional Democrats, has opposed Republican-led efforts to conditionally fund anti-Zika efforts at less than what Obama has requested. But he has offered other solutions and voted against his party for two bills that would have allowed unspecified amounts of money to be repurposed for Zika programs. So the campaign was wrong to say he voted against ""every"" measure."
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30931
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New research from Arizona State University suggests that a catastrophic super-eruption from the Yellowstone caldera could occur sooner than previously thought.
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Till, when we asked if media reports of this conference talk were sensationalized, answered with a categorical and immediate “yes.” Because the nature of Till and Shamloo’s work does not intend to assess the probability of a massive supereruption (nor is it capable of doing so), we rank the claim that this new research suggests an increased risk of a humanity-ending death-blast from Yellowstone in our lifetimes as false.
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false
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Science, eruption, geology, supereruption
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On 10 October 2017, the New York Times ran a story (with the ominous headline “A Surprise From the Supervolcano Under Yellowstone”) that reported on an August 2017 presentation made by Arizona State University PhD candidate Hannah Shamloo at the 2017 “International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior” conference. Christy Till, a professor at Arizona State University’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, is the lead researcher of the lab responsible for the work, and was a co-author on the presentation, as well. The Times article discussed their findings, which suggested — in broad brushstrokes — that chemical changes that occurred prior to the past Yellowstone supereruption happened not on a timescale of millennia, as previously believed, but potentially within mere decades. The Times described the crux of the findings this way: Scientists are just now starting to realize that the conditions that lead to supereruptions might emerge within a human lifetime. A number of other outlets picked up this story, likely in part because Yellowstone supereruption content is a treasure trove of guaranteed clicks. These stories, as is so often the case, came with increasing levels of inaccuracy, as increasingly sensationalized claims bounced through the Internet echo chamber. By 12 October 2017, the story (as reported by USA Today) had become: Yellowstone supervolcano may blow sooner than thought — and could wipe out life on the planet. To be clear, this is in no way what the researchers at Arizona State University (or anyone else in the field of volcanology) were arguing. First, and most importantly, their research does not in any way, shape, or form, change predictions about the likelihood of a supereruption happening within our lifetimes. That risk remains exceedingly low. Till told us in a telephone interview that her work involves high-resolution chemical sampling of layers in crystals found trapped in rocks (a practice similar to reading past climate information from tree rings). These methods are designed to uncover the nature and timing of chemical changes occurring in magma chambers prior to eruptions. In the case of this specific conference presentation, the topic was the most recent supereruption from the Yellowstone caldera, which occurred 631,000 years ago. Their analysis, achieved by sampling crystals at a resolution of “one-one-hundredth the thickness of a human hair,” suggests that clear and dramatic changes may have occurred in the magma chamber, geologically speaking, shortly before the catastrophic eruption: Our research is all about the idea that we do see signals in crystals from Yellowstone’s last big eruption 631,000 ago [that could indicate] that there were injections of hotter magma that might have mobilized [cooler magma already in the chamber]. These “injections”, Till told us, could have occurred just decades before the eruption — a considerably shorter period of time than some previous ideas about how such processes would work. As such, the research could provide insight into volcanological processes and mechanisms that precede Yellowstone eruptions. This, however, stressed Till, “does nothing to suggest that there’s going to be a future eruption.” Further, the chemical signals described in the August presentation are not exclusively indicative of wildly destructive and explosive supereruptions, either. In fact, Till published a paper in 2015 demonstrating similar chemical changes prior to more recent but non-explosive lava flows in Yellowstone. Ilya Bindeman, a professor of volcanology at the University of Oregon unassociated with the ASU team, echoed this point, telling us via e-mail: Most eruptions at Yellowstone are lava flows […], they discharge [a] similar or comparable amount of magma without a super eruption. Since 630,000 years ago there have been many […] such eruptions. These eruptive products also have “short” diffusion profiles [similar to the ones from the explosive 630,000 year old event] in their crystals, but they erupted quietly. While media outlets frequently raise the specter of an apocalyptic supereruption from the Yellowstone caldera, and while the region has indeed produced massive Earth-altering events in the past, scientists remain convinced, based on the size and shape of the current magma chamber, that such an eruption — were it to happen again — would likely not occur in our lifetimes. The USGS considers the risk of a caldera-forming apocalypse at Yellowstone in the next couple of thousand years “exceedingly low”. Reassuringly, the Yellowstone region is constantly monitored for potential signs of trouble, as well. The Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, a collaboration between between the University of Utah, the United States Geological Survey, and the National Park Service, monitors real-time seismic activity, land deformation (from GPS and satellite measurements), and thermal changes or chemical signals from the gases being released (from surface detectors). This kind of predictive work was not the purpose of Till and Shamloo’s research. Their work hopes to uncover a deeper mechanistic understanding of Yellowstone eruptions: What we’re trying to do is understand that if we do see a signal, what are some other properties that might be causing it to kick in bigger? And what is the timescale associated between that happening in each eruption here? […] We already have very good scientists who monitor the volcano and would be able to give you […] months to years warning of an eruption. That’s not changing in any way and there’s no reason that it was going to happen there.
