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2952
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Patient doing well with French company's artificial heart: report.
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A 75-year-old Frenchman was feeding himself and chatting to his family, more than a week after becoming the first person to be fitted with an artificial heart made by French biomedical company Carmat, one of his surgeons said.
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true
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Health News
|
“He is awake, feeding himself and talking with his family. We are thinking of getting him up on his feet soon, probably as early as this weekend,” Professor Daniel Duveau, who saw the patient on Thursday, told Le Journal du Dimanche newspaper. A more detailed account of the patient’s health would be made public on Monday, the paper wrote. Heart-assistance devices have been used for decades as a temporary solution for patients awaiting transplants, but Carmat’s bioprosthetic product is designed to replace the real heart over the long run, mimicking nature using biological materials and sensors. It aims to extend life for patients suffering from terminal heart failure who cannot hope for a heart transplant, often because they are too old and donors too scarce. The artificial heart, which can beat up to five years, has been successfully tested on animals but the December 18 implant in a Paris hospital was the first in a human patient. Three more patients in France are due to be fitted with the device. The next operation is scheduled for the first weeks of January, the newspaper reported. In this first range of clinical trials, the success of the device will be judged on whether patients survive with the implant for at least a month. The patients selected suffer from terminal heart failure - when the sick heart can no longer pump enough blood to sustain the body - and would otherwise have only a few days or weeks to live. Artificial hearts thus fuel huge hope amongst patients, their families, and investors. Shares in Carmat have risen more than five-fold since floating on the Paris exchange in 2010. Duveau told the JDD that Carmat’s first patient was very combative and confident with his new prosthetic heart. “When his wife and his daughter leave him, he tells them: ‘See you tomorrow!’ All he wants is to enjoy life. He can’t wait to get out of the intensive care unit, out of his room, and out of uncertainty.”
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8701
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Britain launches coronavirus vaccine taskforce.
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Britain launched a new coronavirus taskforce on Friday to support efforts to make a vaccine available to the public as quickly as possible.
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true
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Health News
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The government said 21 new research projects would get funding from a 14 million pound investment pool “to rapidly progress treatments and vaccines”. The taskforce will include AstraZeneca and research charity the Wellcome Trust. A million doses of a potential COVID-19 vaccine being developed by British scientists at Oxford University are already being manufactured, even before trials prove whether the shot is effective, the team said on Friday. “UK scientists are working as fast as they can to find a vaccine that fights coronavirus, saving and protecting people’s lives. We stand firmly behind them in their efforts,” business minister Alok Sharma said. “The Vaccine Taskforce is key to coordinating efforts to rapidly accelerate the development and manufacture of a potential new vaccine, so we can make sure it is widely available to patients as soon as possible.” A vaccine against the novel coronavirus is seen as key to defeating the COVID-19 pandemic which has killed over 100,000 globally and delivered a large blow to the global economy. But timeframes for its development vary. While the Oxford scientists said their vaccine would be available by September, GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Sanofi SA, who earlier this week said they would develop a vaccine, forecast that it would not be available until the second half of 2021. Britain’s government said it wanted a vaccine to be available as quickly as possible but did not give more details on an expected timetable for development. The taskforce will be led by Chief Scientific Adviser Patrick Vallance and Deputy Chief Medical Officer Professor Jonathan van Tam, and will aim to make sure regulations and manufacturing capacity are such that the production of a vaccine can be quickly scaled up when one is successfully developed. Britain said it would identify ways to fast-track clinical trials and also continue to support international efforts to find a vaccine. Among the projects to receive funding include a test of a vaccine at Imperial College, London that aims for the body to produce more protective antibodies; Public Health England’s efforts to develop a new antibody to protect from COVID-19 and a University of Oxford trial of an anti-malarial drug to see if it could prove effective against COVID-19.
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6893
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Mumps outbreak strikes Marshallese population in Arkansas.
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An outbreak of mumps has hit a community of Marshall Islanders in northwest Arkansas particularly hard, according to health officials.
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true
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Health, Marshall Islands, Arkansas, Little Rock, Mumps
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Marshallese people accounted for about 60 percent of the state’s 2,220 reported cases as of Friday. The outbreak started in August, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (http://bit.ly/2hVVQYf ) reported. The contagious disease causes swelling in the salivary glands and cheeks, and is often transmitted when an infected person coughs or sneezes. State health department director Nate Smith said he doesn’t know why so many Marshallese people are infected. Officials are investigating if the vaccine is less effective for certain people. Smith noted that Marshallese people tend to live in close proximity. “It’s a little bit more like a college dorm in terms of intensity of exposure,” he said. Smith added that Marshallese people participate in many community-oriented events, where it’s easy for infections to spread. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Arkansas’ outbreak is the largest since about 3,000 people were infected in New York City in 2009 and 2010. Smith said the state’s mumps cases account for more than half of the cases reported nationwide this year. The state health department has vaccinated almost 6,600 people as of Friday. Smith said the efforts are working because only 12 cases were reported during the last three days of last week, “which is quite a bit less than we have had, really, for months.” The Marshall Islands are located in the Pacific Ocean, more than 2,000 miles southwest of Hawaii. Up to 12,000 Marshallese live in northwest Arkansas.
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24244
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Mayor White has major stake in Barnett Shale production company.
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Shami says White has major stake in Barnett Shale drilling company
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false
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Environment, Economy, Energy, Transparency, Texas, Farouk Shami,
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"Gubernatorial hopeful Bill White doesn’t shy away from energy issues — after all, he was mayor of Houston, a city that many oil and gas companies call home, and was deputy energy secretary for about two years during the Clinton administration. More unusual by Houston — and Texas — standards, White touts initiatives undertaken during his six years as mayor to reduce the amount of toxic chemicals emitted by Houston's petrochemical industries. But now Farouk Shami, White's leading Democratic opponent, is trying to use an energy issue against the former mayor, touching on concerns among residents and officials about the environmental and health effects of drilling in populated areas of the Barnett Shale, a natural gas field that stretches west and south from Dallas and covers more than 20 counties. Shami released a statement Feb. 9 with this headline: ""Mayor White Has Major Stake in Barnett Shale Production Company."" In it, Shami concluded that ""it's a conflict of interest at best and utter hypocrisy at worst."" First things first. Is White really connected to a company drilling for natural gas in the Barnett Shale? Shami’s statement links White to the drilling through the former mayor’s ownership of stock in Exxon Mobil Corp., based in Irving. The oil giant is in the process of buying Fort Worth-based XTO Energy Inc., one of the leading producers of gas in the Barnett Shale. XTO says on its Web site that the area accounts for more than 20 percent of its total oil and natural gas production, and it has plans to expand its drilling there. Shami's press release says White ""has at least $2.2 million invested in oil and gas stocks, with a substantial position in the giant Exxon Mobile"" (sic). Asked how it calculated the size of White's investment, Shami's campaign provided a chart based on a federal financial disclosure form White filed in May 2009 when he was a candidate for the U.S. Senate. The campaign counted 14 energy companies in White’s portfolio during 2008, including Exxon and ConocoPhillips. Then it added up the reported values of White’s energy stock holdings. Therein lies a problem. Instead of exact dollar amounts, the disclosure form lists a range of values for each stock, and some are pretty wide. For example, the reported value of White’s investment in BJ Services Co., an oil and gas services company on whose board he sits, is between $500,001 and $1 million – a difference of a half-million dollars. Totaling the high numbers yields $2.2 million; using the low numbers, $1 million. In text with the chart, the Shami campaign used different language from the press release, which states that White has ""at least $2.2 million"" invested in oil and gas companies. The chart wording states White has ""as much as"" that amount. A more definitive measure of White's holdings came from his campaign, which said his oil and gas stocks were worth $1.1 million to $1.3 million in 2009. They are in several accounts personally managed by White and account for about 25 percent of his total portfolio. The White campaign said the candidate has owned Exxon stock for more than five years and disclosed to us the number (700) and value (about $45,000) of the shares. Since Exxon is valued at about $310 billion, White owns far less than 1 percent — a figure that Katy Bacon, a spokeswoman for the White campaign, suggested does not constitute the ""substantial position"" in Exxon that Shami claims. Besides, Exxon’s $31 billion purchase of XTO, announced in December, is still pending, subject to approval by XTO stockholders and the Federal Trade Commission. That means that as of right now, owning stock in Exxon does not equal owning stock in XTO. However, we discovered White does have an interest in Barnett Shale drilling through another company in his portfolio. According to the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the exploration and production of oil and natural gas, ConocoPhillips — in which White reported owning stock valued between $100,001 and $250,000 in 2008 — is currently active in the Barnett Shale through a subsidiary, Burlington Resources. So much for assessing White's stake in the Barnett Shale. A more problematic issue is whether the investments constitute a conflict of interest, as Shami claims. During the debate, both Shami and a reporter asked White whether he supported a proposed moratorium on new drilling in the Barnett Shale. White said he did not, arguing that emissions and other violations should be addressed on a case-by-case basis. ""I think it would be unfair to shut down operations of all operators based on what some operators do,"" he said. In the news release, Shami, who is in favor of a moratorium, says that ""it’s disturbing to think Mayor White’s conflict of interest could be putting people’s lives at risk."" Brian Roberts, a professor of government at the University of Texas, said the ethical concerns raised by Shami are speculative and could become an issue only if White, as governor, were to participate in decisions related to oil and gas. But Roberts said the regulation of those industries largely belongs to the Railroad Commission, whose members are elected. Putting aside the conflict issue, where does this leave us? Shami is correct that White has a financial interest in Exxon, as well as other oil and gas companies. And it's true that Exxon is acquiring XTO, a $27 billion company that's a big player in the Barnett Shale. But Shami's assertion that White's $45,000 investment in Exxon constitutes a ""major stake"" in XTO is off the mark. Though we found that White has a larger interest in ConocoPhillips, which owns another company drilling in the Barnett Shale, that too is a tiny piece of a multinational oil company's action. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to ."
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2871
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FDA staff cautious about J&J's latest Xarelto application.
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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration appears skeptical that data submitted by Johnson & Johnson proves its anticoagulant Xarelto is effective in reducing the risk of further heart problems in patients who have recently suffered a heart attack.
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true
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Health News
|
The agency questioned the way in which J&J analyzed clinical trial data, and said there was no convincing proof the drug confers significant benefit or fills an unmet medical need, given that there are other therapies on the market. The review was posted on the FDA’s website on Tuesday, two days ahead of a meeting of outside experts who will discuss the drug, also known as rivaroxaban, and recommend whether it should be approved. Xarelto is already used to treat and prevent deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolisms and to reduce the risk of stroke and blood clots in patients with an irregular heart beat that is not caused by heart problems. Now the company is hoping it will also be approved for patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS), an umbrella term covering any condition brought on by a sudden, reduced blood flow to the heart, including heart attack and chest pain. Some analysts are doubtful. “Based on our review of this material, we continue to have low expectation of approval,” Larry Biegelsen, an analyst at Wells Fargo Securities, said in a research note. However, he expects sales of the drug to rise to $1.2 billion in 2015 from an estimated $703 million in 2013 based on the indications for which it is approved. “We expect the ACS potential to be modest even if approved,” he said. J&J originally filed for approval of Xarelto in ACS at the end of 2011. The FDA rejected the application, saying efficacy data was not strong enough to support approval. The company provided additional information but the FDA once again declined to approve the drug, prompting J&J to appeal the decision. The FDA denied the appeal but said limiting the duration of use to one month might be a pathway forward because efficacy was more evident and the risk of bleeding, a side effect of the drug, was lower during this period. J&J filed a new application seeking a treatment duration of 90 days. The FDA’s latest review suggests the agency remains skeptical. “It is unclear how to choose the metric for determining when the benefit of rivaroxaban is greatest,” the review found. “Not only does the effect of rivaroxaban not appear to be greater earlier, but an effect in the first 90 days or so is not apparent at all.” Dr. Paul Burton, vice president of clinical development at Janssen Research and Development, a J&J unit, defended the drug, saying the company believes that when added to standard treatments it “delivers a strong incremental benefit by significantly reducing the risk of cardiovascular events, including death, at a time when patients are at the highest risk.” The FDA’s review also questioned whether the benefit of the drug outweighs the heightened risk of bleeding since two other drugs, Eli Lilly & Co’s Effient and AstraZeneca Plc’s Brilinta, are currently approved for ACS. J&J’s proposed prescribing information would warn that treatment in combination with the Effient, known also as prasugrel, and Brilinta, also known as ticagrelor, has not been studied and is not recommended because of the risk of bleeding. Xarelto would therefore only be available as an add-on to Bristol-Myers Squibb Co’s antiplatelet Plavix, or clopidogrel. “There are no data demonstrating that ACS patients treated with clopidogrel plus rivaroxaban will have superior outcomes compared to treatment with prasugrel or ticagrelor,” the review said. “So rivaroxaban does not provide therapy for an unmet medical need.” And while treatment for a limited duration “has an intuitive appeal,” the review said, “the task for the analyses of the effect of rivaroxaban over time is not to pick a time period in which the benefit-risk is acceptable.”
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10717
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Study From Duke University: Favored heart-bypass method found harmful
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This was a story reporting on the result of a recently published study examining long term consequences of the method used to harvest leg veins for use in coronary bypass surgery. It contained a clinician quote that helped to provide some balance for comparing the two methods. While it may be true that the less invasive way of harvesting leg veins may result in a greater chance of having a heart attack or dying in the next 3 years, it is also true that the less invasive way of harvesting leg veins results in a faster recovery with less immediate complications than the open procedure. It would have been useful for the story to have contained some exploration on how the trade-off of benefit now for increased risk later may be factors in decisions made by doctors and patients.
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mixture
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There was no discussion of cost differential for the two methods of harvesting veins; further there was no discussion about how the shortened hospital stay associated with the small incision method affected the cost. The story compared the relative risks of long term problems; this does not provide readers with any sense about how frequently the problems mentioned occur. Instead, the information should be presented as absolute risk. The story did not provide quantitative information for assessing how the procedures compare with respect to length of hospital stay and immediate complications. Beyond this, for balance, the story should have included more detail about the short-term benefits of harvesting veins with a smaller incision. These include reductions in wound-related complications, postoperative pain, hospital length of stay, outpatient wound management resources which are not trivial considerations. While the story included information about the number of patients that were in the study reported on, it neglected to discuss the nature of the study. The story did not include information about the limitations of the evidence in the study – particularly that it was a non-randomized study with wide variation in the rate different procedures were used to harvest veins, there was no standardized patient selection or the means of harvesting and preserving the veins. The story did not seem to engage in overt disease mongering. Quotes from a co-author of the study reported and two local cardiovascular surgeons were included as part of this story. While discussing two methods for harvesting leg veins, it seems curious that it did not also mention the use of mammary arteries as a source of vascular material. Although the study reported on did not cover this, this would have provided readers with a more complete picture of the available options. The story included estimates of the frequency of harvesting legs veins through a small incision, one a general estimate for the US (70%) and one specific to Ohio State (90%). This wasn’t a story about a new treatment but rather about new information about two procedures currently in use. Does not appear to rely exclusively on a press release.
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25071
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Who can you thank for rising prices at the pump? O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!
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Sure, and blame Obama for bad tomatoes, too
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false
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National, Energy, John McCain,
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"A new television ad by Sen. John McCain's campaign seeks to exploit anger over gas prices by directing it toward his opponent. ""Gas prices: four dollars, five dollars, no end in sight,"" says the narrator in the advertisement , which the McCain campaign released July 21, 2008. ""Because some in Washington are still saying no to drilling in America."" Oil drilling goes on all the time in America. What Sen. Barack Obama and others oppose is certain new drilling off the coasts. But let's leave that aside. Some in Washington, the ad continues, say ""no to independence from foreign oil."" Almost no one opposes the notion of independence from foreign oil. The dispute is over how to get there. But let's leave that aside as well. The ad culminates with this question: ""Who can you thank for rising prices at the pump?"" Then we hear a chant familiar to anyone who has watched a fevered Obama rally: ""O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma! O-ba-ma!"" So the central claim of the ad, and the one we decided to check, is that Obama is to blame for rising gas prices. In its news release announcing the ad, the McCain campaign cited everything from Obama's criticism of McCain's electric car contest to Obama's reservations about nuclear power. But in our view those things don't sufficiently back up McCain's sweeping contention that the junior senator from Illinois is to blame for rising gas prices. The main implication of the ad is that the ban on some offshore drilling — a ban that McCain has long opposed, more explicitly lately than in the past — has contributed to rising prices, and since Obama supports it, it is fair to blame him for it. The last part is highly dubious. Obama has only been in the U.S. Senate since 2005, and the congressional moratorium prohibiting oil and gas leasing on most of the outer continental shelf dates to 1982. Granted, Congress has renewed it every year since. But there was also a presidential order banning oil exploration off the coasts from 1990, when the first President Bush issued it, until July 14, 2008, when his son lifted it. So even if the ban on offshore drilling contributed to ""rising prices at the pump,"" it would have done so regardless of how Obama felt about it, at least until the very recent past. Now, has the ban in fact contributed to rising prices at the pump? Probably so, though it's impossible to say how much. Currently, drilling is allowed in about 15 percent of federally controlled waters, and those areas are the source of more than one-quarter of the oil produced in the United States, according to Ron Planting, an economist at the American Petroleum Institute. Domestic production accounts for about a quarter of the oil the country consumes, Planting said. It is not likely that all the other offshore areas currently off limits would be as productive as the Gulf of Mexico, where most of today's offshore drilling takes place, Planting said. ""The only thing we can say is directional,"" Planting said. ""We'd have more supply (if the moratorium hadn't been in place)] and historically more supply has downward pressure on prices."" But that's really a peripheral issue. Regardless of how the moratorium has affected prices over the years, Obama has not been a key force behind it until very recently. True, he vows to be just that in the future. But how lifting the moratorium would affect future prices is a separate question, (and a tricky one, as we explain here ). What the ad pins on Obama — and others who are ""saying no to (new offshore) drilling in America"" — are the price increases the country is currently enduring. That saddles the Illinois senator with a lot more influence than he has had. If one were to line up all the leaders in Washington who share some responsibility for the offshore drilling moratorium — the first President Bush, the Republican leadership of Congress, the Democratic leadership of Congress, the Florida delegation — there would be quite a few people ahead of Obama. We find McCain's claim to be ."
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25785
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Say Joe Biden is a pedophile.
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There is no credible evidence that supports this claim. In Joe Biden’s more than 40 years of public life, we could find no news reports, formal accusations, complaints, arrests or investigations that implicate him in any sort of sex crimes involving kids.
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false
|
Facebook Fact-checks, Facebook posts,
|
"It’s no secret that political candidates running for office face a barrage of personal attacks on the campaign trail — the 2020 presidential election is no different. One of the most egregious examples we have come across is illustrated by a flood of social media posts that claim Joe Biden, the former vice president and presumptive Democratic nominee for president, is a ""pedophile."" Allegations of child sex molestation are a prominent part of the QAnon conspiracy theory that suggests a ""deep state"" is working against President Trump’s success. The posts were flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) We found no credible evidence that supports this claim. Pedophilia is characterized by an obsession of seeing children as sex objects, according to Nolo’s Plain English Law Dictionary: ""A person who acts upon this obsession, by molesting a child, taking explicit photographs, and performing other acts specified by law, is guilty of a crime."" In Biden’s more than 40 years of public life — including two prior runs for the Democratic presidential nomination and eight years as vice president — there have been no formal accusations, complaints, arrests or investigations that implicate him in any sort of sex crimes involving kids. Biden has been accused by some adult women of unwanted touching in public — and former Senate staffer Tara Reade accused him of sexual assault — but there have never been any credible accusations of Biden engaging in inappropriate conduct with children. Our searches of Google and the Nexis database, dating back to Biden’s Senate days, turned up no arrests, news reports, or authoritative testimonies of inappropriate acts by Biden involving children. When we reached out to discuss the accusations, Biden’s campaign pointed us to a May 2020 statement that was issued in response to an Instagram post by Donald Trump Jr. in which the president’s son shared an image of Biden saying, ""See you later, alligator"" alongside a photo of an alligator saying, ""In a while, pedophile,"" to his 3 million followers. Andrew Bates, a spokesman for Biden, told the New York Times, ""No repulsive, manipulative tactic will change the subject from how almost 90,000 Americans have paid for Donald Trump’s coronavirus negligence with their lives and how the booming economy he inherited from the Obama-Biden Administration is now suffering from depression-level job losses."" The COVID-19 death count in the U.S., as of this writing, is over 164,000. Trump Jr. later claimed he was ""just joking"" in a Twitter post, yet also repeated the insinuation by saying Biden should stop his ""unwanted touching"" and posted a collage of photographs of Biden with children at White House events. Biden briefly addressed Trump Jr.’s actions shortly after, saying that what the president’s son was ""trying to do is get something going on the internet"" by repeating the claim often enough that people believe it. ""It’s sick,"" Biden said during a Yahoo News virtual town hall. ""But he is his father’s son."" President Donald Trump has also been accused of sexual misconduct by several women. Dated photos of Trump with young girls, some of them doctored, have also spread on social media along with unproven allegations that he, too, is a pedophile. On social media, the accusation is often accompanied by images, memes, GIFs and videos of Biden appearing to touch children inappropriately. The photos that are real often lack context. Others are not of him or have been deceptively edited to suggest something improper. We found that these images are overwhelmingly captured at public events when he is posing for pictures or greeting people and many depict Biden showing affection toward his family. For example, one photo, of Biden leaning down by a boy with his hand cupped on the child’s face, shows him comforting his grandson at the funeral of Beau Biden, Biden’s son who died of brain cancer. Another image from the funeral routinely used in posts shows Biden kissing the top of his granddaughter’s head as she stands holding her mother’s hand. Another shows Biden leaning in to kiss his grandson during his 2013 swearing-in ceremony as vice president. One often-used photo shows Biden touching a young girl’s arm as he leans in to whisper something as she looks slightly uncomfortable. The image shows Maggie Coons, the daughter of Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, during her father’s swearing-in ceremony in January 2015. After the clip went viral, Sen. Coons, a Democrat, told Fox News host Chris Wallace that Biden was simply offering her reassurance and that his daughter didn’t think he was creepy. Coons said that Biden, who held Coons’ Senate seat before resigning to serve as vice president, has known his children their whole lives. ""I could hear him,"" Coons said in the interview. ""He was leaning forward and whispering some encouragement to her about how, when he was sworn in, his own daughter Ashley was 13 and she felt awkward and uncomfortable."" Carly Melin, former member of the Minnesota House of Representatives, spoke out on Twitter when a 2014 photo she took with Biden and former U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan, D-Minn., became the subject of a Twitter thread by conservative columnist Richard Armande Mills. In the image, Melin and Biden are both holding Melin’s son. Mills, a conservative columnist for Turning Point USA, wrote in the tweet that Biden is ""an open sexual predator."" ""Sir, I don’t know you,"" Melin responded. ""You have tweeted out multiple photos of my infant son in a disturbing, misconstrued attempt to advance your political viewpoint. Delete all tweets that include my son. I’ve reported your behavior to Twitter. Thank you."" Social media users claim that Biden is a pedophile. There is zero evidence — no accusations, testimonies, arrests or investigations — that gives this claim any credibility. Photos that supposedly support the claim are taken out of context or have been directly contradicted by the families involved."
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37485
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"Some Americans need to log into IRS.gov to receive their stimulus payment via the IRS ""Get My Payment"" tool."
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Where is My Stimulus? How to Get Your Missing IRS Coronavirus Check
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true
|
Fact Checks, Viral Content
|
"In mid-April 2020, a number of social media users reported receiving a coronavirus stimulus payment to their bank accounts — but many others were dismayed the long-awaited $1,200 (or more) payment had not yet reached their bank accounts.In one post we viewed, someone reported their IRS coronavirus stimulus check had not arrived. That person discovered that despite receiving a tax refund in 2020, the IRS required additional information to process their direct deposit:Hey all, for anyone who has not seen their stimulus check hit their bank account, go to IRS.gov to check the status of the check. I checked and they claimed they didn’t have my direct deposit information, even though they direct deposited my tax refund 2 weeks ago 🙄 lol.So I would advise anyone who is waiting (and needing) this check to come in, to check that they have your information.Social media was inundated by posts about people not receiving their stimulus checks, so the problem appeared to be widespread. We visited IRS.gov to investigate the claim, eventually landing on the dedicated “Economic Impact Payments” page. (You likely need access to your 2019 or 2018 refund to complete the steps to get your coronavirus stimulus payment if you have not already received it. )It looks like this:We clicked “Get My Payment,” the blue button under the image of money in the column to the left of “Non-Filers: Enter Your Payment Here,” and to the right of the sidebar navigation. Selecting “Get My Payment” on the “Economic Impact Payments” led to a page which looked like this:At the top, text read:Check on the status of your Economic Impact Payment This application will give you information about:• Your payment status • Your payment type • Whether we need more information from you, including bank account informationThe last and final bullet point, “Whether we need more information from you, including bank account information,” was the circumstance described by the person above. We once again clicked “Get My Payment,” which is in actuality the proper selection to determine the status of your coronavirus stimulus check.Clicking “Get My Payment” a second time led to a form which asked for an individual’s social security number, date of birth, and ZIP code:After entering that information, a somewhat alarming warning screen appeared:However, occasionally an error screen appeared, indicating a high level of traffic was affecting the IRS.gov coronavirus stimulus “Get My Payment” tool:We were able to continue the process, reaching a page that asked for information about our tax filing status. In the process of completing the form, the IRS requests:After entering that information, we received the same notice as others — that the IRS did not have our direct deposit information. Had we not visited the page, we would not have received our coronavirus stimulus deposit. We selected from “checking” or “savings,” and entered the information.Currently, using the tool indicates that the IRS updated our information:Some people saw messages affirming their information was correct, and a deposit date:So I was suppose to receive the stimulus check today, but it got sent to a closed account. I don’t know if my bank will sort it out, or I gotta call them. IRS wouldn’t let me update my bank info. #stimuluspayment #StimulusPackage2020 #StimulusDeposits pic.twitter.com/Z2AIEgsCgL— 👨🏾💻Izzy Forward for Humanity 🧢🤑✊🏾🌊 (@IzzyBolden) April 15, 2020But others reported seeing a “payment status not available” screen, and occasionally a “please try again later” message:Literally all my friends have received their stimulus checks except me. Then then I go to the “get my payment” tab in the IRS website and this is what pops up…. 🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️Anybody else in the same boat as me? #IJustWantMyStimulusCheck 😫😩 pic.twitter.com/A70Zw6EDk2— Jason Andrew Hale✨👑 (@EchoesFromAbove) April 15, 2020Did anyone else NOT get their #Stimulusdeposit and then receive this message when they checked they status on the IRS site? 😐😡😭 pic.twitter.com/1PqCg1jRa2— BAD GIRL/SAD GIRL (@bdgirlsdgirl) April 15, 2020Over on Google Trends in the “coronavirus” category, the following represented top searches on April 15 2020:US: Trending questions, past day1 Where is my stimulus deposit? 2 When will stimulus checks arrive? 3 How do you get the stimulus check 4 How to track stimulus check 5 Is the stimulus check a loan?We addressed the fifth question in this fact check:Is a $1,200 Coronavirus Stimulus an Advance on 2020’s Tax Credit — or a Loan You Have to Pay Back in 2021?In sum, a number of eligible filers received their coronavirus “Economic Impact Payments” as of April 15 2020, but others expressed concern that they had not yet received a direct deposit. We checked the tool on IRS.gov, and were among the people for whom the IRS claimed to not have up-to-date banking information; that meant that we were required to enter filing and account information in order to receive payments.If your payment has not arrived, you should visit irs.gov/coronavirus/economic-impact-payments and follow the prompts above.Update, April 15 2020, 5:24 PM: Into the late afternoon of April 15 2020, “IRS payment status not available” trended intermittently on Twitter, with thousands of Americans expressing frustration due to system errors or 24-hour payment processing lockouts:""Payment Status Not Available"" is just so wild. The IRS will find you if you live in Mordor, but if you try to get your #Stimuluscheck they've suddenly never heard of you.— Claire James Carroll (@ClaireJCarroll) April 15, 2020so am i just completely fucked out of my money? thought chase was processing all stimulus checks today but i didn’t get mine, tried to use the irs portal and kept getting “payment status not available” and now i’m locked out for 24 hrs? what the hell?? pic.twitter.com/Uzx9bkWFbS— Whoreticia Addams 🏳️🌈 (@thx4thevnm) April 15, 2020At 11:55 AM EST. @IRSnews tweeted that coronavirus stimulus checks were being sent “on schedule, as planned, without delay, to the nation” and in “record time”:Thanks to hard work and long hours by dedicated #IRS employees, Economic Impact Payments are going out on schedule, as planned, without delay, to the nation. The IRS employees are delivering these payments in record time. #COVIDreliefIRS pic.twitter.com/cXOgNh87Ah— IRS (@IRSnews) April 15, 2020However, a “pinned tweet” published by that account just under four hours later indicated the novel “Get My Payment tool” was “operating at record volumes,” and acknowledged that the “payment status not available” message was frequently displayed:The #IRS Get My Payment tool is operating at record volumes. So far, 9.8M people got an Economic Impact Payment status and 1.6M provided direct deposit info. In some situations, the app responds: Status Not Available. Learn what this means at https://t.co/z4wFEL6Sb2 pic.twitter.com/3BvNibfZ69— IRS (@IRSnews) April 15, 2020@IRSnews linked to its “Economic Impact Payment Information Center,” and a section titled “Locked/Status Unavailable,” which once again requested taxpayers “not contact the IRS” about their missing payments:What does it mean when Get My Payment says, “Please Try Again Later”?Your account has been locked. You will able to access the application after 24 hours have passed. Please do not contact the IRS.Why can’t I get my payment status?To use Get My Payment, you must first verify your identity by answering security questions. If the information you enter does not match our records multiple times, you will be locked out of Get My Payment for 24 hours for security reasons. If you are unable to verify your identity, you will not be able to use Get My Payment. No action is needed to contact the IRS.If you verified your identity and received “Payment Status Not Available,” this means we cannot determine your eligibility for a payment at this time. This may occur for a variety of reasons, for example, if you didn’t file either a 2018 or 2019 tax return or you recently filed and the return has not been fully processed.Under a header titled “Do I need to take action?”, the IRS page provided what appeared to be partly inaccurate information — informing taxpayers no action was needed if they filed a return in 2018 or 2019. Clearly, many of or most of the 1.8 million people who updated their information had filed in 2018 or 2019 so, and further action was required for those people:People who filed a tax return for 2019 or 2018No additional action is needed by taxpayers who:have already filed their tax returns this year for 2019. The IRS will use this information to calculate the payment amount.haven’t filed yet for 2019 but filed a 2018 federal tax return. For these taxpayers the IRS will use their information from 2018 tax filings to make the Economic Impact Payment calculations.Following on from that, millions more were unable to access the system, or remained locked out for at least 24 hours. No figures were available for how many taxpayers received the “payment status not available” message.According to their second tweet, 9.8 million Americans received their “Economic Impact Payment status,” but that 1.6 million were required to submit further information upon checking; the agency did not specify how many Americans were going to receive payments in total. Of 9.8 million, 1.6 million is nearly 20 percent, and no information was available about the total number of taxpayers whose payments were being held indefinitely."
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30176
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A man high on bath salts cut off his genitals and microwaved them.
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None of this was true. This report — a derivative of a previous fake news story — originated solely with TVT News, a junk news site with a history of copying and republishing other fabricated stories, such as one about a strip club’s being shut down by an outbreak of diarrhea and man’s discovering that the prostitute he had engaged was his wife.
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false
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Junk News, tvt news
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On 6 September 2018, the TVT News web site published an article about a Texas man who supposedly cut off his genitals and microwaved them while high on bath salts: A 43-year old man from Killeen, Texas is tonight in intensive care after he was seriously injured during what has been described by investigators as a ‘two-week binge on bath salts’ caused him to cut off his own genitals. The victim – who has not been named – was found by neighbors ‘writhing on the ground in pain’ outside his property. Paramedics were soon on the scene and the 43-year old was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he remains in a critical condition as a result of severe blood loss.
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5690
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US judge in Washington state blocks new Trump abortion rule.
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A U.S. judge in Washington state Thursday blocked new Trump administration rules that would provide additional hurdles for women seeking abortions, including by banning taxpayer-funded clinics from making abortion referrals.
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true
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Health, Abortion, Yakima, Washington, Bob Ferguson, U.S. News
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Judge Stanley Bastian in Yakima granted the preliminary injunction in cases brought by the state and abortion rights groups, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said. The new rules were due to take effect May 3. “Today’s ruling ensures that clinics across the nation can remain open and continue to provide quality, unbiased healthcare to women,” Ferguson, a Democrat, said in an emailed statement. The ruling came two days after a federal judge in Oregon, hearing a separate challenge by 20 states, said he intended to at least partially block the rules. That judge, Michael McShane, suggested he was reluctant to issue a nationwide injunction, but said the administration’s new policy was motivated by “an arrogant assumption that the government is better suited to direct women’s health care than their providers.” Title X is a 1970 law designed to improve access to family planning services, especially for low-income women and those in rural areas, but abortion opponents and religious conservatives say it has long been used to indirectly subsidize abortion providers. Abortion is a legal medical procedure, but federal laws prohibit the use of Title X or other taxpayer funds to pay for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or to save the life of the woman. Clinics that receive money under Title X provide a wide array of services, including birth control and screening for diabetes, sexually transmitted diseases and cancer. The program serves 4 million patients, about 1.6 million of whom obtain services through Planned Parenthood. In addition to banning abortion referrals by taxpayer-funded clinics, the changes would prohibit clinics that receive federal money from sharing office space with abortion providers — a rule critics said would force many to find new locations, undergo expensive remodels or shut down. “All over the country, there are Title X providers looking at their patient schedules and wondering what they were going to do,” said Clare Coleman, president of the National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, which sued. “Now we know that everyone can continue to do their care as they have been doing for the past 50 years.” The judge made his ruling from the bench and issued a written opinion later Thursday. “Plaintiffs have demonstrated the Final Rule likely violates the central purpose of Title X, which is to equalize access to comprehensive, evidence-based, and voluntary family planning,” Bastian wrote. The Department of Health and Human Services declined to comment, citing a policy of not commenting on litigation. While the new rules would permit clinic staff to discuss abortion with clients, they would no longer be required to do so. If patients ask for an abortion referral, staff would be required to give a list of primary care providers with no indication as to which provide abortions. The list would have to include providers who do not offer abortions, and it could not include clinics or organizations that aren’t primary care providers, such as Planned Parenthood. Supporters of the changes say they return Title X’s regulations back to their original legislative intent that “none of the funds appropriated under this title shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.” “We’re extremely disappointed that a district judge made a ruling — a wrong ruling — that affects the entire nation,” said Mark Miloscia, executive director of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, which was not involved in the case. “We support family planning, but not giving it through agencies that kill the unborn.” The legal challenges argue that the changes violate a requirement that patients receive pregnancy counseling that is not weighted for or against abortion, and that it violates the Affordable Care Act’s prohibition on regulations that impose “unreasonable barriers to the ability of individuals to obtain appropriate medical care.” Some 98,000 patients in Washington were expected to receive care through Title X this year, Ferguson said.
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3285
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SpaceX debuts new crew capsule in crucial test flight.
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SpaceX closes in on human spaceflight with this weekend’s debut of a new capsule designed for astronauts.
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true
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AP Top News, Florida, Science, SpaceX, U.S. News
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The six-day test flight will be real in every regard, beginning with a Florida liftoff Saturday and a docking the next day with the International Space Station. But the Dragon capsule won’t carry humans, rather a test dummy — named Ripley after the tough heroine in the “Alien” films — in the same white SpaceX spacesuit that astronauts will wear. NASA doesn’t expect this crucial shakedown cruise to go perfectly. But the lessons learned should improve safety when two NASA astronauts strap into a Dragon as early as July. “Giant leaps are made by a series of consistent smaller steps. This one will be a big step!” retired astronaut Scott Kelly, NASA’s former one-year space station resident, tweeted Thursday. Boeing is also in the race to end NASA’s eight-year drought of launching U.S. astronauts on U.S. rockets from U.S. soil. The space agency is turning to private taxi rides to reduce its pricey reliance on Russian rockets to get astronauts to and from the space station. NASA is providing $8 billion for SpaceX and Boeing to build and operate these new systems. “On a personal level, this is an extremely important mission,” SpaceX executive Hans Koenigsmann told reporters Thursday. “And I’m pretty sure it’s not just me, I think everybody within SpaceX feels this and wants to get this right.” A look at the newest space ride: CREW VS. CARGO SpaceX has made 16 space station deliveries over the past seven years. The private company overhauled the cargo Dragon capsule to make it safe — and comfortable — for passengers. It’s slightly bigger — 27 feet (8 meters) tall — and also launches atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. But now there are four seats, three windows, computer touch screens and life-support systems. Instead of solar wings, solar cells are on the spacecraft itself. And eight engines are built into the capsule walls for use in an emergency; these abort engines could shoot the capsule off a malfunctioning rocket anytime during the launch. SPACEX CHIC You can’t go into space looking dowdy. SpaceX founder and chief executive Elon Musk wants Dragon riders looking sharp and 21st century, just like their new, white, sleek spaceship. The streamlined spacesuits are also white with black trim, with matching helmets and gloves. No bulky orange flight suits left over from NASA’s space shuttle program. Boeing is going with royal blue spacesuits for its Starliner capsule crews. ALONG FOR THE RIDE The life-size test dummy Ripley — wearing SpaceX’s slick new spacesuit — is strapped into one of the capsule’s seats. The mannequin, whose name was unveiled Thursday, is rigged with sensors to see how it holds up. Ripley is similar to Starman, which blasted off last year in the driver’s seat of Musk’s red Tesla convertible, on a test launch of the company’s bigger Falcon Heavy rocket. The capsule can accommodate up to seven astronauts. For this test, it’s carrying 450 pounds (200 kilograms) of supplies and gear. OLD PAD, NEW LOOK Kennedy Space Center’s historic Launch Complex 39A, used a half-century ago for Apollo moon shots and later space shuttle flights, has been remodeled and gussied up by tenant SpaceX. Most notable is the long, enclosed, gleaming white walkway at the top. The old bridge for rocket-boarding astronauts was open to the elements. Astronauts like the new, air-conditioned design. “They’re very happy that it’s covered, and we’re trying to keep the mosquitoes out. Those Florida mosquitoes, they can get in anywhere,” said NASA’s commercial crew program manager, Kathy Lueders. FLIGHT RUNDOWN This mission is a night owl’s dream, with most of the big events happening in the wee hours. Saturday’s liftoff is scheduled for 2:49 a.m. to sync up with a space station arrival the next day. Unlike cargo Dragon, plucked from orbit by the station’s robot arm and guided to its berth, crew Dragon will dock on its own early Sunday morning. The three space station astronauts will enter the Dragon, unload the fresh supplies on board and then fill it with science samples and old equipment. The capsule will undock March 8 and, shortly after sunrise, parachute into the Atlantic, a couple hundred miles off the Florida coast. HOT COMPETITION Just because SpaceX is first off the pad doesn’t mean it will launch astronauts before Boeing. SpaceX is shooting for a July crew launch, but that could slip depending on the results of the upcoming demo and a launch abort test this spring. Several items — parachutes and thrusters, among others — still need work and possibly redesign before certified for human use. Boeing is targeting an April test flight of its Starliner capsule without crew, and a launch with three astronauts no earlier than August. Whichever company delivers astronauts first wins a small U.S. flag left at the station by the last shuttle crew in 2011. NASA’s Doug Hurley and Boeing’s Christopher Ferguson — who both flew that final shuttle mission — will test drive the new commercial capsules. Hurley will ride the Dragon and Ferguson the Starliner. ___ The Associated Press Health & 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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30098
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"A man in Ireland earned the nickname ""Shawshank Husband"" after he dug a tunnel from his bedroom to a local pub over the span of 15 years."
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I completely made the story up — that’s what my website does … short local fictional stories. I’ve written 1000s now since 2012 but that was by far the most successful. I just thought about it driving home from work and wrote it up on my kitchen table in about 20-30 mins in Sept 2014. Within days it took off. I think the big pulls were: it being read out on BBC Radio 2 during the day as a funny real story; John Cusack tweeting about it; and Buzzfeed running with it before they realised it was fake. I don’t mean to catch people out and take no pleasure in doing that — I just like writing stories to make people laugh.
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false
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Junk News, ireland
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Internet legend has it that an Irish plumber spent 15 years digging a tunnel from his house to a local pub so that he could enjoy a drink at his leisure without his wife’s permission. This story has appeared on several web sites over the years, and despite its rather ludicrous premise it has repeatedly taken in some gullible social media users. This rumor started with a September 2014 post on the web site “Tyrone Tribulations” entitled “Omagh’s ‘Shawshank Husband’ Dug Tunnel from Bedroom to Pub Over 15 Years”: An Omagh plumber tunnelled a hole from under his bed to the local pub 800 feet from his house over the course of 15 years, a court heard today. Patsy Kerr had been summonsed to Omagh County Court after it emerged he had been the cause of a collapsed sewage pipe from a neighbouring house. Kerr told the court about his secret tunnel and the reasons behind it: “The wife has a bad snore on her and after watching the Shawshank Redemption on RTE one night in 1994, I decided to do something about it so I waited til she was in a deep sleep and then set about digging a hole under the bed in the direction of the pub. I used all manner of tools from spoons to a heavy duty tunnel boring machine I managed to sneak down there when she was at the shops. It wasn’t until 2009 that I hit the jackpot and came up through the women’s toilet mop and bucket room.” The story was picked up by viral web sites such as Boing Boing and BuzzFeed (both of which later admitted that they had been fooled) before it spread to less reputable sites such as 8shit.net. As of October 2018, web sites such as mens-corner.net were still presenting this story as if it were a genuine piece of news. This tale, however, is just a humorous bit of fiction. Tyrone Tribulations did not specifically mark this story as satire, but it was replete with sufficient ridiculous details to clearly indicate that it was a work of fiction. The most telling aspect is likely found in the closing paragraph, which depicts a wife who simply shrugged off the fact that her husband routinely smelled of sewage: The tunnel was finally discovered after the DOE performed a survey on a sewage problem which turned out to be caused by a pipe Kerr had hit accidentally, causing sewage to leak into his tunnel over five years. The judge questioned Kerr’s wife as to why she never smelt the sewage odours from her husband. Mrs Kerr simply shrugged. “Gombeen,” the author of the article, also provided some humorous explanations when readers questioned the authenticity of his reporting. When asked how this Irish plumber could have seen the Shawshank Redemption in 1994 when the film wasn’t released in Ireland until 1995, Gombeen remarked that years work strangely in the Emerald Isle. And when queried why this man would bother digging a tunnel when he could have just walked out of the front door given that his wife was such a sound sleeper (she apparently wasn’t bothered by the noise of his power tools), Gombeen averred that the floorboards in Omagh are extra squeaky: Tyrone Tribulations frequently publishes humorous material that pokes fun at life in Ireland. Although the site does not carry a disclaimer explicitly labeling its content as satire, they do state that the accuracy of their stories “cannot be guaranteed.” We reached out to the site to confirm that this was a bit of fiction and asked the proprietor, “Paudge McGaudge,” what it was like to unwittingly fool thousands of people:
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5984
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Chinese leaders order probe over vaccine scandal.
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Chinese leaders are scrambling to shore up public confidence and oversight of the pharmaceutical industry after a rabies vaccine maker was found faking records, the latest in a slew of public health and safety scandals that have outraged Chinese parents.
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true
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Li Keqiang, Rabies, Health, Xi Jinping, Changchun, Business, China, Media, Public health
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Premier Li Keqiang said in a statement Sunday that Changchun Changsheng Life Sciences Ltd., which is accused of fabricating production and inspection records, “violated a moral bottom line.” He pledged an immediate investigation of the company and to “resolutely crack down” on violations that endanger public safety. President Xi Jinping echoed those remarks, while police in Changchun, a city in northeastern China, announced that the company’s chief executive and four other executives had been placed under investigation. Li’s remarks were aimed at assuaging Chinese parents who complain about worrying over fake food, milk and medicine in a society that seems to lack a “moral bottom line” — and also competent, uncorrupt regulators. “Defective vaccines are like child abuse and trafficking — it touches on the most sensitive, vulnerable part of the public’s hearts,” wrote Xi Po, a columnist for The Paper, a popular online news outlet backed by the Shanghai government. “But unlike in cases of child abuse, the vaccine scandals involve layers and layers of broken regulators and interest groups.” There were no reports of injuries due to the rabies vaccine, but the disclosure has ricocheted around social media, touching a raw nerve for Chinese parents. Two years ago, a similar scandal erupted after police broke up a criminal ring that had sold millions of faulty baby vaccines — but did not disclose the case for months. Regulators announced last week that Changchun Changsheng, China’s second-largest rabies vaccine manufacturer, was ordered to stop production and recall its rabies vaccine. Days later, provincial authorities in northeast China announced that batches of DPT, or diphtheria-pertussis-tetanus, vaccine were found to be defective. More than 250,000 doses of the DPT vaccine had been sold, China’s state broadcaster reported. Public anger ratcheted up swiftly over the weekend following a report by an anonymous author disclosing that regulators found production problems at Changchun Changsheng as early as November but did not publicize their findings or announce a recall until July. The post was widely shared and was censored by Sunday even as Chinese leaders launched a public relations response. In his statement, Li acknowledged the government’s lapse and pledged to punish offenders and regulators found in “dereliction of duty.” State media chimed in, with the China Daily urging the government to handle the matter in a “transparent manner,” while the Communist Party-owned Global Times called on authorities to “follow up on people’s security demands, and supervise and regulate more effectively.” Government censors have employed a relatively light touch, allowing online news outlets like The Paper and Caixin to pursue the story while giving internet users some space to vent their frustration. By Monday afternoon, the hashtag “Changchun Changsheng makes fake vaccines” had garnered more than 100 million views on Weibo. The company’s phone lines were busy for several hours on Monday and executives could not be reached for comment. Yang Yuze, another writer at The Paper, bluntly questioned whether national policies to prop up pharmaceutical companies were “opening the door” to corruption. “The main problem is insufficient regulation, missing regulation, powerless regulation,” Yang wrote. “It’s easy to see how (lax regulation of the vaccine industry) are fig leafs and excuses for the transaction of money and power.” ___ AP Business Writer Joe McDonald contributed to this report.
