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1634
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Neurologist, author Oliver Sacks dies at age 82 .
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Oliver Sacks, the neurologist who studied the intricacies of the brain and wrote eloquently about them in books such as “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” died on Sunday at the age of 82, his personal assistant said.
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true
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Health News
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The British-born Sacks, who announced in February that he had terminal liver cancer, died at his home in New York City at 1:30 a.m. with his partner, the writer Billy Hayes, and his personal assistant, Kate Edgar, at his side, Edgar told Reuters. “He definitely wrote to the very end,” said Edgar, noting Sacks in his final days never stopped penning a legacy that will be published posthumously and may include “several books.” NYU School of Medicine, where Sacks taught, said in a statement mourning his death that his “breakthrough work” in the fields of neurology and neuro psychiatry led to important understandings in these fields. “Equally important, his prolific, award-winning writing touched the lives of millions around the world,” NYU said. Sacks was called “a kind of poet laureate of medicine” and “one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century” by the New York Times. Using a typewriter or writing in longhand, Sacks authored more than a dozen books, filling them with detailed, years-long case histories of patients who often became his friends. He explained to lay readers how the brain handles everything from autism to savantism, colorblindness to Tourette’s syndrome, and how his patients could adapt to their unconventional minds. Sacks’ view, as expressed in his 1995 book “An Anthropologist on Mars,” was that such disorders also came with a potential that could bring out “latent powers, developments, evolutions, forms of life that might never be seen, or even be imaginable.” “The brain is the most intricate mechanism in the universe,” he said in a People magazine interview. “I couldn’t imagine spending my life with kidneys.” Sacks’ own psyche was quite complicated. At times in his life he struggled with drug abuse and acute shyness and he suffered from prosopagnosia, a disorder that leaves victims unable to recognize faces. In 2012 he told a New York magazine interviewer he had been in psychoanalysis for more than 45 years and celibate since the mid-1960s because he was essentially married to his work. However, in “On the Move” he wrote of falling in love at age 77 with Hayes. Sacks, an atheist, was born in London on July 7, 1933, to Jewish physicians. In hopes of keeping him safe from the Nazis’ bombing of London during World War Two, his parents sent him away to school and the shy young Sacks turned to science. After attending medical school and practicing in Britain, he moved to the United States in the early 1960s where he studied a group of people with encephalitis lethargica. They had been untreated and virtually frozen in catatonic states for decades until Sacks administered an experimental psychoactive drug known as L-dopa. The drug had an explosive “awakening” effect on the patients but the experiment trailed into failure as they developed tics, seizures or manic behavior and had trouble adjusting to the contemporary world. Sacks wrote about the patients in the 1973 book “Awakenings,” the basis of the 1990 Oscar-nominated movie of the same name, starring Robin Williams as a character based on Sacks and Robert de Niro as one of his patients. “This had become a heaven-and-hell experience,” Sacks told People magazine of his “Awakenings” case. “But the patients would just have died without having even a glimpse of that life had they not been given L-dopa.” His best-known work was the 1985 book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” a collection of case studies of people whose brains had misfired, including lost memories, gross perception problems and Tourette’s. Sacks often considered his own maladies in his books including “Migraines”, “The Mind’s Eye” about dealing with blindness, and “Hallucinations” which details his experiences with LSD and mescaline. His autobiography, “On the Move: A Life,” was released in May.
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10324
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Sluggish? Confused? Vitamin B12 May Be Low
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This column provided a string of narratives from people with wellness issues who report personal benefit from supplementation with vitamin B12. In so doing, the story made vitamin B12 appear to be the solution to many of life’s ills without thoughtfully examining alternative sources for the problems listed, the quality of the evidence indicating the vitamin’s benefit in the absence of deficiency, and was not even clear about the benefits that might be obtained from vitamin B12. By suggesting that supplementation with vitamin B12 is the solution to some of life’s common complaints, the column might have the unintended result of delaying attention for potentially serious medical problems. The column could have quite easily given more context and more evidence, and thus, more meaningful information for readers.
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false
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Wall Street Journal
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The costs of vitamin B12 supplements were not discussed and whether they are often covered by insurance was not explored. This article presented no data whatsoever. In terms of descriptive information about benefits, it had, on the one hand, the expert, Irwin Rosenberg indicating that if individuals are not vitamin B12 deficient, then there is no evidence that B12 supplements are of benefit. On the other, you had an individual (Jane Riester, 27) indicating that although her B12 level was in the normal range (i.e. 200 pg/ml), she personally experienced benefit from supplementation. By juxtaposing anecdote and evidence, it confuses the value of evidence. Irwin Rosenberg was quoted as stating that taking too much vitamin B12 is unlikely to cause harm. However – there are specific conditions where the use of injectable vitamin B12 can be problematic (e.g. in those with Leber’s disease or allergy to cobalt) and any regular injections are associated with risk of blood borne infection. There was little critique regarding the quality of the evidence discussed. One clinician was quoted as observing that many patients treated with B12 “feel better” even though she admitted that this was not a controlled study, only adding that “I see a lot of them”. This statement should not be left without some evaluation because personal experience is radically different than clinical study. An individual clinician often has no idea what proportion of patients have responded to this sort of treatment and no way to tease out the proportion of benefit due to placebo effect. At the end, the story postulated that vitamin B12 might reduce homocysteine which may be associated with heart disease before going on to indicate that clinical studies have demonstrated that vitamin B12 does not reduce the risks of heart disease. While it is good to clear up that vitamin B12 does not actually help – it seems confusing that the story indicated that it might. This story including many laundry lists of symptoms ranging from the commonplace (sluggish) to scary (irreversible neurological problems) without appropriate context as to the incidence of the more serious problems or bothering to discuss that many of the problems described commonly result from problems other than vitamin B12 deficiency. There were several sources interviewed for the story. However, the one independent source’s insight was greatly overwhelmed by the personal anecdotes without critical evaluation of their statements. Nonetheless, because there was independent perspective, we’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt on this criterion. There was no discussion about alternative sources for the problems reportedly resolved by B12 nor was there any information about other options for managing problems such as depression, loss of appetite, or lethargy. The text mentioned that vitamin B12 supplements were available in pill and injectable form; a table listing food sources of B12 was included. The story did not indicate that vitamin B12 was a new or novel treatment for any of the possible complaints listed. It does not appear that the column relied solely or largely on a news release.
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805
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Measles-stricken New Zealand girl visited Disneyland, other California destinations.
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A teenage girl from New Zealand sick with measles visited Disneyland and other popular tourist stops across Southern California earlier this month, possibly infecting others, local government health officials warned.
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true
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Health News
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The alert comes amid the worst outbreak of measles in the United States in a quarter century, with more than 1,200 cases reported across 30 states since October 2018, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is looking to identify others who are at risk for measles and may have been exposed to a non-resident measles case that traveled to Los Angeles County while infectious,” the health department said in an advisory on Friday night. The Orange County Health Care Agency said that the girl was in Southern California from Aug. 11 to Aug. 15. During her stay in Southern California the girl visited the Universal Studios Theme Park and several destinations in Hollywood and Santa Monica, Los Angeles health officials said, adding that anyone who was also at those locations may be at risk of developing measles. Orange County health officials said she visited Disneyland in Anaheim on Aug. 12 and stayed at the nearby Desert Palms Hotel. There was no information on her current condition. So far in 2019 a total of 16 measles cases have been reported among Los Angeles County residents, and 11 infected people are known to have traveled through the county. The CDC said earlier this week that there had been a 1.8% increase in the number of cases of the highly contagious and sometimes deadly virus in the United States between Aug. 8 and Aug. 15. The disease was declared eliminated in the United States in 2000, meaning there was no continuous transmission for at least a year. CDC officials say the United States risks losing its measles elimination status if the current outbreak, which began in October 2018 in New York state, continues until October 2019. Measles, considered one of the most contagious viruses in the world, infects 90% of exposed people who have not been immunized, according to the Los Angeles County Health Department. Symptoms of the virus, which can cause severe complications and even death, include fever, cough, runny nose, red eyes and a characteristic rash which can appear up to three weeks following exposure.
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1361
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UK report plans boost for life sciences as Brexit looms.
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The British government has rekindled its industrial strategy, unveiled earlier this year to prepare the economy for Brexit, with plans to boost the country’s pharmaceuticals sector via fresh investments and public-private collaborations.
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true
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Health News
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A government-commissioned sector report by immunologist and geneticist John Bell called on Wednesday for more funding of basic science, new incentives for manufacturing, and increased cooperation between drugmakers and the National Health Service (NHS). Bell also advocates creating a Health Advanced Research Programme to lead ambitious and long-term projects focused on cutting-edge technologies, such as using artificial intelligence in healthcare or understanding the biology of ageing. He laid out several bold targets, such as creating four UK life sciences companies valued at more than 20 billion pounds ($26 billion) within the next 10 years, attracting 2,000 new discovery scientists from around the world, and achieving a 50 percent increase in the number of clinical trials. Bell’s review, which was welcomed by business minister Greg Clark and health minister Jeremy Hunt, will be followed by a ‘sector deal’ from the government in the coming months, acting on his recommendations with concrete commitments. The 64 billion pounds a year life sciences industry, which employs 235,000 people, is one of several sectors the government has prioritized, along with ultra-low emission vehicles, nuclear and creative industries. It is the first to see the launch of a sector report under the industrial strategy. GlaxoSmithKline, Britain’s largest life sciences company, said a stronger and deeper level of collaboration between industry, government, the NHS and academia would make Britain a more attractive place for drugmakers. While Britain is today a leading center for drug discovery, its future success is clouded by the country’s decision to leave the European Union, and pharmaceutical companies have called for a careful and phased transition to avoid disruption. AstraZeneca Chief Executive Pascal Soriot said Bell’s strategy should “provide a more predictable environment for future investment decisions and ensure the UK remains open for innovation as it prepares to exit the EU”. Coinciding with the report, health minister Hunt also announced 14 million pounds of new funding to support 11 medical technology research centers to encourage collaboration between the NHS and industry. Prime Minister Theresa May first announced her “Modern Industrial Strategy” in January with the aim of boosting Britain’s weak productivity growth and spurring investment in technology and research and development. ($1 = 0.7742 pounds)
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7615
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N.H. to receive $28M in federal funding for opioid crisis.
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New Hampshire will over just $28 million in federal funds to support the substance abuse crisis, according to Sen. Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan.
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true
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New Hampshire, Opioids, Health, General News, Maggie Hassan, Jeanne Shaheen
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The senators announced Friday that the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration will provide State Opioid Response grants to New Hampshire in 2020, WMUR-TV reported. A new provision authored by Shaheen will allow the funds to be applied to treat patients with meth and cocaine dependency. According to the data used by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control to determine grant funding, New Hampshire had 35.8 drug overdose deaths per 100,000 residents in 2018 and 37 deaths per 100,000 in 2017. Shaheen’s office said New Hampshire has received about $92 million since 2016.
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3796
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Group with consumer-friendly vibe pushes drugmakers’ message.
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As ominous music plays in the background, the narrator of a radio ad warns that a Trump administration proposal to apply international pricing to certain Medicare drugs would be a nightmare for seniors.
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true
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AP Top News, Politics, North America, Prescription drug costs, Business, Medicare, Prescription drugs, Donald Trump
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The one-minute spot is the handiwork of the Alliance for Patient Access, a nonprofit group that gives off a consumer-friendly vibe but is bankrolled by the powerful pharmaceutical industry. It’s also closely aligned with a Washington lobbying and public relations firm, Woodberry Associates, whose president, Brian Kennedy, is the nonprofit’s executive director. As Congress and President Donald Trump’s administration aim to lower prescription drug costs, outside groups like the Alliance for Patient Access are seeking to sway the outcome. But not all of these organizations are clear about who they actually represent. Their names can obscure the source of the message, and they’re cagey about where they get their funding. Yet even a small degree of separation can be valuable for pharmaceutical companies at a time when the industry faces stiff political headwinds. Drug prices may provide a rare bipartisan issue on which Congress and the White House could collaborate on legislation ahead of the 2020 elections. In a prelude of sorts, the Senate Finance Committee last month grilled drug company executives over the cost of their products. Anger is bubbling up from their constituents. A February poll by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation found nearly one in four Americans taking prescription drugs have difficultly affording their medications. Although majorities of the public trust pharmaceutical companies to develop new and effective drugs, only 25 percent trust them to price their products fairly — down from 41 percent in 2008. Susan Hepworth, a spokeswoman for the Alliance and Woodberry, described the nonprofit as “a national network of physicians that advocates for patient access to the medicines they prescribe.” Through the Alliance, she said, doctors “can share their perspectives about the benefits of respecting the physician-patient relationship, clinical decision making and personalized, patient-centered health care.” It’s no surprise, Hepworth said, that the group’s backers include companies that manufacture medicines. She declined to answer questions about the radio ad. The one-minute spot singles out for criticism a Trump administration proposal to gradually shift Medicare payments for drugs administered in doctors’ offices to a level based on international prices. Prices in other countries are lower because governments directly negotiate with manufacturers. But drugmakers have assailed the Trump plan, arguing it smacks of government price-setting and would lead to socialized health care. The Alliance’s radio spot makes the same argument, using nearly identical language. Under the Trump proposal, the ad says, “cancer treatment would be paid based on rates from countries with European-style health care, where access to new medicine is rationed and patients often wait months for care.” Tax filings for 2015 through 2017, the most recent available, show the Alliance has paid Woodberry’s consultants more than $1 million. Brendan Fischer of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center said the transactions may raise red flags. “Nonprofits are supposed to promote social welfare, not operate to provide a private benefit to any person or entity,” Fischer said. “A nonprofit could run afoul of tax law if it is substantially benefiting a nonprofit officer’s for-profit consulting firm.” Hepworth said Woodberry is a consultancy with a division that specializes in nonprofit coalition management and that the money paid to the firm’s people represents a small amount of the Alliance’s expenditures for those years. The Alliance “files all of the appropriate paperwork with the IRS and takes the extra step of making available on its website a current list of its supporters,” according to Hepworth. The link to this list takes a bit of searching to find, however. The Alliance’s money comes from more than three dozen associate members and financial supporters, which include several of the largest pharmaceutical companies. Among them are AbbVie, manufacturer of Humira, the blockbuster drug for immune system conditions; AstraZeneca, maker of the cholesterol drug Crestor; Bristol-Myers Squibb, maker of the blood thinner Eliquis; and Pfizer, maker of Lyrica for nerve pain. The group’s leaders are medical doctors based outside of Washington; those identified in the tax records as directors aren’t paid for the one hour per month, on average, of work they do for the nonprofit. But several of them have earned tens of thousands of dollars in consulting and speaker fees from the health care industry, including companies that back the Alliance. For example, Dr. Jack Schim, a neurologist in California and an Alliance director, was paid nearly $329,000 between 2015 and 2017, with the bulk of the money coming from Allergan, maker of wrinkle treatment Botox, according to a database maintained by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Schim was one of the top-ranking physicians in his specialty for these payments. While the Alliance names its supporters, it doesn’t disclose how much each has contributed. Federal rules permit groups structured as tax-exempt social welfare organizations to say little about their benefactors. Social welfare organizations like the Alliance also may engage in limited political activities so long as politics isn’t their primary focus. Known by their IRS designation as 501(c)(4)s, they typically are civic-minded groups such as homeowner associations and volunteer fire departments. The Alliance spent $13.6 million in 2015 and 2016 on awards to recognize dozens of members of Congress who, according to Hepworth, “have championed patient access in the Medicare program.” The lawmakers, who are barred by ethics rules from accepting monetary gifts, are presented with a plaque and are praised in press releases and advertisements. Recent recipients include Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn. Tax records for the drugmakers’ influential trade association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, provide a bit of insight into the Alliance’s finances. The association, known as PhRMA, identifies the recipients of its grants and contributions. It donated more than $1.8 million to the Alliance between 2009 and 2016 and since 2016 gave another $215,000 to two smaller offshoots — the Institute for Patient Access and the Global Alliance for Patient Access. PhRMA’s largest single contribution, $1.4 million, came in 2016 when Trump, then a candidate for president, and Democratic contender Hillary Clinton rattled drug companies with their pledges to take aggressive steps to bring down prescription medication costs. “Groups like the Alliance for Patient Access often act as foils for the pharmaceutical industry instead of advancing patient interests,” said Steven Knievel of the nonpartisan watchdog group Public Citizen. “They advocate for policies where industry and patient interests align. But any time drug prices are on the table, they toe the line of their corporate backers.” Kennedy, a former top official at the Republican Governors Association, registered the Alliance in June 2006 in Iowa; he lists an address in Bettendorf on the certificate. He registered Woodberry Associates as an LLC nearly five months later, also in Iowa. Kennedy is the Alliance’s executive director and Woodberry’s president. The nonprofit and the business share an office in downtown Washington. The bulk of the more than $1 million paid to Woodberry between 2015 and 2017 was for consulting services that Hepworth said ranged from managing Alliance working groups to the development and promotion of white papers, podcasts and social media posts. Kennedy also received more than $457,000 in reimbursements for travel, hotels and catering contracts. ___ Follow Richard Lardner on Twitter at http://twitter.com/rplardner
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3084
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Spending deal would end two-decade freeze on gun research.
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A bipartisan deal on a government spending bill would for the first time in two decades provide money for federal research on gun safety. A law adopted in the 1990′s has effectively blocked such research and prohibits federal agencies from engaging in advocacy on gun-related issues.
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true
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Health, General News, Violence, Politics, Donald Trump, Gun politics, Gun violence, Bills, Government spending
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The spending bill, set for a House vote as soon as Tuesday, would provide $25 million for gun violence research, divided evenly between the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If approved by the House and Senate and signed by President Donald Trump, the proposed funding would be a major legislative victory for Democrats, gun control supporters and researchers who have pushed in recent years to study gun violence in the same way scientists look at opioid overdoses and other public health crises. “Nearly seven years to the day after we lost 20 beautiful children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary” in Newtown, Connecticut, “we are finally making progress in Congress to reduce gun violence,″ said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., chairwoman of the labor and health subcommittee of the House Appropriations panel. The new funding for NIH and CDC “will help us better understand the correlation between domestic violence and gun violence, how Americans can more safely store guns and how we can intervene to reduce suicide by firearms,” DeLauro said. Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, who represented Newtown in the House when the 2012 shootings occurred, said the agreement shows “the power of the gun violence prevention movement is now unmistakable.″ The agreement follows approval of language last year clarifying that the so-called Dickey Amendment does not prohibit federal spending on gun research, as had been widely argued by gun rights supporters. The 1996 law, named after former Republican Rep. Jay Dickey of Arkansas, has been the focus of a political fight for more than two decades, and the CDC largely abandoned gun research in the wake of its passage. Dickey, who died in 2017, argued in the years before his death that research on gun violence was needed. “The same evidence-based approach that is saving millions of lives from motor-vehicle crashes, as well as from smoking, cancer and HIV/AIDS, can help reduce the toll of deaths and injuries from gun violence,″ Dickey argued in a 2012 op-ed in The Washington Post. The article was co-authored by Dr. Mark Rosenberg, a former CDC official who clashed with Dickey over gun laws. The one-time political opponents later became close friends and allies. Gun control supporters hailed the agreement on gun-research funding as an important breakthrough. The announcement “is a huge victory in our nation’s commitment to addressing and solving the gun violence epidemic,″ said Christian Heyne, vice president of the Brady gun safety group. “Students graduating from college this spring have never lived in a United States where the federal government studied this issue. That ends today,” Heyne said. The National Rifle Association pushed for the 1996 Dickey law but maintains it does not oppose gun research. Instead the group says it opposes research that is biased, flimsy or aimed at advocacy.
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9730
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Combination Drug May Ease the Agitation of Alzheimer’s
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This short piece in the Well blog describes positive results of a 10-week randomized clinical trial, published in JAMA last week, testing a currently marketed combination of the drugs dextromethorphan and quinidine against placebo for the treatment of agitation and aggression in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. While it manages to provide some insight into the study with its scant 226 words, the story also presents readers with an overly optimistic view of the findings, omits discussion of the high costs of this drug, and never clues readers into the potential conflicts of interest at play. The accompanying editorial in the same edition of JAMA provides a more realistic view of the study and its importance; “… the data from the study by Cummings et al are important, but not overwhelming, and a second independent study with longer duration is needed to confirm the treatment effect.” This matters because as the population ages, an increasing number of people will inevitably develop dementia, including Alzheimer’s, which is estimated to occur in about 5 million people today (according to the National Institute on Aging). As the dementia progresses, it’s not uncommon for people to develop agitated and even aggressive behaviors towards loved ones and caregivers. Behavioral interventions and changes to the environment don’t always help sufficiently, so drug interventions are sought. Stories about these treatments should provide a balanced and realistic view of study findings, as many patients, families, and caregivers are desperate for something that might help.
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mixture
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drug costs,harms,Well blog
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Cost is always an important factor that should be considered in a story about a potential new use for an existing prescription drug. This is a glaring drawback of this piece, since the drug, Nuedextra, is already marketed and currently approved for “pseudo-bulbar affect” — an unrelated neuralgic condition. (Pseudo-bulbar affect refers to uncontrollable laughing or crying, even though the person doesn’t necessarily feel the emotions of happiness or sadness) . A look at Costco, considered one of the least expensive places to buy drugs, came up with a price of $2,222 for 180 capsules. At 2 capsules daily, this would last 3 months. Citalopram, also helpful for agitation in randomized trials as the authors noted, is one of those $4 prescriptions available at Costco, Target. The story makes an attempt to quantify the findings: “Aggression scores declined to 3.8 from 7.1 in the dextromethorphan-quinidine group and to 5.3 from 7.0 in those who took a placebo,” so we’ll give the benefit of the doubt on the rating. But we think the story could have provided a lot more context. Is this a 10-point scale? What does this change represent in terms that would mean something to patients and caregivers? The accompanying editorial provides some of the needed explanation when it notes that “a minimum clinically important difference (MCID) has not been established” for this scale and that “The apparently modest numerical benefit, as evidenced by the approximately 1.5-point between-group difference for the primary outcome measure, is therefore difficult to interpret.” The editorial also notes that there was no improvement in the quality of life measurement during the 10-week trial. Another concern is the story’s description of benefits from the study’s lead author. He says “Fifty-five percent of the people who were on drugs had a 50 percent reduction in their agitation.” Although this is accurate and the drug’s benefits were significantly different from placebo, the placebo group also improved significantly. The story could have noted that there’s a strong placebo effect happening here that accounts for some of the benefits. No harms are mentioned, despite the fact that significant side effects occurred during the study, and in more than one or two people — most frequently falls, diarrhea, dizziness, and vomiting. The drug is also well known to have significant side effects on heart rhythm — hence the exclusion of patients with heart rhythm problems — and also to raise the levels of commonly used drugs such as digoxin and some of the SSRI class of anti-depressant/anti-anxiety drugs. A mere 226 words was not enough to do justice to this study. Given that this is a drug that’s already on the market, a few more pieces of information would really have added value. One thing that should have been noted is that the study was done mostly in outpatients, as opposed to people in nursing homes. No disease mongering, although the study itself is arguably an attempt to expand the drug’s market from a small number of neurological patients (mostly with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and multiple sclerosis) with “pseudo-bulbar affect” for which the drug is currently approved, to the much larger market of agitation in Alzheimer’s. The only source quoted was the lead author. He and most of the other authors are listed as consultants to the company that markets the drug and that funded the study (Avanir). Some of the authors are full-time company employees. The company even supplied a writer to “provide assistance” in writing up the study. The authors clearly have deep financial conflicts here, and it’s well known that sponsor-funded studies come out positive more often than those funded independently. None of this was discussed or disclosed. It would also have been very easy to use the accompanying editorial to provide more balance and context to the story Although there are no satisfactory drugs available for Alzheimer’s-related agitation, many patients are treated off label with antipsychotic drugs. In addition, numerous drugs are under study in clinical trials. As was noted in the accompanying editorial (but not the story), “There are several additional candidate treatments for agitation in patients with Alzheimer disease. Along with some smaller studies of carbamazepine, oxycarbazine, and prazosin,15 recent larger RCTs of citalopram16 and stepped analgesia20 have begun to provide a more informative evidence base, with further small RCTs and secondary analyses identifying additional potential candidate therapies. These studies represent new territory for investigation, where it will become increasingly important to prioritize potential treatments in terms of further research and potential clinical use.” We thought the story should have provided some of this context. The story notes that the drug tested is “already in use for treating certain neurological problems,” and we think most readers can work out from that that the drug is available. To our knowledge, this is the first study to examine the efficacy of dextromethorphan-quinidine in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The story notes that “Agitation and aggression are common in Alzheimer’s patients, and there is no known safe and effective treatment.” We think that’s enough to establish novelty. Although Avanir pharmaceuticals issued a news release for the study, the Times apparently conducted an interview with the lead author, demonstrating original reporting that went beyond the news release.
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16975
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"From 2000 to 2008, we averaged ""about five mass shootings a year. We're now averaging 15. So that's a three-fold increase."
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Thomas said that mass shootings have tripled since the 2000 to 2008 period and the country now sees about 15 episodes a year. The study that matches those figures looked at a different form of violence and included instances where no one was murdered. The study’s author told us that mass murders, as defined by the FBI, have not increased. Using a more narrow definition, Mother Jones found that the country now has between three and four mass killings a year, a doubling since about a decade ago. Another study that looked at the number of people wounded, not necessarily killed, offered similar results. The annual rate is much lower than Thomas said and the change in the rate is also considerably less. There is some evidence that mass killings have increased but that finding hinges on a careful choice of incidents, and by any measure, Thomas’ numbers are way off.
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false
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Crime, PunditFact, Guns, Pierre Thomas,
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"The brutal murders May 23, 2014, near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara, dominated the national news and provoked a lot of talk about what could have been done to save the lives of six young college-aged victims. The public quickly learned the basics. The killer had a history of mental illness. He revealed his plans in a YouTube video posted shortly before his rampage. He killed his first three victims, his roommates, with a knife. He legally owned three handguns and used at least one of them to kill three strangers before committing suicide. In a search for some pattern, ABC’s This Week host, Martha Raddatz asked ABC senior justice correspondent Pierre Thomas about deadly gunfire on or near college campuses since 1996. ""Officials you talk to say there really is a spike nationwide,"" Raddatz said. ""The problem is, it's even bigger than that,"" Thomas said. ""Between 2008 and 2000 roughly, we were averaging about five mass shootings a year. We're now averaging 15. So that's a three-fold increase."" That seemed like a major jump. Does the country really have three times as many mass shootings? We decided to take a closer look. We reached out to Thomas to learn what background information he was using and did not hear back. However, we found an FBI study that, while it ultimately doesn’t support his claim, does offer some numbers that sound very much like the ones Thomas used. Pete Blair, director of the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University was the lead researcher on the study Active Shooter Events from 2000 to 2012. Blair found that from 2000 to 2008, there were about five events each year where someone with a gun attempted to kill multiple people. But after 2008 there were nearly 16 each year. That matches the tripling that Thomas described. The problem is, Thomas talked about mass shootings. That’s not the violence Blair studied. In about 20 percent the cases Blair looked at, no one died. In more than 10 percent of the cases, only one person was killed. Neither scenario meets the definition of a mass shooting. Blair explained that the FBI’s focus was on crafting strategies to save lives once a gunman arrives. ""Active shooter is a response protocol for the police,"" Blair said. ""We believe that we can learn as much from events that do not turn into mass killings as those that do."" Blair found that about half the time, the incidents are over before police arrive and the most common reason is that the shooter commits suicide. In research circles, there is no hard and fast definition for a mass shooting. Instead, the FBI uses the term ""mass murder"" when four or more people are killed in what is essentially a single episode. By that definition, Blair said there has been no increase in mass shootings. James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston, told PunditFact the rate of mass murders has held steady for decades. ""Since 1976, we’ve averaged about 20 cases a year,"" Fox said. ""On average, about 100 people a year are killed by mass murderers."" The data on killings is fraught with analytic pitfalls. USA Today researchers found that the FBI’s homicide data is accurate only about 60 percent of the time. On top of that, different studies look at different kinds of events. For example, Fox includes killings within families and murders committed during burglaries in his tally. In contrast, the magazine Mother Jones did an extensive investigation that aimed to identify instances where at least four people were murdered and the motive was indiscriminate killing in a public setting. Researchers eliminated cases where the violence took place in a home or was tied to a robbery or gang warfare. (Those standards might exclude the Santa Barbara slayings because three of the victims were the killer’s roommates and were slain in their apartment. Nor would it be correct to call them shootings because they were stabbed to death.) Using its approach, Mother Jones found that the rate of these killings has gone up over time. During the period 2000 to 2008, there were 1.8 mass murders a year. From 2009 to 2013, the rate doubled to 3.6 events per year. This shows an increase, but not as large as Thomas suggested. There’s another way to slice the data. Criminologist Gary Kleck at Florida State University went beyond homicides and focused on any event in which seven or more people were killed or injured in a single location. By his tally, the yearly average between 2000 and 2008 was 2.4 events, compared to 5 events per year after 2008. This offers some support for Thomas’s statement but again, the numbers are quite different from the ones he used. Our ruling Thomas said that mass shootings have tripled since the 2000 to 2008 period and the country now sees about 15 episodes a year. The study that matches those figures looked at a different form of violence and included instances where no one was murdered. The study’s author told us that mass murders, as defined by the FBI, have not increased. Using a more narrow definition, Mother Jones found that the country now has between three and four mass killings a year, a doubling since about a decade ago. Another study that looked at the number of people wounded, not necessarily killed, offered similar results. The annual rate is much lower than Thomas said and the change in the rate is also considerably less. There is some evidence that mass killings have increased but that finding hinges on a careful choice of incidents, and by any measure, Thomas’ numbers are way off."
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16135
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The U.S. Constitution owes its notion of democracy to the Iroquois Tribes.
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"The Facebook meme said ""the U.S. Constitution owes its notion of democracy to the Iroquois Tribes."" There’s a grain of truth here: The Iroquois system of government was known to 18th century leaders in the colonies and the new republic, and it shared some similarities with post-revolutionary attempts at governance. However, the meme overstates the consensus among historians. Major elements of the Iroquois system are altogether absent in the U.S. government, including hereditary, clan-based governance, and the meme focuses on Iroquois influences to the exclusion of European precedents that are at least as important, and likely more so."
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false
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National, History, Race and Ethnicity, Facebook posts,
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"Shortly before Thanksgiving, a reader sent us a social media meme of the type that sends you scrambling back to your high school history textbook wondering, ""Did my teacher mention this?"" The meme features the following claim: ""The U.S. Constitution owes its notion of democracy to the Iroquois Tribes, including freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and separation of powers in government. Only difference is the Iroquois included women and non-whites."" It’s accompanied by a reproduction of Junius Brutus Stearns’ 1856 painting of the founding fathers signing the United States Constitution in 1787. We zeroed in on the meme’s underlying premise, that ""the U.S. Constitution owes its notion of democracy to the Iroquois Tribes."" As it turns out, this topic has inspired a passionate debate among historians for more than three decades. But we did find agreement among historians that the meme oversells its central point. The historical background Some four centuries ago, the nations of the Haudenosaunee, or Iroquois, people united in a confederacy to establish peace in what is now upstate New York. The system of unified governance between the Mohawk, Seneca, Onondaga, Oneida, Cayuga and eventually the Tuscarora people enabled the Iroquois to become arguably the predominant Native American tribe in the northeastern United States prior to the arrival of European colonists. The similarity between the Iroquois federal-style government and the one the American colonists settled on after they wrote the Constitution has long intrigued historians. Could the Iroquois system of governance have been the inspiration for the United States’ newborn republic? Interest in this question crescendoed around the time of the 1987 bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution. Historians held conferences to sift through the evidence, and the U.S. Senate passed a resolution saying that ""the confederation of the original 13 colonies into one republic was influenced by the political system developed by the Iroquois Confederacy, as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the constitution itself."" The topic has proven to be a polarizing one. Some supporters of the notion of Iroquois influence say that the historical establishment is reluctant to give Native Americans credit where credit is due. Skeptics counter that the evidence is largely circumstantial. ""On balance, the consensus appears to be that although British North Americans were certainly aware of the confederal nature of the Iroquois government, the case for causation has not been made,"" wrote Alison LaCroix, a law professor at the University of Chicago, in The Ideological Origins of American Federalism, published in 2010. The case for Iroquois influence Scholars told PolitiFact that there are two broad areas of support for the notion that the Iroquois had a degree of influence on the Constitution. • Similarities in government structure. The Iroquois system, like the United States government of the past 200-plus years, was federal in nature -- the five or six individual tribes handled their own affairs, as the American states eventually would, and those tribes came together to form an overarching government to address issues of common importance. The Iroquois system also had aspects of representational democracy. ""It is highly probable that Anglo-Americans during the revolutionary era looked to Haudenosaunee governance as a model of a successful collective polity, and borrowed elements of Haudenosaunee practice in developing revolutionary American constitutional governments,"" said Jon W. Parmenter, a Cornell University historian and author of The Edge of the Woods: Iroquoia, 1534-1701. • The colonists and members of the founding generation were aware of the Iroquois. The colonists knew about the Iroquois from holding diplomatic talks with them, and the revolutionary generation admiringly adopted some of their symbols, such as the Mohawk Indian costumes worn by participants in the Boston Tea Party. We know that in 1744, Canassatego, an Onondaga chief, addressed representatives from Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia at a treaty conference in Lancaster, Pa. ""We heartily recommend Union and a good Agreement between you our Brethren,"" he said. ""Never disagree, but preserve a strict Friendship for one another, and thereby you, as well as we, will become the stronger. Our wise Forefathers established Union and Amity between the Five Nations; this has made us formidable; this has given us great Weight and Authority with our neighbouring Nations. We are a powerful Confederacy; and, by your observing the same Methods our wise Forefathers have taken, you will acquire fresh Strength and Power; therefore whatever befalls you, never fall out one with another."" Benjamin Franklin noticed and published these remarks, and they were ""noticed by patriots,"" wrote the late Temple University anthropologist Elisabeth Tooker, generally a skeptic on the idea of Iroquois influence. Franklin, for his part, remarked at one point that if ""six Nations of ignorant Savages"" were ""capable of forming a Scheme for such a Union,"" then the new nation of European origin should be able to as well. This is none too flattering a reference, but it does provide additional evidence that the founding generation was aware of the Iroquois example. About a decade after Canassatego’s speech, Franklin was involved in crafting the Albany plan, an early, pre-revolution attempt to unify the colonies that in some ways mirrors the Iroquois example. The structure of Iroquois government was also heard periodically during the debates over the Constitution in the 1780s, according to Donald A. Grinde, Jr., a historian at the University of Buffalo and co-author, with Bruce E. Johansen, of Exemplar of Liberty: Native America and the Evolution of Democracy. Grinde writes that James Wilson's notes on the constitutional convention mention Indian governance, as does John Adams’ 1787 volume, Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States, which was published on the eve of the convention. Adams, who would later become the second president elected under the current Constitution, was less enamored of the Indian example than Franklin was, but he nonetheless thought Indian governance worthy of study and consideration. The case against Iroquois influence Despite this, many scholars have concluded that the evidence is short of convincing. • The Iroquois government is in some ways radically different than the U.S. government. For starters, the Iroquois’ federal system arguably bears more resemblance to the United Nations than the American federal system, focusing primarily on diplomacy. The Iroquois council ""was particularly concerned with matters of alliance, with the continuing firm alliance of the five member nations and alliances with other nations. It did not concern itself with the internal relations of the constituent nations,"" Tooker noted in a 1988 paper. More important, the Iroquois system is based on hereditary positions and clan-based leadership -- elements that are entirely foreign to the United States’ system (and arguably seem more similar to the British system the colonists were trying to escape). The Iroquois League’s governmental power was vested in a council of 50 chiefs known as sachems. Each sachem had a title that was essentially hereditary, and each of these titles belonged to a particular clan within a particular tribe. (The meme does have a point about the role of women: The successor to a League chief was chosen by the ""clan mother,"" the senior woman of the clan.) The division of council seats was fixed, but without any relation to the member nation’s population size. Meanwhile, as the council’s ""firekeepers,"" the Onondagas had the the responsibility of presenting the matter to be discussed, Tooker wrote. And the council acted based on consensus, rather than by majority rule, as became the system under the Constitution of 1787. ""There is little in this system of governance the Founding Fathers might have been expected to copy,"" Tooker wrote. ""It is doubtful, for example, that the delegates to the Constitutional Convention meeting during the legendary long, hot Philadelphia summer of 1787 would have proposed a system under which only their relatives could become members of Congress, and a system under which each legislator was chosen by a close female relative of the previous holder of the office. Nor does it seem likely -- even if John Adams had heeded his wife's admonition to ‘remember the ladies’ -- that if such a hereditary system had been adopted, the Constitutional Convention would have opted for matrilineal inheritance of office, which by its very nature excludes a son from succeeding to his father's position."" • Even if there was some Iroquois influence, it wasn’t the primary shaper of the Constitution. This is where the Facebook meme really overplays its hand. You don’t have to be a total denier of Iroquois influence to acknowledge that the meme goes too far when it says ""the U.S. Constitution owes its notion of democracy to the Iroquois Tribes."" The traditionally cited sources of inspiration for the drafters, including ancient Greek and prior European thought, played a significant role -- almost certainly a decisive one. ""Even if the Iroquois Confederation was similar to the Constitution, which it was not, and even if some Americans admired aspects of Indian culture, that does not mean the Framers emulated Native American systems,"" said Stewart Jay, a University of Washington law professor and author of Mortal Words: A History of the U.S. Constitution: Volume 1, Origins to World War II. Jay added that more broadly, the democratic nature of the U.S. Constitution was greatly refined and extended by the civil rights amendments adopted after the Civil War, which were hardly conceived with Iroquois principles in mind. Gautham Rao, an American University historian and author of the forthcoming At The Water’s Edge: Commerce, Governance and the Origins of the American State, concurred. ""It is a fairly important idea that a great many societies and networks influenced American constitutional thought, the Iroquois among them,"" Rao said. ""But it is not true that the concept of ‘democracy’ embodied in the U.S. Constitution was directly suggested by the Iroquois."" Our ruling The Facebook meme said ""the U.S. Constitution owes its notion of democracy to the Iroquois Tribes."" There’s a grain of truth here: The Iroquois system of government was known to 18th century leaders in the colonies and the new republic, and it shared some similarities with post-revolutionary attempts at governance. However, the meme overstates the consensus among historians. Major elements of the Iroquois system are altogether absent in the U.S. government, including hereditary, clan-based governance, and the meme focuses on Iroquois influences to the exclusion of European precedents that are at least as important, and likely more so."
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4049
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US officials report a record number of tick diseases.
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U.S. health officials say a record number of tick-borne diseases were reported last year.
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true
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Health, Ticks
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The 2017 tally of more than 59,000 cases is a 22 percent increase from the previous year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released the numbers Wednesday. Lyme disease accounted for nearly three-quarters of the illnesses. That’s about 43,000 cases. Traditionally about 30,000 cases of Lyme disease were reported to the government each year, but experts believed there was underreporting and thought the actual number was more like 300,000. Experts say better reporting may be a reason for recent increases, but scientists have also discovered more diseases transmitted by ticks. Researchers also note that disease-spreading ticks have been seen over a wide range of states.
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8567
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India considers narrowing lockdown to coronavirus hotspots.
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India is considering plans to seal off coronavirus hotspots in Delhi, Mumbai and parts of the south while easing restrictions elsewhere as a way out of a three-week lockdown that has caused deep economic distress, officials said on Wednesday.
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true
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Health News
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The sweeping clampdown in the country of 1.3 billion people to prevent an epidemic of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, ends on April 14 and Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to decide this week whether to extend it. He told a conference of political leaders on Wednesday that several state governments had asked for an extension of the lockdown to cope with the outbreak. But he also said that India was facing serious economic challenges, according to a statement issued by his office. Scenes of poor migrant workers and their families walking long distances on empty highways to their homes in the countryside after losing their jobs have increased pressure on Modi to reopen parts of Asia’s third largest economy. More than 80% of confirmed COVID-19 cases in India, the world’s second most populous country, have been traced to 62 districts representing less than 10% of India’s landmass, according to government data. These are concentrated in the western state of Maharashtra, home to financial capital Mumbai, the capital Delhi and the southern states of Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Kerala. Many parts of the country have not reported a single case. Such a skewed geographical spread strengthens the case for a more targeted approach under which the affected area and its neighbouring district would be cordoned off, health officials said. “To manage coronavirus, we are working on a cluster containment strategy,” said Health Ministry joint secretary Lav Agarwal, leading the effort to tackle the outbreak. He said such measures were already in place in east Delhi, in Agra, site of the famed Taj Mahal monument, and in the textile town of Bhilwara in the western state of Rajasthan which has become a test case for a more targeted fight against COVID-19. Under the “Bhilwara model”, which was adopted last month soon after about 30 people tested positive in the first big wave of infections, the town and its surrounding villages were sealed off with a virtual curfew in place. People were not allowed even to step out of their homes to get essential stocks or medicines, instead they were asked to call helpline numbers for delivery of staples to their homes. “It is a lockdown, within a lockdown,” said district information officer Gouri Kant. The government of Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state, said 15 districts which had each recorded six or more cases of COVID-19 would be cordoned off beginning Wednesday night as it steps up the fight to stem the infections. “There will be no movement in these areas and government will ensure the supply of essentials,” additional chief secretary Awanish Awasthy said. The Delhi state government said late on Wednesday it was making it compulsory for people to wear masks if they step out of their homes, and 20 areas in the city would be cordoned off. So far, India has registered 5,274 COVID-19 infections of whom 149 have died, government data showed on Wednesday. The small numbers, in comparison to large countries such as the United States, Italy and China, have prompted questions from Modi’s critics about whether India has gone too far in shutting down its economy, throwing millions of those who depend on pay by the day out of work and onto the brink of poverty. However, health experts say India needs to ramp up testing for infections to help ensure it has a grasp on how widespread the coronavirus is, and that a lockdown alone is no solution. India’s Supreme Court said on Wednesday COVID-19 tests should be conducted free at all government and private laboratories. So far, only government labs were conducting free tests, while the private labs had been allowed to charge a fixed rate of 4,500 Indian rupees. “The private hospitals including laboratories have an important role to play … by extending philanthropic services in the hour of national crisis,” the court said, ruling on a public interest litigation. It was not immediately clear how and if the government would reimburse private sector’s costs. A senior government official, aware of internal discussions on the lockdown, said parts of the country that had not reported a single case of the coronavirus and where people were not in quarantine could lift the curbs. “There are proposals that are on the table, if there is a partial lifting it will be done on the basis of safety assessment,” the official said. But it was unlikely that schools, colleges, rail travel and religious gatherings would be allowed anywhere in the country, the official said. Following are government figures on the spread of the coronavirus in South Asia: * India has 5,274 cases, including 149 deaths * Pakistan has 4,072 cases, including 58 deaths * Afghanistan has 444 cases, including 14 deaths * Sri Lanka has 189 cases, including 7 deaths * Bangladesh has 218 cases, including 20 deaths * Maldives has 19 cases and no deaths * Nepal has nine cases and no deaths * Bhutan has five cases and no deaths
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26058
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Google and Apple “put a covid tracker on every phone.”
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Apple and Google have teamed up to create a system that notifies cellphone users when they’ve been exposed to a COVID-19 patient. The system aims to help public health officials slow the spread of the coronavirus by limiting the amount of time infected people who don’t have symptoms can unknowingly spread the virus. iPhone and Android users must opt in to the feature, and personal information like location data will not be shared. Only a few states have said they will use the technology.