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2778
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Lilly CEO: 'It's time to go back on offense'.
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After three years of seeing major drugs like Zyprexa for schizophrenia lose patent protection and wipe away billions of dollars in revenue, Eli Lilly and Co Chief Executive Officer John Lechleiter wants to change the game plan.
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true
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Health News
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“It’s time to go back on offense,” Lechleiter said in a recent interview. New treatments for diabetes and cancer now awaiting approval and increased sales of animal-health products and drugs in China and Japan are some of the aggressive moves he has in mind. He is also counting on a robust success rate among three dozen other experimental drugs now in mid- and late-stage trials, including a cancer drug called ramucirumab. “We’re on the cusp of launching products in cancer and diabetes, two therapeutic areas where we’re well established and where we have built out the infrastructure we need,” Lechleiter said. “And we believe that’s going to be the beginning of our return to growth.” Skeptical investors only now appear to be catching on to Lilly’s potential upside. After rising only 3 percent in 2013, badly underperforming a 27 percent average advance for other large drugmakers, the stock is up 6 percent this month. “Instead of having to play defense and manage through this difficult patent cliff, the company will be able to use additional cash flow to invest in its pipeline, to partner with others or make bolt-on acquisitions,” said Atlantic Equities analyst Richard Purkiss. “The outlook is much brighter, and they’ll try to get that message across in coming months.” Lilly, which reports quarterly and 2013 results on Thursday, has forecast earnings of $2.77 to $2.85 per share this year, the final and worst year of its patent cliff. That’s 41 percent less than 2010. Lilly last year sought U.S. approvals for four drugs, three of which Lechleiter said could be approved in 2014: ramucirumab for stomach cancer, and dulaglutide and empagliflozin for type 2 diabetes - the most common form of diabetes, which is closely linked to obesity. Analysts have forecast annual sales of more than $650 million for ramucirumab, saying sales could be far higher if the drug also wins approval for cancers of the colon, lung or liver. But they caution that the diabetes drugs may have a hard time competing against existing options. Lechleiter said Lilly plans to seek approval of necitumumab for squamous-cell lung cancer this year. The medicine, like ramucirumab, was acquired by Lilly through its $6.5 billion purchase of ImClone Systems in 2008. If approved, necitumumab could capture eventual annual sales of more than $1 billion, analysts say. Such sales could make a big difference for Lilly, whose annual revenue of $20 billion is far lower than Big Pharma rivals like Pfizer Inc and Merck & Co. In the meantime, Lilly is testing nearly 40 medicines in mid- and late stage studies, compared with only 7 in those stages of development a decade ago. They include new treatments for cholesterol, psoriasis, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and Alzheimer’s disease. Animal health unit Elanco, with annual sales of about $2 billion, is thriving as Lilly introduces new products and has expanded the business in China and other fast-growing markets. Many analysts are wary, however, of the company’s ability to win approvals of prescription drugs because it has not launched any major products in recent years and has suffered setbacks in clinical trials, including ramucirumab’s failure to delay