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9632
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Cancer Drug Keytruda Keeps Some Patients Alive For 3 Years
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Former president Jimmy Carter announced in August 2015 that he had melanoma skin cancer that spread to his liver and brain. Months later, he shocked the world again by releasing a statement teasing he was in remission. He said a bit more before a videotaped Sunday school class he led, noting an immunotherapy drug called pembrolizumab — known better as Keytruda — was part of his treatment alongside surgery and radiation. (See our previous coverage: What the media got wrong about Jimmy Carter’s cancer cure.) NBC News has followed the story since it broke last summer, and the outlet revisited it again on the coattails of a new study on Keytruda, published April 19, 2016 in JAMA. NBC News’ latest story was also accompanied by a 2-minute video. The stories together do a nice job of walking readers through the study’s numbers, how pembrolizumab might work, the side effects, costs, and other details. It also cites several researchers who weren’t involved with the study and addresses a key issue with hype by stating the study’s finding “doesn’t mean a cure.” This vivid picture of success may set readers up for false expectations of benefit. Because as the story itself points out, a majority of patients treated with the drug didn’t live longer than three years. Melanoma is an increasingly common form of cancer, likely due to the rise of tanning’s popularity and other risk factors. But it’s also the most lethal form of skin cancer, according to the American Cancer Society, killing more than 10,000 of 76,000 people diagnosed each year in the United States. A new drug that improves life span is certainly a welcome idea.
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true
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cancer treatments,immunotherapy,jimmy carter,Keytruda,melanoma,monoclonal antibody drugs
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The video claims the cost is about $150,000 a year and is “covered by insurance.” The text story notes how pricey it is and states “Keytruda costs about $12,500 a month, or $150,000 a year.” We’re given the total study population of 655 people with advanced melanoma, and how the average patient lived 2 years. The story also notes a 3-year survival of 40%, which the headline teases, and notes a 15% “complete remission” result. We’re also glad the story was frank about the fact that 60% of patients didn’t live three years. The story does a nice job putting those numbers into perspective by quoting Tim Turnham, executive director of the Melanoma Research Foundation, who notes people with a similar diagnosis typically only live 11 months. Although no study can account for all variables, a doubling of lifespan with limited side effects is worth writing home about. Side effects are described — fatigue, itchiness, and rashes — and even notes the dropout rate of 8%. While we’re given some study details, we’re not told where the study was published, nor what type of study it was. In fact, it was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, and it was what’s considered a Phase 1 trial to determine safety of the drug. An accompanying editorial in JAMA provides a bit of context to the study result and is perhaps best summed up with the title: “PD-1 Blockade in Melanoma, A Promising Start but a Long Way To Go.” Or as it was mentioned in the news release: …”it is difficult to make any definitive conclusions based on this single-arm, early phase trial.” This means that in addition to this being a trial to determine safety, the research was limited in many important ways that weren’t addressed in the story. We also want to note that the story made mention of this getting “breakthrough” approval by the FDA--which needs more context given the misleading sound of that word. We didn’t see any gratuitous or frightening description of melanoma’s many symptoms or treatment side effects. At least two outside sources were quoted in addition to a study spokesperson. The story says the majority of participants in the study had Stage IV disease and had limited treatment options. It also briefly discusses the other alternative treatment, i.e. ipilimumab. While this is Satisfactory for this criterion, we would have liked to see more general information about how melanoma is treated, including surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy. The story makes it clear that Keytruda was approved by the FDA in 2014 and is commercially available. This is made clear by a succinct walkthrough of how pembrolizumab might work, and a source’s statement about average life expectancy. Though NBC News’ story quotes a press release from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, it’s not gratuitous and the vast majority of the article is comprised mostly of original reporting.
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28302
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Cellphone bluetooth sensors can detect the presence of credit card skimmers in gas pumps.
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What's true: The Bluetooth sensor in a mobile phone is a potentially useful way to detect and lower the risk of exposure to some common kinds of credit card skimmers. What's false: A mobile phone's Bluetooth sensor won't detect all kinds of credit card skimmers and is prone to false negatives and false positives.
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mixture
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Fraud & Scams
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Social media users are never slow to tip each other off to new or ongoing scams and frauds, as we have examined many times over the years, and they’re likewise keen to share novel ways to counteract those scams and frauds. In February 2019, a viral Facebook post offered readers advice on how to detect gas station credit card skimmers, devices that capture details from a card’s magnetic stripe, allowing thieves to engage in fraudulent spending: Here is a helpful tip: When you pull up to a gas station to fill your car. Search your phone for Bluetooth devices. If a sequence of letters and a sequence of numbers shows up in your device list do not pay at the pump. One of the pumps have a card reader installed. All card readers are bluetooth. This warning was a somewhat crude explanation of a real phenomenon: the Bluetooth sensor on a mobile phone can indeed be used to detect some — though by no means all — credit card skimmers at gas pumps and ATMs. The warning is related to a particular kind of credit card skimmer that is placed in a credit card reader at an ATM or gas station pump. (The Facebook post confusingly referred to a “card reader” rather than a “card skimmer.”) When a customer inserts a card into the reader, the transaction takes place as normal and the customer’s card is debited, but the skimmer also extracts all the relevant data from the magnetic stripe on the card, including the credit card number, expiry date, and security code. The thieves who planted the skimmer can then return to the machine and use a Bluetooth transmitter to transfer all the stored credit card details from the skimmer to a storage device such as a mobile phone or laptop, all without having to physically remove the skimmer. Bluetooth technology Not all credit card skimmers operate using Bluetooth technology in this way, but many do, and this use of Bluetooth technology is what leaves the skimmers vulnerable to detection. We asked Nick Poole, an electronics expert at the hobby electronics company SparkFun and co-creator of the “Skimmer Scanner” Android app, to outline how they work. Poole explained that he and his colleagues were consulted by local law enforcement in Colorado after a wave of credit card skimmer thefts at gas stations in 2017 and were able to reverse engineer some of the skimmers removed from the pumps, adding that: With some of these gas pump skimmers that we’ve come across, they will use a very common Bluetooth radio … and you can see it as a device that you would connect your phone to, just like a Bluetooth speaker or anything else like that. And with the particular skimmers that we came into contact with, we found that [the thieves who installed them] didn’t even change the default name or password of the Bluetooth unit. So in theory, you can open up your cellphone, go to “scan for Bluetooth devices” and possibly you would see the Bluetooth radio that was in the skimmer. What our app did, that was above and beyond that, is that if it saw a radio that we already knew was a skimmer, or suspected was a skimmer because it was the type of radio [the thieves] would use, then we would connect to it over the serial protocol. Then we would send it a serial string [a kind of text message] that we knew the answer to [based on his experiments with the skimmers provided by local police] … Our app sends those, and if it gets a response back that is similar to [the units already known to be skimmers], then we tell the user this is for sure a skimmer, move on to a different gas pump. When Poole and his colleagues worked with police in Colorado in 2017, they found that the majority of credit card skimmers that employed Bluetooth technology used Bluetooth modules called HC-05 or HC-06. Poole told us he was informed at that time that the HC-05 and HC-06 modules had been widely encountered by law enforcement in skimmers across the United States, though they were by no means the only kind of Bluetooth module used in credit card skimmers. So even without using Poole’ mobile app, he said, customers standing at a gas pumps could in principle use their mobile phones to scan their immediate surroundings for Bluetooth devices, and if they saw any devices with names containing “HC-05” or “HC-06,” they would have good reason to think twice about using those gas pumps: “If you saw a strange Bluetooth device that you didn’t have an explanation for — it wasn’t something in your car — then it very well could be a Bluetooth-connected skimmer in the gas pump.” False positives, false negatives Poole warned that because HC-05 and HC-06 were relatively common and affordable Bluetooth modules, they were also used for perfectly legitimate purposes, so detecting one of those devices in the vicinity of a gas pump would not necessarily mean you had detected a credit card skimmer as opposed to, say, a Bluetooth speaker in another motorist’s car. However, someone who wanted to err on the side of caution and avoid the risk of having their credit card information could view the detection of an unexplained Bluetooth device as sufficient reason to go and refuel somewhere else. To complicate matters further, Poole warned that even if your mobile phone did not detect a suspect Bluetooth device in the vicinity of a gas pump, that would not necessarily mean a skimmer was not embedded in the gas pump card reader. This is so for two reasons: First, because not all skimmers use Bluetooth technology, and second, because not all Bluetooth skimmers use the kind of Bluetooth modules (HC-05 and HC-06) that Poole and his colleagues encountered. Using your mobile phone’s Bluetooth sensor to detect credit card skimmers (with or without the “Skimmer Scanner” app) is therefore a way of lowering your risk of exposure to credit card theft not not a surefire way of detecting the presence or absence of credit card skimmers in any given gas pump. Mark Nunnikhoven, vice president of the cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, agreed that Bluetooth scanners could be a useful way to counteract the threat posed by credit card skimmers but also acknowledged their limitations, writing in an email that they “can help but they aren’t foolproof”: “Criminals are always trying to make the skimmers harder to spot. There are several other low-cost Bluetooth modules in the same category as the HC-05, so this app [Skimmer Scanner] won’t detect all types of skimmers.” Nunnikhoven recommended two additional precautions that customers could take if they were concerned about credit card skimmers at gas station pumps: “First, a physical check. Does the keypad or credit card slot look well maintained and well fitted to the pump? Does it match the next pump? Secondly, monitor your credit card statements for suspicious charges. As long as you aren’t negligent with your credit card and PIN (if you have one), the protections provided by the credit card company ensure that if you do get skimmed, it’s only an annoyance (changing all your billing info) and not a financial catastrophe.” Brian Krebs, a leading cybersecurity reporter, told us that Bluetooth detection such as that employed in the Skimmer Scanner app was useful in revealing one kind of credit card skimmer, but he recommended that consumers check the physical appearance of the gas pump reader instead: “Overall, consumers are better off looking for stations that use more modern pumps that include new security features (no master key to rule them all, putting sensitive components in locked, steel cages inside the locked pump, point-to-point encryption, etc.). Consumers can tell them apart simply by looking for pumps that have horizontal card readers and a raised keypad.” On the whole, the viral February 2019 Facebook post was a fairly crude explanation of what is nonetheless a real phenomenon. A mobile phone’s Bluetooth sensor can indeed be used to scan for and detect certain Bluetooth modules known to be used in credit card skimmers. What the Facebook post did not make clear is that not every “sequence of letters” or “sequence of numbers” on a mobile phone’s Bluetooth device list means a customer is in the presence of a credit card skimmer, nor will a mobile phone’s Bluetooth sensor successfully identify every credit card skimmer in use in gas pumps and ATMs across the United States. The mobile phone Bluetooth scanner is a potentially useful way to lower the risk of exposure to some popular kinds of credit card skimmers, but it is not fool-proof, and it is prone to both false negatives and false positives.
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11062
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Study: One dose of radiation during breast cancer surgery is effective
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This story reports on a large, randomized trial comparing conventional radiation therapy for breast cancer administered over several weeks to a one-time dose given at the time of breast conserving surgery. The study found that both treatments resulted in similar rates of breast cancer recurrence. The story does a nice job of describing the study and adding the appropriate caveats. For example, the writer makes it clear that the single-dose regimen may require subsequent conventional radiation therapy, as pathology results are not always available at the time of surgery. This story would have been vastly improved had it included data from the trial, mentioned costs, given more detail on associated harms, pointed out potential conflicts of interest, and adequately compared the single-dose radiation therapy to other accelerated radiation therapy regimens. The inconvenience of conventional radiation therapy delivered over several weeks can be a real barrier for many women, particularly women who continue to work through treatment or those who are older and find it difficult to make every session. The story could have been easily oversold, but the writer maintained an appropriately cautious tone.
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mixture
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There was no discussion of costs, nor of the cost ramifications of the results. The story indicated that the local breast cancer recurrence rate was the same for those who received conventional, external radiation and those who received intraoperative radiation; however, no data were provided. While it was good that they noted that “[i]t’s best for women with a small tumor that is well-defined and involves only one portion of the breast,” it would have been much more meaningful had they defined “small” and included more details on the criteria for selection, as not all breast cancer patients meet the eligibility criteria for this treatment. The story pointed out the potential disadvantages of this treatment, including that many patients (14%) who receive targeted intraoperative radiation therapy still require conventional radiation. While the rate of major toxicities were, indeed, similar between those who received targeted intraoperative therapy and those who received conventional radiation, it would have been helpful to note that significantly more people in the intraoperative therapy group had wound seromas needing more than three aspirations. The story may have also noted that the conventional therapy was associated with a higher toxicity grade compared to the one-time therapy. This story did a nice job of describing some important details of the study: the number of patients, their diagnosis, randomization, and the length of follow-up. The story did not engage in disease mongering. The story provided quotes from independent sources, but it failed to mention that the study authors received funding and consulting fees from Carl Zeiss, the manufacturer of the equipment used in this study. We think such disclosure should be part of any story – and it only requires a few more words. While the focus of the study was to compare conventional radiation therapy to one-time intraoperative radiation, more than just a cursory mention of other accelerated regimens would have been useful. For example, MammoSite is administered for 5 days and is also delivered from inside the breast. Additionally, studies have demonstrated that a traditional external radiation administered over 3 weeks is as effective as the 7-week regimen for some patients. The story makes it clear that this is a new treatment approach and has not yet been established as an available option. While accelerated regimens of radiation therapy are gaining traction, the story makes it clear that delivering one dose of radiation during surgery is a novel treatment approach. This story does not appear to be based on the press release.
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28176
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Keanu Reeves overcame a series of tragic events in his life, before and after becoming a wealthy movie star.
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“It’s a cliché that money doesn’t buy you happiness. But it does buy you the freedom to live your life the way you want.” — Keanu Reeves in 2008.
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true
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Glurge Gallery, glurge, keanu reeves
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Keanu Reeves achieved superstardom as an actor in the ’80s and ’90s via iconic movie roles such as Ted in Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and Neo in the science fiction classic The Matrix (1999), but, like many people irrespective of wealth and status, endured profound hardships along the way. Unlike many people, however, Reeves’ personal tragedies have been compiled into a tearjerking Facebook video that was shared more than a half-million times within its first 72 hours of existence. The video, though quite brief, packs a lot of emotional wallop in a few words — most of which were copied verbatim from a viral Facebook post falsely attributed to Reeves in 2015: With all due respect to Mr. Reeves (who, as far as we know, had nothing to do with the making of the video), we are now obliged to assess its veracity, claim by claim: At age 3, his father left. More-or-less true. Reeves was born in Beirut, Lebanon to a British mother and a Chinese-Hawaiian father in 1964. Biographical accounts vary as to precisely how old Keanu was when his ne’er-do-well father, Samuel Nowlin Reeves, abandoned the family. Some say Samuel left when Keanu was age two, some at age three, and the father himself is on record saying he moved out when Keanu was five, though he was still in his son’s life until he was about 13. “I spent my last vacation with him when I was 13 years old,” Keanu said in a 2002 interview. “On our last day we sat on the veranda and stared at the dark sky. He hardly said anything that evening. The next day he brought us to the airport. Then we didn’t hear anything from him for 10 years. No calls, no letters, nothing.” He attended 4 different high schools and struggled with dyslexia, making education very difficult. Mostly true. Reeves said in a 2008 interview with the Daily Mail that he attended four high schools in the space of five years but was “okay academically.” Vanity Fair reported in 1995 that both Keanu and his sister, Kim, are dyslexic. However, Reeves has also said that he didn’t do all that badly in school. He was asked about it by Tara Brady of the Irish Times: Internet theorists would contend that sorrow stalks Reeves: that he lost his best friend River Phoenix when the pair were barely out of their teens, that as a child he was moved around from city to city, all the while struggling with dyslexia and academic underachievement. That’s not entirely accurate, he says. “We didn’t move around that much,” says Reeves. “And I wasn’t the best student but I don’t remember having trouble fitting in. I kind of blended in.” At age 23, his best friend River Phoenix died of a drug overdose. True. Actor River Phoenix, whom Reeves had known for a few years and became close friends with when they acted together in My Own Private Idaho, died of combined drug intoxication outside a Los Angeles nightclub on 31 October 1993. He was 23. In 1999, the love of his life, Jennifer Syme, was pregnant with their daughter. But the child was stillborn, and it cost them their relationship. True. People magazine published this account of the stillbirth in April 2001: In January 2000 Reeves and his then-girlfriend, Jennifer Syme, 29, buried their child, a girl named Ava, who had been stillborn at 8 months. The grief proved too much for their relationship, which ended several weeks later. (NOTE: The image supposedly showing Jennifer Syme in the video is actually a photograph of someone else.) 18 months later, Jennifer was killed in a car accident. True. This account is from People magazine: But they remained close friends, even brunching together as recently as April 1 [2001] at Crepes on Cole in San Francisco. Just one day later, a much shaken Reeves called the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office and asked, according to Lt. Mac Willie, “if Jen Syme was there.” Sadly, she was. Shortly after 6 a.m. on April 2, Syme, who worked in the recording industry, lost control of her 1999 Jeep Cherokee on L.A.’s Cahuenga Boulevard, sideswiped three parked cars, rolled over several times and was thrown from the car. Authorities believe she died instantly, but they are awaiting toxicology tests to determine the final cause of death. (In her car police found prescribed antidepressants and two rolled-up dollar bills with “a white powdery substance” inside.) Whatever the result, Reeves, says a friend, “is finding it very, very difficult to cope with her death.” His sister had leukemia. She was cured, and he donated 70 percent of his money from “The Matrix” to hospitals that treat leukemia. Partly true. As best we can put together from press reports over the years, Kim Reeves, who is a few years younger than Keanu, was diagnosed with leukemia around 1991 and, after battling the disease for nearly a decade, was in remission as of 1999. A Woman’s Day (Australia) article published in April of that year said Keanu had “lovingly supported” his sister throughout her illness. Media reports as recent as 2015 still describe Kim Reeves as “battling leukemia” — as if there was a relapse — but it’s unclear to what extent that’s based on hard evidence. The claim that Keanu Reeves donated 70 percent of his Matrix earnings to hospitals that treat leukemia appears to have been fabricated, though we’ve found plenty of evidence to indicate he is a frequent and generous contributor to all sorts of charitable causes. In a Ladies Home Journal article published in 2009, he said he had started a private charitable foundation: I have a private foundation that’s been running for five or six years, and it helps aid a couple of children’s hospitals and cancer research. I don’t like to attach my name to it, I just let the foundation do what it does. He doesn’t own a big house like other stars, and he doesn’t wear fancy clothes. Mixture. You wouldn’t describe Reeves’s $4 million two-bedroom house in the Hollywood Hills as “big,” but it’s a very nice home in a very nice neighborhood, with plenty of room for his cars and motorcycles, and with other celebrities living nearby. He doesn’t always wear fancy clothes, but sometimes he does. He’s worth over $100 million, and still rides the subway. Mixture. Most sources say Keanu Reeves’ net worth is about $350 million. He has been known to ride the subway on occasion, but on any given day is more likely to be seen driving his Porsche or one of his classic motorcycles. He’s been photographed on many occasions getting in and out of limos.
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26681
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Viral image Says you can monitor yourself for COVID-19 with a breath test.
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Holding your breath for 10 seconds isn’t a way to test that you don’t have COVID-19.
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false
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Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Viral image,
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"Coronavirus test kits may be in short supply, but advice being shared on social media — including by actress Debra Messing — wrongly claims we can check ourselves for COVID-19. ""How can one know if a person is infected?"" an image with the advice asks. ""By the time he has a fever and/or a cough and goes to the lung hospital, the patient may have 50% fibrosis, and then it’s too late! Taiwanese experts provide simple self-monitoring that we can do every morning: Take a deep breath and hold your breath for more than 10 seconds. If you can do this successfully without coughing and without difficulty, without anxiety or chest tightness, it shows that you do not have fibrosis and generally indicate no infection."" This 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.) ""This has been circulating widely, but sadly is not true,"" Richard Watanabe, a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California, told PolitiFact in an email. ""The only way to test for COVID-19 right now is via laboratory testing."" Loren Rauch, an ER doctor in Los Angeles, told Mother Jones that a breath test can check ""if you are anxious or have respiratory compromise,"" but not COVID-19. Robert Legar Atmar, an infectious disease specialist at Baylor College of Medicine, told the Associated Press that such a breath test could be helpful in identifying whether someone has a ""more serious lung disease."" But, he said, it won’t identify people who are infected and have mild to no symptoms."
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35874
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The abortion rate in the U.S. has declined more under Democratic administrations than Republican ones due to a difference in approach.
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What's true: The abortion rate has steadily declined since the 1980s throughout both Democratic and Republican administrations, with a greater rate of decline during the former. What's false: The reasons behind differing rates of decline in the abortion rate cannot be definitively tied to actions undertaken by the administrations of different political parties.
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mixture
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Politics, 2020 election
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In September 2020, social media users began circulating a text meme charting the decrease in abortion rates in the U.S. during previous presidential administrations, attributing the greater drop in those rates during Democratic administrations to a difference in approach (i.e., making it illegal vs. making it unnecessary): As we noted in an earlier article on a similar topic, following the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that protected a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction, the abortion rate rose immediately afterward until it peaked in the 1980s, and it has fairly consistently declined since that peak through presidential administrations of both parties: Following nationwide legalization of abortion in 1973, the total number, rate (number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years), and ratio (number of abortions per 1,000 live births) of reported abortions increased rapidly, reaching the highest levels in the 1980s before decreasing at a slow yet steady pace. Although it is true that the abortion rate has experienced greater declines during Democratic administrations than Republican ones, we can’t draw any definitive conclusion that, as the meme tries to suggest, this difference is primarily due to varying approaches by the two main political parties. The simple idea presented by the meme has a number of flaws, chief among them that political factors that might influence the abortion rate (e.g., policies, legislation, judicial appointments and rulings) do not neatly conform to presidential terms of office — what takes place during one administration generally continues to have an effect throughout subsequent administrations. As well, events occurring at state and local levels (not necessarily directly tied to federal actions) can have a substantial impact on the availability and prevalence of abortions. More important, though, is that we cannot definitively determine to what extent political factors influence the abortion rate. As the Guttmacher Institute (a pro-abortion-rights research organization) observed, recent declines in the abortion rate appear to have been driven not primarily by abortion restrictions but by a broader decline in pregnancies: Abortion restrictions target either individuals’ ability to access the procedure (such as by imposing coercive waiting periods and counseling requirements) or providers’ ability to offer it (such as through unnecessary and intentionally burdensome regulations). Any one of these restrictions could result in some people being forced to continue pregnancies they were seeking to end; this could, in theory, lower the abortion rate. With the available evidence, it is impossible to pinpoint exactly which factors drove recent declines, and to what degree. However, previous Guttmacher analyses have documented that abortion restrictions, while incredibly harmful at an individual level, were not the main driver of national declines in the abortion rate … Rather, the decline in abortions appears to be part of a broader decline in pregnancies, as evidenced by fewer births over the same period. What’s driving that decline in pregnancies, then? We don’t know that for sure, either, but likely a combination of social, cultural, economic, medical, and political factors: Experts say the decline isn’t due to a single cause, but rather a combination of several factors, including changing economics, delays in childbirth by women pursuing jobs and education, the greater availability of contraception, and a decline in teen pregnancies. The trend seen in the United States is also seen in much of the developed world, including Western Europe, said Dr. John Rowe, a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. One important factor driving this is the changing roles of women in society, Rowe said. “In general women are getting married later in life,” he explained. “They are leaving the home and launching their families later.” [Dr. Helen Kim, an associate professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine] said the concept of the ideal family size may be changing. “There are shifts where having smaller families is a trend,” she added. “I can’t speak on this as a sociologist, but this is what I’ve seen among my peers and colleagues.” One of the biggest factors is the decline in teen pregnancies, Rowe said. “That’s good news … And that makes a huge difference to their lives.” The Guttmacher Institute posited a similar mix of factors to explain the decline in the abortion rate: Because both abortions and births [have] declined, it is clear that there were fewer pregnancies overall in the United States … The big question is why. One possible contributing factor is contraceptive access and use. Since 2011, contraception has become more accessible, as most private health insurance plans are now required by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to cover contraceptives without out-of-pocket costs. In addition, thanks to expansions in Medicaid and private insurance coverage under the ACA, the proportion of women aged 15–44 nationwide who were uninsured dropped more than 40% between 2013 and 2017. There is evidence that use of long-acting reversible contraceptive methods — specifically IUDs and implants — increased through at least 2014, especially among women in their early 20s, a population that accounts for a significant proportion of all abortions Another possible contributing factor might be a decline in sexual activity. Findings from one national survey suggest a long-term increase in the number of people in the United States — mostly younger men — reporting not having sex in the past year. Yet another possibility is that infertility is increasing in the United States, thereby reducing the chances of getting pregnant and subsequently seeking to obtain an abortion. More generally, there are a host of other potential factors that could be driving declines in pregnancy rates, from individuals’ evolving desires about whether and when to become parents to people’s changing economic and social circumstances.
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21108
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More than half of the people on food stamps today are children.
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Rep. Marcia Fudge says more than half of food stamp recipients are children
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true
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Ohio, Federal Budget, Poverty, Marcia Fudge,
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"There’s not much variety in a food stamp diet. Just ask Rep. Marcia Fudge. She began Nov. 7, 2011, dining on less than $5 a day, a self-imposed restriction to raise awareness about poverty in America. The congresswoman took what’s known as the Food Stamp Challenge. Her budget for one week’s worth of food came to $31.50, the average weekly benefit for an adult food stamp recipient in the United States. Her menu included such delicacies as cabbage and kale (flavored with pork neck bones), rotisserie chicken for protein, bananas and potatoes. Just prior to taking the challenge, Fudge championed the food stamp program,, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, with Al Sharpton on MSNBC. Fudge and Sharpton both were critical of a House-passed bill drafted by Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin which calls for cuts in the food stamp program. Fudge said she thought it would be tragic to reduce food aid to needy Americans in the name of balancing the budget. ""More than half of the people on food stamps today are children,"" Fudge told Sharpton. PolitiFact Ohio decided to check Fudge’s claim. But first, some background on Ryan’s budget. It calls for reducing the federal outlay for food stamps by an average of $12.7 billion over 10 years. The bill would shift funding for the program to block grants provided to the states, which would then administer the payouts. Ryan spokesman Kevin Seifert said his boss believes in the food stamp program but wants to make it more sustainable over time by changing the way it’s administered and by reducing budget increases going forward. Enrollment in food stamps has grown from 17.3 million in 2001 to 44.3 million today, while funding has grown from less than $18 billion in 2001 to more than $80 billion today. PolitiFact Ohio isn’t commenting on whether Ryan or Fudge have the best recipe for the food stamp program going forward. We check the data about food stamp recipients. The United States Department of Agriculture administers the food stamp program, and according to its records, 47 percent of the recipients in 2010 were under the age of 18. That’s down from 49 percent in 2008. Fudge pegged the figure at more than half while talking to Sharpton, so we asked her office to explain. Fudge press secretary Laura Allen cited the 49 percent figure as well as another USDA statistic that claimed 52 percent of SNAP households include children. ""The congresswoman could have been more specific, but since 52 percent of households that receive SNAP include children, there is a strong argument that more than half of people ‘on SNAP’ or using the benefits are children,"" Allen wrote in an e-mail. Not necessarily. Just because half the households have children, doesn’t mean half the total recipients are children. It turned out the 52 percent figure was taken from a USDA document that shows that in Fudge’s district in Ohio between 2007 and 2009, 51.5 percent of households receiving food stamps had children below the age of 18. A separate document for 2010 puts the figure at 48.7 percent. Allen went on to say the Congresswoman’s slight overstatement was ""an honest mistake."" Fair enough. And as mistakes go, this one is pretty small. Roughly half the people on food stamps are children. Fudge described it as more than half based on data that was specific to her district. The actual figure for the national average is 47 percent, a point of clarification. A statement that is accurate but requires additional information or clarification lands one place on the Truth-O-Meter: ."
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29440
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30,000 scientists have signed a petition arguing that there is no convincing scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change.
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What's true: A petition that has been in circulation since 1998 claims to bear the name of more than 30,000 signatures from scientists who reject the concept of anthropogenic global warming. What's false: The petition was created by individuals and groups with political motivations, was distributed using misleading tactics, is presented with almost no accountability regarding the authenticity of its signatures, and asks only that you have received an undergraduate degree in any science to sign.
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false
|
Politics, climate change, global warming
|
Over 30,000 Scientists Declare Climate Change a Hoax? A claim has been floating around since 1998 that thousands of scientists have rejected the concept of climate change, ever since since a self-described research group by the name of the “Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine” solicited signatures for a petition (known now as the Oregon Petition) to have the United States reject the Kyoto Protocol to set internationally binding emission reduction targets. This petition reads, in its entirety: We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind. There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth. According to petitionproject.org, the official website of the effort, the petition bore 31,487 signatures as of October 2016: The current list of petition signers includes 9,029 PhD; 7,157 MS; 2,586 MD and DVM; and 12,715 BS or equivalent academic degrees. Most of the MD and DVM signers also have underlying degrees in basic science. These numbers are provided with little means of verification (an issue discussed in more detail below), but the most important takeaway is that the only requirement to sign this petition is an undergraduate degree in any science or science-related field. Here is how the “Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine” describes their requirements: Signatories are approved for inclusion in the Petition Project list if they have obtained formal educational degrees at the level of Bachelor of Science or higher in appropriate scientific fields. It is therefore misleading for the signatories to be considered climate scientists or even top researchers in their field, as some suggest. In fact, based on the group’s own numbers, only 12% of the signers have degrees (of any kind) in earth, environmental, or atmospheric science. Further, the petition and its creators are not neutral parties, and the major entities supporting it can easily be described as politically motivated. The petition was organized by Arthur B. Robinson, a conservative politician who founded the aforementioned Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine and who holds a PhD in biochemistry from the University of San Diego. Along with the petition itself, the document was sent out with a cover letter written by Frederick Seitz, a National Medal of Science Medal winner and a former president of the National Academy of Science who later went on to be an influential yet controversial tobacco lobbyist and who founded the George C. Marshall Institute, a conservative think tank that has since morphed into one more focused on the climate, with a long history of promoting environmental skepticism. In 1994, Seitz authored a paper (external download archived by GreenPeace USA here) titled “Global warming and ozone hole controversies: A challenge to scientific judgment,” which simultaneously made the two demonstrably false claims that chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, were not a threat to the ozone layer, and that second-hand tobacco smoke inhalation was not a threat to health. Seitz’s participation in the circulation of this petition raises another line of issues for the petition — that its original iteration intentionally misled its signers into thinking it was a document officially supported by the National Academy of Sciences. Seitz, a former president of the Academy, used its official letterhead to draft a letter of support and manufactured a non-peer-reviewed “study” formatted to look as if it were published in an Academy journal, as reported by the Washington Post in 2006: It was printed in the font and format of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: the journal of the organisation of which Seitz — as he had just reminded his correspondents — was once president. Soon after the petition was published, the National Academy of Sciences released this statement: “The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal. The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy.” In addition to the political motivations behind the Oregon Petition and the deceptive ways in which those motivations were masked, there is also the problem of accountability regarding the validity of the names that appear on the list. In 2001, Scientific American attempted to verify a random sample of 30 names on the list who claimed to have a Ph.D. in climate science: Of the 26 we were able to identify in various databases, 11 said they still agreed with the petition — one was an active climate researcher, two others had relevant expertise, and eight signed based on an informal evaluation. Six said they would not sign the petition today, three did not remember any such petition, one had died, and five did not answer repeated messages. Critics of the lax accountability about those who allegedly signed the document were even able at one point to add a variety of humorously fictional or otherwise absurd names, as University of Colorado researcher Myanna Lahsen discussed in a 2005 paper published in the journal Science, Technology, and Human Values: Careful study of the list revealed the names of fictional characters from the “Star Wars” movies as well as the name of pop singer Geri Halliwell from the “Spice Girls” band. Critics of the petition had added bogus names to illustrate the lack of accountability the petition involved, including the difficulty—the practical impossibility—of verifying even the actual existence of each of the signatories, not to mention their expertise. To make the latter point, someone had added the title of “Dr.” to Halliwell’s name. Aside from the potential political motivations behind the petition, the misleading tactics employed to gather signatures, and the lack of verification regarding those signatures, the fact remains that the petition is open to anyone with an undergraduate background in science to sign, and a vast majority of the signatories are not climate scientists.
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34857
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Union leader Jeffrey David Cox played a key role in an alleged Clinton-orchestrated conspiracy to kill Jeffrey Epstein in prison.
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Cox appears to have been chosen as the focus of the conspiracy theory not due to any part in an actual conspiracy, but because of his extremely tenuous, aforementioned link to the guards in charge of Epstein’s cell (they were federal employees and he is the national president of a federal employees union) and because he has been photographed in public with Hillary Clinton.
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false
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Junk News
|
In late 2019, we received multiple inquiries about a conspiracy theory that tied Jeffrey David Cox, a union leader, to the death of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. On Nov. 22, for example, a Facebook user posted a photograph of Cox, who is president of the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), shaking hands with former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The photograph was accompanied by the following caption: “Jeffrey David Cox (in Google, real name just David Cox) is the head of Federal Prison Guards in Manhattan. Jeffery is the boss of the guards who were supposed to keep Jeffery Epstein alive while in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. He also is friends with Bill and Hillary Clinton. This is such a small world…” Another widely shared meme featured a screenshot of a post that included photographs of Clinton and Cox shaking hands and the following text: “Just another coinky dink connection to the famous couple. Say hello to Jeffrey David Cox the head of Federal Prison Guards in Manhattan. Jeffery [sic] is the boss of the guards who were supposed to keep Jeffery [sic] Epstein alive while in the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan. He also is friends with Bill and Hillary Clinton. You cant [sic] make this stuff up.” Former President Bill Clinton was an acquaintance of Epstein and has acknowledged having visited his home and traveled on his private plane on several occasions. However, no evidence has emerged showing that Clinton had any knowledge of Epstein’s sexual offenses during that time. Epstein died in prison in New York in August while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. An initial autopsy ruled his death a suicide by hanging, but some experts have said the specific injuries he suffered were more commonly associated with homicide by strangulation, rather than suicide by hanging. Both the FBI and the Justice Department’s Inspector General were conducting investigations into Epstein’s death as of Dec. 4, 2019. In November, two prison guards at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Manhattan were charged with falsifying records associated with their oversight of Epstein’s cell on the night of his death. Many claims and theories surrounded Epstein, before and since his death. Among them was speculation that the billionaire, who was convicted of child prostitution charges in Florida in 2008, may have acquired compromising evidence about purported sexual wrongdoing on the part of certain influential public figures, and that he might have provided prosecutors evidence or testimony about others in exchange for more lenient punishment in his own pending sex trafficking case. In August 2019, President Donald Trump (who was himself an acquaintance of Epstein) shared a tweet that promoted the unfounded conspiracy theory that Epstein was killed at the behest of the Clintons because he “had information on Bill Clinton.” The memes about Cox in November and December 2019 were a further twist on the baseless conspiracy theory that the Clintons were responsible for the death of Epstein, as a means of preventing him from sharing damaging information or evidence about Bill Clinton, and even the premises of the Cox theory were factually flawed. Cox is president of the AFGE, a national union of federal government employees. His role is not specific to federal prison employees. Contrary to claims made in the memes, he is not “the head of federal prison guards in Manhattan” or “the boss of the guards who were supposed to keep Epstein alive.” The warden of the Metropolitan Correctional Center at the time of Epstein’s death was Lamine N’Diaye. Union leaders like Cox are not employers or supervisors, and their role is to lobby on behalf of their members on a collective basis, not to micromanage the work of individuals, or to provide them instructions. The website WhatDoesItMean.com — a notorious serial producer of anonymously sourced conspiracy theories and sensational predictions that never come to pass — described Cox and another AFGE official, Serene Gregg, as being personally in control of “the hiring and scheduling of prison guards.” This is a ludicrous assertion, akin to claiming that the president of the National Education Association is personally in charge of hiring teachers at public schools throughout the country, as well as organizing their recess duty schedules. WhatDoesItMean.com was also responsible for the baseless claims that the Clintons had gifted Cox and Gregg multi-million dollar homes in China, as part of what the website described as an “international murder for hire hit contract” against Epstein.
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11102
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Review Sees No Advantage in 12-Step Programs
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The story does a good job discussing contributing factors to alcoholism and putting the results of a recent Cochrane review in perspective. There is a lack of literature explicitly supporting Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.) and demonstrating its effectiveness, yet it remains a heavily-relied-upon mode of management of alcoholism. This news article highlights the finding of weak support for A.A. While there are some problems with the source study, the reporting on it is clear and fair. The story notes that 12-step self-help programs are not a panacea, and the study showed that these programs were not superior to other psychological interventions for reducing alcohol dependence. About one-fifth of alcoholics remain sober without any treatment. Researchers in the field of addictions research and treatment are cited, noting that people often attend A.A. meetings as only one component of their treatment; other forms of psychological treatment and/or medications to reduce cravings and treat underlying psychiatric conditions may also be part of treatment. however, medications to treat alcoholism are not discussed in this article. The story also fails to mention that A.A. is free, and it may help with long-term sobriety because it so accessible to recovering alcoholics. This would be important to note when discussing comparisons with time-limited and costly psychological interventions for alcohol dependence. Lastly, some addictions researchers feel that continued sobriety involves changing one’s social environment to prevent relapse. A.A. and similar 12-step programs provide on-going social and emotional support for members. A.A. may not be an improvement over other psychological interventions for reducing alcohol consumption, but it is widely accessible and a viable option for people who prefer mutual-help support groups. The story could have done a better job providing this context.
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true
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The cost of treatment is not provided. It would be important to note that A.A. might be a preferred option for relapse prevention because it is free, meetings widely-available, and it is not time-limited, like many forms of psychotherapy. The story provides no quantification of benefit of A.A. and 12-step groups as treatments, however, the story discusses a metaanalysis comparing 12-step programs to other psychological forms of treatment for alcohol dependence. The story notes that 12-step programs were not superior to other interventions to reduce alcohol dependence, and in genereal, about one-fifth of alcoholics remain sober without any treatment. A.A. and 12-step self-help groups may not be an improvement over other psychological interventions for reducing alcohol consumption, but they are an option for people who prefer mutual-help groups. There is no mention of the harms of treatment, however, the story notes that A.A. and 12-step programs are not a panacea for alcohol dependence, as they do not work for everyone. The story does cite researchers in the field of addictions research and treatment who note that people often attend A.A.meetings as only one component of their treatment. The story discusses the design and some of the methodological issues of the metaanalysis comparing 12-step programs to other psychological interventions for reducing alcohol dependence and improving retention in treatment. The story does not engage in disease mongering. The story appropriately provides information from the study and discusses contributing factors of alcohol dependence, including genetics, environmental causes and/or emotional stress. The story does an excellent job of putting the results of this study in perspective by interviewing experts in the field of addiction treatment and research. The story mentions several treatment options compared with, on in conjunction to 12-step groups. The story explains Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and similar 12-step self-help programs for reducing alcohol dependence. The story does not mention that A.A. groups are widely available to anyone regardless of finances, and many groups allow people to attend any meeting without prior membership in the group. This would be important to note when discussing comparisons with more time-limited and potentially costly psychological treatments. A.A. has been around since the 1930s and its’ mutual self-help groups are not a new approach to relapse prevention for alcoholics. Information in this story does not appear to be taken from a press release.
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10429
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Peanuts, Anyone? Researchers Expose Kids to Risky Foods In Order to Cure Them
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"Nice job on a story about desensitization for milk and peanut allergies. Strengths: Included absolute risk reduction data Emphasized that the work was being done in small numbers of children, that there’s ""a long way to go,"" and that researchers ""caution that much more research is needed to prove and perfect the approach and that it is far from ready for widespread use."" Interviewed a broad range of experts in the field for perspective. It devoted 1,600 words to a topic that concerns many families. Room for improvement: Discuss costs – even projected costs. Avoid alarmist and unrepresentative anecdotes. A comment indicating that the majority of food allergies are not life-threatening would have been a welcome addition to the story."
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true
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"The story didn’t mention any potential costs, but it did make clear that these were small, early studies. So it’s understandable that costs aren’t yet known. Nonetheless, we wish the story would just say that – and make the safe prediction that since this treatment will involve multiple visits over a protracted period the costs will likely not be inconsequential. The story included absolute risk reduction data from the milk and peanut studies. The story mentioned that 4 individuals in a study of 33 had to withdraw from the study due to allergic reaction. There was also a strong word of caution to readers NOT to try desensitization on their own. The story made clear that the work was being done in small numbers of children, that there’s ""a long way to go,"" and that researchers ""caution that much more research is needed to prove and perfect the approach and that it is far from ready for widespread use."" This story bordered on the edge of disease mongering because the parental anecdotes about their children’s allergies were extreme and a bit alarming. A comment indicating that the majority of food allergies are not life-threatening would have been a welcome addition to the story. Nonetheless we’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt on this criterion. A broad range of experts in the field and a funding agency spokesperson were all quoted as sources of information for this story. The story touched on avoidance of allergens and the use of desensitization shots as two alternatives to the treatment under study as well as the use of rescue medication such as epinephrine after unintended exposure for the management of allergic reactions. The story described positive results from a couple of studies and indicated that desensitization in this manner is the realm of research and not widely available clinically. That said – it could have provided readers with some ideas for where they could go to learn about studies in their area. (www.clinicaltrials.gov) Although presented as a novel approach to treatment, desensitization is a long-practiced tool and has been an active field of investigation for a number of years. Does not appear to rely on a press release."
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9521
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Laser therapy with deep-sea drug kills prostate cancer in trial
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This story is a rehash of a misleading University College London news release that reported results of a phase 3 trial of a cancer treatment called vascular-targeted photodynamic therapy (VTP), which involves injecting a light-sensitive drug into the bloodstream and then activating it with a laser to attack tumor tissue. We also reviewed the news release. The story reported some quantified benefits and harms that were mentioned in the news release. But this coverage does not explain the full extent of quantified benefits and harms, offers no discussion of study limitations or the potential cost of this treatment, and falsely conveys that low-risk prostate cancer requires prompt treatment. There are no independent sources and no mention that the trial was funded by the biotech company that developed the treatment. News outlets that run PR pieces and call them news stories undermine the credibility of health journalism and erode the ability of real health reporting to advance public dialogue. This is a case in point. Of the millions of men diagnosed with low-risk prostate cancer, those who read this story could be misled into believing they need treatment for something that will never harm them. The exaggerated claims in this story could spawn needless anxiety for many men and prompt inquiries to their physicians about a treatment option that at this point has no obvious benefits. Few men with low-risk prostate cancer will die from it, and this story never makes that point. Unfortunately, it isn’t rare for misleading news releases to influence coverage. A recent study described in a HealthNewsReview.org blog post showed that exaggerations about medical findings in news releases increase the odds that news coverage will also exaggerate those findings.