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mixture
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Technology, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
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"You may have noticed there are new settings on your phone for tracking COVID-19. What’s that all about? Not an unauthorized surveillance plot, as one popular social media rumor suggests. ""Remember a few days ago when everyones phone was acting crazy?"" reads a June 24 Facebook post, which is a screenshot of a comment on a live video. ""Well they put a covid tracker on every phone. Go look its there on your phone right now."" This 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.) Similar claims have been shared widely by other Facebook and Instagram users, including a rapper with more than 420,000 followers. Having a health tracker installed on every Android and iOS device may sound invasive, so we wanted to investigate. (Screenshot from Facebook) We’re not sure what the Facebook post means when it says phones were ""acting crazy,"" but Snopes reported that a network outage June 15 affected primarily T-Mobile customers. While there are settings on your iPhone for ""COVID-19 Exposure Logging,"" you must opt in to the feature, which is aimed at helping contact tracers slow the spread of the coronavirus. Few states have said they will use the technology, which comes with a slew of privacy restrictions. Apple and Google have created technology to help public health officials. But the subtext of the Facebook post — that the companies are tracking users without their knowledge — is inaccurate. In April, Apple and Google announced they were building a tracking system for iOS and Android mobile operating systems. The feature, samples of which were released in early May, uses Bluetooth Low Energy signals to automatically send users notifications when they have come in contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19 and who has also enabled the technology. Apple rolled out the new settings with iOS 13.5 on May 20. The feature would work like this: Say you’re diagnosed with COVID-19. You have a contact tracing app from your local public health department on your phone, so you report your diagnosis. Then, with your consent, the app uses your phone’s Bluetooth data to find other cellphone users you’ve been in contact with over the past 14 days (which is how long people could spread the virus without showing symptoms). Finally, if those people have consented to using the technology, the system notifies them that they were potentially exposed to the coronavirus. (Screenshot from Google) The tracking system is aimed at helping public health officials conduct contact tracing, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says is a key part of reopening the country."
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10389
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College studies may reduce risk of dementia for older adults, research finds
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Australian researchers report that a greater proportion of a group of older people who participated in university studies for at least 12 months over a four-year period performed better on measures of cognitive capacity, or cognitive reserve, which is associated with reduced risk of dementia, than a control group who didn’t participate in university studies (92% vs. 56%). The authors note that those in the control group likely did their own versions of mentally stimulating activities, as they self-selected by enrolling in a study on the topic. The differences between the groups may have been greater had participants been somehow blinded to the intent of the study. While this American Psychological Association news release is informative overall and mostly avoids the hyperbole that we often find in descriptions of similar studies, there were some missed opportunities to inform. Notably, the release doesn’t help readers interpret the magnitude of the benefit observed (was it clinically significant? ), misses some key limitations, and is a bit careless with its use of language — leading to overstatement of the results. The older segments of the population are the fastest growing ones in many parts of the world, especially developed countries. As age is the biggest risk factor for dementia, rates of dementia are expected to burgeon in the coming decades. A variety of drug, activity, and psychosocial interventions are being explored to try to mitigate some of the risk. Prior studies have indicated that intellectual and social stimulation (and physical exercise) have positive effects of cognitive function, and several observational studies have indicated that higher levels of education are associated with protection against dementia. This Australian study is the first to examine university study in an older population prospectively, and it’s one of the longer term studies looking at intellectual or cognitive stimulation as a way of preserving brain health.
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mixture
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Alzheimer's disease,Association/Society news release,Journal news release
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Costs were not mentioned in the article and we think that they should have been. Although costs for tuition in Australia are fixed, the lowest tier is approximately $5,000 US dollars annually. That is a considerable sum for elderly retirees. The authors report the proportions in each group for whom cognitive capacity, or actually “cognitive reserve” improved. It’s difficult, though, to evaluate the magnitude of the change from either the news release or the article. It would have been helpful if the author of the news release pressed one of the scientists to translate this into English. We also don’t know whether the increase the scientists measured has any clinical significance. Contrary to what the title of the press release implies, the findings are a long way from saying dementia risk may be reduced by the university studies intervention. The scientific article authors make this clear by saying in their last paragraph that this question is one for further study. No harms were noted in the news release or the paper, and its hard to envision any, so we’ll rate this Not Applicable. The news release provides limited information about the study design. It is clear that 459 subjects participated but it is unclear how they were chosen or if they were provided with the results of the cognitive testing prior to making a choice about college entry. The demographics of the participants are not provided other than a statement about age. Were the subjects who chose college rather than control more educated than those who chose to be controls? This would be an important piece of information. The release does get at some limitations, including that the control group likely “studied” themselves, which could have affected the results. But the scale tips toward Not Satisfactory for the release’s use of language. Since this was an observational study incapable of demonstrating cause and effect, we think the release should have avoided the use of active verbs which indicate a causal relationship between college studies and dementia risk. Examples: College studies were “associated with” reduced risk, but we can’t say that they “may reduce” risk based on this evidence. It’s an important distinction. None detected. Funding sources weren’t noted, nor conflicts (which could have been covered if just noted that it was a largely government-funded study). The published article is also silent on the matter. Given the subject, it is difficult to identify any meaningful potentials for a conflict of interest. But we think all news releases should discuss funding as a matter of course. That’s our line in the sand. The release refers to other studies including those that have utilized other methods not involving formal education. Not noted explicitly but university courses are widely available especially at community colleges. This is suggested by the release so we’ll give the benefit of the doubt. The news release noted that this study was the first to report the effect of college coursework over time in older adults. Apart from the overly optimistic title and some inappropriate use of active verbs (already noted above), the release provides information in a clear and a reasonable fashion without the use of hyperbole.
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20512
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When my grandfather came to this country back in 1925, there were no government benefits.
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Contrary to what Santorum said, millions of Americans in 1925 would have either qualified for benefits directly, such as payments to veterans, or have been protected by workers' compensation laws that provided benefits to those who became disabled by their jobs. And state and local governments had the longstanding role of paying support to people who were disabled or indigent. This provides a much more complex picture than Santorum is painting.
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false
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National, City Budget, County Budget, Families, Federal Budget, History, Pensions, Poverty, Retirement, State Budget, Veterans, Welfare, Workers, Rick Santorum,
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"On a number of occasions, Rick Santorum has used speeches to tout the theme of self-reliance and limited government, including one claim about government programs at the time his grandfather immigrated to the United States. Here’s an excerpt from his Feb. 29, 2012, speech near Knoxville, Tenn.: ""Eight or nine months ago, President (Barack) Obama, responding to Paul Ryan’s budget, gave a lecture on all these wonderful programs that Ryan was going to cut or change. Programs like unemployment insurance and food stamps and housing programs and Medicaid and Medicare. He listed them all. He said America is a better country because of these commitments. And then he read off his teleprompter, he said, ‘I will go one step further. America was not a great country until these commitments.’ ""So the president of the United States did not believe America was great until people came into power in Washington who raised your taxes, took your freedom and then redistributed your hard-earned dollars to someone that Washington believed deserved it more than you did. In his mind, that’s the greatness of America. ""That’s what makes America not different or great -- it makes it like every other country in the world. And by the way, all of us came from those countries because we didn’t want those countries to take care of us. When my grandfather came to this country back in 1925, there were no government benefits."" There’s a lot to digest here, but we’ll focus in this item on whether it’s true that when Santorum’s grandfather arrived in the United States in 1925, ""there were no government benefits."" We contacted the Santorum campaign about this statement but received no response. But did hear from a dozen historians and economists and read a number of scholarly papers on the subject and found that the pre-1925 history of social welfare spending in the United States was complicated and nuanced. There were two major sources of payments to individuals prior to 1925 -- veterans benefits and workers' compensation. We’ll take a closer look here: Veterans benefits: The federal government began funding benefits for Civil War veterans in 1862, initially based on a physical examination to determine the severity of a wartime injury. In time, however, the threshold for receiving a benefit was lowered -- first to less obvious wartime ailments, then to retroactive wartime claims that had never been previously been reported and then, in 1890, to servicemembers who had a disability not related to their military service. ""Pensioners and federal expenditures swelled after 1890, and the amount the government spent on pensions that year alone was $106 million,"" Peter Blanck and Chen Song wrote in a 2003 paper in the William and Mary Law Review. The 1890 Disability Pension Act, they wrote, was called the most expensive and liberal pension measure ""ever passed by any legislative body in the world"" at the time. The law was expanded further in 1904 through an executive order by President Theodore Roosevelt, defining ""disability"" to include old age, as long as the beneficiary had at least 90 days of service and an honorable discharge. Three years later, the 1890 law was replaced by a new one that granted pensions to veterans over 62, with increases in payments as they aged. ""In 1907, it was estimated that the 1890 Act had cost more than $1 billion,"" Blanck and Song wrote. ""Between 1870 and 1910, the proportion of veterans receiving pensions rose from 5 percent to 93 percent."" A veterans’ health system also began in the aftermath of World War I. This was not a trivial portion of the population. In a different paper, University of Arizona economist Price V. Fishback wrote that ""roughly 40 to 48 percent of the elderly in the North and Midwest in the early 1900s were receiving pensions"" through the system. This was such a significant group, Fishback wrote, that ""it likely altered the political calculus in ways that delayed the adoption of old-age assistance and pensions in the United States for a decade or two."" The presence of federal benefits created, and reinforced, a broad interest group. ""At its height in the 1890s, the (Union veteran) pension scheme consumed almost half of the federal budget and was intimately linked to the Republican Party's strategy to maintain the soldier vote and hold the White House,"" Blanck and Song wrote, adding that ""it galvanized interests of the constituency of disabled (Union) veterans, who were increasingly important to the Republican and Democratic parties in the upcoming national elections."" Worker compensation: A federal worker-compensation law to help civilian government workers injured or made sick on the job was adopted in 1908, according to a history on the Social Security Administration website. Starting in 1911, states began passing such laws, and by 1929, laws were in effect in all but four states. Some states ran the compensation systems themselves, others required employers to pay into private plans, and some gave employers a choice between the two. While these are the clearest examples that run counter to Santorum’s claim, there are a few other efforts worth noting. Local government aid to the poor: During the period Santorum is talking about, local governments were responsible for providing benefits to the poor, Fishback told PolitiFact. These payments tended to be modest. Fischback cited a study by Brendan Livingston of Rowan University that looked at welfare policies in Massachusetts -- generally considered the most generous state in the first decades of the 20th century -- and found that local governments were spending an amount equivalent to about 0.5 percent to 1 percent of all income earned by state residents on relief for the poor. Private charities were spending at about twice that rate. By 1925, most states also had ""mothers' pensions"" on the books, which allowed widows to raise their children without having to put them in orphanages, according to Fishback’s paper. By then, a handful of states also had means-tested pensions for the elderly, and a sizable number had pensions for the blind. And states or municipalities often operated mental hospitals, old-age homes, orphanages and general hospitals, all for the public benefit. ""The 1920s were years when state and municipal expenditures expanded rapidly and public and social services continued the professionalization that had started mainly after World War I,"" said Michael B. Katz, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania. Schools and universities: While education isn’t a direct payment to individuals, it’s worth pointing out that they represented a government-provided benefit in kind. ""Primary and secondary education were already overwhelmingly paid for by taxes from the late 1800s on,"" said Peter Lindert, an economist at the University of California at Davis. Meanwhile, higher education had land-grant subsidies -- federally backed institutions dating back to the Morrill Land-Grant Acts of 1862 and 1890. ""Because they were public institutions, tuition was cheaper on account of public subsidies,"" said Gary Gerstle, a historian and political scientist at Vanderbilt University. ""This was clearly a government benefit."" Health funding for mothers and newborns. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding signed the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act, which gave states matching federal funds to build and operate prenatal and child health care centers. The bill grew out of an investigation begun under President William Howard Taft, which found that ""nearly 80 percent of U.S. women did not receive proper prenatal care -- a fact starkly illustrated during World War I when thousands of men failed to pass their physicals due to afflictions stemming from inadequate medical care as children."" Adding it up How much did such expenditures add up to? Researchers from the Urban Institute pointed us to old editions of the Statistical Abstract of the United States. One table shows a compilation for expenses for federal, state and local governments for selected years between 1902 and 1970. We chose 1922, the year closest to 1925, and found that the ""public assistance"" category amounted to $57 million, the ""other public welfare"" category totaled $71 million and ""veterans services otherwise not classified"" was $505 million. Combined, these three categories were 6.8 percent of expenditures at the three levels of government combined. Even if this overstates the amount, it’s clear that the amount of government benefits was not zero. Santorum does have a point that social welfare spending by 1925 was relatively small compared to what it would ultimately become, because two major programs, Social Security and Medicare, didn't start until later. ""The most obvious feature of social expenditures at the turn of the 20th century was how much smaller they were in comparisons with the levels at the turn of the 21st century,"" Fishback wrote. As we noted in a previous fact-check of Santorum, federal entitlement programs have grown significantly, particularly after the establishment of Social Security in the 1930s and Medicare in the 1960s. In 1958, such payments accounted for 25.4 percent of the federal budget and grew to 65.1 percent in fiscal year 2011. This is not purely a result of policy decisions; it’s also a result of technological advances and demographic trends. The cost of medical care has risen significantly over the years due to technology and advances in treatments (a topic we earlier discussed here), and the percentage of the population that is elderly has grown from 4.1 percent in 1900 to 12.2 percent in 2000. It’s also worth noting that the specific individual Santorum cited -- his newly arrived immigrant grandfather -- wouldn’t have benefited from military pensions or a land-grant college upon his arrival on these shores, and his ability to collect worker compensation would have depended on what state he lived in upon his arrival. Similarly, the local aid to the poor he would have qualified for would have varied significantly depending on what city or county he lived in, and it would have been small by the standards of later decades. ""I’d go easy on Santorum for this one,"" said Brookings Institution economist Henry Aaron. ""There wasn’t much back then."" ""Santorum is not alone in making these mistakes,"" Fishback told PolitiFact. ""I would bet that the vast majority of people including many social scientists do not know what our social welfare system looked like in 1925."" Still, Aaron and Fishback are among many economists we contacted who were skeptical about the underlying message of Santorum’s claim -- that life was better before the New Deal programs of the 1930s and the Great Society programs of the 1960s. Dean Baker, an economist with the liberal Center for Economic and Policy Research, notes that inflation-adjusted per capita disposable income grew from $6,537 in 1929 to $32,659 in 2011 -- a fivefold increase. ""Life is unquestionably better, unless you think two-earner households, busy spouses, and dirtier homes are not worth SUVs, air conditioning, and weekend in Paris,"" said Douglas J. Besharov, a public policy professor at the University of Maryland. Our ruling Contrary to what Santorum said, millions of Americans in 1925 would have either qualified for benefits directly, such as payments to veterans, or have been protected by workers' compensation laws that provided benefits to those who became disabled by their jobs. And state and local governments had the longstanding role of paying support to people who were disabled or indigent. This provides a much more complex picture than Santorum is painting."
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34581
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An 86-year-old woman's severely painful and curved back was cured by her practicing yoga for a month.
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Without contacting her personal doctor or seeing her medical records, it’s hard to verify exactly what helped her overcome her back problem. Yoga seems to have played a positive role in her life, regardless of whether it was the cure, but doctors caution that it isn’t for everyone and urge potential yogis to seek out professional medical care and good instructors to ensure safety.
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unproven
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Uncategorized, spinal inuries, yoga
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An August 2016 New York Post article reporting that an elderly New York woman got complete relief from a curved and painful back by doing one month of yoga has gone viral. But a spine surgeon told us it’s unlikely yoga alone miraculously cured her. The 8 August 2016 account stated that 86-year-old Anna Pesce, the “yoga grandma,” now stands tall despite suffering from a herniated disc, scoliosis, and osteoporosis, and the feel-good premise has become popular on Facebook, prompting other news outlets to cover the story. The Post article said Pesce had lived with a hunched-over posture for decades, and in 2014 she experienced debilitating pain trying to climb a set of stairs that left her wheelchair-bound — until she discovered yoga: [Yoga instructor Rachel] Jesien visited Pesce in her home once a week, teaching her restorative poses and stretches such as child’s pose and chair savasana, in which Pesce would rest her lower legs on a chair while lying on the floor with her knees slightly bent and a strap around her thighs. After one month of sessions, Pesce was able to walk again. But Dr. Nick Shamie, a spine surgeon and professor of orthopedic surgery and neurosurgery at the University of California at Los Angeles, told us that while practicing yoga has likely been good for Pesce’s overall health, he can’t credit it with healing her back: The reason people get excited about this story is someone who was in severe pain, with one month of treatment, has had a complete return to normalcy with something that is safe and enjoyable. But we need to be objective of our statements. Acute pain from a back injury, depending on the source and severity, often goes away with no more help than the body’s natural ability to heal over time. Dr. Shamie said he himself practices yoga but stressed that while he generally considers it beneficial, people with back pain need to see a medical doctor before jumping into an exercise regimen: One needs to objectively look at her symptoms and try and correlate the symptom with a diagnosis — when did her pain start versus what medical conditions are acute. Then you have to see if yoga is an appropriate treatment for that diagnosis. If someone has a fracture of the spine, the last thing you want to do is go and do a down dog. It’s not uncommon for patients and their loved ones to mistake whatever course of action they’ve taken to relieve their symptoms as a miracle cure when it coincides with relief (even though the relationship isn’t necessarily a causal one): Yoga, regular exercise, appropriate diet, regular and ample hours of sleep all have a positive effect on your sense of well being. But to say someone was suffering from three conditions, not know which was symptomatic and saying after yoga all three of them got better, I think it’s a stretch. Notwithstanding that, I believe that yoga is definitely a great form of exercise and can certainly, if done correctly, with proper guidance and training, help with pain that many people are suffering from regarding the spine and may even increase the longevity of your spine. Like any other exercise regimen, if done inappropriately and with bad habits can actually be harmful. Dr. Jeffrey Wang, co-director of the Spine Center at the University of Southern California and professor of orthopaedic surgery and neurosurgery, said yoga does help some of his patients — the regimen can help straighten out a hunched spine if the patient doesn’t have a rigid deformity, which can only be corrected through surgery: There are people that lean forward because their muscles are fatigued and tired. The bone isn’t in that position, it’s the muscles. If you strengthen the muscles you can get back your posture. The danger is that there are a lot of people in her age group that have fixed deformities that are not flexible. If so you can do all the exercises in the world and it’s not going to give back your posture. He believes Pesce to have had a flexible deformity, which are caused by muscle weakness and not fixed skeletal issues. If that is the case, it is possible yoga could have helped her strengthen core muscles and straighten out her back: You have someone who has a flexible deformity that had weak muscles and got into a good exercise program and I think that’s fantastic. Pesce’s yoga instructor, Rachel Jesien, pointed out that she and other teachers she works with have developed a special yoga program to help people with scoliosis and other back problems. She said Pesce’s dedication and hard work were key to her recovery.
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10889
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High-tech help for fibroid tumors
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The decision by the FDA in 2004 to approve the ExAblate system for uterine fibroids represented a new option for women who are suffering from symptomatic fibroids but who want to avoid hysterectomy or other invasive treatments. However, little is known about the long-term safety and efficacy of the procedure. Furthermore, the procedure is expensive and availability is limited. This story does not adequately cover these issues and is flawed in many ways. Although the story mentions hysterectomy and briefly mentions medications and other procedures, the story does not comment on the advantages and disadvantages of the alternatives or explain how this new treatment would fit with existing approaches. The story quotes two Mayo doctors and a representative of the company. This is insufficient. The story should have quoted clinicians or researchers who do not have a stake in the claims being made to provide some context about how this treatment will fit within the context of existing approaches. By quoting biased sources, it is likely that the benefits of this treatment have been inflated and the potential harms have been downplayed. The story also does not attempt to quantify the benefits of treatment, nor does it mention harms of the treatment, which can include skin burns, thermal injury to surrounding tissue, and the need for repeat procedures. The story does not comment on the strength of the available evidence, which is limited given that the procedure is so new. Although the story does mention that the procedure is expensive and not usually covered by insurance, this is not sufficient information on costs. What does it cost? The story clearly states that this treatment was recently approved by the FDA and is only available in a dozen or so clinics in the U.S. The story should have mentioned where the clinics are located. The story clearly states that this is a novel approach to treating fibroids and it accurately describes the prevalence of fibroids. However, the story highlights one extreme case of fibroids. Most women with fibroids do not have trouble walking or have chronic pain. By focusing on one woman’s positive experience, the story misses the complete picture of what is known about what this procedure can or can’t do for women with symptomatic fibroids.
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false
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Although the story does mention that the procedure is expensive and not usually covered by insurance, this is not sufficient information on costs. And it’s not good enough to say, “Mayo Clinic officials said the cost of the procedure varies for each patient, and declined to provide any estimates. They said patients can receive individual cost estimates before the procedure.” If it’s worth publicizing, it’s worth getting cost estimates. The story does not attempt to quantify the benefits of treatment. The story also doesn’t even explain whether women who have undergone this treatment actually have less menorrhagia. The story does not mention harms of the treatment, which can include skin burns, thermal injury to surrounding tissue, and the need for repeat procedures. The story does not comment on the strength of the available evidence, which is limited given that the procedure is so new. The story gives no comparison of outcomes (either positive or negative) from any of the other accepted therapies to treat fibroids. The story accurately describes the prevalence of fibroids. However, the story also provides one extreme case of fibroids. Most women with fibroids are not as limited as the woman in the story and do not have continuous chronic pain. Nonetheless, we’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt and give it a satisfactory score here. The story quotes two Mayo doctors and a representative of the company. This is insufficient. The story should have quoted clinicians or researchers who do not have a stake in the claims being made to provide some context about how this treatment will fit within the context of existing approaches. By quoting biased sources, it is likely that the benefits of this treatment have been inflated and the potential harms have been downplayed. Although the story mentions hysterectomy and briefly mentions medications and other procedures, the story does not comment on the advantages and disadvantages of the alternatives or explain how this new treatment would fit within the context of existing approaches. The story clearly states that this treatment was recently approved by the FDA and is only available in a dozen or so clinics in the U.S. It would have been more helpful to indicate where these other centers are located. The story clearly states that this is a novel approach for treating fibroids. There is no way to know if the story relied on a press release as the sole source of information. However, the story did rely on the story of one patient, from one institution, using one technology from one company.
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28079
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"The state of South Carolina executed 14-year-old George Stinney in 1944, but a judge from the same court declared his ""innocence"" in 2014."
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"What's true: An August 2018 Facebook post describes the major facts and minor details associated with George Stinney's case with a high degree of accuracy. What's false: A South Carolina judge did not declare Stinney ""innocent"" or exonerate him in 2014; she overturned his conviction on the basis that his trial and execution violated his constitutional due process rights."
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true
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Politics, criminal justice, racism
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In August 2018, viral social media posts introduced many readers to the case of George Stinney, Jr., a black teenager who was convicted of murder and executed by the state of South Carolina in 1944, although his conviction was overturned 70 years after his death. Facebook user Chiadikaobi O. Atansi posted several images, including Stinney’s mugshot and three still images from a movie based on his life, along with the following message: We will never forgive, and we will never FORGET !! George Stinney Jr, of African descent, was the youngest person to be executed in the 20th century in the United States. This young black was only 14 years old at the time of his execution by electric chair. 70 years later, his innocence has just been officially recognized by a judge in South Carolina. From his trial to the execution room, the boy always had his Bible in his hands while claiming his innocence. George was unfairly accused of murdering two White girls (Betty 11 and Mary 7), whose bodies had been found not far from the house where the boy and his parents lived. At that time, all the members of the jury were white. The trial lasted 2H30, and the jury made the decision of his sentence after 10 minutes. The boy’s parents, threatened, were barred from taking part in the trial after being ordered to leave the city. Prior to his trial, George spent 81 days in detention without the possibility of seeing his parents for the last time. He was imprisoned alone in his cell, 80 kilometers from his hometown. His hearing of the facts was done alone, without the presence of his parents or a lawyer. George’s electrocution charge was 5,380 volts on his head. We let you imagine what such an electric shock can have on a young child’s head. We will never forgive and will never FORGET! Continue To Rest In Power Odogwu In the week after Atansi’s post, Twitter user Myaa Shakur and Facebook user Benjamin Jimerson-Phillips published widely-shared posts which appear to have been based on the account posted by Atansi. George Stinney Jr, of African descent, was the youngest person to be executed in the 20th century in the United States. This young black was only 14 years old at the time of his execution by electric chair. 70 years later, his innocence has just been officially recognized. pic.twitter.com/kUZK7u9KRy — Myaa Shakur ✊🏿 (@iam____Myaaaaa) August 16, 2018 All these posts included still images taken from a scene from the 1991 TV movie Carolina Skeletons, which told Stinney’s story (via a protagonist named “Linus Bragg”) and was based on David Stout’s 1988 novel of the same name. On the whole, the account presented in Atansi’s Facebook post was very accurate, correctly recounting the major facts of the case and describing several smaller details with a similarly high degree of accuracy. The only significant shortcoming in the account was the presentation of a 2014 court ruling in South Carolina as if it had happened in 2018, and a failure to clearly explain that the judge did not officially “recognize” Stinney’s “innocence,” but rather vacated his conviction on the basis that his trial and sentencing had violated his constitutional due process rights. Basic facts The following description of the basic facts of the case is taken from the ruling of Carmen Tevis Mullen, the 14th Judicial District judge in South Carolina who vacated Stinney’s conviction in 2014. It contains descriptions of violence against children that some readers might find upsetting: On the afternoon of March 23, 1944, Betty June Binnicker, age 11, and Mary Emma Thames, age 7, failed to return home in the rural town of Alcolu, South Carolina. The next morning, their bodies were discovered lying in a ditch. Both girls’ skulls had been crushed and one of the girls’ bicycle was lying on top of their bodies, its front wheel detached. George Stinney Jr. was taken into custody a few hours later and confessed to murdering the girls within hours of his apprehension. The Defendant was tried for the murder of Betty June Binnicker on April 24, 1944, just one month after being taken into custody. An all-white male jury was selected and the trial concluded that same day during a special term of court with Judge P.H. Stoll presiding. Appearing on behalf of the State was Solicitor Frank McLeod, who presented evidence from law enforcement that the Defendant confessed to the crime. While law enforcement testified that a confession occurred, no written confession exists in the record today … The capital murder trial lasted one day. As such, I am best left to conclude that few or no witnesses were called by the Defense and little to no cross examination conducted. After ten minutes of deliberation by the jury of twelve, the Defendant was found guilty of the murder of Betty June Binnicker and was that same day sentenced to death by electrocution. No appeals were filed and no stays of execution were requested by counsel. On June 16, 1944, George Stinney Jr. was executed. He was fourteen years old. Conviction overturned Judge Mullen vacated Stinney’s conviction some 70 years after his death. Her rationale (set out in detail in her ruling) was that Stinney’s constitutional right to due process had been violated on multiple grounds: his confession was likely coerced; his lawyer did woefully little to defend him, especially by failing to call witnesses on his behalf or to appeal his conviction; the selection of the jury did not mitigate against the possibility of racial prejudice playing a role in the verdict; and the execution of a 14-year-old child in and of itself constituted “cruel and unusual punishment.” Strictly speaking, Judge Mullen did not exonerate Stinney when she vacated his conviction, despite the 2018 social media claims that “his innocence has just been officially recognized by a judge in South Carolina.” Mullen issued something called a writ of coram nobis, which had been requested by Stinney’s surviving siblings. (The state of South Carolina contested their petition, claiming that they lacked legal standing to bring it, and that too much time had passed since the conviction.) Coram nobis is a relatively rare type of ruling in which (roughly speaking) a court is presented with facts about an earlier case which, if known at the time, would have been so significant as to make the verdict unreliable or invalid. When such facts emerge, a plaintiff or defendant typically brings a motion for a new trial, but coram nobis is used (in some courts in the United States) when this alternative is not available. In the case of George Stinney, a new trial could not take place because Stinney and potential witnesses are dead, very few documents from the original case have survived, and physical evidence no longer exists. Hence the Stinney family’s motion for coram nobis on his behalf. In ordering the writ of coram nobis and vacating Stinney’s conviction, Judge Mullen quoted earlier case law and stipulated that her decision was “not on the grounds that the judgment against him was wrong on the merits, but that the courts have failed in a capital case to discharge their proper functions with due regard to the constitutional safeguards in the administration of justice.” Despite this distinction between an exoneration and a vacation of conviction, a strong belief that Stinney was innocent of the murders of Betty June Binnicker and Mary Emma Thames is prevalent. His siblings (now aged in their 70s and above) all provided him with an alibi during depositions for the 2014 motion, saying that he had been at home during the time the murders took place and therefore could not have committed them. (Stinney’s lawyer Charles H. Plowden and local police failed to interview any of the boy’s family at the time of the murders.) Furthermore, the family’s lawyers speculated that the murder weapon might have been a “drift pin,” a “twelve-inch long, two-inch wide piece of metal or iron that hitches railroad cars together.” They invited a local railroad engineer to testify about the implement, which he said could commonly be found on “log-carrying railroad cars” or lumber storage yards. This detail dovetailed with a separate theory that the real killer might have been the son of a local sawmill boss (a prominent white man), on whose property the girls’ bodies were found. Other claims The claim that Stinney was the youngest person to be executed in the United States in the 20th century appears to be accurate. A black teenager named Fortune Ferguson is often reported to have been 13 years old in 1923 when he was convicted and sentenced to death for the rape of an eight-year-old girl in Florida, but his execution (also by electrocution) was stayed and delayed for four years. Furthermore, his age at the time of his conviction is in doubt: one 1924 newspaper article placed him at 17 years old, while a 1927 article put his age at 22 years old at the time of his death. The viral Facebook post is also accurate in its claim that Stinney’s family was forced to leave the town of Alcolu after George’s arrest. In her 2014 ruling, Judge Mullen wrote: “Collectively, the testimony [of Stinney’s siblings] recounts that the Stinneys were forced to immediately leave town to Pinewood and then Sumter following the Defendant’s apprehension, fearful that locals would seek violent revenge against the Stinney family.” Speaking to NBC News in 2011, Stinney’s brother Charles said, “We had to leave that same night.” We can’t say whether Stinney “always had his Bible in his hands” from the moment of his conviction up until his death, but multiple news articles from 1944 certainly noted that Stinney brought a Bible with him into the execution chamber on 16 June. The Greenville News, for example, reported that Stinney had “a Bible under his arm” as he sat in the electric chair. It’s not clear what was meant by “[Stinney’s] hearing of the facts was done alone, without the presence of his parents or a lawyer.” We know that the teenager did have a lawyer, Charles H. Plowden, but he appears not to have served his client in any meaningful way, declining to challenge the selection of an all-white jury, failing to bring any witnesses or present any evidence on behalf of Stinney in what was a very short trial, and then opting not to appeal Stinney’s conviction and death sentence. The current applied to Stinney’s body during his execution amounted to 4,300 volts in total according to a contemporary news article, not far off the “5,380 volts” claimed in the Facebook post. Charles Kelly, whose father was a longstanding chaplain at the South Carolina State Penitentiary and witnessed 34 executions, wrote about Stinney’s death in his book Next Stop, Eternity: The Columbia Record reported the executions of June 16, 1944. The article stated, “Young Stinney was such a small boy that it was difficult to adjust the electrode to his right leg. After the first charge of 2,400 volts was sent coursing through his body, the death mask slipped from his face and his eyes were open when two additional shots of 1,400 and 500 volts followed.
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33744
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Certain symbols displayed on the packaging of a variety of grocery items signify that their manufacturers have paid a 'secret tax' to the Jews.
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The presence of certain symbols on a variety of food products does not indicate that a 'secret tax' has been paid to Jews.
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false
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Business
|
People sometimes search for proofs of their darkest imaginings everywhere, including on the shelves of grocery stores. One example of this phenomenon is that packages bearing marks whose meanings aren’t readily apparent to the average shopper have been interpreted by those always on the sniff for a Jewish conspiracy as signs that Big Business is in league with the Jews: The “Kosher Nostra Scam” on the American Consumer By Ernesto Cienfuegos La Voz de Aztlan Los Angeles, Alta California — (ACN) La Voz de Aztlan receives quite a few “news tips” per week from our many subscribers and readers. Some we dismiss immediately but a very few catch our attention. Last week we receive an e-mail asking us if we knew the significance of the small encircled letter “U” or letter “K” that can be found printed on many food cans, food packages and on other kitchen products. The message gave us some clues and suggested that we do some research into the subject. What we found certainly was “news” to us and it both shocked and angered us. On arriving at my residence, I immediately went to the pantry to verify that what I had just learned was actually true. Sure enough, most of the packaged and canned foods from major companies, like Proctor & Gamble and others, did have the (U), the (K) or other similar markings. The Arrowhead water bottle, the instant Folgers Coffee, the Kelloggs box, the Jiff Peanut Butter, the Pepper container, the Trader Joe’s tea box and even the Glads plastic sandwich bags carton had the (U) or (K) mark on them. We needed a little more verification so we called two major companies to asked some questions. We chose Proctor & Gamble that markets the Folgers Coffee and the Clorox Company that manufactures the Glads plastic zip lock sandwich bags. Each of the two companies, as well as most others, have 1-800 telephone numbers printed on their packages for consumers to call in case they have any questions about their products. When we asked the Proctor & Gamble representative what the (U) meant on their Folgers Coffee container, she asked us to wait until she consulted with her supervisor. She came back and informed us that the mark meant that the coffee was ” certified kosher”. We than asked her how and who certified the coffee to be “kosher” and whether it cost any money to do so. She refused to answer these and other questions. She suggested that we write to their Corporate Public Affairs Department. We than called the Clorox Corporation to ask what the (U) meant on the package of their Glads plastic sandwich bags and she also said that the (U) meant that the plastic bags were “kosher” but refused to answer questions concerning payments the Clorox Corporation has to make in order to be able to print the (U) on their products. What we learned next, pretty much floored me personally. I learned that major food companies throughout America actually pay a Jewish Tax amounting to hundreds of million of dollars per year in order to receive protection. This hidden tax gets passed, of course, to all non-Jewish consumers of the products. The scam is to coerce the companies to pay up or suffer the consequences of a Jewish boycott. Jewish consumers have learned not to buy any kitchen product that does not have the (U) the (K) and other similar markings. Another shocker was learning who is actually behind these sophisticated “Kosher Nostra Scams.” It turns out that the perpetrators of these elaborate extortion schemes are actually Rabbinical Councils that are set up, not just in the U.S. but in other western countries as well. For example, the largest payola operation in the U.S. is run by those who license the (U) symbol. The (U) symbol provides protection for many products sold here in Aztlan and in the United States. This symbol is managed by the The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations with headquarters at 333 Seventh Avenue in New York City. The scam works like a well oiled machine and is now generating vast amounts of funds, some of which are being utilized by the Union of Orthodox Rabbis to support the Ariel Sharon Zionist government in Israel. The website of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations is full of pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian propaganda. The “Kosher Nostra” protection racket starts when an Orthodox Rabbi approaches a company to warn the owners that unless their product is certified as kosher, or “fit for a Jew to eat”, they will face a boycott by every Jew in America. Most, if not all of the food companies, succumb to the blackmail because of fear of the Jewish dominated media and a boycott that may eventually culminate in bankruptcy. Also, the food companies know that the cost can be passed on to the consumer anyway. The food companies have kept secret from the general consumer the meaning of the (U) and the amount of money they have to pay the Jewish Rabbis. It is estimated that the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations, which manages the (U) symbol protection racket, controls about 85% of the “Kosher Nostra “certification business. They now employ about 1200 Rabbi agents that are spread through out the U.S. Food companies must first pay an exorbitant application fee and than a large annual fee for the use of the (U) copyright symbol. Secondly, the companies must pay separate fees each time a team of Rabbis shows up to “inspect” the company’s operations. Certain food companies are required to hire Rabbis full time at very lucrative salaries. The amount of money that the non-Jewish consumer has paid the food companies to make up for the hidden Jewish Tax is unknown, but it is estimated to be in the billions since the scam first started. The Orthodox Jewish Councils as well as the food companies keep the amount of the fees very secret. The Jewish owned Wall Street Journal wrote about the problem many years ago, but they have stopped writing about it now. Only public awareness concerning the “Kosher Nostra Scam” will eventually help stop this swindle of the American consumer. Public education of the scam may lead to an eventual non-Jewish boycott of all products with the (U), (K) or other Jewish protection symbols. I certainly do not need to pay extra for “kosher water”, “kosher coffee” or “kosher plastic sandwich bags”. In fact, I demand my money back for all the money I had to pay over the years for the hidden and illegal Jewish Tax. Are there any bright attorneys out there that could bring a class action suit against the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations on behalf of the citizens of Aztlan and other non-Jewish people? The rumor that the presence of those mysterious markings signifies that the manufacturers of those products have paid a secret tax to the Jews of America has been afoot for decades, and the e-mail quoted above is merely a more recent manifestation of this age-old canard. The claim is wholly false, and we wonder at the twisted minds that would advance such a slander. No “Jewish Secret Tax” exists, or ever has. The markings pointed to in the rumor are real; however, their purpose is entirely different from the one asserted by the rumormongers. They do not signal that a secret tax has been paid or that corporations have succumbed to blackmail; they are there to indicate to members of a particular faith that such items have been vetted as having met the strictures their religion imposes. (If the notion of a religion imposing dietary requirements upon its followers sounds like an outlandish proposition, keep in mind that only in recent times have Catholics taken to eating meat on Fridays, and that Muslims still eschew pork.) As to what those markings mean: This variety of markings used on packaged foods alert consumers that items contained therein either meet the strict dietary constraints imposed by Judaism on its followers or that the contents of the package can be mixed with other foods or can touch them. Not all Jews keep kosher, nor even among those who do are the strictures always adhered to rigorously, but those determined upon being truly pious are aided in this endeavor by the presence of those markings. The devout go so far as to maintain two separate sets of utensils, cookware, and cutting surfaces so that meat and dairy never encounter one another in their kitchens. It is for their benefit that otherwise puzzling kosher certifications on non-foodstuff items are there (e.g., certifications are placed upon dishwashing liquid because dishes used for dairy cannot be washed using a soap made from animal fats). Less observant Jews do not bother themselves overly much about the kosherness of everyday items; they avoid the out-and-out no-nos such as pork and shellfish but don’t lose much sleep over the animal fat content of their washing-up liquid, nor do they fret that cold cuts might now be resting upon a plate that had months earlier been used to serve cheese. The proponents of the “Jewish Secret Tax” slander often assert that a sub rosa Jewish cabal forces large companies to comply via the threat of a nationwide boycott, backed by the underlying presumption that all Jews can be marshalled into turning their backs on products that fail to display kosher certification marks. That is not the case — Jews buy and use non-kosher items too, so although lack of kosher certification keeps the ultra-conservative crowd from buying certain products, it doesn’t prevent the less stringent from making such purchases, nor would a “don’t buy that because it’s not kosher” directive have much effect even if there were a secret Jewish cabal to issue it. Those seeking kosher certification for their products have to adhere to kosher practices through the manufacturing process, use only kosher ingredients, and have their facilities regularly vetted by qualified inspectors. Kosher certification companies do charge for this service, which is the backbone of the “secret tax” claim — it costs money to obtain and maintain kosher certification, thus this is an extra expense a manufacturer must bear if he’s determined upon having that certification. Where the rumor and reality part ways, however, is where the money goes. Fees paid to kosher certification companies go to keeping those businesses afloat with the profits siphoned off by those companies’ owners; they do not flow off into some special Jewish fund used to advance Zionist causes. These are businesses, not charities, and those who run them do so with every expectation of making a living, in the same manner that someone who owns a hardware store does so with the notion of making enough from the endeavor to support himself and his family. Does certification add to the price of a product? Certainly, but the amount is miniscule, especially compared to the advertising, packaging, shipping, research, testing, admin and finance-related costs, and a myriad of other components that contribute to the process of bringing a product to market or making it better appeal to consumers. One might as well rail against the costs associated with selecting the ink colors and style of lettering used on a package — it’s all legitimate business expense, even though no one ever rails against the “Secret Red Ink Conspiracy” or rants about the “Helvetica Font Tax.”
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27841
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"January is the primary ""break-up"" month for couples."
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Divorce attorneys have long acknowledged January and February are among their most bountiful months for acquiring new clients.
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true
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Love, Dating Disasters, divorce, relationships
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Cold temperatures aren’t the only thing frosty about January: it’s also widely known as the “break-up” month because more couples split up during that month than at any other time of the year. Divorce attorneys have long acknowledged January and February are among their most bountiful months for acquiring new clients. (Not all of those unhappy souls immediately file for divorce, however; many of them hold off until May or June before taking that step, perhaps out of desire to not disrupt their children’s schooling.) Yet it is not only married folks who need fear the January freeze-out; couples in dating or live-in relationships also tend to go their separate ways more often in January than in any other month. Many unhappy couples come uncoupled in January, the first month of the year, because their final break-ups have been put off until that time. “Relationship freezes” often take place between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, a period during which couples who likely would otherwise have called it quits decide to stay together through the holidays. January, therefore, racks up not only all the unpairings that normally would have accrued to it, but also many of those of mid-November through December. People are reluctant to end unhappy relationships just prior to, or during, the holiday season for a variety of reasons. No one wants to be thought of as a Grinch, the person who lowered the boom on an unsuspecting romantic partner at what was supposed to be the happiest time of the year. Other holiday factors also come into play, such as air travel to see kith and kin already having been booked and paid for, or a lack of desire to explain to family and friends at the holiday feast what happened to What’s-His-Name. Some couples even stay together because they don’t want to face the holidays alone — in their minds, at least, it’s better to have someone to take to the holiday parties and family gatherings than it would be to show up on their own. Gifts also factor in, both those already purchased and wrapped that are meant for the soon-to-be-departing, and those the one doing the breaking-up expects to receive. Someone looking forward to getting a Wii or a PlayStation for Christmas may, for example, delay ending things until the hoped-for goodie is in his or her hands. Couples that have children will tend to attempt to preserve through the holidays the illusion they are happy out of a desire not to ruin that time of the year for their little ones. Beyond just wrecking a particular Christmas, few want to risk linking the decorating of festive cookies with Mom and Dad announcing they were getting a divorce, or tying the joy of present opening on Christmas morning with a memory of the last big fight before one of the parents moved out. There also lurks in many of us the enduring belief in a Christmas miracle, that special moment when two people who’ve been having problems getting along suddenly realize how very much they mean to one another and resolve to make things better between them. That things don’t always work out in real life the way they do in television shows doesn’t stop those brought up on such fare from harboring the hope the sight of the Christmas tree, or the family gathered round the table, or the sound of church bells calling the faithful to Midnight Mass, will suddenly work its magic on a relationship gone bad. Beyond the “relationship freeze” that works to add some of November’s and most of December’s partings to the first month of the new year’s ledger, January also exerts its own special influence. The start of a new year puts people into reflective phases where they tend to examine what is and is not working in their lives. Those self-examinations sometimes result in realizations they’re not at all happy in their current love relationships. Given that January is also a time of new beginnings, casting out that which no longer suits in preparation for finding a true soul mate becomes part of the many changes those looking to alter their lives will embrace. Last of all, the holidays with their additional family and financial stresses sometimes prove to be the straw that snaps the camel’s back. Christmas often highlights the flaws in a relationship, sharpening rather than smoothing the rocks a relationship is foundering upon. Despite everyone involved’s having tried very hard to put a good face on things, such pressures can make it abundantly clear that a particular pair isn’t suited to one another. When a twosome can’t get along even on their best behavior, it’s time to throw in the towel. “I’m not going to go through all of that again next year” becomes the battle cry that precedes someone’s being shown the door.
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10578
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Mindfulness Meditation May Cut IBS Symptoms
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Among several weaknesses in the story, the biggest was a failure to evaluate the quality of the evidence – a failure to help readers understand what this study might mean and what it might not mean. As we state below in our “Evidence” criterion: “We aren’t told if the symptom improvement is clinically meaningful. After all, IBS is a chronic condition and this is a short-term study. And most importantly, the reporting is confusing: “Changes in quality of life …..were not significantly different…. but all were much improved at the 3-month followup in the meditation group.” And no explanation was given of how symptom changes were measured. Or what was meant by “all were much improved at the three-month followup.” That’s a big weakness in the story.” Many people are interested in non-medical approaches to improving health. Mindfulness meditation and other complemenary and alternative therapies, along with exercise and nutritional recommendations are of high interest. Mindfulness meditation and similar therapies are unlikely to have adverse effects and have the potential to be very low cost therapies. But this story didn’t give them enough about a very early, small study.