progression of breast cancer. Of 20 analysts tracked by Thomson Reuters, 12 have hold or sell ratings on Lilly, versus 8 with buy ratings. Lilly shares trade at 19 times expected 2014 per-share earnings, compared to a price-to-earnings ratio of 14.6 for other large drugmakers. That could be more a reflection of the company’s poor earnings this year than excitement about the stock. “We believe that overall the pipeline will disappoint investors,” said Alex Arfaei of BMO Capital Markets in a research note, citing low sales expectations for ramucirumab and the new diabetes drugs. When Lilly’s Zyprexa was confronted with cheaper generic treatments for schizophrenia in October 2011, it faced one of the industry’s steepest patent cliffs ever, quickly losing 80 percent of its onetime $5 billion in annual sales. Similarly precipitous declines are expected for Cymbalta, Lilly’s $5 billion-a-year antidepressant, which lost U.S. patent protection last month, and for blockbuster osteoporosis treatment Evista, which goes generic in March. Many other large drugmakers, when faced with patent expirations and earnings declines of lesser scope, have resorted to megamergers to cushion the blow from generics and prop up earnings with cost savings. Huge layoffs, sapped morale and poor track records in introducing new drugs are more common results. Pfizer Inc stands out, having snapped up U.S. rivals Warner-Lambert, Pharmacia and Wyeth since 2000. Lechleiter, who began his career at Lilly in 1979 as a senior organic chemist, has steadfastly spurned any suggestion of a big merger: “It’s never entered our minds, and we remain adamantly opposed.” John Boris, an analyst for Suntrust Robinson Humphrey, said he expects Lilly earnings to grow an average of 10 percent a year between 2015 and 2020, which would make it second to Bristol-Myers Squibb Co in profit growth over that period. Atlantic Equities’ Purkiss said he anticipates Lilly will deliver industry-topping earnings growth in the “mid-teens” percentage range in 2015, 2016 and 2017. “The sentiment has been very negative on Lilly, but it looks like it will go from one of the most growth-starved to the fastest growing of the major U.S. drugmakers and the European players,” Purkiss said. By avoiding a disruptive megamerger, Lilly has allowed itself to press ahead with ambitious research, said Barclays analyst Tony Butler. He said to date the company has met long-term sales and earnings forecasts it provided in 2009 - before patents went over the cliff - while maintaining its generous dividend, with a current yield of 3.6 percent. “At the time, the market was incredibly skeptical about Lilly’s ability to fund its dividend and to have enough remaining cash flow to fund its business,” said Butler. “Lilly proved everybody wrong.” (This story has been refiled to change second subhead)
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11261
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Diabetes drug side effect reports triple
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This is an ambitious original work of health journalism designed to explore the dangers of Avandia beyond what current research and government action allow. It also suggests that the data it gathered, by its very nature, illustrates weaknesses in the government post-market surveillance system. It’s an excellent example of enterprise work. Getting documents under the Freedom of Information Act requires considerable time and effort. Both AP and the reporter should be recognized for their commitment to this story. Having said all that, the article fails to convey key information about the true size of the benefits and risks of the drug to people with type 2 diabetes. It does not mention other treatment options. As a result, the story may unnecessarily frighten Avandia users.