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false
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prostate cancer
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The story does not discuss the potential costs of this therapy. The story states: Results of a trial in 413 patients showed that the drug, which is activated with a laser to destroy tumor tissue in the prostate, was so effective that half the patients went into remission, compared with 13.5 percent in a control group. In the trial only 6% of patients treated with VTP needed radical therapy compared with 30% of patients in the control arm who were under active surveillance. While it’s good to see some numbers, we have concerns about the “radical therapy” statistic and what it means, which we’ll address below in the “Evidence Quality” criterion. We also call foul on a quote by the researcher who says the treatment represents “a huge leap forward,” which is an exaggeration. It’s too soon to say if this is a real advance or merely a costly and ineffective treatment that exposes patients to potential harm for no reason. Here’s one reason why readers would do well to temper their enthusiasm: The study follow-up was too short to show a survival benefit–which is the ultimate goal of treating prostate cancer. We wish the story had called attention to that limitation. This story regurgitates nearly word-for-word what’s in the news release: While radical therapy causes lifelong erectile problems and incontinence, VTP only caused short-term urinary and erectile problems which resolved within three months, the researchers said. No significant side-effects remained after two years. As we mentioned in our review of the news release, it’s a disservice to patients to downplay harms with the word “only.” The story does not give the proportion of patients on VTP who experienced adverse events, which was 80 percent. Nor does it mention that 30 percent of VTP patients versus 10 percent of those in the active surveillance group had serious adverse events. Finally, both the story and the news release gloss over the fact that over 1/3 of patients needed repeat treatment within 2 years, and that men undergoing VTP appear likely to need to be on the same monitoring protocol as those on active surveillance (meaning they will need biopsies, which carry risks). VTP and prostate biopsies can cause harms. The story doesn’t mention several important study limitations, including the fact that more research is needed to determine the long-term efficacy of tissue-preserving therapies such as VTP in controlling prostate cancer, according to the study itself. Moreover, one of the outcomes reported in the release — the need for radical prostate surgery, which the researchers say is lower with VTP — is problematic because neither the release nor the story say how it was determined that additional treatment was needed. One reason that men switch from active surveillance to surgery is that they are uncomfortable not treating their cancer. In this study, the men in the intervention group may have been more comfortable not aggressively treating their cancer because they were getting the VTP. The cancer progression reported in this study is actually much higher than has been reported in other studies. In his accompanying editorial, Stephen Freedland, M.D., of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, argues it’s “not readily apparent” who might benefit from VTP, which he says amounts to over-treatment for patients with low-risk disease and under-treatment for patients with aggressive cancers. He says that VTP proved only “marginally effective” for prostate cancer after two years, at a cost of higher frequency of serious adverse events including urinary and sexual problems. Further, her writes: Although better than active surveillance, any treatment that leaves residual cancer in more than half the men (as in this study) is not ideal. Moreover, more than a quarter of men “progressed” within two years, again suggesting a non-ideal treatment. Freedland also points out that the benefits of VTP in this study may have been inflated because technological advances that were not commonly used during the study period are now allowing researchers to more accurately determine which patients are candidates for aggressive treatment versus those with low-risk disease in which active surveillance is more appropriate. Freedland’s editorial is publicly available online, but the story doesn’t mention it. The story shares the flaws of the news release it’s based upon. It says that prostate removal causes lifelong erectile problems, but this is not always the case. Nerve-sparing procedures can preserve potency for a substantial proportion of patients. In addition, active surveillance is described as monitoring and treating only “when” the cancer becomes more severe. The correct phrasing would be “if and when” the cancer progresses, because many of these cancers will not progress. The phrasing “kills cancer” in the headline is also questionable, as it sends a false message that low-risk prostate cancer needs to be eradicated. In fact, most men with small, isolated prostate cancers can live for years without treatment. The story misses the mark on two counts. First, it contains no independent sources. That’s a particularly concerning omission since there’s nothing to counter hyperbolic quotes from the study’s lead researcher that the findings are “excellent news for men with early localized prostate cancer” and “truly a huge leap forward.” Further, it says the treatment “was developed by scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel in collaboration with the privately-owned STEBA Biotech.” But it doesn’t say that Steba, which holds the commercial license for the treatment, funded the study, a fact that was in the news release, or that all of the researchers involved in the study were compensated by Steba, which was reported in the study itself. The story addresses the current standard of care for low-risk prostate cancers, active surveillance, along with treatments for more aggressive disease. But as noted above, we don’t think the description of active surveillance is accurate, the description of radical therapy is excessively gloomy, and the story doesn’t warn that people treated with VTP will likely need to follow the same protocol involved with active surveillance. For these reasons we think the comparison is Not Satisfactory. The story says the treatment is “being reviewed by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for possible license, but it is likely to be several years before it can be offered to patients more widely.” Still, we’re left wondering what “more widely” means here. Is it already available to some patients? The story doesn’t say. This coverage establishes the novelty of the study. It’s puffery to call this “a huge leap forward” but we’ve addressed that concern elsewhere. This coverage is based entirely on a news release (which we also reviewed), with no attribution to let readers know that there’s no actual reporting here. In some cases, entire paragraphs were lifted from the news release with only minor stylistic changes. The following paragraphs are almost word-for-word like those in the news release: Men with low-risk prostate cancer are currently put under active surveillance, where the disease is monitored and only treated when it becomes more severe. Radical therapy, which involves surgically removing or irradiating the whole prostate, has significant long-term side effects so is only used to treat high-risk cancers. While radical therapy causes lifelong erectile problems and incontinence, VTP only caused short-term urinary and erectile problems which resolved within three months, the researchers said. No significant side-effects remained after two years. In the trial, only 6 percent of patients treated with VTP needed radical therapy compared with 30 percent of patients in the control arm who were under active surveillance. The trial involved 47 treatment sites in 10 European countries, most of which were performing VTP for the first time. The VTP treatment is now being reviewed by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) for possible license, but it likely to be several years before it can be offered to patients more widely.
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8760
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Gene may hold key to neutralizing HIV: U.S. study.
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The AIDS virus is especially hard to fight because few people develop antibodies to neutralize it, but U.S. researchers said on Thursday they have found an immunity gene that may offer a new way to fight back.
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true
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Science News
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They said the gene Apobec3 helps mice develop antibodies against an HIV-like virus, and they think the same gene in humans could lead to a potent vaccine against the human immunodeficiency virus or HIV. “This gene is central to HIV biology,” Dr. Warner Greene of the Gladstone Institutes at the University of California, San Francisco, said in a telephone interview. So far, efforts to make a vaccine against HIV have failed. In humans, HIV devotes one of its 9 genes to disabling Apobec3 proteins, which may help explain why people with HIV rarely make antibodies against the virus, he said. HIV is a retrovirus, which means it copies bits of its own genetic code into the DNA of the host. “If we could prevent HIV from destroying this key pivotal host factor, we might allow HIV-infected patients to develop neutralizing antibodies like they do in mice,” he said. “It’s a translation from mice to men. That’s the challenge now,” said Greene, whose study appears in the journal Science. Green’s lab and others have been hunting for the gene in mice that allows them to fight off the Friend virus, a retrovirus similar to HIV. Working with a team at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the researchers conducted a series of experiments in which they genetically engineered mice to lack the Apobec3 gene. “Sure enough, when we knocked out the Apobec3 gene, they lost their ability to recover from Friend virus infection,” Greene said. He said the discovery of Apobec3’s role in retroviral immunity is exciting because genes in this region are active in people who resist HIV infection, suggesting they are making effective antibodies against the virus. “Blocking this degradation of Apobec3 is probably the most promising new drug target in HIV biology,” Greene said. Antibodies are key to warding off viral infections, and most vaccines against viral diseases stimulate the body to make antibodies against the target virus. Greene said efforts at developing an HIV vaccine have largely focused on building up a kind of immune cell called a T-cell to attack the virus. “Those types of approaches are not proving adequate. We are desperately seeking better approaches to creating neutralizing antibodies,” he said, adding, “Maybe this will help us.” The AIDS virus infects an estimated 33 million people globally and has killed about 25 million since the pandemic started in the 1980s. There is no cure but drugs can suppress the virus and allow patients to lead a near-normal life. Without treatment, the virus destroys the immune system, leaving patients susceptible to infections and cancer.
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9713
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Better Diets May Be Extending Americans' Lives
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This news story ably describes a Harvard research team’s effort to evaluate the quality of American diets over time using a composite index of food choices that reflect adherence — or lack thereof — to diets predicted to lower the population risk of heart disease, cancer and diabetes. The story does a pretty good job of explaining a mind-numbingly complicated collection of disparate data, as well as the research team’s overall conclusion: that improvements in U.S. diet between 1999 and 2012 — notably reduction in trans fats and red meat consumption, along with increased consumption of fruits, nuts and whole grains — may have pushed down the rates of premature deaths and chronic disease burden, although doing little to raise the overall “health” of the American diet. But the story swallows a bit too easily the claim that better diets “have saved more than one million people from dying prematurely.” While that’s certainly possible, the claim is based on modeling from observational studies that can’t prove cause and effect — so it’s inappropriate to suggest, based on these types of studies, that dietary changes “saved” anyone. These are associations but not proof that diets reduced death rates. In addition, the story could have been strengthened by a bit more emphasis on racial and socioeconomic disparities in the improvement rates; by adding some information about the links between public policy and dietary choices; and by delving a little deeper into the study’s limitations, which are outlined in substantial detail by the investigators. Efforts to slow or stem the rising or persistent epidemics of obesity, diabetes, cancer and heart disease depend substantially on an educated public, ample healthy food choices and public policies that clarify and encourage healthy diets. One huge problem has been getting any clarity out of a jumble of often-contradictory dietary claims, unpopular or impossible-to-implement regulations (think bans of large-size sugary drinks), and a constant drum beat of newspaper, magazine, online and electronic stories that remind us endlessly that we are all going to dietary hell in a hand basket. Stories about analytical efforts to put dietary changes in some perspective, and provide even a bit of clarity, are therefore much needed and welcome, not only by public health policy makers struggling to make a dent in our morbidity and mortality rates, but also by those who are footing the bills for the epidemics and the attempts to address them.
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true
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diabetes,heart disease,limits of observational studies,obesity,weight loss
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We are content to declare this Not Applicable, but it wouldn’t have hurt to note the financial burden and potential financial savings accrued from fewer chronic diseases and deaths and bends in the rates of disease burden. A sentence or two would have strengthened the story. The major claim in the story is that better diets prevented more than one million premature deaths. But as noted above, this is an estimate based on a model derived from observational studies. Although better diets may be associated with lower death rates, there’s no way to tell based on these studies whether dietary changes caused the benefits that the story claims. The coverage should have been clearer about this. It’s certainly possible that attempts to promote healthier diets could result in unintended harms. For example, some might argue (erroneously, in our view), that a tax on sugar-sweetened beverages, intended to promote healthier drink choices, would be regressive (i.e. disproportionately costly to lower income consumers). But we think a discussion of such issues is beyond the scope of this article, so we’ll rate it Not Applicable. Overall, the article did a fair job of describing the sources of the data, but it could have done more to bring credibility had it specifically mentioned some of the seven studies that made up the “index,” particularly NHANES which in some circles is a household name. In addition, we wish the story had made more specific mention of the fact that these were observational studies that are subject to important limitations. But since we’ve already mentioned that above, we won’t ding the story for that problem here. And the story does at least nod to the controversy surrounding the utility/validity of dietary recall data in these types of studies through comments from the quoted expert. None here. As noted, the article would have been stronger if it had quoted more senior authors of the paper and more outside experts, but it does quote one and the quote is strong. The story doesn’t discuss anything besides healthier diets that might have contributed to increased longevity during the study period. More widespread use of effective medications (e.g. statin drugs)? Lower smoking rates? More regular physical activity? A line or two would about other relevant trends would have been welcome. Except possibly for food deserts, healthy foods are generally available. The story makes the case that widespread consumption of healthier foods has had broad public health benefits. The article hooks the reader with the idea that contrary to the “stereotype” of the unhealthy Americans and their greasy kid stuff diets, the study at hand suggests the “opposite” may be the case. While the researchers’ conclusions struck a balance between good news and bad news about our collective eating habits, and the article may have slightly overstated the “surprise” findings, the text does its job of getting readers’ attention and quickly qualifies the “good news” with a quote citing “huge room …for further improvement.” Health Affairs did publish a brief summary “news release” on its website, but the article clearly went beyond the release to report the story.
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11126
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Diabetes Drug Metformin Linked to Lower Lung Cancer Rate in Mice
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"It doesn’t take much to please us sometimes – but putting ""mice"" in the headline goes a long way most days. If you’re going to report this stuff, you better be up front about the level of research. And this story went on to include other caveats, including an ending quote that was an apt conclusion – ""interesting and thought provoking"" but ""what’s proven in humans is totally another level."" It is interesting and thought-provoking to consider the potential impact of a widely-available, generally safe and inexpensive generic medicine being used in this new way. But the research – and the potential – deserve to be wrapped in the caveats that were clear in this story."
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true
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"The story explains that ""Metformin (originally marketed as Glucophage, though it is now available as an inexpensive generic) has been in use for more than two decades and is currently prescribed to 40 million Americans."" Good enough to get a satisfactory score. Like the Reuters story, HealthDay gave only relative risk reduction data, not absolute. Please read our brief primer and learn from it. Why not tell us 34 percent fewer tumors THAN WHAT? At least the story noted, ""no one knows if metform in safe in non-diabetic populations but some clinical trials are starting to look at the issue."" Adequate overview of how the research was done, the likely mechanism of action, and a broader look at some other related human research – all points done better than in the competing Reuters story. And considerable credit goes to HealthDay for putting mouse research in the headline – something Reuters didn’t do. No disease mongering in this story. Several sources interviewed – including one who appears to be independent of this research. This job did a better job of at least mentioning alternative approaches and also other research. This quote even touched on the possible future decision-making impact of this research: ""All other things being equal, many diabetics face a choice of oral agents, and early evidence that metformin may have an effect on the oncology side may increasingly play a role in decision-making."" But, importantly, the story ended with another quote about the new research: ""interesting and thought-provoking, what’s proven in humans is totally another level."" The current widespread use and availability of metformin is clear from the story The story gives at least a brief overview of past research – including evidence of impact of metformin diabetic people. It’s clear that this story did not rely solely or largely on a news release."
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10376
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Creatine supplements may benefit women with knee osteoarthritis
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There were only 13 people in the active arm of the trial. Is this really newsworthy? If so, shouldn’t it be wrapped into the context of past claims for supplements for osteoarthritis? Yet this story didn’t give any sense of the scope of the benefits found in the study. Did everyone taking creatine supplements improve in comparison with controls? If so, how much did they improve? Not enough here to guide news consumers in their own decision making. Knee osteoarthritis is an important problem. Many supplements have been promoted for it. Few have solid evidence to back them up. We wish there had been a closer evaluation of the limited evidence from this trial.
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false
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Los Angeles Times,Supplements,women's health
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The story doesn’t give any estimate of the cost of creatine supplements. The story didn’t give any sense of the scope of the benefits found in the study. Did everyone taking creatine supplements improve in comparison with controls? If so, how much did they improve? The story discusses improvement in stiffness and “significant” gains in lower limb lean mass and quality of life in the creatine group in very general terms. But it states that “No differences in muscle strength or pain reduction were seen between the two groups.” Which did women value more? There was no discussion of potential harms. A story about a study that had only 13 people in the active arm of the trial should at least mention the limitations of drawing conclusions from such a small sample. It didn’t comment on the possible limitations of self-reported physical function, stiffness and pain. In addition, the blog post didn’t mention any of the limitations that the researchers themselves acknowledged: There was no overt disease-mongering in the story. There are no independent sources quoted to evaluate the findings. The story didn’t offer any comparison or any context about other claims for other supplements for knee osteoarthritis, or about other research in this field. The story begins by referring to the popularity of creatine supplements. The story didn’t explain if there has been any other past research on creatine for knee osteoarthritis. Is this a first? How does it fit into the context of other research in this field? The authors wrote: “it is important to note that our findings are in apparent dissonance with those by Roy et al., who did not observe improvements in functional recovery after 40 days of creatine supplementation in osteoarthritis patients submitted to total knee arthroplasty.” Not applicable because we can’t be sure of the extent to which the blog post may have relied on a news release. No source, other than the journal, is listed. No one is quoted.
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9786
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Experimental treatment may help food allergies
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Strong point: Weaker points: The headline, “Experimental treatment may help food allergies,” promises more than what the story delivers.
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false
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allergies
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There wasn’t any estimate given of the cost of oral immunotherapy, nor of the drug mentioned at the end of the article that is being studied for use against food allergies. The story reported benefits in this way: The results suggested that children who went through a year of sublingual therapy followed by one to two years of oral immunotherapy were less likely to have significant allergic reactions when undergoing the oral immunotherapy. Still, it did not eliminate all symptoms. Why not quantify/specify what terms like these really mean: The story didn’t quantify/explain the extent of “significant reactions during the treatments that make the therapy unfeasible” in the new sublingual approach. There were appropriate caveats about the limitations of the research: One thing that could have been improved: The story mentioned that the study was “published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology” but didn’t link to it as we do here. Basing the story on the talk at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology and not linking to the journal article might mislead people if they take that to mean it hasn’t undergone the same rigorous peer review as a journal article. NO disease mongering at play here. There wasn’t any independent voice in the story. The story at least ended with mention of one other approach being studied: Researchers are separately looking at a drug called omalizumab (Xolair), approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of severe asthma, to see if it could help people with food allergies, too. As noted, the story made it clear that this is preliminary research and that the approach “may one day” be available. Then the story quoted the researcher estimating that “the treatment could be brought to the public within six to eight years.” This is not entirely accurate, as oral immunotherapy for food allergies (including milk allergy) is currently being administered clinically by a handful of physicians. The concept behind the treatment (basically, exposing patients to food proteins) is not FDA regulated, and so there is theoretically no barrier to physicians offering this type of therapy to their patients. Citing the potential for adverse reactions and other concerns, however, most experts say that it is much too soon to use oral immunotherapy outside of a research setting. And so the story’s bottom line message about availability is correct for the vast majority of patients. Still, the estimate of availability “within 6 to 8 years” may cause confusion to parents who have heard, via allergy blogs or other media sources, that it is already available. The story noted other immunotherapy research that’s been done, but stated “This is the first time the sublingual therapy has been studied in terms of its benefit as a precursor to the oral immunotherapy.” It does not appear that the story relied solely on a news release.
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3638
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Monkey birth a step to saving fertility of boys with cancer.
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Scientists are closing in on a way to help young boys undergoing cancer treatment preserve their future fertility — and the proof is the first monkey born from the experimental technology.
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true
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AP Top News, Cancer, Health, Science, University of Pittsburgh, Childhood cancer, Monkeys, U.S. News
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More and more people are surviving childhood cancer, but nearly 1 in 3 will be left infertile from the chemotherapy or radiation that helped save their life. When young adults are diagnosed with cancer, they can freeze sperm, eggs or embryos ahead of treatment. But children diagnosed before puberty can’t do that because they’re not yet producing mature eggs or sperm. “Fertility issues for kids with cancer were ignored” for years, said University of Pittsburgh reproductive scientist Kyle Orwig. “Many of us dream of growing up and having our own families. We hope our research will help these young patients to do that.” Orwig’s team reported a key advance Thursday: First, they froze a bit of testicular tissue from a monkey that hadn’t yet reached puberty. Later, they used it to produce sperm that, through a monkey version of IVF, led to the birth of a healthy female monkey named Grady. The technique worked well enough that human testing should begin in the next few years, Orwig said. “It’s a huge step forward” that should give hope to families, said Susan Taymans of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, which helped fund the research published in the journal Science. “It’s not like science fiction. It’s something that seems pretty attainable.” University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and a handful of other hospitals already freeze immature testicular tissue from young cancer patients, in hopes of knowing how to use it once they’re grown and ready to have their own children. Boys are born with stem cells inside little tubes in the testes, cells that start producing sperm after puberty’s testosterone jolt. Orwig’s goal: Keep sperm-producing stem cells safe from cancer treatment by freezing small pieces of testicular tissue, and using them to restore fertility later in life. How? Enter the monkey research. Orwig’s team froze tissue from young male monkeys, and then sterilized them. Once the monkeys approached puberty, the researchers thawed those tissue samples and gave them back to the original animal — implanting them just under the skin. “We’re not hooking it up to the normal plumbing,” Orwig cautioned. Boosted by hormones, the little pieces of tissue grew. Months later, the researchers removed them. Sure enough, inside was sperm they could collect and freeze. Colleagues at the Oregon National Primate Research Center injected some of that sperm into eggs from female monkeys and implanted the resulting embryos. Last April, Grady was born, and “she plays and behaves just like every other monkey that was grown the normal way,” Orwig said. If the technique sounds a little bizarre, it’s similar to a female option. Girls’ eggs are in an immature state before puberty. Researchers have removed and frozen strips of ovarian tissue harboring egg follicles from young women before cancer treatment, in hopes that when transplanted back later the immature eggs would resume development. It’s considered experimental even for young adults but some births have been reported. Now some hospitals bank ovarian tissue from girls, too. Surgery involving the boys’ testicular tissue is less invasive, noted Orwig, who also is researching ways to reinsert sperm-producing stem cells where they belong rather than the more roundabout technique. The new research shows “immature testicular tissue may become an option” to preserve boys’ fertility, Nina Neuhaus and Stefan Schlatt of the Center of Reproductive Medicine and Andrology in Muenster, Germany, wrote in an accompanying editorial. Meanwhile, “it’s important for parents to know about this,” said Christine Hanlon of Holiday, Florida, who took her son Dylan to Pittsburgh to have his tissue stored when he was newly diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma at age 9. Today Dylan is a healthy teen, and no one knows if he’ll ever need the stored tissue, one of more than 200 samples Orwig’s study has preserved. But Hanlon was thrilled to learn the research is moving along, just in case. “You lose part of your childhood in cancer treatment,” Hanlon said. “If there was a chance I could help him have normalcy in his future, with the potential of having a family if that’s what he decided to do, I wanted to be able to.” ___ Online: University of Pittsburgh fertility preservation program: www.fertilitypreservationpittsburgh.org ___ The Associated Press Health & 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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24037
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By the end of Governor Rick Perry's term, he will have drained Texas taxpayers ... of more than $360,000 to pay for the rental mansion he has been living in while the historic Governor's Mansion is repaired.
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Researchers in Germany have created transparent human organs using a new technology that could pave the way to print three-dimensional body parts such as kidneys for transplants.
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true
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Elections, State Budget, Texas, Bill White,
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Scientists led by Ali Erturk at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich have developed a technique that uses a solvent to make organs such as the brain and kidneys transparent. The organ is then scanned by lasers in a microscope that allows researchers to capture the entire structure, including the blood vessels and every single cell in its specific location. Using this blueprint, researchers print out the scaffold of the organ. They then load the 3D printer with stem cells which act as “ink” and are injected into the correct position making the organ functional. While 3D printing is already used widely to produce spare parts for industry, Erturk said the development marks a step forward for 3D printing in the medical field. Until now 3D-printed organs lacked detailed cellular structures because they were based on images from computer tomography or MRI machines, he said. “We can see where every single cell is located in transparent human organs. And then we can actually replicate exactly the same, using 3D bioprinting technology to make a real functional organ,” he said. “Therefore, I believe we are much closer to a real human organ for the first time now.” Erturk’s team plan to start by creating a bioprinted pancreas over the next 2-3 years and also hope to develop a kidney within 5-6 years. The researchers will first test to see whether animals can survive with the bioprinted organs and could start clinical trials within 5-10 years, he said.
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6039
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Maryland continues funding for protective crop plantings.
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About $5 million the state of Maryland has set aside for farmers to plant protective crops has gone wanting in recent years.
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true
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Environment, Chesapeake Bay, General News, Water quality, Maryland, Pollution
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For the second year in a row, the state has spent less than it set aside on a program that Maryland uses in its favor when tallying efforts to clean up the Chesapeake Bay. In 2010, under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency set the Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load — called a “pollution diet” — for the estuary to minimize major sources of pollution, including nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment, and meet water quality standards. The Chesapeake Bay watershed includes seven jurisdictions: Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York and the District of Columbia. Low water quality in the Bay can cause dead zones in the water — areas of water with not enough oxygen to sustain marine life. The standards established by the EPA set pollution limits for the Bay that would reduce nitrogen by 25%, phosphorus by 24% and sediment by 20% in total. Each of the seven jurisdictions was given distinct limits and required to describe how they would meet their goals in what are called Watershed Implementation Plans. Since 2010, Maryland has reduced its phosphorus loads by nearly 10%, from 4.01 million pounds per year to 3.62 million pounds per year, already reaching its 2025 target. Additionally, Maryland’s nitrogen pollution per year has decreased by over 9%, from 58.1 million pounds per year in 2010 to 52.7 million pounds per year in 2018. To meet its 2025 target, Maryland must reduce nitrogen runoff by an additional 6.9 million pounds per year. The EPA set the targets, said Jason Keppler, the state’s Watershed Implementation Plan manager, and Jason Schellhardt, the Maryland Department of Agriculture’s communications director, and the state is given the flexibility to design programs that will meet its goals. One of these is Maryland’s cover crop program for local farmers. After harvesting for the season, farmers can plant more crops — wheat, barley, rye, and legumes — to cover their land, i.e. cover crops. These plantings hold the soil together and sequester and absorb excess nutrients, according to the Maryland Department of Agriculture. The cover crops take up the excess nitrogen from previous fertilizers and prevent them from flowing downstream into the Chesapeake, said Colby Ferguson, government relations director at the Maryland Farm Bureau. Additionally, the cover crops reduce sediment and phosphorus erosion. To encourage participation in the cover crop program, Keppler and Schellhardt said, the department pays farmers per acre to plant crops as a part of the state’s Watershed Implementation Plan. This year, the state allocated $22.5 million to the program, according to this year’s cover crop brochure. To qualify for this year’s program, farmers had to apply between June 21 and July 17 at soil conservation district offices. The last day to plant cereal grains was Nov. 5, and other types of cover crops had earlier deadlines. As a part of the program, farmers are not allowed to sell their harvested cover crops as a grain. If a farmer decides to sell the grain, they forfeit money from the cover crop program. Farmers may have livestock graze the cover crops, the Maryland Department of Agriculture said. Following the planting of cover crops, the Department of Agriculture confirms the number of acres that were planted before paying for them, said Rob Schnabel, Maryland restoration biologist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Payments are per acre and depend on when the cover crops were planted and removed. In this year’s program, crops left to grow after May 1, 2020, qualify as “Extended Season” and receive an incentive payment of $15 per acre. Keppler said that the department “(tries) to encourage early adoption of cover crops” because it reduces the time that the soil is left uncovered. According to the state’s Phase III Watershed Implementation Plan, the state increased funding to the cover crop program to $25.5 million per year starting this year, covering around 470,000 acres. According to Nicholas Pepersack, deputy chief of staff at the Department of Budget and Management, this amount has not been allocated since fiscal year 2015. The cover crop program offsets the costs of planting to encourage farmers to use the program. There are benefits to the farmers other than financial incentives. Leaving crops in the ground over the winter helps retain the soil, Ferguson said, which is to the farmer’s advantage. The plant material is left on top of the soil and functions similar to mulch. The organic matter improves soil quality and holds in water so the soil does not dry out as fast. The leftover plant material also decreases weeds, said Norman Astle, the Maryland Department of Agriculture’s administrator of Maryland Agricultural Conservation Grants. Last program year, counties on the Eastern Shore received the highest amount of payouts compared to other counties in the state. A program year starts from when a farmer signs up for the program and then harvests the crop the next spring. In recent years, participation in the program has decreased, according to data from Maryland’s Department of Agriculture. During the 2018-2019 cover crop program, around 1,274 farms participated in the program, down 10% from the 2017-2018 program. The exact number cannot be confirmed because of differentiations between two Maryland Department of Agriculture datasets. (One dataset includes historical data, which the department explained should be used because the data is likely more consistent over time. Another dataset contains each farm that signed up for the program and includes slightly different program totals than the historical dataset. The Maryland Department of Agriculture said that this dataset may be different because it may include some refunds from farmers. Historical data is used for this story.) Harborview Farms in Kent County has been the largest user of the cover crop program in the last two years. During the 2018-2019 program, Harborview Farms planted over 9,500 acres and received over half a million dollars from the state. Attempts to contact representatives for the farm were unsuccessful. Additionally, 11 farms in the state received over $100,000 each from the program for planting over 2,000 acres of crops. In the last seven years, farmers signed up for a total of over 600,000 acres per year. Through the 2016-2017 program, at least 68% of the acres signed up for the program were actually planted, and it peaked at nearly 81% that year. During the 2017-2018 program, the number of participants who signed up and actually planted their cover crops dropped to below 60%. From 2017 to 2018, the final number of acres paid for by the state compared to the initial number of acres registered dropped by 25 percentage points. The drop in participation was weather-related, Astle said. Wet weather in the spring can delay the planting of crops, which pushes the harvest back and a farmer’s ability to participate in the cover crop program. Because the weather has been drier this year, Astle said he anticipates higher participation in the 2019-2020 program. Because planted acreage is down, the state is spending less on the program than it has allocated. In the last two years combined, the state has spent nearly $36 million. However, the program typically has been allocated annually between $22 million and $24 million split, nearly equally, between the Chesapeake Bay Trust Fund and the Bay Restoration Fund, Pepersack said. “Any unspent funds from the (Bay Restoration Fund) remain in the cover crop program and are carried over to the following fiscal year,” Pepersack said in an email. Remaining funding from the Chesapeake Bay Trust Fund is reverted back to the trust fund at the end of the fiscal year. Not everyone is on board with increasing the allocation of funding to cover crops in Phase III of the Watershed Implementation Plan. Schnabel said the Chesapeake Bay Foundation would like to see a greater emphasis on long-term agricultural solutions, such as permanent pastures and stream-side forest cover. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation believes these are more cost-effective than annual funding programs, like cover crops, in the long run. Permanent pastures convert cropland used for feed for livestock into permanent rotational grazing fields of grass. Originally, Maryland’s Watershed Implementation Plan indicated 425,000 acres of cover crop and 15,000 acres of permanent pasture, but the most recent phase III plan indicated approximately 70,000 more acres of cover crops, and reduced permanent pasture acreage by around 12,500, according to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. Keppler said that cover crops are just “one tool in the toolbox.” Permanent pastures are more geared for a livestock farm industry whereas cover crops are better suited for cropland, Keppler said. Capital News Service reached out to a number of farms that have participated in this program, but none responded. ___ This story was produced by the University of Maryland’s Capital News Service.
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4465
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Doctor of incapacitated woman who gave birth cedes license.
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The longtime doctor of an incapacitated woman who was raped and later gave birth at a Phoenix care facility is surrendering his medical license, according to state medical board records.
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true
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Arizona, Phoenix, Health, General News, U.S. News, Legal proceedings
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Dr. Phillip Gear agreed to a consent order to voluntarily give up his license and not contest the matter in court. “I decided to retire rather than to go through several rounds of legal proceedings, in view of my own age,” Gear, 67, said in a statement to The Arizona Republic. Gear asserted, however, that he always offered high-quality care and professionalism to all his patients. The order, filed Nov. 8, summarized the results of the board’s investigation following the woman giving birth on Dec. 29, 2018, at Hacienda HealthCare. Gear was the victim’s physician on and off from 1992, when she was 3 years old, until a few months before the birth. He last cared for her in September 2018 when she had a cyst. He then transferred her care to another doctor. That doctor, Thanh Nguyen, had a complaint narrowly dismissed by the board in October. In a notice of claim against the state, the victim’s attorney alleged Nguyen had missed several signs she was pregnant. Nguyen told the board there were no obvious indicators. According to the board, Gear failed to perform required monthly exams on her. He also never did an annual mental health assessment. A review determined he kept incomplete and inadequate medical records for her. The investigation also found Gear was physically unable to do exams without the help of another doctor or nurse practitioner. He also failed to supervise four students training with him. The students reported that Gear never entered patient rooms with them. Authorities say Nathan Sutherland, a male nurse, sexually assaulted the woman and DNA confirms he is the father of her baby. Sutherland has pleaded not guilty to charges of sexual abuse and vulnerable adult abuse. He also surrendered his nursing license after his arrest. His trial is scheduled to for February.
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38111
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A former CIA said in a deathbed confession that he killed Bob Marley by infecting him with cancer.
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CIA Agent Confesses to Murdering Bob Marley on Deathbed
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false
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Celebrities, Government
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A website known for passing off fabricated reports for factual news is behind false reports that a CIA agent confessed to murdering Bob Marley. Your News Wire published the false report in question on November 30, 2017. It appears under the headline, “CIA Agent Confesses On Deathbed: ‘I Killed Bob Marley.’” Within days, it had been shared nearly 100,000 times on social media. Problems Abound With CIA Agent Confessing to Bob Marley’s Murder Your News Wire doesn’t identify as “fake news” or “political satire.” But the website’s disclaimer states that its content “may include inaccuracies or typographical errors.” That creates wiggle room to publish fabricated or misleading reports. In other words, Your News Wire is not credible. So, it’s no surprise that this story’s facts don’t check out. Bob Marley died of melanoma in 1981. This type of melanoma is not transmitted by “cancer viruses and bacteria,” as the rumor claims. While it’s true that transmittable viruses like HPV, Epstein-Burr virus and Hepatitis can lead to elevated risks for certain types of cancers, Bob Marley’s case doesn’t align with any of them. The type of melanoma that Bob Marley had — which develops on areas of the body where there’s hairless skin (like the soles of feet) — is unique. And it’s almost always caused by genetic factors, the Skin Cancer Foundation reports: While most melanomas are caused by exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun or from tanning machines, this type, which develops on hairless skin such as under nails, on the soles of the feet or palms of the hands, is more likely caused by genetic factors. While this form is rare, it is the most common form of melanoma in people of color. Based on the lack of credibility of Your News Wire, and the unlikeness of that account from a medical standpoint, we’re calling this one “fiction.” Comments
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1263
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Midwifery students use augmented technology to improve clinical skills.
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Midwifery students in London are learning to bring new life into the world in a radically new way with the help of augmented reality (AR) technology.
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true
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Health News
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Using AR headsets and lifelike models of full-term mothers, trainee midwives at Middlesex University can take part in fully simulated births, which the university’s clinical staff hope will both hone their clinical skills and leave them better prepared to face challenges rarely seen in day-to-day practice. AR technology offers users an interactive experience in which objects in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated information. Midwifery educator Sarah Chitongo said the AR system allowed students to understand better the birthing process by displaying an interactive representation of a patient’s anatomy. “It allows you to see a visual picture of the actual anatomy itself, which is raised out of the normal body, and you can step in, walk around and have an internal view,” Chitongo told Reuters. Chitongo cited high-risk problems such as shoulder dystocia - when a baby’s shoulders get stuck in the mother’s body - and breech births - when a baby is born bottom first - as particular rarities for midwives where AR could help prepare students to cope better and ultimately to save lives. Chitongo believes that younger trainees will embrace the technology positively as they are of a generation that has largely grown up with computers and interactive environments. However, her overarching aim is for midwives to become better prepared to reduce mortality rates, which are disproportionately high among ethnic minority pregnancies. “Currently, here in the UK, it sits at 60% combined, compared to 9.8% in white women,” Chitongo said, adding that the issue had not been meaningfully addressed despite the trend having risen since 2011. “When you get it right, with a population where it’s actually on the worst side (of the statistics), it means you’ve got a better and safer maternity service across the UK.”
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27301
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"The animated film ""Incredibles 2"" contains scenes that prompted an epilepsy warning at movie theaters."
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You can find details here and here about the specific elements in the film that have caused most concern.
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true
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Entertainment, epilepsy, health warnings, incredibles 2
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On 15 June 2018, Incredibles 2 — the sequel to the hugely successful 2004 animated movie Incredibles — was released to good reviews. Not long after that, the reviews were augmented by concerns in widely shared blog posts and social media warnings that certain scenes might trigger epileptic seizures. On 16 June, the non-profit Epilepsy Foundation issued a warning about the film: Members of our community have expressed concerns about flashing lights in the new Disney Pixar movie “Incredibles 2,” and, in certain instances, people having experienced a seizure during the movie. We stand with our epilepsy warriors and their families as they voice their concerns about the movie and appreciate the efforts some theaters have already made to post warning signs for people waiting to see the movie. According to the Epilepsy Foundation, around three percent of people with epilepsy have a condition known as photosensitive epilepsy, in which intense flickering lights and other visual stimuli can trigger seizures, migraines, and headaches. Among the common causes of these seizures are “intense strobe lights,” “video games or TV broadcasts containing rapid flashes or alternating patterns of different colors,” and even natural sunlight, “especially when shimmering off water, flickering through trees or through the slats of Venetian blinds.” Over the course of the movie’s opening weekend, members of the public shared photographs of a boilerplate warning posted in movie theaters in various parts of the country by various companies including AMC and Cinemark: So I went to see The Incredibles 2 and I saw this sign outside the theatre. I want thank @AMCTheatres for this. With a wife that is diagnosed with Epilepsy I greatly greatly appreciate this! Thank you AMC Cherry Hill pic.twitter.com/90Ts26Lrg2 — Lost Boy Kirby (@TLBKirby) June 18, 2018 Major shoutout to the Jordan Creek movie theater for posting epilepsy warning signs for Incredibles 2. Thanks for lookin out for those of us with epilepsy. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/CVX3wboGHo — Kelsey Culbertson (@kels_culbs) June 16, 2018 I saw The Incredibles 2 today and the theater had warnings about the epilepsy scenes at the ticket areas when I got there. Btw it was a great movie, I totally recommend it, but those with epilepsy might want to be cautious if they go to see it. pic.twitter.com/ODmY8KFQUJ — Whip [Colin WK] (@Whip_YT) June 17, 2018 Thank you to everyone for retweeting this, writing articles, and signal boosting my message! My goal of having signs at the ticket counter was reached so that people can be warned about the flashing lights in Incredibles 2. pic.twitter.com/JljozWlojd — Veronica Lewis (@veron4ica) June 17, 2018 Film curator Colin Geddes shared what appears to be a memo sent by Ken Caldwell, Senior Vice President at Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, to movie theaters showing Incredibles 2. The memo is dated 15 June 2018, suggesting that Disney took action on the epilepsy risk on the same day the movie was released: It has come to our attention that some lighting effects in Incredibles 2 may affect photosensitive viewers. Out of an abundance of caution, we recommend that you provide at the box office and other appropriate places a notice to your customers containing the following information: “INCREDIBLES 2 contains a sequence of flashing lights which may affect customers who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy or other photosensitivities.” Bring the kids! This notice sent to exhibitors today from Disney #incredibles2 “INCREDIBLES 2 contains a sequence of flashing lights which may affect customers who are susceptible to photosensitive epilepsy or other photo sensitivities.” pic.twitter.com/N2g0vQ8lsL — Colin Geddes (@colingeddes) June 16, 2018
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37632
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"Facebook user ""Angelika Greg-Delany"" shared a stirring and authentic account of her experience living in socialist Ukraine."