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false
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WebMD
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A researcher is quoted as saying the method is “inexpensive.” We imagine that’s true – although no cost estimate was given. However, the people in the study took an eight-week course and a half-day retreat. The costs in this study – in patient time, therapist time, gas bills at $4 a gallon and room space – can’t be trivial. Some cost estimate should have been given. The story gave only percentages of number of people who saw improvement. With such a tiny study, why not give the actual numbers? So, rather than reporting: Why not report that 9 people in the meditation group reported reduced IBS severity compared with 2 in the support group. And after 3 months, 13 in the meditation group compared with 4 in the support group. The story was also vague on the degree of symptom improvement, reporting: “Changes in quality-of-life impairment, anxiety, and psychological distress were not significantly different after the eight-week period. But all were much improved at the three-month follow-up in the meditation group.” What does “much improved” mean? This is the core of the issue and it wasn’t explained adequately enough. Not applicable. We can’t imagine what the harm of this meditative approach would be. We applaud the continued attempt by WebMD to include the boilerplate language at the end: But we suggest some improved language: The story states that 75 women were studied. But the abstract explains that only 66 completed the study – with a 12% dropout rate. Why did people drop out? And of 66 in the study, only 34 were in the mindfuless training group. But our biggest problem is this: we aren’t told if the symptom improvement is clinically meaningful. After all, IBS is a chronic condition and this is a short-term study. And most importantly, the reporting is confusing: “Changes in quality of life …..were not significantly different…. but all were much improved at the 3-month followup in the meditation group.” And no explanation was given of how symptom changes were measured. Or what was meant by “all were much improved at the three-month followup.” That’s a big weakness in the story. Not applicable because the story never even provided a basic description of IBS. Some readers may not even know what IBS is. So you can’t commit disease-mongering when you’ve offered so little background on the condition. But you also can’t educate readers very well this way either. No independent expert was quoted. NO comparison was made with any other approach to relieving IBS symptoms. The story quotes one of the researchers saying “that mindfulness meditation is a practical, widely applicable and inexpensive method” and that “this method can be learned in educational classes without the need for clinical therapists.” Widely applicable does not mean widely available. And “can be learned” doesn’t mean “has been learned.” True to the spirit of what we’re looking for in this criterion, the story never gives an idea of how widely available this method or this training is. The story didn’t even quote what the authors wrote in their abstract, where they called their work: “This first randomized controlled trial of mindfulness training as an intervention for IBS.” The story doesn’t provide any background on whether this approach had been tested before for IBS.
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41647
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66 A&E and maternity wards have been closed.
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We don’t know, as this information isn’t collected nationally. In 2014, there were reportedly plans to close or downgrade 66 in England, but while some have been, others have stayed open.
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unproven
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health
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There are 16,481 fewer beds in hospitals since 2010. This is in the right ballpark, but it doesn’t seem to be the best comparison. It seems to compare the number of beds at different times of the year, but the number available fluctuates seasonally. Comparing July-September in 2010 and 2017, the decrease in beds available overnight in England is closer to 13,200. 66 A&E and maternity wards have been closed. We don’t know, as this information isn’t collected nationally. In 2014, there were reportedly plans to close or downgrade 66 in England, but while some have been, others have stayed open. 103 NHS walk-in centres have closed or been downgraded since 2010. We don’t know exactly, as this information isn’t collected centrally. Research from an NHS regulator and from campaign group 38 Degrees suggests more than 90 have been closed or downgraded. 60 ambulance stations have closed since 2010. We don’t know how many ambulance stations have closed since 2010 as national figures on this aren’t regularly published. 1,000 GP practices have closed since 2010. There are around 1,000 fewer GP practices in England in 2017 than in 2010. Some practices may have merged together, rather than closing completely, but we don’t know how many have done so. A&E four hour targets have been missed more than 10 million times since 2010. Correct. Between 2010/11 and 2017/18, around 12 million A&E attendances in England took over four hours from arrival to admission, transfer or discharge. The number of patients waiting more than 12 hours in A&E is up 2,700% since 2010. Correct (although not all patients will necessarily have been waiting in A&E). In 2011/12, 120 patients in England waited 12 hours between the decision to admit them to emergency admissions and their actual admission, compared to 3,500 in 2017/18. Spending on social care is down 8% since 2010. Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies last year said that between 2009/10 and 2016/17, councils’ spending on adult social care in England fell 8% in real terms. Newer analysis says that it fell by 6% over the same period. We’ve asked it for more information. There are 5,240 fewer mental health nurses since 2010. This seems to be looking at different months in 2010 and 2017, which isn’t the best comparison. Comparing the number of full-time equivalent mental health nurses between January 2010 and January 2018 (the latest figures), the drop is closer to 4,500. The number of operations classed as urgent that have been cancelled twice have doubled since 2010. Correct. The number of urgent operations in England cancelled for the second time or more for non-medical reasons more than doubled between 2011/12 and 2017/18. There has been a 22% drop in ambulances meeting their 15 minute transfer target since 2010. The decrease is actually greater—28%. In 2010/11 in England 80% of ambulance transfers were done in 15 minutes, in 2015/16 it was 58%. Claim 1 of 12
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6952
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State: Delaware landfill is exceeding air emissions limits.
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Operators of a Delaware landfill are fighting to expand despite being notified that it’s been releasing too much air pollution for more than a year.
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true
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Environment, General News, Delaware, Waste management, New Castle
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The News Journal of Wilmington reports a state notice of violation sent to the Minquadale landfill gives it until Dec. 2 to install a device that lessens the emissions. The Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control notice says the landfill has been exceeding hourly limits for sulfur oxide since October 2018. Federal authorities say this can cause breathing difficulties and other health problems. Waste Management spokesman John Hambrose denies this, saying the current level of emissions don’t pose a public health or safety concern. Despite the ongoing violation, Waste Management is suing New Castle County in an effort to increase the landfill’s size. ___ Information from: The News Journal of Wilmington, Del., http://www.delawareonline.com
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18252
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Immigrants are more fertile.
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Bush said that immigrants are more fertile and the data back him up. National statistics show that birth rates among foreign-born residents are about 50 percent higher than for U.S.-born women. However, the rates are converging, they vary widely among immigrant groups and over the years, the rates change. Still, Bush’s words were on track.
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true
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Immigration, National, Jeb Bush,
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"The aging of America draws a lot of attention as the country tries to control the rising cost of health care and sustain critical programs such as Social Security. Jeb Bush, former Republican governor of Florida and potential 2016 presidential candidate, has a partial solution -- promote immigration. Bush, speaking at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference in Washington, made a pitch for immigration reform, saying America needs more new workers to help pay for retirees -- ""to rebuild the demographic pyramid"" as he put it. ""Immigrants are more fertile,"" Bush said. ""And they love families and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population. Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity."" Bush’s reference to the fertility of immigrants stirred up an immediate flurry of activity on Twitter and the comment sections of news websites. Some said his words were callous, some said he was simply speaking the truth. We decided to take an evidence-based look into the fertility of immigrants. The key here is understanding the meaning of the word ""fertile."" Fertility can mean the ability to have children, but it can also refer to the birth rate of a population. In context, Bush's comments clearly referred to the second definition. We contacted Bush’s office; his spokesperson, Jaryn Emhoff, told us Bush was referring to birth rate. On that front, there is no debate about the numbers. The Pew Research Center reported in 2012 that the birth rate among foreign-born women was nearly 50 percent higher than for U.S.-born women -- 87.8 births per 1,000 women compared with 58.9 births per 1,000 women of prime child bearing age (15-44). A major reason why immigrant birth rates are higher has to do with the age of new arrivals; as a group, they skew young, which means more of them are likely to be ready to start families. If you looked at a group of foreign-born women and the same number of U.S.-born women, all between 15 and 44 years old, you would find more women closer to 20 years old among the immigrants. However, the Pew report noted an important trend. While birth rates for all women dropped between 2007 and 2010, it fell much faster among immigrant women. It declined by 14 percent compared with 6 percent for women born in America. Analysts differ on what is driving this change, and the debate has some bearing on Bush’s main interest in promoting immigration. The Pew researchers believe the data shows that these women are simply not having children. An alternative explanation is that there are fewer young immigrant women. Emilio Parrado, a sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, leans towards that one. Parrado said that the data tell him that the real reason for the drop in the immigrant birth rate is the recession. With fewer jobs in America, fewer people had the incentive to come. ""There are no new entrants,"" Parrado said. ""The immigrants who are already in the U.S. have already completed their family size, so they are no longer having kids and rates are declining."" This debate has significant implications for Bush’s argument on immigration. If birth rates for immigrants continue to drop, then immigration reform as a way to rebalance the country’s age distribution is not simply a matter of creating a legal option for those who are already here. It requires a steady influx of newcomers. Steven Camarota, director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, an organization that opposes high levels of immigration, said it is easy to overstate the benefits of attracting people from other countries. He noted that the children of foreign-born women still represent a significantly smaller slice of all births. This shows up in the data. The overall birth rate in the Pew report is 64 per 1,000 -- for U.S.-born women it is 58.9. ""Immigrants do pull up the average but not by very much,"" Camarota said. To really change the birth rate, Camarota said a much larger number of immigrants would be needed. We should also note that it’s not a good idea to lump all immigrants together. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that the country of origin can have a big impact on fertility rates. For mothers from Mexico, the rate is 77; that jumps by about a third for people from Central and South America. For mothers from Asia, the rate is 59 per 1,000. In addition, rates can change from one generation to the next. A paper presented at the Population Association of America 2013 conference found significant shifts among first-, second- and third-generation immigrant families. In terms of the number of children a woman will have in her lifetime, fertility falls steadily among Asians, from 1.84 in the first generation to 1.3 by the third. In contrast, Hispanic women show a dramatic decline from the first to second generation -- 2.41 to 1.9. But in the third generation, the number rises to 2.1. Our ruling Bush said that immigrants are more fertile and the data back him up. National statistics show that birth rates among foreign-born residents are about 50 percent higher than for U.S.-born women. However, the rates are converging, they vary widely among immigrant groups and over the years, the rates change. Still, Bush’s words were on track, and"
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4183
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Ban lifted on shellfish harvesting along coastline, harbor.
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New Hampshire’s Department of Environmental Services has lifted a ban on most shellfish harvesting along the state’s ocean coastline and Hampton-Seabrook Harbor after a drop in toxic algae bloom known as red tide.
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true
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New Hampshire, Environment, Algae, Harbors
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The harvest closure went into effect on May 9 in response to elevated levels of paralytic shellfish poisoning detected in blue mussels. Chris Nash, the department’s shellfish program manager, said Maine and Massachusetts have been reporting similar red tide declines. He said the one exception is that surf clams along the Atlantic Coast continue to show unacceptably high levels of the toxin. He said surf clams typically retain it much longer than other types of shellfish. The DES says paralytic shellfish poisoning is life-threatening. Symptoms include tingling, burning, numbness, drowsiness, incoherent speech, and respiratory paralysis.
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2502
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New diet craze offers five days of feasting for two days of famine.
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Forget abandoning carbohydrates or detoxing. The new dieting craze sweeping Britain and taking off in the United States lets people eat whatever they like - but only five days a week.
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true
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Health News
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“The Fast Diet”, also known as the 5:2 diet, is the brainchild of TV medical journalist Michael Mosley and journalist Mimi Spencer and allows people to eat what they want for five days but only eat 600 calories a day on the other two. Their book, “The Fast Diet”, has topped bestselling book lists in Britain and the United States this year and been reprinted more than a dozen times. Mosley said the diet is based on work by British and U.S. scientists who found intermittent fasting helped people lose more fat, increase insulin sensitivity and cut cholesterol which should mean reduced risk of heart disease and diabetes. He tried this eating regime for a BBC television science programme called “Eat, Fast, Live Longer” last August after finding out his cholesterol level was too high and his blood sugar in the diabetic range. He was stunned by the results. “I started doing intermittent fasting a year ago, lost 8 kgs (18 pounds) of fat over 3 months and my blood results went back to normal,” Mosley told Reuters. Mosley said he had been amazed at the way the diet had taken off with a list of websites set up by followers of the 5:2 diet or variations of the eating regime to share their experiences. Following the success of “The Fast Diet”, Spencer joined forces with dietitian Sarah Schenker to bring out “The Fast Diet Recipe Book” in April which has topped amazon.co.uk’s food and drink list with 150 recipes containing under 300 calories. Eating a 600 calorie daily diet - about a quarter of a normal healthy adult’s intake - could consist of two eggs for breakfast, grilled chicken and lettuce for lunch, and fish with rice noodles for dinner with nothing to drink but water, black coffee or tea. Mosley put the diet’s success down to the fact it is psychologically attractive and leads to steady drop in weight with an average weekly loss of 1 pound (0.46kg) for women and slightly more for men. “The problem with standard diets is that you feel like you are constantly having to exercise restraint and that means you are thinking about food all the time, which becomes self-defeating,” said Mosley. “On this regime you are only really on a diet two days a week. It is also extremely flexible and simple.” Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) initially expressed doubts about the diet and its long-term effects, saying side effects could include sleeping difficulties, bad breath, irritability, anxiety, and daytime sleepiness. But as the popularity of the 5:2 diet has grown and become one of the most searched diets on the Internet, the NHS has started to look again at the diet and its effects. On its website last month the NHS said the British Dietetic Association (BDA) reviewed a 2011 study by researchers at the UK’s University Hospital of South Manchester that suggested intermittent fasting could help lower the risk of certain obesity-related cancers such as breast cancer. “The increasing popularity of the 5:2 diet should lead to further research of this kind,” the BDA said in a statement. Schenker, a sports and media dietitian who works with football clubs and food companies, said it was a shame that the NHS had criticized the eating regime that had proved such a success with so many people. “We are in the midst of an obesity crisis and you need to balance up which is worse - intermittent fasting of staying obese?” Schenker told Reuters. Despite concerns raised by the NHS, the 5:2 diet has been widely praised by those who follow it. Deb Thomas, 50, a management coach from London, said she has followed the diet for six months and dropped a couple of dress sizes. This has also inspired her husband to join her in fasting two days a week. “It is such an easy diet to follow that fits into my way of life,” Thomas said. “You have a tough day of not eating but you know the next day you can eat normally again, and that keeps you going.”
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29530
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Hillary Clinton successfully defended an accused child rapist and later laughed about the case.
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"What's true: In 1975, young lawyer Hillary Rodham was appointed to represent a defendant charged with raping a 12-year-old girl. Clinton reluctantly took on the case, which ended with a plea bargain for the defendant, and later chuckled about some aspects of the case when discussing it years later. What's false: Hillary Clinton did not volunteer to be the defendant's lawyer, she did not laugh about the case's outcome, she did not assert that the complainant ""made up the rape story,"" she did not claim she knew the defendant to be guilty, and she did not ""free"" the defendant."
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false
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Politics Politicians, hillary clinton
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In May 2016, the image macro shown above began circulating on Facebook, holding that back in 1975 a young Hillary Clinton (then Hillary Rodham) had “volunteered” to represent a 42-year-old man (Thomas Alfred Taylor) who was accused of raping a 12-year-old girl, that Clinton told the judge in the case that the complainant “made up the rape story because [she] enjoyed fantasizing about older men, that Clinton “got [the] rapist freed,” and that Clinton later admitted she knew the defendant was guilty and “laughed about” the outcome of the case. Although Hillary Clinton was indeed involved in a case of this nature, the aspects of the case presented in the image were largely inaccurate or exaggerated. As Hillary Clinton wrote in her 2003 biography Living History, she didn’t volunteer to represent the defendant, but rather was appointed to the case by the judge: [Prosecuting attorney Mahlon Gibson] called me to tell me an indigent prisoner accused of raping a twelve-year-old girl wanted a woman lawyer. [Prosecutor Mahlon] Gibson had recommended that the criminal court judge, Maupin Cummings, appoint me. I told Mahlon I really didn’t feel comfortable taking on such a client, but Mahlon gently reminded me that I couldn’t very well refuse the judge’s request. That assertion was backed up by the prosecuting attorney, Mahlon Gibson, as noted in a 2008 Newsday article about the case: On May 21, 1975, Tom Taylor rose in court to demand that Washington County Judge Maupin Cummings allow him to fire his male court-appointed lawyer in favor of a female attorney. Taylor, who earned a meager wage at a paper bag factory and lived with relatives, had already spent 10 days in the county jail and was grasping for a way to avoid a 30 years-to-life term in the state penitentiary for rape. Taylor, 41, figured a jury would be less hostile to a rape defendant represented by a woman, according to one of his friends. Cummings agreed to the request, scanned the list of available female attorneys (there were only a half dozen in the county at the time) and assigned Rodham, who had virtually no experience in criminal litigation. “Hillary told me she didn’t want to take that case, she made that very clear,” recalls prosecutor Gibson, who phoned her with the judge’s order. Rodham immersed herself in Taylor’s defense as the law school’s spring semester came to an end. “She worked a lot of nights on it,” said Van Gearhart, her teaching assistant at the law clinic in 1975. “I remember her doing that because she wanted to show that she was willing to take court appointments, hoping that the bar would help us in getting established as a clinic.” Gibson said the same thing during a 2014 CNN interview about the case, adding that Hillary had attempted unsuccessfully to get the judge to remove her from the case: Gibson said that it is “ridiculous” for people to question how Clinton became Taylor’s representation. “She got appointed to represent this guy,” he told CNN when asked about the controversy. According to Gibson, Maupin Cummings, the judge in the case, kept a list of attorneys who would represent poor clients. Clinton was on that list and helped run a legal aid clinic at the time. Taylor was assigned a public defender in the case but Gibson said he quickly “started screaming for a woman attorney” to represent him. Gibson said Clinton called him shortly after the judge assigned her to the case and said, “I don’t want to represent this guy. I just can’t stand this. I don’t want to get involved. Can you get me off?” “I told her, ‘Well contact the judge and see what he says about it,’ but I also said don’t jump on him and make him mad,” Gibson said. “She contacted the judge and the judge didn’t remove her and she stayed on the case.” Documents from the 1975 case include an affidavit (p. 34) sworn by Clinton, from which the “in court, Hillary told the judge that I made up the rape story” portion of the claims was derived. That affidavit doesn’t show, as claimed, that Hillary Clinton asserted the defendant “made up the rape story because [she] enjoyed fantasizing about men”; rather, it shows that other people, including an expert in child psychology, had said that the complainant was “emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and to engage in fantasizing about persons, claiming they had attacked her body,” and that “children in early adolescence tend to exaggerate or romanticize sexual experiences.” Clinton therefore asked the court to have the complainant undergo a psychiatric exam (at the defense’s expense) to determine the validity of that information: “She was vigorously advocating for her client. What she did was appropriate,” said Andrew Schepard, director of Hofstra Law School’s Center for Children, Families and the Law. “He was lucky to have her as a lawyer … In terms of what’s good for the little girl? It would have been hell on the victim. But that wasn’t Hillary’s problem.” As for the claim that Hillary Clinton “knew the defendant was guilty,” she couldn’t possibly have known that unless she were present when the incident in question occurred. It’s also largely irrelevant given that under Hillary Clinton’s handling of the case, the defendant pled guilty rather than going to trial and asserting his innocence. As Newsday observed, the case was a “hopelessly convoluted” one in which the facts were far from straightforward and in which another person (a juvenile) was also charged: The case, [Hillary] quickly learned, was hopelessly convoluted, hinging on the accounts of three people — Taylor, the girl and a 15-year-old boy — who all had reasons to withhold details. Finding out precisely what happened in the pre-dawn hours of May 10, 1975, is difficult three decades later, particularly since Taylor died in 1992 of a heart ailment. But a basic outline can be reconstructed from interviews, court documents, witnesses’ statements and the Washington County sheriff’s original case file, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Sometime around midnight, the girl was sleeping over at a friend’s house in Springdale when Taylor and his 20-year-old cousin walked in, asking if anyone wanted to take a drive. The sixth-grader, who says she was bored and wanted to buy a soda, jumped into Taylor’s beat-up red 1963 Chevrolet pickup truck. Soon after, they picked up the 15-year-old boy and drove to a liquor store, where Taylor bought a pint of Old Grand-Dad whiskey, which he mixed for the girl in a cup of Coca-Cola, according to the boy, now a 48-year-old Army veteran. (Newsday is withholding the boy’s name because he was charged in the case as a juvenile offender.) After a few hours at a local bowling alley, the foursome crammed into Taylor’s truck and drove to a weedy ravine off a busy two-lane highway connecting the sister cities of Fayetteville and Springdale, according the sheriff’s department account. Taylor and the older man went off for a walk, leaving the 12-year-old and the teenager alone in the cab. In a statement to police, the 15-year-old said he removed his pants and admitted to having sex, revealing the encounter only after being pressed by investigators. Moments later, he said he left and Taylor approached the truck, climbing on top of the girl. The girl let out a scream, according to the police report, and he claims to have seen Taylor hitching up his pants. The victim, the boy reported, turned to both of them and yelled, “You all planned this, didn’t you?” At 4:50 a.m., the girl walked into a local emergency room, badly shaken. The doctor’s report noted that she had injuries consistent with rape. Taylor was a tight-lipped client, never wavering from his claim that he’d driven all the passengers home that night without stopping in the ravine, according to Dale Gibson. (Taylor was less guarded around his 15-year-old companion, who recalls the older man whispering “Let’s keep our stories straight” when the two met in county jail.) Audio tapes from the 1980s of Hillary Clinton describing the case to journalist Roy Reed surfaced in 2014 and were incorporated into a video clip associated with the image macro’s claims: The audio on these tapes is difficult to understand, but Clinton can be heard describing the case as “terrible.” She did audibly laugh or chuckle at points, not about “knowing that the defendant was guilty” or “getting a guilty guy off” (which makes little sense, given that the defendant pled guilty) but rather while musing about how elements of the case that might ordinarily have supported the prosecution worked in the defendant’s favor (i.e., observing that the defendant’s passing a polygraph test had “forever destroyed her faith” in that technology): Finally, Hillary didn’t “free” the defendant in the case. Instead, the prosecuting attorney agreed to a plea deal involving a lesser charge that carried a five-year sentence, of which the judge suspended four years and allowed two months credit of time already served towards the remaining year: Additionally, according to Newsday it was the complainant and her mother who pushed the state to make a quick plea deal rather than have the former go through the ordeal of a court trial, with the mother actively interfering in the investigation to bring about that result: The victim says it was her mother, who had recently been abandoned by her husband, who pushed for a quick plea deal to avoid the humiliation of having her daughter testify in open court. The mother, who died several years ago, was so eager to end the ordeal she coached her daughter’s statements and interrupted interviews with police, Sgt. Dale Gibson [the department’s lead investigator] recalls. “We both wanted it to be over with,” the victim told Newsday. “They kept asking me the same questions over and over. I was crying all the time.” Even now, that outcome is not unusual for violent criminal charges: 2014 statistics show that 97% of criminal cases (including rape) are resolved by plea bargain, and only 3% go to trial. The ratio of plea bargains to trials was similar in 1970 [PDF]. Additionally, that 1975 criminal case came before the widespread adoptions of rape shield laws that now protect rape victims in court from some forms of questioning. A case brought in 1975 would have been subject to much weaker legal protection for the accuser than today. As Hillary Clinton said while looking back on the case during a 2014 interview for Mumsnet: “I had a professional duty to represent my client to the best of my ability, which I did. He later pled guilty to a lesser included offense. When you’re a lawyer you often don’t have the choice as to who you will represent. And by the very nature of criminal law there will be those you represent you don’t approve of. But, at least in our system, you have an obligation. And once I was appointed I fulfilled that obligation.” Newsday closed their 2008 article on this case by reporting that the (unnamed) victim had experienced subsequent legal problems but bore Hillary Clinton “no ill will”: In 2005, while working in a laundry, the victim stole several hundred dollars worth of checks from her boss to buy drugs. She is now living in a halfway house and looking for work. Despite these problems, she bears Hillary Rodham Clinton no ill will and was eager to read “Living History” — at least pages 72 and 73, which contain her case. Eight years later, in 2016, the UK’s Daily Mail identified the victim (who had previously spoken anonymously to the Daily Beast) as Kathy Shelton and quoted her as saying that she “cannot forgive Hillary Clinton for defending her rapist” and that she was unaware for many years that Hillary Clinton was the person who had represented the defendant in her case: ‘It’s put a lot of anger back in me,’ said Shelton, now 54, in an exclusive interview at her Springdale, Arkansas, home. ‘Every time I see [Clinton] on TV I just want to reach in there and grab her, but I can’t do that.’ For decades, Shelton said she had no idea that Clinton was the same woman as the lawyer who defended her rapist in 1975.
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3188
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AP PHOTOS: In despair, French hospital interns go on strike.
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Nestled in the cinderblock complex of Marseille’s sprawling La Timone hospital stands the intern residency building, home to a community of French student doctors holding an exceptional, open-ended strike to demand a better future.
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true
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International News, General News, Strikes, France, Health, Business, Marseille, Europe
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Protesting interns in white coats and blue hair nets wave signs made from brooms and bedsheets, tooting trumpets and banging drums. Hanging from lampposts in his scrubs, Xavier Charléty chanted slogans through a megaphone to his colleagues marching through the streets of Marseille as their strike began earlier this month. France’s vaunted public hospital system is increasingly stretched to its limits after years of cost cuts, and the interns at La Timone — one of the country’s biggest hospitals — say their internships are failing to prepare them as medical professionals. Instead, the doctors-in-training are being used to fill the gaps. “They call us students, but when they need us, they call us doctors,” says Charléty, a general medicine intern and an active member of the Autonomous Union for Interns of the Hospitals of Marseille. The movement isn’t directly linked to the retirement strikes convulsing France, but reflects a nationwide worry that public services are falling victim to global market pressures. After their union meetings, the interns gather together for dinner, usually leftover hospital meals, in their residence’s communal kitchen. Graffiti decorates walls around the brutalist, nine-floor high-rise, as do signs reading “Interns on strike.” “It is a kind of shelter, when people around you start to talk about the strike and how things can change, it gives you strength,” says Vincent Achour, a psychiatry intern. The interns proudly wear their uniforms and name tags even while on strike, demonstrating their attachment to the profession. They’re torn between guilt at leaving their posts – and their patients – and determination to call attention to the precarious conditions at La Timone. Strike-related disruptions have sent hospital management scrambling to assign senior doctors to fulfil the roles of their absent apprentices. French hospitals are required by law to provide a minimum level of service even during strikes. Pediatrics intern Smranda Deaconu says she will return to work the week of Christmas because she can’t bear to see the strain on her colleagues brought about by her absence. As late-stage medical students specializing in their respective departments, the interns are still learning but often work the same hours and conduct the same procedures as their fully qualified superiors. The strike is unusual because in the past, interns would formally declare themselves on strike yet still go to work, not receiving pay for the hours they complete. Charlety called this form of protest “meaningless.” His union is determined to keep up the pressure through the holidays. The health minister is meeting hospital employee representatives next month, in hopes of finding solutions for their mountain of grievances. —- Angela Charlton contributed to this report from Paris.
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7602
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Long-term care facilities linked to 61% of WA virus deaths.
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More than 60% of coronavirus deaths in Washington are linked to long-term care facilities and authorities say more than 250 such locations in the state have reported at least one COVID-19 case.
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true
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Seattle, Health, General News, Washington, Pandemics, Nursing homes, Virus Outbreak
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The state’s COVID-19 response team released information Wednesday showing there were 507 deaths tied to such facilities as of May 2, accounting for 61% of virus fatalities in the state at the time. There were 2,894 positive cases associated with care facilities, representing 19% of total cases as of last week. Nursing homes have been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus pandemic and the nation’s first deadly cluster of COVID-19 cases happened at a Seattle-area care facility, where more than 40 people died. The Washington state Department of Health says long-term care cases include residents, employees and visitors and notes that authorities aren’t certain that all the cases were exposed to the virus at the facilities. The state agency that regulates such facilities says 94 assisted living facilities, 76 nursing homes, 51 adult family homes and 30 supported living providers have reported one or more COVID-19 cases among residents or staff as of May 5. Gov. Jay Inslee said Tuesday state officials are reviewing the possibility of using antibody testing, to retroactively measure the spread of the coronavirus. He said the testing wouldn’t be used as a way to clear those who test positive to return to work, however, KUOW reported. Inslee said state officials had been talking with the manufacturer Abbott Laboratories, Inc, “about the potential of expanding large-scale surveillance antibody testing in the state.” Abbott’s COVID-19 antibody test, which is done through a blood draw, is already being used by the University of Washington’s Virology Lab. The test detects coronavirus antibodies, the proteins created by the immune system in response to the presence of a virus. Virology Lab officials have reported the test has a perfect rate of detecting antibodies in those who have them. However, they’ve cited a 99.6% rate of specificity, meaning there’s potential to see false positives for those who haven’t produced coronavirus antibodies. More than 15,900 people in the state have tested positive and at least 870 people have died from the coronavirus as of Wednesday. The virus causes mild to moderate symptoms in most patients, and the vast majority recover. But it is highly contagious and can be spread by those who appear healthy and can cause severe illness and death in some patients, particularly the elderly and those with underlying health conditions.
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33106
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"President Obama has started confiscating guns ""by force."
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What's true: A California law effective January 2016 allowed family members to attempt to obtain a temporary restraining order restricting gun possession for relatives experiencing a mental health crisis. What's false: President Obama is confiscating guns by force in California or elsewhere; the law in question was in any way linked to President Obama; under that law, guns will be indiscriminately confiscated by federal agents or law enforcement agents in California.
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false
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Politics Guns, barack obama, california, guns
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On 27 December 2015 the web site American Column published the misleadingly named article “BREAKING: Obama Begins Confiscating Guns By Force.” The headline began with the word “BREAKING,” suggesting that whatever followed was an extremely recent development. It continued: California has just submitted to Obama in a truly sickening way by launching an unconstitutional gun-grabbing plan. California has officially launched its most unconstitutional program yet, calling it the Armed Prohibited Persons System. The once supported system is gaining negativity as its true intentions are being played out and acted upon in the name of safety. The initial intent of the program was to disarm dangerous felons and people with serious mental illness but has since been modified. The state of California has generalized these categories to include anyone who has committed a felony and anyone who has needed a psychiatrist or taken drugs that benefit your mental state. They then took these generalizations one step further by including anyone involved in a domestic dispute and anyone convicted of a minor misdemeanor. We were unable to locate any developments pertaining to broad gun policy in California in December 2015, much less any suggesting President Obama was “confiscating” guns “by force.” The words “gun-grabbing plan” linked to a separate article off-site. That article was titled “Forceful Gun Confiscation Begins In California,” and published by the web site Mr. Conservative on 28 December 2013. Notably, in the intervening two years between those iterations, no “gun grab” executed “by force” transpired in California. The Mr. Conservative article contained much of the same text verbatim, down to a photograph of a purported firearm confiscation victim and an excerpt from the web site Downtrend. Neither article provided links to their source material. The Downtrend article, published on 23 August 2013, held that: Earlier this year, the state legislature expanded the list of what they call “prohibited persons” — people who have legally registered a firearm but, for various reasons, are no longer allowed their Second Amendment rights. These reasons were expanded to include people who are behind on state taxes, did not pay toll fees in a “timely” manner and a wide range of other minor misdemeanors or reported mental health concerns. In preparation for the crackdown, the state authorized $24 million to hire additional officers to track down 20,000 people on the list. One person on this list was Joe Mendez. A police officer came to the door and lured Mendez out of his house with a story of a hit and run report. Once outside, he had M16s pointed within inches of his face, was taken into custody and had all weapons removed from his house. While American Column‘s rehash was published on 27 December 2015, the Washington Times ran an article a few days later that noted: Gun-safety legislation going into effect in California will allow authorities to seize a person’s weapons for 21 days if a judge determines there’s potential for violence. Proposed in the wake of a deadly May 2014 shooting rampage by Elliot Rodger, the bill provides family members with a means of having an emergency “gun violence restraining order” imposed against a loved one if they can convince a judge that allowing that person to possess a firearm “poses an immediate and present danger of causing personal injury to himself, herself or another by having in his or her custody or control.” “The law gives us a vehicle to cause the person to surrender their weapons, to have a time out, if you will,” Los Angeles Police Department Assistant Chief Michael Moore told a local NPR affiliate. “It allows further examination of the person’s mental state.” It appeared coincidental that material originally written prior to Rodgers’ 2014 rampage (the 2013 articles published by Downtrend and Mr. Conservative and lifted for republishing by American Column) circulated at the same time. Nevertheless, social media users expressed concern that some sort of a gun-grabbing spree was underway in California, at the direction of President Obama. Those articles referenced California’s “Armed & Prohibited Persons System (APPS),” which was not novel legislation [PDF], and which came into existence in 2001, nearly eight years prior to the inauguration of President Obama. Even by Washington Times‘ description, the gun surrender described was not indiscriminate but something triggered by family member concerns that were reported to authorities. It simply allowed for an “emergency ‘gun violence restraining order'” option with respect to individuals armed with guns who were behaving erratically. In short, an article claiming that President Obama began confiscating guns (originally published in August 2013, republished without additional information in December 2015) began recirculating in late December 2015. At roughly the same time, news outlets reported a new law involving temporary restrictions on gun possession based upon family reports of an individual’s compromised mental state. The former appeared to be purely scarelore, as no wide-scale confiscations occurred between the three appearances of identical articles. The latter was marginally true, but it involved the acquisition of a formal legal injunction based on the ruling of a judge.
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350
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CEO sees Bayer 'massively' affected by herbicide litigation.
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Bayer’s chief executive on Thursday acknowledged the German maker of pharmaceuticals and crop chemicals was facing massive challenges from a wave of lawsuits over an alleged carcinogenic effect of its Roundup weedkiller.
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true
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Environment
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“We have lost two cases in lower courts. That is why the company is massively affected. You see it in our share price,” CEO Werner Baumann said in a panel discussion at an academic business event in Cologne. “You see it selectively, mainly here in Germany and in France - less so in the USA - in our reputational scores,” he added. Bayer has seen about 30 billion euros ($34 billion) wiped off its market value since August, when a U.S. jury found Bayer liable because Monsanto, acquired by Bayer for $63 billion last year, had not warned of weedkiller Roundup’s alleged cancer risks. It suffered a similar courtroom defeat last month and more than 10,000 cases are pending. “There’s lots of politicking, campaigning and propaganda that goes entirely against the current regulatory status of our products. That has prompted U.S. lawyers to sue for damages - a big industry in the USA - following an outlier assessment of the potential risk by a subordinate organization,” Baumann added. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the European Chemicals Agency and other regulators across the globe have found that glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, is not likely carcinogenic to humans. However, the World Health Organization’s cancer arm in 2015 reached a different conclusion, classifying glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans”. Bayer is legally challenging the verdicts and has stressed that regulators across the globe have found the product to be safe.
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39985
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The eRumor is a warning not to eat jars of Peter Pan peanut butter with the product code “2111” because of Salmonella contamination.
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FDA Warning About Certain Jars of Peter Pan Peanut Butter
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true
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Food / Drink, Warnings
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The warning is true and was issued on February 14, 2007 by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. On February 26, 2007, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it had confirmed the presence of Salmonella in the ConAgra peanut butter and also said that they were looking into two deaths believed to have died as a result and that hundreds had been sickened. The FDA says that both Peter Pan and Great Value brand peanut butter is affected and both have the same product code on the lid of the jar that beings with the number “2111.” They were manufactured in the same facility in Georgia by a company called ConAgra. The FDA says that Great Value peanut butter made by other manufacturers and with different product codes are not affected. ConAgra was recalling any affected jars and encouraged anyone with one of the jars to throw it away. The FDA release said there was a risk of contamination with Salmonella Tennessee. Symptoms include fever, diarrhea, and abdominal cramps. The first person to get sick may have become ill as early as August, 2006. The FDA warned that for people with poor underlying health or weakened immune systems, Salmonella can cause life-threatening infections. Anyone who ate the affected peanut butter and had any of the described symptoms was encouraged to get professional medical help immediately and report any Salmonella poisoning to state or local health authorities. Updated February 26, 2007 Comments
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9086
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New delayed-release stimulant improves morning ADHD symptoms and all-day functioning
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This release describes a phase 3 trial of a new formulation of an existing drug, methylphenidate, used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The use of a delayed-release form of the drug was intended to allow children to take the drug at night and then feel the positive affects when they wake and before school — a time that often is stressful for both child and family. The release states that children taking the drug showed “statistically significant improvement” in their morning routines compared to those receiving a placebo but doesn’t define what those improvements are. The release also left out costs, alternative treatments and potential conflicts of interests among study co-authors. The release explains that the period between when a child with ADHD awakens and begins school can be especially trying for both child and parent. Medications can take time to take effect and in that window, the child’s ability to function adequately is reduced, stressing both them and their parents. The idea of a medication they could take at bedtime that would “kick in” when they wake in the morning might offer a remedy to this problem. However, future studies comparing the delayed release version of the stimulant drug to other ADHD stimulants are needed to show superiority. Comparing to placebo alone is not enough. Journalists writing about ADHD drug treatments and parents of children diagnosed with ADHD should note there are ongoing debates among experts about over-treatment and under-treatment of ADHD in youth. It’s best to become informed about the harms and benefits of stimulant drugs before drawing conclusions.
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false
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ADHD,Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology,methylphenidate
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There is no mention of the cost of methylphenidate in this release. While the price of the existing forms of this drug are readily obtainable, this research touts a new extended/delayed release form of the medicine and therefore, it is conceivable that the price will be different, and more than likely higher. As far as benefits of this new drug go, the release only states that it “led to significant improvement in ADHD symptoms and functional impairment first thing the next morning, compared to a placebo.” It adds that, “children taking the delayed-release stimulant did not have to wait for a morning dose to take effect and also benefited from improved symptoms later in the afternoon and evening.” There is no explanation of the degree of improvement among children taking the drug compared to those on a placebo, and therefore, readers are at a loss to gauge the real value of the new formulation. Moreover, the new formulation is compared to placebo, but it is already known that stimulants are superior to placebo for most ADHD-related outcomes. If the novel element of this new (and presumably more expensive) formulation is that it improves morning symptoms compared to standard early AM dosing, then a more appropriate control group (or perhaps a 3rd volunteer group) would have been morning dosing of standard formulation methylphenidate. The release addresses possible harms with use of this new formulation of the drug by saying, “the main adverse effects of appetite suppression and insomnia being those commonly reported for other formulations of methylphenidate.” The study itself offers more detail and a breakdown of what proportion of participants experienced these effects but most were considered to be mild. The study published in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology describes the research as a “3-week, randomized, double-blind, multicenter, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, forced-dose titration trial” which would give readers confidence in the integrity of the research methods. Unfortunately, the release only describes it as “a phase 3 study of children ages 6-12 years.” It doesn’t even tell us how many children were enrolled in the trial. (According to the journal article there were 161 participants, half assigned to the active drug and half to placebo.) One glaring omission in describing the benefits and evidence is that the release didn’t tell us which symptoms were being assessed and which tools were used to make the assessments. And as noted above, the delayed-release drug was only tested against placebo and not the original standard drug or any other drug. We still don’t know whether this new (and presumably more expensive) formulation is actually superior to standard dosing of methylphenidate. No disease mongering here. There is no mention in the release about the funding for the research or any information about potential conflicts of interest among the researchers. The published research paper, however, readily discloses that the study was supported by a pharmaceutical manufacturer and that the lead researcher is a paid consultant to that company. Numerous other potential conflicts among the research team are also outlined in the paper. All of these financial ties should have been mentioned in the release. Methylphenidate is one of many drugs available for the treatment of ADHD but this release doesn’t name any of the other drugs or any non-drug therapies. The release doesn’t even say how the delayed release version of methylphenidate compares to standard dosing of the drug. The release offers no information about the possible availability of the new formulation of methylphenidate. It only mentions that the research was a “phase 3 trial,” which some readers will recognize must occur before a drug gets FDA approval for its use. In this case, it’s unclear whether the new formulation is in the drug approval process. The release suggests that the trial showed the delayed release form of an existing drug positively affected the quality of life for young children with ADHD and their families. However, it remains unclear whether this formulation is indeed superior — or novel — in comparison to standard dosing of methylphenidate since that wasn’t part of the trial. No unjustifiable language here.
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6301
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W Virginia medical school offering free osteopathic services.
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The West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine on Monday said it is looking for patients for its free annual osteopathic clinic.
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true
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General News, West Virginia, Medical schools
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The medical school has opened registration for its Student Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine Clinic, which provides free osteopathic evaluations and other treatments to people who live in Lewisburg and surrounding areas The school says procedures are performed by students under the supervision of physicians. The program runs on Wednesdays between Jan. 8 and Feb. 5, and then from Feb. 12 to March 11 at the school’s Clinical Evaluation Center in Lewisburg. Potential patients must have a written referral from a doctor, physician’s assistant or nurse practitioner before scheduling an appointment with the clinic.
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27604
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Meryl Streep applauded for Roman Polanski at the Academy Awards in 2003.
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A video clip showing Meryl Streep applauding for Roman Polanski at the Academy Awards in 2003 came to the forefront after the actress' controversial 2017 Golden Globes speech.
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true
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Politics Politicians, donald trump, meryl streep, Roman Polanski
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On 9 January 2017, the day after after Meryl Streep delivered a speech critical of President-elect Donald Trump as she was awarded the Cecil B. DeMille Award for lifetime achievement at the annual Golden Globes ceremony, an image macro purportedly showing the actress cheering for director Roman Polanski — who fled the United States in the 1970s to avoid imprisonment for the sexual assault of a minor — at the Academy Awards ceremonies in 2003 was circulated on social media: The image of Steep’s applauding (along with nearly everyone else present) was indeed taken from the Academy Awards ceremony of 2003, just after Polanski was announced as the winner in the Best Director category for his film The Pianist. The event captured in the screenshot can be glimpsed at the 1:10 mark of the following video: This video was widely shared online in an effort to portray Streep (and other Hollywood elites) as hypocritical: Well well well… it turns out while Meryl Streep has a problem with the President Elect Donald Trump, she is perfectly fine with Roman Polanski, who as a 43 yr old, RAPED a 13 year old girl. In fact, Streep even gave Polanski a standing ovation. You can read details about Polanski’s sick crime here. I guess these are “Liberal Hollywood values” actors abide by. Standing ovation for rapists, and long-winded diatribes against a man looking to put America First. Are you proud of that hypocrisy, Meryl? Streep’s speech at the Golden Globes also sparked the ire of president-elect Donald Trump, largely because the actress brought attention to a 2015 incident when Trump reportedly mocked a handicapped reporter: At tonight’s #GoldenGlobes we honor Hollywood legend Meryl Streep with the prestigious Cecil B. Demille Award. pic.twitter.com/dxpeCDNXY6 — Golden Globe Awards (@goldenglobes) January 9, 2017 But there was one performance this year that stunned me. It sank its hooks in my heart. Not because it was good; there was nothing good about it. But it was effective and it did its job. It made its intended audience laugh, and show their teeth. It was that moment when the person asking to sit in the most respected seat in our country imitated a disabled reporter. Someone he outranked in privilege, power and the capacity to fight back. It kind of broke my heart when I saw it, and I still can’t get it out of my head, because it wasn’t in a movie. It was real life. And this instinct to humiliate, when it’s modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody’s life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing. Disrespect invites disrespect, violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others we all lose. Trump responded to Streep’s comments on Twitter, calling her one of the “most over-rated” actresses in Hollywood and denying that he had “mocked” a disabled reporter: Meryl Streep, one of the most over-rated actresses in Hollywood, doesn’t know me but attacked last night at the Golden Globes. She is a….. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2017 Hillary flunky who lost big. For the 100th time, I never “mocked” a disabled reporter (would never do that) but simply showed him……. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2017 “groveling” when he totally changed a 16 year old story that he had written in order to make me look bad. Just more very dishonest media! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 9, 2017
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15689
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American families work hard to earn $4,250 a month. Obama is spending $18,972 a month on each illegal immigrant child.
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A CVS Health Corp (CVS.N) health plan that uses an outside drug pricing group to help it decide whether to cover certain new medicines has gained little traction with customers, according to its top medical executive, and has drawn fierce criticism from patient advocacy groups.