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true
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The article fails to report how much the drug costs, especially as compared to generic or other alternatives. If it is a relatively expensive drug, this would provide useful context. The article should have made clear the absolute risks of the most severe cardiac outcomes in the Type 2 population in general and in Avandia takers specifically. This is especially important given the data the article focuses on clearly misrepresent prevalence. The author cites a 43 percent increase in heart attacks attributed to Avandia in the original New England Journal of Medicine article, but Nissen’s original NEJM report shows that the numbers of heart attacks and deaths were quite small. The article makes clear the range of side effect severity, properly focusing on the most serious: heart-related hospitalizations and deaths. More information on the benefits of this class of drugs would provide better balance. The article makes clear that the data it is examining are limited by the anecdotal, voluntary nature of the reports to the federal government. But it fails to specify the harms and benefits of the treatment as reflected in previous research. The risks of Type 2 diabetes itself and of taking Avandia are real. Still, the citation of a 43 percent increase in risk to Avandia takers, without context and proportion, creates a potentially misleading impression of the drug’s harm. The article makes clear the affiliations and potential conflicts of interest of key experts interviewed. A small oversight is the failure to mention that the original NEJM piece discloses that author Steve Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic has received research support from a number of diabetes drug makers, none of which is GlaxoSmithKline, Avandia’s maker. That study mentions that consulting fees he gets from various drugmakers (it is not revealed whether that group includes GSK) are donated directly to charity. The article fails to mention that there are cheaper, effective alternatives to Avandia on the market. The article makes clear that Avandia is widely used, and that 1 million Americans take it. Given the intent of the article, however, it would have been useful to include an estimate of the drug’s market share, or at least compare the one million to the national type 2 diabetes population. The author makes clear that the treatment is in widespread use. The reporter has undertaken considerable original research to do this article.
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26499
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Suggests Trump urged sick people to get out and vote during COVID-19 pandemic
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Trump urged supporters during a rally to vote in the presidential election even if their doctor recently gave them the ‘worst possible prognosis’ — but he said this during his 2016 campaign, not in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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false
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Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Tweets,
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"A video clip of President Donald Trump urging sick people to get out and vote has resurfaced on social media. But the video was recorded weeks before the 2016 presidential election, not amid Trump’s 2020 re-election bid and the COVID-19 pandemic, as some posts suggest. The video was shared on Twitter on April 4, 2020, with the hashtags #covid19 #coronavirus and #coronavirusupdate and a title that reads, ""Trump to the terminally ill: Vote for me before you die."" Trump says: ""You’ve got to get out there November 8. I say kiddingly but I mean it. I don’t care how sick you are. I don’t care if you just came back from the doctor and he gave you the worst possible prognosis, meaning it's over. You won’t be around in two weeks. Doesn’t matter. Hang out until November 8. Get out and vote. And then all we’re going to say is we love you and we will remember you always."" #covid19 #coronavirus #coronavirusupdate unbelievable president. pic.twitter.com/jfqNJrzxGB The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Trump said the words, but the statement was not targeted at Americans who have been sickened by the novel coronavirus, as the post suggests. The clip was filmed about a month before the Nov. 8, 2016, presidential election at a campaign rally in Henderson, Nevada. The 2020 general election date is Nov. 3. We reached out to Trump’s 2020 campaign for comment but did not hear back. The clip is authentic but posts sharing it now leave the impression that Trump said this during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, and is referring to people who have been diagnosed with the virus. That’s ."
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4997
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Indianapolis Zoo says 2 elephants beat deadly virus.
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Indianapolis Zoo says two African elephants have survived a deadly virus that killed two other members of the herd.
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true
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Indianapolis, Elephants, Health, General News, Indiana
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The zoo said in a statement Tuesday that 12-year-old female Zahara and 13-year-old male Kedar “are both healthy and have beaten the virus. We will continue to monitor the entire herd through frequent blood testing.” The two elephants were diagnosed this spring with elephant endotheliotropic herpes virus. Two others, 6-year-old Nyah and 8-year- old Kalina, died from the virus in March . The zoo has said the virus causes fatal hemorrhagic disease in elephants, mainly Asian elephants.
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808
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Malaysia's Mahathir says linking palm oil to deforestation 'baseless'.
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Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad on Friday said linking the production of palm oil to deforestation was “baseless, unfair and unjustified”, and that the industry has grown responsibly.