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Angelika Greg-Delany #WalkAway Campaign: ‘I Came From the Soviet Socialist Part of the Ukraine, I Barely Survived’
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mixture
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Disinformation, Fact Checks
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Late on February 6 or early February 7 2020, Facebook user “Angelika Greg-Delany” shared a purportedly true account to the group #WalkAway Campaign — purportedly first about her encounter with a Russia-bashing “Bernie Sanders supporter,” and her response about the evils of socialism during her time in Ukraine.A first few lines set the scene: The wife of a “husband and wife customer” purportedly launched into a tirade about United States President Donald Trump, Russia, collusion, and a phone call with Ukraine, before asking the self-identified Ukrainian woman (who says she works in “sales,” and is not supposed to discuss political matters at work) what she thought:Well today I was working with a husband and wife customer. They were very chatty, asking questions and listening to information about our products, when the wife asked me where I was from. It is a frequent question because I have an Accent. I told her I am originally from Ukraine. Well that was the trigger she was waiting for.She immediately began bashing President Trump and his administration for the Russia Collusion and the Ukraine Phone call. Trump withholding Aid and how Bernie Sanders should be the next President. Then she rambled on and bashed the President for another five minutes. Then with a very proud smile on her face she asked me what I thought? Well to heck with political correctness! I answered.In the next portion, Delany quotes herself as responding at length, first citing the “ignorance of people” unaware of Soviet life and complaining about having been sexually harassed and not having the ability to wear western clothes:I came from The Soviet Socialist part of the Ukraine. I barely survived the 25 years I lived there. I am often amazed at the ignorance of people who know nothing about life under a socialist regime praising the virtues of Socialism. I had free medical and it was terrible, and never free. I got free education, until it came time for college and when I was not a member of the communist party was rejected. The country gave me a mandatory job in a State owned milk factory. I spent hours a day in lines to find basic goods and services. I was sexually harassed almost on a daily basis. I had to listen to the daily drum beat of fake news and propaganda about how we were the only super power in the world and how we lived a better than anyone else in the world, yet I could not travel abroad to see for myself. I was not allowed to wear western cloths or read western magazines, because they were classified as a danger to society. No thank you, I will be voting for President Trump. He loves America almost as much as I do. He wants to keep the rule of law to protect my individual liberties and allow me, self determination. He actually has helped Ukraine more than all former US Presidents combined and Israel too. He is going to expose the Media, the Democrat Party and the corrupt Intelligence agencies under Obama for colluding in a coup to remove a duly elected President. I live in the greatest country on earth and it will stay that way because of the things President Trump is doing and in spite of the things the Democrat Party is doing to destroy it.Now, Would like to purchase this product? The woman was getting madder with ever word and the husband was standing behind her with his mouth on the floor. She stormed off and told him to finish with me because she couldn’t take any more of this. He sheepishly gave me his info and thanked me for helping .. Isn’t America the greatest place on earth? I felt great the rest of my shift because I think the husband is a closet Conservative.It is time to be more like President Trump and stand up for what is right and say hell no to political correctness! MAGA!Delany’s post was quite popular, racking up 10,000 shares in about 12 hours. But it was also a mixed bag of anecdote, opinion, and purported firsthand experience — not all of which was verifiable. We’ll attempt to break it down into parts and check them individually.The Bernie Sanders-supporting married couple clients – did they exist?The encounter described by Delany tested plausibility from the get-go, as it was a great basis to form a rant about “socialism” and “communism” as it related to her post. No identifying information was included, and it seemed just as likely the encounter was a parable as a real-life occurrence.Moreover, of candidates in the Democratic field, Sanders is sometimes lumped in as a beneficiary of putative Russian interference in the 2016 election. Other candidates’ supporters tended to be focused on the specter of Russian interference, so a die-hard Sanders fan wasn’t the most likely person to be angry about Russia (however, Sanders’ embrace of universal health care and “free” college made him one of the few Trump opponents Delany could plausibly shoehorn into the rant. )To elaborate, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg supporters might not have the same rosy view of Medicare for All (as just one example), which effectively would defang the rant and make it even less plausible. But angst about Russia and collusion was also necessary to string the anecdote together.What’s the #WalkAway Campaign?The #WalkAway Campaign, depending on who is explaining, is either a grassroots move away from the Democratic Party, or an astroturfing effort to make it seem a mass exodus of Democrats from the party is underway. Posts from Republicans such as the one linked above are exceedingly common in those groups, further indicating the effort is largely populated by people who were not Democrats to begin with. A 2018 article found that a number of purported #WalkAway Campaign supporters were actually people from stock photographs.When did Delany emigrate to the United States from Ukraine?By her husband’s explanation (they appeared to share a Facebook account), in or around 1989:… When I was a tent maker missionary in the USSR in 1989, I was allowed to work with real Angels … When I finally had a dream that I could recall. It was a dream too real, about the most beautiful woman I had ever seen and her son. The woman in this dream was my wife, and yet I was not married. I woke in a sweat, and wondered what I had just seen. That very same day I met that woman in that dream in a random store in Kiev, Ukraine. I was looking for supplies for our project in Pervomysk, Ukraine. I finally mustered enough nerve to asked her out and while she was telling me about herself, she said she had a son from a previous marriage. I asked her if he was about four years old, with blond hair and green eyes. She said yes, how do you know? I explained about my dream. Thank God for his infinite wisdom, He does not do things in a vacuum. God had given Angela dreams about me as well. She told me the minute I walked into the store that day she heard a voice that said “It’s him!” She had not seen me yet and wondered what the strange voice was. When we did see each other, We both stared open mouthed at each other. It was like looking into our own dreams. She said she had seen me twice in dreams that month and could not stop talking about it to her mother. We married after three months.When did Delany come to America?Again, according to her husband’s post on Facebook linked above, the couple met in our around Pervomysk, Ukraine. Additional posts to the page indicate they remained in parts of the former USSR through the early 1990s.In another post, Delany said:Who would return to a lifestyle of pure evil when they have tasted of the blessings of America? My life has Two halves. 25 years in a Socialist Hell and 24 years in a Free Market Paradise. Why would you even try to convince me your way is better?? ?In 2019 or 2020, 25 years prior was about 1994 or 1995.Was Delany describing communism or socialism? What’s the difference?By her account, again, the terms and ideologies appeared to be conflated. In the beginning of her purported response to the Sanders supporters, she recounts:I came from The Soviet Socialist part of the Ukraine. I barely survived the 25 years I lived there. I am often amazed at the ignorance of people who know nothing about life under a socialist regime praising the virtues of Socialism. I had free medical and it was terrible, and never free. I got free education, until it came time for college and when I was not a member of the communist party was rejected.Fears of communism sparked by Sanders’ 2016 run led to a 2015 Vox explainer about the functional differences between “communism” and “socialism” as they related to how world governments and parties behave and interact:So in practical political terms, “communism” has come to connote a belief in revolutionary political change or, at the very least, more dramatic and transformative democratic change than social democratic parties have advocated. “Socialism” has come to connote commitment to democratic processes and the taming of capitalism through reform. But communist parties would almost universally identify themselves as committed to the goals of socialism — more committed, indeed, than their squishy social democratic rivals. And for their part, many democratic socialists — like US presidential candidate Norman Thomas and British Prime Minister Clement Attlee — were vehemently anti-communist.That same explainer went to lengths Delany did not, explaining the relevance of Sanders’ positions to modern analogues in countries such as Finland and Sweden:The good news is that neither Sanders nor European social democratic parties favor the creation of a Soviet-style economy or a Soviet-style political system. There are plenty of other models of socialist society, some of which have worked in practice, and many of which have never been tried.In particular, the Nordic social democracies that Sanders praises are demonstrably economic success stories. One could fairly argue that these societies have successfully ended, or at least drastically curtailed, the worst excesses of capitalism. In 2012, the relative poverty rate — the share of the population living on less than half the median income — was only 9 percent in Sweden and 5.4 percent in Denmark. In the US, by contrast, it was 17.9 percent. Infant mortality in Finland is roughly half that in the US, largely because poor Finns get better health care than poor Americans.Also in 2015, the Washington Post enlisted a high school teacher to explain the difference between communism and socialism after then-candidate Donald Trump conflated the two:… I scaled it back a bit and talked to Tori Waite, who teaches high school history at Del Mar High School in San Jose. After all, since most of us were first introduced to these ideas in high school, perhaps we just need a refresher.“When we teach about the different types of economies,” Waite said, “the first thing we do is we talk about economic questions. How is it made? Who makes it? Who gets to buy it? Based on the economy, different people answer those questions.”“In a communist country, the government answers those questions. There’s no private business. There’s no private property. The government decides.”“In a capitalist society, the people make those decisions. The businesses, the market decides how much products will cost, how many there are, where it will be made.”“In the socialist system, there’s a mix of both. The government operates the system to help all, but there is opportunity for private property and private wealth. That’s generally how we talk about it.” … A socialist government could control all of the means of production — or it could, for example, use taxes to redistribute resources among the population.Additional context from the Vox explainer involved why Sanders selected the label of “democratic socialist,” which, according to the Senator himself, has to do with the origins of the Democratic party as it relates to labor issues:And in the US, where “socialist” has never been a mainstream label, it’s stranger still, given how much of Sanders’s platform is shared by American politicians who don’t identify as socialists. He supports single-payer health care, but so do 53 House Democrats. He supports full employment through government jobs, but so does Congressman John Conyers, who, while friendly with some democratic socialist groups, has not to my knowledge adopted the label himself. Overall it’s hard to see the big distinction between Sanders and especially liberal Democrats like Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) or the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s leaders Reps. Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ), both of whom have endorsed Sanders.So why take on the “socialist” label, knowing it might be an impediment? In his interview with Vox, Sanders suggested that he might not identify as a socialist if Democrats had stayed true to the labor liberalism of the New Deal, but that given the current economic policies of the party, setting himself apart is necessary. “There was a time — I think under Roosevelt, maybe even under Truman — where it was perceived that working people were part of the Democratic Party,” Sanders said. “I think for a variety of reasons, a lot having to do with money and politics, that is no longer the case.” If identifying as a Democrat is no longer enough to mark oneself as a politician of and for the working classes, then another moniker is needed — and “democratic socialist” is as good as any.Did Delany live in “socialist Ukraine,” or was the country communist?Much of the relevant modern history of Ukraine and the USSR is tied to the fall of the USSR on December 26 1991. What is now known as Ukraine was indeed known as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic until 1991:Both formally and actually the Ukrainian SSR was a unitary state without autonomous parts. Until 1940 it contained the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, which that year became a separate Union republic. In 1954 Crimea oblast [province] was transferred from the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. After a local referendum in January 1991, the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR recognized the Crimea’s autonomy. Until the end of 1991 the Ukrainian SSR was part of a broader federation of the USSR and its governing organs were subordinated to the governing organs of the USSR. Until 1990 the leading force in the political system in the Ukrainian SSR was the Communist Party of Ukraine, which was merely a branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.As Delany said, the party in power until 1991 was the Communist Party of Ukraine. As change swept through the countries of the former USSR in 1990, Ukraine’s communist party began losing a strangehold grip on its governance:The most significant development of 1990 [in Ukraine] was the beginning of parliamentary democracy. The first competitive elections to the Ukrainian parliament (which replaced the old-style Supreme Soviet), held on March 4 [1990], broke the Communist Party’s monopoly on political power in Ukraine. The parliament that met in mid-May had a substantial democratic bloc that, with the defection of numerous communist deputies from strict party discipline on particular issues, reduced the CPU’s core majority to 239 of the 450 members. Changes in the political leadership proceeded rapidly and culminated in the parliament’s election of the recent CPU secretary for ideology, Leonid Kravchuk, as its chairman. On July 16 sovereignty (though not yet independence) was claimed in the name of the “people of Ukraine”—the entirety of Ukraine’s resident population without regard to nationality or ethnicity; the declaration marked the onset of a gradual convergence of views on key issues between the communist majority and the democratic opposition, whose agenda was increasingly adopted by the pragmatic Kravchuk.Based on Delany’s timeline, it seemed the answer to whether she lived under communist or socialist rule is that it was communist in practice and socialist largely in name.That was almost 30 years ago — is modern universal healthcare as bad as the post says it is?Universal healthcare coverage is one of the biggest — if not the most prominent — platform plank and issue of debate in the 2020 Democratic primary. Delany’s post painted a deeply unpleasant picture of “government controlled healthcare,” in which everyday people lack access to necessary treatment and medications, and in which “free healthcare” is “never free.”In the context of American political opinions, Delany’s is certainly valid in as much as many people oppose the introduction of “Medicare for All.” Many other Americans strongly support such a program, with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren among candidates advocating for some form of universal healthcare.Outside the realm of opinion, there are certain inarguable facts when it comes to universal healthcare and the developed world. The first is that of 33 developed nations on Earth, 32 have some form of universal healthcare. The United States is unique among them in lacking a system like it.As noted in previous fact checks about Medicare for All, a December 2019 video from the United Kingdom, in which British people on the street react to questions and answers about the cost of healthcare for American citizens, spread virally:Ambulance call out? $2,500. Childbirth? $30,000.Our NHS is not for sale, @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/q9z4r6Ni6g— PoliticsJOE (@PoliticsJOE_UK) December 3, 2019The Guardian‘s coverage of the video explains:In the UK, there are no questions asked about whether you would prefer the better, more expensive surgery, or the cheaper one – the best option is simply chosen for you; something that public health officials spend hours poring over, in publicly available cost-benefit analyses. And it costs the UK government less than the US – the UK government pays about half what the US does towards healthcare – with better outcomes than the US to boot.Meanwhile, in the US, the average consumer spends more than $10,000 a year on healthcare, and 52% of all debt collection actions include unpaid medical bills.A significant number of Americans go broke trying to pay off their medical debt – 530,000 bankruptcies a year are because of debt accrued due to a medical illness. Outside of going broke is a nasty reality – about 45,000 Americans die annually because they don’t have healthcare. As one Brit in the video succinctly puts it: “Man, so if you’re poor, you’re dead.”Back in 2016, a former Finland resident who moved to the United States penned a piece for The Atlantic about limited American understanding of “Nordic socialism,” writing:A Nordic person myself, I left my native Finland seven years ago and moved to the U.S. Although I’m now a U.S. citizen, I hear these kinds of comments from Americans all the time — at cocktail parties and at panel discussions, in town hall meetings and on the opinion pages. Nordic countries are the way they are, I’m told, because they are small, homogeneous “nanny states” where everyone looks alike, thinks alike, and belongs to a big extended family. This, in turn, makes Nordic citizens willing to sacrifice their own interests to help their neighbors. Americans don’t feel a similar kinship with other Americans, I’m told, and thus will never sacrifice their own interests for the common good. What this is mostly taken to mean is that Americans will never, ever agree to pay higher taxes to provide universal social services, as the Nordics do. Thus Bernie Sanders, and anyone else in the U.S. who brings up Nordic countries as an example for America, is living in la-la land.But this vision of homogenous, altruistic Nordic lands is mostly a fantasy. The choices Nordic countries have made have little to do with altruism or kinship. Rather, Nordic people have made their decisions out of self-interest. Nordic nations offer their citizens—all of their citizens, but especially the middle class—high-quality services that save people a lot of money, time, and trouble. This is what Americans fail to understand: My taxes in Finland were used to pay for top-notch services for me.When I lived in Finland, as a middle-class citizen I paid income tax at a rate not much higher than what I now pay in New York City. True, Nordic countries have somewhat higher taxes on consumption than America, and overall they collect more tax revenue than the U.S. currently does—partly from the wealthy. But, as an example, here are some of the things I personally got in return for my taxes: nearly a full year of paid parental leave for each child (plus a smaller monthly payment for an additional two years, were I or the father of my child to choose to stay at home with our child longer), affordable high-quality day care for my kids, one of the world’s best public K-12 education systems, free college, free graduate school, nearly free world-class health care delivered through a pretty decent universal network, and a full year of partially paid disability leave. As far as I was concerned, it was a great deal. And it was equally beneficial for others. From a Nordic perspective, nothing Bernie Sanders is proposing is the least bit crazy—pretty much all Nordic countries have had policies like these in place for years.A British doctor writing for TIME in October 2019 raised some of the same points, and in doing so challenged the claim doctors in universal healthcare systems are unhappy and underpaid:Whether you have heartburn or a heart attack, whether your baby has meningitis or you need a liver transplant, whether you’re walking down the road to your family doctor or an air ambulance is scraping you off the side of a mountain to get you to a trauma center, no one will ask for your credit card or insurance details — it’s already been paid for through your taxes. No questions. No exceptions. No deductibles. No weighing up whether it’s more important that your children eat than you investigate your shortness of breath. And if the very worst happens, your family won’t be left with a bill for your death.With that in mind, I find it utterly baffling that universal healthcare is such a political hot potato on your side of the pond. I hear arguments that your government can’t afford it, even though current UK spending on healthcare is $4,000 per head compared with your $10,000. I even hear untrue, outrageous, outlandish statements about “death panels” from political fear mongers, presumably with financial skin in the game, that are utterly alien to anyone with experience in the NHS system. And yet conversely, Gallup reports for the fifth year in a row that the availability and affordability of healthcare is the single biggest concern for Americans, with 55% worrying about it “a great deal.” Even the most conservative estimates of the number of Americans declaring bankruptcy due to health care bills sits in the hundreds of thousands per year. In the UK, you can count the number of health care bankruptcies on the fingers of, at worst, a hand.So what’s true and what’s false about Delany’s post?As we mentioned, Delany’s post was a mixed bag of opinion, assertion, and anecdote. We don’t know if the conversation occurred as described or at all, and it was possible the “angry Bernie Sanders supporter” was part of a parable about the evils of communism-cum-socialism.It appeared that Delany — the wife part of the husband and wife shared Facebook account — met and married an American man in or around 1989, and lived in Ukraine at the time. Based on modern political history, Ukraine was ruled by the Communist Party of Ukraine until 1991.Delany’s claims about the risks of universal healthcare were predicated on her own supplied experiences 30 years earlier in a failing communist state on the verge of collapse. Factually, 32 of 33 developed nations maintain some form of “socialized medicine,” systems their citizens are loathe to surrender (even if they are underfunded or overburdened). Reasonably, the most reasonable comparison for single-payer healthcare would be made with systems like the UK’s NHS, not the USSR’s long-defunct systems. On a whole, the post was presented out of context; for that reason.
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14030
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On his support for Donald Trump.
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Dating back to August 2015, when he himself was a candidate for president, Walker said he would support the Republican presidential nominee. And several times over the next 10 months, Walker repeated that pledge -- including as it was becoming clear that Trump would be the presumptive nominee. But on two consecutive days in June 2016, Walker shifted somewhat. Questioned about Trump by reporters, Walker would not state his support as he had in the past. Instead, while criticizing Trump, he emphasized that Trump is not yet the nominee. Our definition of Half Flip is a partial change of position or inconsistent statements. That fits here. Recently on our Flip-O-Meter: No Flip -- to GOP U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy for his position on how to respond to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis Half Flip -- to Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan on his support of Trump Full Flop -- to Wisconsin Democratic Party chairwoman Martha Laning on casting her superdelegate vote for the Democratic presidential nominee.
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mixture
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Elections, Wisconsin, Scott Walker,
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"On the same day chatter surfaced about how Scott Walker could still become the Republican presidential nominee, the Wisconsin governor made comments that raised questions about his support of the party’s presumptive nominee, Donald Trump. Walker’s comments on June 8, 2016 prompted headlines such as these: Politico: ""Walker backs away from endorsing Trump"" Wall Street Journal: ""Scott Walker withholds Donald Trump endorsement"" So, barely a month before the GOP nominates its candidate for president, has Walker changed his position on Trump? Cue the Flip-O-Meter, which determines whether a politician has changed positions on an issue. The backdrop Talk among Republicans about replacing Trump grew in the wake of racial remarks Trump made about a Hispanic federal judge in California who is handling two lawsuits filed in against Trump University. Yahoo reported that Walker ""has been increasingly mentioned as a possible replacement."" And the conservative website RedState said there were rumors of Walker being open to accepting the nomination at the convention. Walker dismissed the talk. But the new reports on Walker’s viability as a Trump replacement were fueled by Walker’s own comments the same day. So, let’s look at where Walker has been on Trump, starting with when Walker himself was still in the race. Walker’s early comments Walker launched his presidential bid in July 2015 and was quickly considered a frontrunner, even in the crowded GOP field. The next month, he was on stage with Trump and eight other hopefuls for the first GOP debate, held in Cleveland. The candidates were asked to raise their hand if they would not pledge to back the party's nominee and swear off an independent run. Trump was the only one to raise his hand. In other words, Walker pledged he would back the GOP nominee. Of course, at that stage, Walker himself hoped to be his party’s choice, and it would be months before Trump became the presumptive nominee. Walker ended his presidential bid in September 2015, amid campaign cash-flow problems and a drop in the polls, Ahead of Wisconsin’s primary in April 2016, Trump was harshly critical of Walker, who endorsed U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas. Soon questions turned to whether Walker would back Trump. April 20, 2016: Walker told reporters: ""I will support the Republican running against Hillary Clinton in the fall -- whoever that is."" Asked if he would do so even if Trump were the nominee, he said: ""Yeah. To me, I think it's preferable to have a Republican nominee over Hillary Clinton."" May 4, 2016: Alluding to the first GOP debate, Walker told reporters the day after Cruz dropped out: ""I stood on the stage in Cleveland and said that I would support the nominee. I’ve said it repeatedly since then and I’ll be supporting the Republican nominee once that’s officially set at the convention against Hillary Clinton."" June 6, 2016: The Post-Crescent in Appleton reported that Walker said he would have no problem supporting Trump even though ""he wasn't my first choice."" He said in the interview: ""There are issues, not the least of which lately with his statements about the judge he commented on, which I just fundamentally disagree with him on, so just saying that I'll support him over Hillary Clinton doesn't mean I embrace all the things that he says or all the ways that he says it."" So, Walker initially declared he would support the Republican nominee. Then, months later, as it became clear that Trump was closing in on the nomination, Walker repeatedly said he would support Trump -- though on at least one occasion he said his support once the GOP nomination becomes ""officially set."" Now to the Walker comments that made national headlines. Walker’s latest comments June 7, 2016: The Wall Street Journal headline about Walker withholding a Trump endorsement was based on comments Walker made to reporters that were highlighted in a report by WKOW-TV in Madison. Walker denounced Trump’s comments about the judge and said he wanted Trump himself to renounce them, according to a reporter’s recording of Walker’s remarks. A reporter then asked: ""Would that influence your decision at all on whether or not to back him as the nominee?"" Walker said: ""Again, we’ll watch and see what happens. We’ll be watching closely. There’s still quite some time until he’s even the nominee, so we’ll have to wait and see."" Asked what would cause him not to support Trump, Walker said: ""Well, again, he’s not yet the nominee. Officially that won't happen until the middle of July, and so for me that's kind of the time frame on that. In particular, I want to make sure that he renounces what he says -- at least in regards to this judge."" Walker added: ""I think for a lot of us, not just Republicans in general, we want to see what he’s going to do between now and the time the convention comes. The sad fact is -- it’s just sad in American that we have such poor choices right now."" June 8, 2016: After another question-and-answer session with reporters, the Associated Press reported, that Walker was wavering in his support of Trump and that he dodged a question on the issue. Walker was asked, according to a reporter's recording of that exchange: ""Do you still support him (Trump) as the nominee?"" Walker began his response by saying: ""Well, right now I'm focused on calling out, as I have the last couple days, the fact that I believe what he said about the judge is wrong -- not as a Republican, not as a political person, but I think it's just wrong as an American."" Walker went on at some length criticizing Trump’s remarks, ending by saying: ""He needs to make it abundantly clear to the American people that he does not embrace those ideas. And I think it’s particularly important between now and the convention that he does that."" Our rating Dating back to August 2015, when he himself was a candidate for president, Walker said he would support the Republican presidential nominee. And several times over the next 10 months, Walker repeated that pledge -- including as it was becoming clear that Trump would be the presumptive nominee. But on two consecutive days in June 2016, Walker shifted somewhat. Questioned about Trump by reporters, Walker would not state his support as he had in the past. Instead, while criticizing Trump, he emphasized that Trump is not yet the nominee. Our definition of is a partial change of position or inconsistent statements. That fits here. Recently on our Flip-O-Meter: No Flip -- to GOP U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy for his position on how to respond to Puerto Rico’s debt crisis -- to Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan on his support of Trump Full Flop -- to Wisconsin Democratic Party chairwoman Martha Laning on casting her superdelegate vote for the Democratic presidential nominee."
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7928
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"EU Green Deal ""not over"" despite coronavirus, industry commissioner says."
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The European Union’s “Green Deal” plan to fully decarburize its economy by 2050 will go ahead despite the coronavirus pandemic, the bloc’s industry chief said on Wednesday, as governments shift their attention to combating the disease.
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true
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Environment
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Some campaigners fear governments will shy away from long-term efforts to curb emissions or lift the carbon costs they impose on polluting sectors in a bid to relieve firms hit hardest by the outbreak. “The Green Deal is not over ... We should deliver and we should work on greener solutions,” Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for the 27-country EU’s internal market, told an online event. Coronavirus will inevitably change these discussions, but this should not come at the expense of decarbonisation, he said. European companies were reviewing their operations to address issues including carbon costs before coronavirus disrupted supply chains, Breton said. Only nine days ago, the EU unveiled a plan to steer industry towards the bloc’s goal to cut net greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 — a target that will require huge investments to retrofit factories with low-carbon equipment. Since then, companies including ArcelorMittal (MT.AS), the world’s largest steelmaker, and German carmaker Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE), have said they will scale back production in Europe amid supply chain disruptions and sinking demand. Lower production means Europe’s industrial emissions are expected to fall by more than 20 million tonnes of carbon dioxide this year, consultancy Energy Aspects told Reuters, revising a previous forecast from Monday that industrial emissions would dip by 10 million-20 million tonnes this year. EU carbon prices have tumbled amid the pandemic, reducing the price of pollution permits firms must buy to cover their emissions. But the drop in carbon prices could also mean less funding is available to help industrial sectors decarburize. One source of support is an EU innovation fund made up of revenues from carbon allowance auctions in the coming years that was valued at some 11 billion euros ($11.76 billion) at the end of 2019, when the EU carbon price was roughly 25 euros per tonne of carbon dioxide. Carbon prices are now nearer 16 euros per tonne, putting the fund’s value at roughly 7 billion euros.
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1996
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McDonald's grimaces at Happy Meal lawsuit.
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A lawsuit seeking to stop McDonald’s Corp from offering toys with Happy Meals must be dismissed because parents can always choose not to buy the meals for their children, the hamburger giant said in a court filing late on Monday.
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true
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Health News
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"Two McDonald's Happy Meal with toy watches fashioned after the characters Donkey and Puss in Boots from the movie ""Shrek Forever After"" are pictured in Los Angeles June 22, 2010. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni The lawsuit accuses McDonald’s of unfairly using toys to lure children into its restaurants. The plaintiff, Monet Parham, a Sacramento, California mother of two, charges that the company’s advertising violates California consumer protection laws. The Happy Meal has been a huge hit for McDonald’s — making the company one of the world’s largest toy distributors — and spawning me-too offerings at most other fast-food chains. One recent and very successful Happy Meal promotion was a tie-in with the popular DreamWorks Animation film “Shrek Forever After.” The meals included toy watches fashioned after the movie’s characters Shrek, Donkey, Gingy and Puss in Boots. McDonald’s use of Happy Meal toys also has come under fire from public health officials, parents and lawmakers who are frustrated with rising childhood obesity rates and weak anti-obesity efforts from restaurant operators, which are largely self-regulated. Parham, who filed suit last December, is represented by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nutrition advocacy group. In the lawsuit, Parham admits she frequently tells her children “no” when they ask for Happy Meals, McDonald’s said in Monday’s court filing. “She was not misled by any advertising, nor did she rely on any information from McDonald’s,” said the company. McDonald’s had the suit moved to federal court, but the plaintiff plans to fight to get the case back before a California state judge. Should Parham’s lawsuit be allowed, it would spawn a host of other problematic legal proceedings, McDonald’s said. “In short, advertising to children any product that a child asks for but the parent does not want to buy would constitute an unfair trade practice,” the company said. Stephen Gardner, litigation attorney for the public interest group, said McDonald’s is using a cookie cutter approach to dismissing the lawsuit, with one key difference. “What is different about this motion is that McDonald’s has chosen to blame the victim — saying that it’s all Monet Parham’s fault if she doesn’t force her daughter to ignore the onslaught of McDonald’s marketing messages,” Gardner said. “McDonald’s makes a lot of money by going around parents direct to kids, and it wants to continue with that strategy.” Most food companies have pledged not to advertise directly to children, but it is largely up to the industry to police its own actions on that front. Industry also has argued that government attempts to limit advertising crimp free speech protections. The U.S. food industry has successfully fended off obesity-related lawsuits for years, including helping push through state laws that ban obesity-related lawsuits. The proposed class action lawsuit in U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, is Parham v. McDonald’s Corporation et al, 11-511."
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35122
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A vaccine meant for cattle can be used to fight COVID-19.
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Ming Tan, a faculty member of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, told PolitiFact that:
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false
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Medical, COVID-19
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In March 2020, a rumor started to circulate on social media claiming that the world has been using a vaccine for coronavirus on cattle for years, and that the current panic about a growing COVID-19 pandemic was being overblown by the media: However, as of this writing, no vaccine currently exists for the novel coronavirus that causes the COVID-19 disease. The confusion seems to stem from a misunderstanding of the word “coronavirus.” While this word was frequently used in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic to describe the virus that causes the new disease, “coronavirus” is actually a broad term that refers to a group of viruses. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) writes: “Coronaviruses are named for the crown-like spikes on their surface. There are four main sub-groupings of coronaviruses, known as alpha, beta, gamma, and delta. “Human coronaviruses were first identified in the mid-1960s. [There are] seven coronaviruses that can infect people…” The above-displayed photograph does show a real vaccine used to treat bovine coronavirus. This vaccine, however, is not effective in humans or against the new strain of coronavirus that emerged at the end of 2019. This product, called ScourGard 4K, is for the “vaccination of healthy, pregnant cows and heifers as an aid in preventing diarrhea in their calves caused by bovine rotavirus (serotypes G6 and G10), bovine coronavirus, and enterotoxigenic strains of Escherichia coli having the K99 pili adherence factor.”
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26083
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“Six months before the COVID ‘plandemic,’ Bill Gates had negotiated a $100 billion contact tracing deal with (the) Democratic congressman sponsor of bill.”
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There’s no evidence Gates worked with U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush on a $100 billion COVID-19 contact tracing bill months before the COVID-19 outbreak occurred. The bill proposed by Rush would give money not to Gates or his foundation but to organizations that provide COVID-19 testing, contact tracing or other services.
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false
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Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
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"An article shared widely on Facebook claims a COVID-19 conspiracy with this headline: ""Six Months Before The Covid Plandemic, Bill Gates Had Negotiated A $100 Billion Contact Tracing Deal With Democratic Congressman Sponsor Of Bill."" 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.) We could find no evidence to back up the claim. The term ""plandemic"" became widely known in May from a 26-minute conspiracy video called, ""Plandemic: The Hidden Agenda Behind COVID-19."" It was viewed tens of millions of times before YouTube and Facebook removed it. We fact-checked eight of the most misleading claims in the video, which is a deep dive into conspiracy theories about COVID-19, public health and figures such as Gates. The claim we’re checking here is from an article shared from the website of Rangitikei Environmental Health Watch. That article is actually an excerpt of an article by conservative website TruePundit. Both articles cite an interview given by private investigators John Moynihan and Larry Doyle on a TruePundit podcast in which the investigators said that representatives from the Gates Foundation met with U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., in Rwanda, East Africa, in mid August 2019 ""to hash out who would score the windfall from a government contact tracing program."" The article points out that, in May, Rush introduced the $100 billion Testing, Reaching and Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act to fight the coronavirus. Our searches of Google and Nexis turned up no reports of a meeting in Rwanda between Rush and the Gates Foundation. A philanthropic organization interested in issues of global health and education, the Gates Foundation has pledged millions of dollars to companies developing potential novel coronavirus vaccines. But there is no evidence that the foundation stands to profit from these efforts. Moynihan and Doyle previously claimed to have found financial wrongdoing by the Clinton Foundation. But when appearing before a House hearing in December 2018, they refused to submit what they said were 6,000 pages of documents. As we’ve reported, the Trace Act was introduced by Rush in May. It would provide $100 billion in grants in the current fiscal year to faith-based organizations, clinics, medical centers and other organizations that perform testing for COVID–19, do contact tracing or provide services for individuals who are isolating at home. Contact tracing is a process that tasks public health workers with learning as much as they can about whom an infected patient has been in contact with, so they can be notified about their potential exposure. The bill stands a 4% chance of passage, according to a service used by GovTrack.us., which tracks federal legislation. The Gates Foundation sent PolitiFact this response: ""This claim is ."" We didn’t get replies from the two investigators or from Rush. An article shared widely on Facebook claimed: ""Six months before the COVID ‘plandemic,’ Bill Gates had negotiated a $100 billion contact tracing deal with (the) Democratic congressman sponsor of bill."" There is no evidence of Gates collaborating on the bill, which would provide $100 billion to faith-based organizations, clinics, medical centers and other organizations that perform COVID-19 testing, conduct contact tracing or provide services for individuals who are isolating at home."
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27755
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Baby drop off boxes have been installed in Indiana firehouses for parents to anonymously and legally surrender newborns.
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Indiana’s baby drop off boxes are real. The apparatuses are part of long-running efforts to curb baby abandonment deaths as part of what are known as “safe-haven laws.” And while the programs were adopted as early as 1999 in some states, the number of questions we’ve received about baby drop off boxes indicates how little known the programs remain years after the first law was passed.
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true
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Politics Legal, baby drop off box, baby moses laws, fire stations
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On 2 May 2016, a news article about the installation of several baby drop off boxes at Indiana firehouses began circulating on Facebook: The Associated Press reported that all 50 states (including Indiana) long ago since adopted some form of “safe-haven” laws, which allow parents to legally and anonymously surrender an infant at designated locations, such as a fire station. The installation of the boxes was a step toward making use of such laws easier on parties involved: A Safe Haven Baby Box where mothers can drop off unwanted newborns anonymously with emergency help moments away is now available in northeastern Indiana. The padded, climate-controlled container was dedicated Tuesday at the Woodburn Volunteer Fire Department about 15 miles east of Fort Wayne near the Ohio state line. It’s on an exterior wall of the fire station. The Knights of Columbus of Indiana will pay for the first 100 baby boxes, which cost $1,500 to $2,000 each, said Monica Kelsey, a volunteer with the fire department who has been advocating for baby boxes in Indiana for several years … The boxes are equipped with a security system that notifies emergency personnel when a baby is dropped off. Emergency responders can get to the child within minutes. All 50 states and the District of Columbia have safe haven laws, which allow unharmed newborns to be surrendered without fear of prosecution. Indiana’s law allows mothers to drop off newborns at police stations, fire stations and hospitals. In an era when preposterous claims constantly circulate on social media, many people who may be unfamiliar with safe-haven laws may be skeptical that they exist. However, as the article stated, under such laws the parent of a newborn can anonymously place the infant in the padded, climate controlled box. Closing the door then locks the apparatus and alerts firefighters to the presence of a surrendered infant. The “safe-haven laws” (also called “Baby Moses laws”) from which the baby drop-off boxes stemmed are not a new legal development. Texas was the first state to enact such a policy in 1999, after a string of fatal infant abandonments. At that time, law enforcement agents struggled to address a persistent and troubling spate of newborn deaths after such abandonments: It sounds bizarre and horrific: An educated, middle-class young woman denies her pregnancy, covertly delivers without medical help, then disposes of the baby. Experts say such behavior is so rare that it simply has not been formally studied. But the discoveries of three abandoned dead babies over the last seven months suggests the phenomenon may not be so rare – and that it cries for more scrutiny. In the latest case, an 18-year-old from Ocean County, N.J., allegedly gave birth on Friday during her high school prom, then put the baby in the trash. In many ways, the case echoes that of Melissa Seaner, 17, of Bucks County, charged with concealing the death of her baby over Memorial Day weekend, and Amy Grossberg, 18, of Wyckoff, N.J., charged with murdering her newborn in November. How could a young woman who presumably has the knowledge and resources to explore abortion or adoption wind up throwing away an infant? Experts – discussing the phenomenon in general, not the three recent cases – say they can only speculate, because no one really knows. More than 1,000 children die of abuse and neglect each year, according to the National Committee to Prevent Child Abuse in Chicago; experts guess that about a quarter of these children die on the day they are born. But typically, women who abandon or dispose of their babies have few resources. “It is not unusual for a young, deprived, frightened girl to deny her pregnancy until the baby is born,” said Billie F. Corder, a clinical psychologist at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine. “But it does not happen that often” among young women with greater means. Growing concern over the unknown numbers of mothers who abandoned their newborns led to formal research by the state of Nevada in 2000 [PDF]. That report cited increased media attention as a factor in the development of what would become nationwide safe-haven laws: Over the past few years, the news media has reported on an increasing number of newborn infants who have been abandoned within hours of birth. Many of these children are found in disturbing places, such as garbage dumpsters and public toilets. Often, these infants have died before they are located. For example, three men fishing in the Mississippi River found one newborn in Minnesota. The baby girl, whose umbilical cord was still attached, was found floating in icy waters. Even the State of Nevada is not exempt from these horrific news stories. In Humboldt County, two teenagers were prosecuted for running over their newborn infant with a pickup truck and burying the child near an Interstate 80 billboard sign. Although individual cases of abandoned infants receive frequent media attention, there are no solid statistics measuring the extent of infant abandonment. An informal search of newspaper articles on this issue was conducted by the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). The DHHS search found reports of 105 infants abandoned in public places in 1998; 33 of those infants were found dead. In 1991, there were 65 reported cases of abandoned infants and eight deaths. It is important to remember that figures were not collected for the years between 1991 and 1998, and this “increase” cannot be interpreted as a trend. Instead, it may simply reflect heightened media interest in the issue. Very little information exists on the individuals who abandon newborn children. Research on neonaticide (the killing of a newborn on the day of its birth), as well as media reports of public abandonment, indicate that individuals who abandon newborns or commit acts of neonaticide are predominately very young, unmarried, physically healthy young women. By 2000, states that had adopted similar measures generally stipulated an age range (between three and thirty days after birth) and specific circumstances under which infants could be anonymously surrendered. By 2013, the U.S Department of Health and Human Services reported [PDF] that laws were adopted across all 50 states, although the eligibility involved parties varied by region: To date, all 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico have enacted safe haven legislation. The focus of these laws is protecting newborns. In approximately 12 States and Puerto Rico, infants who are 72 hours old or younger may be relinquished to a designated safe haven. Approximately 19 States accept infants up to 1 month old. Other States specify varying age limits in their statutes. In most States with safe haven laws, either parent may surrender his or her baby to a safe haven. In four States and Puerto Rico, only the mother may relinquish her infant. Idaho specifies that only a custodial parent may surrender an infant. In the District of Columbia, an infant may be relinquished only by a custodial parent who is a resident of the District. In approximately 11 States, an agent of the parent (someone who has the parent’s approval) may take a baby to a safe haven for a parent. In California, Kansas, and New York, if the person relinquishing the infant is someone other than a parent, he or she must have legal custody of the child. Eight States do not specify the person who may relinquish an infant. Early data on the success of such laws was promising. New York adopted its “Abandoned Infant Protection Act” in 2000, and public promotion of the program was credited with saving multiple babies’ lives across several states later that year: … anecdotal evidence suggests that where safe haven laws are heavily publicized, they are working the way their proponents said they would: Women are coming forward and bringing in their newborns. In Texas, for example, the law languished for almost a year until state Land Commissioner David Dewhurst spent more than $200,000 of his own money for public service announcements, informational kiosks at shopping malls and bus stop ads. In the last two months, two women have brought newborns to Texas hospitals. And in New York, which enacted a safe haven law in July, two babies have been turned in, including one recently on Long Island, which an organization has blanketed with posters urging pregnant women to call its crisis hotline instead of abandoning their newborns. Two weeks after New Jersey enacted its Safe Haven Infant Protection Act, a 4-day-old baby was turned in. In Alabama the tally is six, most of them in Mobile, which has had a highly publicized program since 1998. “Legislation is one thing, but implementation is a completely different animal,” said Jodi Brooks, the Mobile reporter who started A Secret Safe Place for Newborns. “Anyone can pass a law. But until you tell people about the program, it’s nothing.” Other jurisdictions have started imitating Mobile’s formula of taking out ads, distributing thousands of brochures at schools and clinics, and training hospital staff how to handle abandoned newborns. No one can say if infant abandonment is increasing or if the incidents are just receiving more publicity. A study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found 105 infants abandoned in “public places” in 1998, including 33 who were dead. In 1991, the only other recent year for which figures were compiled, 65 infants were found abandoned in public places, eight of them dead. A skeptical 2007 New York Times article said data on how effective the laws might actually be was weak, but one advocate said that hundreds of babies were legally surrendered nationwide after the laws became commonplace: But proponents say that if even one baby is saved, the laws have served their purpose. Dawn Geras, president of the Save Abandoned Babies Foundation of Illinois, said the number of babies illegally abandoned and found dead has been decreasing in tandem with increased awareness of safe-haven laws. “I think it does work when people know about it,” Ms. Geras said. She said 889 babies had been safely relinquished nationwide, according to her records, since the first safe-haven law was enacted in Texas in 1999. By 2013, that number had climbed significantly: Since 1999, 2,138 children have been relinquished nationwide under the Baby Safe Haven laws. Florida accounts for nearly 10 percent of that total, with 202 children left at safe havens around the state since 2000. Illinois has had 86 children left at safe havens since 2001. In the 12 years Arizona’s law has been in effect, 24 children have been left at safe havens. However, well more than a decade after the laws began going into effect, supporters said lack of knowledge about the programs made them less effective: [A] 16-year-old Mesa mother was arrested on suspicion of attempted second-degree murder and child abuse. She could face at least seven years in prison if prosecutors decide to charge her as an adult. It is not known whether the girl was aware of Arizona’s Baby Safe Haven law. But if she attended a school in the Mesa Public Schools district, or just about any school in the Phoenix area, chances are slim that she ever received any information about the law in a classroom or nurse’s office. Mesa schools, like most others, are silent on the issue. “We don’t have anything at all in place for communicating or not communicating about them,” said Helen Hollands, a district spokeswoman. “There’s nothing there.” And the entire situation — a pregnant teen living seven doors down from a fire station, less than a mile from a hospital, and in a school district and state that are predominantly silent about a law that could have ensured a healthy beginning for her baby and saved the girl from a potential prison sentence — exemplifies the struggles in raising awareness about the 12-year-old law, said Heather Burner, head of the Arizona Safe Baby Haven Foundation.
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36979
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Dr. Ben Carson has had his medical license revoked in all 50 states after making “brainless comments” on the campaign trail in his pursuit of the GOP presidential nomination.
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Dr. Ben Carson Loses Medical License Because of “Brainless Comments”
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false
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Humorous, Politics
|
False reports that Dr. Ben Carson had lost his medical license because of comments that he made on the campaign trail have been fueled by a satirical story published by the Huffington Post. The story appeared under the headline, “Ben Carson Loses Brain Surgeon License After Making Numerous Brainless Comments,” had been shared on social media sites more than 17,000 times within days of its publication: The Medical Boards for all 50 States in the Union announced today that they have revoked Ben Carson’s medical license and will no longer allow him to operate as a brain surgeon any where in the U.S. And they cited as their reason Carson’s mental and intellectual challenges — otherwise known as the propensity to sound like a total and utter nutcase. In a joint statement, the Medical Boards said: We have been increasingly concerned about the gibberish emanating from Mr. Carson’s cerebrum. We cite by way of example his belief that the holocaust could have been prevented by armed German citizens, that straight people go into prison and come out gay, and that Obamacare is the worse thing to happen to the country since slavery. We are therefore suspending his medical license in any state where he is qualified to practice. And should he choose to come out of retirement and re-apply for credentials, we will not allow him to operate on people’s cerebrums, or indeed cerebullums, limbic systems and brain stems, until he can demonstrate that his own are in fully working order.” The story appeared in the “comedy” section of the Huffington Post website, but that was lost on many who followed a direct link to the story and were unaware that it was published as political satire. But, in reality, the scenario that the (fake) news report outlines for Ben Carson to lose his medical license isn’t possible. State licensing boards don’t decide who can perform brain surgery — individual hospitals do, according to a CATO Institute report: …In the United States, state licensing boards do not decide who actually conducts brain surgery. Medical licensing is not specialty-specific; licenses are given to graduates of medical school who have passed a comprehensive exam. They are not evaluated for specialty-related training, skills, or experience. Instead of government-sanctioned licensing boards, hospitals decide who may practice neurosurgery. Members of a hospital’s medical staff credential and privilege medical professionals, determining exactly what an individual may do. They verify and evaluate the education, skills, experience, malpractice history, and competency of each individual medical professional before the individual is granted the right to perform specific tasks. Health maintenance organizations go through much the same procedure, verifying a wide range of background information when they establish networks or panels of physicians from whom patients may seek care. They do this because they might be held liable for a mistake made by a credentialed care provider, and because their reputations matter… So, even if medical boards in all 50 states wanted to revoke Ben Carson’s medical license to perform brain surgeries (which they don’t), they wouldn’t be able to.
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6066
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DC psychiatric hospital to go another week without water.
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Officials say a public psychiatric hospital in the nation’s capital may go another week without drinking water.
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true
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Health, General News, Legionnaires disease
|
The district’s deputy mayor for health and human services, Wayne Turnage, tells The Washington Post that St. Elizabeths Hospital’s water service may not be restored until late next week. Repairs were expected to finish this Friday. The bacteria that can cause Legionnaires’ disease was found in the system during a routine test last month. About 700 staffers and 273 patients at the District-owned facility have since relied on bottled water and running water substitutes such as wipes and portable showers. The lack of potable water also means the hospital’s food service is being outsourced. Officials say no one has shown any symptoms related to the bacteria first reported on by the Washington City Paper. ___ Information from: The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com
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11099
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Video games improve brain connections in multiple sclerosis patients
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This release describes a comparative study in a very small number of patients with MS who either used a video game program or not. The research study reports that the control group received no comparative treatment during the 8-week study period. The study reports changes in brain imaging and test scores that suggest benefit at the end of the study period. While encouraging, the release alludes to the need for considerable additional studies. We found that the release ignored some criteria we consider important, including cost, harms, alternative therapies and acknowledgement of the study funders or any potential conflict of interest. It would have been helpful for the release to emphasize more clearly what this study doesn’t do and next steps needed before this is something that patients with MS, who may be desperate for new therapies, should embrace. MS is a degenerative brain disease that often affects individuals in the prime of life. For some, the course may be mild and managed with current therapy. However, for others it is a terrifying disease with rapid declines in function that can come without warning and only partially be reversed with treatment. In this context, therapies that help “train” the brain to function better within the limits of the disease make sense. And there are a range of rehabilitative programs that are available to MS patients and it is in this context that any new treatments, such as video game training should be considered. If proven effective, this approach of using a home-based, readily available video game/training program might improve the quality of life for MS patients whose prospects for improvement are often slim. However, the size of the study population is far too small to extrapolate findings to MS patients overall, and neither the release nor the study itself demonstrate an actual clinical improvement in these patients, although the lead paragraph of the release suggests that such is the case.
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mixture
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Association/Society news release,Multiple Sclerosis
|
The release makes no mention of the cost of this video game/training program although that would be a key immediate question in the minds of both MS patients and their families. Moreover, this cost may not be covered by health insurance whereas other forms of cognitive training, for example performed by occupational therapist, may be. The release also fails to mention the cost of other equipment required to play the video game. Together, the game and player can cost hundreds of dollars, depending on the model purchased, and while that cost may not be overly prohibitive, readers deserve to know it when considering the value of this study’s information. The release says that the research showed “significant increases in thalamic functional connectivity” but fails to quantify the extent of those increases. Nor does it show that increased connectivity improves the patients’ quality of life, although it certainly suggests that outcome. More important for patients, the release states, “The modifications in functional connectivity shown in the video game group after training corresponded to significant improvements in test scores assessing sustained attention and executive function…” This improvement is not quantified, nor is it put into a perspective where the patient can know what this may or may not mean in terms of life functioning (see quality of evidence section). While there are no obvious harms that would come from playing the video game/training program used in the study we think addressing harms is applicable for this news release, and there was no mention. It is possible that focusing on training in one part of brain function may lead to lack of attention in other parts, and this imbalance may result in relative gains and losses in brain activity that may have negative impacts in certain cognitive or functional areas. It may also be worth noting that harm may come from overuse. In a controlled setting like this study, overuse may be preventable. But what if this was available at home and the person could use it 24/7? The news release adequately frames the trial and its findings and describes how outcomes were measured through cognitive and imaging tests. But the release could have gone further in providing the specific outcome data, which we addressed in the benefits section above. This was a very small study using only two dozen patients, half of which were controls. While the release states that brain scans showed increased connectivity in game-playing patients, it fails to offer evidence of improvements in the patients’ disease or in their ability to cope with it. The combination in the release of information about the incurable disease of MS, plus the appeal of video games potentially playing a therapeutic role, makes this a release that should trigger broad interest, but that does not seem to reach the level of disease-mongering. The release doesn’t share any information on how the research was funded, while in fairness, neither does the original research paper. Neither does it discuss any potential conflict of interest, although the research paper suggests there is none. Given the mention of the use of a commercial game, information about funding and conflict of interest is relevant. The release fails to mention any alternatives to the use of the video game/training program which might produce equivalent improvement in connectivity within this region of the brain. As previously mentioned, there are other forms of therapy for patients with MS and it isn’t clear how this new therapy compares. At least a mention of this would have been appropriate. The last line of the release says this new treatment could be combined with existing rehabilitation therapy, but we think this is too little, too late. The release does identify the specific video game used in the study and its manufacturer, Nintendo, allowing readers to do a quick web search showing both it and accompanying equipment are readily available on the market. A study showing that a video game used regularly in a home environment might improve the condition of MS patients, if confirmed, is certainly novel enough to warrant a news release, although the lack of substantive findings from the research weaken its value to readers. The release does not appear to use unjustifiable language.
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1090
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Brazil's Bolsonaro shocked by high number of penis amputations.
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Brazil’s far-right President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday expressed horror over the 1,000 penis amputations that occur each year in the country including those due to a lack of basic hygiene, a figure he called “ridiculous and sad.”
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true
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Health News
|
Speaking with reporters in Brasilia after visiting the Education Ministry, the former army captain despaired at the number and said his government must work with vulnerable men to make them more aware of the dangers of unhygienic behavior. “In Brazil, we have 1,000 penis amputations a year due to a lack of water and soap,” he said. “We have to find a way to get out of the bottom of this hole.” Bolsonaro did not specify the source of the number. A spokeswoman for the Brazilian urology society said the figure is based on official data for penis amputations. The society said the amputations were necessitated by untreatable infections along with cancers and complications from HIV.
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2676
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Ancient brew may reduce gut damage after chemotherapy.
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An ancient Chinese brew may help reduce the intestinal damage caused by chemotherapy given to colon and rectal cancer patients, researchers said on Thursday.
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true
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Health News
|
To meet growing consumer demands, researchers in the field of traditional medicine are trying to prove the efficacy of ancient drugs using Western-style animal tests and human clinical trials. In a paper published in Science Translational Medicine, the researchers said they fed cancerous mice the Chinese brew after the rodents had been treated with irinotecan, a chemotherapy drug known to be toxic for the gut and a cause of diarrhea. “The researchers treated cancerous mice with chemotherapy, which shrank tumors but also caused massive destruction in the intestinal lining of the animals,” they said in a statement. “After a few days of treatment with PHY906, the medicine restored the damaged intestinal linings in the mice.” PHY906 is the laboratory formulation of a 1,800-year-old Chinese formula containing peonies, a purple flower called skullcap, licorice and fruit from a buckthorn tree. Called Huang Qin Tang, the brew has been used for a long time to treat diarrhea, nausea and vomiting. “Irinotecan reduces tumor growth by itself but if you combine with PHY906, it will further reduce tumor growth,” said lead author Yung-Chi Cheng at the Yale University School of Medicine in the United States. “By itself, PHY906 does not decrease tumor growth, it has to be used in combination with chemotherapy.” Colorectal cancer is the third deadliest cancer, after lung and stomach cancer. It caused 639,000 deaths globally in 2004, according to the World Health Organization. According to the American Cancer Society, the economic impact from colorectal cancer in terms of premature death and disability is US$99 billion annually, excluding direct treatment costs. Cheng said the team has since completed a small clinical trial using the brew on 17 human patients with colorectal cancer. “The results of the clinical phase 1/2A trial looks promising,” Cheng said by telephone, adding that they would be proceeding to a larger clinical trial. Cheng has a stake in PhytoCeutica, Inc., which develops traditional Chinese medicine into drugs for the treatment of cancer and it holds the license for PHY906.