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false
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Immigration, National, Federal Budget, ForAmerica,
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The company has held back on marketing the pharmacy benefit plan while it talks to these groups, CVS said. The plan, launched a year ago, is based on analyses by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER), a Boston-based group that assesses effectiveness of drugs to determine appropriate prices. Using ICER’s cost effectiveness assessment, CVS decides whether to include second or third medicines entering the market if there are already similar ones in the plan. Opposition to the CVS plan is part of much broader concerns cited by drug companies and advocacy groups, many of which receive funding from the pharmaceutical industry. Some say that ICER’s analysis based on additional years of “quality life” gained from a given treatment is arbitrary and disregards the costs of drug development and patient needs. More than 50 groups, including drugmakers, PhRMA, the industry’s main lobby group, and other advocacy groups, have provided comment during a public input period included in a review by ICER of its assessment methods. Many asked ICER to eliminate price recommendations from its efficacy analyses. ICER has defended its methods, which are based on a widely-used cost effectiveness analysis. The soft rollout of CVS’ ICER-related product comes as employer health plan sponsors - its biggest clients - are showing increased concern over their cost for new high-priced drugs, and are considering refusing to pay for them at all, CVS Chief Medical Officer Troy Brennan said in a recent interview. If corporate customers follow through on that threat, CVS said it could change tactics with the plan. Rising drug prices, particularly for expensive specialty treatments for severe or deadly conditions, have pushed annual U.S. healthcare spending to $3.65 trillion, and made them unaffordable for many individuals. Earlier this year, Novartis AG (NOVN.S) launched Zolgensma, a more than $2 million gene therapy for a rare but deadly disease called spinal muscular atrophy. The new CVS program, cited as an example of ICER’s growing influence on U.S. drug pricing, would not apply to such a breakthrough treatment. It is a tiny plan by CVS standards as the company manages pharmaceutical benefits for more than 102 million people and also owns Aetna insurance and a national pharmacy chain. The plan’s scope is limited to so-called me too drugs, those where similar effective treatments already exist, and aims to pressure drugmakers to set lower prices. For example, two of three very similar drugs for migraine approved in 2018 could have been excluded, but drugmakers set prices ICER deemed cost effective. CVS has limited sales and marketing for the plan while it talks to patient groups who oppose it. About 240,000 CVS employees and a few large clients’ employees are enrolled thus far. The company declined to comment on exact membership. “We are not widely promoting this program,” Brennan said, adding that CVS is working to address patient groups’ concerns. Meanwhile, Brennan said some employers are considering refusing to pay for million-dollar treatments like gene therapy. They are saying, “I’m not going to cover these kinds of therapies no matter what their comparative effectiveness is if they’ve got a really high cost.” Large healthcare consultant and brokerage Mercer said it has begun to field similar concerns. “We have certainly gotten some plan sponsors saying ‘What if we don’t cover specialty drugs?’” said David Dross, who runs Mercer’s managed pharmacy practice. Two years ago, it never received any such questions, he said. Steve Wojcik, an executive with the National Business Group on Health which represents large employers, said he does not believe many will take that drastic step. Still, ICER President Steven Pearson said employers tell him they worry about their ability to cover everything and have suggested they might drop some high-cost treatments. He said employers can use cost effectiveness analysis to help them manage their spending. ICER has responded to outside criticism by meeting with patient advocates and by adding new measurements for a drug’s effectiveness, such as the value of life years gained, which does not focus on quality of life improvements, Pearson said. Since 2015, ICER has published up to a dozen reviews each year of drugs and classes of medicines. Most U.S. private insurers now use ICER clinical and cost analyses to inform coverage negotiations with drugmakers. ICER funding primarily comes from a non-profit foundation, but drug companies and health insurers provide some funds for ICER-related activities.
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41645
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The rate of extra investment in the NHS has fallen by 68% since 2010.
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Chinese panda experts and Thai officials on Thursday began preparing for an autopsy of beloved giant panda Chuang Chuang, who died unexpectedly this week at the Chiang Mai Zoo in northern Thailand while on loan from Beijing.
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true
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health
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The death of 19-year-old Chuang Chuang sparked mourning among Thai fans and an outcry on Chinese social media, where a hashtag seeming to blame Thailand was viewed 250 million times. Zoo officials said there had been little sign Chuang Chuang was suffering health problems before his death on Monday. Pandas generally live 14-20 years in the wild but can live up to 30 years in captivity. The autopsy should take no more than seven days and then Chuang Chuang’s body would go to China as per an agreement with Beijing, said Sumet Kamolnoranat, deputy director of the Zoological Park Organisation. “A working team between Chinese and Thai officials has been formed and their progress will be notified in future updates,” a statement from the Thai zoo on Thursday said. Chinese and Thai officials were also discussing whether Chuang Chuang’s mate, Lin Hui - the only remaining panda in Thailand - should be returned to China, a Chinese official said. “For Lin Hui, I understand that there are some concerns about her being alone and her loneliness. We have to talk about this later,” said Ren Yisheng, the Chinese Consul General in Chiang Mai. The panda pair, on loan from China since 2003, were celebrities in Thailand after Lin Hui gave birth in 2009. Baby pandas are rarely born in captivity and the offspring was eventually returned to China. Lin Hui conceived through artificial insemination after Chuang Chuang failed to impregnate her, despite being shown videos dubbed “panda porn” meant to encourage them to mate. Pandas are famously difficult to breed in captivity. On Thursday, Thai tourists at the zoo expressed sorrow. “I felt sad once I knew about his death. Today, when I saw the area where he used to stay make me feel horrible,” said visitor Kanchana Anatasomboon. Bangkok resident Supatra Saraneeyatham, on his first visit to Chiang Mai, said: “I’m here with my sister and she almost cried once we saw Lin Hui alone inside.”
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12790
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"Blogger Says former president Jimmy Carter said, ""Medical marijuana cured my cancer."
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Bogus claim that Jimmy Carter credits marijuana for curing his cancer is all smoke
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false
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Fake news, PunditFact, Bloggers,
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"The Internet is getting a sustained buzz from a fake news story about former President Jimmy Carter saying marijuana cured his cancer, but the years-old hoax can only burn readers. ""Jimmy Carter: ‘Medical marijuana cured my cancer,’"" reads the headline on a post dated Dec. 8, 2015, from CannaSOS.com. The site says it is a social media platform where ""cannabis enthusiasts"" can discuss information related to marijuana. The post says Carter had become a cannabis connoisseur since being diagnosed, and credited a medical marijuana purveyor in Oakland, Calif., for helping find a proper strain of the drug. Facebook users flagged the story as being potentially fake, as part of the social media network’s efforts to thin out fake news stories. While the story goes back to 2015, it was shared on Facebook more than 1,000 times in the past seven months. Versions of the same story have appeared in links from other websites, as well. In 2015, Carter was really diagnosed with skin cancer that had spread to his brain, but in December of that year announced the cancer’s growth had been arrested and reversed. Instead of medical marijuana, Carter announced he had been trying a new drug called Keytruda that appeared to help control and reverse the metastatic melanoma. The fake story, meanwhile, appears to have originated from a Dec. 7, 2015, post on a site called SatiraTribune.com. There’s no disclaimer on the site, but their Facebook page notes that SatiraTribune publishes ""satirical and futuristic news."" The story is full of cliches about smoking marijuana, including Carter being forgetful and having the munchies for peanuts. It also says Carter would be supporting legalization efforts in several states. (Four more states voted to allow recreational marijuana in 2016, while three others approved medical marijuana. That brings the total number of states with some form of legal marijuana to 28, plus the District of Columbia.) Carter’s own record on marijuana is a little hazier than the story makes it out to be. He suggested to Congress in 1977 that possession of up to one ounce of marijuana should be decriminalized, in an effort to keep people out of prisons for smoking the drug. When a CNN anchor asked him in 2012 whether he supported legalization, he said, ""I’m in favor of it. I think it’s OK."" He recently clarified his position in 2013: ""I do not favor legalization,"" he said at a meeting of state legislators and regulators. ""We must do everything we can to discourage marijuana use, as we do now with tobacco and excessive drinking."" But perhaps the biggest giveaway is a faked quote from Carter that reads, ""I smoke two joints in the morning, I smoke two joints at night, I smoke two joint in the afternoon, and it makes me feel all right."" That’s actually the opening line from The Toyes’ 1983 weed anthem ""Smoke Two Joints,"" although many people instead refer to Sublime’s 1992 cover, or even Macy Gray’s 2012 interpretation. We don’t know which version Carter would prefer. At any rate, this is a fake story that sparked a wave of readers being fooled."
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2154
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"Love"" hormone may help autism symptoms: study."
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A hormone thought to encourage bonding between mothers and their babies may foster social behavior in some adults with autism, French researchers said on Monday.
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true
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Science News
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They found patients who inhaled the hormone oxytocin paid more attention to expressions when looking at pictures of faces and were more likely to understand social cues in a game simulation, the researchers said in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Angela Sirigu of the Center of Cognitive Neuroscience in Lyon, who led the study, said the hormone has a therapeutic potential in adults as well as in children with autism. “For instance, if oxytocin is administered early when the diagnosis is made, we can perhaps change very early the impaired social development of autistic patients,” Sirigu said in an email. Sirigu said the study focused on oxytocin because it was known to help breast-feeding mothers bond with their infants and because earlier research has shown that some children with autism have low levels of the hormone. People with Asperger’s syndrome and other autism spectrum disorders often have problems with social interaction. Sirigu said oxytocin could help autism patients who have normal intellectual functions and fairly good language abilities because it improves eye contact. “Eye contact can be considered the first step of social approach,” Sirigu said. But people with autism often avoid looking at others. “In our study we show that oxytocin enhances eye contact because patients spent more time looking at the eyes,” she said. She said the hormone also improves the ability of people with autism to understand how other people respond to them, and they can learn the appropriate response to others’ behavior. In their study, Sirigu and colleagues had 13 people with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders inhale oxytocin before taking part in two experiments. The participants, 11 men and two women, had no medication two weeks before the study, which included a control group of an equal number of healthy men and women. The researchers watched the patients’ responses during a virtual ball tossing game to measure behavioral changes. In a separate experiment, Sirigu’s team measured how patients responded to facial expression when shown pictures of human faces.
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2856
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Brain injuries like Schumacher's can destroy lives: study.
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People with severe head injuries like the one that left Michael Schumacher in critical condition have permanently altered brains that make the victims more likely to become mentally ill and die prematurely, scientists said on Wednesday.
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true
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Health News
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Brain experts said most health services fail to make the link between traumatic brain injury (TBI) and long-term mental consequences, meaning patients can fall through the net into depression, behavioral problems and crime. While Schumacher, a wealthy and famous former motor-racing driver well supported by family, friends and doctors, is in a far better position that most with TBI, he will nevertheless still have a changed brain and will need to readjust and cope. “If Schumacher survives he will not be Schumacher. He will be (Mr.) Bloggs. And his rehabilitation will only be effective if he comes to terms with being Bloggs - and fulfils what Bloggs can do,” said Richard Greenwood, a consultant neurologist at London’s Homerton Hospital and at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery. “That’s a very, very difficult process to take people through - and many people don’t achieve it.” Greenwood was speaking at a briefing for reporters on the results of a study into the long-term effects of traumatic brain injuries caused by blows to the head. The study, published on Wednesday in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, found that survivors of TBIs are three times more likely to die prematurely than the general population, often from suicide or fatal accidents. Seena Fazel of Oxford University’s Department of Psychiatry, who led the study, said the exact reasons for the increased risk of premature death - which in this study was defined as dying before the age of 56 - are not clear. But he said they may be linked to damage to parts of the brain responsible for judgment, decision-making and risk-taking. TBI survivors are three times more likely to die from fatal injuries that may be a due to impaired judgment or reactions. They are also at increased risk of developing psychiatric illnesses such as depression and anxiety, which can lead to patients having difficulties dealing with new situations and organizing their lives. A TBI is a blow to the head that leads to a skull fracture, internal bleeding, loss of consciousness for longer than an hour or a combination of these symptoms. Some 1.7 million people in the United States and one million people in Europe are hospitalized after TBIs each year. Experts say typical causes include road accidents, falls and sports injuries, and Schumacher’s skiing injury - sustained when he slammed his head on a rock while skiing off-piste in the French Alps - is a an example of this type of injury. Fazel said current guidelines do not recommend assessments of mental health or suicide risk in TBI patients, but focus instead on short-term survival. “Looking at these findings, it may make more sense to treat some TBI patients as suffering from a chronic problem requiring longer-term management just like epilepsy or diabetes,” he said. “TBI survivors should be monitored carefully for signs of depression, substance abuse and other psychiatric disorders, which are all treatable conditions.” For their Study, Fazel and fellow researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm examined Swedish medical records going back 41 years covering 218,300 TBI survivors, 150,513 siblings of TBI survivors and more than two million controls matched by sex and age from the general population. “We found that people who survive six months after TBI remain three times more likely to die prematurely than the control population and 2.6 times more likely to die than unaffected siblings,” Fazel said. “Looking at siblings who did not suffer TBIs allows us to control for genetic factors and early upbringing, so it is striking to see that the effect remains strong even after controlling for these.”
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14387
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Will (HB2) threaten federal funding for public schools under Title IX? No, according to a federal court which has looked at a similar issue.
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Gov. Pat McCrory is correct that a federal judge said schools shouldn’t lose Title IX funding for not allowing transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with. But McCrory failed to mention that the case is still pending on appeal, and that there are questions about the judge’s impartiality. Furthermore, the threat of losing Title IX funds was real enough to convince authorities in Illinois and California to comply. In the end, it largely comes down to politics. The two judges who have ruled against transgender students are Republican political appointees. The federal departments of education and justice, which typically support transgender students, are run by Democratic political appointees. McCrory is right that a judge said there shouldn’t be a threat to Title IX funding in these types of situations. But that’s not to say there’s no threat at all – the official stance of the Obama administration, after all, has been enough of a threat to scare Illinois and California into making changes. Those are important pieces of context that are nowhere to be found in McCrory’s statement.
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mixture
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Education, Gays and Lesbians, Government Regulation, Sexuality, North Carolina, Pat McCrory,
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"One of the biggest questions in the ongoing debate over North Carolina’s new statewide law invalidating local LGBT protections is the status of $4.5 billion in federal education funding via Title IX. Title IX is a 1972 law that requires educational institutions to treat men and women equally. It has been used to punish schools for not taking sexual assault seriously, or for not offering women chances to play sports. The federal government has begun arguing in recent years that Title IX protections extend to transgender students, and a 2014 Department of Education memo formalized that position. ""All students, including transgender students and students who do not conform to sex stereotypes, are protected from sex-based discrimination under Title IX,"" the memo reads. ""Under Title IX, a recipient generally must treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity in all aspects of the planning, implementation, enrollment, operation, and evaluation of single-sex classes."" Transgender people are those who don’t identify with the gender on their birth certificate. Even if they have one gender’s anatomy, they live life as the other gender and consider themselves to truly be that gender. One widely cited study in 2011 estimated that 0.3 percent of adults are transgender. North Carolina’s new law specifically prohibits schools from allowing transgender students to use bathrooms consistent with their gender identity. The law says schools may only permit a student to use the restrooms, locker rooms or other such facilities of the gender listed on the student’s birth certificate. The ACLU and some Democratic legislators say that contradiction between the state law and the federal guidance could cost billions. North Carolina is scheduled to receive an estimated $4.58 billion from the federal government in 2016 for education funding, which could be at risk with a Title IX violation. Those funds are largely for Pell Grants and student loans but also go toward K-12 programs for homeless students, rural schools, adult literacy and more. Republicans thoroughly disagree that the funding is at risk, and it was one of 18 points Gov. Pat McCrory made in a press release over Easter weekend which he dubbed ""Facts vs. Myths."" ""Will this bill threaten federal funding for public schools under Title IX?"" McCrory asked, only to then answer: ""No, according to a federal court which has looked at a similar issue."" McCrory has a point, but he leaves out a lot of detail. In eastern Virginia, a federal judge did rule that a school district wasn’t violating Title IX by refusing to let a transgender teen, who was born a female but identifies as male, use the boys bathroom. In that lawsuit, the student was represented by the ACLU and had statements of support from the U.S. Department of Justice and Department of Education. The Virginia case McCrory knows the case well; he was one of two governors (along with Maine Republican Gov. Paul LePage) who submitted briefs on behalf of the school district in that case. A few other states weighed in with briefs from their attorneys general, but North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper – and McCrory’s Democratic opponent in November – declined to follow suit. The Virginia school district restricted students to bathrooms based on their ""biological gender,"" which is similar to the ""biological sex"" wording used in North Carolina now. And in Virginia, the judge said that restriction is OK. So McCrory is right on that much. But he fails to mention that the case is currently under consideration by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, the federal appeals court which also covers North Carolina. The ACLU has further asked that the 85-year-old judge in question be removed from the case, alleging he didn’t follow proper procedure and made statements indicating he doesn’t have a firm grasp of science. ""Regardless of the outcome of this case, the public in general, and transgender people in particular, should have confidence the proceedings are not based on mistaken assumptions that continue to stigmatize transgender people, even if unintentionally,"" the ACLU wrote in asking the appeals court to remove the judge, Robert G. Doumar. The appeal states the judge refused expert witness testimony, allowed hearsay evidence on behalf of the school district but not on behalf of the student, refused testimony from the student, referred to the student as having a ""mental disorder"" – even after being informed that ""The American Psychiatric Association has made clear that Gender Dysphoria should not be described as a ‘disorder’"" – and went off on a tangent about federal policies concerning drug use, immigration and other unrelated issues. The appeals court heard the appeal in January but has not yet announced its decision. Other cases Last year a judge in Pennsylvania ruled against a transgender University of Pittsburgh student, who was expelled and criminally charged after repeatedly ignoring a bathroom ban. In that case, unlike in the Virginia case happening around the same time, the federal government did not weigh in. And then there’s the matter of other cases in which schools have settled with the federal government rather than going to court, like in the Virginia case. Schools in Illinois and California changed their policies after being threatened with the loss of funding by the federal government via Title IX. In Illinois, a transgender student who was born a male was allowed to change in the girls locker room, but behind a curtain. Previously the student had been using private, single-occupancy rooms to change – a provision that North Carolina’s law does allow for – but the federal authorities told Illinois officials that wasn’t good enough. In California, a school district agreed to let transgender students use the facilities of the gender they identify as, to amend its anti-discrimination policies to include ""gender identity,"" to train administrators on how to accommodate transgender students and to give students ""age-appropriate"" lessons to discourage bullying and sexual harassment of transgender people. Our ruling Gov. Pat McCrory is correct that a federal judge said schools shouldn’t lose Title IX funding for not allowing transgender students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with. But McCrory failed to mention that the case is still pending on appeal, and that there are questions about the judge’s impartiality. Furthermore, the threat of losing Title IX funds was real enough to convince authorities in Illinois and California to comply. In the end, it largely comes down to politics. The two judges who have ruled against transgender students are Republican political appointees. The federal departments of education and justice, which typically support transgender students, are run by Democratic political appointees. McCrory is right that a judge said there shouldn’t be a threat to Title IX funding in these types of situations. But that’s not to say there’s no threat at all – the official stance of the Obama administration, after all, has been enough of a threat to scare Illinois and California into making changes. Those are important pieces of context that are nowhere to be found in McCrory’s statement."
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10998
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New Anti-Wrinkle Treatment
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This report once again puts a spotlight on a leading health scourge: wrinkles. At least, it seems that wrinkles rank above many other health issues based on how much time network morning shows devote to the subject. This time the hook is FDA approval of broader use of an injectable product that stimulates collagen production in the face in order to smooth out wrinkles. The substance had been approved for use in people who had lost facial fat due to HIV. The taped report and in-studio interview did include a number of strong caveats about problems experienced by some patients and the wisdom of waiting until there is broader experience with the product. However, the only dermatologist featured did work funded by the product’s manufacturer and the only patients in the piece gave glowing reviews. Viewers neither heard about special conditions the FDA placed on the manufacturer that requiring larger and longer clinical trials and adverse effect monitoring nor did they get to see or hear from anyone who needed surgical treatment to correct problems caused by the what the field reporter called “latest breakthrough that doesn’t freeze time, it helps you grow some of it back.” If, indeed, the segment’s advice was “I think you should wait a few years if you’re nervous about it” – then one wonders why this was worth several minutes of network TV air time.
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mixture
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"The story says treatments cost about $800 and that three sessions are typically needed, and that follow-up injections are needed after about three years. Although the story notes that the benefits are temporary the story said the effects last three years (and included only patients who claimed they still felt some benefit after five years), the manufacturer’s web site says the benefits of treatment last only two years. No data were given on what results were seen in what percentage of patients. In addition to talking about potential harms, the story could have included at least one patient who got a less-than-satisfactory result. The report noted that some people who got Sculptra injections needed surgery to remove nodules. The studio interview also noted that people prone to keloids should not use the product. The story also pointed out that inflammation is a common side effect. The in-studio interview points out that a number of FDA-approved products have been removed from the market after wider use revealed harms that were under-appreciated in the pre-approval clinical trials… and that cautious people may want to wait. But the taped report refers to “years of clinical trials” and years of experience in Europe and in the U.S. (in people with HIV), without ever revealing any of the evidence from all of these years of experience. And it didn’t point out that the trials used to win FDA approval for wider use involved just a few dozen participants. Also, neither the taped report nor the studio segment mentioned that the FDA is requiring the maker of Sculptra to undertake a 5-year post-approval trial involving 863 patients in order to track the occurrence of nodules and inflammation. This one is a close call. The in-studio interview points out that potential users should consider just how important it is to them to get rid of wrinkles. Wrinkles are not a disease. But comments about putting back “a few of those passing years” (as though wrinkle treatment actually has an effect on aging) send a message that wrinkles are something that often deserves medical intervention. And the lead-in describes the ""fight to look younger."" A fight? The taped report featured only a researcher who did studies for the product manufacturer. While the physician interviewed in-studio may not have a financial relationship with the manufacturer (there was no mention of any ties), her background appears to be in gastroenterology, not dermatology; so the presentation failed to include a qualified independent expert to balance the rosy view presented by the expert whose work was funded by the manufacturer. The in-studio interview emphasized that by staying out of the sun and avoiding smoking, people can delay wrinkles. The story also briefly mentioned collagen injections and Botox, though only the drawbacks of those alternative products were discussed. The story notes that Sculptra was recently approved for general use, several years after being approved for use in people with HIV who had lost facial fat. While the taped report and in-studio interview noted that people should be treated only by properly trained and experienced providers, viewers were not told how to find out if a provider has the proper qualifications. The story notes that this product has been available for several years in Europe and also for people in the US who have facial fat loss due to HIV… so that the news is FDA approval for general cosmetic use. The story did not appear to rely solely only on a news release."
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4341
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2 tuberculosis cases reported at Georgia elementary schools.
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Officials say tuberculosis cases have been reported at two elementary schools in Georgia.
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true
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Health, Rome, Georgia, Tuberculosis
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The Floyd County School District tells news outlets that one case of TB was confirmed at Model Elementary, and another at Johnson Elementary. Both schools in Rome remain open and are being cleaned. District Superintendent Jeff Wilson says two letters will be sent to students’ families with details and action-plans, one to those who may have had contact with people infected and another to those at less risk. A statement on the district’s website says the risk is low of contracting the infectious bacterial disease that mainly affects the lungs. Dr. Unini Odama is director of the Northwest District of state the Public Health Department. She says officials are confident that actions being taken are protecting people.
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4911
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Judge rejects Trump plan for road in Alaska wildlife refuge.
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The Trump administration violated federal law with a proposed road through a national wildlife refuge in Alaska, a federal judge ruled Friday, saying the project would have reversed previous policy without explanation.
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true
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Wildlife, Alaska, Environment, Ryan Zinke, Courts, U.S. News
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U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason rejected an Interior Department land exchange that would have led to a road through Izembek National Wildlife Refuge, an internationally recognized habitat for migrating waterfowl. Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke signed a land exchange agreement for the road more than a year ago. Nine environmental groups sued a week later. In her written decision, Gleason said Zinke was required to acknowledge that the road was a reversal of previous Interior Department policy and to provide an explanation. “An agency may not simply discard prior factual findings without a reasoned explanation,” Gleason wrote, quoting a previous case. “But that is not what happened here.” The decision is the latest development in a long dispute over access in Izembek. Congress created the 486-square-mile (1258-sq. kilometer) refuge in 1980. Residents say they were not properly consulted before their access to the area was limited. The road would split an isthmus as narrow as 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) on the southern border of Izembek Lagoon. It holds one of the world’s largest beds of eelgrass, a rich food source for Pacific brant geese, endangered Steller’s eider sea ducks and other migratory birds. The isthmus separates King Cove, a fishing community of about 900 people sandwiched between ocean and mountains, and an all-weather airport at Cold Bay. Zinke, at the urging of Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski and other Alaska officials, portrayed the road as a people-versus-wildlife issue. Strong winds at King Cove frequently prompt flight cancellations. Residents for decades have sought a road to Cold Bay, the site of an airport for emergency flights for patients. The facility was built during World War II and features one of Alaska’s longest runways. Congress in 1997 addressed the King Cove transportation issue with a $37.5 million appropriation for water access to Cold Bay that included a $9 million hovercraft. The Aleutians East Borough, the regional governing body, took the vessel out of service after deciding it was too expensive and unreliable. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in 2013 concluded that a road through the isthmus could cause irrevocable damage to the watershed. Former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell agreed with a Fish and Wildlife analysis that found a land exchange could not compensate for the special qualities of existing wildlife refuge lands. Zinke signed a land exchange swapping up to 0.8 square miles (2 square kilometers) refuge land for land of equal value offered by King Cove Native Corp. He said at a signing ceremony that the 12-mile (19-kilometer) section of the road through the refuge would cause no harm to wildlife but would make a difference to children or mothers who need to get to a hospital. He said the road was a priority for President Donald Trump. Environmental groups criticized the agreement, saying it was hatched in secret and the road would inevitably be opened to commercial usage, severely damaging the refuge. They hailed Gleason’s decision Friday. “The agency’s attempt to skirt the law to benefit private or commercial interests disregards the intention of Congress and the purpose of the Refuge System itself,” said Katie Strong, senior staff attorney with Trustees for Alaska, which represented the environmental groups in the lawsuit. Della Trumble, spokeswoman for King Cove Corp., made up of members of two federally recognized Aleut tribes, called the ruling disappointing. “The King Cove Group will never give up our fight for this land exchange,” she said in a statement. “It is so crucial for safeguarding the lives of our families. This access is truly a matter of life and death for us.”
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11248
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Acupuncture Eases Depression in Pregnancy
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This story reports on a small, randomized trial evaluating acupuncture for the treatment of depression in pregnant women. This story has numerous flaws, the biggest of which was relying heavily on the press release. By relying on a news release for quotes, this story missed some of the caveats and words of caution from researchers and independent experts that we saw in other stories.
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false
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There was no discussion regarding the cost of acupuncture, a particularly important omission since acupuncture is not covered by all insurance companies. The story tells the us that acupuncture significantly improved symptoms compared to the other treatment groups, but then it states that there was no difference in remission rates. A discussion on what this mixed outcome means would have been useful. While acupuncture is generally safe, the story should have mentioned that 21 women in the study reported transient pain at the site of needle insertion and 1 woman experienced bleeding. The story did a nice job describing the study methods, pointing out that the patients were randomly assigned to a treatment group and that the people measuring their outcome were not aware which treatment the patients were receiving. These are all signs of a rigorous study design, but the story does not tell the reader why these methods are so important. The story also should have noted that a study with 150 participants is still relatively small. This story indicates that 14% of pregnant women may suffer from depression; however, the writer might have also noted that 3-5% of pregnant women have actually been diagnosed. No independent experts were interviewed for this story.
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20530
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In 2010 about 75 percent of child abuse and neglect reports in Oregon were made by those required to report by law.
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Do most child abuse reports come from people required to report?
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true
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Oregon, Children, Laurie Monnes Anderson,
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"While the 2012 Legislature has been hung up on some issues, lawmakers approved a law that expanded the sorts of professionals required to report child abuse and neglect. The legislation came in response to the recent scandal at Penn State University. There, former assistant Coach Jerry Sandusky was charged with more than 40 counts of child sex abuse involving multiple boys over a 15-year period. Longtime coach Joe Paterno, who had supervised him, was fired. Before the bill passed, a long list of professionals were required to report abuse, but employees of higher education institutions and organized youth activities were not. During the Senate debate on the legislation, Sen. Laurie Monnes Anderson, a Gresham Democrat, spoke briefly in favor of the mandatory reporter expansion. ""It really will help all adults recognize their responsibility to protect our kids,"" she told her colleagues. ""In 2010, about 75 percent of child abuse and neglect reports in Oregon were made by those required to report by law. It is clear, very clear, that mandatory reporting is a very important tool to keep our kids safe."" We thought a quick check on her 75 percent figure would be interesting. As always, we started with the speaker and gave Monnes Anderson’s office a call. Molly Woon, a spokeswoman for the Senate Democrats, pointed us to the 2010 Child Welfare Data Book published by the Oregon Department of Human Services. According to the report, which was released last March, 74.4 percent of the abuse and neglect cases were reported by school and medical officials, police, clergy, child-care providers, court and mental health personnel and therapists -- all of whom are required to report. The other 25 percent of reports came from the abusers themselves, parents or, according to department spokesman Gene Evans, victims, relatives, friends, neighbors, ex-live-ins, ex-spouses and anonymous reporters. The figures make this claim an easy one to rule on. Monnes Anderson said 75 percent of the abuse and neglect reports the state collected in 2010 came from mandatory reporters. The Department of Human Services backs her up."
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33701
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The cast of M*A*S*H did not learn of Col. Blake's death until they were actually filming the scene in which it was announced.
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Did the cast of 'M*A*S*H' not learn of the death of Col. Henry Blake until they were actually filming the scene in which it was announced?
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false
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Entertainment, Television
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Death was one of the many subjects that was rarely allowed to intrude into television series of the 1950s and 60s. Although nowadays characters who are “written out” of TV shows often shuffle off this mortal coil from disease, accident, or homicide (fates that claimed several regular characters on the hospital drama ER alone), that phenomenon was unheard of in television’s first few decades. Part of the reason why producers of television series in the 1950s and 60s were loath to kill off their characters was simply good business sense: If a character had to be dropped because the actor who portrayed him was no longer available (due to illness, a contract dispute, or the actor’s desire to leave television for film roles or other ventures), finding a way to write out the character without ending his life allowed for a smooth reintroduction should the actor later return to the fold. (The producers of Dallas famously faced a knotty problem when they killed off Bobby Ewing after actor Patrick Duffy quit the series, then had to find a way to resurrect the character when Duffy rejoined the cast a year later.) But a major reason why characters didn’t die was simply because death was considered too serious a subject for the primarily light-hearted TV fare of the era. Bit players or guest stars might die, but series regulars were typically written out by having them go somewhere that took them away from a program’s setting: they moved away to take jobs in other cities, they went off to college, they got married and left home, or they took extended trips abroad. This principle generally held true even when there was no chance an actor (and hence his character) would ever return. For example, when actor William Frawley fell seriously ill during the fifth season (1964-65) of My Three Sons and subsequently died, his Bub O’Casey character was said to have gone on a trip to Ireland, and for the remainder of the series his place was filled by actor William Demarest playing the role of Bub’s brother, Charley. When actor McLean Stevenson announced in 1975 that he would be leaving the Korean War-based sitcom M*A*S*H at the end of the current season, the series’ producers initially took what looked like a conventional approach to writing out his Col. Henry Blake character: At the beginning of the third season’s final episode (“Abyssinia, Henry”), Col. Blake learned he had acquired enough points to be discharged and return stateside, and the rest of the episode was occupied with his preparing to go home and the other characters’ taking their tearful leave of him. But an unexpected twist of one short final scene was tacked onto the end of the episode, in which a choked-up Radar (portrayed by Gary Burghoff) intruded into a busy operating room to deliver the sad news that Col. Blake’s homeward-bound plane had been shot down (with no survivors): So shocking to the viewing audience was the surprise of a familiar character’s dying tragically and unexpectedly that a legend grew out of it — one which held that the rest of the M*A*S*H cast themselves did not know what fate was going to befall the Col. Blake character until they were actually filming the scene in which it was announced. For example, the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) entry for the “Abyssinia, Henry” states that: In the third season finale “Abyssinia, Henry”, Henry Blake is sent home, to coincide with McLean Stevenson’s departure from the show. In a surprise twist at the end of the episode, the characters learn that Blake’s plane was shot down en route to Japan, and everyone aboard died. This was kept a surprise from the cast (with one exception, Alan Alda) until the moment when Gary Burghoff’s character ran into the operating room to announce the news. The producers’ intent was to capture the cast’s genuine shock and surprise, and to remind the audience that war takes friend and foe alike. Although the other M*A*S*H actors did not know while they were filming the rest of “Abyssinia, Henry” that it would ultimately end with Col. Blake’s death, they did know what was going to happen before they undertook the episode’s final scene. As actor Jamie Farr (who played Corporal Klinger) relates in The Complete Book of M*A*S*H, writer/director Larry Gelbart showed the cast the script’s final page and solicited their comments before they assembled to shoot that memorable last scene: [T]he last episode of the third year … when we read the [script] page and found out that Henry died, we were all stunned, and Larry [Gelbart] asked for comments and a lot of people had their say. But I didn’t say anything because I didn’t think they would really care what I had to say. I happened to agree with doing it, but I didn’t say a word. The whole thing about Henry’s death was very hush-hush. I had already finished my scenes and was at home waiting for a call about the [end of season] wrap party. Loretta [Swit] was finished also. Then I got a call from the studio asking me to come in for an added scene, and they said Loretta was coming, too. I asked if I needed the pages ahead of time — if I had to study any lines — and they said no, not to worry, it was a quick scene in the OR and just to come on in. I said fine. I came down and they called all the regulars into a corner and Larry had a big manila envelope and he pulled out these [script] pages. We couldn’t believe what we had read. We blocked it without saying a word so the crew wouldn’t know anything until we actually did it. Larry Gelbart confirmed that account in his own book, Laughing Matters: Although the cast (with the exception of Alan Alda) was in the dark about the episode’s resolution until the last minute, it was not “kept a surprise from the cast until the moment when Gary Burghoff’s character ran into the operating room to announce the news”: [T]here was no precedent for the last episode of our third season, in which the character of Colonel Henry Blake died. Naturally, CBS did not want us to “kill” the Henry Blake character, played by McLean Stevenson. They were most upset about that, and so was sentimental, dear old Twentieth Century-Fox. Killing a character in a half-hour show had never been done before. That was all the reason [producer] Gene [Reynolds] and I needed to know we would have to do it. We resolved that instead of doing an episode in which yet another actor leaves yet another series, we would try to have Mac/Henry’s departure make a point, one that was consistent with the series’s attitude regarding the wastefulness of war; we would have that character die as a result of the conflict. After three years of showing faceless bit players and extras portraying dying or dead servicemen, here was an opportunity to have a character die that our audience knew and loved, one whose death would mean something to them. Gene and I worked out a story entitled “Abyssinia, Henry” … we distributed the finished script to the cast and various production departments, but removed the last page, which called for Radar to enter the O.R. and read a Defense Department communiqué that informs everyone that Henry Blake, who had been discharged and was flying back to his family in the States, had gone down in the Sea of Japan. “There weren’t no survivors,” he concludes. I kept that one last page under wraps, locking it in my desk drawer. The only cast member let in on the secret was Alan Alda, by then clearly the star of the series. We planned the production schedule for this episode so that the O.R. scene would be the last one shot. There were, in fact, two O.R. sequences in that show: one at the top of the show, in which Henry is informed by Radar that he, Henry, is going home, that he has received his discharge orders, whereupon everyone in the room breaks into raucous song; the second, of course, was the final scene in which Radar enters to read the communiqué announcing Henry’s death. After we shot the first scene, the one in which Henry gets the good news, the cast and crew, understandably, began to wrap, pulling the plug on the episode and for that matter, the whole season. There were a great many visitors on the set: spectators, press, family, friends, easily a couple of hundred people. We asked everyone to wait a few minutes before joining us in the traditional wrap party, that we had one more piece of business to finish. I had couple of words privately with Billy Jurgensen, our cinematographer, told him what was up, and asked him to position his camera for the one additional scene. I did not want to rehearse it; we would shoot it only once. Then, Gene and I took the cast aside and I opened a manila envelope that contained the one-page last scene, telling them I had something I wanted to show them. “I don’t want to see it!” Gary Burghoff exploded. “I know you! You’ve got pictures of dead babies in there!” Assuring him I didn’t, I gave each [actor] a copy of the scene to read to themselves. Each had a different reaction. “F**king brilliant,” said Larry Linville. “You son of a bitch,” Gary said to McLean. “You’ll probably get an Emmy out of this!” Mac, who had stayed to watch the filming of what he knew was his last M*A*S*H, was speechless. But that doesn’t begin to say it. We returned to the set. For once I said “Action” instead of “Cut.” We began to shoot the scene. Gary was unbelievably touching as he entered the busy O.R. and read the message to all the doctors and nurses. Extras in the scene, performers who had been with series since day one, reacted with a kind of heartfelt sincerity that was stunning — their performance was based on their real surprise and lingering shock, their awareness of how much Mac meant to them. The crew, hearing of Henry’s death for the first time as the cameras were rolling, stuck to their chores; they did all one could ask of them. Unhappily, there was some sort of technical glitch. Either the boom mike or a light or whatever could go wrong did, and we had to shoot it again. I was heartsick. Gary would never be able to do a second take as beautiful as he did the first. I still knew nothing about directing. He was better. And on the second go, a totally unexpected thing happened. After Gary finished reading his message, there was a hushed silence on the set as B.J.’s camera panned the stricken faces of the cast, and then someone off-camera accidentally let a surgical instrument drop to the floor. It was perfect, that clattering, hollow sound, filling a palpable void in a way that no words could. I could not have planned it better; I wish I had — whenever I happen to hear it again, I marvel at how perfectly it fit. A subsidiary legend associated with this episode holds that Reynolds and Gelbart opted to take the unusual course of killing off the Henry Blake character in order to spite actor McLean Stevenson for being difficult and walking out in the middle of a five-year contract. Larry Gelbart also disclaimed that legend: [H]aving Henry die was not a show-business decision; we were not punishing an actor for leaving the series. We were trying to make his departure one that would be apt, as well as memorable.
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6397
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Air pollution concentrations to reach high in seacoast towns.
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New Hampshire’s Department of Environmental Services is expecting air pollution concentrations to reach unhealthy levels in Portsmouth and other seacoast communities.
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true
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New Hampshire, Portsmouth, Air pollution, Environment, Smog, Air quality, Pollution
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The outlook for Tuesday is for unhealthy concentrations of ground-level ozone, the main component of smog. The unhealthy air quality comes from the persistence of high temperatures under sunny skies, which can combine with local emissions. The department is advising area residents to take precautions to protect their health by limiting prolonged outdoor exertion. Sensitive individuals include children and older adults; anyone with lung disease such as asthma, emphysema, and bronchitis; and people who are active outdoors. The department says even healthy people may experience mild health effects Tuesday and should consider limiting strenuous or prolonged outdoor activities. The air is expected to be cleaner on Wednesday, with lower temperatures and cloudier skies.
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36856
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Hillary Clinton’s campaign used a body double after Clinton suffered a medical episode at a 9/11 ceremony in New York.
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Hillary Clinton Has a Body Double
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unproven
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Politics
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Rumors that Hillary Clinton has a body double are nothing but speculation at this point. The story unfolded when bystander video emerged of Clinton nearly fainting and stumbling from a curb before her aids loaded her into a van after a 9/11 event in New York. The situation played into conspiracy theories that Clinton has been hiding a major medical condition, most likely Parkinson’s disease. Clinton’s doctor, Lisa Bardack, released a statement saying that Clinton had been experiencing a cough related to allergies and that she had been diagnosed with pneumonia during a follow up visit on Friday: She was put on antibiotics, and was advised to rest and modify her schedule. While at (Sunday’s) event, she became overheated and dehydrated. I have just examined her and she is now re-hydrated and recovering nicely. After her stumble outside the 9/11 event, Clinton was reportedly taken to Chelsea Clinton’s NYC apartment to rest. Questions about a Clinton body double emerged after she appeared publicly, saying she was “feeling great” and, “It’s a beautiful day in New York.” Side-by-side pictures that were taken of Clinton before and after she emerged from the apartment argued that her nose looked suspiciously different: Other side-by-side pictures were used to argue that her cheek, teeth, smile and ears were different before and after she emerged from Chelsea’s apartment: Another side-by-side picture was used to argue that Clinton’s index finger was longer than her ring finger in an earlier picture — but that wasn’t the case when Clinton emerged from Chelsea’s apartment: In the end, it’s impossible to use these side-by-side pictures to definitively prove that a Clinton body double was used. Different lighting, different angles and different cameras create pictures that look very different.
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41736
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“We are, by the way, the number one producer of energy in the world because of what we’ve done right now.
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In launching his reelection campaign, President Donald Trump said, “Nobody’s done what we have done in two and a half years.” However, we found his speech was filled with familiar false, misleading and exaggerated statements about his record on jobs, military spending, veterans, energy and more.