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true
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Environment
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Malaysia is the world’s second-biggest producer of palm oil, a widely consumed commodity used in everything from chocolate spread to lipstick. Several studies have shown that palm oil is a major contributor to deforestation, along with cattle ranching and soybean production. The European Union passed a law earlier this year to phase out palm oil from renewable fuels by 2030 due to deforestation concerns. “The claims linking palm oil to deforestation is baseless, unfair and unjustified,” Mahathir said at an event on Malaysian forests. “These claims bring negative impact to Malaysia which depends highly on the palm oil industry to raise the socio-economic well-being of our people,” he said. Mahathir also said the palm oil industry in Malaysia has been developed sustainably and responsibly. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a Switzerland-based group of governments, conservation organizations and scientists, has said oil palm expansion is a major driver of deforestation and degradation of natural habitats in parts of tropical Asia and Central and South America. At least 50% of all deforestation between 2005 and 2015 in Borneo - an island shared by Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei - was related to oil palm development, the IUCN has said. Malaysia and Indonesia, the world’s largest palm oil producer, supply around 85% of global palm oil, much of which is used in foods. Environmentalists and locals have alleged deforestation continues to this day in Borneo and other parts of Malaysia. Mahathir also said Malaysia was focused on improving productivity and yields of oil palm, rather than expanding land. He said the government would limit oil palm cultivation at 6.55 million hectares (16.2 million acres) by 2023, reaffirming an earlier target set by the minister in charge of palm oil. Earlier this week, Reuters reported that Malaysia has launched a global public relations and lobbying effort to protect the reputation of palm oil, especially in Europe. The campaign is centered around small holder farmers, carried out by platforms that say they represent farmers but are created or run by public relations firms hired by a government agency responsible for promoting palm oil.
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38065
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President Trump ended an Obama-era gun law that required background checks to block the sale of guns to people with mental illnesses.
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President Trump Rolled Back Law Blocking Gun Sales to the Mentally Ill.
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true
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Trump
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President Obama handed down a series of gun control regulations during his last days in office. One of those regulations aimed to block gun sales to individuals with mental illness through more comprehensive background checks. Congress approved a bill rolling back the regulations in February 2017, and President Trump signed it into law. Rumors about Trump’s action to rollback a law designed to block gun sales to mentally ill people resurfaced in February 2018. That’s when a former student killed 17 people at a high school in Parkland, Florida. School officials said the shooter, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz, had been previously expelled and suffered from mental illness. In the aftermath, Florida Gov. Rick Scott said officials must keep guns away from individuals struggling with mental illness. And the president himself appeared to blame the shooting on Cruz’s mental health issues—which led to questions about the background check regulations Trump signed into law in 2017. A Closer Look at the Obama Gun Regulations President Obama took executive action on gun control on January 4, 2016. The president announced a series of changes—including more comprehensive background checks, additional ATF agents, and $500 million in funding for mental health treatment. Under the regulations, the Social Security Administration (SSA) would have been required to submit mental health records for beneficiaries to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System: The reporting that SSA, in consultation with the Department of Justice, is expected to require will cover appropriate records of the approximately 75,000 people each year who have a documented mental health issue, receive disability benefits, and are unable to manage those benefits because of their mental impairment, or who have been found by a state or federal court to be legally incompetent. The rulemaking will also provide a mechanism for people to seek relief from the federal prohibition on possessing a firearm for reasons related to mental health. The regulations would have also rolled back legal barriers to states reporting relevant information to background check systems. Why Did Obama’s Background Check Laws Get Repealed? Republicans were almost universally opposed to Obama’s executive action to enhance background checks for gun sales, along with the NRA. That’s probably not a surprise. But the ACLU and 23 national disability groups also came out against the new laws. The ACLU explained in a statement: This is about more than guns. Adding more innocent Americans to the National Instant Criminal Background database because of a mental disability is a disturbing trend — one that could be applied to voting, parenting or other rights dearer than gun ownership. We opposed it because it would do little to stem gun violence but do much to harm our civil rights. Republicans in Congress agreed. They used the Congressional Review Act, which allows the legislature to overturn executive actions taken in the last months of an administration with a simple majority, to repeal the actions. And President Trump signed it into law in February 2017— a little more than a year after the Parkland school shooting. Based on all that, we’re calling claims that Trump repealed tighter gun control for people with mental illness “truth.” Comments
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