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21476
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(U.S. Reps.) Paul Ryan, Sean Duffy and Reid Ribble are … shutting down town hall meetings, or making their constituents pay to attend them.
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Wisconsin Democratic Party says Republican Representatives Paul Ryan, Sean Duffy and Reid Ribble are making people pay for access to them
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false
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Medicare, Wisconsin, Democratic Party of Wisconsin,
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"For members of Congress, the ""town hall"" meeting with constituents has taken on a new dynamic. The once-routine chats with the folks back home have, at times, become highly charged sessions with large crowds. They’ve become a barometer of sorts of public sentiment -- or the ability of opponents to organize. Democrats faced hostile crowds during the summer of 2009 when the hot topic was the federal health care reform bill. Some of the meetings drew hundreds and saw shouting, pushing and shoving. President Barack Obama decried what he called ""scare tactics"" from opponents. And one left leaning blog ran a list of dozens of town hall meetings believed to be targeted for disruption. Congressional Republicans got a similar reception in the spring and summer of 2011. The frequent topic: Proposals by House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to alter Medicare. Tempers flared and meetings were disrupted, including one in April in Racine where Ryan asked police to remove a protester. So as Congress settled into its August break, the Wisconsin Democratic Party took a shot at some of the state’s GOP members of Congress -- Ryan, and freshmen Sean Duffy and Reid Ribble. In an Aug. 17, 2011 email to supporters, state Democratic Party chairman Mike Tate said: ""Paul Ryan, Sean Duffy and Reid Ribble are so ashamed to own up to their disastrous records that they are shutting down town hall meetings, or making their constituents pay to attend them."" Buried amid the heated, and opinionated, rhetoric -- ""so ashamed to own up to their disastrous records"" -- there’s a powerful factual claim: Are the three ""shutting down"" town hall meetings or ""making constituents pay"" to see them? A Democratic Party spokesman did not respond to an email request for evidence backing up the statement. So we were left to search the public record and to make our own calls. The genesis of the claim appears to be a Politico article from the day before the party’s release that began this way: ""The House Budget Committee chairman isn’t holding any face-to-face open-to-the-public town hall meetings during the recess, but like several of his colleagues he will speak only for residents willing to open their wallets."" Now, what about the party’s claim? The claim starts off on a wrong track: Ribble participated in a forum in Appleton on Aug. 8, 2011, and Duffy held a town hall meeting in Wausau on Aug. 15, 2011. Ryan, meanwhile, held an Aug. 8, 2011 ""telephone town hall meeting"" with residents of Rock County. So, all three had meetings of some variety -- in person or the newfangled phone-in approach -- before the party’s claim was even made. Indeed, members of Congress don’t always have town hall meetings during a recess. And by at least one measure, Republicans were more likely to do so this time than Democrats. A nonpartisan group called No Labels released a survey Aug. 22, 2011 that found ""67.9% of Democrats and 50.8% of Republicans stating they had no town hall meetings scheduled for the recess period."" So what about the second thrust of the Democratic claim: Are the Republicans hiding behind a pay wall? We found three events where money was involved. The events were not fund-raisers for the congressmen, but lunch meetings open to the public that carried a cost. The most highly publicized -- and politicized -- one is an appearance by Ryan on Sept. 6, 2011 sponsored by the Whitnall Park Rotary Club. The club’s website says: ""This is NOT a town hall meeting format, and the $15 fee covers only the lunch and other costs incurred in enabling an open public invitation."" Club officer Gilbert Freen told us the group routinely charges guests to cover the cost of the lunch served at its meetings. The Democrats, some union groups and others view this as outrageous. Citizen Action of Wisconsin says it is organizing buses to bring people to protest Ryan’s appearance. But politicians of all stripes regularly appear at such luncheons. For instance, on Aug. 23, 2011, U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis) spoke to the Rotary Club of Milwaukee. That event was not open to the public -- just to members and their guests, who paid $17.50 each. Numerous other politicians (including Ryan and Moore together in 2009) have appeared at Newsmaker Luncheons sponsored by the Milwaukee Press Club. At those events, which are open to the public, a fee is charged -- for the lunch. Ryan’s office said the Whitnall club meeting was the only event the congressman had scheduled during the August break that involved a charge. We found two other paid events, one each from Ribble and Duffy. Ribble’s office said he participated in the Aug. 8 forum addressing regulation with two other local civic groups. ""I believe it was at lunchtime and there was a cost for the lunch,"" said Ribble spokeswoman Ashley Olson. Duffy participated in one event -- an Aug. 18, 2011 small business forum at the University of Wisconsin-Superior -- where participants were charged $15 for lunch and materials. So, each of the three GOP congressmen singled out had at least one event where a fee was charged. But such appearances are routine tor politicians of both parties, the fee covered lunch and did not go to the congressman. The thrust of the statement, though, was broader still -- that the three were ""shutting down"" town hall meetings and thus the ability to talk to the elected official. Here’s what we found about the summer recess schedule for each when we asked aides, checked public schedules and looked at news accounts: Ryan: Toured various local businesses, held ""multiple hour-long meetings"" with small business owners, Realtors and home builders. In addition to the ""telephone town hall meeting,"" attended the Walworth County Fair, a Boy Scout lunch and a 75th anniversary lunch for Kenosha Beef. Constituents could contact Ryan’s office for an appointment to meet with him in his office, said spokesman Conor Sweeney. Ryan was on vacation in Colorado for part of the month. Ribble: Held a three-hour ""Conversations with your Congressman"" on Aug. 13, 2011 -- 10 minute one-on-one meetings; attended an Aug. 12, 2011 forum on transportation; an Alzheimers Association public input session, and a forum with seniors about Medicare. Duffy: Like many House members with large districts, Duffy maintains a mobile office, and its schedule is listed prominently on the congressman’s web page. Duffy himself is on the bus some, but not all, of the time, said Brandon Moody, chief of staff. Moody said Duffy has spent the entire August break in his northern Wisconsin district. Including the town meeting in Wausau, he held a half dozen coffees and, yes, community town hall meetings. He also visited county fairs and toured area businesses. No fee was charged for any of these events, or for access to the congressman. Our conclusion: The state Democrats say that three Republican congressmen from Wisconsin are shutting down town hall meetings or making constituents pay to attend them. Yet all three had town hall meetings or participated in a forum -- in person, or by phone -- before the statement was made. And one, Duffy, participated in several town hall meetings. In fact, one review showed many members of Congress did not have any town hall meetings -- and Democrats were less likely than Republicans to hold them. What’s more, the party provided no evidence Ryan or the others were not available to constituents during the break. Finally, the assertion that appearing at a Rotary lunch that is open to the public is ""charging constituents"" for access is far off the mark. The party’s claim is not only false, but ridiculously so. It’s ."
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9638
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What Teen Girls Should Eat to Reduce Breast Cancer Risk
|
This story focuses primarily on a May 11 paper published in the BMJ, which reported that eating more fruit (particularly during adolescence) was associated with a decreased risk of breast cancer for women. A healthy diet and breast cancer risk reduction are worthy topics, but the story doesn’t touch on some important points — such as the fact that a previous study in Pediatrics by the same researchers, using the same cohort data, pointed to adolescent dietary fiber intake as a significant factor in reducing breast cancer risk. We also were confused by the data discussion: What does a 25% reduction actually mean? Without absolute numbers, we’re just not sure. As we noted in our story reviews related to the earlier Pediatrics study, the CDC reports that breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in the United States — with more than 224,000 new cases reported in 2012 alone. Research findings that identify new ways to reduce the incidence of breast cancer are newsworthy, particularly when the new health measures may also have significant ancillary health benefits — as is likely the case with consuming a diet high in fruits.
|
mixture
|
breast cancer,fruit and breast cancer risk,limits of observational studies,nutrition
|
Cost was not discussed, and because this is about fruit, we’ll rate this N/A. However, it is worth pointing out that fresh fruit isn’t something that all consumers can take for granted, since it can be expensive and hard to find in areas known as “food deserts.” The story tells readers that women “who reported eating nearly three servings of fruit a day on average [during adolescence] had a 25% lower risk of developing breast cancer than those who ate half a serving of fruit.” However, it’s not clear where that number comes from. And what does that mean in terms of absolute risk? I.e., how likely is someone who ate only half a serving of fruit as a teen to get cancer? The story doesn’t tell us — and that is key. If a story tells readers that eating “nearly three servings of fruit” as a teen means a “25% lower” risk, it needs to say 25% lower than what. There are no significant risks with eating three servings of fruit per day during adolescence, so we’ll rate this not applicable. The story offers a general overview of the study, which analyzed data from the Nurse’s Health Study, but didn’t make at least one key point clear: The adolescent diet data that the study results hinge on were self-reported years after the fact. As the BMJ paper itself notes, “adolescent diet might be misclassified because assessments were done when women were aged 33-52.” And as a related editorial in BMJ notes, “Much more evidence is needed before we can draw conclusions on the reported protective association between adolescent fruit intake and breast cancer risk.” No disease mongering here. No independent sources were included in the article, nor does it tell readers who funded the study. In this case, the work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and the Japan Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association. This one squeaks by, because it also addresses risk factors such as alcohol and red-meat consumption. However, it would have been better to place the work into a broader context of lifestyle factors that influence risk, such as exercise, maintaining a health weight and avoiding tobacco use. Fruit has been around longer than humans have, so we’ll rate this not applicable. The story does note that the study is “among the first” to look at adolescent diet and cancer risk, which is good. But it misses a key point: that this exact same group of researchers, using the same set of data, published a paper in March focused on adolescent diet and breast cancer risk. That paper focused specifically on the role of dietary fiber in reducing breast cancer risk. This story discusses dietary fiber, but does so without the context that would come from discussing (even briefly) the earlier paper. This is a close one, since the story is very similar to a release from BMJ. However, the story does appear to include quotes from an interview with the lead author.
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10599
|
Marrow cells don’t seem to help heart
|
This is a well-written and accurate story about an experimental study to give the drug Neupogen to heart attack patients to cause bone marrow stem cells to rush into the bloodstream in an attempt to regenerate the heart. The story makes clear that the experiment showed no positive effect. Context is provided so that readers can understand where this new study fits into what was already known and not known. Complex outcomes of the intervention (ejection fraction, restenosis, left ventricular infarct size) are explained clearly and simply. The intervention itself was accurately described without hyperbole or hype. It is commendable for providing this level of detail on a negative trial. Side effects of the drug (mostly mild to moderate bone pain) were not noted. The story fits much pertinent information into a 540-word story.
|
true
|
The treatment isn’t available to the general population specifically for this use, so it seems fine that the cost of the drug isn’t noted. No estimate was provided, but differences in outcomes were not significant. It seems appropriate to not quantify these results. The story cites several researchers saying the experiment caused no harms, but there is no comment on bone pain. The story describes this randomized study as the “largest, most rigorous test of the theory that stem cells can be recruited to the site of heart injury.” It also mentions prior studies and describes them as “few, small and inconclusive.” There is no apparent disease-mongering in the story. Mentions sources of information for article and interviews with other researchers. Does not mention funding. Since the story is about an experimental attempt to regenerate heart muscle, there are no good treatment options to discuss. The story did allude to fetal stem cells, although not explicitly. The story makes clear that the drug is “widely used” for another use — “to spur replacement of white blood cells after cancer chemotherapy.” The story makes it clear that this is early research — “part of an explosion in research into the use of stem cells – particularly non-controversial adult stem cells – for cardiac repair.” And it puts into the context of other studies: “Previously, a few small, inconclusive studies suggested that simply mobilizing bone marrow stem cells after a heart attack could be beneficial, presumably because the cells received signals to home in on the injured organ and help heal it.” There is no evidence that this story relied solely or largely on a news release.
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33260
|
Human trafficking rings are using job interviews to lure college students.
|
Although a single account involving human trafficking was reported in Humble, Texas, in 2013, that incident appeared to have involved migrant workers and not college kids recruited for sales jobs.
|
false
|
Crime, human trafficking
|
Warnings about a new ambient threat targeting unwitting victims in day-to-day settings emerged in June 2015, one popular version of which was published to Twitter by the account @TweetLikeAGirl. This warning held that summer job interview ads for receptionists were actually a front for a human trafficking abduction scheme: Girls. I just got a call from a business saying that they needed girls to work this summer as a receptionist for $15 an hour. They wanted me to come in for an interview at 3:15 today so I called my mom and this is what she told me. Recently in Humble, TX there was a girl who got the same type of phone call and when she went in to interview, something felt off so she left and called the sheriffs office. It was a human trafficking place, they take the girls back to interview and give them a bottle of water that is drugged and the girls wake up halfway around the world. So basically if y’all get a phone call offering you a job, hang up and report them. Where @TweetLikeAGirl sourced the message from was unclear, and neither the sender nor the recipient of the depicted text message was identified. That Twitter account is quite popular (with more than 1.3 million followers), however, and is identified in its description as a “parody account.” While some followers may have mistaken the tweet for a first-person tale, it was not: all the content on that particular timeline was aggregated from other sources. The account’s owner likely received an impressive response to the human trafficking warning tweet above, as roughly an hour after posting it he tweeted a similar (false) warning about a shopper’s purported encounter with human traffickers in an Oklahoma Hobby Lobby store. So who is @TweetLikeAGirl, and why was he or she posting so many warnings about human trafficking? A BuzzFeed article published on 6 November 2014 (“Meet the Network of Guys Making Thousands of Dollars Tweeting As ‘Common White Girls'”) identified him as Cameron Asa, a 21-year-old college student from Tennessee and revealed the purpose of Asa’s mix of content: Asa’s new game is keeping his account relevant and relatable — and it’s working. He’s now pulling in pretty massive money. He was a little uncomfortable discussing the amount he makes per retweet, but he said that it can be as high as hundreds of dollars. “Lately I’ve been posting for different apps, and it can range from anywhere from $500 – $1,000 per post — it’s awesome,” Asa said. “I actually did an app tweet last week and I ended up getting the app 20,000 downloads off one tweet.” In a (somewhat amusing) side-note, BuzzFeed paraphrased a fellow Twitter parody account operator who noted that “targeting young girls with an account is a great market to try to tap into.” It seems targeting them to scare them about being targeted by criminals is a lucrative business, too. To wit, Asa shares content that is likely to be re-shared by his audience on Twitter, and urban legends about human trafficking are clearly a big hit. So big, in fact, that his posted warning was almost immediately widely repeated as fact across Twitter that same evening. By 2 June 2014, the claim and attendant form letter arrived on Facebook. A user in Fresno, California, published a status update warning parents that that it was in actuality a front for human trafficking: PARENTS BEWARE OF THIS LETTER.. This letter is being sent to kids for work, but it isn’t for work, it is to get the girls down to this place and drug them and use them for sex trafficking. My 19 yr old received this letter today. And when I showed it to her she told me she had seen this letter online and what it was really about. She didn’t believe it. Until she received a letter herself. PLEASE DO NOT ALLOW YOUR KIDS TO RESPOND TO THIS LETTER!!!! Please share with others to get this out there!!! Similar Facebook posts targeted Vector, a company that typically enlists teenagers to sell fancy knives door-to-door, as a human trafficking front: URGENT A few days ago I reblogged a tumblr post warning about a letter being sent to young women urging them to apply for a job of which they gave no details. This group has been drugging girls that show up for the interview and kidnapping them to be used in sex trafficing. The post I saw was based in California, but today I received the same letter. PLEASE DO NOT RESPOND IF ANY OF YOU GET THIS. This is dangerous and repulsive. As with the earlier text-in-a-tweet, users indeed shared these warnings. And as with several other similar viral claims, a number of factors converged to advance them quickly. The first factor was the influx of college students to their hometowns seeking temporary summer employments as well as the notoriously aggressive recruiting methods of some door-to-door sales companies (who ramp up their efforts to hire college students during summer break). As a result, numerous college kids across the United States received unsolicited job or interview offers at the time of the circulating warning. Many of them (or their parents) arrived at the intuitive conclusion: this is part of the human trafficking scheme we just read about on Facebook! It seemed the breadth of social media couldn’t quite agree upon which opportunities were the riskiest. Many on Twitter believed Cutco Cutlery (operating under the Vector name) was to blame, while others circulated a message implicating book sales company Southwestern Advantage in the kidnapping front ring warning. (Radio station KPSR in Nixa, Missouri, profiled the latter rumor on 4 June 2014 and found it to be without merit.) Door-to-door sales jobs certainly generate a number of online complaints from disgruntled candidates, but those grievances generally comprise bait-and-switch job descriptions and high-pressure interview tactics. A second aggravating factor concerned a persistent misconception about the risk factors involved in human trafficking. Statistics clarifying the frequency with which adults are simply abducted against their will are notoriously hard to pin down; enumerating particular cases correctly defined as “human trafficking” are even harder. However, a lack of corresponding news stories proportional to the rumors is telling: when any adult disappears under suspicious circumstances, the event is typically newsworthy and often widely reported. That’s not to say that individuals (women in particular) are never abducted and trafficked; rather, that the avenues to activities commonly described as human trafficking are far less likely to be (solicited or invitation-based) job interviews than other means associated with the issue. According to the non-governmental anti-trafficking organization the Polaris Project, human trafficking (or sex trafficking) in the United States is often a function of sex work. Sex workers, teen runaways, and immigrants are most likely to be subject to the risk due in part to inherent expectations of intermittent absence or off-the-grid periods for those groups: Sex traffickers may lure their victims with the false promise of a high-paying job. Others promise a romantic relationship, where they first establish an initial period of false love and feigned affection. During this period they offer gifts, compliments, and sexual and physical intimacy, while making elaborate promises of a better life, fast money, and future luxuries. However, the trafficker eventually employs a variety of control tactics, including physical and emotional abuse, sexual assault, confiscation of identification and money, isolation from friends and family, and even renaming victims. U.S. citizens, foreign nationals, women, men, children, and LGBTQ individuals can be victims of sex trafficking. Runaway and homeless youth, victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, war or conflict, or social discrimination are frequently targeted by traffickers. Door-to-door sales warranted a mention by the Polaris Project on a separate page devoted to labor trafficking. However, that context did not involve a drugged bottle of water or one-time job interview, but instead encompassed a range of behaviors associated with longer-term coercive employment practices: Common types of labor trafficking in the United States include people forced to work in homes as domestic servants, farmworkers coerced through violence as they harvest crops, or factory workers held in inhumane conditions. Labor trafficking has also been reported in door-to-door sales crews, carnivals, and health and beauty services … Victims of labor trafficking must frequently work long hours for little to no pay. (Given that Cutco/Vector, the company identified in this warning, screens, hires, and trains contractors in groups, it’s unlikely that people could be abducted or made to disappear during the process without other prospective hires noticing that something unusual appeared to being on.) Finally, a 4 October 2013 article published by Your Houston News referenced Humble, Texas, in a story about human trafficking. That incident did not involve an interview for a door-to-door sales (or any other job), and it pertained to undocumented immigrants: “When the officers arrived at the park, the wrecker driver said he heard a loud pop and then saw the car driving at a high rate of speed with no tire. He followed the car and called us immediately,” Humble Police Department Detective Mike Flynt said. “Once officers arrived at the park, they interviewed the suspects and determined the suspect was transporting several illegal aliens to a meet up location with another group.” Jesse James Castillo, 33, was arrest on a charge of trafficking of a person and was transported as well as two teens and two adults who were in the United States illegally by Homeland Security for further investigation. So while claims of human trafficking fronts were rampant as teens lined up for summer work in June 2015, no substantive (or even flimsy) evidence supported such rumors. It’s true that door-to-door sales jobs have generated online complaints (and even, in rare instances, been linked with labor trafficking), but the bulk of those comments pertained to the nature of the work. We were unable to locate any corresponding reports of drugged beverages supplied to job candidates, nor any disappearances that matched up with sales of knives or books by college kids.
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7976
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British PM Johnson has coronavirus, self-isolates in Downing Street.
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British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has tested positive for the coronavirus and is self-isolating at his Downing Street residence but said he would still lead the government’s response to the accelerating outbreak.
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true
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Health News
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Johnson, 55, experienced mild symptoms on Thursday, a day after he answered questions at a weekly question-and-answer session in parliament’s House of Commons chamber. He received the positive test result at around midnight. “I’ve taken a test. That has come out positive,” Johnson said on Friday in a video statement broadcast on Twitter. “I’ve developed mild symptoms of the coronavirus. That’s to say - a temperature and a persistent cough.” “Be in no doubt that I can continue, thanks to the wizardry of modern technology, to communicate with all my top team to lead the national fightback against coronavirus,” he said. Health minister Matt Hancock, another senior member of the British government’s response, said he had also tested positive and was self-isolating at home with mild symptoms. The government’s top medical adviser also said he had symptoms. Johnson is the first leader of a major power to announce a positive test result for coronavirus. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau went into isolation this month after his wife tested positive for the virus. U.S. President Donald Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have both been tested, so far with negative results. Trump, in remarks at the White House, said he spoke with Johnson on Friday to wish him a speedy recovery. “Before he even said hello he said, ‘we need ventilators,’” Trump said. “I said, ‘wow that’s a big statement.’ Hopefully he’s going to be in good shape,” Trump said. Johnson chaired a government meeting on the coronavirus on Friday morning via teleconference. His designated deputy is foreign minister Dominic Raab. Britain does not have a publicised contingency plan in case senior ministers were incapacitated. Britain has recorded more than 14,500 coronavirus cases and the death toll had risen to 759 as of Thursday afternoon, up by nearly a third in 24 hours. It is the seventh highest official death toll after Italy, Spain, China, Iran, the United States and France. Britain, which has the world’s fifth largest economy, initially took an approach to containing the spread of the disease that was modest in comparison to European countries such as Italy. But Johnson imposed stringent controls after projections showed a quarter of a million people could die. On Monday, he banned Britons from leaving their homes for all non-essential reasons, effectively shutting down large parts of the economy. It was unclear where Johnson was infected or how many staff and ministers would need to isolate themselves. Johnson last appeared at a news conference on Wednesday, flanked by the government’s chief scientific adviser, Patrick Vallance, and England’s Chief Medical Officer, Chris Whitty. The event was closed, with journalists asking questions by video link. A spokesman said that the moment Johnson felt symptoms he took steps to avoid close contact, and ministers would need to self-isolate if they developed symptoms. Whitty said he was experiencing symptoms and would also self-isolate. The official guidance is for people to stand two metres (around six feet) apart to prevent contagion. This was not always adhered to for some of Johnson’s earlier news conferences. Senior minister Michael Gove chaired Friday’s virtual conference alongside public health officials who announced plans to test health workers for the virus and the approval of two new temporary hospitals in Manchester and Birmingham. Johnson will have meals delivered to the door of an apartment at 11 Downing Street, while he self-isolates. “The doors between Number 10 and Number 11 have been closed off to all other staff who work in the building,” a Downing Street spokesman said. Rishi Sunak, who as finance minister works out of Number 11, is not self-isolating, a Treasury source said. Johnson’s office did not say whether the prime minister’s partner, Carrie Symonds, who is pregnant, had been tested. But Johnson’s seven-day quarantine, rather than the 14-day period for infected households, implied she was not with him as he self-isolates. Britons paid tribute to health workers on Thursday evening by clapping and cheering from doorways. Johnson and Sunak took part but came out of separate doors and did not come into close contact. Queen Elizabeth, 93, last saw Johnson on March 11 and she remains in good health, Buckingham Palace said. Their regular audiences have recently conducted by telephone. Prince Charles, the 71-year-old heir to the British throne, tested positive for coronavirus this week and has mild symptoms. He is in good health and self-isolating in Scotland.
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37317
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Reports have swept the Web that two Ebola victims in Liberia awoke from the dead as flesh-eating Ebola zombies and that FEMA is preparing for the Ebola zombie apocalypse. Rampant reports have also alleged that FEMA is quietly setting up Ebola quarantine camps across the U.S.
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FEMA Prepares for Ebola Zombie Apocalypse – Fiction!
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false
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Military, Politics
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The Ebola pandemic in West Africa has quickly grown into a global crisis, but an Ebola zombie apocalypse is not imminent. Internet users in China coined the term “zombie disease” in August 2014, and rumors spread about the virus’ ability to reanimate its victims as flesh-eating zombies. But China’s state-run Zinhua News Agency quickly dispelled rumors of the so-called “zombie disease” sweeping West Africa. “The term — which Baike, a Chinese online encyclopedia similar to Wikipedia, even lists as a synonym for Ebola — appears to arise from the virus’ high fatality rate and the particularly gruesome death it can cause, sometimes with bleeding from the eyes, ears and gums,” according to a version of the story translated by Foreign Policy. Foreign Policy went on to explain that some people in China believed that once people die from Ebola, they can “unexpectedly reawaken, entering into an extremely violent condition in which they bite any moving object, including humans and animals.” The Zinhua News Agency cited an unnamed “expert” who claimed Ebola victims actually grow weaker because they lose so much blood and that zombie reanimation “can only happen in the movies.” But that wasn’t the end of the Ebola zombie eRumor. It came back to life on September 24, 2014, after the New Dawn, an independent newspaper that covers Africa, reported that two women had been “resurrected” after apparently succumbing to the virus in Nimba County. But the article makes no mention of “Ebola zombies,” and it’s apparent that the women likely recovered after they had been presumed dead by villagers. News of the resurrections had “created panic in residents of Hope Village Community and Ganta” who described one of the women as a “ghost who shouldn’t live among them,” the New Dawn reported. But the villagers’ panic can easily be attributed to cultural differences and the extremely contagious nature of Ebola. Nevertheless, reports of the so-called zombie apocalypse were spread by American websites and bloggers. Some of those reports included claims that FEMA was preparing for a zombie apocalypse and/or was setting up Ebola quarantine camps. But accompanying photos that allegedly show FEMA workers “quietly establishing Ebola quarantine centers” across the U.S. are a hoax. The photos were taken in Africa in 2012 and were published by Business Insider. Posted 10/02/14
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6980
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Pirates put Nova on DL with sprained finger, recall Kingham.
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The Pittsburgh Pirates have placed starting pitcher Ivan Nova on the 10-day disabled list with a sprained ring finger on his right hand.
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true
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Baseball, Sports medicine, Nick Kingham, MLB baseball, Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Pirates, Sports
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Nova has struggled in May following a solid start. He is 0-4 with a 7.61 ERA this month. The Pirates diagnosed the injury after Nova gave up five runs, four earned, in a loss to Cincinnati last Thursday. Director of sports medicine Todd Tomczyk says he expects 10 days being enough time for Nova to recover. The Pirates recalled rookie Nick Kingham from Triple-A Indianapolis to start in Nova’s place on Tuesday against the Chicago Cubs. Kingham is 2-1 with a 3.44 ERA in three starts this season. ___ More AP baseball: https://apnews.com/tag/MLBbaseball
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3708
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Symposium on opioid crisis set this week in West Virginia.
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West Virginia University’s School of Public Health is working with partners across the state on a symposium on the opioid epidemic.
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true
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Epidemics, General News, West Virginia, Public health, Opioids
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Assistant Professor Lindsay Allen says the rate of drug overdose deaths involving opioids doubled between 2010 and 2017. Allen says extra effort is needed to find ways to address the problem. The symposium on Tuesday and Wednesday is planned to bring together policy administrators, state legislators and researchers. The meeting is at Stonewall Resort in Roanoke. Cost to attend is $75. Other sponsors include the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine, Marshall University, The Health Plan and the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation.
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28392
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In September 2018, Pope Francis said, in effect, that exposing pedophile priests is Satan's work.
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"What's true: In September 2018, Pope Francis said in a homily that ""the Great Accuser"" (a Biblical name for Satan) was working to ""attack bishops"" and ""uncover their sins"" so as to ""scandalize the people."" Francis delivered the homily at a time when the Vatican hierarchy (including he himself) is facing multiple allegations of covering up sexual abuse. What's false: Pope Francis did not make a general pronouncement about efforts to expose child sexual abuse, but rather a much more ambiguous and enigmatic statement which left itself open to multiple interpretations."
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mixture
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Politics, pope francis, your news wire
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In September 2018, Your News Wire — a website known for distorting and sensationalizing news stories, as well as publishing conspiracy theories — claimed that Pope Francis had described efforts to uncover child sexual abuse within the Catholic church as “Satan’s work.” Under the headline “Pope Francis: Exposing Pedophile Priests is Satan’s Work,” the website reported that “Satan, the ‘Great Accuser,’ is influencing Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò in his quest to expose pedophile priests within the Catholic Church, Pope Francis warned.” The article then quoted large sections from an earlier report by the right-wing web site Breitbart, which itself wrote: The former nuncio, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, recently accused a number of prelates of dereliction of duty in dealing with clerical sex abuse and claimed that the pope had rehabilitated serial abuser Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, elevating him to a position of influence despite knowledge of his misdeeds … “The Great Accuser, as he himself tells God in the first chapter of the Book of Job, roams around the earth looking for someone to accuse,” Francis said in his morning homily at Mass in the chapel of the Santa Marta residence in the Vatican. In these times “it seems that the Great Accuser has been unleashed and has it in for the bishops,” the pope said. “It is true, we are all sinners, we bishops,” he said, but the Great Accuser “seeks to unveil sins so that they may be seen, to scandalize the people.” Pope Francis did indeed appear to suggest that Satan (i.e., “the Great Accuser”) was playing a role in ongoing allegations against senior figures within the Catholic hierarchy, potentially including himself, although the identity of the “accuser” he had in mind was not clear. Vatican News (an official communications organ of the Holy See) reported on the pontiff’s 11 September homily as follows: In his homily at Mass on Tuesday morning, Pope Francis said it seems the “Great Accuser” is attacking the bishops of the Catholic Church to create scandal … “In these times, it seems like the ‘Great Accuser’ has been unchained and is attacking bishops. True, we are all sinners, we bishops. He tries to uncover the sins, so they are visible in order to scandalize the people. The ‘Great Accuser’, as he himself says to God in the first chapter of the Book of Job, ‘roams the earth looking for someone to accuse’. A bishop’s strength against the ‘Great Accuser’ is prayer, that of Jesus and his own, and the humility of being chosen and remaining close to the people of God, without seeking an aristocratic life that removes this unction. Let us pray, today, for our bishops: for me, for those who are here, and for all the bishops throughout the world.” Francis again referred to the “Great Accuser” in his homily on 13 September, as Vatican News reported: It is certainly easy to “badmouth enemies or those who are of a different party,” but Christian logic goes against the current, and follows the “folly of the Cross.” The ultimate goal, Pope Francis added, “is to get to the point where we behave ourselves like children of our Father”: “Only the merciful are like God the Father. ‘Be merciful, as your Father is merciful.’ This is the path, the path that goes against the spirit of the world, that thinks differently, that does not accuse others. Because among us is the “Great Accuser,” the one who is always going about to accuse us before God, to destroy. Satan: he is the “Great Accuser.” And when I enter into this logic of accusing, of cursing, seeking to do evil to others, I enter into the logic of the “Great Accuser” who is the “Destroyer,” who does not know the word mercy, does not know, has never lived it.” Francis did not identify any particular accuser or enemy, and there are a couple of reasonable interpretations of what he meant by the “Great Accuser.” Pope Francis could have been referring to Pennsylvania authorities (including state attorney general Josh Shapiro) behind the publication of a scathing 1,400-page report in mid-August which documented the sexual abuse of more than 1,000 children by Catholic clergy over a period of several decades, as well as the covering up of that abuse. If so, the “Great Accuser” homily would represent a jarring change in tone from the Vatican’s initially contrite reaction to the Pennsylvania grand jury report, which saw the head of the Holy See press office write that: The Holy Father understands well how much these crimes can shake the faith and the spirit of believers and reiterates the call to make every effort to create a safe environment for minors and vulnerable adults in the Church and in all of society. Victims should know that the Pope is on their side. Those who have suffered are his priority, and the Church wants to listen to them to root out this tragic horror that destroys the lives of the innocent. However, Francis could (more plausibly) have been responding to attacks made against him personally by Archbishop Viganò, as outlined by Breitbart. On 26 August, as Pope Francis was concluding a high-profile and important visit to Ireland, Viganò (who was Apostolic Nuncio to the United States from 2011 to 2016) published an eleven-page letter containing multiple detailed allegations against members of the Vatican hierarchy, including Francis himself, of whom Viganò is a long-standing critic. As the New York Times reported of that letter: Archbishop Viganò claimed that the Vatican hierarchy was complicit in covering up accusations that Cardinal Theodore McCarrick had sexually abused seminarians and that Pope Francis knew about the abuses by the now-disgraced American prelate years before they became public. Yet, the letter contended, Francis did not punish the cardinal, but instead empowered him to help choose powerful American bishops. In a news conference on the papal plane back to Rome late Sunday evening, Francis was asked whether there was any truth to the claim that Archbishop Viganò had personally informed him in 2013 of Cardinal McCarrick’s history of abuse. He was also asked whether Benedict had sanctioned the American cardinal, as the letter also claimed. The pope did not deny it, but sidestepped the questions by insisting he would not dignify them with a response. “I will not say a single word about this,” he said. “I believe the statement speaks for itself. And you have the sufficient journalistic ability to make your conclusions. It’s an act of trust.” On 28 July, the Vatican announced that Pope Francis had accepted the resignation of Cardinal McCarrick, who had served as Archbishop of Washington and was a member of the College of Cardinals, the body that elects the pope. Five weeks earlier, McCarrick had been removed from priestly ministry, in light of allegations of sexual abuse of a minor 45 years ago, which the Archdiocese of New York (the location of the alleged abuse) deemed to be “credible and substantiated.” At time of this publication, his canonical trial was pending. Conclusion Breitbart’s article (which was copied and pasted by Your News Wire) was largely accurate, although it did involve speculation that Francis was specifically alluding to Viganò’s allegations when he warned that the “Great Accuser” was “attacking bishops.” However, as we have outlined, this is a very reasonable interpretation of the pope’s intended meaning. Contrary to Your News Wire’s headline, Pope Francis did not actually say “exposing pedophile priests is Satan’s work.” He made a somewhat enigmatic Biblical reference to Satan “attacking bishops” in order to “scandalize the people,” at a time when the hierarchy of the Catholic church, including Francis himself, was facing several allegations of covering up historical sexual abuse. While the pope’s “Great Accuser” homily was ambiguous enough to leave itself open to multiple interpretations, it is more likely that it formed part of an ongoing battle between him and Cardinal Viganò (a strong critic of Francis), rather than an effort to demonize any and all efforts to uncover child sexual abuse within the Church.
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23228
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"Said state insurance commissioner candidate Ralph Hudgens ""fights hard"" to strip women of life-saving coverage such as mammograms."
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Candidate for insurance commissioner says rival fought against mammogram coverage
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mixture
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Georgia, Health Care, Women, Mary Squires,
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"If you believe Democrats, state Sen. Ralph Hudgens, the Republican candidate for insurance commissioner, is trying to get between women and their mammograms. Hudgens' opposition, former state Sen. Mary Squires, lobbed this attack in news releases and statements to the media commemorating the beginning of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, which is October. ""Why would we vote for an insurance commissioner who fights -- and fights hard -- to strip women of life-saving coverages like mammograms?"" Squires asked Morris News Service. Taking coverage of mammograms from women? Really? We took a closer look. Squires is one in a chorus of Hudgens critics on the subject. At about the same time she launched her attack, an anonymous video appeared on YouTube that pilloried him on mammogram coverage. A spokesman for the Squires campaign said it is not behind the video and does not know who is. The video juxtaposes an interview with a woman who says she owes her life to a mammogram with grainy clips of Hudgens saying he doesn't want to have to pay for the tests. ""Why would I need to pay for maternity coverage?"" Hudgens says. ""Or why would I need to pay for coverage of breast reconstruction or Pap smears or mammograms?"" ""He wouldn’t even cover mammograms,"" a female announcer says. ""And now he wants to be your insurance commissioner."" This skirmish is part of an ongoing battle over whether Georgia law should require certain health insurance policies to cover mammograms, Pap smears, colorectal cancer screening and other services. These requirements are called ""mandates."" In the past, health insurance policies in Georgia failed to include coverage for women's health and other services. State legislators, especially the Georgia Legislative Women’s Caucus, rallied to institute mandates to fix this problem starting in the early 1990s. Hudgens ran afoul of the Women's Caucus because he co-sponsored SB 407 during the past session. The bill would have let Georgians buy health insurance policies across state lines. The idea of allowing out-of-state policies is popular among certain conservatives and insurance companies, but not with the bipartisan Women's Caucus. Its members battled successfully to kill the bill because they believed it would have undermined mandates by freeing insurance companies to sell policies governed by other states, some of which have fewer requirements. But state Sen. Judson Hill, a Republican from Marietta and the sponsor of SB 407, said his bill did not threaten coverage protected by mandates. No one would be forced to buy insurance across state lines, and some of the policies might be governed by states that have more mandates. But insurance industry advocates were concerned that SB 407 didn't do enough to curb mandates. They wanted state law to allow ""mandate-light"" policies, or policies that don't have to follow all the mandates. Georgia has one of the country's highest number of the requirements, which means that this state's policies would be too expensive to compete with cheaper ones from states with fewer mandates, an official with the Georgia Association of Health Underwriters said. Still, when Hudgens made the statements featured in the attack video in July, he was using fightin' words. They came during a primary campaign candidates forum hosted by the Northwest Georgia Association of Insurance and Financial Advisers and the Georgia Association of Health Underwriters. A longer video of his statement shows Hudgens said this: ""Why would I, if I were buying an individual policy for myself, why would I need to pay for maternity coverage. And this costs you, in every policy. Or why would I need to pay for coverage of breast reconstruction or Pap smears or mammograms?"" A few seconds later, Hudgens added ""every time we have attempted to create a mandate-light policy, you got two groups of people that fight us and defeat us. One of them are the Democrats ... and the other one is the Women’s Caucus. Whether it be Republicans or Democrats, they fight against this, saying we’re trying to discriminate against women."" When reached by AJC PolitiFact Georgia for this item, Hudgens told us he dislikes mandates in general because they drive up health care costs. He wants Georgia to let consumers buy plans where they can pick and choose the services they need without paying for ones they don't. ""There is no way I'm against women,"" Hudgens said. ""What I'm looking for is to change the way we buy insurance to tailor it to the individual."" So it's not only true that Hudgens as a co-sponsor of SB 407 joined efforts to weaken mandates. He's a vocal opponent of mandates, and as chairman of the state Senate's Insurance and Labor Committee, he has a great deal of influence. And it's true that if SB 407 passed as originally conceived, the policies available to Georgians might not all have mammogram coverage. But would Hudgens' opposition to mandates have effectively stripped woman of mammogram coverage? As SB 407 sponsor Hill said, no one would have to buy out-of-state coverage. Mammogram coverage is so well-established it is possible but ""unlikely"" that plans would drop the coverage if it was no longer mandated, said Christopher Carpenter, an expert on economics and public policy at the University of California-Irvine who has studied state insurance mandates and mammography. Before state mandates, many women who did not have mammogram coverage got them anyway, Carpenter said. Still, the mandates appear to have an important impact since they began in the mid-1980s through 2000. Carpenter's yet-unpublished research appears to show that they increased mammography rates by about 8 percent. So it appears that more women do get mammograms if they have coverage. And it's reasonable to be concerned that the end of mandated coverage for mammograms could mean that it would be harder to get. Women could have to pay a premium to buy it. But saying Hudgens fought to ""strip women of life-saving coverages like mammograms"" is an overstatement. He fought to take away mandatory coverage. Squires' statement is accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. That means it meets PolitiFact's definition for ."
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39073
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This email says that air conditioners in 1985 to 1998 cars are dangerously toxic and are spewing a gas that is the leading cause of Alzheimer’s disease and lung cancer.
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Dangerous gas in car air conditioners is causing lung cancer and Alzheimer's disease
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false
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Household, Medical, Warnings
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This story is filled with fiction and inaccuracies from top to bottom. The writer claims to be a researcher for “The American Motor Vehicle Safety Organization.” TruthOrFiction.com cannot find any such group. It claims that all air conditioners for all cars were ordered from a corporation called Akson Technologies Initiative. TruthOrFiction.com cannot find any such organization. Also, there is no single company that has made all air conditioners for all cars. The email claims that a flaw in the design of the air conditioners allowed carbon monoxide to leak into the guts of the air conditioning system and mix with freon gas to produce a toxic substance called Dichlorodifluorocarbonmonoxide.” An air conditioner expert tells TruthOrFiction.com that In auto air conditioners, the freon gas is inside a sealed system and cannot mix with carbon monoxide. Similarly, if the system with the freon inside is properly sealed, there would not be any toxic gas leaking anyway. Additionally, there is no such substance as “Dichlorodifluorocarbonmonoxide.” It’s a fabricated word. Anyone familiar with health risks of this alleged magnitude knows that the determination of whether there was any danger or correlation with lung cancer or Alzheimer’s disease would not be made by an auto company. It would be researched by health professionals and any findings of the significance alleged in this email would be front page news, not revealed by a poorly contrived email. update 06/07/08 Comments
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9267
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Vaping may lead to fewer respiratory infections for ex-smokers
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This news release describes results of an online survey showing that most smokers who switched to e-cigarettes, or vaping, for at least two months reported a drop in respiratory infections. The news release cautions readers about limitations of the survey, which was published in the Journal of Addiction Research & Therapy, though we don’t think it goes far enough in describing those drawbacks. We disagree with its assertion that the survey provides “a reasonable reassurance that vaping does not promote respiratory infections.” A survey does not equate to scientific evidence that vaping is safe, as the news release suggests. A self reported survey of conventional cigarette smokers might help make a comparison, but it still wouldn’t be a controlled trial with verified findings. There’s no data on the extent of reported improvements, which means vaping could still contribute to lung infections, just not to the extent of regular cigarettes. The news release also should have mentioned that one author of the report has done work for several e-cigarette makers. E-cigarettes are heralded as a way to get a nicotine fix without the risk of smoking traditional cigarettes, but the jury is still out on just how safe they are and whether they actually help people quit smoking altogether. There is much that is unproven about e-cigarettes and similar new nicotine delivery devices. It is biologically plausible that they may be less harmful than smoking cigarettes, since they contain fewer harmful chemicals. Some studies have found a modest portion of established smokers stop smoking when they switch to e-cigarettes, similar to the success rates of nicotine patches. But the overall harms and potential benefits remain unclear. In the absence of definitive evidence, the U.S. public health community has traditionally taken a stronger stand against e-cigarettes than the British medical community has, but health groups are becoming more divided on their use as an alternative to tobacco use. UK health policy experts tend to see vaping as a likely harm reduction strategy against the number one cause of premature death. The current news release is from London, and may be received differently there than here.
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mixture
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e-cigarettes,Queen Mary University of London,vaping
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Vaping is a lot cheaper than smoking, but it still isn’t cheap, running into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars per year. The cost of vaping isn’t mentioned. Nor is the cost of other smoking cessation methods. The health costs of e-cigarettes are still unknown. The news release says of 941 respondents, 66 percent reported an improvement in respiratory symptoms, 29 percent reported no change and 5 percent reported worsening. However, respondents were not required to quantify the extent of changes in their symptoms, so it’s hard to tell how significant these reported improvements are. We disagree with a researcher’s conclusion that the survey results “provide sufficient information to suggest that vaping does not increase infection rates and may in fact lead to a decrease in infections.” That’s something that requires a controlled trial. The news release quotes a researcher saying it’s “misinformation” to tell smokers that vaping is dangerous. That’s just not true. E-cigarettes contain nicotine, which can harm fetuses and adversely affect brain development. They also contain a host of other chemicals, including some potential carcinogens and lung irritants, which have not been adequately studied. The relative amount of harm from vaping versus smoking remains uncertain. The news release does some things right. It stresses in the fifth paragraph that the study “needs to be interpreted with caution because it is based on self-reported data, and further studies using objective measures are needed.” But more detail should have been provided. For one thing, the news release should have explained that the survey was posted in two large online German vape forums. Responses were invited from e-cigarette users who had stopped smoking or reduced smoking by at least 95%. The news release does not mention that it’s possible some vapers “were trying to portray vaping in a positive light to counteract the general anti-vaping ethos of public health and media coverage,” according to the published report. The report says it’s possible some respondents reported improvements in infection resistance “even when the actual change was small or none.” Another potential problem cited in the study and left out of the news release is that people who experienced adverse effects from e-cigarettes and stopped using them would have been left out of the survey. The news release does not exaggerate the severity or extent of nicotine addiction. The news release does not mention that one of the study authors has financial ties to e-cigarette makers and another to pharmaceutical companies making smoking cessation medications. Smoking cessation programs that incorporate counseling, nicotine replacement therapy such as patches or gum, and antidepressants are considered to be cost-effective and relatively safe. The news release does not mention this. The healthiest and most cost-effective strategy is to avoid both smoking and e-cigarettes. E-cigarettes are widely available at nearly every drug store and gas station convenience store in the United States and are widely available in the UK where the study was conducted. The release could have mentioned that, in the U.S. at least, new rules require buyers to be at least 18 years old to purchase them. The news release is not the novelty of e-cigarettes but the novelty of the research. We give it a satisfactory for including this statement which puts the research in context: “Some previous cell and animal studies have been interpreted as suggesting that vaping may increase vulnerability to infection, but these studies did not use realistic exposure levels. Human trials have reported no significant adverse respiratory effects associated with e-cigarette use for up to 1.5 years and a follow-up study of smokers with asthma who switched to vaping found significant improvements.” The news release does not use unjustifiable language.