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mixture
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border security, Clinton emails, defense spending, energy, health care, jobs, manufacturing, oil and gas, opioids, Russia investigation, Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, veterans,
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At a rally in Orlando on June 18, President Donald Trump officially launched his reelection campaign. Trump boasted that under his leadership, the country is “thriving, prospering and booming,” and he asked voters for four more years to “keep America great.”“Nobody’s done what we have done in two and a half years,” he said. However, we found his speech was filled with many familiar false, misleading and exaggerated statements about his record on jobs, military spending, veterans, energy, trade and more.During his speech, Trump twice took credit for the state of America’s energy production, citing milestones that were achieved years ago or long expected.“We are, by the way, the number one producer of energy in the world because of what we’ve done right now,” the president said, early on in his remarks. About a half hour later, Trump returned to the theme, stating, “We’ve ended the last administration’s cruel and heartless war on American energy. What they were doing to our energy should never be forgotten. The United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world.”As we’ve explained before, citing data from the Energy Information Administration, the United States is the top producer of natural gas. But that’s a title the nation has held since 2009. The U.S. also produces the most petroleum — and has done so since 2013.More recently, this past summer, the U.S. did take over as the leading producer of crude oil. Production of crude oil, however, had been ramping up for many years, and the milestone was expected.According to the most recent EIA data, the United States is not the largest overall producer of energy. That award goes to China, which in 2016 produced 107 quadrillion Btus of total primary energy, a term that includes fossil fuels as well as nuclear and renewable sources.In 2016, the U.S. was second worldwide, with 84 quadrillion Btus. Since then, the U.S. has increased its energy production to 95 quadrillion Btus in 2018. The agency doesn’t have more recent data for China, but U.S. production is still below China’s 2016 level.Trump repeated his misleading claim that spending on defense is at a record high.Trump: After past leaders slashed military budgets, we are rebuilding the U.S. armed forces with $700 billion last year and $716 billion this year, far more than ever before.Trump got the dollar amounts right. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, a two-year budget agreement that Trump signed into law on Feb. 9, 2018, set the budget authority for national defense at $700 billion in fiscal year 2018 and $716 billion in fiscal 2019.Neither figure is “far more than ever before” in inflation-adjusted dollars.When we reviewed this claim last year, Jacob Cohn, a research fellow at the nonpartisan Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, calculated the real, or inflation-adjusted, value of national defense outlays — actual spending in a fiscal year — dating to 1940, which covers World War II spending. Cohn adjusted past national defense spending (table 3.1) based on the Office of Management and Budget’s deflators (table 10.1) from the president’s fiscal year 2019 budget. Cohn found that the most amount ever spent was in 1945, when the U.S. spent the equivalent of $950.1 billion (in 2019 dollars). More was also spent in 1943 and 1944, and in 2008 through 2012, which included the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.We also should note that the U.S. spent far more on defense as a percentage of the gross domestic product during World War II. The department’s fiscal 2019 budget request included a graph that shows defense spending as a percentage of GDP peaked in 1944 at 35.5 percent — far more than the 3.1 percent projected at the time for fiscal year 2019. WWII spending is an anomaly, but spending as a percentage of GDP has routinely been higher in the past than it is now.Trump again made a mostly meaningless claim about the number of U.S. workers, which he exaggerated in the process.Trump: And today, right now, as we speak, almost 160 million people are working, that’s more than ever before, it’s the first time ever, the number of people is almost 160 million and we’re going to be breaking that number soon.Total nonfarm employment was 151.1 million as of May, according to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics projections. That’s the most all-time, but still well short of 160 million.But Trump’s claim still doesn’t mean much considering that the U.S. also has a larger population than ever before. U.S. employment isn’t at an all-time high according to other (also imperfect) measures that factor in population.For those age 16 and over, the civilian labor force participation rate was 62.8 percent in May, and the employment-population ratio was 60.6 percent. Neither is the highest ever. BLS data also show the national unemployment rate — 3.6 percent in May, nearly a 50-year low — wasn’t the lowest in history.The president made a misleading comparison about manufacturing job growth before and after he took office.Trump: In the eight years before I took office, on average, we lost 2,000 manufacturing jobs a month. Since my inauguration, we’ve added 16,000 manufacturing jobs a month. That didn’t happen by accident.As of May, manufacturing employment had increased by an average of 17,000 jobs per month since Trump was inaugurated. Trump is also correct that the manufacturing sector suffered an average loss of 2,000 jobs per month under Obama. However, Trump is including 13 months at the beginning of Obama’s presidency that were during or immediately following the Great Recession that officially ended in June 2009. Manufacturing employment actually increased by an average of 11,000 jobs per month if tallied from when manufacturing job losses bottomed out in February 2010 until January 2017, when Obama left office.This graph shows the manufacturing sector almost steadily gaining jobs in that time and since. Although, as of May, there were still 907,000 fewer people employed in manufacturing compared with December 2007, when the economic recession began.Trump said that he is well on his way to keeping his signature campaign promise to build a wall along the southern border. But most of the construction so far has been replacement of existing fencing. None of it is the type of solid wall that he once talked about during the campaign, nor is it anything like the prototypes Trump commissioned early in his presidency.Trump: And we are building the wall. We’re going to have over 400 miles of wall built by the end of next year. It’s moving rapidly, moving very rapidly. … It’s beautiful, I changed the design, it’s stronger, bigger, better, and cheaper. Cheaper, a lot cheaper. You know sometimes when they don’t give you the money, you have to make it cheaper, not going to happen, but it’s going well.In a White House meeting on June 12, when Trump asked how “the wall” is coming along, Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan said that by the end of next year, DHS will have completed construction of “over 400 miles, in partnership with DOD.”But a couple caveats are in order. First, most of those 400 miles are replacement of existing wall. In May, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that since January 2017, when Trump took office, “approximately 205 miles of new and updated border barriers have been funded through the traditional appropriations process and via Treasury Forfeiture Funding, of which approximately 42 miles have been completed to date.”CBP has identified $6.1 billion over the last three fiscal years to fund 336 miles of new and replacement barriers, according to the agency’s fact sheet. Of those 336 miles, 86 miles are “new primary wall,” and another 24 miles are “new levee wall.” But the majority — 226 miles — are “updated” barriers (either primary, secondary or vehicle barriers). Before Trump took office, there was already about 650 miles of fencing of various types along the border.The type of steel bollard fencing now being erected is also a far different construction design than Trump once pursued. During the campaign, Trump talked about a solid wall of “precast planks.” And early in his presidency, Trump commissioned, and later toured, prototypes of solid-wall designs. However, Congress passed spending bills that specifically funded only fencing designs deployed as of May 2017, such as steel bollards, and thereby precluding any of the wall prototypes that Trump commissioned.Trump packed two pieces of misinformation into one claim when he said, “we have never taken in 10 cents [in tariffs] from China, we would lose $500 billion a year with China.” The president, as he frequently does, exaggerates the trade deficit he inherited with China — a deficit that has increased under his leadership — and he ignores the billions the U.S. has been collecting in tariffs for years.Trump: And remember this, and you know it as well as I do, we have never taken in 10 cents from China, we would lose $500 billion a year with China. We rebuilt China. They’ve done a great job, but they took us for suckers, and that includes Obama and Biden. We took — they took us for suckers. Five hundred billion, five hundred billion. Somebody said, “You mean five hundred million.” That’s a lot too, right? No, $500 billion, actually more than that, I don’t want to be too specific 507.The trade deficit with China has never been $500 billion. Trump has been exaggerating it for years. The trade deficit in goods and services with China was $308.9 billion in 2016, Obama’s final year in office, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The highest yearly deficit under Obama hit $333.5 billion in 2015. But the trade deficit with China has climbed higher under Trump, reaching $380.8 billion in 2018, the highest annual figure dating back to 1999, according to BEA.The total trade deficit in goods and services with all countries under Obama was $503 billion in 2016. That, too, has gone up under Trump, reaching $627.7 billion in 2018.As we also have written, it’s not true that the U.S. has “never taken in 10 cents [in tariffs] from China.” Setting aside that tariffs on Chinese goods fall on U.S. importers, and ultimately largely result in U.S. consumers paying higher prices, prior to Trump becoming president, the U.S. collected $122.6 billion in customs duties from 2007 to 2016, or $12.3 billion a year on average, according to the U.S. International Trade Commission DataWeb. Last year, the U.S. collected nearly $23 billion — an increase that reflects the higher tariffs imposed on China by the Trump administration. Trump falsely said that he and congressional Republicans enacted “the largest package of tax cuts and reforms in American history.” Earlier in his speech, he called it “the biggest tax cut in history.”Days before Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act into law in December 2017, the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation estimated that it would reduce tax revenues by $1.46 trillion over 10 years.The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said that an even more expensive plan Trump proposed before that one would have been only the eighth largest tax cut as a percentage of gross domestic product, and it would have been the fourth largest cut in inflation-adjusted dollars.The tax bill that Trump signed needed to cost roughly $6.8 trillion over 10 years to beat the 1981 tax cut under President Reagan, which was 2.9 percent of GDP, according to CRFB.Trump inherited a large number of federal judge vacancies, which he often wrongly describes as an (inept) gift from Obama. He did so again in his campaign kickoff speech, saying Obama “was very nice to us” and “didn’t fill the positions.” In fact, the high number of vacancies left for Trump was due to a Republican-controlled Senate blocking Obama’s late-term picks.Trump: I will soon have appointed my 145th judge. President Obama was very nice to us. He didn’t fill the positions. I get there the first day. “How many judges do I have to appoint?” They said, “Sir, 139.” Now it’s 145 and we’ve just finished number 107, already approved sitting on the bench, how about that?When Trump took office, in January 2017, there were 112 federal judicial vacancies. By the end of the year, that number had grown to 144. It was at 131 as of June 19. But the high number of vacancies left for Trump was not the result of complacency by Obama, but rather opposition to Obama’s judicial nominations from Senate Republicans who took over a majority during the last two years of Obama’s presidency. Experts told us Senate Republicans confirmed far fewer judicial nominees in Obama’s last two years than had been confirmed in the last two years of previous presidents. As a result, in early January 2017, just before Trump took office, there were 59 federal court nominees pending. That’s why Trump inherited so many vacancies.In referring to the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Trump claimed, “They appointed 18 very angry Democrats to try to take down our incredible movement.” As we’ve written before, among the 17 investigators, 13 had previously registered as Democrats, according to the Washington Post. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, meanwhile, was described as a registered Republican by the Post when then-President George W. Bush appointed him FBI director in 2001.Trump also used an unconfirmed figure for the cost of the investigation, putting it at “$40 million, probably a hell of a lot more than that.” So far, we know the investigation cost $25.2 million as of Sept. 30, according to the special counsel’s expenditure statements. That figure includes $12.9 million for Department of Justice “components that support” the special counsel’s office and were “expenditures the components would have incurred for the investigations irrespective of the existence of the SCO.”The investigation continued for nearly another six months, ending in late March. If the expenses then were similar to the expenses reported for the previous six months, total spending would be about $34 million. But we don’t yet have a publicly released final amount.It’s worth noting that the investigation also resulted in former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort agreeing to forfeit assets, including real estate properties and bank accounts worth an estimated $42 million to $46 million.Trump also went too far in claiming that his predecessor “did nothing” about Russian interference in the 2016 election.Trump: And in September, just before the election, the FBI told President Obama about possible Russian interference and he did nothing because he thought that Hillary Clinton, Crooked Hillary was going to win, that’s why he did nothing. He did nothing.As we’ve written before, some Democrats have said Obama should have done more. But it’s not the case that he “did nothing.” Obama spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin about the issue in September 2016, and his administration worked with state officials from mid-August that year until Election Day to prevent voting systems from being hacked. Also, on Oct. 7, 2016, the Department of Homeland Security and Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a public statement that said the U.S. intelligence community is “confident” that “Russia’s senior most officials” were behind the computer hacking of the Democratic Party email systems. The president repeated his false boast that “we passed VA choice” after politicians have been “trying to get that passed also for about 44 years.” Obama signed the bipartisan Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act, which created the Veterans Choice Program, on Aug. 7, 2014.The program enabled veterans facing long waits or travel distances to VA facilities to receive care from non-VA providers.Trump has continued the program, and in June 2018, he signed the bipartisan VA MISSION Act, which provided funding to keep the Veterans Choice program for one more year and then consolidate it and other programs into a new Veterans Community Care Program.Trump falsely claimed that the VA “couldn’t do anything” about employees who mistreated veterans, prior to him signing accountability legislation.Trump: And we also passed VA accountability so that when somebody does bad things or mistreats, our wonderful veterans, we couldn’t do anything with them. They were protected between civil service unions and all of the problems, it didn’t matter, you couldn’t do anything. Now, you can just say, “You’re fired, get out, get out, get out.”Trump signed the Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act in June 2017, and it does aim to make it easier to remove employees based on performance or misconduct. But it was already possible for the VA to fire employees for cause prior to that law. The VA fired more than 2,000 employees each year going back to 2006 for discipline and performance reasons before Trump took office, according to data the department reported to the Office of Personnel Management.The president touched on one of his favorite subjects: the cleanliness of the nation’s air and water.Trump: And something I want to make clear to the media, we have among the cleanest and sharpest, crystal-clean, you’ve heard me say it, I want crystal-clean air and water, anywhere on Earth. We are creating a future of American energy independence and yet our air and water are the cleanest they’ve ever been by far.We’ve written about these sorts of claims repeatedly, most recently when Piers Morgan interviewed Trump during the president’s visit to the U.K. Over the decades, the U.S. has generally made progress on reducing pollution. But there is little evidence to suggest that America’s water and air have substantially improved since Trump took office.On air quality, for example, the existing Environmental Protection Agency data is mixed at best. The average national air pollutant concentrations for sulfur dioxide and ozone got a bit better between 2016 and 2017, but particulate matter got worse. The number of days with unhealthy levels of air pollutants for sensitive groups also increased, from 701 days in 2016 to 729 days in 2017, and was well above 2014’s low of 599 days. With so few data points, and lacking 2018 data, which is not yet available, it’s difficult to make much of these trends. But they do not indicate that the air is the cleanest it’s “ever been by far.”In terms of rankings, the most recent Environmental Performance Index put the U.S. in 10th for air quality, and 29th for water and sanitation, although for drinking water, America tied for first with nine other nations. On wastewater treatment, which the EPI website explains can have impacts on human health and the ecosystem, the U.S. came in at number 39, behind most of the Western world.Trump repeated a well-worn claim from the 2016 campaign, claiming that his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, “decide[d] that they’re not going to give” 33,000 emails after receiving a subpoena and “deleted and acid washed” them, “which is very expensive.” Trump is referring to 31,830 emails that Clinton’s lawyers had deemed personal and, per State Department policy, did not have to be turned over to the government.The emails were deleted in 2015 by an employee of the server management company after Clinton received a subpoena related to a Republican investigation into the 2012 deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. There’s no evidence that Clinton knew that the emails were deleted after the subpoena was issued.Trump: If you want to know how the system is rigged, just compare how they came after us for three years with everything they have, versus the free pass they gave to Hillary and her aides after they set up an illegal server, destroyed evidence deleted and acid washed 33,000 e-mails, exposed classified information, and turned the State Department into a pay-for-play cash machine. … [T]he simplest thing, they get a subpoena from the United States Congress and they decide that they’re not going to give it so Lindsey Graham, they delete and they acid wash, which is very expensive. … Nobody does it, they acid wash those emails, never to be seen again, but we may find them somewhere deep in the State Department.As we’ve written before, in December 2014, Clinton gave the State Department 30,490 work-related emails. According to FBI notes of its investigation, a Clinton attorney in 2014 told Platte River Networks, the company managing Clinton’s private server, that Clinton had preserved her work-related emails and “decided she no longer needed access to any of her e-mails older than 60 days.” But a PRN employee didn’t delete the other 31,830 emails from the server until March 2015, after the Republican-led committee subpoena.The FBI said that PRN used BleachBit, a free software program, to delete the emails, not a “very expensive” process, as Trump claims.The president said “we may find [the deleted emails] somewhere deep in the State Department.” In fact, the FBI recovered about 14,900 emails that weren’t part of the work-related emails Clinton turned over. On Sept. 7, 2016, government officials said 30 of those emails were related to Benghazi, but only one had been previously undisclosed. Then-FBI Director James Comey said the FBI “found no evidence that any of the additional work-related emails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them in some way.”Trump touted some unsubstantiated statistics when discussing his administration’s progress on addressing the opioid epidemic.Trump, June 18: We are boldly confronting the opioid and drug addiction, and you know what’s happening, drug addiction is the [scourge] of our country and many other countries, and we have made so much progress, so much progress. Opioid down 17, 18, 19, and 21 percent in some places.It’s not clear which specific statistic Trump is highlighting — “opioid” could refer to the number of opioid prescriptions, abuse rates or opioid-related deaths, among a variety of measures. Nevertheless, similar figures were presented to Trump at an opioid meeting on June 12, so we suspect Trump is thinking of overdose deaths. Those numbers, however, were for all drug overdose deaths, not just those involving opioids.In that meeting, Assistant Secretary for Health Brett Giroir presented the latest Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures for overdose deaths from any drug, which compared the past year’s predicted tally of drug overdose deaths as of November 2018 to the same figure in November 2017.Giroir, June 12: Nationwide, overdose deaths have now fallen 4.4 percent over the past year. And let’s look at some specific states. In New Hampshire, where you first announced your initiative, drug overdose deaths are down 4.8 percent. Florida — 8.1 percent. West Virginia — 10.3 percent. Iowa — 18.2 percent. Pennsylvania — 18.5 percent. And Ohio — down 23.3 percent.Giroir’s numbers match those that appear on the CDC’s website, which includes a color-coded interactive map with the declines or increases marked for each state. But there is no equivalent map — nor a complete set of state data — for opioid-related overdose deaths.Only 16 states and two other jurisdictions provide opioid-specific information. Of these, nearly all show a decline in opioid-related deaths, but only two are as large as the president suggests. Oklahoma saw a 24 percent drop, while Washington, D.C., saw a 17.5 percent decrease. The next closest is the state of New York, which had an 11.2 percent decline.Nationally, when calculated the same way as the 4.4 percent decline in total overdose deaths, the drop in opioid-related deaths is 2.1 percent.It’s possible more locales have experienced significant drops in opioid-related overdose deaths, and that those figures might more closely match what Trump emphasized in his speech, but we are unaware of such data. We reached out to the White House to find the source for Trump’s numbers and did not receive a reply.Trump said that the Democrats who are co-sponsors of “Medicare for All” legislation in Congress “want to end Medicare as we know it and terminate the private health insurance of 180 million Americans who love their health insurance.” The bills call for expanding Medicare into a national health insurance program that covers everyone. So, the plan would “end Medicare as we know it,” but by expanding benefits — adding dental, hearing and vision coverage and instituting no premiums or copays, except for prescription drugs — and expanding coverage. Private insurance, which does cover nearly 180 million people now, would be eliminated under the plan introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders, with the exception of possibly limited private insurance to cover the few benefits that the new universal system wouldn’t, and those policyholders would instead have health coverage under a new national Medicare program.Trump vowed: “And we will always protect patients with preexisting conditions. Always, always.” But he, and Republicans in Congress, has not supported protections that go as far as those in the Affordable Care Act.Under the ACA, insurers can’t deny coverage or charge more based on health status. Republican health care bills debated in 2017 offered some preexisting condition provisions, but not such a blanket protection. For instance, as we’ve written before, the House Republican bill said states could get a waiver to allow insurers to charge higher premiums based on health status for one year for those who had a lapse in their insurance coverage.The Trump administration also has sided with the plaintiffs in a Texas lawsuit seeking to find the ACA unconstitutional. Last summer, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that if the lawsuit were successful, the provisions in the law prohibiting insurers from denying coverage or charging premiums based on health status would have to be eliminated. The administration now fully agrees with the plaintiffs that the entire law should be struck down.
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8941
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Extract from soursop leaves can prevent the symptoms of fibromyalgia
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This news release covers a study that tested whether a tropical plant extract improves fibromyalgia symptoms in rats. It says the study of soursop — also known as graviola or guanabana — was published, but doesn’t say where. We couldn’t find it. The release feeds rampant misinformation about this plant, falsely announcing that soursop extract is a remedy for chronic pain, anxiety and depression associated with fibromyalgia and can improve the lives of patients with that very common condition. Not until two-thirds of the way into the text do we learn those claims are based on a rat study. There’s no specific data about the findings, no caution about harms, and no mention that benefits found in animal studies seldom translate to humans. Nor does it mention the plant’s widespread availability — a situation we find worrisome given unproven medical claims that glut the internet. In sum, this one left us with a very bad taste in our mouths. Fibromyalgia can be difficult to treat effectively. The condition is not uncommon, and although evidence-based treatment is available, the goal is symptom management. Many patients are interested in “natural remedies” to avoid long-term reliance on prescription medicines. But news releases based on animal studies are obligated to alert these interested readers that positive findings don’t yet apply to humans. We hold not only the university responsible for this news release, but the American Association for the Advancement of Science, whose EurekAlert! news release service disseminates releases for a fee, but does not enforce standards that would prevent such weak releases from being disseminated worldwide by their service. We’ve written in more depth about this troubling policy in the past.
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false
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fibromyalgia,soursop leaves,University of Seville
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There’s no discussion of costs. We found soursop leaves online in various forms — including a liquid extract — for less than $20. There’s no attempt to give readers a sense of the magnitude of benefit in humans — or even in the rat group that was studied. We couldn’t find the study online, and the news release doesn’t provide a citation. Unconscionably, there’s no mention of harms in the release which could mislead people into thinking it’s safe. The published study does caution that “more toxicity assays and clinical trials would be necessary to establish optimal and safe doses of consumption on the application of these medicinal plants.” That should have been highlighted in the release. According to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, substances derived from soursop plant “can damage nerve cells and cause neurological side effects similar to Parkinson’s disease. In addition, some animal studies suggest long-term use may increase the risk of other neurological diseases.” Use of the plant “may also affect nuclear imaging because it has been shown to decrease the uptake of radiopharmaceuticals used in such procedures.” In addition, it’s possible people reading only this news release might be encouraged to forego proven treatments to try this supplement. As we said earlier, the news release doesn’t alert readers until the fourth of its six paragraphs that the study was carried out in rats, not people. It does disclose that the study was carried out over one month using 60 five-week old female rats, divided into six groups that were fed “a standard diet supplement” with different quantities of the plant. It also said the next step is to test it in patients “to corroborate the extract’s activity and establish the safe and effective dose in humans.” That language brushes over the fact that animal studies seldom predict results in human trials. The news release also puffs up this plant as “scientifically validated in pre-clinical tests” for inflammation, pain, infections, diabetes and cancer. But that could mislead some readers. According to Memorial Sloan Kettering, lab studies indicate the plant is effective against cancer cells and the herpes virus and might fight infections. However, it hasn’t been studied in humans for any of those purposes. Finally, as we said earlier, it’s concerning that the news release doesn’t give a citation for this study, which it says has been published. There’s no disease-mongering, but nor does the release inform readers how many people have fibromyalgia. In the U.S., it’s estimated to affect about 2% of the adult population, or about 4 million people. There’s no information on who funded this research. There’s no mention of medications (such as antidepressants and drugs for neurologic conditions), lifestyle interventions, and counseling that can treat fibromyalgia symptoms like pain, sleep problems, fatigue, and mental distress. The news release doesn’t say so, but this plant is widely available as tea, dried leaves, and extract. The use of soursop for fibromyalgia seems like a novel area of study. But we couldn’t find any research relating to it on PubMed. The headline is inaccurate and misleading. You can’t claim a benefit before a treatment has been tested in humans. The headline and subhead announce: ‘Extract from soursop leaves can prevent the symptoms of fibromyalgia’. ‘Scientists from the University of Seville indicate that it can lessen the chronic pain, anxiety and depression that accompany this disease.’ But you have to read two-thirds of the way down to learn it’s only been studied in rats.
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1736
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New Year’s resolutions may be more procrastination than motivation.
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People seeking to get or stay fit in 2015 might do better to start today rather than rely on a New Year’s resolution to shape up tomorrow, fitness experts say.
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true
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Health News
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Losing weight and getting fit and healthy are among the top five resolutions every year, even though most of winter’s great expectations wither by spring. “The New Year’s resolution is a kind of grand, glorified, long-term goal that people, for societal reasons, tend to begin on the first day of the calendar year,” said Gregory Chertok, a sports psychology consultant with the American College of Sports Medicine. Goals set because people feel they should make them tend to be pressure-filled, unrealistic and less likely to be accomplished, he says. “‘I’d like to cut down on junk food a little bit,’ is a goal more likely to be accomplished than ‘I’ll completely revamp my lifestyle,’ which is the kind of goal we set as a New Year’s resolutions,” Chertok said. While about 45 percent of Americans make New Year’s resolutions, only about 8 percent succeed, according to a University of Scranton study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology. Dr. Michele Olson, professor of exercise science at Auburn University Montgomery said a resolution can be a way of putting off what can be done today. “If there is a fitness need, such as to increase strength or decrease body fat, I say, ‘Let’s make a plan now,’” Olson said, adding that what is essential is to set a long-term plan with short-term goals. “This is why athletes stay in shape year-round. They have a program scheduled and planned over an entire year with variation, rest days, more-intense and less-intense workout periods,” she said. “It’s like one’s job: there’s very little vacation time.” Dr. Cedric X. Bryant, chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise, said the New Year may be the worst time to make a lifestyle change. “For many it’s the busiest, most hectic time,” he said, “and most people have an all-or-nothing mentality.” Bryant said people who succeed focus on progress, not perfection, and plan for the inevitable slip-up. “People don’t take time to celebrate the little successes,” he said. “Because they’re so focused on, say, an arbitrary weight goal, they don’t notice that they are sleeping better or feeling less anxious.” Chertok suggests setting goals that don’t depend on the calendar to achieve the best results.
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36463
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"Brooke Shields was photographed for ""Playboy"" when she was ten years old."
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Was Brooke Shields Photographed for ‘Playboy’ at Age 10?
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true
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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In March 2019, the following meme appeared (archived here), containing a claim that Brooke Shields had been photographed suggestively for Playboy magazine when she was just ten years old:The image featured a heavily made-up small girl who looked quite a lot like Shields and an inserted image of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner covering her presumably naked body, with text that read:DID YOU KNOW?In 1976 Playboy published nude photos of Brooke Shields, who was just TEN YEARS OLD at the time!No comment, sources, or citations were provided, and a watermark on the image (@aNewKindofHuman) suggested that it originated elsewhere earlier.In 2009, the Guardian published a story about the image and its photographer Garry Gross. It provided a recounting of a controversy involving photographs captured of a then-ten-year-old Brooke Shields in 1975 (not 1976). The photographs did not appear in Playboy, but they were shown in a related publication called Sugar ‘n’ Spice:The Richard Prince photograph of Brooke Shields that Tate Modern recently withdrew from the exhibition Pop Life, after Scotland Yard suggested it might break obscenity laws, travelled across the Atlantic carrying a long history of controversy. It shows a 10-year-old Shields, oiled and glistening, naked and made-up, posing in a marble bathtub with a seductive danger that belies her years. She has, in Prince’s description, “a body with two different sexes, maybe more, and a head that looks like it’s got a different birthday.”When artist Collier Schorr sublet Prince’s studio in the 1980s, the photograph was hanging in the hallway. “I always thought that it was a perverse picture,” says Schorr, who has since made a documentary about Prince, and befriended Shields when she photographed the actor/model last year for Interview magazine. “I found it really disturbing, but my impression always was that Richard made the piece because it was disturbing … It tells you everything about what we fear and desire.”Prince, Schorr tells me, has never met Shields. Intent on questioning notions of authorship and originality, he rephotographed an existing image that had already inspired two years of legal debate. The original picture, for which Shields was paid $450, was taken by fashion photographer Garry Gross in 1975 for a Playboy publication titled Sugar and Spice. It was one of a dozen images of Shields designed, according to Gross, to reveal the not-so-latent sexuality of the prepubescent child.We were able to find a 1981 lawsuit: Shields v. Gross (N.Y. 1983). That document included an appeals court opinion authored by two judges, indicating that at 15, Shields legally sought to withdraw the image set from circulation due to distress and embarrassment. The ruling was not in her favor:Plaintiff [Brooke Shields] is now a well-known actress. For many years prior to these events she had been a child model and in 1975, when she was 10 years of age, she obtained several modeling jobs with defendant through her agent, the Ford Model Agency. One of the jobs, a series of photographs to be financed by Playboy Press, required plaintiff to pose nude in a bathtub. It was intended that these photos would be used in a publication entitled “Portfolio 8” (later renamed “Sugar and Spice”). Before the photographic sessions, plaintiff’s mother and legal guardian, Teri Shields, executed two consents in favor of defendant. * After the pictures were taken, they were used not only in “Sugar and Spice” but also, to the knowledge of plaintiff and her mother, in other publications and in a display of larger-than-life photo enlargements in the windows of a store on Fifth Avenue in New York City. Indeed, plaintiff subsequently used the photos in a book that she published about herself and to do so her mother obtained an authorization from defendant to use them. Over the years defendant has also photographed plaintiff for Penthouse Magazine, New York Magazine and for advertising by the Courtauldts and Avon companies.In 1980 plaintiff learned that several of the 1975 photographs had appeared in a French magazine called “Photo” and, disturbed by that publication and by information that defendant intended others, she attempted to buy the negatives. In 1981, she commenced this action in tort and contract seeking compensatory and punitive damages and an injunction permanently enjoining defendant from any further use of the photographs….Additionally, the court ruled the images were “not pornographic,” and earlier decisions prohibited the future use of the photographs in “pornographic publications.” The controversy became newsworthy in September 2009, when police in the United Kingdom preemptively shuttered a scheduled exhibition featuring art based on the images:The child actress is shown standing naked in a bathtub, staring directly at the viewer, with a heavily-made up face and an oiled torso.The image is by Richard Prince, a New York artist, and is the centrepiece of the Pop Life: Art In A Material World exhibition at the Tate. So controversial is the photograph that it has been separated from the other exhibits and hangs in its own room behind a closed door. A notice on the door warns visitors that they may find the work “challenging”.It is the first time that the piece, entitled Spiritual America, has been displayed in a British gallery, although it has been shown in the US. The Tate consulted lawyers before including it in the exhibition, which opens on October 1.A Tate spokesman said: “As with any artwork that contains challenging imagery, Tate has sought legal advice and evaluated the situation. Tate has taken measures to inform visitors of the nature of the work, providing information outlining the intentions of the artist.”In October 2017, following the death of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner, the media returned to the controversy once again, this time to examine the photographs through the lens of the #MeToo movement:The most surprising detail to emerge after Hefner’s death was that Brooke Shields had featured in a Playboy publication called Sugar and Spice when aged only 10 years old in 1975. Photographer Gary Grosse received $450 to take the photographs of the heavily made-up Shields posing naked in a bathtub. The Sugar and Spice series of books in which the images appeared promised “surprising and sensuous images of women” from contemporary photographers, coding them as “artistic”.The ongoing controversy about the images, particularly once Shields was old enough to realise that she did not want them in the public domain, affected Gross’s career as a fashion photographer and he eventually became a dog trainer. Yet the fallout from the exploitative images did not significantly tarnish the Playboy name or Hugh Hefner. Shields featured on the cover of Playboy in 1986 at age 21.The image in the meme was taken from the original photographs of Shields, captured in 1975 and published in 1976 for Playboy publication Sugar ‘n’ Spice. By the time Shields reached the age of 15, she attempted to suppress the images but was unsuccessful.
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9658
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Love of physical activity may start in the womb
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This is a quick story about the findings from a small study of pregnant mice. The study showed that mice given the opportunity to exercise during pregnancy (by running on a wheel) had offspring that were more physically active than the offspring of pregnant mice who were not permitted to exercise. This story was concerning on several fronts: We suggest an alternate message for moms: Wait for larger, controlled human studies before buying into such a link. And we would urge on all of us a greater degree of skepticism for news releases that promote such generalizations on the basis of a small study. Active human beings are generally healthier human beings. But the prospect that level of parental activity during pregnancy might influence the eventual activity levels of their children—and that such influence is biological, not environmental—is novel and would be of great interest if it proved to be true.
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false
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fitness,mice studies,Pregnancy
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The intervention here is the act of running—in the case of these furry participants, running in an exercise wheel. If the assumption is that the human equivalent is also running (and not weight lifting as the story’s image indicates), the primary cost to people would be one of time. The story explains that levels of physical activity in mouse kids of active mouse moms were 50% greater than were activity levels of kids of mouse moms who were prevented from using a wheel. Normally, we’d expect to see these numbers quantified in absolute terms, but since we’re talking about mice, we don’t think it’s essential to get too precise, as that might feed the perception that the results are applicable to humans. Possible harms of vigorous activity during pregnancy were not discussed. While the story makes clear, early on, that this study was conducted in mice, it fails to note that the design utilized only a handful of the little critters: 12 to 16, according to the peer-reviewed article in The FASEB Journal. The reporter clearly understood the potential gap between mouse and human studies and included a brief section heralded by the question “How does this relate to our own species?” But the subsequent text, instead of highlighting the challenges of generalizing from mice to moms, offers the reader encouragement to make that jump. In some ways, this story is not about disease but about wellbeing. The unfortunately thing here is that a small mouse study is now circulating the internet on a number of news sites, possibly impacting the decisions pregnant women make, when this research isn’t at all conclusive about what humans should or shouldn’t do during pregnancy. There appear to be no overlooked conflicts of interest in this story. However, because there were no independent sources, this falls under Not Satisfactory. Although the story refers repeatedly to “exercise,” the only physical activity studied here was mice running on an exercise wheel, and not other forms of vigorous activity. That’s the limitations of mouse research, and why these sorts of stories should be reported on sparingly. Running as an activity is presumably accessible to women. The article notes that the current study goes beyond available observational studies in humans by utilizing an experimental design in mice. This brief story is highly reliant on a news release. The reporter has made no obvious attempt to contact the researchers for further information or to obtain reactions from other scientists.
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33613
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Statement reproduces President Obama's response regarding opposition to his veterans' health insurance plan.
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A statement purportedly reproducing President Obama's response regarding opposition to his veterans' health insurance plan was a satirical creation.
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false
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Politics Politicians, barack obama, health insurance, veterans
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President Barack Obama did not utter any of the statements reproduced above; the quoted example is a bit of fictional dialogue excerpted from a satirical piece by conservative humorist John Semmens which was published on his site on 21 March 2009. The basis of Mr. Semmens’ satire was that, in conjunction with meeting with several veterans groups in March 2009, the Obama administration floated a proposal to save the federal government an estimated $540 million per year by billing veterans’ private insurance companies for the treatment of their combat injuries and other service-related health problems. (Currently only non-service-related medical treatments are so billed.) The proposal would not have, as was often misreported, forced veterans to pay for the treatment of their injuries out of their own pockets or required them to buy private insurance; but it did raise the prospect that injured or ill veterans might find it harder or more expensive to purchase health coverage, or to obtain employment in the private sector if employer-funded private insurance plans had to cover the additional costs of treating injuries and other service-related health problems. The plan was heavily criticized by veterans almost from the moment it was presented to them, as the Washington Post reported in an account of a meeting between President Obama and veterans’ groups: [T]he leaders of veterans service organizations warned the president that their goodwill would vanish if he pursued a budget proposal to bill veterans’ private insurance companies for treatment of amputations, post-traumatic stress disorder and other combat-related injuries. One Vietnam veteran summoned his deep voice to address Obama, calling the change “a dumb move.” An Iraq veteran said the move would be “a deal-breaker” because it would represent an abrogation of the government’s responsibility to care for the wounded and could jeopardize veterans’ insurance benefits. Within 48 hours, the White House announced that the proposal had been dropped, but the President still came in for his fair share of criticism from those who maintained that he failed to anticipate how his proposal would be received and should have known better than to even raise the subject: However, many said that they were surprised by the ham-handedness of the private insurance effort because it seemed that no one in the White House or the [Veterans Administration] took into consideration how veterans would react — or Congress, where several members called the plan “dead on arrival.” “The president needs to drop this,” [Paul] Rieckhoff [executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America] said of Obama. “The longer we wait, the more it hurts his relations with the [veterans service organizations] and with vets. This is a no-brainer. We were all shocked. We don’t understand why he’s picking this fight.” A Newsday editorial summed up many Americans’ feelings about the matter in opining that: This load-shedding device would have saved the government about $540 million. But whoever proposed it to Obama was politically tone-deaf. To Obama’s credit, he appears to have backed away from this insensitive proposal. But veterans still can’t figure out how he let someone in the administration persuade him to try it. Frankly, neither can we.
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33542
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"The song ""The Twelve Days of Christmas"" was created as a coded reference to important articles of the Christian faith."
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Nonetheless, plenty of writers continue to expound upon “the beauty and truly biblical and spiritual meanings locked away in this wonderful song that puts Christ into Christmas where he doesn’t appear to be.” Perhaps those who consider this tale to be “beautiful” and “inspirational” (despite its obviously dubious truthfulness) should consider its underlying message: That one group of Jesus’ followers had to hide their beliefs in order to avoid being tortured and killed by another group of Jesus’ followers. Of all the aspects of Christianity to celebrate at Christmastime, that doesn’t sound like a particularly good one to emphasize.
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false
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Holidays, christmas carols, christmas urban legends, twelve days of christmas
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Two common forms of modern folklore are claims that familiar old bits of rhyme and song (such as the nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie“) encode “hidden” meanings which have been passed along for centuries, and claims that common objects of secular origin — particularly objects associated with Christmas (such as the candy cane) — were deliberately created to embody symbols of Christian faith. Here we have an article that combines both these forms and posits that a mirthful Christmas festival song about romantic gift-giving actually originated as a coded catechism used by persecuted Catholics: Example: [Collected via e-mail, 1998] You’re all familiar with the Christmas song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas” I think. To most it’s a delightful nonsense rhyme set to music. But it had a quite serious purpose when it was written.It is a good deal more than just a repetitious melody with pretty phrases and a list of strange gifts. Catholics in England during the period 1558 to 1829, when Parliament finally emancipated Catholics in England, were prohibited from ANY practice of their faith by law – private OR public. It was a crime to BE a Catholic. “The Twelve Days of Christmas” was written in England as one of the “catechism songs” to help young Catholics learn the tenets of their faith – a memory aid, when to be caught with anything in writing indicating adherence to the Catholic faith could not only get you imprisoned, it could get you hanged, or shortened by a head – or hanged, drawn and quartered, a rather peculiar and ghastly punishment I’m not aware was ever practiced anywhere else. Hanging, drawing and quartering involved hanging a person by the neck until they had almost, but not quite, suffocated to death; then the party was taken down from the gallows, and disembowelled while still alive; and while the entrails were still lying on the street, where the executioners stomped all over them, the victim was tied to four large farm horses, and literally torn into five parts – one to each limb and the remaining torso. The songs gifts are hidden meanings to the teachings of the faith. The “true love” mentioned in the song doesn’t refer to an earthly suitor, it refers to God Himself. The “me” who receives the presents refers to every baptized person. The partridge in a pear tree is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In the song, Christ is symbolically presented as a mother partridge which feigns injury to decoy predators from her helpless nestlings, much in memory of the expression of Christ’s sadness over the fate of Jerusalem: “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! How often would I have sheltered thee under my wings, as a hen does her chicks, but thou wouldst not have it so…” The other symbols mean the following: 2 Turtle Doves = The Old and New Testaments 3 French Hens = Faith, Hope and Charity, the Theological Virtues 4 Calling Birds = the Four Gospels and/or the Four Evangelists 5 Golden Rings = The first Five Books of the Old Testament, the “Pentateuch”, which gives the history of man’s fall from grace. 6 Geese A-laying = the six days of creation 7 Swans A-swimming = the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven sacraments 8 Maids A-milking = the eight beatitudes 9 Ladies Dancing = the nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit 10 Lords A-leaping = the ten commandments 11 Pipers Piping = the eleven faithful apostles 12 Drummers Drumming = the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle’s Creed Some versions of this piece do not specifically mention Catholicism or England. In these alternate versions, the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is said to have been developed by Christians who could not openly practice their faith because they lived in societies where Christianity was forbidden. Locating a place in the western world where the practice of Christianity was banned during the last several centuries is difficult enough, but trying to discern the usefulness of a Christmas song as a method of preserving tenets of Christianity in a society where the practice of Christianity itself was outlawed is truly a mind bender, since in such a society all facets of Christmas celebrations would surely be banned as well. Therefore, our discussion here will concentrate on the claim that “The Twelve Days of Christmas” was the creation of Catholics living in England after the Anglican Reformation. The history of the development of the Anglican Church and the relationship between Anglicans and Catholics in England over the subsequent centuries is a complex subject which could not be done justice in anything less than a lengthy and detailed discourse. (For an overview of the topic, we recommend the entry on “England [Since the Reformation]” in The Catholic Encyclopedia.) In short, the era under discussion begins with King Henry VIII’s (1509-1547) break with the Catholic Church in Rome and his establishment of the Anglican Church. In 1558, Henry’s Catholic daughter Mary I died, and her non-Catholic half-sister Elizabeth I took the throne; the following year the Act of Uniformity abolished “the old worship,” and the open practice of Catholicism was forbidden by law until Parliament passed the Catholic Emancipation Act in 1829. However, it is not accurate to say that, without exception, anyone caught practicing Catholicism (or possessing material indicating adherence to Catholicism) at any time during this 270-year period was immediately imprisoned or executed. The state’s toleration of Catholicism waxed and waned with the political exigencies of the times, and during some periods Catholics were treated more leniently than others. (As an interesting side note, we should mention that during the Puritan Commonwealth of 1649-1660, legislation banning the celebration of Christmas in England by anyone, Anglican or otherwise, was enacted, although these laws were overturned with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660.) Two very large red flags indicate that the claim about the “secret” origins of the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is nothing more than a fanciful tale, similar to the many apocryphal “hidden meanings” of various nursery rhymes: Moreover, several flaws in the proffered explanation argue compellingly against it: What little has been offered in support of this claim is decidedly unconvincing. This piece is often attributed to Fr. Hal Stockert, and in his explanation on a page from the web site of the Catholic Information Network, he wrote: I found this information while I was researching for an entirely unrelated project which required me to go to the Latin texts of the sources pertinent to my research. Among those primary documents there were letters from Irish priests, mostly Jesuits, writing back to the motherhouse at Douai-Rheims, in France, mentioning this purely as an aside, and not at all as part of the main content of the letters. So where is the information gleaned from these letters? As Fr. Stockert explained to syndicated religion writer Terry Mattingly in 1999: “I’ve got all kinds of people writing me demanding references for my work,” he said. “I wish I could give them what they want, but all of my notes were ruined when our church had a plumbing leak and the basement flooded.” Meanwhile, he said, his copy of the original article is on “a computer floppy disk that is so old that nobody has a machine that can read it, anymore.” What we do know is that the twelve days of Christmas in the song are the twelve days between the birth of Christ (Christmas, December 25) and the coming of the Magi (Epiphany, January 6). Although the specific origins of the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” are not known, it possibly began as a Twelfth Night “memory-and-forfeits” game in which the leader recited a verse, each of the players repeated the verse, the leader added another verse, and so on until one of the players made a mistake, with the player who erred having to pay a penalty, such as a offering up a kiss or a sweet. This is how the song was presented in its earliest known printed version, in the 1780 children’s book Mirth Without Mischief. (The song is apparently much older than this printed version, but we do not currently know how much older.) Textual evidence indicates that the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” was not English in origin, but French. Three French versions of the song are known, and items mentioned in the song itself (the partridge, for example, which was not introduced to England from France until the late 1770s) are indicative of a French origin. It is possible that “The Twelve Days of Christmas” has been confused with (or is a transformation of) a song called “A New Dial” (also known as “In Those Twelve Days”), which dates to at least 1625 and assigns religious meanings to each of the twelve days of Christmas (but not for the purposes of teaching a catechism). In a manner somewhat similar to the memory-and-forfeits performance of “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” the song “A New Dial” was recited in a question-and-answer format: (Using ordinary objects to represent biblical concepts is a common device, as exemplified by the several popular recordings of Deck of Cards.) “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is what most people take it to be: a secular song that celebrates the Christmas season with imagery of gifts and dancing and music. Some misinterpretations have crept into the English version over the years, though. For example, the fourth day’s gift is four “colly birds” (or “collie birds”), not four “calling birds.” (The word “colly” literally means “black as coal,” and thus “colly birds” would be blackbirds.) The “five golden rings” refers not to five pieces of jewelry, but to five ring-necked birds (such as pheasants). When these errors are corrected, the pattern of the first seven gifts’ all being types of birds is re-established.
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10780
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Tailored medicine could prevent more heart attacks
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The story addressed most of our criteria, but we felt it could have been improved a bit by even brief mention of the cost impact of implementing such a system, and a little more context on the Archimedes system and related research. Overall, though, good job. Finding more cost effective and more efficient means of treating people with high blood pressure has great potential for health policy – as does the broader approach of using risk calculators in electronic medical records.
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true
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heart disease,Reuters Health
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Couldn’t Dr. Eddy have commented on the projected cost of implementing his idea? And certainly the projected cost saving impact of his Archimedes system has been the focus of past news coverage. So even a line about cost impact would have been appreciated. Mixed bag here, but we’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt. The benefits from the use of models to better fit treatment recommendations were described as relative improvements rather than absolute benefits. That’s how the data were described in the abstract of the paper reported on; the predicted numbers were contained within the body of the article. Given the size of the population in question, we can look the other way on the use of relative risk reduction figures. And, as already noted, the story injected some caution about real world benefits by quoting an independent expert: We don’t know what the harms would be of the idealized “tailored medicine” approach described in the piece. The story did an adequate job explaining how the analysis was done. And, through the words of an independent expert (author of an editorial accompanying the journal article), it injected some real-world cautions: The story did not engage in disease mongering. The comments from the author of the editorial that accompanied the journal article were helpful. The entire focus of the story was a comparison of a “tailored medicine” approach to existing guidelines for treatment of high blood pressure. It would have been interesting to explore whether this is the only model for tailoring clinical information to arrive at better clinical outcomes or whether there are other models available for this purpose. The story could have been more explicit about the availability – or lack thereof – of the computerized risk calculator in question. However, a reader should be able to deduce from the following hints that the idea is not in widespread use: The story could have done a better job providing even a brief background on the Archimedes system and past reports about this or related research. A reader might think this was the very first news about this approach. It’s clear that the story did not rely solely on a news release.
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1332
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Stephen Hawking, who unlocked the secrets of space and time, dies at 76.
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Stephen Hawking, who sought to explain the origins of the universe, the mysteries of black holes and the nature of time itself, died on Wednesday aged 76.