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10940
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Out cold: Some cardiac arrest patients revived after cooling procedure
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This is a story about hypothermia treatment following resuscitation from cardiac arrest. But the story neglects to clearly define the specific condition in which the treatment might be valuable, whether sudden cardiac arrest of myocardial infarction, which are different entities with different causes, outcomes, and incidence. How eligibility for treatment is assessed is not explained; neither are the costs or potential harms. The article, including physicians interviewed, describes benefits associated with the treatment, although it did not include sound information about the number or type of patients that might benefit. While the story included quotes from several clinicians who provide the treatment, and one patient who had had the treatment, it failed to back up their anecdotes with clinical evidence. This article provides little clarity about how or when the treatment would be used and exaggerates expectation for improvement in survival when projecting benefit to an unclearly specified population of those who have cardiac events. Evidence, costs, and input from independent sources are important components of health/medical news stories. All were missing in this story.
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false
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"The story does not include any information about the expense of this treatment; it also does not indicate whether hospitals need to purchase special equipment in order to provide this treatment. The story estimates that this treatment could save ""tens of thousands"" of lives, though this estimate is several orders of magnitude greater than the data in the article supports. It contains a quote from a physician who stated that they ""believe the people who do go home have fewer neurological problems,"" but no evidence is given for this. There was no discussion of harms associated with this treatment or the frequency with which these are typically observed. The person used as an example of the benefits of the treatment developed pneumonia in the course of his recovery from his cardiac arrest and his hypothemia treatment, which may be a side-effect of the treatment. Although there is a physician interviewed who provided some estimates of outcomes from the hospital in which he practices, the story did not provide information about the source(s) of the evidence supporting the clinical assertions made in the story. The numbers in this story don't square up as describe. The story estimates that the number of people who are killed by acute cardiac arrest in this country is 250,000 per year. But the most recent estimate from the CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/) is that this is the cause of death for 171,00 people per year. The story engages in treatment mongering by claiming that this treatment could save ""tens of thousands"" of lives each year. However, using the data in the story, (250,000 cases of cardiac arrest; out of 100 cardiac arrests, 7-8 that undergo hypothermia walk out of the hospital as compared to one or two fewer in those who don't undergo hypothermia) hypothermia has the potential for an additional 500 people to walk out of the hospital. This is 500 more happy outcomes but not ""tens of thousands"". While quotes from several physicans were included in this story as well as quotes from a patient who had had the treatment, the sources of the background information about the treatment and the studies about its benefit were not mentioned. So readers get the perspectives of ""believers"" minus any hard evidence. The sequence of when this treatment would be used – and the decisions about how and when it would be used – are unclear. So, too, then is any discussion about what the options are. The story indicated that this treatment is not available at all hospitals. It is not clear from this story whether this is a new treatment or just a newly introduced treatment at this particular hospital. The story stated ""The American Heart Association has approved the procedure in the wake of extensive overseas clinical trials"", however at the American Heart Association web site, there is mention of this treatment from a media advisory of February 20, 2002 – more than five years ago. And the American Heart Association doesn't technically ""approve"" any procedures – making this a simplistic, naive and inaccurate statement in the story. There is no evidence that this story relied solely or largely on a news release."
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2925
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Gilead says head of commercial operations to retire.
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Gilead Sciences Inc said on Monday that its head of commercial operations for the past decade, Kevin Young, who oversaw tremendous sales growth at the U.S. biotechnology company, will retire next month.
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true
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Health News
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Young, who plans to step down on February 4, has held the top commercial post for the world’s leading maker of HIV/AIDS medicines since 2004. During his tenure Gilead’s annual sales grew from $1.24 billion in 2004 to about $11 billion in 2013. “Over the past nine years, he has greatly expanded and strengthened our commercial organization, preparing the company to introduce products in new therapeutic areas,” Gilead Chief Executive John Martin said in a statement. The company said it was not ready to announce any succession plans but said Young will continue to work with Gilead as a senior advisor after his retirement. Young, 56, leaves the top commercial post just as Gilead is launching what is widely expected to be its biggest and most important new therapy in years - an all-oral regimen for treating hepatitis C that has garnered analyst forecasts for eventual annual sales of $3 billion to $16 billion. During his tenure, Young oversaw the launch of eight new therapies, including Atripla, the first single tablet regimen for the treatment of HIV, which is the top seller for treating the virus that causes AIDS in the United States and Europe, Gilead said. Before joining Gilead, Young held posts with U.S. biotech Amgen Inc and British drugmaker AstraZeneca.
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25976
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“New Zealand let health experts” rather than politicians make decisions about how to deal with COVID-19, “and as of today they have zero COVID cases.”
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New Zealand has no current cases among people in the country. There were 22 cases as of the date of the Facebook post — all from people who tested positive upon entering the country. Health experts get some credit for New Zealand’s success, but the prime minister, following the advice of scientists, has been widely praised for her response.
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true
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Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
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"Do the Kiwis have something exceptional to show the world on how to fight COVID-19? A Facebook account called ""God"" with more than 3.94 million followers shared an image of a tweet that made this claim: ""today i learned that new zealand let health experts make the decisions about how to deal w the pandemic rather than politicians and as of today they have 0 covid cases. wow almost as if science and common sense works."" The July 7 post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The country has earned headlines such as, ""New Zealand has ‘effectively eliminated’ coronavirus"" in National Geographic and ""How New Zealand beat the coronavirus"" in Politico. So, let’s see what’s happening there. The number zero is accurate in terms of the number of active cases in which the coronavirus was contracted within New Zealand. In fact, the New Zealand Ministry of Health told PolitiFact on July 9 it had been 69 days since the last case of COVID-19 was confirmed as ""acquired locally from an unknown source."" This isn’t to say New Zealand, which has a population of 5 million, has had no cases. As of July 7, the date of the Facebook post, there were 22 active cases in the country — all detected at the port of entry among New Zealanders who were returning from overseas travel, the ministry told us. In total, the country has counted 1,540 confirmed and probable cases during the outbreak, including 22 deaths. A probable case does not have a positive laboratory result, but ""is treated like a confirmed case based on its exposure history and clinical symptoms."" As for the whys of New Zealand’s success, both health experts and politicians can be credited — along with New Zealanders’ willingness to abide by stay-at-home orders — according to a number of news analyses. National Geographic credited New Zealand’s success to mandatory quarantines for all visitors beginning March 15, which it called one of the strictest policies in the world at the time — even though there were just six cases nationwide. Just 10 days later, it instituted a complete, countrywide lockdown, including a moratorium on domestic travel. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ""made clear, concise statements about the situation to the nation, bolstered by a team of scientists and health professionals"" and citizens abided by the restrictions, wrote a reporter who became one of the quarantined visitors. How strict? The lockdown from March 24 to April 9 allowed non-essential workers to leave home only for essential exercise within close proximity to their residences, Forbes reported. ""New Zealanders didn’t complain, they didn’t protest, they simply followed the rules,"" another foreign reporter who was in New Zealand for the lockdowns, wrote in Politico. When Ardern’s health minister took his family for a 20-minute ride to the beach, he was demoted, the reporter wrote. Ardern announced the reopening of schools in May. The BBC credited Ardern’s leadership as well as the presence of New Zealand Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield at Ardern’s daily briefings. Bloomfield effectively explained complex health issues, and that made New Zealanders more compliant in following orders, the network reported. The New York Times reported June 8, the day the New Zealand lifted its lockdown and declared the virus eliminated, that Ardern ""has been praised internationally for her approach to New Zealand’s outbreak, which was among the most stringent in the world. ""Her live video updates on Facebook, streamed from her own home, offered a relatable understanding of the impact of the coronavirus lockdown on the lives of New Zealanders, but a firm resolve to eradicate the disease from the country."" A Facebook post claimed that ""New Zealand let health experts"" rather than politicians make decisions about how to deal with COVID-19, ""and as of today they have zero COVID cases."" As of July 7, the date of the post, New Zealand reported having 22 active cases of COVID-19 — but each had been detected at the port of entry among people returning from travel abroad. In other words, the country had zero active, locally transmitted cases. Health experts, along with New Zealanders’ compliance with stay-home orders, are partly credited for the success. But Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s decisions to order strict early lockdowns, following scientists’ advice, have won wide praise. For a statement that is accurate but needs a little more information, our rating is ."
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36212
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10,874 people killed by drunk drivers in 2017, and 403 by rifles. Walmart stops selling rifles. Still sells alcohol...
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‘10,874 People Killed by Drunk Drivers in 2017, 403 by Rifles but Walmart Stops Selling Rifles’ Meme
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mixture
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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On September 3 2019, the Facebook page “Life’s Short Live Free” shared the following meme commentary (archived here), discussing Walmart discontinuing the sale of some firearms:Black text against a purple background contrasted purported statistics for the total number of deaths by drunk driving with the number of Americans purportedly killed by rifles in 2017:10,874 people killed by drunk drivers in 2017, and 403 by rifles. Walmart stops selling rifles. Still sells alcohol…It seemed the meme’s point was largely rhetorical, observing that the toll of alcohol-related traffic deaths far exceeded the number of deaths caused by rifles. On the same day it was shared to Facebook, multiple news outlets reported that Walmart announced various changes to its policies and retail practices involving guns.That decision was a direct response by Walmart to a mass shooting on August 3 2019 at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas. On September 3 2019, CBS News reported that the “open carry” portion of Walmart’s new policy was due in part to customer anxiety after the stochastic killing spree:A month after 22 people were fatally shot at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, the retailer is requesting that customers refrain from openly carrying guns into its stores. The company also plans to stop selling some types of ammunition and end handgun sales in Alaska, the only state where it still sells such weapons.Since El Paso, Walmart has experienced multiple incidents in which individuals “attempting to make a statement” entered a store wielding a firearm, frightening workers and customers, Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said [September 3 2019] in news release. He also relayed incidents in which “well-intentioned customers acting lawfully” inadvertently caused stores to be evacuated and local law enforcement to be called in to respond.“These incidents are concerning and we would like to avoid them, so we are respectfully requesting that customers no longer openly carry firearms into our stores or Sam’s Clubs in states where ‘open carry’ is permitted – unless they are authorized law enforcement officers,” McMillon said.Coverage published the same day by CNN reported changes to Walmart’s inventory, some of which were specific to certain states. In those details, at least one element of the claim was called into question:[Walmart], America’s largest retailer, said it will stop selling handgun ammunition and “short-barrel rifle ammunition,” such as the .223 caliber and 5.56 caliber, that can also be used on assault-style weapons after selling all of its current inventory. Walmart (WMT) will also stop selling handguns in Alaska, the only state where it still sells handguns. And Walmart will request that customers no longer openly carry guns into its 4,700 US stores, or its Sam’s Club stores, in states that allow open carry … However, Walmart will continue to sell long barrel deer rifles and shotguns and much of the ammunition for those guns. The company sells guns in about 3,900 stores. Walmart will also continue to allow concealed carry by customers with permits in its stores.As that article noted, the September 2019 changes applied by Walmart were not the retailer’s first inventory shuffle in response to mass casualty events:[Walmart] stopped selling assault rifles in 2015 and raised its minimum gun purchasing age to 21 last year after the Parkland, Florida, shooting. Walmart also stopped selling handguns in every state but Alaska in the mid-1990s and only sells a firearm to customers after receiving a “green light” on a background check.By all accounts, Walmart took a range of actions relating to open carry as well as its inventory practices. Regarding the latter, the retailer announced it would stop selling:Among referenced firearms and ammunition not being discontinued for sale by Walmart was:The Facebook status update meme made two claims about Walmart and rifles — that Walmart had banned the sale of rifles, and that 403 people were killed by rifles in 2017. Unless the policy had been misreported, the first claim was false. Walmart appeared to be discontinuing the sale of several varieties of ammunition only, and discontinuing the sale of handguns in the only state in which Walmart was selling handguns in the first place.In the first part of the claim, the post asserts that 10,874 people were killed by drunk drivers in the United States in 2017. That figure matches the figure provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for that year and is accurate.For the second part of the claim involving 403 deaths in 2017, that was partly correct but misleading. Exactly 403 deaths rifle-related homicides were recorded by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division for the year 2017. That same year handguns, which were “banned” by Walmart in September 2019, killed 7,032 Americans — again only in homicides. The total number of Americans killed in a gun homicide in 2017 was 10,982.So why does the claim cite rifles, which did not appear to have been banned by Walmart, and not handguns? It’s one of several logical fallacies inherent in the claim — namely a variant of cherry-picking or the sharpshooter fallacy, otherwise known as Occam’s broom:A variant of cherry picking is Occam’s broom; which is used to sweep inconvenient facts under the rug. It’s subtly different from cherry picking, because it’s just one (or a few) facts that are hidden, rather than a select few that are hand-picked from a large set.The FBI’s data tables for 2017 indicate an exact total of 403 deaths due to rifles in 2017, a number that pales in comparison to the 10,874 deaths purportedly caused by drunk drivers. Walmart did not seem to have banned rifles as the meme said, but several forms of ammunition and handguns in one state. The claim became far less compelling when contrasting the 10,874 drunk driving deaths with the 7,032 homicides that same year by handgun alone, presumably far more in other firearm discharge deaths.We assume that most, if not all, of the 10,982 of the gun homicides in 2017 involved ammunition, and Walmart discontinued the sale of several forms of ammunition in the change critiqued by the meme. But that number of deaths — similar to the number of drunk driving deaths cited — was not used for the cherry-picked comparison in the meme.Yet another instance of cherry picking used by not identified in the claim was reference to homicides only, when the text described deaths numbering 403 by rifles. Using the FBI crime table above 10,982 Americans were killed in gun-related homicides in 2017 — but 39,773 Americans died firearm-related deaths in 2017 [PDF]. Gun homicides made up just 27 percent of all gun deaths in 2017, and 73 percent of firearm fatalities in 2017 were in a manner other than homicide.The Center for Disease Control [CDC]’s 2017 mortality reference sheet does not break out the details of firearm-related deaths in 2017. For that, we used the CDC Wonder tool to estimate the number of deaths by rifle in 2017. Rifles were grouped with shotguns and “large firearms,” and returned a figure of 3,462 fatalities. Of the total 3,462 deaths by rifle in 2017, 11.6 percent (403) were homicides. Excluded from those numbers were deaths involving legal intervention and war operations, figures also counted in the broader CDC tables.In any event, 403 Americans died by rifle-related homicide in 2017, and 3,462 died by rifle, shotgun, or large firearm-related discharge (excepting war and law enforcement) that same year. A final note is that the FBI’s figures are not complete, although they are the closest estimates available:It’s important to note that the FBI’s statistics do not capture the details on all gun murders in the U.S. each year. The FBI’s data is based on information submitted by state and local police departments, and not all agencies participate or provide complete information each year. In 2017, nine-in-ten law enforcement agencies submitted data to the FBI.Going back to the number of drunk driving deaths accurately referenced in the post, another logical fallacy is invoked. Whataboutism and the red herring fallacy take focus of the issue at hand (Walmart discontinuing the sale of ammunition in many states and handguns in Alaska) by pointing to an completely unrelated to it — in this case, drunk driving:A red herring, besides being a type of pickled fish, is a fallacious argument style in which an irrelevant or false topic is presented in an attempt to divert attention from the original issue, with the intention of “winning” an argument by leading attention away from the original argument and on to another, often unrelated topic. This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because changing the topic of discussion does not count as an argument against a claim.Walmart’s decisions were clearly made in response to the deaths of 22 people in a mass shooting at an El Paso store in August 2019. Regardless of how many deaths occur by other preventable means, the changes to inventory and in-store policy relate to, and were precipitated by, gun deaths. Had a drunk driver plowed into a Walmart and killed 22 shoppers, the comparison would perhaps have been somewhat less dishonest. But it seemed a preventible cause of death with no relationship to the reasoning for Walmart’s implemented changes was shoehorned in using questionable math to argue that its decision to restrict firearm and ammunition sales was irrational. Agreement with Walmart’s new policies was subjective, but the underlying statistics were not.
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27766
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A white strawberry that tastes like pineapple is available in certain markets.
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Pineberries’ growing season is about five weeks long, which further limits their commercial viability. However, if you feel a real need for a pineberry but aren’t anywhere near a market that carries them, you can order them online or grow your own.
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true
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Uncategorized, not a hoax, strawberries, waitrose
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Stories about “pineberries” seem to circulate periodically every year, along with a photo of white strawberries with red seeds and claims that they don’t taste like strawberries, but like pineapples: These Little Guys May Look Like Strawberries — But They Taste Like Something Else Entirely : https://t.co/oriCjAwVIy — Crillmatic (@jcrillz) March 20, 2016 The pineberry is real, although they aren’t crosses between pineapples and strawberries (despite some misleading headlines to that effect). The pineberry first emerged, or re-emerged, in 2010 (on 1 April, as a matter of fact, leading some cynics to conclude that they were an elaborate hoax) in United Kingdom markets. However, while they weren’t a hoax, neither were they a new and exciting crossbreed of strawberry and pineapple. Also, while they weren’t a lost variety miraculously resurrected by enterprising scientists, similar berries might have been around since the 18th century (and other white strawberry varieties have existed for far longer): In fact, the specific strawberry variety whose genetics contribute to the striking appearance of the pineberry was “rescued” by a group of Dutch farmers. They discovered the source material in France. They did not find and rescue the pineberry from extinction in the wilds of Chile, as some have claimed. After six years of plant selection and cultivation, the plant vigor and quality of the pineberry plants was improved, and the decision to begin growing them for commercial production was made. The fruit produced by pineberry plants is very aromatic and has flavor that most say is reminiscent of pineapple while retaining the texture and feel of a strawberry. The pineberry, or pineapple strawberry, is more of a novelty at present. They are produced on a very small scale in Europe and Belize and are not very profitable due to the small size of the pineberries (large pineberries are less than an inch [2.54 cm] big) and the low yield of pineberry plants…. They didn’t seem to taste much like pineapple, though, according to a 2010 piece in the Guardian: Weekend’s food editor, Bob Granleese, never one to hold back, was not a fan: “It smells like a strawberry.” Bite. “It tastes like … water.” Pause. “With sweetener in it.” Pause. “It’s disgusting.” I went next, immediately pulling a lemon sucking face at the sharpness of the albino fruit which I can only describe as “nippy”. Jay Rayner was similarly unimpressed: “Basically, it’s an unripe strawberry. Just because it can be sold doesn’t mean it should”. And devoted food lover Rachel Dixon was quite taken aback: “What the hell? It’s a raspberry. No. Strawberry.” Nibble. “Um.” Pause. Grimace. “Whoa”. Pause. “So it’s some kind of freakish strawberry that doesn’t taste very nice.” Not much endorsement so far.
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34701
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Account by Kitty Werthmann describes the German takeover of Austria.
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“After America , There is No Place to Go”
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unproven
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History, ASP Article
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Example: [Collected via e-mail, December 2012] America Truly is the Greatest Country in the World. Don’t Let Freedom Slip AwayBy: Kitty Werthmann What I am about to tell you is something you’ve probably never heard or will ever read in history books. I believe that I am an eyewitness to history. I cannot tell you that Hitler took Austria by tanks and guns; it would distort history. We elected him by a landslide – 98% of the vote.. I’ve never read that in any American publications. Everyone thinks that Hitler just rolled in with his tanks and took Austria by force. In 1938, Austria was in deep Depression. Nearly one-third of our workforce was unemployed. We had 25% inflation and 25% bank loan interest rates. Farmers and business people were declaring bankruptcy daily. Young people were going from house to house begging for food.. Not that they didn’t want to work; there simply weren’t any jobs. My mother was a Christian woman and believed in helping people in need.. Every day we cooked a big kettle of soup and baked bread to feed those poor, hungry people – about 30 daily. The Communist Party and the National Socialist Party were fighting each other. Blocks and blocks of cities like Vienna, Linz, and Graz were destroyed. The people became desperate and petitioned the government to let them decide what kind of government they wanted. We looked to our neighbor on the north, Germany, where Hitler had been in power since 1933. We had been told that they didn’t have unemployment or crime, and they had a high standard of living. Nothing was ever said about persecution of any group — Jewish or otherwise. We were led to believe that everyone was happy. We wanted the same way of life in Austria . We were promised that a vote for Hitler would mean the end of unemployment and help for the family. Hitler also said that businesses would be assisted, and farmers would get their farms back. Ninety-eight percent of the population voted to annex Austria to Germany and have Hitler for our ruler. We were overjoyed, and for three days we danced in the streets and had candlelight parades. The new government opened up big field kitchens and everyone was fed. After the election, German officials were appointed, and like a miracle, we suddenly had law and order. Three or four weeks later, everyone was employed. The government made sure that a lot of work was created through the Public Work Service. Hitler decided we should have equal rights for women. Before this, it was a custom that married Austrian women did not work outside the home. An able-bodied husband would be looked down on if he couldn’t support his family. Many women in the teaching profession were elated that they could retain the jobs they previously had been required to give up for marriage. Hitler Targets Education – Eliminates Religious Instruction for Children: Our education was nationalized. I attended a very good public school. The population was predominantly Catholic, so we had religion in our schools. The day we elected Hitler (March 13, 1938), I walked into my schoolroom to find the crucifix replaced by Hitler’s picture hanging next to a Nazi flag. Our teacher, a very devout woman, stood up and told the class we wouldn’t pray or have religion anymore. Instead, we sang “Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles,” and had physical education. Sunday became National Youth Day with compulsory attendance. Parents were not pleased about the sudden change in curriculum. They were told that if they did not send us, they would receive a stiff letter of warning the first time. The second time they would be fined the equivalent of $300, and the third time they would be subject to jail. The first two hours consisted of political indoctrination. The rest of the day we had sports. As time went along, we loved it.. Oh, we had so much fun and got our sports equipment free. We would go home and gleefully tell our parents about the wonderful time we had. My mother was very unhappy. When the next term started, she took me out of public school and put me in a convent. I told her she couldn’t do that and she told me that someday when I grew up, I would be grateful. There was a very good curriculum, but hardly any fun – no sports, and no political indoctrination. I hated it at first but felt I could tolerate it. Every once in a while, on holidays, I went home. I would go back to my old friends and ask what was going on and what they were doing. Their loose lifestyle was very alarming to me. They lived without religion. By that time unwed mothers were glorified for having a baby for Hitler. It seemed strange to me that our society changed so suddenly. As time went along, I realized what a great deed my mother did so that I wasn’t exposed to that kind of humanistic philosophy. Equal Rights Hits Home: In 1939, the war started and a food bank was established. All food was rationed and could only be purchased using food stamps. At the same time, a full-employment law was passed which meant if you didn’t work, you didn’t get a ration card, and if you didn’t have a card, you starved to death. Women who stayed home to raise their families didn’t have any marketable skills and often had to take jobs more suited for men. Soon after this, the draft was implemented. It was compulsory for young people, male and female, to give one year to the labor corps. During the day, the girls worked on the farms, and at night they returned to their barracks for military training just like the boys. They were trained to be anti-aircraft gunners and participated in the signal corps. After the labor corps, they were not discharged but were used in the front lines. When I go back to Austria to visit my family and friends, most of these women are emotional cripples because they just were not equipped to handle the horrors of combat. Three months before I turned 18, I was severely injured in an air raid attack. I nearly had a leg amputated, so I was spared having to go into the labor corps and into military service. Hitler Restructured the Family Through Daycare: When the mothers had to go out into the work force, the government immediately established child care centers. You could take your children ages 4 weeks to school age and leave them there around-the-clock, 7 days a week, under the total care of the government. The state raised a whole generation of children.. There were no motherly women to take care of the children, just people highly trained in child psychology. By this time, no one talked about equal rights. We knew we had been had. Health Care and Small Business Suffer Under Government Controls: Before Hitler, we had very good medical care. Many American doctors trained at the University of Vienna . After Hitler, health care was socialized, free for everyone. Doctors were salaried by the government. The problem was, since it was free, the people were going to the doctors for everything. When the good doctor arrived at his office at 8 a.m., 40 people were already waiting and, at the same time, the hospitals were full. If you needed elective surgery, you had to wait a year or two for your turn. There was no money for research as it was poured into socialized medicine. Research at the medical schools literally stopped, so the best doctors left Austria and emigrated to other countries. As for healthcare, our tax rates went up to 80% of our income. Newlyweds immediately received a $1,000 loan from the government to establish a household. We had big programs for families. All day care and education were free. High schools were taken over by the government and college tuition was subsidized. Everyone was entitled to free handouts, such as food stamps, clothing, and housing. We had another agency designed to monitor business. My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables. Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn’t meet all the demands. Soon, he went out of business. If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control. We had consumer protection. We were told how to shop and what to buy. Free enterprise was essentially abolished. We had a planning agency specially designed for farmers. The agents would go to the farms, count the live-stock, then tell the farmers what to produce, and how to produce it. “Mercy Killing” Redefined: In 1944, I was a student teacher in a small village in the Alps . The villagers were surrounded by mountain passes which, in the winter, were closed off with snow, causing people to be isolated. So people intermarried and offspring were sometimes retarded. When I arrived, I was told there were 15 mentally retarded adults, but they were all useful and did good manual work. I knew one, named Vincent, very well. He was a janitor of the school. One day I looked out the window and saw Vincent and others getting into a van. I asked my superior where they were going. She said to an institution where the State Health Department would teach them a trade, and to read and write. The families were required to sign papers with a little clause that they could not visit for 6 months. They were told visits would interfere with the program and might cause homesickness. As time passed, letters started to dribble back saying these people died a natural, merciful death. The villagers were not fooled. We suspected what was happening. Those people left in excellent physical health and all died within 6 months. We called this euthanasia. The Final Steps – Gun Laws: Next came gun registration. People were getting injured by guns. Hitler said that the real way to catch criminals (we still had a few) was by matching serial numbers on guns. Most citizens were law abiding and dutifully marched to the police station to register their firearms. Not long afterwards, the police said that it was best for everyone to turn in their guns. The authorities already knew who had them, so it was futile not to comply voluntarily. No more freedom of speech. Anyone who said something against the government was taken away. We knew many people who were arrested, not only Jews, but also priests and ministers who spoke up. Totalitarianism didn’t come quickly, it took 5 years from 1938 until 1943, to realize full dictatorship in Austria .Had it happened overnight, my countrymen would have fought to the last breath. Instead, we had creeping gradualism. Now, our only weapons were broom handles. The whole idea sounds almost unbelievable that the state, little by little eroded our freedom. After World War II, Russian troops occupied Austria. Women were raped, preteen to elderly. The press never wrote about this either. When the Soviets left in 1955, they took everything that they could, dismantling whole factories in the process. They sawed down whole orchards of fruit, and what they couldn’t destroy, they burned. We called it The Burned Earth. Most of the population barricaded themselves in their houses. Women hid in their cellars for 6 weeks as the troops mobilized. Those who couldn’t, paid the price. There is a monument in Vienna today, dedicated to those women who were massacred by the Russians. This is an eye witness account. “It’s true..those of us who sailed past the Statue of Liberty came to a country of unbelievable freedom and opportunity. America Truly is the Greatest Country in the World. Don’t Let Freedom Slip Away
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7014
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First lady to take part in ‘town hall’ on opioids.
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Liberty University has announced that first lady Melania Trump will participate in a “town hall” discussion at Liberty University next week about the opioid epidemic.
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true
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Kirstjen Nielsen, Eric Bolling, Epidemics, Entertainment, Politics, North America, Health, Demi Lovato
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Also participating in the Nov. 28 event will be Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Dianna Hart, whose daughter Demi Lovato was hospitalized over the summer after a reported drug overdose. The discussion also will include former Fox News host Eric Bolling, whose college-age son died last year of a mix of cocaine and the painkiller fentanyl. Bolling tweeted Wednesday that the first lady would join him “for an intimate and important one-on-one discussion” at the town hall in Lynchburg, Virginia. Addressing the opioid epidemic is part of the first lady’s “Be Best” campaign.
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26318
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Chris Murphy Says President Donald Trump implemented “a travel ban that just didn't work, 400,000 people got in from those countries that were subject to the restrictions.”
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The number of people that flew directly in from China after Trump’s travel restrictions went into effect was reported in April to be around 40,000, not 400,000. Those travelers were American citizens and other authorized travelers who were exempted from the restrictions. That number is now higher, according to new U.S. Customs and Border Patrol data of both direct and indirect flights from China through mid May.
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false
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Immigration, China, Public Health, Coronavirus, Chris Murphy,
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"President Donald Trump often credits restrictions he imposed on travel from China with saving American lives. But Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said the ""ban"" didn’t stop everyone. ""We have had just an absolute abysmal failure of leadership from the White House since the very beginning,"" Murphy told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace in a May 11 interview. ""Effectively, after the travel ban — a travel ban that just didn't work, 400,000 people got in from those countries that were subject to the restrictions — after that, the president just gave up."" We won’t weigh in on whether the travel ban ""just didn’t work,"" as Murphy claimed. But Murphy is wrong on the number. He mixed up two numbers from an April 4 New York Times report. The New York Times analysis detailed the number of travelers that arrived in the U.S. on direct flights from China toward the start of 2020. The analysis relied on flight and other data from the U.S. Commerce Department, American firms MyRadar and FlightAware, and VariFlight, an aviation data company based in China, according to the report. Not really Murphy was referring to a larger number that included travel both before and after Trump’s restrictions kicked in. According to the report, there were at least 430,000 people who flew directly into the U.S. from China between Dec. 31, 2019, when China notified the World Health Organization that it was treating cases of pneumonia caused by an unknown illness, and early April. That total included a smaller number of travelers whose direct flights occurred after Trump imposed travel restrictions on China starting Feb. 2 — and this smaller number is what Murphy should have used when talking about what happened after the restrictions. Almost 40,000 ""Americans and other authorized travelers"" entered in the two months after the Trump administration announced the restrictions, the report said. The travel restrictions made exceptions for U.S. citizens, permanent residents and their family members. The New York Times report mentioned both numbers in its first paragraph: ""Since Chinese officials disclosed the outbreak of a mysterious pneumonialike illness to international health officials on New Year’s Eve, at least 430,000 people have arrived in the United States on direct flights from China, including nearly 40,000 in the two months after President Trump imposed restrictions on such travel, according to an analysis of data collected in both countries."" Murphy spokesperson Jaime Geller said the senator ""misspoke and meant to say that 400,000+ people traveled to the U.S. from the start of the outbreak, referencing this New York Times reporting."" The report said ""the bulk"" of the passengers arrived in January on more than 1,300 direct flights to the U.S. from China. It said 279 direct flights from China flew in between the time of the report and the start of Trump’s travel restrictions, which have since expanded in several ways. Travelers check in for an American Airlines flight at Beijing Capital International Airport in Beijing, on Jan. 30, 2020. (AP/Schiefelbein) The New York Times’ passenger counts didn’t include the number of travelers who came from China through connecting flights, stopping in another country en route to the U.S. But a spokesperson for U.S. Customs and Border Protection gave us that information. The spokesperson said the agency’s preliminary data for both direct and indirect flights counted 68,409 authorized travelers — most of whom were U.S. citizens — that entered the U.S. from China between the implementation of the travel restrictions and May 11. It’s unknown how many people who came into the U.S. from China had COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, or whether many of the individuals who returned to the U.S. in the months after the travel restrictions took effect were infected. The first confirmed COVID-19 case in the U.S. returned to the state of Washington from Wuhan, China, where the outbreak was first documented. Chinese government data shows that the earliest known case was Nov. 17, per the South China Morning Post. Travel into the U.S. is currently prohibited for ""certain foreign nationals who have been physically present"" in China, Iran, Ireland, the United Kingdom or 26 other countries in Europe in the previous two weeks, the CBP spokesperson said. American citizens, legal residents and other exempted individuals can continue to travel into the U.S., the spokesperson said, but they require screening upon arrival and can only come in through one of 13 U.S. airports. That’s Mostly Murphy said Trump implemented ""a travel ban that just didn't work, 400,000 people got in from those countries that were subject to the restrictions."" That is wrong. The New York Times reported a much lower number for people who flew directly into the U.S. from China after Trump’s limits went into effect — around 40,000 over two months. Those travelers were American citizens and other travelers exempted from the restrictions. The number is slightly higher when you factor in the number of travelers who took indirect flights and the number who have come in since the New York Times published its analysis in April. But it’s still far from 400,000."
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34659
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"A ""female physician in Munich"" penned an alarming warning letter about refugees."
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Variations: The name of Dr. Barbara Sziraki has since become attached to this message, but she appears to be a Los Angeles psychologist who simply forwarded the letter via e-mail and not a Czech physician working in Germany.
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unproven
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Politics Immigration, Dr. Barbara Sziraki, syrian refugees
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On 8 October 2015, the web site The Right Scoop published the above-reproduced missive as an article headlined “MUST WATCH: Whistleblower Doctor Explains HORRIFIC Reality Dealing with Muslim Invaders in Germany” — not long afterwards, verbatim versions of the same commentary began circulating in an e-mail frequently titled “A Female Physician in Munich, Germany Sends a Warning Message to The World…” The Right Scoop claimed credit for transcribing the letter from the video embedded above; but whether that translation is an accurate one is unclear. A longer version of the same clip was uploaded to YouTube on 6 October 2015, and both clips began with what appeared to be repetition of an older rumor involving refugees and Oktoberfest. The source of the missive was apparently an on-air reading by a Czech newscaster, who recited what was said to be a letter from a Czech doctor treating immigrants in a German hospital. Its assertions were a blend of difficult-to-verify first-person claims and opinion (mixed with a measure of undiluted misinformation), its purported author was an unnamed “female physician,” and a handful of its talking points were claims about incidents at an unidentified Munich hospital in the weeks following an influx of Middle Eastern refugees to Germany in September 2015. (The piece was almost certainly veiled criticism of German citizens who had welcomed asylum-seekers with open arms a few weeks prior to its circulation.) Like earlier polemics written from the perspective of an authority figure, the occupation of the writer served to bolster the e-mail’s claims and lend credibility to them — it’s difficult to imagine the item’s gaining such traction had it been the perspective of a barista or dog walker. The claims contained in the letter were not dated (making it easier for them to circulate in perpetuity), so verifying even the scant collection of non-opinion statements offered in the e-mail is difficult. In its first portion the writer claimed that “Muslims” had “refused” to be treated by female doctors (and that “and, we, women, are refusing to go among those animals, especially from Africa”): Many migrants have AIDS, syphilis, open TB and many exotic diseases that we, in Europe, do not know how to treat them. If they receive a prescription in the pharmacy, they learn they have to pay cash. This leads to unbelievable outbursts, especially when it is about drugs for the children. They abandon the children with pharmacy staff with the words: So, cure them here yourselves! So the police are not just guarding the clinics and hospitals, but also large pharmacies. AIDS, syphilis, and tuberculosis are hardly diseases modern doctors would consider “exotic,” and it beggars belief that anyone (particularly a “physician”) would claim medical professionals “don’t know how to treat them.” There’s some truth to the assertion Muslim men might eschew care from female doctors, as a 2010 New York Times article explained: People who are non-mahram adults of the opposite sex are prohibited from being alone together in a closed place where sexual intercourse could occur or where even such an accusation could be made, [Dr. Aasim I.] Padela said. A prophetic tradition states that when a non-mahram woman and man are alone together, Satan is the “third among them,” Dr. Padela noted, so the laws prohibit not only adultery but “proximity” to adultery. As a result, Muslim men, too, may be reluctant to be cared for by female physicians. However, that same piece also covered the larger issue of patient comfort and bedside manner; and open contempt for patients (as expressed by the putative author of the letter from a Munich hospital) is unusual in medical settings, where most doctors and nurses are accustomed to providing care to all, whether or not those interactions are pleasant. The Munich physician’s letter also stated: Until now, the number of unemployed in Germany was 2.2 million. Now it will be at least 3.5 million. Most of these people are completely unemployable. A bare minimum of them have any education. What is more, their women usually do not work at all. I estimate that one in ten is pregnant. Hundreds of thousands of them have brought along infants and little kids under six, many emaciated and neglected. If this continues and German re-opens its borders, I’m going home to the Czech Republic. Nobody can keep me here in this situation, not even double the salary than at home. I went to Germany, not to Africa or the Middle East. As of July 2015 there were an estimated 2.8 million people registered as unemployed in Germany, and the author didn’t cite any source for predictions that number would rise to 3.5 million based on an influx of asylum seekers. The “one in 10 is pregnant” figure is an admitted estimation by the e-mail’s writer, for which we could find no corroborating evidence (and it further stands to reason that pregnant refugees would seek medical care with higher frequency than women in general, for obvious reasons). However, it should be noted that that overall claim deviated significantly from other popular refugee rumors which consistently described those seeking asylum as predominantly men of “fighting age.” The missive went on to state: For now, the local hospital staff has not come down with the diseases they brought here, but, with so many hundreds of patients every day — this is just a question of time. In a hospital near the Rhine, migrants attacked the staff with knives after they had handed over an 8-month-old on the brink of death, which they had dragged across half of Europe for three months. The child died in two days, despite having received top care at one of the best pediatric clinics in Germany. The physician had to undergo surgery and two nurses are laid up in the ICU. Nobody has been punished. The notion that spikes in immigration lead to outbreaks of disease is a common theme among rumors that circulate during crises that drive large numbers of people out of a given area. Media speculation about such public health concerns inevitably follows; but (as the author conceded) those predictions have not come to pass in connection with Syrian refugees. We were unable to find any news reports that any hospital workers near the Rhine had been attacked by refugees at any point in 2015 in the manner described by the author. The e-mail continued by stating: The local press is forbidden to write about it, so we know about it through email. What would have happened to a German if he had stabbed a doctor and nurses with a knife? Or if he had flung his own syphilis-infected urine into a nurse’s face and so threatened her with infection? At a minimum he’d go straight to jail and later to court. With these people, so far, nothing has happened. Precisely what “it” the “local press [was] forbidden” to report was left to the reader’s preconceptions (presumably the alleged attacks on medical personnel by immigrants); but news coverage about the ongoing refugee crisis wasn’t subject to any blackout or other restriction (as attested to by comprehensive global news coverage of the situation). The author seemed to hint that similar e-mails were the source for the claims, accounts that proliferate on social media but don’t appear in the news. However, the reason for the absence of such accounts from the news media is far more likely their dubious credibility than any sort of censorship of reporting, which itself creates a self-propelling narrative of widespread suppression. The author of this missive concluded: And so I ask, where are all those greeters and receivers from the train stations? Sitting pretty at home, enjoying their non-profits and looking forward to more trains and their next batch of cash from acting like greeters at the stations. The writer seems to suggest as a footnote that the crowds of Germans who warmly received refugees weeks earlier were paid by unnamed parties, insinuating that the sole motivation for their display of welcome was financial. As it stands, no one has stepped forward to claim authorship of the popular polemic; and a number of its assertions are shaky, unsupported, or simply opinion-based (such as the repeated description of African people as “animals”). Were there any truth to its claims, there’s no demonstrable reason why that information would be subject to a “blackout” of any description; and even the conspiracy-level censorship alleged by the writing would be unlikely to stop such reports from reaching the world at large through social media and blogs.
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10846
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Want a Better Memory? Try Eating a Mediterranean Diet
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A review of a small number of studies examining impacts of the Mediterranean Diet finds that the diet is associated with both cognitive improvements and slower cognitive decline. The study is laudable in that it seeks to capture a bit of the “big picture” by examining the results of many studies, and focusing on 18 studies that met the researchers’ criteria for inclusion. The challenges of pinning down the effects of diet are well known (see, for example, a recent article in the New York Times reflecting on these issues) so determining the actual benefits of the Mediterranean diet will take time and careful analysis. This news release is far more convinced of that linkage than is warranted. We assume that diet and exercise help us maintain health and longevity, and we may be right. But determining cause and effect in this arena is elusive. Because cognitive decline and dementia are increasing in prevalence as the population lives longer, any lifestyle measures that delay or mitigate this are important to learn about and implement.
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false
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Journal news release
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Although the text clearly identifies the components of the Mediterranean diet, it does not attempt to “cost” them out for the typical American. The costs of adhering to a Mediterranean diet could be prohibitive, especially for older adults living on fixed incomes. While it would be some work to estimate the annual cost of eating this way for a person or family, the cost consideration could at least be acknowledged. The release mentions three outcomes—“slowed rates of cognitive decline, reduced conversion to Alzheimer’s, and improved cognitive function”—and explains those outcomes a bit more specifically lower in the text. But missing from the text is information supporting the benefit claims. Slower than what? Reduced relative to what? Improved relative to what? Our criteria call for releases to report the risk reduction in absolute terms if at all possible, but this release gives no numbers at all. There appear to be minimal to no health debits stemming from the Mediterranean diet, assuming one eats in moderation. This is a tough call. The release makes clear that the scientists conducting this analysis used “strict inclusion criteria” to cull 18 studies from a group of 135 for examination. Identifying the size of the sample is good, as it gives reporters the opportunity to evaluate that. But the release tells you nothing about those inclusion criteria. It turns out that the authors did a fairly rigorous job of choosing trials that were longitudinal in nature, including those that examine the same cohorts repeatedly over time, and they also excluded studies exploring outcomes other than cognitive decline/improvement, their dependent variables of choice. However, the number “18” should send up red flags for any journalist. The analytical strategy used in this study employed the study as the unit of analysis, so the sample size is actually 18. That’s way too small for purposes of generalization. Finally, because the published review of studies included observational studies, we rate this for not addressing the lack of cause and effect. Further, the release uses active verbs to describe the benefit when cause isn’t shown, such as in the headline: “Eating a Mediterranean diet can slow down cognitive decline.” The issues identified in this study are real ones for all individuals, particularly older ones. This is an important population health problem. Although the published study indicates that none of the principal investigators received funding to conduct this study, presumably minimizing conflicts of interest, the news release doesn’t address these issues. That’s unfortunate, since the investigators’ independence would be a strength of the study. Other lifestyle or medical interventions are not mentioned in the release. The published review article itself cited other lifestyle interventions. The ingredients of the Mediterranean Diet are available worldwide. Studies of this diet are numerous. Although this meta-analysis may be unique in its analytical characteristics, the text makes no claim for novelty. The release includes quotes which make the study sound like new information, when it really isn’t. For example: “The most surprising result was that the positive effects were found in countries around the whole world. So regardless of being located outside of what is considered the Mediterranean region, the positive cognitive effects of a higher adherence to a MedDiet were similar in all evaluated papers.” The researcher quoted in the news release recommends that folks adopt the Mediterranean Diet and testifies that he himself follows it. That is a fairly robust statement of advocacy, but it is not overly sensational.
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7100
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$40M mental health hospital planned for suburban Detroit.
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Beaumont Health and Universal Health Services are planning a new $40 million mental health hospital in suburban Detroit that’s designed to improve care in Michigan.
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true
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Mental health, Health, Michigan, Detroit, Joint ventures
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The project was announced Monday as part of a joint venture between the health care system and Pennsylvania-based Universal Health Services that will double Beaumont’s current capacity for inpatient mental health care. Plans also include enhanced and expanded day programs and outpatient care. Universal Health Services will be the majority owner of the joint venture and will oversee the day-to-day operations and management of the mental health facility. Construction will begin in early 2019 on the 150-bed hospital, which will be located across the street from Beaumont Hospital, Dearborn. The new facility is expected to open in 2021.
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33040
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A photograph shows Bernie Sanders at a 1965 civil rights march with Martin Luther King, Jr.
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A photograph doesn't show Bernie Sanders marching from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 with Martin Luther King, Jr.
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false
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Politics Politicians, bernie sanders, martin luther king
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On 20 January 2016, the web site Democratic Underground posted a photograph purportedly showing Bernie Sanders participating in a 1965 civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery (Alabama) with Martin Luther King, Jr. The web site identified the man standing “behind Coretta King, just right of Old Glory in the glasses, white ‘t’ shirt, open collar and dark jacket” as the future United States senator and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate: The man pictured in the above-displayed photograph does bear a resemblance to a young Bernie Sanders, but that similarity isn’t sufficient by itself to confirm that Sanders took part in the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march: The above-displayed image was taken on 26 March 1965, and a caption to the photograph provided by licenser Corbis Images identifies Martin Luther King, Jr. along with several other prominent political leaders but makes no mention of Bernie Sanders: Dr. Martin Luther King (C) leads thousands of civil rights demonstrators out on the last leg of their Selma to Montgomery 50-mile hike. Others identifiable in the front row include John Davis (2nd from L) of SNCC, King’s aide Reverend Ralph Abernathy (3rd from L), Dr. Ralph Bunche (5th from L), Mrs. King (next to her husband) and Reverend Hosea Williams (carrying little girl, R). This photograph has been widely available for decades, but it wasn’t until January 2016 that Bernie Sanders’ name became associated with a face in the crowd. Although Sanders has stated that he did participate in the landmark “March on Washington” civil rights event of August 1963 (where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech), we haven’t found any record of Sanders’ claiming that he was also present at any other civil rights march involving Martin Luther King, Jr: On the national holiday named for the civil rights leader, Sen. Bernie Sanders called the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., “one of the great leaders in American history.” Sanders, then a college student, was in the crowd on The Mall in Washington when King delivered his “I have a dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. “We must never forget his heroic efforts to end segregation and racial injustice. It is also important, however, to remember that he fought for a society in which all people had good jobs at good wages and that quality education and health care were available to all. At a time when we have an almost record number of Americans living in poverty, obscene levels of income and wealth inequality and millions working longer hours for lower pay, we still have much to learn from Dr. King’s extraordinary life.” As Mother Jones noted, Sander’s active participation in the Civil Rights movement was “brief and localized” and effectively ended in 1963: Sanders’ involvement was brief and localized, his sacrifices limited to one arrest for protesting and a bad GPA from neglecting his studies. But Sanders was, in his own right, an active participant in the movement during his three years at the University of Chicago. Although Sanders did attend the 1963 March on Washington, at which Lewis spoke, most of his work was in and around Hyde Park, where he became involved with the campus chapter of CORE [Congress of Racial Equality] shortly after transferring from Brooklyn College in 1961. During Sanders’ first year in Chicago, a group of apartment-hunting white and black students had discovered that off-campus buildings owned by the university were refusing to rent to black students, in violation of the school’s policies. CORE organized a 15-day sit-in at the administration building, which Sanders helped lead. The protest ended when George Beadle, the university’s president, agreed to form a commission to study the school’s housing policies. That spring, with Sanders as its chairman, the university chapter of CORE merged with the university chapter of SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee]. Sanders announced plans to take the fight to the city of Chicago, and in the fall of 1962 he followed through, organizing picketers at a Howard Johnson in Cicero. Sanders told the Chicago Maroon, the student newspaper, that he wanted to keep the pressure on the restaurant chain after the arrest of 12 CORE demonstrators in North Carolina for trying to eat at a Howard Johnson there. Sanders left his leadership role at the organization not long afterward; his grades suffered so much from his activism that a dean asked him to take some time off from school. But he continued his activism with CORE and SNCC. In August of 1963, not long after returning to Chicago from the March on Washington, Sanders was charged with resisting arrest after protesting segregation at a school on the city’s South Side. He was later fined $25, according to the Chicago Tribune. Some have pegged the identity of the face circled above as likely being that of Paul Reese, who looked somewhat like a young Bernie Sanders, participated in civil rights events of the time, and was present at the march pictured here: In short: One more time: that picture is not of Bernie Sanders, who did not march in Selma. His campaign has *confirmed* this. https://t.co/EseJmycaVX — Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) February 12, 2016
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11152
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Study: Crestor Not As Effective As Hoped
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This news story reports on research that was presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Cardiology and published simultaneously in the Journal of the American Medical Association (http://jama.ama-assn.org). It might have served its readers better if it provided a little more analysis on this important topic. The article summarizes the findings of new research suggesting that the cholesterol drug Crestor slows thickening of the carotid artery wall in certain individuals. The story quantifies the purported benefit of Crestor down to the thousandths of a millimeter, and adds a note on side effects. Unfortunately, it fails to state the cost of Crestor or the cost of screening low-risk individuals who received Crestor, does not go beyond the study’s lead author for an independent comment, and neglects to mention treatment options other than Crestor—including simple lifestyle changes or doing nothing. We also wonder whether readers could come away from this story believing that the “disease” under study is more sinister than it really is. The researchers enrolled people who had no symptoms and whose only risk factors were age, moderately elevated cholesterol, or moderately thickened arterial walls. As the article notes, doctors don’t usually prescribe cholesterol-lower drugs for people like these. Yet readers might easily—and wrongly–conclude that these individuals are at the beginning of an inexorable journey toward a bad outcome. “Thickening of the arterial walls is a precursor to plaque buildup, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes,” according to the article. The story could have taken greater care to explain that most of these patients will face unremarkable outcomes over time. In fact, the trial investigators themselves might have provided a more nuanced interpretation of their study. “Larger, longer randomized trials focused on clinical events are needed to determine the practice implications of these findings,” they concluded in the version published simultaneously in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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mixture
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The article fails to mention the cost of treatment with Crestor, either for its approved indication (lowering LDL cholesterol) or for its unapproved use at high doses to reduce carotid artery wall thickness in patients at low risk of heart attack or stroke. The story also did not describe the cost of screening a low-risk population by ultrasound to find people with moderately thickened carotid arterial walls–the subjects in the study. Even if the test were inexpensive, screening 5700 individuals to find a group of 984 to receive treatment would be costly.
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1831
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Study paves way for simple blood test to predict Alzheimer's.
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British scientists have identified a set of 10 proteins in the blood that can predict the onset of Alzheimer’s and call this an important step towards developing a test for the incurable brain-wasting disease.
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true
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Science News
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Such a test could initially be used to select patients for clinical trials of experimental treatments being developed to try to halt progression of Alzheimer’s, the researchers said, and may one day move into routine use in doctors’ clinics. “Alzheimer’s begins to affect the brain many years before patients are diagnosed (and) many of our drug trials fail because by the time patients are given the drugs the brain has already been too severely affected,” said Simon Lovestone of Oxford University, who led this work from King’s College London. “A simple blood test could help us identify patients at a much earlier stage to take part in new trials and hopefully develop treatments,” he said. Shares in biotech company Proteome Sciences, which co-authored the study with scientists from King’s College, jumped 12 percent on the news on Tuesday morning. Alzheimer’s is the most common form of dementia, a brain-wasting disease which in 2010 was estimated to be costing the world $604 billion a year. The fatal disease affects 44 million people worldwide, with the number set to triple by 2050, the campaign group Alzheimer’s Disease International says. Several big pharma firms including Roche, Eli Lilly, Merck & Co and Johnson & Johnson, are pursuing various approaches to get to the root cause of Alzheimer’s and try to find treatments to halt its progression. Yet over the past 15 years, more than 100 experimental Alzheimer’s drugs have failed in trial. Lovestone and other experts believe this may be because drug trials are conducted too late, in patients whose condition has already gone too far. A predictive test for use before people develop symptoms would help researchers select the right people for drug trials, and help show whether the experimental drugs are working. Previous studies have found that PET brain scans and tests of lumbar fluid can be used to predict the onset of dementia from people with a less severe condition known as mild cognitive impairment (MCI), but these tests are expensive and invasive, so scientists are keen to develop a cheaper, simpler blood test. MCI includes problems with day-to-day memory, language and attention. It can be an early sign of dementia, or a symptom of stress or anxiety. Around 10 percent of people diagnosed with MCI develop dementia within a year. Apart from regular assessments to measure memory decline, there is currently no accurate way of predicting who will or won’t develop dementia. For this study, published in the journal Alzheimer’s & Dementia, Lovestone’s team used blood samples from 1,148 people - 476 with Alzheimer’s, 220 with mild cognitive impairment and 452 elderly controls without dementia. They were analysed for 26 proteins previously found to be linked with Alzheimer’s. The team found 16 of these 26 proteins to be strongly associated with brain shrinkage in either MCI or Alzheimer’s and then ran a second series of tests to see which of these could predict which patients would progress from MCI to Alzheimer’s. With this second series, they found a combination of 10 proteins capable of predicting with 87 percent accuracy whether people with MCI would develop Alzheimer’s disease within a year. Experts in the field welcomed the results but said they should be replicated in larger studies before an Alzheimer’s blood test could be rolled out for use in doctors’ clinics. “The results reported today are interesting, but as the authors point out there is still a very large amount of work remaining until a usable blood test for Alzheimer’s disease becomes available,” said Adrian Pini of the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at King’s College London. James Pickett, head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, said the research “does not mean that a blood test for dementia is just around the corner”. “These 10 proteins can predict conversion to dementia with less than 90 percent accuracy, meaning one in 10 people would get an incorrect result,” he said. “Accuracy would need to be improved before it could be a useful diagnostic test.”
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9971
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Low-Dose Omega-3 Fatty Acids Don’t Protect Heart Patients
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"We were frankly a bit surprised at the number of stories on this study – this one even being filed well before the paper was even presented at the Curopean Society of Cardiology Congress in Stockholm. Was it that earth-shattering? However, at least this story did seek independent perspectives as part of their story – even if filed early. (Also see reviews of AP and Reuters.) The ending quote is the money quote: ""..this is by no menas the final word."" It never is."
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true
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"Not applicable. The margarines used in the study are not commercially available, so we can understand why cost of these formulations wasn’t given (even if the story didn’t disclose that the these were special non-commercially-available products). It would have been interesting to learn how the costs of omega-3 fatty acid fortified margarine compares to a comparable, unfortified product. Adequate. The story mentioned that there did appear to be a subcategory of benefit in women who consumed the ALA fortified margarine. It didn’t to mention the benefits seen in individuals with diabetes from the use of fortified margarine. While mentioning that there didn’t appear to be any benefit from the use of fortified margarine, the story neglected to report that there also didn’t seem to be any overt harm from the used of the fortified margarine. Even the absence of harm is worth mentioning. We look for discussions of benefits, harms and costs in all stories and don’t see same often enough. The story did an adequate job reporting on how the study was done and on some of the factors that might explain or influence the findings. The story did not engage in over disease mongering. The story included comments from several individuals without direct ties to the study reported on but with active research programs examining the potential of benefit from omega-3 fatty acids. The story addressed some other approaches albeit indirectly: ""The scientists focused on patients who were already taking medications to control blood pressure, cholesterol and potential clotting. So, the researchers theorized that the poor performance of the supplements may simply reflect the overwhelming power of the medications."" There was no discussion of other things that have been shown to lower the risk of future coronary events in those who have had a heart attack beyond taking medications. Even one line offering such context would have been helpful. The story was not clear that the margarines used in the study reported on were formulated specifically for use in the study and are not commercially available. Nor did it explain – as other stories did – that there are similar products already on the market. The story did not mention that the specific margarines used in this study were formulated for use in the study and are not commercially available. No evidence that the story relied solely or largely on a news release."
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13659
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Because there's no local option to allow communities to ban, limit or restrict the location of pot shops, if Amendment 2 passes you can expect the seedy elements of the pot industry to move in right next door to your neighborhood, your church, your business and even your child's school.
|
"Vote No On 2 said, ""Because there's no local option to allow communities to ban, limit or restrict the location of pot shops, if Amendment 2 passes you can expect the seedy elements of the pot industry to move in right next door to your neighborhood, your church, your business and even your child's school."" While the statement is technically accurate about the amendment’s wording, it’s highly doubtful there will be a dispensary on every corner. If it passes, the state will be in charge of writing regulations, including whether and how local jurisdictions will be able to create their own zoning laws or ordinances. It’s impossible to say with certainty what Florida’s regulations on dispensaries would look like should the amendment pass, as regulations in other medical marijuana states vary. But local bans or restrictive laws on dispensaries are common in medical marijuana states. Fears about the precise locations of pot shops and local control are premature."
|
false
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Government Regulation, Public Health, Florida, Marijuana, Vote No On 2,
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"Local governments will be powerless to prevent medical marijuana dispensaries from sprouting up anywhere and everywhere should Amendment 2 pass this fall, opponents of the measure say. A pamphlet from Vote No On 2 mailed to voters in July warns that the constitutional amendment prevents any kinds of restrictions on the locations of marijuana-related businesses. The amendment would allow doctors to recommend medical marijuana for certain health conditions and patients to pick up the drug from dispensaries that sell it. ""Because there's no local option to allow communities to ban, limit or restrict the location of pot shops, if Amendment 2 passes you can expect the seedy elements of the pot industry to move in right next door to your neighborhood, your church, your business and even your child's school,"" the pamphlet cautions. Vote No On 2 is a campaign run by the Drug Free Florida Committee, an anti-drug group started in 2014 by longtime GOP fundraiser Mel Sembler and his wife, Betty, with financial backing from casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. We wanted to know whether Amendment 2 prevented communities from their own bans on so-called ""pot shops."" The short answer is that the amendment does not have any provisions for local legislation — but that’s only because the state would eventually be deciding whether local jurisdictions could do that. Amendment 2 redux First, let’s recall that Amendment 2 hit the ballot first in 2014, but just missed the 60 percent of the vote needed to pass. The current version for the November 2016 ballot has the same name, but United for Care, the group behind the measure, has altered the language for November 2016 to clear up confusion about the prior proposal. The amendment now requires parental consent and doctor certification for minors and more clearly defines the medical conditions it covers: cancer, HIV/AIDS, epilepsy, glaucoma, post-traumatic stress disorder, Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis ""or other debilitating medical conditions of the same kind or class as or comparable to those enumerated,"" with a doctor’s recommendation. That means that if a doctor recommends medical marijuana for a patient with one of these conditions, the patient (or a certified caregiver) will get a state-issued ID card. That card allows them to buy marijuana at a state-regulated dispensary. There are some things to keep in mind about the whole process. Doctors are only recommending cannabis, because it’s illegal under federal law to prescribe a Schedule I drug — meaning it’s considered highly addictive and has no known medical benefits. Doctors would risk losing their ability to practice medicine if they prescribe marijuana. Pharmacies also can’t legally distribute cannabis, making dispensaries necessary. Dispensary suspense The state has estimated there could be almost 2,000 medical marijuana dispensaries in Florida should Amendment 2 pass, though there may be far fewer than that in reality. The proposed amendment requires the Legislature and the health department to figure out all the details of implementing medical marijuana should the measure pass — including the number of dispensaries and where they’re allowed to be. Vote No on 2 spokeswoman Christina Johnson pointed out to us that Amendment 2 does not include any language about a local option, and therefore doesn’t guarantee the state will allow them. The group believes that if a community passes an ordinance, the issue will have to be settled in court due to the amendment’s wording, and a right to access will trump local law. But the amendment also doesn’t prevent the state from letting local jurisdictions create their own rules. While no one knows exactly what will happen, chances are good that there will be some leeway for local rules. Kate Bell, legislative counsel for the Marijuana Policy Project, said it wouldn’t be appropriate for an amendment to try to codify regulations into the state’s constitution. Instead, regulations would have to spell out specifics, such as setbacks from schools and how dispensaries must follow local zoning laws. If the state doesn’t make distinct rules about dispensaries, local zoning rules would likely apply. The examples from other laws vary, as all 25 medical marijuana states (plus the District of Columbia) differ in their regulations. In New York, a rule says dispensaries can’t be within 1,000 feet of a ""school, church, synagogue or other place of worship."" In Washington, D.C., a dense urban area, dispensaries and cultivation centers where marijuana is grown may be no closer than 300 feet of a ""preschool, primary or secondary school, or recreation center."" Ordinances could be shaped into de facto bans, but there is some precedent for local governments being prevented from prohibiting dispensaries entirely. Maryland regulations say a licensed dispensary ""shall conform to all local zoning and planning requirements,"" but the state’s attorney general has said in an opinion that those rules can’t outright ban dispensaries. Arizona law says ""cities, towns and counties may enact reasonable zoning regulations that limit the use of land for registered nonprofit medical marijuana dispensaries to specified areas,"" but court rulings have said those laws can’t make opening a dispensary practically impossible. Pennsylvania’s law, passed earlier this year, prevented local ordinances from completely banning dispensaries. Andrew Livingston, a policy analyst for national law firm Vicente Sederberg, which represents marijuana businesses, said Florida is fairly unique in trying to pass a constitutional amendment with the expectation of marijuana storefronts. Nevada and Colorado passed constitutional amendments, and both allow local dispensary bans. He said almost all states that used voter-approved initiatives — like California, Oregon and Alaska — made the decision before the idea of dispensaries became popular. Those states focused on allowing patients or caregiver to grow their own plants, not buy them through state-approved dispensaries. ""There were no reasons to ban marijuana businesses because marijuana businesses were never mentioned in these earliest laws,"" Livingston said. There is no provision in the Florida amendment for patients to grow their own plants. As for Florida, we don’t have to wait to see whether towns or counties will create their own laws shunning medical marijuana. It’s already happening, in part because of a 2014 law allowing low-THC cannabis products for patients with muscle spasms, cancer, epilepsy and terminal illnesses. More than two dozen cities have regulated or completely banned medical marijuana sales. Boca Raton, for example, has a moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries, cultivation, processing or distribution until city zoning rules are ironed out. Pasco County has banned any type of marijuana business. And while cannabis is still illegal in Plant City, the city commission passed an ordinance on Aug. 8 in anticipation of Amendment 2 winning at the polls. If federal law one day changes, medical marijuana dispensaries would be allowed, but they still have to be at least 500 feet from schools, churches, daycares, drug treatment centers, public parks and residential areas. Any dispensaries also would be confined to an area smaller than four acres in the city, next to a hospital and a fried chicken restaurant. Our ruling Vote No On 2 said, ""Because there's no local option to allow communities to ban, limit or restrict the location of pot shops, if Amendment 2 passes you can expect the seedy elements of the pot industry to move in right next door to your neighborhood, your church, your business and even your child's school."" While the statement is technically accurate about the amendment’s wording, it’s highly doubtful there will be a dispensary on every corner. If it passes, the state will be in charge of writing regulations, including whether and how local jurisdictions will be able to create their own zoning laws or ordinances. It’s impossible to say with certainty what Florida’s regulations on dispensaries would look like should the amendment pass, as regulations in other medical marijuana states vary. But local bans or restrictive laws on dispensaries are common in medical marijuana states. Fears about the precise locations of pot shops and local control are premature."
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37636
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"Screenshot of the ""pro-life wife"" is a ""real-life post by an anti-abortion activist,"" complaining about the inconvenience of caring for a baby she cannot afford and for which she did not plan."
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‘This is a Real-Life Post by an Anti-Abortion Activist, You Can’t Make This S*** Up’
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true
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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On February 3 2020, Twitter user @HayleeFarless shared the following purported screenshot of a woman named Jamie Jeffries to a closed Facebook group called, “Are You Even Pro-Life?” with a comment claiming that it was “a real-life post by an anti-abortion activist,” and adding that “you can’t make this shit up”:This is real. This is a real-life post by an anti-abortion activist. You can’t make this shit up. pic.twitter.com/wDjmU2ZHyh— Hayley Farless (@hayleyfarless) February 3, 2020Beneath Farless’ comment was a screenshot showing the following text:I talked a mom out of abortion in February. Her baby is 6months old now and was just removed from her families custody by DCS (unfortunately it was probably a justified removal)But this family put ME down as a next preferred placement for this baby. Dude me?!?!? No. No no no no no no no no no! I do way too much for this work already, a 6month old will break me, destroy my marriage and physical health. I just can’t! !The screenshot went viral on Twitter and other versions of it were shared to Facebook as well.A separate screenshot shared by the page “Social Justice Sundays” included an edited update, linking to a post by Jamie Jeffries on her page “The Pro-Life Wife.” By Jeffries’ own account, the screenshot was an accurate, undoctored representation of a post she shared to the group mentioned above (“Are You Even Pro-Life?”) at some prior date.Jeffries’ response to the screenshot’s spread was shared on January 26 2020, indicating that the screenshot was in circulating before it appeared on Twitter on February 3 2020. Jeffries confirmed her comments, saying that she legitimately expressed dismay when confronted with the prospect of providing care for the baby that she had “saved”:The post being shared was my venting in a supposedly private prolife group, and while yes I do say “no no no” about taking this baby myself the post doesn’t end there.Jeffries intimated that she didn’t owe anyone an explanation about her position on caring for the at-risk baby, but detailed the factors she cited in her original post. Jeffries stated it would have been “illegal” for her to foster the infant, and reasoned that her refusal was largely due to a legal barrier.That portion was somewhat confusing, as her original claim was that she had recently moved, had a baby of her own, had two surgeries, and then moved again — “thus” making the fostering “illegal.” In her original “venting” post, Jeffries didn’t seem to suggest thst any legal barrier existed to her caring for the infant, merely that it was a matter of convenience and financial concern:If people need the reason behind the “no” it’s simple…I had moved across state lines, had an infant, and just had 2 major life altering surgeries within a year, and moved again, thus I was not even ALLOWED to take in this baby. I couldn’t pass DCS clearance in time. And I knew it. The only way I could take this baby would have been illegally. And to illegally taking a baby I say no. I wouldn’t put my family through an against the law placement. In our state a child under age 3 can only have emergency open case placement with someone who has shared residence or someone who qualifies for substantial connection like kinship. I qualified as neither. If I took him they’d take him back and everyone would be worse off.Jeffries maintained that her emotional, financial, and logistical concerns about unexpectedly caring for a baby were immaterial, and his mother’s choice to attempt to not have an abortion was the sole relevant factor:If I take him or not isn’t what’s important. What’s important is that he is with a family who loves and adores him and keeps him safe. What’s important is that even though it’s not been ideal his life has been worth living. He wasn’t better off dead or never existing.Although Jeffries ultimately declined (or was legally prohibited from) fostering the baby, she said that she would “always be there for him,” presumably just not in terms of taking him in:And I will always be there for him. He will always have me and I will always do everything in my power to make sure he is safe and loved just as I have since he was 8 weeks old in the womb. I’ve been by his side his entire life…he couldn’t get rid of me even if he tried!Finally, Jeffries complained that her words were “taken out of context” and dishonestly edited to make her look bad, while still maintaining her post was authentic and unaltered. In that portion, she added that initially, she didn’t “explain everything” nor add that she “wasn’t cleared” to take him, a claim that seemed to contradict her original post:I get people are posting edited and cropped down year old screen shots that were stolen from a private prolife advocacy group, and yeah that out of context incomplete screens shot looks bad. I didn’t word it well and it’s easy to take out of context. I didn’t explain everything in that post the way I have here because I didn’t need to. It wasn’t a post to the public or to people who didn’t know I wasn’t cleared to take him. Those reading the post that day a year ago knew the story and saw the updates that followed that day and those that have followed for a year now. Had that post been a public statement on the events of the day rather than an in the moment update to fellow advocates in a private group I would’ve worded it more officially and explained all aspects of the case as I have here.Pro-abortion people are posting about this all over to make me look bad or like I failed when they have no idea the reality is the opposite. This wasn’t a fail. This wasn’t a refusal to continue to support, love, and protect this baby boy … it doesn’t matter because that baby boy…oh how I love him. He’s so worth every bit of the hard.Screenshots of a “real-life post by an anti-abortion activist” complaining about her inability to care for a child due to emotional, financial, physical, and logistical stressors were not satire. Jamie Jeffries herself confirmed the post was both authored by her and shared freely to the closed group “Are You Even Pro-Life?” at some point in the past. Jeffries said in January 2020 that although she was unwilling to care for the baby boy, she enlisted another person to adopt him after DCS sought placement for the child six months after his birth.
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2473
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Pet pig Nemo's lymphoma treatment makes research history.
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When George Goldner went to feed his six pet pigs earlier this year, his 730-pound (331-kg) companion Nemo was acting strangely. Nemo had suddenly stopped eating and laid in the mud.
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true
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Health News
|
So Goldner loaded Nemo into a trailer and drove more than two hours to Cornell University Hospital for Animals (CUHA) in Ithaca, New York. There he learned his four-year-old Hampshire pig had what doctors believed was the blood cancer B-cell lymphoma. The hospital’s researchers told Goldner they had never seen a pig treated for cancer. But that did not deter Goldner, a self-described animal lover, who asked doctors to devise a way to treat his pig based on their knowledge of cancer in dogs and humans and not worry about costs. Now, four months after Goldner first rushed to the hospital, Nemo has made history as the first known pig to undergo lymphoma treatment - and successfully - leaving researchers with hope for advancements in treating cancer in large animals. “Before when large animals were diagnosed with cancer, it was pretty much impossible to treat them,” said Emily Barrell, a resident who picked all of Nemo’s chemotherapy drugs and delivered them. “Now we have a model to base it on.” Because pigs have necks bigger than many humans, their veins are difficult to access, Barrell said, making it impossible to deliver many of the aggressive drugs needed for chemotherapy. Doctors at CUHA consulted with researchers in other fields before implanting a vascular access port, which is a small metal port with a silicone cover, directly under Nemo’s skin behind his ear. The port contained a catheter that ran through a jugular vein in his neck, allowing Nemo to receive the sort of cancer treatment administered to dogs and humans. Nemo is now believed to be in remission, Barrell said, and will return home in September if everything goes according to plan. Goldner and doctors at CUHA declined to specify how much Nemo’s treatment cost. The cost of chemotherapy for an average-sized golden retriever is $4,000-$5,000 from start to finish, Barrell said, and Nemo is seven or eight times the size of that. “There were two choices: One was to let him die and the other was to give it a shot,” Goldner said in an interview. “Now I think (Nemo) is definitely bound to provide some help.” Though some may criticize the cost of treating such large animals, Barrell said it has become common practice for cat and dog owners to pay for cancer treatment, and it is up to owners to decide how much they are willing to pay. “This is exactly the type of clinical veterinary research we should be doing to treat disease in other animals,” said Justin Goodman, director of laboratory investigation at animal rights group PETA. Nemo’s appetite is back and he’s treated like a “big star” at CUHA, Goldner said. “(Nemo) is a really special story about people being innovative and owners being dedicated,” Barrell said.
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37031
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An email that tells the story of the Women’s Suffrage Movement that fought for the right for women to vote and the Home Box Office movie called “Iron Jawed Angels” that aired on television. It tells of the “Night of Terror” in 1917 when women were arrested for protesting at the White House, beaten and tortured and says that it as a reminder for all to vote.
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"Why Women Should Vote and The ""Iron Jawed Angels"" "
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true
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Miscellaneous, Politics
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This email covers only part of the story. Women’s rights had been an issue throughout the early history of the United States along with the abolition of slavery. There is a complete timeline posted on the Library of Congress web site in a section dedicated to The National American Woman’s Suffrage Association collection consisting of 167 books, pamphlets and other artifacts documenting the suffrage campaign. The Library of Congress timeline begins with Abigail Adams who wrote a memo to her husband in 1776 to remind the Continental Congress while they were drafting the Constitution of the United States to “remember the ladies.” It wasn’t until after the civil war and the abolishment of slavery in the US that the women’s movement began to gain momentum as the next battle for civil rights. In 1866 Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the American Equal Rights Association, an organization dedicated to the goal of universal suffrage. In 1872 Susan B. Anthony was arrested and fined $100 for trying to enter a polling place to vote for Ulysses S Grant. Former slave, Sojourner Truth showed up at a polling booth in Battle Creek, Michigan, demanding a ballot but was turned away. According to the case posted in the University of Kansas City Law School Anthony never paid her fine and “no serious effort was made by the government to collect it.” In 1878 A Woman Suffrage Amendment was introduced in the United States Congress proposing “The right of citizens to vote shall not be abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex” but was not ratified by Congress until August 18, 1920. In 1913 Teddy Roosevelt adopted the woman’s suffrage cause as a plank on his Bull Moose Party platform when he ran for a third term for President of the United States. Throughout the course of time there were many groups and conventions promoting the right to vote for women. Lucy Burns and Alice Paul organized the Congressional Union eventually changing the name to the National Women’s Party which got them noticed. Their tactics were more radical and militant than the groups that preceded them and included hunger strikes, picketing the White House, and engaging in other forms of civil disobedience to publicize the suffrage cause. In 1917 members of the movement staged a massive protest in front of the Whitehouse in Washington DC. Hundreds of women were arrested on charges of “obstructing sidewalk traffic.” Many were convicted and sentenced to prison at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia. In 2004 HBO (Home Box Office) produced and released the docudrama “Iron Jawed Angels” staring Hillary Swank as Alice Paul and Frances O’Connor as Lucy Burns. It gives an account of the history of the movement and does show Lucy Burns, who went on a hunger strike during her incarceration, being forced fed through a tube down her throat. Doris Stevens (1892-1963) wrote her firsthand account of treatment and conditions in which the suffragists were held at the Occoquan Workhouse in 1917 in a book called “Jailed for Freedom” and it can be found at the Gutenberg Project website, a collection of writing that were produced by tens of thousands of volunteers. In 1978, President Jimmy Carter signed the Susan B. Anthony Dollar Coin Act into law making her the first woman to be honored by having her likeness appear on a circulating United States coin. Click here for the University of Kansas Law School “Trial of Susan B. Anthony” Click here for Doris Steven’s “Jailed for Freedom” on Gutenberg. Click here for the National Archives and Records Administration history of the 19th Amendment Click here for the Library of Congress page Click here for the HBO Ironed Jawed Angles page posted 09/08/08
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2379
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Fitness websites aim to stream togetherness as well as workouts.
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Fitness websites are proliferating, offering a wide range of workout options from group classes to virtual personal training, and experts call the online venues especially inviting for the young, the time-pressed and the gym-averse.
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true
|
Health News
|
And despite the lack of hands-on contact, the most popular sites manage to maintain the human touch, even if it is faceless and far away. “I do think online fitness formats that have social community are successful,” said exercise physiologist Jessica Matthews. “We know that social support is a long-term adherent to social activity.” Matthews, who teaches exercise science at Miramar College in San Diego, California, said for many people online fitness is about making connections and being with like-minded people. Fitness instructor, trainer, and wellness coach Jessica Smith, who started streaming workouts in 2005, credits the connection established with her audience, mainly women 30 to 45 years old, for the success of JessicaSmithtv.com. “That’s what keeps people coming back and leaving comments,” she added. Even corporate gyms are dipping their toes into the video stream. Crunch, a national gym chain, launched Crunch Live at the end of 2013. “We’re hurtling so quickly through technology,” said Donna Cyrus, a senior vice president of programming at Crunch Fitness. “It seemed to me the future was definitely online.” She said internet streaming is more cost-effective than purchasing a library of DVDs, and can reach consumers in rural areas too sparsely populated to support a brick-and-mortar gym. Cyrus said many streamers are in their late 20s or early 30s, a generation comfortable online and less touchy-feely. “This business, like everything else, is becoming less personal. People don’t even talk on the phone anymore. They communicate on Facebook,” she said. “Maybe this is an answer for those people.” Texting is how Florida-based personal trainer and health coach Lee Jordan communicates with clients scattered across the country. Most people he works with are morbidly obese, about 100 pounds above their ideal weight. Jordan, who has shed more than 275 pounds through gastric band surgery, diet and exercise, knows how much support and encouragement are needed to achieve such a weight loss. He said text messaging and the power of the cellphone enable him to be in his clients’ pockets all day long without coming off like an intimidating drill instructor. “These people have experienced a lot of negatives and can be hypersensitive,” he said. “In person they can shut down but via text they have a chance to read it, let it percolate, and respond.” His tools include “apps like MapMyWalk from MapMyFitness,” Jordan explained. “My phone rings when they’re done it and I can pull up what they did: how far, where. Then I can give them very specific feedback.” Neal I. Pire, a trainer and fitness expert with the American College of Sports Medicine, is for anything that gets anyone off the couch and moving. But he cautions that online tools are no substitute for the hands-on trainer. “I don’t think it’s the ideal for anyone looking to do an exercise program,” said Pire. “Even with a video cam to watch the client, it’s hard for a trainer to be sure he’s covering all the bases.” Whatever the shortcomings, most experts agree online fitness is here to stay. Smith remembers when her long-term goal was to have a television show. “Now I don’t need one,” she said.
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6318
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To boost workforce, medical schools try to sell rural life.
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On a field trip to the Birthplace of Country Music Museum, Ashish Bibireddy put on headphones and scrolled through a jukebox of music from an influential 1927 recording session.
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true
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Health, General News, AP Top News, Medical schools, Tennessee, Bristol, U.S. News
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Bibireddy and nine other medical students had already been biking and rafting on their visit to rural Appalachia organized by a nearby medical college. But it wasn’t just casual sightseeing; the tour was part of a concerted effort to attract a new generation of doctors to rural areas struggling with health care shortages. The Quillen College of Medicine at East Tennessee State University is among a small group of medical schools across the U.S. with programs dedicated to bolstering the number of primary care doctors in rural communities. The schools send students to live in small towns and train with rural doctors. Like Quillen, some also organize outings and cultural experiences to try to sell students on living there after they graduate. Schools have taken students to a ranch to brand cattle, brought in an Appalachian story teller and catered local delicacies to show students who may have never lived without the convenience of a Starbucks or Target what rural life offers. “It’s a little sense of what the fun part of rural life can be,” said Dr. Dana King, chair of the family medicine department at West Virginia University School of Medicine, where students in the rural track go to a ski resort, visit a coal mine and go whitewater rafting. At the University of Colorado School of Medicine, students can meet with the mayor, police chief or other leaders of rural communities and interview residents to learn about the town. “We want to give the students an idea about what goes into the workings of a small community,” said Dr. Mark Deutchman, director of the school’s rural track. Most of the more than 7,000 facilities, population groups and areas in the U.S. facing a shortage of primary care physicians — often a patient’s first point of contact for treatment — are rural, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. They need nearly 4,000 additional physicians to close the gap. Most of the students who came to Quillen did not grow up or attend school in rural areas, but all expressed an interest in working with underserved populations, rural programs coordinator Carolyn Sliger said. The students spent three weeks with doctors in rural towns in eastern Tennessee and a week in June exploring the region. After the museum tour, they visited a war memorial with an eternal flame and hulking U.S. military attack helicopter. The group then headed to a rooftop bar overlooking Bristol, where the brick-lined main street straddles the Virginia-Tennessee state line. Bibireddy, 23, grew up in suburban Edison, New Jersey, and attended the University of Central Florida medical college in Orlando. He never lived in a rural area but was impressed with what he saw of Appalachian life during the visit. “The people here are genuinely caring,” he said. He was inclined to work in a rural area after medical school but acknowledged that building relationships with a community as an outsider would be difficult. Jason Soong, another medical student in the program, said he has “always known” that he wanted to live in a sparsely populated place with open space. Soong, 23, grew up in a Philadelphia suburb and attended California Northstate University College of Medicine outside Sacramento. “Living out in a rural area, you can just go outside your door, and you have nature right there,” Soong said. Katherine Schaffer and a few other students ended their day in Bristol around a patio table at a stylish downtown bakery. Schaffer, 27, said she was excited to meet people who shared her interest in rural practice. Her medical school friends in Norfolk, Virginia, want to work in cities as specialists and worry they wouldn’t have a social life in a small town, she said. “I think it’s very difficult in my medical school to find like-minded people (interested in rural practice),” she told the group. Administrators of rural track medical school programs say their graduates go into rural practice at considerably higher rates than other doctors. But many of those students are already inclined to practice in a rural area, so the figures may exaggerate the programs’ success, said Dr. Randall Longenecker, associate project director for the Collaborative for Rural Primary care, Research, Education and Practice. “We skim the cream off the top,” said Longenecker, whose research has documented 39 accredited colleges of medicine and colleges of osteopathic medicine that have clearly delineated rural training tracks — about a fifth of U.S. medical schools. For students from small towns, the programs can help maintain their enthusiasm for rural life, said Dr. Joseph Florence, director of rural programs at Quillen. Florence said big city medical programs push students to become specialists and avoid primary care. “They beat rural out of you by the time you leave,” he said. The rural track programs, on the other hand, give the students “a place to be rural and not only be accepted but be appreciated for it,” he said. Dr. Darrin Nichols, 28, said the rural track program at West Virginia University School of Medicine confirmed his choice to practice near the West Virginia town of roughly 800 people where he grew up. He was struck by the camaraderie of coal miners he met during a trip organized by the school and said it reminded him of his own tight family bonds. “I always wanted to stay near my family and practice in a community that had those types of relationships,” he said.
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28760
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Canada has legalized heroin for general use.
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What's true: Canada has enacted new regulations enabling doctors to prescribe heroin to opioid addicts due to an ongoing drug crisis. What's false: Canada has not legalized heroin for general or recreational use.
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mixture
|
Medical, addiction, canada, decriminalization
|
In September 2016 a number of social media posts left readers with the impression that Canada had quietly legalized the general use of heroin, a seemingly shocking claim given the substance’s reputation as one of the hardest and most lethal street drugs. There was some truth behind the rumor, but the refrain that “Canada legalized heroin” was not quite accurate. According to the Canadian Press, on 8 September 2016 Canada enacted regulatory changes that enable doctors to prescribe heroin to patients who are severely addicted to opioids “in cases where traditional treatment has failed”: Health Canada has amended regulations allowing doctors to prescribe heroin to people who are severely addicted to opioids. The government says the country is facing an opioid overdose crisis and healthcare providers need help in treating patients suffering from chronic dependency. The change to the former Conservative government’s legislation means pharmaceutical-grade heroin can be prescribed under a special-access program in cases where traditional treatment has failed. However, Health Canada says that while there is scientific evidence to support emergency access to the drug, the treatment is not an option for most people. Supervised heroin therapy is used in several countries, including Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands, and a clinical trial in Canada has concluded injectable heroin was more effective than standard methadone treatment. The decision was made in part due to a growing number of opiate-related fatalities in Canada, including more than 250 deaths in a four-month period in early 2016. The regulatory changes were proposed in May 2016 and described as suitable for “a small group of addicts.” The American ABC News outlet provided additional detail about the program’s intricacies, including commentary from medical and drug policy experts who underscored that the program was reserved for those suffering from treatment-resistant opioid addiction: Canada’s health ministry announced that doctors will now be able to prescribe diacetylmorphine or prescription-grade heroin for the treatment of “chronic relapsing opioid dependence.” The drugs will be given through Canada’s Special Access Programme (SAP) which provides access to drugs not currently available on the market for the treatment patients with serious or life-threatening conditions when “conventional therapies have failed, are unsuitable, or unavailable.” “Scientific evidence supports the medical use of diacetylmorphine for the treatment of chronic relapsing opioid dependence in certain individual cases,” Canadian health officials said. “Health Canada recognizes the importance of providing physicians with the power to make evidence-based treatment proposals in these exceptional cases.” Dr. Scott MacDonald developed a pilot program that studied the effects of providing prescription heroin to certain users in Vancouver and said researchers have seen huge success with the program. “This is a kind of last resort to get them into care to get them off the streets,” MacDonald said. “We see them come to us every day rather than stay on the streets… that engagement and retention in care is a significant benefit.” In the pilot program users must be a long time heroin user, who has tried at least twice to stop using drugs. The drug users are allowed to come to the clinic between two to three times a day where they are provided a syringe and drugs for injection. Medical staff on site monitor the drug users and can intervene if they show signs of overdose. Daniel Raymond, policy director for Harm Reduction New York, said that providing prescription heroin could viewed as an extension of medicine-based rehab programs that utilize drugs like morphine or buprenorphine that help medically address symptoms of opioid addiction and withdrawal. “I think the idea is not so much the Marie Antoniette style let them have heroin,” said Raymond. “We know people who struggle with opioid disorder. We’ve been using bufneoprohine, morphine…none of them have been sufficiently scaled up.” Raymond pointed out this treatment is only right for a small group of drug users. The recent movement towards marijuana decriminalization (including provisions for recreational as well as medical use) in the U.S. led many social media users to infer Canada’s purported legalization of heroin resembled the dispensary model with which many Americans are familiar. But the Canadian program is akin to neither legal medical or recreational marijuana use in states such as California or Colorado. Experts have noted that the pool of eligible opiate-dependent Canadians is small, and the new regulations do not allow anyone to walk into a shop and purchase heroin either with a prescription or at their leisure. The program is described as suitable only for long term heroin users who have already attempted traditional heroin cessation treatments at least twice and failed; it does not facilitate heroin acquisition for casual users or others without a documented history of failed addiction rehabilitation attempts.
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7397
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Gene tests can provide health clues -- and needless worry.
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Last year, Katie Burns got a phone call that shows what can happen in medicine when information runs ahead of knowledge.
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true
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AP Top News, Health, Genetic Frontiers, North America, Science, U.S. News
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Burns learned that a genetic test of her fetus had turned up an abnormality. It appeared in a gene that, when it fails to work properly, causes heart defects, mental disability and other problems. But nobody knew whether the specific abnormality detected by the test would cause trouble. “I was pretty distraught,” says Burns, a photographer in Charlotte, North Carolina. “I had a baby who was kicking. I could feel him moving inside of me. But at the same time I had this ache in my chest. What was his life going to be for him?” It took two months to get more reliable information, and Burns says she wasn’t really sure of the answer until after she gave birth in October to a healthy boy. Her experience is a glimpse into a surprising paradox of modern-day genetics: Scientists have made huge leaps in rapidly decoding people’s DNA, but they sometimes don’t know what their findings mean. They can even get fooled. That can come to a head when medical professionals have people tested for genetic variants that cause or promote a disease, usually because they show symptoms or an illness runs in their family. The testing often focuses on relatively rare disorders, caused by a single gene. Medicine is getting into genetic testing in a big way. One recent estimate found nearly 75,000 health-related DNA tests being marketed by American labs to health care providers, mostly for single-gene disorders, with the total growing rapidly. And this year, the Pennsylvania-based Geisinger health system began offering free genetic testing to its patients as a standard part of its disease prevention efforts, along with things like mammograms and cholesterol checks. Americans are interested in what their genes say about their health. Poll results released Thursday by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 60 percent would want to know if they carried a variant associated with even an incurable disease. But DNA test results can be puzzling. Katie Burns’ fetus had what experts call a “variant of uncertain significance,” or a VUS. Many are known: One standard database contains almost 193,000 variants categorized as a VUS, more than twice the number of listed variants known to cause disease. Each variant may be seen in only one or a handful of patients. But as a group, many thousands of them are being reported to patients, said Heidi Rehm of Boston’s Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The rates vary by disease. In seeking genes to explain a patient’s hearing loss, for example, around half of tests will find only a VUS, she said. A child with symptoms that suggest developmental delay or a related disorder might get a test that examines 200 genes, she said. With such a wide net cast, the chances of a VUS are nearly 100 percent, she said. That can cause more than worry, said Otis Brawley, chief medical and scientific officer for the American Cancer Society. He tells of women who got breasts removed after learning they had a VUS in a gene linked to breast cancer — only to learn years later that further research showed the variants were harmless. How can this be? How can scientists not know whether a DNA abnormality is dangerous? To understand that, it helps to know a bit about DNA. In each of us, the genetic code is like a text with 3 billion letters. Some of those letters spell words — genes — that carry out specific jobs. If a gene has one or more letters that aren’t the ones found in the generic “spelling” of human DNA, they are called variants. Some variants lead to disease. But each of us carries many variants, and most are harmless. You can’t tell their effect just by looking at them. And just because a variant is rare, that doesn’t mean it’s harmful. Scientists do have ways to determine if a variant is risky or not, but they often don’t have enough information to make the call. That’s what happened to Katie Burns. She had the genetic test done because of an unusual finding on a fetal ultrasound scan. The VUS prompted her genetic counselor to suggest testing both her and her husband to see if they had the variant. The counselor also brought up the possibility of an abortion. “Termination was off the table,” Burns said. Instead, Burns scoured the internet. In a searchable database of genetic variants called Clinvar, she saw that Rehm’s laboratory had encountered the variant found in her fetus, and classified it as a VUS. Burns contacted Rehm, who provided some reassurance. In the years since the 2013 classification as VUS, the variant had turned up in three members of the general public, and Rehm told Burns she suspected that either she or her husband would be found to have the variant. That would give further evidence that it’s harmless. When Burns later learned that the variant appeared in her healthy husband, “a lot of stress kind of eased off.” And in October, her son was born without any trace of the disease. So how should a person react to a VUS? Genetic counselors say it should be considered along with the person’s other medical information, but not used as the sole reason for a major decision like breast removal. That message has not gotten through to some doctors, said Dr. Allison Kurian of Stanford University. She recently surveyed surgeons about tests that examined the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, in which certain mutations can greatly increase the risk of breast cancer. Many surgeons said they’d treat a patient with a VUS the same way as if she had a known disease-promoting mutation. “That is not a correct recommendation,” Kurian said. “Those two things are different. ... We need to have expert genetic counseling more closely integrated into the care of breast cancer patients.” Kendra Snyder, of Newton Hamilton, Pennsylvania, recalls being told by her genetic counselor “just to live your normal life” after VUS results this year. She had taken the test because of a heart condition. “I was a little upset,” she said. “I was hoping I’d have more conclusive answers as to why my heart is like this.” But upon reflection, she said, she realized she shouldn’t stress over it, because doing so would reduce her quality of life. As for the VUS finding, “it’s there, but I’m not really panicking and thinking much about it.” As scientists find more people with a VUS and carry out lab studies, they hope to distinguish the truly risky ones from those that are harmless. With large population databases that have recently become available, they can determine if a VUS is more common in the general population than the rare disease it might cause — a sign that it’s harmless. And combining results from different test labs, such as those submitting information to the Clinvar database, can help. Meanwhile, any worried parent who consults Clinvar about the genetic variant found in Katie Burns’ baby will find a bit of comfort. In November, after hearing the good news from the Burns family, Rehm updated the database to note that her lab no longer considered it a VUS. The new classification: “Likely benign.” ___ AP medical writer Lauran Neergaard in Washington contributed to this report. ___ This Associated Press series was produced in partnership with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. ___ This story has been corrected to show the spelling of Kurian’s first name is Allison, not Alison.