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true
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Science News
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Hawking’s formidable mind probed the very limits of human understanding both in the vastness of space and in the bizarre sub-molecular world of quantum theory, which he said could predict what happens at the beginning and end of time. Ravaged by the wasting motor neurone disease he developed at 21, Hawking was confined to a wheelchair for most of his life. As his condition worsened, he had to speak through a voice synthesizer and communicating by moving his eyebrows - but at the same time became the world’s most recognizable scientist. Hawking died peacefully at his home in the British university city of Cambridge in the early hours of Wednesday. “He was a great scientist and an extraordinary man whose work and legacy will live on for many years,” his children Lucy, Robert and Tim said. “His courage and persistence with his brilliance and humor inspired people across the world.” Hawking shot to international fame after the 1988 publication of “A Brief History of Time”, one of the most complex books ever to achieve mass appeal, which stayed on the Sunday Times best-sellers list for no fewer than 237 weeks. ”My original aim was to write a book that would sell on airport bookstalls,” he told reporters at the time. “In order to make sure it was understandable I tried the book out on my nurses. I think they understood most of it.” The physicist’s disease spurred him to work harder but also contributed to the collapse of his two marriages, he wrote in a 2013 memoir “My Brief History”. In the book he related how he was first diagnosed: “I felt it was very unfair - why should this happen to me,” he wrote. “At the time, I thought my life was over and that I would never realize the potential I felt I had. But now, 50 years later, I can be quietly satisfied with my life.” U.S. space agency NASA said: “His theories unlocked a universe of possibilities that we and the world are exploring.” Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, said: “We have lost a colossal mind and a wonderful spirit.” Hawking’s popular recognition became such that he appeared as himself on the television show “Star Trek: Next Generation” and his cartoon caricature appeared on “The Simpsons”. He narrated a segment of the opening ceremony of the London Paralympic Games in August 2012, the year he turned 70. A 2014 film, “The Theory of Everything”, with Eddie Redmayne playing Hawking, charted the onset of his illness and his early life as a brilliant student. “We have lost a truly beautiful mind, an astonishing scientist and the funniest man I have ever had the pleasure to meet,” Redmayne said. In Cambridge, Hawking’s university college Gonville and Caius flew its flag at half mast. “At Caius he will always be ‘Stephen’ – the man whose wicked sense of humor enlivened high table dinners and saw him spinning uproariously around hall in his wheelchair to the strains of a waltz at a college party,” it said in a tribute. Since 1974, Hawking worked extensively on marrying the two cornerstones of modern physics - Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which concerns gravity and large-scale phenomena, and quantum theory, which covers subatomic particles. As a result of that research, Hawking proposed a model of the universe based on two concepts of time: ”real time”, or time as human beings experience it, and quantum theory’s “imaginary time”, on which the world may really run. “Imaginary time may sound like science fiction ... but it is a genuine scientific concept,” he wrote in a lecture paper. He caused some controversy among biologists when he said he saw computer viruses as a life form, and thus the human race’s first act of creation. ”I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive,” he told a forum in Boston. “We’ve created life in our own image.” Another major area of his research was into black holes, the regions of space-time where gravity is so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape. When asked whether God had a place in his work, Hawking once said: “In a way, if we understand the universe, we are in the position of God.” He married undergraduate Jane Wilde in July 1965 and the couple had Robert, Lucy and Timothy. But Hawking tells in his 2013 memoir how Wilde became more and more depressed as her husband’s condition worsened. “She was worried I was going to die soon and wanted someone who would give her and the children support and marry her when I was gone,” he wrote. Wilde took up with a local musician and gave him a room in the family apartment, Hawking said. “I would have objected but I too was expecting an early death ...,” he said. He divorced Wilde in 1990 and in 1995 married one of his nurses Elaine Mason, whose ex-husband David had designed the electronic voice synthesizer that allowed him to communicate. The pair divorced in 2007. Stephen William Hawking was born on Jan. 8, 1942. He grew up in and around London. After studying physics at Oxford University, he was in his first year of research work at Cambridge when he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. “The realization that I had an incurable disease that was likely to kill me in a few years was a bit of a shock,” he wrote in his memoir. In fact there were even advantages to being confined to a wheelchair and having to speak through a voice synthesizer. “I haven’t had to lecture or teach undergraduates and I haven’t had to sit on tedious and time-consuming committees. So I have been able to devote myself completely to research,” he wrote. “I became possibly the best-known scientist in the world. This is partly because scientists, apart from Einstein, are not widely known rock stars, and partly because I fit the stereotype of a disabled genius.”
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1896
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To optimize exercise, heed your heart rate training zone.
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Whether you’re interested in running a marathon or staving off the chronic diseases of ageing, to reap the rewards of your efforts getting into the zone is essential.
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true
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Health News
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A woman jogs before the arrival of Hurricane Irene at downtown Manhattan in New York August 27, 2011. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz Experts say knowing and staying within your heart rate training zone is an easy way to pace the intensity of your workout. “Exercisers need to get to at least a moderate level of physical activity in order to reap the benefits,” said Dr. Adrian Hutber of the American College of Sports Medicine. “Your goal is to get to a stage where you’re fit enough to exercise within your heart rate training zone.” Your heart rate training zone, or target heart rate, is based on your maximum heart rate (MHR), which is roughly calculated as 220 minus your age. “It’s not exact but it doesn’t need to be,” said Hutber. “It’s a really good indicator.” For moderate-intensity physical activity, a person’s target heart rate should be 50 to 70 percent of MHR, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Vigorous exercisers should aim for 70 to 85 percent. A 62-year-old woman has an estimated target heart rate zone of 111-134 beats per minute. An 18-year-old boy has a range of 141-172. Science tells us you need at least 150 minutes of moderate-level physical activity per week to be healthy, said Hutber, quoting U.S. government guidelines. Heart rate is a user-friendly way to track intensity level, according to Hutber. METS (Metabolic Equivalent of Task), which measures energy consumption, is another and VO2, which measures oxygen uptake, is a third. “But for the public it’s easier to talk about percentage of maximum heart rate,” he said. So short of wearing a heart monitor, how can you be sure you’re training in the zone? Most modern treadmills, elliptical trainers, and other cardio machines will tell you if you feed it your correct age. And experts say you should. “For the beginner who wants the most benefits and results, getting in that range is more important than worrying about calories burned,” said Deborah Plitt, a trainer with Life Fitness, the equipment manufacturer. She said the training zone is tied to age because as the heart gets older and becomes less efficient, it beats faster. But as you become more fit your heart muscle recovers from exercise more quickly, returning sooner to the resting heart rate. “Your resting heart rate becomes lower than it was because the same workout is getting easier,” she explained. “The heart is a muscle and as it gets stronger it doesn’t have to pump as many times ... It becomes more efficient.” People can check their heart rate any time simply by taking their pulse for 15 seconds and multiplying that number by four to calculate beats per minute. A less disruptive way to check the intensity of your workout is the sing-talk test. “It’s a very approximate but very good litmus test for moderate physical activity,” Hutber said. “If you’re exercising hard enough that you can still carry on a conversation but you couldn’t sing, that’s moderate intensity. If you can’t talk you’re moving into vigorous.” And if you’re able to both chat and carry a tune? “Then you haven’t brought your activity up to a moderate level,” he said. “That shouldn’t be your goal.”
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10631
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Pill That Hits A Cause Of Cystic Fibrosis Beats Expectations
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Noteworthy is how the short piece still included: better cost projections than some competitors offered caveat that “all we know about the latest data is from press releases” important disclosure following CF Foundation president’s quote brief explanation of what 10 percentage points improvement really means in patients’ lives This story is important for a couple of reasons. New CF treatments are needed. Desperately. The announcement of positive results for a new mode of therapy is sure to cause great excitement among patients, providers, and investors. The cystic fibrosis gene was identified in 1989 and with the identification came the hope that the mutation could in some way be manipulated or new treatments identified. VX-770 is a step in that direction. It remains to be seen if the drug will make it to market.
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true
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NPR
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More explicitly than some other stories we saw, this blog included an estimate that the drug “would command a very high price, perhaps $250,000 a year.” Good enough. We appreciate at least the attempt to explain that the 10 percentage points improvement in lung function “is a big deal for CF patients.” The story quotes the CF Foundation president saying there were no significant side effects. But even the press release reported some numbers for discontinuation rates and severe side effects, so we wish the blog had as well. in just 369 words, the story did an adequate job evaluating the evidence, including the important caveat: “Now, to be perfectly clear, all we know about the latest data is from press releases.” No disease mongering here. It was clear that this was a study in people with a specific genetic mutation that affects only about four percent of CF patients. Includes interview with CF Foundation president – not the most independent of sources since they have funded this work – but the story appropriately notes that the foundation will receive royalties from sales if the drug makes it to market. The story also interviewed a biotech and drug analyst. Nothing on existing alternatives. We wish the story had included even one line as the NY Times did: “Two inhaled antibiotics and one drug that loosens mucus are approved to treat cystic fibrosis, but nothing that directly improves chloride ion transport.” The story is clear that the drug is experimental, and that it hasn’t even been put before the FDA for review yet. Adequate job establishing the novelty of this approach for the target population. It admits it relied on a news release. But as we noted in our review of a competing NY Times story, while the study information is from a news release, the story did use several other sources. And, while we would normally chastise this type of reporting, we think that in this instance it is reasonable. Cystic fibrosis is a terrible disease that has defied attempts at a cure or even a satisfactory treatment. A drug that shows promise, albeit with the information dissemination coming from a press release, is newsworthy.
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11952
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"Joe Manchin Says West Virginia is ""down to around 50 percent of the adult workers who are actually working now because of addiction or conviction."
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"Manchin said the reason for the decline of working adults in West Virginia to ""around 50 percent"" of adults is due to the state’s opioid epidemic. His estimate of workforce participation is correct, and recent research at the national level suggests opioids have hurt workers and employers looking for healthy employees. Experts on West Virginia’s economy think the health crisis has affected participation in the workforce; they just don’t yet know to what extent. In any event, a number of other factors are likely driving the decline. Manchin’s claim is partially accurate, but lacks context that might give a different understanding of the data."
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mixture
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National, Drugs, Economy, Labor, Joe Manchin,
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"The Democratic senator from West Virginia — where the opioid overdose death rate ranked highest in the nation in 2015 — connected the state’s opioid use with its battered workforce. Sen. Joe Manchin told MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt that the opioid crisis is destroying families and wrecking the state’s economic future. ""I've got the greatest workers in the world,"" Manchin said on Oct. 22. ""But I'm down to around 50 percent of the adult workers who are actually working now because of addiction or conviction."" We wondered to what extent opioids are to blame for low employment in West Virginia. Manchin’s office told us he learned about the effect opioid abuse has on the state’s employment through ""hundreds of meetings with business executives, state workforce and labor experts, at his job fairs and with community leaders across the state."" The office also clarified Manchin’s comment, saying people who struggle with addiction or have been convicted in crimes related to opioid use in the past often have trouble getting jobs. Experts agreed that the opioid crisis affects employment rates in West Virginia, but they don’t know how much. Manchin is about on the mark when he says about half of West Virginia’s adults are employed. What’s less certain is the role opioid abuse plays. To measure this, the Bureau of Labor Statistics looks at two key figures: the employment-population ratio (the percentage of people over the age of 16 who are employed) and the labor force participation rate (the percentage of people over the age of 16 who are either employed or actively looking for a job). The latest estimates place West Virginia at a 50.4 percent employment-population ratio and a 53.1 percent labor force participation rate in September. By comparison, the United States’ employment-participation ratio in September was at 60.4 percent and the labor force participation rate was 63.1 percent. (Because the labor force doesn’t typically include students and retirees, college towns or populations with more elderly individuals might sometimes appear to have lower workforce participation.) West Virginia has historically had one of the lowest labor participation rates in the United States. Since the late 1970s, as far back as the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ data on labor participation rates goes, the state’s rate has remained below 58 percent. Similarly, the employment-population ratio has not exceeded 55 percent. A 2015 study of West Virginia’s labor participation rate conducted by the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy found that the state’s higher-than-average elderly population, percentage of people on work disability and poor overall health were major factors in the participation rate. In addition, lower rates of educational attainment beyond a high school degree had prevented young workers from obtaining jobs that require more education. Where does that leave opioid addiction? Experts say that’s an unanswered question. ""While I'm sure addiction and the opioid crisis have played a role in hurting West Virginia's workforce, I'm not sure you can attribute much of the state's decline to it,"" said Sean O’Leary, a senior policy analyst with the center. He also noted that the state’s recent decline coincides with the national recession. At the national level, a September 2017 paper out of Princeton University suggested opioid use could account for 20 percent of the drop in men’s labor force participation from 1999 to 2015 and 25 percent of the decline in women’s participation. And the problem has drawn the attention of Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, who testified to the epidemic’s effects on national labor during a July 13 Senate Banking Committee meeting. ""I do think it is related to declining labor force participation among prime-age workers,"" Yellen said. ""I don’t know if it’s causal or if it’s a symptom of long-running economic maladies that have affected these communities and particularly affected workers who have seen their job opportunities decline."" But there is no specific research related to West Virginia. Anecdotal evidence suggests employers nationwide have struggled in the past several years to find potential workers who are drug-free and healthy enough to perform required job tasks. The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland also cited the problem in a September 2016 report on West Virginia, which said local employers contacted by the reserve bank indicated ""educational attainment and social factors such as frequent opioid and heroin use"" limited the employers from finding the workers they need. Still, the exact statistical impact for the state remains unclear. Jessica Ice, an assistant professor at West Virginia University’s Institute for Labor Studies and Research, said she would be hesitant to attribute the entire decline in employment to opioids. ""I think we are still learning about the extent of the problem here as the epidemic continues to wreak havoc on the state of West Virginia,"" Ice said. ""While surely there is an impact I cannot even say what came first, disability and then prescription drug abuse? Hopelessness over the state of the economy and resorting to drugs to cope?"" Manchin said the reason for the decline of working adults in West Virginia to ""around 50 percent"" of adults is due to the state’s opioid epidemic. His estimate of workforce participation is correct, and recent research at the national level suggests opioids have hurt workers and employers looking for healthy employees. Experts on West Virginia’s economy think the health crisis has affected participation in the workforce; they just don’t yet know to what extent. In any event, a number of other factors are likely driving the decline. Manchin’s claim is partially accurate, but lacks context that might give a different understanding of the data."
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11422
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New HPV vaccine offers greater protection against cervical cancer than current vaccine
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This news release has several strengths. It carefully describes an important study comparing two forms of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine and provides the reader with information on the potential impact of HPV infections. However, it doesn’t deliver fully on several of our other criteria including costs, quantification of benefits, and harms. We also think that it is important from a public health perspective to discuss use of the vaccine in the context of screening programs for cervical cancer (e.g. Pap tests). While the release does mention screening, it does so only in passing. The vaccine can greatly reduce the risk that immunized girls will develop cervical cancer in the future, but it cannot totally eliminate that risk, even when all three doses are administered. In addition, the rates of complete vaccination among eligible girls is not ideal, and a few words about the importance of completion would have added to the release. HPV infection occurs in just about every sexually active adult. In the vast majority of cases, its presence produces no lasting effects. Depending of the strain of virus and other factors, however, the virus can cause a number of genital conditions including genital cancers. A vaccine that lowers risk when administered prior to sexual activity in girls is a significant step toward reducing the burden of the disease. This release highlights the results of a study that compared two forms of the vaccine that target different HPV subtypes.
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true
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Academic medical center news release,Cancer
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The release is from the UK and likely written for a UK audience, which would expect the cost of the vaccine to be covered under the NHS vaccination program. (The release mentions that the current vaccine is covered by NHS.) However, the release does not provide any detail on what the vaccine costs per person or what the vaccination program costs NHS — which is something we think even readers in the UK would be interested in and deserve to know. For our U.S. readers, we’d note that the vaccine requires three doses and therefore three different office visits. The costs of the visits and the vaccines ($130-140 per dose) bring the total immunization cost to approximately $500. Insurance usually covers a portion of the costs, but patients may have copayments. The release headline says the new version of the vaccine is “better” than the existing version, and the study backs this up. As the release notes, “
Gardasil 9 was 97 per cent effective at preventing high-grade cervical, vulvar and vaginal disease caused by HPV 31, 33, 45, 52 and 58, and was equally effective as the current Gardasil vaccine in preventing diseases caused by HPV 6, 11, 16 and 18.” But while “97 percent effective” sounds very impressive, what exactly does that mean? “97 percent effective” compared with what? The study published in the NEJM has the statistics that can put this into perspective. The paper notes the exact rate of disease that was observed in both the old and new vaccine groups: “The rate of high-grade cervical, vulvar, or vaginal disease related to [various HPV subtypes] … was 0.1 per 1000 person-years in the 9vHPV [new vaccine] group and 1.6 per 1000 person-years in the qHPV [existing vaccine] group.” For a more reader-friendly description, the release could have said the rates were 0.1 vs. 1.6 cases per thousand people in the study annually. In addition, the accompanying editorial in the NEJM rightly points to the less than spectacular successes to date in actually immunizing young and adolescent girls with three doses over 6 months. “At 57%, coverage for the first dose of HPV vaccination among girls 13 to 17 years of age lags behind coverage for other vaccines recommended for children 11 to 12 years of age by approximately 20 to 25 percentage points.” Greater emphasis on the need to follow through with all three doses would have been welcome. The only mention of potential harms from the new vaccine come from a study author who says, “This is a significant achievement. The new vaccine, Gardasil 9, is not only safe but will offer greatly improved protection against cervical and other cancers.” Indeed, the vaccine appears to be safe, but we think that a complete disclosure of the adverse events observed in the study would have been helpful. The conclusion in the research notes, “Adverse events related to injection site were more common in the 9vHPV group than in the qHPV group.” So yes, the vaccine is safe, but appears to have more issues at the injection site than the existing vaccines. This is important because not all girls carry through with all three vaccinations; the lack of follow-through may be related to pain on injection. The release notes that the vaccine has been approved by the US FDA on the basis of the study being reported on. It also provides some information about the study itself, noting that it was a “clinical trial [comparing] the safety and efficacy of the new vaccine, Gardasil 9, with the current vaccine, Gardasil, in more than 14,200 women aged between 16 and 26 years old. ” Ideally we should have been told it was a randomized double blind study and the study duration was 6 months. Some detail about the demographics of the women in the study would also have been helpful. However, we think the release provides enough information for readers to be assured of the study’s overall quality. The release doesn’t exaggerate the burden of HPV infection or cervical cancer. In fact, we think the release could have done more to create urgency around the need to vaccinate. The release points out that the study was funded by the manufacturer of the vaccine and that Dr. Cuzick was a coauthor of the study. The release does point out that there are two older vaccines that are available. It notes that the quadrivalent vaccine protects against 4 strains of HPV, offering about 70 percent protection against cervical cancer, whereas the 9-valent vaccine protects against 9 strains and can prevent up to 90 percent of all cervical cancers. The release also mentions in passing that the vaccine can be discussed as part of a screening program in women ages 25 to 45. We feel that the release could have emphasized this more. The release makes it clear that the new vaccine is available in the US but not yet in the UK. The release makes it clear that the study is the first of its kind comparing two types of HPV vaccine. Quotes from Dr. Cuzik are enthusiastic but could not be described as unjustified. He says, “This is a significant achievement. The new vaccine, Gardasil 9, is not only safe but will offer greatly improved protection against cervical and other cancers. Eventually this will mean less screening is needed, as women will have greater protection from the outset.” We’d add that while his statement may be accurate, the promise of the vaccine will only be achieved with higher vaccination rates
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35306
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Elisa Granato died shortly after being administered a trial vaccine for COVID-19.
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Oxford University also posted an update on its page dedicated to the COVID-19 vaccine trial, explaining that “false reports about the progress of the trial” had been circulating on social media. The university cautioned readers this likely would not be the last time a false rumor would circulate about the vaccine trial and urged people to get updates about the trial directly from the source:
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false
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Medical
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On April 23, 2020, Elisa Granato became one of the first people to take part in a trial for a potential COVID-19 vaccine at Oxford University. The following day, false reports started to circulate on social media that claimed she had died from the vaccination. One such article published to a website called News NT claimed: Elisa Granato, the first volunteer who availed herself in Oxford for a jab in the first Europe human trial of a vaccine to protect against the coronavirus pandemic, has died. She died two days after the vaccine was administered, authorities have said and added that an investigation into the cause of the death has been initiated. This is not a genuine news article. While Granato truly took part in a vaccine trial for COVID-19, she has not died. Her tweets are protected, but she did update her profile to explain that she is “100% alive”: The University of Oxford News Office confirmed to Reuters that Granato was “alive and well,” while the U.K.’s Department of Health and Social Care called the reports of Granato’s death “completely untrue” on Twitter: BBC News reporter Fergus Walsh also confirmed that Granato was alive, writing on Twitter: “Fake news has been circulating on social media that the first volunteer in the Oxford vaccine trial has died. This is not true! I spent several minutes this morning chatting with Elisa Granato via Skype. She is very much alive and told me she is feeling ‘absolutely fine. '” Ferguson shared a video of his call with Granato on April 26, the day after she supposedly died from the vaccine: ….and here is Dr Elisa Granato in person. Alive and well pic.twitter.com/Csw1WqmBQa — Fergus Walsh (@BBCFergusWalsh) April 26, 2020
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2668
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Air bags, poor economy save road lives.
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Air bags and the economic recession have contributed to the biggest drop in road deaths in the United States since World War II, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
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true
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Health News
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Changes in driving patterns and safety features both contributed to a 22 percent decline in road deaths between 2005 and 2009, Michael Sivak and Brandon Schoettle of the University of Michigan said in a report that studied federal data looking for the causes associated with fatal crashes. “From 2005 to 2009, U.S. road fatalities dropped by 22 percent (from 43,510 to 33,963). A reduction of such magnitude over such a short time has not occurred since road safety statistics were first kept (starting in 1913), except for the reductions during World War II,” they wrote in the journal Traffic Injury Prevention. “We were amazed by the magnitude of this,” Sivak said in a telephone interview. Separately, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 85 percent of American drivers say they use seat belts all the time, while 1 in 7 do not. Traffic deaths in 2009 were the lowest since 1954, the U.S. Department of Transportation said in March. “The two general factors that we are putting our money on are technological advances, primarily air bags, and the economic downturn,” Sivak said. He and Schoettle analyzed traffic patterns and found, for instance, an overall 4 percent drop in traffic, with notable decreases during rush hour and less traffic on high-speed interstate highways. They also found fewer crashes involving trucks, along with data that less freight is being shipped. “This supports the notion that people are cutting down on travel and staying closer to home. Traffic on local streets has increased,” Sivak said. Federal statistics include a code for factors involved in fatal crashes and they point to a big increase in inattentive driving. “U.S. data combine talking, eating and using cell phones in the same group. We have seen an increase of 42 percent in fatal crashes in which the coder labeled inattention as a factor,” Sivak said. In October researchers at the University of North Texas Health Science Center calculated that drivers using cell phones killed 16,000 people from 2001 to 2007. In 2009 the U.S. government blamed distracted driving for 16 percent of road deaths, or 5,800 deaths. Sivak said it was difficult to say how much any one factor contributed to overall deaths, but there are clues pointing to the decline in fatalities. “We have found there has been an increase in the deployment of air bags during crashes, especially side air bags,” he said. “We have been driving less and we are driving differently.”
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2845
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U.S. shortage of Tamiflu for children resolved: Roche.
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A temporary shortage in the United States of one of the leading flu medicines used to treat children with the sometimes deadly virus has been resolved, Roche, the maker of Tamiflu, said on Thursday.
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true
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Health News
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Due to high demand and packaging delays, Roche had experienced a shortage of supplies of the liquid version of the medicine, known a Tamiflu Oral Suspension, used to treat children under the age of 13 and adults unable to swallow pills. “We now anticipate having sufficient supply of both the liquid and capsule forms of Tamiflu to meet demand for this flu season,” Roche spokeswoman Tara Iannuccillo said in an emailed statement. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has added Tamiflu OS to the list of resolved drug shortages on its website with the notation “no supply issues anticipated.” Tamiflu is used to reduce the severity of the flu when taken at the outset of symptoms. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that people get flu shots to prevent the virus. So far this season, 35 U.S. states have reported widespread cases of flu and another 12 said they had regional influenza activity, with 10 pediatric deaths associated with the virus reported, according to the CDC. Thousands of people die every year from flu, which typically peaks in the United States between the months of October and March. Despite the brief shortage of liquid Tamiflu, there has been a continuous supply of the 75 milligram capsules, Roche said. Tamiflu is manufactured by Roche’s U.S. biotech unit Genentech and supplied to retail pharmacies through a network of distributors.
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26643
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“I've always known this is a real, this is a pandemic. I've felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
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In January, Trump said there were no worries about a pandemic. In late February, he said the virus was “very much under control.” Trump did activate federal measures to contain the spread in late January.
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false
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National, Public Health, Coronavirus, Donald Trump,
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"In the early days of the coronavirus crisis, President Donald Trump aimed to reassure the public. Now, he has called for a 15-day push to shut down transmission. ""By making shared sacrifices and temporary changes, we can protect the health of our people and we can protect our economy,"" Trump said in a March 17 press conference. When a reporter asked if there had been a shift in tone, Trump shot back. ""I've always known this is a real, this is a pandemic,"" Trump said. ""I've felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic."" Trump re-emphasized that point in a tweet the next morning. ""I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning, including my very early decision to close the ‘borders’ from China,"" Trump tweeted March 18. I always treated the Chinese Virus very seriously, and have done a very good job from the beginning, including my very early decision to close the “borders” from China - against the wishes of almost all. Many lives were saved. The Fake News new narrative is disgraceful & false! Trump and his administration acted to keep the virus out of the United States, but his words in public downplayed the threat for many weeks. On Jan. 20, about three weeks after China first reported the new virus, the World Health Organization reported cases in China, Japan, Thailand and South Korea. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention activated its emergency response center on Jan. 21. On Jan. 29, the White House formed the Coronavirus Task Force, headed by Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and coordinated by the National Security Council. On Jan. 30, Trump effectively banned all non-Americans from entering the country if they had been in China in the previous two weeks. Americans could come back, but they would be quarantined. Azar declared a public health emergency. The same day, WHO declared a global health emergency. It was the fifth time WHO issued such a warning since 2005. Fears of a pandemic were in the air by mid January. The federal response came as Trump painted a more comforting picture. On Jan. 22, in an interview with CNBC, Trump was asked, ""Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?"" ""No,"" Trump replied. ""Not at all. We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine."" Two days later, he gave the sense that the virus would be kept in China. ""China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus,"" Trump tweeted Jan. 24. ""The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well."" China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi! Trump maintained that upbeat tone at a Jan. 30 rally in Iowa. ""We think we have it very well under control,"" he said. ""We have very little problem in this country at this moment — five. And those people are all recuperating successfully."" In a Feb. 2 interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump repeated the idea that transmission was unlikely. ""We pretty much shut it down coming in from China,"" he said. ""We’re going to see what happens, but we did shut it down."" Trump also suggested that warmer weather in April would beat back the virus. As late as Feb. 24 and Feb. 25, Trump continued to paint a picture of a virus corralled. He tweeted that the virus was ""very much under control in the USA,"" and added ""Stock Market starting to look very good to me!"" In India, he said ""we have very few people with it,"" and they were getting better. This was at a time when WHO had reported 76,000 cases worldwide. A pandemic is when a new disease spreads worldwide. On March 11, WHO formally declared the coronavirus to be a pandemic. Trump said that he’s ""always known this is a real, this is a pandemic. I've felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic."" Until late February, Trump spoke as though the U.S. problem was limited and well under control. That description is at odds with the nature of a pandemic. We can’t know what was in Trump’s mind when he aimed to reassure the public, but his words did not fit with the threat of a pandemic. Trump’s claim that he was always aware of it being a pandemic is contradicted by his many early comments. His statement now is not accurate."
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6793
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Wisconsin lawmakers introduce medical marijuana bill.
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A group of lawmakers launched another push Friday to legalize medical marijuana in Wisconsin, introducing a bill that would allow patients to use the drug if they register with the state and create a licensing system for growers.
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true
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Wisconsin, Medical marijuana, Health, General News, Marijuana, Jon Erpenbach, Scott Walker, Bills
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Thirty-three states, including neighboring Michigan, Minnesota and Illinois, have legalized marijuana for medical purposes and 11, including Illinois, have legalized it for recreational purposes. The Wisconsin bill’s authors, Sens. Jon Erpenbach and Patrick Testin and Rep. Chris Taylor, said in a joint statement that the time has come to lift the state’s restrictions. Erpenbach and Taylor are Democrats. Testin is a Republican. “Doctors and patients, not government, should decide if cannabis is the right treatment,” said Testin, who co-sponsored a bill legalizing industrial hemp farming last legislative session. Then-Gov. Scott Walker signed that proposal into law in 2017. Democrats have tried to get some form of marijuana legalization passed in every legislative session for the past decade. Despite Testin’s support, the latest bill faces an uncertain future in the Republican-controlled Legislature. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos has said he’s been open to legalizing medical marijuana for years and wants to work on the issue this fall. But Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald has said he doesn’t support it. He’s running for Congress next year in a traditionally conservative southeastern Wisconsin district and signaling support for marijuana could motivate potential primary challengers. Democratic Gov. Tony Evers proposed legalizing medical marijuana in the state budget but Republicans removed the provisions from the final spending plan. Fitzgerald said in a statement Friday that the new bill is all but dead. “Everyone knows that medical marijuana leads to legalized marijuana,” he said. “I don’t’ support this plan and I think that it’s going to be a tough sell to a majority of our caucus.” Under the bill, patients looking to use marijuana for medical purposes would have to join a new state Department of Health Services registry. To qualify for the registry, a person would have to be suffering from any of a wide range of ailments, including cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, severe pain and chronic disease. A doctor would have to diagnose the ailment and explain the potential risks and benefits of medical marijuana to the registrant before he or she could join the list. Applicants would have to pay a $250 registration fee and an annual $250 fee. The registry would be sealed to the public. People convicted of a violent felony wouldn’t be allowed to join it. The bill also would set up a licensing system for medical marijuana growers through the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. A grower would be defined as someone who grows more than a dozen marijuana plants. Applicants would have to pay a $250 initial fee and a $5,000 annual fee. Licensees would be prohibited from growing marijuana for personal or family use. Evers tweeted Friday that he supports the bill, pointing to a Marquette University Law School poll from April that found that 83% of respondents supported legalizing medical marijuana. “It’s time for Wisconsin to do the right thing and allow doctors to prescribe medication that’s best (for) their patient and their families,” Evers wrote. ___ Follow Todd Richmond on Twitter: https://twitter.com/trichmond1
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3586
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Kansas officials issue toxic algae alert for Lake Afton.
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Kansas authorities have issued a public health advisory urging people and pets to stay out of the water at Lake Afton near Wichita because of elevated toxins.
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true
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Health, Kansas, Wichita, Lakes, Environment, Pets, Algae
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The Wichita Eagle reports that the 258-acre lake west of Wichita is among more than a dozen to receive a blue-green algae warning. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment says people should not swim, wade, ski, boat, fish or use personal watercraft on the lake while the alert is active. People should also clean fish well before eating them and keep pets, livestock, children and others from eating dried algae or drinking untreated lake water. People and animals exposed to tainted water should wash immediately with potable water. Exposure can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, rash, irritated eyes, seizures and breathing problems. ___ Information from: The Wichita (Kan.) Eagle, http://www.kansas.com
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31587
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Rep. Trey Gowdy ordered the exhumation of the body of Clinton associate Vince Foster.
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Reports that the South Carolina Congressman ordered the disinterment of Vince Foster (a Clinton associate who died in 1993) are fake news.
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false
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Junk News, clinton body count, last line of defense, the last line of defense
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On 21 March 2017, the web site The Last Line of Defense published a story that appeared to report that U.S. Representative Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) arranged for the body of Vince Foster to be exhumed as part of an investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton: For the first time in history, a US Congressman has asked that a body be exhumed in connection with an investigation by a House intelligence committee. Judge Harmon Watson agreed to issue the order for a work crew in Fairfax, Virginia to exhume the body of Vince Foster for autopsy. The order came just minutes after evidence turned up in the case of a murdered reporter who had an “if anything ever happens to me” letter delivered to his publication that implicated Hillary Clinton in a 23-year-old crime, which put it right around the time of Foster’s supposed “suicide.” Foster’s body has already been removed from the ground and is currently being transferred to the Naval Hospital in Norfolk to undergo an autopsy to look for a very specific cause of death. That information is being kept a closely guarded secret for now by Gowdy and the other federal prosecutors, since only the killer would know. Foster took his own life on 20 July 1993, and the circumstances surrounding his death in part formed the basis of long-circulating conspiracy theories that Clinton associates were often found dead under mysterious circumstances. Foster’s death was ruled a suicide in multiple investigations. The claim about Gowdy’s purported order was picked up by several dubious sites, but there is no truth to it; the story originated with The Last Line of Defense (The Resistance), an openly fake news outfit whose disclaimer states: The Resistance may include information from sources that may or may not be reliable and facts that don’t necessarily exist. All articles should be considered satirical and any and all quotes attributed to actual people complete and total baloney. Pictures that represent actual people should be considered altered and not in any way real. The image used to illustrate TheLastLineOfDefense.org’s article was from 2014 (not March 2017), and was published as part of a news report about finding the identities of unnamed dead individuals. TheLastLineOfDefense followed up this fake news piece with another one positing that a post-exhumation autopsy of Foster’s remains had prompted doctors to issue a ruling changing the manner of his death from suicide to homicide: Forensic specialists examined the body last night at the Naval Hospital in Norfolk, Virginia, concluding that the cause of death for Mr. Foster should be changed from suicide to homicide. LT Col. James McFitting, head of the hospital’s forensics lab, told reporters in his office that Foster had not one but two gunshot wounds, both of which would have been fatal. There would be no way he could have pulled the trigger himself a second time. The wounds were also in the back of his head, meaning unless he reached all the way around to make it look like a murder and fired two identical guns at the same time, the original story was impossible. The site then put out yet another article in the series holding that Foster’s exhumed body had been stolen from the morgue: Vince Foster is back in the news today after it was discovered that his body, which was exhumed to be autopsied at the request of Congressman Trey Gowdy, had disappeared from the morgue. The autopsy, which concluded yesterday, had already determined that the cause of Foster’s death should be ruled a homicide. The problem is, without the body to be used for further forensic analysis, it will be nearly impossible to connect the dots back to Clinton. The bullets, which were scheduled for extraction today, won’t be able to be matched to registered firearms of Clinton “security” teams as Gowdy had hoped and the ballistics experts won’t be able to determine things like if the shooter was right or left handed or his or her height.
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4514
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Court: Pot patients in Arizona protected from arrest on hash.
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The Arizona Supreme Court has ruled that medical marijuana cardholders are protected from arrest for possessing hashish and other cannabis extracts as long as they don’t have more of the drug than allowed.
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true
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Arizona, Medical marijuana, Marijuana, Arrests, Court decisions, Arizona Supreme Court
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In making the ruling, the court concluded the state’s medical pot law covers products made with resin extracted from pot plants. The unanimous ruling Tuesday reversed a lower-court decision that found patients faced arrest for hashish possession because the drug isn’t mentioned or included by name in the law. The state Supreme Court said Arizona’s 2010 voter-approved medical marijuana law includes dried cannabis flowers and resin extracted from pot plants. The ruling points out that, under the law, marijuana means “all parts of any plant of the genus cannabis whether growing or not.” “It is implausible that voters intended to allow patients with these conditions to use marijuana only if they could consume it in dried-leaf/flower form,” the Supreme Court wrote. “Such an interpretation would preclude the use of marijuana as an option for those for whom smoking or consuming those parts of the marijuana plants would be ineffective or impossible.” The court said its interpretation lets medical marijuana patients use the drug to treat debilitating medical conditions in whatever form best suits them. The case centers on the 2013 arrest of medical marijuana card holder Rodney Jones at a Prescott hotel on charges of possession of cannabis and drug paraphernalia. Police say Jones had 0.05 ounces of hashish in a jar. He was convicted and later sentenced to two years in prison. Prosecutors had argued the state’s medical marijuana law didn’t apply to pot extracts. Attorneys for Jones countered that his medical marijuana card provided him a defense because hashish, as a preparation of dried marijuana flower, was covered by the medical pot law. In a ruling last summer in Jones’ case, the Arizona Court of Appeals said the medical marijuana law “is silent” on hashish and that if voters wanted to protect patients who use hashish from prosecution, they should have written the law that way. The Supreme Court threw out Jones’ conviction and sentence. A medical marijuana cardholder is allowed to possess 2.5 ounces of marijuana. The Supreme Court said it wasn’t offering an opinion on how much resin may be extracted from 2.5 ounces of dried pot flowers. Jones was prosecuted by the office of Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk, who led an effort to defeat legalization of recreational marijuana in 2016. Polk likened the court’s conclusion Tuesday to finding that explosives produced from fertilizer are protected by laws allowing the sale of farm products. “Sadly, the Supreme Court rejected the Arizona appeals court’s common-sense reasoning and its sound conclusion that hashish is a form of cannabis, which state law defines as distinct from the dried marijuana leaves,” Polk said. Robert Mandel, one of the attorneys representing Jones, said Polk’s office tried to impose limits on the medical marijuana law where none existed and, in the process, ended up causing his client to be imprisoned. “He served time he will never be able to get back,” Mandel said.
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428
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Coal-fired plants around New Delhi running despite missing emissions deadline.
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Coal-fired utilities around New Delhi were still operating on Wednesday despite threats from the Indian authorities to close them down if they had not installed equipment to cut emissions of sulfur oxides by the end of the year.
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true
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Environment
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Three senior executives at companies operating power plants around New Delhi and facing an end-2019 deadline said they had not received direction on whether they could continue to run the plants having not installed the kit. Only one out of the 11 utilities in the national capital region had installed the equipment. India had already extended its December 2017 deadline for its utilities to meet the emissions standards - posing a further challenge to the authorities grappling with the pollution that can cause lung disease and blights air quality. Officials from the India’s Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB), who had threatened a shut down for non-compliance, did not respond to repeated calls and text messages seeking comment. Reuters reported last month that more than half of India’s coal-fired power plants and 94% of the coal-fired units ordered to retrofit equipment to curb air pollution would likely miss the phased deadlines. The air quality index for the Indian capital, the worst affected major city, indicated “severe” conditions on Wednesday - like most days this winter - a potential risk for even healthy people. Real-time data government data showed both power plants in the country’s largest state of Uttar Pradesh which had a Dec. 31 deadline were operating. In Punjab, Vedanta-owned TSPL units were producing power, as were state-run plants at Ropar and Bhatinda. Mohammed Shayin, managing director at northern Haryana state-run power generator HPGCL said all units other than ones under scheduled maintenance were operational, adding that the utility was “pleading” with federal authorities to extend the emissions deadline. Private producers such as Vedanta and Larsen & Toubro Ltd argued for yet another extension to the deadline. L&T-owned Nabha Power Ltd said it was “constrained to shut down both its units due to a delay in extension of timelines by the CPCB”. Vedanta said it was “confident” that authorities “would take a considerate stand”. “We shall shut the plant in case we get the directions from the CPCB or the environment ministry,” the company said.
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6432
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Diplomat joins athletes in pledging brain for research.
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A U.S. diplomat who said he suffered headaches and memory loss under mysterious circumstances while stationed in China pledged Friday to donate his brain to head injury researchers.
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true
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Cuba, Boston, Guangzhou, Boston University, North America, China, Science, Trauma, Headaches
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Mark Lenzi, 44, is an unusual addition to the several thousand others, including many former NFL players who suffered concussions during their careers, who previously signed agreements to have their brains studied after they die by the CTE Center at Boston University. A security engineer for the U.S. State Department, Lenzi was among a number of diplomats who were brought home last year from the U.S. Consulate in Guangzhou, China, after reporting as-yet-unexplained symptoms. The State Department has drawn no link between those diplomats and 26 workers at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba who were withdrawn in 2017 after reporting symptoms, including those consistent with minor traumatic brain injury, or concussion. “The engineer in me wants to get to the bottom of this type of concussion and exactly what happened to me,” Lenzi said while signing the pledge in Boston with representatives of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, an organization that collaborates with the BU researchers by recruiting donors and publicizing the dangers associated with head trauma. Chris Nowinski, co-founder and chief executive of the foundation, said the brain injury community must continue research to find answers for head trauma. “There are patients out there that need answers from the scientific community,” he said. Lenzi now works at a State Department passport office in his native New Hampshire. He said he and his wife began hearing strange noises in their apartment in 2017, and later developed symptoms consistent with concussion. In an interview with the AP, he said he initially did not associate the noises with the symptoms, believing the headaches may have been triggered by smog. Lenzi has not been identified by U.S. officials as someone suffering from injuries similar to those suffered by diplomats in Cuba. The State Department said Friday that out of 15 diplomats or family members from China who underwent additional medical evaluation in the U.S., 14 were found not to have symptoms like those from Cuba and the other case had not been determined. The Associated Press has reported that an interim FBI report found no evidence that sound waves could have caused the injuries to the personnel in Cuba. The department said its investigation was continuing and that its top priority was the safety and security of U.S. personnel. Preliminary findings by a team at the University of Pennsylvania and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on 24 personnel affected in Cuba showed they had sensory and memory problems similar to the brain dysfunction seen with concussions. More than 5,000 people have pledged to donate their brains to the BU researchers and 716 have been donated so far, Nowinski said. More than 360 diagnoses of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, have been made to date, representing more than 70 percent of confirmed cases worldwide, the foundation said.
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7545
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Pandemic upends life on isolated, idyllic Galapagos Islands.
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Before the coronavirus, sudden life-threatening ailments among tourists, fishermen and others on the Galapagos Islands were considered so rare that hospitals didn’t have a single intensive care unit bed.
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true
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Financial markets, Wildlife, AP Top News, Understanding the Outbreak, Health, General News, Charles Darwin, Galapagos Islands, Latin America, Caribbean, Pandemics, Travel, Virus Outbreak, Lifestyle, Ecuador, Science
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Now, officials are racing to equip medical teams on the remote islands with breathing machines while also trying to stanch an economic crisis that has left many of the 30,000 residents jobless. The island chain’s famous isolation is now heightening its hardship. For seven weeks now, not a single tourist has arrived at the UNESCO World Heritage site that inspired Charles Darwin. Studies of the archipelago’s unique marine and avian wildlife have halted. And residents are making urgent changes, like growing carrots, peppers and tomatoes at home so they don’t go hungry. “Galapagos is the land of evolution,” said Joseline Cardoso, whose small family-run hotel on Santa Cruz island is empty. “The animals have adapted and we humans cannot be the exception.” Ecuador is among Latin American nations hit hardest by COVID-19, and authorities on the Galapagos Islands believe their first cases probably came from Guayaquil, the coastal city where hospitals turned away patients and the dead were left in homes for days. The storied islands have been relatively shielded by what happens 600 miles away on the mainland. A financial crisis two decades ago left many Ecuadorians penniless but steady international tourism kept the Galapagos afloat. Last year, over 275,000 people came to see the swimming iguanas, giant tortoises and birds with webbed feet the color of blue cotton candy. Islanders rely on military aircraft to ferry the critically ill to Quito or Guayaquil. Many go to the mainland for appointments, and some hire doctors to fly in for major events like childbirth. Locals like to joke that, “In the Galapagos, it is prohibited to get sick.” But the coronavirus has upended any sense of island immunity. The islands’ first four cases were diagnosed in late March, all believed to have come from Guayaquil before travel was cut off. Soon after, the first island-associated death was announced: a worker in his 60s who had been on the Celebrity Flora yacht and fell ill after returning to Quito. There are now 107 cases in the Galapagos, including about 50 crew members still aboard the Celebrity Flora, a luxury ship operated by a subsidiary of Royal Caribbean Cruises. It docked in time for passengers to get flights home. Authorities have scrambled to equip hospitals, where there are only four ICU beds – about one for every 7,500 residents – and a lab to do virus tests. The Charles Darwin Foundation donated two of the new ventilators. In addition to military transports, a police aircraft is being mobilized. The president has offered one of his two planes, said Juan Sebastián Roldán, his Cabinet secretary. Most of the cases have been mild, with only two people hospitalized. The bigger blow has been to tourism: At least 800 visitors usually arrive daily, and officials estimate the islands already have lost at least $50 million, a quarter of the expected annual income. “The base of our economy has entirely collapsed,” said Norman Wray, governor of the islands. “This is completely changing the future of tourism in the Galapagos.” Ivan López, a guide and scuba teacher, was taking tourists around the islands when Ecuador ordered a lockdown. He was told to get off the boat and immediately was jobless. A 39-year-old father of two, he believes he can stretch his savings for six months but doesn’t know what he will do if the crisis drags on. He’s started a vegetable garden. Already-high prices in supermarkets have skyrocketed. When López searched recently for disinfectant, he found alcohol at $40 a gallon. The islands largely rely on cargo ships, which have been slower to arrive. “If the ships stop coming, it will be chaos,” he said. “We won’t have anything to eat.” Fishermen go door-to-door selling tuna and wahoo to islanders, while farmers drive through neighborhoods yelling out “Tomatoes! Lemons! Greens!” on a megaphone. Cardoso, who dreamed up her six-room hotel as part of a student project, said her new reality feels like a nightmare she’s yet to wake up from. The hotel is usually 75% occupied throughout the year, but all reservations have been canceled through July. “To be with an empty hotel breaks your heart,” she said. Scientists have also seen their work analyzing the Galapagos’ wildlife abruptly interrupted. The islands have a rich history of scientific investigation and discovery since Darwin arrived aboard the HMS Beagle in 1835, noting that species on the relatively new volcanic islands bore key differences from those in South America. Humans have caused the islands irreparable harm, wiping out thousands of whales and tortoises, introducing invasive species like insects, wild pigs and goats, and damaging the delicate vegetation. At the Charles Darwin Foundation, researchers had been studying a species of parasitic flies, which likely arrived over 30 years ago on a plane or boat. The flies threaten 20 bird species, and scientists have been collecting data on them for over five years, but there will be blank spaces for 2020 that “we will not be able to recover,” said María José Barragán, the foundation’s CEO and science director. She also said scientists have been unable to see how species are being affected by the absence of humans, though that will be studied once they are back in the field. How soon the Galapagos Islands might be able to reopen is unclear. Ecuador’s government is allowing for a gradual opening in three stages. But the final stage is not a full return to normal and does not call for resuming national or international flights. For many islanders, the pandemic has left them to meditate on their relationships with nature, industry and travel. Some wonder if they should continue to remain so dependent on tourism, while others say it highlights the need for self-sufficiency. For Cardoso, the answer lies in the story of the finches, penguins and tortoises who share the islands with them. “We have to put in practice the lesson of our history,” she said. “We have to adapt.” —- Armario reported from Bogota, Colombia.
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8704
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Almost a third of Northern Ireland COVID-19 deaths outside hospitals.
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Forty-eight people died in Northern Irish care homes and private residences on top of the 109 COVID-19 hospital deaths reported a week ago, the region’s statistics office said on Friday, adding to evidence that the UK toll is higher than so far reported.
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true
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Health News
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There were 13,729 hospital deaths from COVID-19 across the United Kingdom as of 1600 GMT on April 15, the fifth highest official death toll in the world. Broader data show the true death toll far exceeds that due to deaths in care homes and the wider community, but exact numbers are slower to emerge. The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency said that 41 or 26% of the 157 deaths reported up April 10 occurred in 23 separate care homes and hospices with a further seven fatalities at private addresses It was the first such breakdown of figures and added 39 more people to the death toll than had previously been reported from the data on confirmed cases for the same period, the region’s executive government said in a statement. Northern Ireland public health agency (PHA), which gives a daily update, has reported another 51 deaths since the morning of April 11 from a total of 2,201 cases. PHA figures may not capture all deaths that occur outside hospital, the statistics office said. While there have been 486 deaths across the open border in Ireland, it has two and a half times the population, has tested more than six times as many patients and includes deaths outside hospitals, which accounted for 39% of fatalities. More than half of all deaths in Ireland are associated with nursing homes, though some of those patients had been moved to hospital before they died. Northern Ireland’s regional government decided this week to keep strict restrictions in place for another three weeks, in line with the rest of the United Kingdom and a similar lockdown in Ireland due to run until May 5. “The publication of this additional detail will help inform the Executive’s ongoing response. But it is also extremely sad, as we learn that Covid-19 has robbed many more families of their loved ones,” Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster said.
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35508
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Supermarket retailer Kroger sent letters to employees informing them they must repay overpaid emergency pay provided amid the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic.
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What's true: Kroger sent letters to some employees stating that they had been overpaid emergency pay during the pandemic and must pay it back. What's false: According to a company spokesperson, Kroger is no longer requiring employees to repay the money. What's undetermined: It's unclear why the letters went out in the first place or what the specific source of the issue/problem was.
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mixture
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Politics Business, COVID-19
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In late May 2020, Snopes readers submitted screenshots of a letter purportedly sent from Kroger grocery stores to an employee amid the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. The letter claimed that the worker had been “overpaid your Emergency Pay in the gross amount of $461.60.” Readers asked whether the letter was authentic. Grocery store workers have been deemed an essential part of the workforce during the pandemic. Their close contact with the public has also placed in them in harm’s way, and some have died as a result. Kroger and other large grocery store chains have come under scrutiny for how they treat workers during the ongoing pandemic. In March 2020, the store chain announced that workers officially diagnosed with COVID-19 could qualify for 14 days emergency sick leave. But some criticized that move as insufficient. Shortly after, Kroger announced it would expand the paid sick leave to include employees who were simply experiencing COVID-19 symptoms, or who were self-isolating to protect themselves from the illness.
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40296
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It is a warning that a TV news report said that at “dollar stores,” including Dollar Tree and Greenbacks, name-brand toothpastes were not “the same as from Wal-mart, grocery stores, etc,” They were manufactured for other countries, which have different standards than in the U.S.
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Foreign toothpaste at U.S. discount stores
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true
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Household, Warnings
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When one TV station does an innovative investigative report, it often results in numerous stations across the country doing the same thing. In 2004 there were numerous local investigations by TV stations of discount stores across the country. An example is in May of 2004, NBC 5, which serves Dallas and Ft. Worth, Texas, broadcast an investigative report on discount stores. According to the report, tubes of toothpaste were found in local stores that had been manufactured in foreign countries. They looked like the products that U.S. customers would expect but closer inspection revealed their origins and that some did not have required U.S. labeling. They quote an expert from the Baylor College of dentistry who said that the biggest concern about the foreign toothpastes was the fluoride levels. For example, he said, one of the toothpastes from South African had 10 times the fluoride of products normally sold in the U.S. The report said that toothpastes sold in the United States should have the seal of the American Dental Association on them. We also found similar reports by NBC 4 in Columbus, WROC-TV in Rochester, New York, KXAN 36 in Austin, Texas, and many others. All of them discovered foreign toothpastes in discount or so called “dollar” stores. Last updated 3/25/06 Comments
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4261
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Ex-government health chief joins warnings about EPA proposal.
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A former top government environmental health official joined health experts on Wednesday in expressing alarm as the Trump administration moves forward with a proposal that scientists say would upend how the U.S. regulates threats to public health.
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true
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Health, Politics, Environment, Business, Environmental health, Public health, Science
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“It will practically lead to the elimination of science from decision-making,” said Linda Birnbaum, who retired last month as director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences after serving under both Republican and Democratic administrations. In an appearance before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Birnbaum said the proposal could be used to roll back fundamental protections from air pollution and other toxins. The “effects here could affect an entire generation,” she said. The Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed regulation seeks public disclosure of the data underlying studies used by agency officials in deciding how to regulate contaminants and toxins, from car exhaust to coal waste to pesticides. Opponents fear that could include seeking to release identifying information for patients and study participants in violation of confidentiality requirements, leading important public health studies and other research on people to be taken out of consideration instead. The administration says the proposal would increase transparency in government regulation. Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, an EPA principal deputy assistant administrator, told the lawmakers that the agency was working “to ensure the public has access to information so they can make decisions to protect their health and environment.” But opponents fear the measure will be used to toss out findings of decades of research on humans — and of future studies yet to come — that are a foundation of environmental and public health regulation. With weaker evidence regarding risks to human, the result could be weaker regulation of toxins, opponents said. When the EPA first raised the proposal last year, university heads, public health officials, researchers, health workers, environmental advocates and others lined up at the agency’s public hearings to object. The agency received nearly 600,000 public comments on the change, the majority urging against it. Debate on the proposal revived this month when the EPA sent a draft supplement to the measure to the White House for government review. That made clear that the administration was moving ahead on the measure despite the unusually strong torrent of opposition from scientists and health practitioners. At Wednesday’s hearing before a committee of the Democratic-controlled House, some Republicans also indicated concerns about the measure, which follows past, failed efforts by conservative lawmakers to get similar legislation through Congress. “This is about attacking the EPA under the current administration — not about improving transparency and scientific integrity,” said Rep. Frank Lucas of Oklahoma, the committee’s senior Republican member. Lucas called the EPA proposal “well-intended,” but said broader discussion was needed about “the best way to improve reproducibility and transparency.” Orme-Zavaleta, a career EPA employee, said a draft of the rule obtained by the news media this week was not the final version. Under questioning from Democratic lawmakers, Orme-Zavaleta acknowledged that while the proposal was not intended to be retroactive to existing rules, it could apply to past health studies. Democratic lawmakers argued the change could also be used to throw out findings of health studies and rewrite regulations whenever an existing rule comes up for review. “The true purpose is to undermine the decades of sound science on which the EPA relies to protect public health,” so that “political agendas are given more weight than science,” said Rep. Paul Tonko, D-NY. It “will endanger the safety and health of millions of Americans for many generations to come.” Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., noted the early draft rule would allow the EPA administrator to make exceptions to the data disclosure requirements. “Can you understand why we might not be comfortable having the final call being made by a coal lobbyist?” Foster asked, referring to the current EPA administrator, Andrew Wheeler. Birnbaum, one of five scientists and health experts testifying Wednesday in addition to the EPA official, said eliminating studies and research on humans because of the confidentiality of identifying information would leave regulators more dependent on animal studies, which are less accurate for people. However, Wheeler announced separately in September that the agency intended to scale down and ultimately eliminate testing of chemicals on animals. Animal rights advocates welcomed the move, but health officials said it eliminated an essential safeguard for human health.
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23031
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"Rick Perry Says the federal government restricts ""how much salt we can put on our food."
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Gov. Rick Perry says the federal government regulates how much salt we can put on our food
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false
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Food Safety, Texas, Rick Perry,
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"Shortly after Texas voters decided Gov. Rick Perry was worth his salt by re-electing him, Perry launched a national tour this week to sling his new book. In the first chapter of ""Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America from Washington,"" which was first available at Perry's election-night party, Perry writes: ""We are fed up with being overtaxed and overregulated. We are tired of being told how much salt we can put on our food, what windows we can buy for our house, what kind of cars we can drive, what kinds of guns we can own, what kind of prayers we are allowed to and where we can say them, what political speech we are allowed to use to elect candidates, what kind of energy we can use, what kind of food we can grow, what doctor we can see and countless other restrictions on our right to live as we see fit."" We won't look at every regulation Perry sees out there for this article, but we wondered if he's right about government telling us how much to salt our food. Responding to our request for elaboration, Carolyn O'Keefe, a publicity manager for the book, sent us a link to an April 20 Washington Post news article that says the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ""is planning an unprecedented effort to gradually reduce the salt consumed each day by Americans, saying that less sodium in everything from soup to nuts would prevent thousands of deaths from hypertension and heart disease. The initiative, to be launched this year, would eventually lead to the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products."" The article continues: ""The government intends to work with the food industry and health experts to reduce sodium gradually over a period of years to adjust the American palate to a less salty diet, according to FDA sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the initiative had not been formally announced. Officials have not determined salt limits."" Should we shelve our shakers? Not so fast. The same day, the FDA issued a press release saying the Post story ""leaves a mistaken impression that the FDA has begun the process of regulating the amount of sodium in foods. The FDA is not currently working on regulations nor has it made a decision to regulate sodium content in foods at this time."" When we showed the press release to O'Keefe, she said she would pass it along to Perry ""to see if there are any comments."" Next, we sought information from the FDA, whose website says the agency requires nutrition labels to include how much sodium is in, for example, a can of Coca-Cola (45 milligrams per serving). A page about salt on the site that was last updated May 18 says that while the agency has the authority to limit the amount of salt added to processed foods, it hasn't. It is, however, ""conducting research in this area,"" according to the site. In 2005, the Center for Science in the Public Interest asked the FDA to impose limits on the amount of salt in processed foods, according to the FDA website. More recently, the FDA sponsored an Institute of Medicine (IOM) report, ""Strategies to Reduce Sodium Intake in the United States."" Among other suggestions, the April 20 report recommends that the FDA ""expeditiously initiate a process to set a mandatory national standards for the sodium content of foods."" ""These recommendations are being carefully reviewed and evaluated by the FDA,"" according to the FDA site. Currently, salt is regulated by the FDA as a ""generally recognized as safe"" (GRAS) ingredient, which means the FDA doesn't approve it before people can use it. A GRAS ingredient is ""one that has a long history of safe, common use in foods, or that is determined to be safe, for the intended use, based on proven science,"" according to the FDA site. Pat El-Hinnawy, a spokeswoman with FDA, told us that the agency ""is not currently working on regulations nor has it made a decision to regulate sodium content in foods at this time."" How does Perry's statement shake out? An agency has been exploring ways to reduce sodium in the food supply and federal dietary guidelines recommend consuming less than 2,300 milligrams, or about 1 teaspoon, of sodium per day. But government isn't telling anyone how much salt to sprinkle."
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28185
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A court ruling means priests in Louisiana don't have to report sexual abuse.
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What's true: The Louisiana Supreme Court ruled Catholic priests are not mandatory reporters when hearing information in confidence during the sacrament of confession. What's false: Priests remain mandatory reporters at all other times.
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true
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Politics
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On 28 October 2016, the Louisiana Supreme Court issued a ruling that Catholic priests are not mandatory reporters while performing the sacrament of confession. The decision was the result of a 2009 lawsuit brought by the parents of Rebecca Mayeux, who was 14 years old when she told a priest, Fr. Jeffery Bayhi, that a member of the parish had sexually abused her during confession. According to court documents, the priest did not report the abuse. Her parents said that Bayhi, as a mandatory reporter, should have reported the abuse. The “mandatory reporter” designation refers to adults in various official capacities that are required to give a report to authorities if they believe a child is being harmed or abused. Mandatory reporters include professions of public trust, including teachers, police officers, members of the clergy and mental health practitioners: In their petition, plaintiffs alleged Fr. Bayhi had knowledge of and failed to report that Mr. Charlet had inappropriate sexual contact with Rebecca. In particular, the petition alleged Fr. Bayhi (1) negligently advised Rebecca, then 14 years of age, during the sacrament of confession on at least three separate occasions she needed to personally handle the alleged sexually abusive situation with Mr. Charlet, and (2) negligently failed to immediately report the abuse to law enforcement personnel and Rebecca’s parents pursuant to La. Child. Code art. 609. The court held that Louisiana law exempts priests from being mandatory reporters when receiving confidential communications: La. Child. Code art. 603 (emphasis added). Pursuant to the plain language, priests are expressly excluded from the mandatory reporting requirement, i.e., mandatory reporter status, when receiving “a confidential communication, as defined in Code of Evidence Article 511, from a person [when the priest], in the course of the discipline or practice of that church, denomination, or organization, is authorized or accustomed to hearing confidential communications, and under the discipline or tenets of the church, denomination, or organization has a duty to keep such communications confidential.” Therefore, priests are not mandatory reporters of information acquired when (1) the communication is confidential communication under La. Code Evid. art. 511, (2) the priest in the course of the discipline or practice of that church, denomination, or organization, is authorized or accustomed to hearing the confidential communication, and (3) the priest under the discipline or tenets of the church, denomination, or organization has a duty to keep such communication confidential… In accord with the tenets of the Roman Catholic Church, a priest is both authorized and accustomed to hearing confidential communications in sacramental confessions. Requiring priests to report communications made during confession would force them to violate Catholic codes, and would place them at risk for excommunication, and also violate their freedom to practice their religion, the court ruled. But if the priest learns information outside the confessional that would lead him to believe a child is being harmed, he is duty-bound to report: In a 2014 ruling in the case that resuscitated Rebecca Mayeux’s lawsuit against the Baton Rouge Diocese and the Rev. Jeff Bayhi, the state Supreme Court said a dispute remained “concerning whether the communications between the child and the priest were confessions per se and whether the priest obtained knowledge outside the confessional that would trigger his duty to report” sexual abuse allegations. However, priests must encourage people who use confession to confide about instances of harm or abuse of children to report the matter to the authorities.
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28292
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Muslim militants killed 120 Christians in Nigeria during a three-week period in February and March 2019.
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What's true: Although not entirely reliable, various local news reports corroborated the incidents and deaths described in reports by Breitbart and the Christian Post website. What's false: Religious affiliation is a secondary issue in the ongoing Nigerian herder-farmer conflict, which impartial experts consistently describe as being primarily a dispute over natural resources and land usage. Reports in the U.S. in March 2019 failed to properly explain the complexity of the conflict, and Breitbart's article did not mention a major reported atrocity perpetrated against the mostly Muslim Fula people in February 2019.
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mixture
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Politics
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In the aftermath of the March 2019 Christchurch, New Zealand, massacre in which a white supremacist gunman fatally shot 50 people at two mosques, some right-leaning observers quickly turned their attention to atrocities allegedly perpetrated by Muslims against Christians in recent weeks. On 16 March, Breitbart reported that “Nigerian Muslim militants” had killed 120 Christians within a space of three weeks since late February 2019. In another article published the next day, the same author wrote that “Political leaders and public figures were falling over themselves this weekend to condemn the mosque attacks in New Zealand, while dozens of Christians were slaughtered by Muslims in Nigeria to the sound of crickets.” That article cited a report from the website Christian Post, which in turn cited a 14 March press release posted by the U.K.-based charity Christian Solidarity Worldwide, which read: “At least 120 people have died since 9 February in a series of attacks by Fulani militia on communities in the Adara chiefdom of southern Kaduna. The violence comes in the wake of a statement by the Kaduna state governor on the eve of Nigeria’s presidential elections in February regarding an alleged massacre of Fulani villagers in the area.” Christian Solidarity Worldwide outlined the purported details of five recent attacks: On 11 March, 52 people were killed and around 100 homes were destroyed in attacks on Inkirimi and Dogonnoma villages in Maro, Kajuru Local Government Area … The day before, on 10 March, Ungwan Barde village in Kajuru suffered an attack in which 17 people died and dozens of homes were burnt. On 26 February, 38 people were killed and around 40 homes were destroyed in attacks on the Karamai community in Maro, Kajuru. Ten people were killed in an earlier attack on Ungwan Barde on 10 February, including a pregnant woman. Prior to this, on 9 February, six people were killed in isolated attacks in the area. Although not entirely reliable, local news reports largely corroborate the incidents and deaths described by Breitbart and Christian Solidarity Worldwide. It is difficult to arrive at a definitive total number of persons killed, but the numbers claimed by Breitbart and Christian Solidarity Worldwide are certainly plausible and, unfortunately, in keeping with the ongoing farmer-herder conflict that has affected parts of Nigeria in recent years. However, that conflict has a complex set of causes and motivations, and the Breitbart and Christian Post articles in March 2019 served readers poorly by focusing exclusively on the religious affiliations of the groups involved — something that impartial experts have presented as not being a central cause of the conflict — while failing to mention other, much more relevant factors. Breitbart also markedly failed to mention in their article the single largest atrocity recorded during February and March 2019, one in which members of the mainly Christian Adara ethnic group were alleged to have killed 130 members of the mainly Muslim Fula ethnic group. Since around 2017, longstanding and violent clashes have escalated between various groups of farmers in different parts of Nigeria and semi-nomadic cattle herders from the mostly Muslim Fula ethnic group (known collectively as Fulani). In the summer of 2018, the International Crisis Group, a non-governmental organization that researches violent conflicts around the world, described the spiraling clashes as “Nigeria’s gravest security challenge,” offering this outline of the farmer-herder conflict: In the first half of 2018, more than 1,300 Nigerians have died in violence involving herders and farmers. What were once spontaneous attacks have become premeditated scorched-earth campaigns in which marauders often take villages by surprise at night. Now claiming about six times more civilian lives than the Boko Haram insurgency, the conflict poses a grave threat to the country’s stability and unity… The conflict is fundamentally a land-use contest between farmers and herders across the country’s Middle Belt. It has taken on dangerous religious and ethnic dimensions, however, because most of the herders are from the traditionally nomadic and Muslim Fulani who make up about 90 per cent of Nigeria’s pastoralists, while most of the farmers are Christians of various ethnicities. … The conflict’s roots lie in climate-induced degradation of pasture and increasing violence in the country’s far north, which have forced herders south; the expansion of farms and settlements that swallow up grazing reserves and block traditional migration routes; and the damage to farmers’ crops wrought by herders’ indiscriminate grazing. But three immediate factors explain the 2018 escalation. First is the rapid growth of ethnic militias, such as those of the Bachama and Fulani in Adamawa state, bearing illegally acquired weapons. Second is the failure of the federal government to prosecute past perpetrators or heed early warnings of impending attacks. Third is the introduction in November 2017 of anti-grazing laws vehemently opposed by herders in Benue and Taraba states, and the resultant exodus of herders and cattle, largely into neighbouring Nasarawa and, to a lesser degree, Adamawa, sparking clashes with farmers in those states. In a major December 2018 report, Amnesty International also described the conflict as one being waged over access to natural resources, and they characterized ethnic (and thereby religious) links between communities as a factor that inflames retaliation rather than being a primary underlying cause of the conflict itself: This report documents the violent clashes between members of farmer communities and members of herder communities in parts of Nigeria, particularly in the northern parts of the country, over access to resources: water, land and pasture. It also documents the failure of the Nigerian government in fulfilling its constitutional responsibility of protection of lives and property by refusing to investigate, arrest and prosecute perpetrators of attacks. The report shows how government’s inaction fuels impunity, resulting in attacks and reprisal attacks, with at least 3,641 people killed between January 2016 and October 2018, 57 percent of them in 2018 alone. Amnesty International discovered that majority of the attacks by both sides were retaliatory, which then affected nearby communities because of the ethnic connection with the targeted communities. In an email sent to Snopes.com, Brandon Kendhammer, associate professor of political science at Ohio University and an expert in Nigerian politics, said the religious dynamics of the conflict were further complicated by the fact that Fulani herders had also been attacking farmers in Zamfara State, “where nearly all the farmers and victims are also Muslim.” He added, “Here, the conflict very clearly appears to be rooted in the impunity of criminal gangs.” The farmer-herder conflict escalated further in early 2019 with a series of attacks, especially in Kaduna State in Northwestern Nigeria. Obtaining reliable, impartial information about the ongoing conflict from local news media is difficult, but the Nigeria Security Tracker — a Council on Foreign Relations project run by former U.S. Ambassador to Nigeria John Campbell — attempts to verify details by collating as many such reports as possible. According to the Nigeria Security Tracker, as downloaded on 19 March 2019, these are the recorded incidents of farmer-herder conflict-related violence between 1 February and 15 March 2019: Although not included in the 19 March Nigeria Security Tracker, additional killings appear to have taken place on 16 March when, according to reports, suspected Fulani militants set fire to dozens of homes and killed 10 people in the village of Nandu, in the Sanga LGA in Kaduna State. On 13 March, Kaduna State Governor Nasir el-Rufai imposed a 6:00 PM to 6:00 AM curfew in the Kajuru LGA and parts of the Chikun LGA in response to the spiraling violence. On 16 March, Nigeria’s President Muhammadu Buhari released a statement condemning what he called “internecine violence” in Kaduna State, which read (in part): President Muhammadu Buhari has urged the actors in the communal and persistent violence in Kaduna State to come to terms with the fact that mutual violence has no winners, but losers on both sides of the conflict. Reacting to the endless carnage in Kaduna State on Saturday, President Buhari said, “I am deeply troubled by the fact that sanctity of life is now treated with such reckless disregard that people derive joy in shedding the blood of others or perceived enemies.” According to the President, “inhumanity has replaced compassion in the hearts and minds of the perpetrators of these atrocities.” “No responsible leader would go to bed happy to see his citizens savagely killing one another on account of ethnic and religious bigotry”, he further noted sadly. According to President Buhari, “Violence cannot be the solution to these persistent conflicts as long as people resort to deliberate provocations, revenge and counter revenge.” The ongoing herder-farmer conflict in Nigeria has claimed thousands of lives in recent years, particularly during an escalation of the violence in 2019 and especially in Kaduna State, where dozens of mostly Christian Adara were reported to have been killed in February and March by mostly Muslim Fulani militants. Local news reports, as recorded in the Council on Foreign Relations’ Nigeria Security Tracker, largely corroborate the incidents and deaths described by Breitbart and the Christian Solidarity Worldwide non-profit group. However, reports by Breitbart and the Christian Post website failed readers by presenting a woefully narrow viewpoint on the conflict, emphasizing only the religious affiliations of the participants while neglecting to mention what impartial experts have highlighted as being the primary driving force behind it: a dispute over natural resources and land usage. Furthermore, while Breitbart’s article provided details of several reported attacks by Fulani herders on farmers in Kaduna State in February and March 2019, it did not mention the attack on the mainly Muslim Fula ethnic group, which was the single largest reported atrocity during the time period in question. Notwithstanding the fact that some local Christian leaders disputed the death toll presented in that case, Breitbart’s failure to even mention the attack on the Fula group constitutes a glaring omission in any article purporting to be a reliable or impartial examination of what is, to begin with, a volatile and complicated conflict.
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33853
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An attempted abduction of a child from a mall or amusement park was thwarted because the kidnappers forgot to change the child's shoes.
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Urban legend holds that an attempted abduction of a child from a mall or amusement park was thwarted because the kidnappers neglected to change the child's shoes.
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false
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Horrors, Parental Nightmares
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One of the most effective types of scarelore is the “barely escaped from the clutches of evil” variety, as nothing drives home a warning better than a vivid first-person account of a narrowly-averted tragedy. The explicit warning presented in a common child abduction legend is obvious: You must never, ever let your child out of your sight in a public place, even for a moment — kidnappers could be lurking anywhere, and the attempted abduction in the following examples was foiled only due to the diligence of an employee and the thoroughness of a store’s security precautions: CHILD ALERT Please take the time and forward this to any friend who has children! Thanks! Wanted to share something that happened today while shopping at Sam’s club. A mother was leaning over looking for meat and turned around to find her 4 yr. old daughter was missing, I was standing there right beside her, well she was calling her daughter and no luck. I asked a man who worked at Sam’s to announce it over the loud speaker for Katie. Well, he did, and let me say he walked past me when I asked and went to a pole where there was a phone right there to make his announcement for all doors, and gates to be locked a code something…so they locked all the doors at once. This took all of 3 min after I asked the guy to do this. They found the little girl 5 min later crunched in a bathroom stall, her head was half shaved, and she was dressed in her underwear with a bag of clothes, a razor, and wig sitting on the floor besides her. Whoever this person was, took the little girl, brought her into the bathroom, shaved half her head, undressed her in a matter of less than 10 min. Makes me shake to no end. Please keep an eye out for your kids when in shopping places. It only took a few minutes to do all of this, another 5 min and she would have been out the door…I am still in shock some sick person could do this, let alone in a matter of minutes…The little girl is fine… thank God for fast workers who didn’t take any chances. Thanks for reading. Please keep praying for our children. Especially now that school is about to start. Just reading this was enough for me. I’m making a pledge to keep watch for all kids, young and old! We know those little kids slip by us so fast when we are in a store. Especially when they see toys or candy. Everything can be replaced but a life. No parent would want to lose a child in no way form or fashion! [Collected via e-mail, March 2008] One of my brother’s works at the Sam’s Club in Murfreesboro, TN and yesterday he called me with some very disturbing news. As most stores, Sam’s has different codes that are stated over the intercom throughout the store such as for extra help, severe weather, etc. Sam’s has a code called “Code Adam” for when a child becomes missing or is feared kidnapped. The store is immediately shut down and employees are instructed to go to an entrance/exit. That code was called yesterday at his store. A mother had her four year old daughter standing next to her as she was looking in the meat department. Then she noticed she was gone and notified a manager who then notified the store manager. Immediately, the “Code Adam” was called and all employees went to each exit in the store not allowing anyone to enter or exit. They found the little girl in the bathroom with the predator. Her head was partially shaved, she had on a different outfit, and a wig was found. This all happened within less than five minutes. Thank God Sam’s Club has this sort of “code” or that little girl would have been gone. I wanted to pass this along to each of you so that you are aware that predators seem to be less fearful and braver these days. Please pass this along to anyone you know with small children. [Collected via e-mail, November 2009] Dear All. This is a very serious message that I hope you can pass on to as many people as you can. Last night at the big ASDA in Bradley a three-year-old girl went missing. Fortunately their policy when something like this happens is to lock the doors. The little girl was found in the toilets with two Romanian women, one shaving her head and the other dressing her in boys’ clothes. This comes from an employee who was there last night. Please pass the message round to as many as you can and remain extra vigilant with your own children. [Collected via e-mail, August 2011] Friend of Ana’s went to Wonderland yesterday. She was with another friend too and together they had 4 children (each w 2). Kids were 4-5-6 years old. While they were busy w 1 of the 4 kids one of the other kids disappeared … Literally. 5 year old girl. After frantically searching for 2 minutes they alerted the Park’s security who then searched the Park for the next 5-6 mins. The Park then closed all exits and would not allow anyone too leave while they continued to search for the next 45 mins. Still they couldn’t find her and the Park was forced to re-open the exits. The Police advised Ana’s friend to focus on childrens’ shoes and nothing else. So she watched the exits and mobs of people were leaving. She noticed 1 man carrying a sleeping child with a blanket over her. And the child’s hair was a different colour but she said to the police that she had noticed a child wearing the same shoes but ……. it probably wasn’t her child. The police stopped the man and it turns out that it was indeed the right child. The child had been tranquillized by injection to the neck and was sleeping. Her hair had been cut short and had been spray painted a different colour. And all her clothing had been changed except …. her shoes. They got the perp and, thank God the child is fine. Moral: don’t take your eyes off your child for even 1 second. Unbelievable!!! Although these warnings may contain some good advice, the legend they present exaggerates both the prevalence and manner of kidnappings. A child is far more likely to be snatched by a family member or ex-spouse in a custodial dispute than to be the victim of a random abduction. And rarely will kidnappers go through such elaborate procedures as the ones hinted at here — luring a child outside where he or she can be quickly bundled into an automobile is far more effective and less risky than trying to smuggle one out the exit of a crowded public space. (Some of the examples presented above don’t even make much logical sense. Why would abductors waste precious getaway time shaving a child’s head — with a razor, yet — when they already had a wig on hand to disguise their victim’s natural hair color and style?) This form of tale that has been circulating for decades, always involving the kidnapping of children from family-type public places such as amusement parks and shopping centers. In the basic form of the legend, a kidnapper snatches a child away from an inattentive parent, drugs it, and hustles it into a restroom; there the abductor performs a quick haircut, dye job, and clothing change on the child to conceal its identity (and sometimes to obscure its gender) and wraps it in blankets before attempting to quickly and quietly spirit the child off the premises. Meanwhile, a vigilant security force has sealed off all the exits, and the attempted kidnapping is thwarted either because the kidnapper realizes he cannot escape undetected and simply abandons his intended victim in the bathroom, or because the child’s parent is monitoring the exits (in person or via security cameras) and recognizes the youngster by its distinctive shoes, which the kidnapper has neglected to change or remove. More malevolent versions of this story end not with the thwarting of the abduction attempt, but with the discovery of the child’s original clothing on a restroom floor (along with other evidence of what had transpired, such as loose hair, scissors, and a bottle of hair dye). In these versions police tell the victims’ parents they are powerless to recover their children (whom they warn are probably already on their way out of the country to be used as unwilling organ donors or sex slaves), and the parents are paid off to keep quiet about the abductions. Often the payoff for the parents’ silence is claimed to be something absurdly small in value, such as free passes to the amusement park where the kidnapping took place, yet people continue to take the story at face value. (Would you keep quiet about your child’s disappearance for any amount of money, much less something as paltry as a few free tickets?) The tale of the “haircut-and-dye-job” kidnappers goes back several decades and is tied to the growth of cities, the movement away from rural areas and small towns, and the increase in the crime rate that occurred in America after World War II. The small-town communities where everyone knew everyone else, outsiders were few, and residents felt safe leaving their doors unlocked at night began to disappear; as people increasingly became part of large, impersonal urban centers, they began to develop fears about the relative anonymity and facelessness of their day-to-day lives. Several of these fears are expressed in this one legend alone: fear of crime and mistrust of strangers (you don’t know everyone here; criminals could be anywhere in the crowds you encounter every day, blending in with the masses), lack of faith in the willingness and effectiveness of police protection (the police are “powerless” to recover the missing children and therefore don’t even try), and distrust of powerful, monolithic corporations (these companies don’t care about you or your children; they’ll pay you off to make sure you don’t dent their enormous profits or ruin their carefully-cultivated family image by blabbing the TRUTH to the media). Even though most versions describe the kidnappers as being caught because of their carelessness, the story still serves its function of providing a vivid cautionary tale to drive home the message that you must carefully keep an eye on your children at all times while out in public: just a few moments’ slip-up can lead to disaster. Over the years, this story has been set in virtually every type of locale where families mingle with large numbers of strangers, such as shopping malls, beaches, carnivals, fairs, and amusement parks. Since the details of urban legends tend to gravitate towards the most prominent examples of their kind, this legend has become more and more associated with theme parks such as Disneyland and Canada’s Wonderland, and big-box retailers such as Walmart stores, examples of well-known large facilities frequented by families with children and parts of huge corporate enterprises. (In truth, no child has ever been kidnapped from a Disney theme park, and although the abduction and murder of 6-year-old Adam Walsh led Walmart to create its Code Adam protocol for locating missing children in their stores, Adam Walsh actually disappeared from a Sears outlet, and no evidence was found to indicate the abductor had made an effort to alter Adam’s appearance.) Sightings: An episode of NBC’s Law & Order: SVU (“Stolen”; original air date 12 October 2001) opens with a baby girl being kidnapped from a grocery store; the abductor takes her to a bathroom, drugs her, changes her clothes, and cuts her hair. In April 2012, a reporter for a television station in Israel was suspended after running the “attempted abduction at Disney park” rumor as a news story. That news outlet was duped by a man claiming to be the father of a 9-year-old girl who went missing at Walt Disney World and was then discovered in one of the park’s bathrooms drugged and with her head shaved.
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39858
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Viral posts on Facebook that allege that President Obama ordered a flag at half mast for singer/actress Whitney Houston but two years later, when U.S. Ambassador Shirley Temple Black died, the President ignored her death. Other versions compare Whitney Houston and U.S. Navy sniper Chris Kyle, who was murdered on February 2, 2013.
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Obama Ordered Half Staff Flag for Whitney Houston but not for Shirley Temple
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false
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Celebrities, Crime / Police
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There was no national order to lower the flags by President Obama for singer Whitney Houston. An order to lower the flags in the state of New Jersey was issued by Governor Chris Christie. This according to a February 14, 2012 article by NJ.Com, a news site based in New Jersey, that said, Governor “Chris Christie plans to sign an executive order requesting flags on public buildings in New Jersey to fly at half-staff on the day of Jersey native Whitney Houston’s funeral.” Houston was found dead in her hotel room bathroom at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, Ca on February 12, 2010. She was in the Los Angeles area for the Grammy Awards. The official coroner’s report listed her cause of death as accidental drowning with heart disease and cocaine use listed as contributing factors. The article also said that the memorial service was held at Newark’s New Hope Baptist Church, where Ms. Houston began singing when she was a child. Almost two years later, on February 10, 2014 former U.S. Ambassador and child star Shirley Temple Black died from natural causes at her home in Woodside, California at the age of 85. President Obama made no comment of the services to her country by the late actress. This according to a February 11, 2014 article by the Washington Times that said the President “chose to put out a statement about the retirement of a civil rights activist Tuesday while remaining mum about the death of former child star and diplomat Shirley Temple Black. ” According to her page on biography.com, Shirley Temple Black serve as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 1969 to 1970. In 1974 she was appointed by President Gerald Ford as U.S. Ambassador to Ghana. From 1976 to 1977 she served as chief of protocol of the United States. Her page also said that “Temple became the only person to date to achieve the rank of honorary U.S. Foreign Service officer,” in 1988. One year later, President George H. W. Bush appointed her as ambassador to Czechoslovakia, a role that she served until 1992. Chris Kyle was a decorated U.S. Navy Seal with 150 confirmed kills. On February 2, 2013 he tragically met his death at a pistol range. Texas Governor Rick Perry issued a formal statement but we have not found any official statement from the White House. Kyle and his friend, Chad Littlefield, were helping a friend, U.S. Marine Reservist Eddie Ray Routh, overcome post traumatic stress disorder when Routh allegedly turned is weapon on Kyle and Littlefield and open fired. This according to a September 17, 2013 article by an NBC News affiliate in Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas that said, “Routh, 25, is facing capital murder charges after police said the troubled war vet shot and killed Chris Kyle, the most lethal sniper in U.S. history.” Routh’s trial is expected to begin in May, 2014. Posted 2/17/14 Updated 02/20/14 Comments
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1440
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Recreational marijuana becomes legal in Illinois on New Year's Day.
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Many pot-smoking adults in Illinois will ring in the new year on a high note when recreational marijuana use becomes legal in the state on Jan. 1.
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true
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Health News
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Starting New Year’s Day, people 21 and older will be able to legally buy up to 30 grams of marijuana flower, 5 grams of marijuana concentrate, or 500 grams of THC-infused products such as edibles at licensed commercial dealers throughout the state. Cannabis consumers are expected to flock to the handful of licensed shops across Chicago on New Year’s Day. On the city’s North Side, a dealer sold $250 tickets to clients who wanted to be at the front of the line when the store opens early in the morning next Wednesday. Another shop, Dispensary 33, in the city’s Uptown neighborhood, will use a paging system to usher in customers who are waiting at a bar next door. “The whole neighborhood is joining on the party... it’ll be a whole new world in Chicago on Jan. 1,” manager Abigail Watkins said, noting that many businesses in the neighborhood are offering specials and deals to celebrate the day. Illinois joins 10 other states and the District of Columbia where small amounts of the drug for adult use is legal. Medical marijuana in Illinois has been legal since 2014. In June, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, signed into law marijuana legislation that also allows for some 700,000 marijuana-related records and convictions to be erased. Not everyone approves of the legislation. “The message that... these foolish politicians are sending to our communities and especially to our young kids is that it’s no big deal,” said Illinois Family Institute Executive Director David Smith, who opposes the measure. “We know that it’s a big deal from all of the studies that have been done about the high-potency marijuana that is today’s product... we are seeing a spike in marijuana illnesses and addictions,” he said. Private pot sales, driving while high and consuming marijuana in public will remain prohibited in state. The law is projected to generate more than $57 million in new tax and fee revenue for Illinois in fiscal 2020, which begins on July 1 for the financially troubled state, according to Illinois’ revenue department. (This story refiles to insert apostrophe in New Year’s Day)
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2024
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Can money motivate weight loss? Perhaps at first.
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Obese people may be more likely to slim down if they have money riding on their success through financial incentives — but the weight might creep back once the monetary carrot is gone, according to a U.S. study.
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true
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Health News
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A program in which people stood to lose cash if they failed to lose weight appeared to motivate them, but the motivation didn’t last, the study — published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine — found. All participants received weight loss counseling, but some also signed a “deposit contract,” where the funds they deposited in an account were matched and awarded to them at the end of a certain period of time if they achieved their weight loss goals. If they failed to hit their goal, they lost the money. People with the “deposit contract” lost an average of nine pounds (4.1 kg) over eight months, while the participants with no money to lose lost only one pound. “Financial incentives produced significant weight loss over an eight-month intervention,” wrote Leslie John at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who led the study. “However, participants regained weight post-intervention.” For the study, John and her colleagues randomly assigned 66 adults with BMIs — body mass indexes — of 30 to 40, mostly men, to either have a counseling session with a dietician plus monthly weigh-ins, or the same program plus the deposit contract. BMI is a measure of weight for height. Obese is classified as 30 and above. Under the contract, participants could deposit up to $3 per day in an account that the researchers matched dollar-for-dollar. If at the end of the month, they had reached their weight-loss goal — up to one pound per week — they could claim the money. John said the reasoning behind an incentive program is that people respond more readily to the immediate threat of losing money compared to the distant threat of weight-related health problems. In the study, the threat of losing money did seem to push people to lose more weight. But only 7 of the 66 actually met the study goal of shedding one pound per week over the first 24 weeks of the eight months. And nine months after the program ended, the financial-incentive group had gained back most of the weight. Other studies have also suggested incentives may work, John said. Last year, a different research team reported that giving free prepared meals as part of a structured weight loss program helped obese people lose weight. John said more research is needed to see if the initial success of the plan can be extended. In the real world, money for weight loss could be offered by insurance plans. “Obesity is hugely costly to insurance companies, so they have financial incentives to look at this,” she said, noting that incentives are only really effective in the short- and medium-term. “I think we still need to show that the weight loss can be maintained,” she added. SOURCE: bit.ly/hmDfta
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A woman died at a movie theater while watching the movie It in September 2017.
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These articles are not accurate. As of this writing, we’ve yet to see any credible reports about someone suffering a heart attack and dying during the new Stephen King movie.
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false
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Junk News, fake news, it, it deaths
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Did a woman die during a screening of the movie It in Syracuse, New York? Or was it Monroe, Louisiana? Maybe Paducah, Kentucky? Well, that depends on which fake news article from the web site SundayPost.org you happened to read. They all went a little something like this: A 41-year-old woman died in a Syracuse cinema auditorium Saturday while watching a screening of Stephen Kings horror movie remake, IT. The incident occurred at Regal Cinemas in Syracuse, New York. The cinema-goer attended the new release screening with friends and had complained of chest pains and difficulty breathing during one the film’s climax scenes. According to witnesses, the woman let out a large scream and then collapsed in her seat. In September 2017, SundayPost.org published at least three fake news articles claiming that a woman died during a screening of the movie It. All of these articles were nearly verbatim copies of one another, except for the name of the city where the death allegedly took place: This is a common tactic among fake news purveyors as it allows them to publish a single hoax article numerous times with only slight changes. We saw a major uptick in this type of story in early 2016 as web sites such as The McKenzie Post and Headline Brief published dozens of articles claiming that [insert celebrity name] had moved to [insert small town]. But the rumor went beyond SundayPost.org. The web site QualitySharing.com, for instance, upped the death count to 43 when they posted a similar story: A packed theatre in Haddonfield, New York watched an advanced screening of IT and they had to cut the movie short after several people were so horrified they passed out and went into cardiac arrest. […] Scientist Frederick Bookman gave a statement saying: Unfortunately, movies are not just entertainment, but a way to attack your consciousness. This movie could have triggered the brain by those images, they are powerful too, and their body had a natural response to terror. Fight or flight. And sadly it was flight. So please be careful when you looking for entertainment in movies like IT Unlike SundayPost.org, QualitySharing.com carried a disclaimer labeling itself as “satire”: Qualitysharing.com is the most notorious fauxtire & satire entertainment website in the world. If it’s trending on social media you’ll find it here!
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Cigarettes kicked out of school in China.
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China has banned smoking in schools, state media reported on Wednesday, the latest step in a government drive to kick the country’s pervasive tobacco habit.
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true
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Health News
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Despite years of campaigning by health activists, China is the world’s largest consumer of cigarettes and smokers can be spotted everywhere, even in schools and hospitals. But with a huge public health burden looming ever larger, China has recently intensified efforts to stamp out smoking. The State Council, or cabinet, is aiming for a nationwide ban on smoking in public places this year, and several cities have already introduced anti-smoking regulations. But critics say authorities only enforce bans sporadically, if at all, and it is common to see people puffing away in front of no smoking signs. The latest ban, imposed by the Ministry of Education, covers kindergartens, elementary and middle schools, and vocational schools. Universities must set up smoking areas and forbid lighting up in academic buildings. Anti-tobacco efforts have been hampered by the country’s powerful tobacco monopoly, health campaigners say, which pays hundreds of billions of yuan in taxes every year. Critics say another problem is that it is not clear who is responsible for punishing violators of cigarette bans, meaning officials often just turn a blind eye. Schools can no longer seek sponsorship from cigarette brands or post tobacco advertisements on campus, the ministry said in a notice. School principals must enforce the ban by installing smoke alarms or surveillance cameras to spot offenders. School canteens must also stop selling tobacco. Schools that do not crack down properly will be punished, the ministry said. As part of the battle against smoking, the government had earlier urged Communist Party cadres and government officials to stop smoking in schools, workplaces, stadiums, and on public transport and elsewhere to set a good example.
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Guam’s Christmas trees dosed with chemical to kill pests.
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Christmas trees arriving by ship to the U.S. territory of Guam are getting decked out with a special decoration: Doses of methyl bromide gas to prevent them from becoming nesting grounds for invasive species.
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true
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Guam, Trees, Science, General News, Invasive species, Hagatna, Christmas
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Guam’s Customs and Quarantine’s BioSecurity Task Force is filling containers of imported Christmas trees with odorless and colorless methyl bromide gas to kill potentially invasive species, The Pacific Daily News reports. Customs agents have treated six containers of more than 2,500 imported trees, wreaths and garlands and expect to treat another seven containers in coming weeks, officials said. The Guam Invasive Species Council approved the Department of Agriculture’s fumigation policy in 2016 to prevent unwanted pests from impacting Guam’s agriculture, natural resources or the homes of Christmas celebrants. Each container will be released after a customs inspection to ensure the treatment works, officials said. The Environmental Protection Agency characterizes methyl bromide as a toxic fumigant to control a wide variety of agriculture and shipping pests including fungi, weeds, insects, roundworms, and rodents.
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36626
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A viral photograph showing a woman pulling two girls away from teargas shot over the U.S.-Mexico border by American forces was faked.
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Were Photographs Showing the United States Firing Teargas at a Crowd in Mexico ‘Staged’?