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Type 2 Diabetes Treatment Victoza Helps Type 1, Too
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This story reports on a small case series showing that a drug intended for type 2 diabetes (which typically affects adults and doesn’t require insulin injections) seems to benefit individuals with the type 1 form of the disease (which usually presents in childhood and requires insulin replacement therapy). The findings are certainly newsworthy because better glycemic control could help prevent the long-term consequences of type 1 diabetes, such as heart disease and kidney failure. However, they shouldn’t be communicated to a consumer audience without strong caveats about the preliminary nature of the research. This story didn’t meet that standard. Small, uncontrolled studies often report tantalizing benefits for new treatment approaches. Sometimes these benefits are real, but often they reflect factors that have nothing to do with the new therapy. Patients may get better simply because they think they are getting a useful new treatment (i.e., the placebo effect). Or, they may improve because the study researchers give them more attention and education than they were getting before. Another possibility is that patients become motivated to manage their disease more carefully while they are in a study. Controlled studies limit the influence of these factors and are important for determining the true value of a new treatment.
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mixture
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WebMD
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The story does not discuss costs. Adding Victoza to a diabetic’s treatment regimen would cost an additional $350 per month, according to coverage of the study by MedPageToday. This is not a trivial sum. The story attached numbers to some of the benefits reported on. We learn that patients taking the drug had less need for mealtime and all-day insulin (reductions of 7 and 8 units, respectively); that their HbA1C dropped from 6.5% to 6.1%; and that they lost an average of 10 lbs. However, no numbers are provided to back up the claim in the second paragraph that patients “felt much better overall” after treatment. This one is close, but since the story emphasizes the drug’s effects on how patients feel (in the third paragraph, the lead researcher on the study says patients experienced a “delightful improvement” in well-being), we felt that some data should have been provided to substantiate this. The story pays appropriate attention to potential harms. It notes that the weight loss caused by the drug could be detrimental to thin patients, and that the drug causes abdominal pain, nausea, and vomiting. The study author notes that adverse effects cause about 5% of type 2 diabetes patients to stop taking the drug. The story probably should have mentioned that the drug is administered by injection, something which can’t be very appealing to type 1 diabetics who may already be giving themselves multiple injections daily or, as in this study, are using insulin pumps that only require a needle to be inserted every few days. We found several problems here: In addition, while the outcomes reported in this study — insulin requirements, blood sugar levels, etc — are clinically important, it’s not clear if they will ultimately reflect improvements in the primary long-term problems associated with diabetes, such as blindness, amputations, and heart attacks. The story could have mentioned this uncertainty. No disease-mongering in this story. The story notifies readers that this study was conducted without drug company support, but that a corporate-funded trial is in the works. The story could also have notified readers that the lead researcher, Dr. Dandona, disclosed numerous relationships with pharmaceutical companies in the abstract for this study — although none with Victoza manufacturer Novo Nordisk. The story fell short of the bar when it failed to obtain feedback from an expert who wasn’t involved with the research. Context is everything, and even hearing from a practicing diabetes expert would have been helpful. The story mentions that another drug in the same class as Victoza might have similar benefits in type 1 diabetes. The story might have included more information about the importance of testing blood sugars, frequent insulin changes, and careful dietary monitoring in improving control of diabetes. The story states that the drug is not approved for use in type 1 diabetes, but that it could be used off-label in this population by a diabetologist since it is approved for use in type 2 diabetes. There’s a good description of how the drug works and why it hasn’t previously been studied in individuals with type 1 diabetes. The story acknowledges in a footnote that a news release from the Endocrine Society was used as source material. However, we could not locate a copy of this release online to evaluate it. Since there were no expert sources cited other than the lead researcher on the study, we can’t be sure to what extent this story relied on the Endocrine Society release for its content. We’ll rate this one not applicable.
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35507
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Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York recently received a little-publicized $71,000 pay raise that made him the highest paid governor in the U.S.
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What's true: Cuomo of New York is scheduled to receive an aggregate $71,000 pay raise that would currently make him the highest-paid governor in the U.S. What's false: Cuomo was only one of several high-level state officials who received pay increases phased in over three years, which would put them well over $200K in annual salary; the raises were openly recommended by a state compensation board in 2018 and passed by the state legislature in 2019.
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mixture
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Politics
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During the coronavirus pandemic of spring 2020, Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York remained at the top of the news cycle for two reasons: His state saw by far the largest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths, and his daily press briefings were a staple of television news coverage of the crisis. The New York governor was also praised as a model of political leadership during an emergency by those who were highly critical of President Donald Trump and his handling of the U.S. federal response to COVID-19. During that period, a meme circulated via social media stating that Cuomo had recently requested and been granted a $71,000 pay raise that made him the highest-paid governor in the U.S., and that this activity had taken place “while most NYers were sleeping”: It was true that Cuomo had been granted a pay raise that would make him (at least temporarily) the highest-paid governor of any state. But that pay adjustment had been recommended and enacted a year earlier (i.e., in 2019, not 2020), the $71,000 increase was phased in across the span of three years (rather than given all at once), and the matter involved multiple recommendations and approvals from state authorities which were openly publicized (not furtively hidden from New York residents). On April 1, 2019, both houses of the New York Legislature (Assembly and Senate) approved a pay hike that would increase Cuomo’s compensation from $179,500 to $200,000 in 2019, $225,000 in 2020, and $250,000 in 2021. In terms of base salary, that raise created the potential for Cuomo to become the nation’s highest-paid governor in 2020, out-earning Gov. Gavin Newsom of California (assuming that no other state raised its chief executive’s pay to a higher level before then). The gubernatorial pay hike was one of several salary increases that had been recommended back in December 2018 by the New York State Compensation Committee, which “after months of research and public hearings,” advocated substantial pay raises for multiple high-level state officers — many of whom would, like the governor, would see phased pay increases eventually garnering them well over $200,000 per year: A four-member committee has recommended substantial pay raises for members of the state Legislature, the governor, lieutenant governor, state comptroller and state attorney general. The New York State Compensation Committee — consisting of current and former New York state and New York City comptrollers — unveiled their recommendations Monday, December 10, 2018, after months of research and public hearings. The Compensation Committee recommends that, starting on Jan. 1 of 2019, state legislators will receive an annual salary of $110,000. Beginning on Jan. 1, 2020, lawmakers will receive an annual salary of $120,000 and their outside income would be capped at $18,000, which 15 percent of their legislative pay. Beginning on Jan. 1, 2021, lawmakers would receive $130,000 a year and their outside income would be capped at $19,500, which is 15 percent of their legislative pay. This would be the long-term compensation for state legislators moving forward. The Compensation Committee is also recommending pay increases for the governor, who would receive an annual salary of $250,000 after a three-year phase-in; the lieutenant governor, who would receive $220,000 after a three-year phase-in; and an annual salary of $220,000 for both the state comptroller and state attorney general after a phase-in period. Executive branch commissioners and department heads would also receive pay raises under the plan, with Tier A commissioners making $220,000 after a three-year phase-in. As the New York Post reported, some legislators “grumbled that the [pay raise] measure was thrown in at the last minute” while they were working overtime to pass a state budget, but Cuomo and others defended it by noting that the compensation committee’s recommendations had been published and accepted months earlier: Because the governor can’t sign off on his own pay hike, the raise required legislative action.
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27749
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An image shows the inside of a leatherback turtle's mouth.
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Additional photographs showing the insides of a leatherback sea turtles mouth have been taken by several other scientific organizations:
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true
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Fauxtography, animals, leatherback sea turtle
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A photograph purportedly showing the insides of a leatherback turtle’s mouth that is frequently shared online is often viewed with a heavy dose of skepticism due to its gruesome and alien-like appearance: However, the image is indeed real. The esophagus of a leatherback sea turtle is lined with papillae, sharp, keratinized prongs that enable the turtle to dine on jellyfish: Another adaptation that leatherbacks and a few other sea turtles have is called esophageal papillae. These prongs are made of cartilage and line the throat of the turtle, and basically grip on to the jellyfish that it’s eating and ensures that it doesn’t slip back out as the turtle uses the muscles in its throat to expel excess salt water. The esophageal papillae also protect the leatherback from the stinging cells for the jellyfish – as you can imagine, the jellyfish don’t go down without a fight, so these cartilaginous prongs keep the turtle from being injured by its prey. Now, leatherbacks travel vast distances and require a lot of energy to make these migrations possible – but jellyfish are primarily water, a little protein, some vitamins and minerals, and some fat. So – how on earth can a leatherback fuel it’s body with them? Well, they actually have an extremely long esophagus that leads from the mouth to the rear of the body, and then it loops up the side again until it reaches the stomach, which is about a quarter of the way from the front of the turtle. This long esophagus acts as a holding pouch so that the leatherback can continually digest its food – as parts of its meal leaves the stomach digested, new jellyfish are being pushed into the stomach. The image seen here was first posted online by The Los Roques Scientific Foundation in September 2010 and was reportedly taken at the Los Roques Archipelago National Park in Venezuela.
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3399
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3 years in, no sign of Trump’s replacement for Obamacare.
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As a candidate for the White House, Donald Trump repeatedly promised that he would “immediately” replace President Barack Obama’s health care law with a plan of his own that would provide “insurance for everybody.”
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true
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AP Top News, Health, General News, Politics, Election 2020, Donald Trump, Barack Obama
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Back then, Trump made it sound that his plan — “much less expensive and much better” than the Affordable Care Act — was imminent. And he put drug companies on notice that their pricing power no longer would be “politically protected.” Nearly three years after taking office, Americans still are waiting for Trump’s big health insurance reveal. Prescription drug prices have edged lower, but with major legislation stuck in Congress it’s unclear if that relief is the start of a trend or merely a blip. Meantime the uninsured rate has gone up on Trump’s watch, rising in 2018 for the first time in nearly a decade to 8.5% of the population, or 27.5 million people, according to the Census Bureau. “Every time Trump utters the words ACA or Obamacare, he ends up frightening more people,” said Andy Slavitt, who served as acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services during the Obama administration. He’s “deepening their fear of what they have to lose.” White House officials argue that the president is improving the health care system in other ways, without dismantling private health care. White House spokesman Judd Deere noted Trump’s signing of the “Right-to-Try” act that allows some patients facing life-threatening diseases to access unapproved treatment, revamping the U.S. kidney donation system and the FDA approving more generic drugs as key improvements. Trump has also launched a drive to end the HIV/AIDS epidemic. “The president’s policies are improving the American health care system for everyone, not just those in the individual market,” Deere said. But as Trump gears up for his reelection campaign, the lack of a health care plan is an issue that Democrats believe they can use against him. Particularly since he’s still seeking to overturn “Obamacare” in court. This month, a federal appeals court struck down the ACA’s individual mandate, the requirement that Americans carry health insurance, but sidestepped a ruling on the law’s overall constitutionality. The attorneys general of Texas and 18 other Republican-led states filed the underlying lawsuit, which was defended by Democrats and the U.S. House. Texas argued that due to the unlawfulness of the individual mandate, “Obamacare” must be entirely scrapped. Trump welcomed the ruling as a major victory. Texas v. United States appears destined to be taken up by the Supreme Court, potentially teeing up a constitutional showdown before the 2020 presidential election. In a letter Monday to Democratic lawmakers, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi singled out the court case. “The Trump administration continues to firmly support the recent ruling in the 5th Circuit, which they hope will move them one step closer to obliterating every protection and benefit of the Affordable Care Act,” Pelosi wrote, urging Democrats to keep health care front and center in 2020. Accused of trying to dismantle his predecessor’s health care law with no provision for millions who depend on it, Trump and senior administration officials have periodically teased that a plan was just around the corner. In August, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Seema Verma, said officials were “actively engaged in conversations and working on things,” while Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway suggested that same month an announcement was on the horizon. In June, Trump told ABC News that he’d roll out his “phenomenal health care plan” in a couple of months, and that it would be a central part of his reelection pitch. The country is still waiting. Meantime Trump officials say the administration has made strides by championing transparency on hospital prices, pursuing a range of actions to curb prescription drug costs, and expanding lower-cost health insurance alternatives for small businesses and individuals. One of Trump’s small business options — association health plans — is tied up in court. And taken together, the administration’s health insurance options are modest when compared with Trump’s original goal of rolling back the ACA. Since Trump has not come through on his promise of a big plan, internecine skirmishes among 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls have largely driven the health care debate in recent months. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are leading the push among liberals for a “Medicare for All” plan that would effectively end private health insurance while more moderate candidates, like Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, advocate for what they contend is a more attainable expansion of Medicare. Brad Woodhouse, a former Democratic National Committee official and executive director of the Obamacare advocacy group Protect Our Care, said it is important for Democrats to “put down the knives they’ve been wielding against one another on health care.” “Instead turn their attention to this president and Republicans who are trying to take it away,” Woodhouse counseled. Some Democratic hopefuls appear to be doing just that. During a campaign stop in Memphis, Tennessee. this month, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called out Trump on health care, saying the president is “determined to throw Americans off the boat, without giving them a lifeline.” Polling suggests Trump’s failure to follow through on his promise to deliver a revamped health care system could be a drag on his reelection effort. Voters have consistently named health care as one of their highest concerns in polling. And more narrowly, a recent Gallup-West Health poll found that 66% of adults believe the Trump administration has made little or no progress curtailing prescription drug costs. Prescription drug prices did drop 1% in 2018, according to nonpartisan experts at U.S. Health and Human Services. That was the first such price drop in 45 years, driven by declines for generic drugs, which account for nearly 9 out of 10 prescriptions dispensed. Prices continued to rise for brand-name drugs, although at a more moderate pace. Trump’s broadsides against the pharmaceutical industry might well have helped check prices, though drug companies have been hammered by every major Democrat as well as many Republican lawmakers. Trump says a health insurance overhaul can be done in a second term if voters give him a Republican Congress as well as a reelection win. But Trump and the GOP had that chance when they were in full control and unable to deliver, because Republicans don’t agree among themselves. Trump could still score a big win on prescription drugs before the 2020 election. He’s backing a bipartisan Senate bill that would limit what Medicare recipients pay out of pocket for their medicines and require drug companies to pay rebates to the government if they increase prices above inflation. Passing it would require the cooperation of Pelosi, harshly criticized by Trump over impeachment.
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17388
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"The ""U.S. has the highest unintended pregnancy rate of any Western industrialized country."
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"Richards said the U.S. ""has the highest unintended pregnancy rate of any Western industrialized country."" She did not offer nor did we find a breakdown of unintended pregnancy rates for individual Western industrialized nations, evidently because none exist. This gap leaves us with the Guttmacher institute’s conclusion that in 2008, Canada and the U.S., combined, had more unintended pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15-44 than every region except Asia (not including Japan), Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. None of these regions with higher rates are commonly considered developed and industrialized."
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true
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Abortion, Sexuality, Texas, Cecile Richards,
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"Asked about differences among Americans on abortion rights, Cecile Richards suggested this country leads in a dubious way. Texas Monthly editor-in-chief Jake Silverstein asked Richards, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America whose mother, Ann, served as governor of Texas: ""It’s often said that abortion is an issue on which there’s no room for compromise; there are two sides that fundamentally disagree, and there’s just no coming together. Do you think that’s true?"" Richards replied: ""Where we see enormous common ground—maybe not among politicians but among people—is that folks want women to have access to birth control; they want young people to have access to sex education that helps them prevent becoming pregnant before they are ready to be parents. ""Frankly,"" Richards continued, ""it’s an outrage that the U.S. has the highest unintended pregnancy rate of any Western industrialized country. So that, I think, is where there is enormous common ground, and we’ve demonstrated that when women have access to family planning services and can choose the family planning that works for them, we can reduce teen pregnancy, we can reduce unintended pregnancy, and we can reduce the abortion rate."" Silverstein told us the bulk of the interview took place Dec. 6, 2013, with excerpts debuting in the magazine’s February 2014 edition and online. So, does the U.S. have the highest rate of unintended pregnancies among Western industrialized countries? A word: The United Nations says online that it has no established convention for identifying ""developed"" and ""developing"" countries or areas, but in common practice, Japan, Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Europe are considered developed regions or areas. Guttmacher Institute research By email, Justine Sessions, a Planned Parenthood aide, offered as the basis of Richards’ claim a December 2013 ""fact sheet"" from the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit that promotes reproductive health and and abortion rights. It states: ""The U.S. unintended pregnancy rate is significantly higher than the rate in many other developed countries."" According to the sheet, 51-plus percent of U.S. pregnancies in 2008--or 3.4 million of 6.6 million--were unintended, which the sheet defines as mistimed (31 percent) or unwanted (20 percent). That percentage was reached by institute researchers Lawrence Finer and Mia Zolna based on U.S. government data and the institute’s Abortion Patient Survey, according to a Dec. 19, 2013, Guttmacher press release. ""Although many unintended pregnancies are accepted or even welcomed,"" the release said, ""40% end in abortion."" The rate of unintended pregnancies — that is, factoring in population — is another statistic, and it’s the one Richards referred to. According to the Guttmacher fact sheet, there were 54 unintended U.S. pregnancies in 2008 for every 1,000 women aged 15-44. ""In other words,"" the sheet says, ""about 5% of reproductive-age women have an unintended pregnancy each year."" The sheet’s reference to unintended pregnancies in the U.S. and other developed countries was footnoted to a December 2010 research article, published in the journal Studies in Family Planning, on global levels of unintended pregnancy as analyzed by Susheela Singh, Guttmacher’s vice president for research, and two colleagues. But that article, emailed to us by Guttmacher spokeswoman Rebecca Wind, didn’t break down unintended pregnancy rates country by country. This lack of detail made us wonder how the researchers concluded that the U.S. rate significantly exceeds the rates in other Western industrialized nations. Charting unintended pregnancy rates by region Instead, the article presented a chart comparing the prevalence of unintended pregnancies by regions of the world, which the researchers said they estimated using nationally representative and small-scale surveys of 80 countries. ""Of the 208 million pregnancies that occurred in 2008, we estimate that 41 percent were unintended,"" the authors wrote. That was up from 38 percent from an estimate in 1995. Unintended pregnancies were defined as ""being comprised of unplanned births, induced abortions and miscarriages."" The researches concluded that 48 percent of the 7.2 million pregnancies in 2008 in North America, in this analysis meaning only Canada and the United States, were unintended. As noted, the authors separately said 51 percent of the U.S. pregnancies that year were unintended. Latin America and the Caribbean had the highest unintended pregnancy rate in the report, at 58 percent. But both areas are not developed and industrialized, at least per the U.N.’s characterizations. Other world regions saw fewer occurrences of unintended pregnancy: Europe (44 percent), Africa (39 percent) and Asia (38 percent). By email, Wind said there are no Western industrialized countries in most of the regions with more unintended pregnancies than the U.S., with the exception of Eastern Europe. She noted, too, that the U.S. rate of unintended pregnancy in 2008 was 54 per 1,000 women aged 15-44, ""well above"" the 48 per 1,000 in Eastern Europe. Given that Richards spoke of the rate of unintended pregnancies, here is the 2010 study’s breakdown of such rates by region: North America (48 unintended pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15-44); Latin America and the Caribbean (72); Europe (38); Asia, not including Japan (49); and Africa (86). Country by country data almost non-existent Guttmacher researcher Gilda Sedgh, asked about unintended pregnancy rates for individual developed countries, told us by email: ""Data on unintended pregnancy rates in developed countries are not systematically collected."" Referring to the institute’s latest number-crunching, Sedgh added that researchers have preliminarily estimated that in Europe in 2012, there were 43 unintended pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15-44, while in North America there were 51 per 1,000. In the end, we did not identify on-point sources of information on unintended pregnancy rates in specific countries. Wind, the institute spokeswoman, said the absence of country-specific data in the published study doesn’t mean that such data always isn’t available. ""Some developed countries publish unplanned birth data, some publish abortion data, and some publish both,"" Wind emailed. ""Because not all countries publish those data, we do our analysis at the regional level. What is true is that there are no published country-specific data that directly address that claim. However, based on our research, we are confident that the US unintended pregnancy rate is higher than that of most other developed countries."" At Wind’s suggestion, we reached out to the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, which oversees the National Survey of Family Growth. By email, an unidentified spokesperson pointed us to a July 24, 2012, research article published in National Health Statistics Reports. The article, drawing on interviews of 12,279 U.S. women aged 15-44, estimated that 37 percent of domestic births occur due to unintended pregnancies; the researchers did not develop an independent estimate of the prevalence of unintended pregnancies or make comparisons to other countries, though it referenced Guttmacher research in stating that about half of U.S. pregnancies are unintended. Separately, James Trussel, a Princeton University professor of economics and public affairs who co-authored a January 2008 Contraception editorial on reducing unintended pregnancies, told us by email that statistics ""do not exist for most countries. Even in the"" United Kingdom, ""we have estimates only for Edinburgh. That said, the percentage of pregnancies that is unintended is very high in the U.S. (and probably the highest in any Western industrialized society)."" Our ruling Richards said the U.S. ""has the highest unintended pregnancy rate of any Western industrialized country."" She did not offer nor did we find a breakdown of unintended pregnancy rates for individual Western industrialized nations, evidently because none exist. This gap leaves us with the Guttmacher institute’s conclusion that in 2008, Canada and the U.S., combined, had more unintended pregnancies per 1,000 women aged 15-44 than every region except Asia (not including Japan), Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. None of these regions with higher rates are commonly considered developed and industrialized. The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information."
|
35912
|
Joe Biden 'botched' his recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance during a September 2020 campaign speech.
|
Other states with a high number of deaths include Texas, a red state, and Florida, a battleground … [R]ed states and battlegrounds, such as Louisiana, Mississippi, Arizona and Michigan were also in the top ten.
|
false
|
Politics, 2020 election
|
"On Sept. 21, 2020, a short video clip of U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was circulated via Twitter, with claims that depicted the candidate as he “completely botches the Pledge of Allegiance.” In this clip, Biden can be heard saying, “I pledge allegiance to the United States of America, one nation, indivisible, under God, for real”: Joe Biden completely botches the Pledge of Allegiance: ""I pledge allegiance to the United States of America, one nation, indivisible, under God, for real."" pic.twitter.com/Gct4AEVWog — Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) September 21, 2020 The common version of the pledge, used since the mid-1950s, is somewhat longer: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” This clip was an excerpt from a speech Biden had delivered earlier in the day (Sept. 21) at a campaign event in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. During that speech, Biden criticized Trump’s repeated (and false) claim that if “blue” (i.e., Democratic-voting and/or Democratic-run) states were not counted, the U.S. would have one of the lowest COVID-19 death rates in the world: President Donald Trump blamed “blue states” for increasing the nation’s death rate from coronavirus, suggesting that if “you take the blue states out” of the equation the United States would be far more competitive with other countries. Trump has long blamed Democratic leaders for a variety of ills, including “Democrat-run” cities where protests against police have occasionally turned violent. But his suggestion that states fared better or worse with the pandemic depending on their political persuasion was his most explicit effort yet to frame the handling of the virus in political terms. The president’s remarks came as his administration has faced questions about the death rate from the virus in the United States compared with other countries. The U.S. has experienced about 60 coronavirus deaths for every 100,000 people, according to Johns Hopkins data, among the highest rates in the world. Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump argued the United States is handling the virus well “despite the fact that the blue states had tremendous death rates.” “If you take the blue states out,” he continued, “we’re at a level that I don’t think anybody in the world would be at. We’re really at a very low level but some of the states – they were blue states, and blue-state managed.”"
|
37706
|
The senior class at Etowah High School in Georgia was photographed together without wearing face coverings in August 2020.
|
Was a Georgia High School’s Senior Class Photographed Together Without Masks?
|
true
|
Fact Checks, Viral Content
|
Online criticism concerning safety measures in schools trying to reopen amid the COVID-19 pandemic circulated around a second Georgia school in August 2020 as a photo spread online showing an entire senior class gathered together without face coverings.Etowah High School gained attention after the Twitter account “Everything Georgia” posted the class photograph on August 3 2020 explaining, “Despite being in the middle of a pandemic, today Etowah High School in Cherokee County started their first day of school. Here’s a seniors photo that was taken this morning.”Despite being in the middle of a pandemic, today Etowah High School in Cherokee County started their first day of school.Here’s a seniors photo that was taken this morning. pic.twitter.com/3VwzN3d0pE— Everything Georgia (@GAFollowers) August 4, 2020The photograph spread even further when it was posted to the Facebook group “The Other 98%” with the caption, “Not a mask in sight and ZERO social distancing. If this is what [Donald] Trump & Betsy DeVos meant by opening schools safely then God help us all.” The group’s post was shared more than 10,000 times on that platform.Etowah High officials have not publicly addressed the class photograph, but a spokesperson for its own governing body, the Cherokee County School District, told WXIA-TV that “masks are not mandated for students — they are strongly encouraged and recommended. The fact that masks would not be mandated for students is known to all CCSD parents, as it has been repeatedly communicated to them since the reopening plan was announced July 8.”The district further told Associated Press that officials only heard about the class photograph after it spread online, since it was not an official school function.The photograph’s spread mirrored that of another photo taken inside a school in Paulding County, about 30 miles away from Etowah High, with both going viral amid a slight decrease statewide in the amount of positive tests for COVID-19 as well as newly confirmed cases.AP also reported that the state hit a new weekly high mark for deaths on August 4 2020, with an average of 51 deaths from the disease across the prior week.Comments
|
4922
|
Utah moves to scrap state-run pot dispensary system.
|
Utah legislators were moving Thursday to scrap a planned state-run medical marijuana dispensary system after county attorneys said it would put public employees at risk of being prosecuted under federal drug laws.
|
true
|
Medical marijuana, Health, General News, Utah, Marijuana
|
Under the revised plan being written by Republican Senate Majority Leader Evan Vickers, medical cannabis would instead be distributed through as many as 12 private dispensaries. The changes to Utah’s medical marijuana law would have to be approved in a special session. Some cannabis advocates applauded the proposed change, saying it would increase patient access to pot. Others, however, worried that 12 dispensaries won’t be enough to meet demand when the program is rolled out next year for people with certain medical conditions who get a patient card from their medical provider. The law now calls for seven private dispensaries with a state-run “central fill pharmacy” to distribute the remainder of medical marijuana orders through Utah’s 13 local health departments. Some county attorneys argued that using health departments as pickup points could make the employees de facto drug dealers. Marijuana is banned at the federal level, though a congressional amendment blocks the Justice Department from interfering with states’ medical marijuana programs. Utah’s plan emerged when lawmakers made sweeping changes to the voter-approved law as part of a compromise involving the influential Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The compromise removed the ability for people to grow their own marijuana if they were far from a dispensary. The health-department system was aimed at helping rural residents. More than 30 other states allow medical marijuana, but none have state-run dispensaries because they fear the potential legal fallout, according to the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington-based pro-legalization advocacy group.
|
8656
|
Italy's coronavirus deaths could be underestimated in data: official.
|
The number of deaths from coronavirus in Italy could be underestimated in the official figures, the head of national health institute ISS said on Tuesday.
|
true
|
Health News
|
“It is plausible that deaths are underestimated. We report deaths that are signaled with a positive swab. Many other deaths are not tested with a swab,” Silvio Brusaferro told reporters. He confirmed that official coronavirus data did not include deaths of people who died at home, in nursing homes and all those who may have been infected by virus but were not tested. The vast majority of tests have only happened in hospitals. The official death toll from the epidemic totaled 11,591 as of Monday, while there were 101,739 confirmed cases. The mayor of Bergamo, the worst-hit city in the country, has said the official death tally might be four times higher given the huge numbers of people who have died in care homes.
|
9367
|
Deep brain stimulation may offer treatment for type 2 diabetes, study suggests
|
This Los Angeles Times story reports on a study with some tantalizing new information about connections between the brain and the body’s metabolism. The research is novel, very preliminary, and more about introducing a new avenue of study for researchers rather than a new therapy for people with type 2 diabetes. The story maintained this framing well — that the findings are useful for researchers more than clinicians at this time. However, the headline and the photo credit undermine this carefulness with phrasing suggesting a new treatment option: “may offer treatment” and “may provide alternative treatment.” Given that the headline may be the only part of this article seen by many readers, it’s an important shortcoming. Type 2 diabetes is a chronic metabolic disease that affects 1 in 10 Americans and continues to increase. The disease is the leading cause of kidney failure, limb amputation, and blindness and the seventh leading cause of death in the US. We know many of the risk factors and have treatment options, and yet there is a lot of room for improvement in managing this chronic disease. In addition, greater understanding into the cause of the disease and ways to counteract the deficits in metabolism that are the hallmark of diabetes are much needed.
|
true
|
deep brain stimulation,diabetes
|
Even though deep brain stimulation (DBS) is not close to being recommended for diabetes, it is a current therapy for Parkinson’s disease and other movement and psychiatric disorders. Thus, cost information could have been included — we found estimates ranging from $35,000 – $50,000. Of course, the costs associated with the use of this technology for diabetes might differ from the costs with Parkinson’s disease. However, our rule of thumb in these situations is, If it’s not too early to claim this approach “may offer treatment,” it’s not too early to discuss what that treatment may eventually cost. The article did a good job describing the current evidence for deep brain stimulation on insulin sensitivity, which is still in the earliest of stages. A single patient receiving DBS for obsessive-compulsive disorder reduced his need for insulin dose by 80%. Description of more fundamental experiments were not quantitatively detailed, which seems acceptable for the health focus here. The article did not mention side effects of deep brain stimulation, which may include brain bleeding, stroke, seizure, and mood and cognitive changes. The article summarized a variety of evidence that supports a connection between deep brain stimulation (specifically dopamine neurotransmission) and metabolic regulation (specifically insulin sensitivity). The story also spends plenty of time establishing the preliminary nature of the research and its lack of clinical application at this time. Although this careful framing is undermined by the aggressive wording of the headline, we’ll give the benefit of the doubt and award a satisfactory grade here. No disease-mongering here. The story quotes a physician-researcher who was not involved in the study. Because the story mentions that the new findings might “pave the way for a new approach to treating type 2 diabetes,” we think it’s important to briefly review for readers what the current approaches are, such as diet, exercise, and a variety of diabetes medications. The story makes clear that deep brain stimulation is a current therapy, though not yet for diabetes. The story makes clear that the novelty of this study is that it introduces a new brain area (the nucleus accumbens rather than the hypothalamus) as having regulatory control over metabolism. The story does not seem to rely on a news release.
|
32687
|
Files released by the FBI prove that Adolf Hitler escaped Germany for Argentina.
|
Although there is nothing to be found in the AnonHQ article or the FBI files that comes close to contradicting the standard understanding that Hitler died by his own hand in his Berlin bunker in the closing days of World War II, these documents do highlight the fact that the types of people who forward patently fake e-mails or write hoax articles just to garner web traffic have indubitably existed in one form or another since at least the 1940s.
|
false
|
History, adolf hitler, anonhq, yournewswire
|
In May 2016, a web site called AnonHQ published a shocking story about Adolf Hitler: apparently the FBI had finally admitted, at long last, that the Nazi leader had not only fled to South America at the end of World War II, but that he had lived out his last years there in peace before finally dying of old age: The FBI.gov website reveals the government knew Hitler was alive and well, and living in the Andes Mountains long after World War II had ended. The world has been told for the last 70 years that on April 30 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker. His body was discovered and identified by the Soviets before being taken back to Russia. Is it possible that the Soviets lied all this time, and that history was rewritten? With the release of these FBI documents, it certainly seems that the most notorious leader in history escaped Germany and lived a peaceful life in the foothills of the Andes Mountains in South America. The story was permeated with links to official-looking documents and other stories, giving it an convincingly authoritative sheen. However, the links that led to the most “damning” FBI pages turned up a collection of letters, newspaper clippings, and first-, second-, and third-hand accounts that had been gathered over a period of several years after the end of World War II. The first letter in the collection referred to a man who contacted the now-defunct Los Angeles Examiner through a friend of a friend, claiming to have proof of Hitler’s dramatic escape by submarine (the names in the scanned documents were blacked out): [Redacted] disclosed to [redacted] that he wished to find some high government official who would guarantee him immunity from being sent back to Argentina if he told him the following information. According to [redacted] he was one of four men who met HITLER and his party when they landed from two submarines in Argentina approximately two and one-half weeks after the fall of Berlin…. [Redacted] maintains that he can name the six Argentine officials and also the names of the three other men who helped HITLER inland to his hiding place. [Redacted] explained that he was given $15,000 for helping in the deal. [Redacted] explained to [redacted] that he was hiding out in the United States now so that he could tell later how he got out of Argentina. Alas, when the reporter tried to follow up with the source, he was unable to find him again. Additionally, police and Immigration and Naturalization Services were unable to match the man’s name with any records. The existence of this document in FBI records demonstrates nothing beyond the fact that the agency was obligated to follow up all such leads reported to them in the immediate post-war era, no matter how far-fetched they might seem. Another site turned up a purported photograph of Hitler (by then supposedly calling himself Adolf Liepzig, because apparently he didn’t have the wherewithal to figure out that he should use a different name) posing with his girlfriend (supposedly named “Cutinga”) not long before he died of old age in 1986: Of course, the photograph is old and grainy, making it impossible to identify any significant facial features of the persons pictured in it. However, the picture is taken as solid evidence of Hitler’s escape by Simoni Renee Guerrerio Dias, a student from Brazil who coincidentally discovered the photograph at around the same time she was trying to sell her book about Hitler. Other documents recorded reports of similar sightings that all ultimately led to dead ends, and the collection demonstrates that the FBI actively investigated such leads for several years. Of course, the fact that the agency never turned up anything isn’t taken as evidence that there was nothing to find by the most conspiracy-minded denizens of the internet, but rather that the FBI was complicit in Hitler’s escape: Even with a detailed physical description and directions the FBI still did not follow up on these new leads. Even with evidence placing the German sub U-530 on the Argentinian coast shortly before finally surrounding, and plenty of eye witness accounts of German official being dropped off, no one investigated.
|
33925
|
A psychiatrist said U.S. President Donald Trump may be responsible for millions more deaths than Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.
|
Frances, who is author of the book “Twilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump,” was otherwise critical of what he called “medicalizing politics” and said attributing Trump’s erratic behavior to mental illness stigmatizes the mentally ill and fails to adequately address his policies.
|
true
|
Politics
|
A statement by a psychiatrist made on the CNN program “Reliable Sources” comparing the deadliness of policies enacted by U.S. President Donald Trump with murderous authoritarian regimes of the 20th century grabbed headlines in late August 2019. But the expert in question, Dr. Allen Frances, said he was referring to the effects of climate change. Frances, professor and chairman emeritus of psychiatry at Duke University School of Medicine, was debating with Yale School of Medicine Psychiatry Professor Bandi X. Lee, author of the book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump,” about the merits of mental-health professionals who have raised alarms about Trump’s mental state. Frances stated, “Trump is as destructive a person in this century as Hitler, Stalin, and Mao were in the last century. He may be responsible for many more million deaths than they were.” Comparing the American president to the dictatorial regimes of Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin, which killed millions of people, unsurprisingly drew the attention of members of the news media, who wrote headlines like, “University psychiatrist: Trump ‘may be responsible for many more million deaths’ than Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.” The backlash on social media was also predictably viral. . @AllenFrancesMD, a psychiatrist, tells @Brianstelter: Trump “may be responsible for many more million deaths” than Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong.https://t.co/cBUZVQjhNU pic.twitter.com/RVARyeVnVh — Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) August 25, 2019 The only thing “Reliable” about Stelter is that he is reliably a leftwing hack. https://t.co/qYJb07wMdQ — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) August 25, 2019 But the follow-up statement to that sentence in the broadcast suggests Frances was talking about a potential rolling catastrophe resulting from the effects of climate change. Frances stated, “It’s crazy for us to be destroying the climate our children will live in. It’s crazy to be giving tax cuts to the rich that will add trillions of dollars to the debt our children will have to pay. It’s crazy to be destroying our democracy by claiming that the press and the courts of the enemy of the people. We have to face these policies, not Trump’s person.” In an email to us after the program aired, Frances stated that he was talking about Trump’s climate-change denial, not the proactive slaughter associated with the likes of Hitler. “I think it is no exaggeration to worry that the policies that follow from Trump’s reckless climate denial may wind up causing the death of hundreds of millions of people. Our species appears to be on a path to self-destruction, and Trump is enthusiastically leading the way,” Frances stated in the email.
|
1987
|
Scientists find genetic link to depression.
|
Scientists say they have discovered the first solid evidence that variations in some peoples’ genes may cause depression — one of the world’s most common and costly mental illnesses.
|
true
|
Science News
|
And in a rare occurrence in genetic research, a British-led international team’s finding of a DNA region linked to depression has been replicated by another team from the United States who were studying an entirely separate group of people. “What’s remarkable is that both groups found exactly the same region in two separate studies,” Pamela Madden, who led the U.S. team at Washington University, said in a statement. The researchers said they hoped the findings would bring scientists closer to developing more effective treatments for patients with depression, since currently available medicines for depression only work in around half of patients. “These findings ... will help us track down specific genes that are altered in people with this disease,” said Gerome Breen of King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, who led the other research group. The researchers said they believed many genes were involved in depression. These findings are unlikely to benefit patients immediately, with any new drugs developed from them likely to take another 10 to 15 years. However, they will help scientists understand what may be happening at the genetic and molecular levels in people with depression. The first study analyzed more 800 families with recurrent depression, while the second examined depression and heavy smoking in a series of families from Australia and Finland. Both studies were published in the American Journal of Psychiatry on Monday and both teams reported a strong link between depression and genetic variations in a region called chromosome 3p25-26. “Normally in genetic studies of depression, replication of findings is very difficult and frequently takes years to emerge, if ever,” said Breen, who gave a briefing in London about the work. Major depression affects about 20 percent of people at some point in their lives. Severe and recurring depression affects up to 4 percent of people and is notoriously hard to treat. The World Health Organization has forecast that depression will rival heart disease as the health disorder with the highest disease burden in the world by 2020. According to a 2006 study, depression is responsible for 100 million lost working days a year in England and Wales alone at a cost of 9 billion pounds ($14.6 billion). Studies of families with depression have indicated that the disorder has a genetic link and scientists think around 40 percent of the risk of developing it is contributed by genes, with the rest down to environmental and other external factors. “We are just beginning to make our way through the maze of influences on depression and this is an important step toward understanding what may be happening at the genetic and molecular levels,” Michele Pergadia, who worked on Washington University study, said in a statement about the findings. Breen’s team is now conducting detailed gene sequencing studies in 40 of the families involved in the first study to try to find specific genes and variations that show a link.
|
3629
|
Health officials: Rabid bat found outside Illinois home.
|
Health officials say a rabid bat has been found outside a home in Woodstock in northeastern Illinois.
|
true
|
Rabies, Health, General News, Illinois, Crystal Lake, Bats
|
The (Crystal Lake) Northwest Herald reports Friday that several dogs playing with the bat may have been exposed to the disease. The McHenry County health department says the dogs were up to date on rabies vaccinations and were being monitored. No human exposure has been reported. The Illinois Department of Public Health rabies surveillance map shows that 20 other rabid bats have been found this year in the state. Rabies is a viral disease affecting the nervous system and can be transmitted from infected mammals to humans. It is almost always fatal if not treated before symptoms appear. ___ Information from: The Northwest Herald, http://www.nwherald.com
|
20571
|
"Chain email Says Gov. Scott Walker is ""openly"" backing a move to abolish the state retirement system and convert it to a 401(k)-style plan that will reduce pensions ""by at least a third"" for current and retired public employees"
|
Chain email says Gov. Scott Walker supports a move to abolish the state retirement system and reduce pensions
|
false
|
Pensions, State Budget, Wisconsin, Chain email,
|
"Wisconsin public employees, already feeling bruised from past battles, now fear Gov. Scott Walker is planning to strip away their guaranteed pension benefits. A chain email that has rapidly been making the rounds among Democrats and public employees claims Walker is ""openly"" backing a move to abolish the Wisconsin Retirement System in favor of a system that will cut pensions. The retirement system has 430,000 members, including retired and active teachers, state and municipal employees. So that’s a lot of potential interest in the topic. We have received a dozen or more requests to check it out. Here are some of the key points from the chain email, including its tortured syntax: ""Walker is saying that after he wins the recall election, he plans to push thru the legislature a plan to abolish the state retirement system and convert everyone to 401 K which will reduce our pensions by at least a third,"" the email says. ""Tell everybody you know, included those already retired, because if Walker wins we are all in big trouble…. This is not a rumor, he is openly talking about it in Madison, it just isn't being publicized. Remember how nobody thought he would do anything to the union."" The email is built around its own contradiction: Walker is ""openly talking about it"" yet ""it just isn’t being publicized."" It’s just one tack taken by those claiming Walker is out to gut the pension system. More than 32,000 people have signed a Move.On.org-sponsored online petition that opposes an alleged Walker plan to ""radically alter"" the retirement system. And the state teachers union is organizing a March 1, 2012 meeting on what it what it termed Walker’s plan to ""seriously undermine"" retirement security. ""If you think that you are safe because you are retired, THINK AGAIN,"" says a flier from the Wisconsin Education Association Council. The concerns did not develop out of thin air. They date to early 2011, after Walker’s budget repair bill called for a study of the 401(k)-style concept. That study was later approved in the 2011-2012 budget. The budget calls for a study to be completed by June 30, 2012 of ""establishing a defined contribution plan as an option for participating employees."" ""Defined contribution"" refers to a 401(k)-style concept. (A second study topic is allowing employees to opt out of making contributions). The study comes after last year’s changes that required most public employees to contribute 5.8 percent of their pay toward their pension. Walker's administration, in response to the growing public profile of the issue, sent a letter to all WRS participants on Feb. 24, 2012 outlining the study's rationale. How does the pension system work? The current WRS is a modified version of a ""defined benefit"" system. It offers a guaranteed pension funded mostly from pooled investments in which risk is shared between the employer and the employees. Pension are based mainly on years of service and final salary. In contrast, under a ""defined contribution"" system, future benefits are not guaranteed at a specific level and workers bear the investment risk in an individual account. There’s actually precedent for this kind of system in Wisconsin: Before 1966, then-separate funds for teachers and state workers were of the defined-contribution type, according to a history done by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau. Experts told the Journal Sentinel at the time that Walker’s study, along with the governor’s ultimately successful move to eliminate of collective bargaining over pension changes, could herald an eventual conversion to a 401(k)-type plan. But the chain email makes a different, much bolder claim: That the decision to abolish the system has already been made and, indeed, Walker is ""openly"" backing such a move. In fact, little has been written or said about even what the study is looking at. We asked Mike Huebsch, secretary of the state Department of Administration, if the study would look at putting future hires into a 401(k)-style plan, as Michigan did. We also asked about ""hybrid"" systems, which combine the traditional guaranteed pension with a 401(k)- type program, such as in Indiana. And we asked if the study included a purely voluntary option where employees could choose to participate in a 401(k)-type program. Huebsch said all three approaches would be studied but ""there is no intent at this point of forcing anybody into a system they wouldn’t want to be part of."" He said he was aware of the outcry in other states when workers were forced into a 401(k)-style plan. ""That’s why we would give them the option,"" Huebsch said. Walker recently commented on the study in an interview with WISC-TV in Madison, saying that alternatives would be evaluated according to ""a balance of protecting hardworking taxpayers and providing whatever we might provide in a respectful and responsible way."" Walker also said: ""Despite all the hype and rumors out there, for people in the pension system right now, I can't anticipate anything in the future that wouldn't allow them to continue in that pension system if that's what they prefer to do."" That contradicts the idea that Walker is openly touting elimination of the system. Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie reiterated that Walker would await the study to determine if any changes needed to be made. No specific options are under active consideration, he said. Wisconsin already has a slight flavor of a defined-contribution plan, in that annual growth in retirees’ basic pension varies with state pension-fund earnings. Still, retirees are guaranteed a pension no lower than the level when they retired, unless they pick a high-risk option. Huebsch said that far from ""abolishing"" the retirement system, the goal is to determine how the Wisconsin system can remain stable and avoid the massive shortfalls facing other states’ pension funds. Experts say the Wisconsin pension fund is one of the healthiest in the United States, offers a relatively modest benefit and costs taxpayers less as a share of governmental spending than plans in nearly all other states. One of the email’s most provocative suggestions is that existing employees -- and even those already retired -- would see major benefit reductions. But legal experts say retirees almost certainly would be unaffected by any changes under discussion. Courts, they say, have consistently protected benefits already earned by retirees and current workers as a property right -- though governments are increasingly testing that principle. In contrast, judges have blessed changes that affect new hires who have never been under an existing system. Huebsch made clear how he viewed Wisconsin law: Changing any benefits already earned would be illegal. Could the state leave their previously accrued pension benefits in place but change them for future earnings? Some states, including Rhode Island, have required current employees to participate in ""hybrid"" pension plans that combine elements of both types of plans. Workers are suing over cuts in what they will receive. Wisconsin state statute 40.19 says ""Rights exercised and benefits accrued to an employee under this chapter for service rendered shall be due as a contractual right and shall not be abrogated by any subsequent legislative act."" But the statute also speaks of the state’s right to change benefits going forward. The state Employee Trust Funds department, which administers the pension fund, said in a statement on its website that any changes ""could only apply to the accrual of future benefits."" That leaves open changing benefits going forward for current employees. Our conclusion A chain email making the rounds claims Walker is ""openly"" backing a move to abolish the state retirement system. While a study of the system is under way, the email’s claim jumps the gun and goes way too far. We don’t yet know the study’s conclusions, and Walker’s administration says no decisions have been made on making any changes at all. What’s more, legal experts say in all likelihood any changes would have to be going forward -- and retirees have the most protection."
|
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