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false
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Disinformation, Fact Checks
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On November 25th, 2018, at the tail end of the long Thanksgiving weekend in the United States, the United States government closed down the San Ysidro port of entry — one of the busiest land crossings in the world — into and out of Mexico. When a group of people ran to the border crossing, officials from the American side shot tear gas and smoke bombs at unarmed people through the barriers into Mexico.The United States purportedly did so because of rumors that a group of people from a large caravan that has trekked from Central America to the United States had been planning to “rush” or “storm” the border. A photograph from Reuters photographer Kim Hyung-Hoon from the Mexico side went viral:Instantly and predictably, the usual disinformation purveyors went into overdrive to claim that the photographs were faked with the usual “evidence” of fakery. One story read:Yesterday’s Headline is todays hoax. The illegal alien mother ‘fleeing’ from the border wall was all a lie. It was a setup.After further review, yesterday’s ‘horrific’ picture of a woman with barefoot children running from the US border wall was a hoax. In the background of the picture a group of men are posing for one camera man and another is running towards another camera man. In other areas, people are just standing around. The woman with the children was just a photo-op….It included a photograph with mark-ups as “proof” of this claim:The photographs were not faked, and they accurately show the chaos that stemmed from the decision on the part of the United States to fire tear gas and smoke bombs at unarmed protestors, as multiple photographs and videos from the scene clearly show:#US border guards shooting several rounds of tear gas into #Mexico to disperse migrants massed at the border in #Tijuana. Many women and children around… «I fainted, » one woman told me. pic.twitter.com/HZ6RsiNBLM— Jonathan Pedneault (@j_pedneault) November 25, 2018The reason so many reporters were there is because there was a planned demonstration for which caravan members had been preparing the night before by making flags and banners at the camp to show to Mexican and American border agents as they approached the port. Many of them were made by the children traveling with the group:Hundreds of Central American men, women, and children walked with banners and baby strollers from the Benito Juarez stadium to the El Chaparral port of entry, on the US-Mexico border. They marched to ask for asylum and thank the Mexican authorities for their support. […]But some individuals pushed their way through, opening a breach in the line of police shields that was quickly widened by dozens of migrants who sought to run into US territory.The more people began running towards the border, the more joined them. I observed as the migrants, pushing baby strollers and wheelchairs with their meager belongings on their backs, streamed across the Tijuana river to the Mexican immigration offices and through fences to neighboring train tracks.While a few people were able to get up to and through the border wall into the United States, various descriptions of the group “rushing” or “storming” the border are not accurate:Today’s CBP shutdown of the San Ysidro port came about as a large group of migrants marched (and at times ran) toward the port. The goal – according to organizers – was to raise migrants’ visibility and protest asylum wait times https://t.co/uZMmhZPW6i— Stephanie Leutert (@Sleutert) November 25, 2018The Caravana Migrante is an annual trek from Central America to the United States border that is intended to fulfill two objectives — to draw attention to an ongoing humanitarian crisis in the region, and to coordinate large-scale requests to enter the country. The caravans have been going on since at least 2009 and end when participants turn themselves in en masse at the border to request entry into the United States, as asylum can only be requested at a port of entry or from within its borders. (Typically, only a tiny percentage is allowed to remain in the country. )Pressure has been building in Tijuana in particular, where much of the pressure of the United States’ immigration laws and policies have been concentrated because of the port of entry there:The San Ysidro port of entry is the most common place for Central Americans to seek asylum in the US, because it’s so large and because the route to Tijuana is safer than traveling through northeast Mexico into Texas. But for months, the number of asylum seekers going to San Ysidro has outstripped the number the US actually allows in to seek asylum.Under a policy of “metering” asylum seekers, in which US officials limit the number of people who are allowed to enter the port and ask for asylum each day, migrants currently wait two months or longer in Tijuana before being allowed to enter the US.Citing resource constraints, the US allows 60 to 100 asylum seekers — or fewer — into San Ysidro each day. An unofficial wait list of hundreds of people over the summer ballooned to thousands this fall. Before the caravan arrived, wait times stretched to two months, and the migrant shelters in Tijuana were already near capacity.As wave after wave of people arrived in caravans from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, all countries that have been devastated by instability and violence, rumors came crashing down ahead of them, plaguing the journey from start to finish with the usual anti-immigrant propaganda and disinformation fueled by provocateurs and carried along by the misinformed.The backlog and disinformation has culminated in thousands of hungry, bedraggled, and frustrated people stuck just south of the American border, with members of the United States military waiting for “invasions” in riot gear watching through freshly strung barbed wire over the border wall — with still more caravans on their way.
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5845
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Report finds cases of STDs reach all-time high in California.
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The number of cases of sexually transmitted diseases in California reached a record high last year and officials are particularly concerned by a spike in stillbirths due to congenital syphilis, state health authorities said Monday.
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true
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Sexually transmitted diseases, Los Angeles, Chlamydia, Health, North America, California, Gonorrhea, Syphilis, Public health
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More than 300,000 cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis were reported in 2017, a 45 percent increase from five years ago, according to data released by the California Department of Public Health. Chlamydia and gonorrhea are most common among people under 30, the report said. Rates of chlamydia are highest among young women, while men account for the majority of syphilis and gonorrhea cases. If left untreated, chlamydia and gonorrhea can lead to infertility, ectopic pregnancy and chronic pelvic pain. Syphilis can result in blindness, hearing loss and neurologic problems. The figure that caused the greatest alarm for researchers and administrators was 30 stillbirths resulting from congenital syphilis statewide — the highest number reported since 1995, the CDPH said. Los Angeles County alone saw congenital syphilis cases jump from eight in 2013 to 47 last year. “For California to have a steady increase in congenital syphilis is shameful,” said Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, a professor of medicine at University of California, Los Angeles. He pointed to nations such as Cuba, Thailand and Belarus that have nearly eliminated the life-threatening infection seen in infants. “We’ve known how to control syphilis since early 1900s. Seeing it come back like this is a sign of failure of the public health safety net,” Klausner said. Klausner placed much of the blame for the overall STD spike on what he called the “decimation” of public health infrastructure since the 2008 financial crisis. Funding slashed a decade ago hasn’t been restored, leading to continued closing of clinics and collapse of education programs about risks and treatment options. Dr. Heidi Bauer, chief of the state health department’s STD Control Branch, agreed that budget issues are part of the problem. She estimated that about $20 million in state and federal money is allocated yearly to fighting STDs — a small number in a state with nearly 40 million residents. Bauer also suggested the rise in STDs may be a symptom of more general problems in areas such as the economically hard-hit San Joaquin Valley where people are struggling with poverty, substance abuse, mental health issues and homelessness. She also partially blamed the funneling of patients away from public health services toward primary care physicians under the Affordable Care Act. “For sexual health, primary care wasn’t the most effective method,” Bauer said. Someone who depended on public clinics for STD screening and treatment may not want to discuss it with their doctor, or may not have a doctor at all, she said. The health department is spearheading a “multi-pronged” effort to educate the public about the risks and get the word out to medical providers about the latest advances in screening and treatment, Bauer said. Officials are also increasing efforts to follow up on cases, especially those involving pregnant women with syphilis, she said. Experts agreed that sex education in schools and programs in the community raising awareness and having a public discussion about the often stigmatized conditions. “While there are advocates and champions for cancer, nobody is out there saying, ‘I have gonorrhea and these are the best ways to treat it.’ There’s no one out there being a champion for these conditions,” said Klausner. The health department’s director, Dr. Karen Smith, urged sexually active people to use condoms and get tested regularly. Many STDs can be cured with antibiotics if attacked quickly. Rates for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis have been rising nationally for several years. More than two million new cases of all three infections were reported in the United States in 2016 — the most ever, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. CDC numbers for 2017 won’t be available until later this year. __ Follow Weber on Twitter at https://twitter.com/WeberCM
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2514
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New fitness centers cater to aging baby boomers.
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Baby boomers, the generation that vowed to stay forever young, are getting older, designing senior-friendly gyms and becoming their own personal trainers.
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true
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Health News
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In exercise havens for the over-50 set, the cardio machines are typically low impact, the resistance training is mainly air-powered and some group fitness classes are taken sitting down. At Welcyon gyms, founded by husband-and-wife boomers Suzy and Tom Boerboom, the average age of members is 62. “The environment is really designed for those 50 and over,” said Suzy Boerboom. The couple created Welcyon, which has locations in Minnesota and South Dakota, in 2009. It has no tread-mills and no free weights and workouts are customized to members’ levels of fitness. A smart card sets resistance, counts repetitions and adjusts workouts. An important attraction for many boomers: background music is a combination of ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s tunes played at a much lower volume than in traditional gyms. “It was something I could manage,” said 66-year-old Bill Zortman, one of an estimated 78 million baby boomers, defined as the group born between 1946 and 1964, who make up about 26 percent of the U.S. population, according to U.S. Census reports. His thrice-weekly workouts at a Welcyon in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, consists of riding a bicycle or using air-powered resistance machines to strengthen his legs, arms and back. “They make sure I’m not overdoing it,” Zortman said of the staff, who Boerboom said are often boomers themselves. The absence of clanging free weights also cuts down on the racket, Boerboom said, noting that many people over 50 prefer a quieter gym. Group fitness classes for boomers are also modified. “We’re just beginning to develop a group fitness interval training program,” Boerboom said. “It will be four to six people and low impact.” The American Council on Exercise says many of their fitness professionals are baby boomers who specialize in working with older adults. “People in their early 60’s are becoming personal trainers and group fitness instructors,” said Todd Galati, ACE’s director of credentialing. But they are far from the majority, as the average age of ACE’s 50,000 certified fitness professionals is 42, and more than 37 percent are over 40. “Every year I talk to newly certified personal trainers, retired from their career in another field, who want to help people their age become more fit,” Galati said. A recent study published in JAMA Internal Medicine showed that a sample of baby boomers had higher rates of hypertension, diabetes, obesity and high cholesterol than their parents’ generation. “There is a big bad myth about the boomer generation being more fit,” said Dr. Sheldon S. Zinberg, founder of Nifty after Fifty fitness centers for older adults. “In fact, the boomer generation is less fit than their parents were at same age.” The chain has locations in Arizona, California, Nevada, Texas, Virginia and New York. Its programs target muscle power, muscle strength, reaction time, balance and cognitive skills, he said. “At age 40 people lose 0.8 to 1 percent muscle mass each year. By age 60 this accelerates to 1.5 percent,” Zinberg said. At Nifty after Fifty, group fitness classes range from yoga and Zumba to seated volleyball and cane fu, a self-defense class in which participants use a cane. As with Welcyon, there are no tread-mills. “We used to use tread-mills, but we had people falling off,” Zinberg said. “We use recumbent stair steppers, among other exercisers.” He advises people to get fit in their 40s and 50s, “and when you do become older, enjoy a supervised, customized program.” Boerboom said Welcyon plans to open more gyms later this year. “There are over 70 million of us boomers,” she said, “and we have to take care of ourselves.”
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10783
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Screening Guidelines Miss Many Kids With High Cholesterol
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"Although the lead of this story about cholesterol screening of children sticks to the test results without stating that the testing will lead to actual health benefits for children, the body of the story (like the story from TIME that we also reviewed) fails to grapple with the important distinction between screening and health outcomes. In the short-term,screening might make kids worse-off: they will be labeled as being ""high-risk"", they will undergo (painful) blood draws and they may be treated with drugs that will have (rare) adverse effects. This MIGHT be worthwhile if it led to fewer heart attacks or strokes 30 years later, but that is unknown, and some indirect evidence suggests it is unnecessary and that efforts in kids should focus on healthy eating and physicial activity promotion (for obesity prevention, diabetes prevention, and coronary heart disease risk reduction). The story didn’t do justice to these perspectives."
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mixture
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The story says that the cost of universal cholesterol screening of children is a concern, but it does not tell readers what the costs of either screening or treatment might be. Cost is clearly relevant to the story. The researchers blame the lack of health care insurance for the high proportion of parents and grandparents of these children who have never had a cholesterol test. The story does not address the issue of how families would pay for ongoing treatment. The story does not address the absence of studies that would demonstrate that early identification and treatment of elevated cholesterol in children actually prevents heart disease later in life. So the kind of benefit that people should really care about was not addressed. The story points out some of the specific risks identified in studies of statin treatment of adults, but it does not make clear that the safety of these drugs has not been studied in children. Nonethless we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. The story reports that the study is based on data collected from screening of school children in West Virginia. The reporter also includes a comment from a researcher about whether the results would apply to children across the country. But as mentioned above, this story does not make clear that the study looked only at cholesterol levels, and did not look at whether treating elevated levels affected the health of the children. It’s a limitation to what the evidence shows and it should have been explained or differentiated better for readers. The lead of the story focuses on the number of children who are found to have elevated cholesterol through screening. It does not jump to the conclusion that the screening would lead to lower rates of heart disease. Also, by noting that less than two percent of the children tested were found to have cholesterol levels high enough to consider drug treatment, the story offers readers valuable perspective on the actual scope of the problem. However, this story does not point out the distinction between cholesterol levels (an indicator of risk) and heart disease (a health outcome). That omission may lead readers to assume that treating more children would improve their health, something this study did not look at. This story points out that the journal Pediatrics stated that the study authors did not report any relevant financial interests. The story does include comments from an independent expert; however, the independent expert addresses only questions about the efficiency of screening, not the health benefits or harms of identifying children with elevated cholesterol. The story includes comments from an independent expert pointing out alternatives to universal cholesterol screening for children. It also notes that the “first line of defense” is lifestyle changes. The availability of cholesterol screening is not at issue. The novelty of cholesterol screening and treatment is not at issue here. The story does not appear to be based on a news release.
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36231
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"Before Joseph Stalin entered the history books, he was a young, ""hip"" atheist and a democratic socialist."
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Was Dictator Joseph Stalin Once a Hip, Young Democratic Socialist?
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mixture
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Disinformation, Fact Checks
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A meme claiming that Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was once a hip, young atheist and a Democratic Socialist appeared on Facebook (archived here) in August 2019. Beneath a black-and-white photograph of an arguably handsome young man, text read:Josef Stalin was once a hip, intellectual, atheist, and Democrat Socialist, that led protests against the rich and powerful. Rose to power, promising equality, then took over private industry, leading to mass poverty and famine. Killed 20 million of his own people.Atop it, additional commentary mused:I guess they leave this chapter out in today’s college classes.While there was only a small amount of text alongside the image, the entire meme managed to encompass quite a few claims. Among them were:Although the meme never mentioned any particular politicians outright, its reference to democratic socialists seems to tacitly target Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (who is young, popular with young people, and opposes income inequality) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (who describes himself as a democratic socialist and espouses several of the positions above.) Others made that connection more explicit:Joseph Stalin was once a hip, intellectual, atheist, socialist who wanted equality. But once he got government power, he killed 60 million of his own citizens. BEWARE. #AOC— Lori Hendry (@Lrihendry) April 10, 2019By means of association with an historically reviled figure (Stalin), the meme indicts concepts as linked with fascism by proxy, including youth, general hipness, intellectual pursuits, atheism, democratic socialism, equality, opposition to corporatism, and regulations of business.Starting with the easiest claim, the image is a widely-published photograph of Joseph Stalin at age 23 in 1901. That particular photograph is itself a meme, known sometimes as “Handsome Stalin” or “Ridiculously photogenic dictator.” According to a Mashable profile of Stalin, 1901 was the year Stalin left his job in a weather office to become a “a full-time, boot-strapping underground revolutionary.”A second claim holds that Stalin was once considered “hip” by his contemporaries, a descriptor which was entirely subjective and not verifiable. It goes on to describe Stalin as an intellectual; a journal article published in World Politics in 1953 (the year Stalin died) was titled “Stalin as an Intellectual.” A December 2015 thread shared to the vigorously moderated r/AskHistorians on Reddit similarly asked for perspective on whether Stalin’s contemporaries considered him “uncouth” and “uncultured,” or instead an intellectual:Was Joseph Stalin an intellectual? from AskHistoriansA top comment was best summarized as declaring the answer to be subjective. A September 2016 Irish Times article on the same subject argued that Stalin was an intellectual — but the basis of that assertion offers a conflicting historical view of Stalin:In the pantheon of dictators Joseph Stalin’s reputation for brutality is rivalled only by that of Hitler. The conventional image portrays Stalin as nothing more than a bloody tyrant, a machine politician, a heartless bureaucrat and an ideological fanatic. Yet Stalin was also an intellectual who believed in the transformative power of ideas and a bookworm who amassed a significant personal library.The meme describes the young Joseph Stalin as a rising political star, not the Stalin of decades later. According to that article, Stalin did not begin accumulating books until after the Russian Revolution of 1917 — when Stalin was pushing 40:Although his peripatetic lifestyle meant Stalin did not begin to collect books and build a personal library until after the Russian Revolution, by the time of his death in 1953 he had amassed a collection of some 25,000 volumes. In 1925 Stalin drew up a grandiose plan for the classification of his books. He envisioned a library that would contain a diverse store of human knowledge, not just the humanities and social sciences but aesthetics, fiction and natural sciences.That timeline was echoed in a November 2014 profile in The Atlantic, which explained Stalin’s stalled-out political career in his twenties and thirties:Year by year, crisis by crisis, a fine-grained picture of Stalin’s intellectual development nevertheless emerges. It is easy to forget, but on the eve of the Russian Revolution, Stalin was in his late 30s and had nothing to show for his life. He had “no money, no permanent residence, and no profession other than punditry,” meaning that he wrote articles for illegal newspapers. He certainly had no training in statecraft, and no experience managing anything at all. The Bolshevik coup d’état of 1917 brought him and his comrades their first, glorious taste of success. Their unlikely revolution—the result of Lenin’s high-risk gambles—validated their obscure and fanatical ideology. More to the point, it brought them personal security, fame, and power they had never before known.Per the meme, Stalin was known in his early years to be hip, intellectual, and a leader to fellow youth. But historical accounts indicate that despite Stalin’s youthful commitment to his ideals, roughly two decades passed before he made any meaningful mark on Russian history at all.A fourth claim in the meme was that Stalin was an atheist, another assertion largely not in dispute. But the image was taken in 1901, not long after Stalin left a seminary in 1899, suggesting that in his early life he was not so committed to atheism as he was during his later years:Stalin was of Georgian — not Russian — origin, and persistent rumours claim that he was Ossetian on the paternal side. He was the son of a poor cobbler in the provincial Georgian town of Gori in the Caucasus, then an imperial Russian colony. The drunken father savagely beat his son. Speaking only Georgian at home, Joseph learned Russian — which he always spoke with a guttural Georgian accent — while attending the church school at Gori (1888–94). He then moved to the Tiflis Theological Seminary, where he secretly read Karl Marx, the chief theoretician of international Communism, and other forbidden texts, being expelled in 1899 for revolutionary activity, according to the “legend”—or leaving because of ill health, according to his doting mother.The fifth and most central claim was that Stalin was a “Democrat [sic] Socialist,” referencing a modern political affiliations known as democratic socialism:American politicians today who are associated with democratic socialism generally favor New Deal-style programs, believing that government is a force for good in people’s lives and that a large European-style welfare state can exist in a capitalist society. They generally support ideas such as labor reform and pro-union policies, tuition-free public universities and trade schools, universal healthcare, federal jobs programs, fair taxation that closes loopholes that the wealthiest citizens have found, and using taxes on the rich and corporations to pay for social welfare programs. (Of course the Democratic Socialists of America website has a whole page on this very question, as do the campaign websites for Ocasio-Cortez and Salazar, as well as that of Senator Bernie Sanders, another prominent democratic socialist. )In history, Stalin’s name is attached to a specific form of political ideology known, appropriately, as Stalinism:Stalinism, the method of rule, or policies, of Joseph Stalin, Soviet Communist Party and state leader from 1929 until his death in 1953. Stalinism is associated with a regime of terror and totalitarian rule … In a party dominated by intellectuals and rhetoricians, Stalin stood for a practical approach to revolution, devoid of ideological sentiment. Once power was in Bolshevik hands, the party leadership gladly left to Stalin tasks involving the dry details of party and state administration. In the power struggle that followed Vladimir Lenin’s death in 1924, the intellectual sophistication and charismatic appeal of Stalin’s rivals proved no match for the actual power he had consolidated from positions of direct control of the party machinery. By 1929 his major opponents were defeated; and Stalinist policies, which had undergone several shifts during the power struggle, became stabilized. Stalin’s doctrine of the monolithic party emerged during the battle for power; he condemned the “rotten liberalism” of those who tolerated discussion on or dissent from party policies. […]Basic to Stalinism was the doctrine of “socialism in one country,” which held that, though the socialist goal of world proletarian revolution was not to be abandoned, a viable classless society could be built within Soviet boundaries and despite encirclement by a largely capitalist world. Stalin, appealing both to socialist revolutionary fervour and to Russian nationalism, launched in the late 1920s a program of rapid industrial development of unprecedented magnitude. A “class war” was declared on the rich farmers in the name of the poor, and Russian agriculture was rapidly collectivized, against considerable rural resistance, to meet the needs of urban industry.Given Stalin’s role in world history, it is unlikely that any modern political entities would rush to describe themselves as “Stalinist,” and that the term would function more as a pejorative hurled at opponents regardless of their ideology. And despite use of the word “socialism,” the definition of Stalinism went on to describe the seizure of agriculture assets from farmers deemed wealthy, assets which were mobilized to serve industrialized business. Presumably American ideologues on both sides of the aisle would see their cause as opposed to the tenets of Stalinism.Stalin was associated with three parties in his political career, and the third evolved to become the Communist Party:It would likely be most accurate to class Stalin as, appropriately enough, a “Stalinist” and a communist. But the ideals he espoused did not align with those of modern democratic socialists.The meme went on to say Stalin “rose to power, promising equality,” following with a number of claims about his time in power and an effort to industrialize agriculture. According to a History.com biography, Stalin rose to power through various struggles with his political contemporaries, not via appeals to his fellow citizens:In 1912, Lenin, then in exile in Switzerland, appointed Joseph Stalin to serve on the first Central Committee of the Bolshevik Party. Three years later, in November 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. The Soviet Union was founded in 1922, with Lenin as its first leader. During these years, Stalin had continued to move up the party ladder, and in 1922 he became secretary general of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, a role that enabled him to appoint his allies to government jobs and grow a base of political support.After Lenin died in 1924, Stalin eventually outmaneuvered his rivals and won the power struggle for control of the Communist Party. By the late 1920s, he had become dictator of the Soviet Union.Elements of Stalin’s rise to prominence and leadership circle back to the meme’s claim that he had been lauded as an intellectual. Other biographies mention demonization of intellectuals as a key tenet of his political messaging:After Lenin’s death in 1924, Stalin methodically went about destroying all the old leaders of the Party, taking advantage of their weakness for standing on arcane intellectual principle to simply divide and conquer them. At first, these people were removed from their posts and exiled abroad. Later, when he realized that their sharp tongues and pens were still capable of inveighing against him even from far away, Stalin switched tactics, culminating in a vast reign of terror and spectacular show trials in the 1930s during which the founding fathers of the Soviet Union were one by one unmasked as “enemies of the people” who had supposedly always been in the employ of Capitalist intelligence services and summarily shot. The particularly pesky Leon Trotsky, who continued to badger Stalin from Mexico City after his exile in 1929, had to be silenced once and for all with an ice pick in 1940. The purges, or “repressions” as they are known in Russia, extended far beyond the Party elite, reaching down into every local Party cell and nearly all of the intellectual professions, since anyone with a higher education was suspected of being a potential counterrevolutionary. This depleted the Soviet Union of its brainpower, and left Stalin as the sole intellectual force in the country–an expert on virtually every human endeavor.That same item describes Stalin’s motives as predicated on economic competition — efforts that resulted in a massive famine:Driven by his own sense of inferiority, which he projected onto his country as a whole, Stalin pursued an economic policy of mobilizing the entire country to achieve the goal of rapid industrialization, so that it could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Capitalist powers. To this end, he forcefully collectivized agriculture (one of the Bolsheviks’ key policy stances in 1917 was to give the land to the peasants; collectivization took it back from them and effectively reduced them to the status of serfs again), instituted the Five-Year Plans to coordinate all investment and production in the country, and undertook a massive program of building heavy industry. Although the Soviet Union boasted that its economy was booming while the Capitalist world was experiencing the Great Depression, and its industrialization drive did succeed in rapidly creating an industrial infrastructure where there once had been none, the fact is that all this was done at exorbitant cost in human lives. Measures such as the violent expropriation of the harvest by the government, the forced resettlement and murder of the most successful peasants as counterrevolutionary elements, and the discovery of a source of cheap labor through the arrest of millions of innocent citizens led to countless millions of deaths from the worst man-made famine in human history and in the camps of the Gulag.The famine of 1932-1933 (Holodomor) is considered a “man-made catastrophe” during which millions of people died:The result of Stalin’s policies was the Great Famine (Holodomor) of 1932–33 — a man-made demographic catastrophe unprecedented in peacetime. Of the estimated five million people who died in the Soviet Union, almost four million were Ukrainians. The famine was a direct assault on the Ukrainian peasantry, which had stubbornly continued to resist collectivization; indirectly, it was an attack on the Ukrainian village, which traditionally had been a key element of Ukrainian national culture. Its deliberate nature is underscored by the fact that no physical basis for famine existed in Ukraine.Finally, claims that Stalin killed 20 million during his reign appeared in a 1989 New York Times article, which drew figures from an article published by a Russian newspaper:A Soviet weekly newspaper today published the most detailed accounting of Stalin’s victims yet presented to a mass audience here, indicating that about 20 million died in labor camps, forced collectivization, famine and executions.The estimates, by the historian Roy Medvedev, were printed in the weekly tabloid Argumenti i Fakti, which has a circulation of more than 20 million.That 1989 reporting cited labor camps, executions, and policies as well as famine as causes. Those figures are debated by historians, with no firm number of deaths under Stalin agreed upon by scholars:Accounts “gloss over the genocidal character of the Soviet regime in the 1930s, which killed systematically rather than episodically,” said Naimark. In the process of collectivization, for example, 30,000 kulaks were killed directly, mostly shot on the spot. About 2 million were forcibly deported to the Far North and Siberia.They were called “enemies of the people,” as well as swine, dogs, cockroaches, scum, vermin, filth, garbage, half animals, apes. Activists promoted murderous slogans: “We will exile the kulak by the thousand when necessary – shoot the kulak breed.” “We will make soap of kulaks.” “Our class enemies must be wiped off the face of the earth.”One Soviet report noted that gangs “drove the dekulakized naked in the streets, beat them, organized drinking bouts in their houses, shot over their heads, forced them to dig their own graves, undressed women and searched them, stole valuables, money, etc.”The destruction of the kulak class triggered the Ukrainian famine, during which 3 million to 5 million peasants died of starvation.The meme about young Joseph Stalin as a “Democrat Socialist” and an intellectual is laden with inaccuracies and half-truths among some historically factual information. The image of a man does show Stalin in 1901, Stalin was an atheist, and many died in famines during his reign. He was a communist or Stalinist, not a democratic socialist by any accepted definition. And though arguments have been presented that Stalin was “an intellectual,” they exist in contrast with his historical presence as a brute and tyrant. Finally, his name is commonplace in history texts and the poor education hinted at in the meme is likely to produce factually slanted and misleading Facebook shares versus awareness of Stalin’s legacy.
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18142
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"Food stamp spending ""doubled under President Bush, doubled again under President Obama."
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"Cole said food stamp spending ""doubled under President Bush, doubled again under President Obama."" Agriculture Department numbers back his claim. Whether that’s evidence the program requires reform depends on your perspective on government assistance. Even with no change in the law, spending will fall as the economy recovers. Cole got his history right."
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true
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National, Children, Deficit, Families, Federal Budget, Poverty, Welfare, Tom Cole,
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"Food stamp spending doubled under President Barack Obama — after doubling under his Republican predecessor, says Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. That’s one reason he’s disappointed that House lawmakers missed a chance to push for more than $20 billion in savings over 10 years when they stripped nutrition programs from the farm bill. Now they may be stuck with current law or the Senate bill, he said, which aims to trim about $4 billion. ""I would argue what we missed, as Republicans, was the chance for real reform,"" he said in an MSNBC interview July 16, 2013. ""We could have gotten some reductions. It's a program that's doubled under President (George W.) Bush, doubled again under President Obama. So, you know, program this big, there's some things you can do differently and still help people that need it."" We wondered: Did such spending double under Bush, then double again? SNAP growth We’ll start by noting that food stamps have officially been known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, since October 2008. It’s the federal government’s largest food program, eclipsing other big farm-bill food spending for school lunches and breakfasts and for Women, Infants and Children. It helps low-income people buy groceries, usually with benefit cards that work like debit cards. The 2007-09 recession drove the number of folks on food stamps to a record high under Obama. In an average month in 2011, one in seven U.S. residents got help. A Washington Post reporter this year documented one Rhode Island town’s reliance on its monthly SNAP infusion. We asked Cole for his evidence that spending doubled under Bush before doubling under Obama. The congressman provided numbers from the agency that administers the program, the U.S. Agriculture Department. He compared total costs of the program from the start of Bush’s term in 2000 to the end of his second term in 2008, then growth from 2008 to the most recent fiscal year available, 2012. Costs had more than doubled under Bush, from $17 billion to $38 billion, then doubled again under Obama, to $78 billion. Cole didn’t adjust for inflation, but he should have: A more accurate inflation-adjusted measure even more closely matches his claim. Total spending on SNAP in 2012 dollars doubled under Bush, from $20 billion to $40 billion, and very nearly doubled under Obama, $40 billion to $78 billion. Why? The story since 2007 is still fresh: joblessness driven by the recession made more people eligible for help, and also drove more folks who were already eligible for help to ask for it, perhaps because their other support networks were tapped out. The stimulus bill also included a boost in benefits, which temporarily increased costs. That expires in November. The recession also partly explains the rise in benefits before Bush left office in 2008. But it was the presidency of Bill Clinton and the 1996 welfare reform that set the stage for rising benefits under Bush. Under Clinton, spending had fallen nearly 40 percent, partly because of new limits in the law. By the late 1990s, lawmakers were already starting to roll back some restrictions, according to the Congressional Budget Office. ""The increases were largely a rebound from the deep cuts the program sustained in the 1996 welfare law and strengthening the program’s ability to support working families,"" said Dottie Rosenbaum, who worked in the Congressional Budget Office at the time. She’s now a senior policy analyst with the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Ron Haskins, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who advised Bush on welfare policy at the time of the 2002 farm bill, said the goal then was to expand food programs for low-income working families. The bill made it easier for states to administer the programs and to get more eligible people signed up. ""If they're willing to work for 9 or 10 bucks an hour, and get our kids out of poverty, then we ought to help them,"" he said. He said he’s concerned by the increase in spending on food stamps, and has testified before Congress on ways to reduce it, including requiring more evidence for families to claim deductions that help them qualify for benefits. Rosenbaum argues no change is required. Spending will come down on its own as the economy recovers. About 65 percent of the growth in spending from 2007 to 2011 was driven by an increase in the number of people eligible for food stamps in the poor economy, according to the Congressional Budget Office. About 20 percent of growth came from the temporarily higher benefits under the stimulus bill. In other words, the economy by itself will bring food stamp spending down. ""The more recent growth is driven primarily by the recession and is evidence that SNAP is doing precisely what it is designed to do: quickly help more low-income families during economic downturns as poverty rises, unemployment mounts, and more people need assistance,"" she said. Our ruling Cole said food stamp spending ""doubled under President Bush, doubled again under President Obama."" Agriculture Department numbers back his claim. Whether that’s evidence the program requires reform depends on your perspective on government assistance. Even with no change in the law, spending will fall as the economy recovers. Cole got his history right."
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35332
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The Obama administration left behind no playbook for dealing with pandemics for the next administration.
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An NSC official confirmed the existence of the playbook but dismissed its value. “We are aware of the document, although it’s quite dated and has been superseded by strategic and operational biodefense policies published since,” the official said. “The plan we are executing now is a better fit, more detailed, and applies the relevant lessons learned from the playbook and the most recent Ebola epidemic in the [Democratic Republic of the Congo] to COVID-19.”
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false
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Politics, COVID-19
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On May 9, 2020, Yahoo! News reported that it had obtained a tape of former U.S. President Barack Obama talking privately with ex-members of his administration. On the tape, Obama reportedly characterized the Trump administration’s handling of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic as “an absolute chaotic disaster.” In response, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared during an interview with Lara Trump (President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law) that “President Obama should have kept his mouth shut” and criticized the Obama administration for supposedly failing to prepare a pandemic “game plan.” That interview was broadcast live by the president’s re-election campaign: They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years but what if that’s no longer true? We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this. However, McConnell’s criticism on the latter point was untrue. As former Obama White House Ebola Response Coordinator Ronald Klain stated in a tweet, “We literally left them a 69-page Pandemic Playbook … that they ignored”: We literally left them a 69-page Pandemic Playbook…. that they ignored And an office called the Pandemic Preparedness Office… that they abolished. And a global monitoring system called PREDICT .. that they cut by 75% https://t.co/OD94v0UI4n — Ronald Klain (@RonaldKlain) May 12, 2020 Back in March 2020, Politico had written about the 69-page pandemic playbook (titled “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents”), which was completed by the Obama administration in 2016: [H]undreds of tactics and key policy decisions are laid out in a 69-page National Security Council playbook on fighting pandemics … [R]ecommendations include that the government move swiftly to fully detect potential outbreaks, secure supplemental funding and consider invoking the Defense Production Act … “Each section of this playbook includes specific questions that should be asked and decisions that should be made at multiple levels” within the national security apparatus, the playbook urges, repeatedly advising officials to question the numbers on viral spread, ensure appropriate diagnostic capacity and check on the U.S. stockpile of emergency resources. The playbook also stresses the significant responsibility facing the White House to contain risks of potential pandemics … According to Politico, the Trump administration had been briefed on the document in 2017, but it was not approved by the National Security Council (NSC) as Trump administration strategy, and one NSC official referred to it as “quite dated”: [T]he Trump administration was briefed on the playbook’s existence in 2017, said four former officials, but two cautioned that it never went through a full, National Security Council-led interagency process to be approved as Trump administration strategy.”
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9058
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Kerastem Reports Successful US Phase II Hair Growth Clinical Trial Results
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This release reports on a small phase 2 clinical trial that tested a new surgical approach to treating hair loss. It involves liposuction to remove specific fat cells, treating them and then re-injecting them into the scalp to foster hair growth. The trial itself is early, and small, with each experimental arm using less than two dozen participants. The information it offers for positive results is insufficient for readers to really assess the change the treatment provides. It fails to mention anything about costs or discuss any risks of this treatment, nor does it mention anything other than one alternative, and it does that in passing. The release appears to focus more on laying the groundwork for marketing this new treatment than it does providing information helpful for human health. It also medicalizes a condition that might not be that serious to many who have it. To our knowledge the study results have not been published. There is a summary of the trial on ClinicalTrials.gov. Hair loss is a common result that comes with aging for a certain part of the population, both men and women. It’s a psychological issue for some; it causes no known medical problems. The National Institutes of Health suggests that it “affects an estimated 50 million men and 30 million women in the United States,” which represents a huge market for clinics working to remedy that. In fact, the release itself mentions that the “global hair loss treatment market generates more than $7 Billion annually.” Readers deserve much more useful information.
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false
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hair growth,Kerastem
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The only mention of money in this news release is the reference to the “global hair loss treatment market” which it says amounts to about $7 billion annually. There is no information on what the proposed new treatment might cost, or even what current typical hair loss treatments might run, so readers are at a loss to be able to consider the real value of a proposed new approach. Also, it is unlikely health insurance will pay for this. This release does provide some numerical data but it’s not necessarily helpful for the reader. It states that the new approach “achieved a statistically significant increase in mean terminal hair count, when compared to control.” It adds, “An average increase of 29 terminal hairs per cm2 of scalp was observed, corresponding to a 17% increase (p < 0.05) from baseline.” Later it says, “the low dose treatment group had an average increase of 29 hairs per cm2 of scalp, which corresponds to an increase of 2,900 hairs per 100 cm2 of treated scalp. While the average hair transplant today is between 1,900 to 2,200 transplanted hairs, patients with early hair loss are very often not candidates for hair transplantation.” While the numbers are there, readers can remain confused. How many hairs typically are on the head on average? Would the increase shown in this research return the patient to what he or she would consider a full head of hair? Since hair restoration is considered to be a cosmetic, rather than essential, procedure, readers need more information on the degree of change that results from this new approach. The release says that “All treatment arms of STYLE (the clinical trial) were safe with no serious adverse events reported.” But that doesn’t seem to be enough. The procedures involved liposuction, an invasive procedure with a history of potential serious risks, but no mention of that is made. It also involves the injection of tissue subcutaneously, which carries its own set of risks. And again, treatment for hair loss is a voluntary decision, not one that is medically necessary, so the risks to any cosmetic procedure should be clearly spelled out. The release could have stated more clearly than it did that if the “dose” of fat cells is too high it can speed up hair loss: “We were very pleased to see the positive results from the low dose arm and were surprised that the high dose ADRC’s + Puregraft fat treatment group, along with the fat alone group, observed a reduction, or no change, respectively in terminal hair counts. Stated otherwise, dosing and tissue purity matter.” To its credit, the release explains that the research is a “phase II, US multi-center, randomized, single-blinded, and controlled clinical trial.” But it also mentions that only 70 participants were enrolled and it doesn’t explain the distribution of women and men. According to the explanation of the trial on ClinicalTrials.gov, those participants were divided into groups of 20 each for the three experimental arms of the trial and 10 participants acting as controls. Those are small numbers and the results are very early, which should be pointed out in the release. In addition, the release mentions that too high a dose can lead to hair loss but doesn’t provide any data on the amount of hair lost or how many volunteers experienced loss. Hair loss is a normal possibility for a large portion of the population as they age. It isn’t an illness in its own right and, as we have said, “treatment” for hair loss is considered a cosmetic procedure, not a medical necessity. But the release mentions a potential market for early hair loss “treatment” of 40 million people, as if all of those people were candidates for this approach. The truth its, many people with baldness would never consider changing this normal condition — nor should they. This is a classical example of medicalizing a condition that is for most people a natural occurrence that poses no health risks. While it never states it specifically, this release mentions the study sponsor, Kerastem, 12 times in a seven-paragraph news release, so readers can assume this company funded the study. The release quotes two officials from the company but none of the researchers. And there is no mention of conflicts of interest in the release although the sites where the research was conducted appear to be all private clinics, which would benefit from positive coverage of this research. Since the release states that “patients with early hair loss are very often not candidates for hair transplantation,’ its clear that transplantation is one alternative. But there is no mention of the various drugs which have shown some success it treating hair loss. There is no mention in the release as to when this new approach for treating hair loss might be available. The release states it is seeking “distribution relationships outside of the United States” but makes no mention whether it is planning to market the procedure in the US or seek US regulatory approval. We’ll give this category a Satisfactory rating since this is a novel approach that differs from current treatments for hair loss. The release does not appear to use unjustifiable language.
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7746
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Chinese scientist who gene-edited babies fired by university.
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A Chinese scientist who created what he said were the world’s first “gene-edited” babies evaded oversight and broke ethical boundaries in a quest for fame and fortune, state media said on Monday, as his former university said he had been fired.
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true
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Science News
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He Jiankui said in November that he used a gene-editing technology known as CRISPR-Cas9 to alter the embryonic genes of twin girls born that month, sparking an international outcry about the ethics and safety of such research. Hundreds of Chinese and international scientists condemned He and said any application of gene editing on human embryos for reproductive purposes was unethical. Chinese authorities also denounced He and issued a temporary halt to research activities involving the editing of human genes. He had “deliberately evaded oversight” with the intent of creating a gene-edited baby “for the purpose of reproduction”, according to the initial findings of an investigating team set up by the Health Commission of China in southern Guangdong province, Xinhua news agency reported. He had raised funds himself and privately organized a team of people to carry out the procedure in order to “seek personal fame and profit”, Xinhua said, adding that he had forged ethical review papers in order to enlist volunteers for the procedure. The safety and efficacy of the technologies He used are unreliable and creating gene-edited babies for reproduction is banned by national decree, the report said. The Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in the city of Shenzhen, said in a statement on its website that He had been fired. “Effective immediately, SUSTech will rescind the work contract with Dr. Jiankui He and terminate any of his teaching and research activities at SUSTech,” the statement said. The university added the decision came after a preliminary investigation by the Guangdong Province Investigation Task Force. Neither He nor a representative could be reached for comment on Monday. He defended his actions at a conference in Hong Kong in November, saying that he was “proud” of what he had done and that gene editing would help protect the girls from being infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. International experts in genetic science said they hoped that Monday’s report was only the initial result of investigations into He and that more action would be taken. “The report will hopefully set an example with appropriate legal and punitive actions to reassure the public and scientific community,” said Yalda Jamshidi, a genomics expert at Britain’s University of London. He’s announcement sparked a debate among Chinese legal scholars over which laws He had technically broken by carrying out the procedure, as well as whether he could be held criminally responsible or not. Many scholars pointed to a 2003 guideline that bans altered human embryos from being implanted for the purpose of reproduction, and says altered embryos cannot be developed for more than 14 days. The case files of those involved who are suspected of committing crimes have been sent to the ministry of public security, an unnamed spokesperson for the investigation team was quoted by Xinhua as saying. Helen O’Neill, a reproductive science expert at University College London, said she was concerned that the report gave “no further clarification on what measures will be taken to prevent this happening in future, nor what will be done as punishment”.
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17165
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Jerry Patterson Says he was the only statewide elected official to speak in favor of a federal guest worker plan at the 2012 Republican Party of Texas convention.
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Patterson said he was unique among statewide elected officials in speaking for the guest-worker section that became part of the Republican Party of Texas platform in 2012. True. TRUE – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing.
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true
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Immigration, Economy, Workers, Texas, Jerry Patterson,
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"Jerry Patterson, an unsuccessful candidate for lieutenant governor this year, subsequently said that he somewhat uniquely spoke out for a federal guest-worker program a few years ago. According to a March 30, 2014, news story in the San Antonio Express-News, Republicans including state Sen. Dan Patrick of Houston, who's in a May 27, 2014, runoff for the party's lieutenant governor nomination with incumbent David Dewhurst, have talked about not putting language supportive of a guest-worker program in this year’s party platform, which is to be finalized by delegates to the next state convention in June 2014. Patrick has stumped on securing the Texas-Mexico border, also objecting in a Jan. 25, 2014, Twitter post to the ""illegal invasion."" The Express-News story described Patterson, the state land commissioner since 2003, as saying he was the only statewide elected official to speak in favor of the guest-worker plank at the June 2012 state convention where it was initially adopted. Patterson separately said on his 2014 campaign website: ""Many of my elected colleagues privately expressed support, but told me that they just couldn’t take the risk."" Did Patterson, who often flies his own plane between cities, venture solo in this way? Immigration in 2012 platform The immigration plank, on page 21 of the platform, states that mass deportation of all the undocumented individuals in the United States ""would neither be equitable nor practical,"" while ""blanket amnesty"" would only encourage more illegal entries. The plank also calls for securing the border, modernizing Social Security cards and limiting birthright citizenship to babies born to a U.S. citizen. Finally, the plank calls for a temporary worker program ""to bring skilled and unskilled workers into the United States for temporary periods of time when no U.S. workers are currently available,"" to be self-funded through participation fees and fines, the plank says. The guest-worker plank was characterized by proponents at the time as a meaningful breakthrough for the state party. A June 9, 2012, Texas Tribune news story quoted TexasGOPvote.com's Bob Price, a convention delegate, as saying adoption of the guest-worker provisions ""takes away a tool that Democrats have used for years to drive a wedge between conservative Hispanics and Republicans."" William Kelberlan, a delegate from Williamson County, told the Tribune: ""It was a tough pill to swallow; it didn't go down easily."" Kelberlan said he recognized the need for immigration reform but thought more time was needed to hammer out the details of what form it should take. Patterson spoke in favor of the guest-worker plank, according to the story, but it was silent on whether he was the sole statewide elected official to do so. Patterson invokes 'cojones' To our inquiry, Patterson indicated he remembers his solo status well. ""Ain’t much to elaborate,"" he said by email. Asked if he’d heard the speeches given by other statewide elected officials and why he knows he was alone in this regard, Patterson replied: ""I know all the statewides. I know what they do and say. I know who has cojones"" (um, courage) ""and who doesn't. I was the only one."" By email, Steve Munisteri, the party chairman, confirmed Patterson was the only statewide elected official to speak during floor debate of the guest-worker plank and then only after delegates agreed to let him do so, Munisteri said. Separately, Brad Bailey told us he helped draft the relevant language as a delegate from Senate District 11 in Houston. By phone, Bailey said Patterson was alone among statewide elected officials in speaking about the guest-worker section. Main speeches lacked mention of guest-worker idea We didn't have to take anyone's word for this. Munisteri reminded us the party placed video recordings of the convention online. So we watched the speeches given by several statewide elected officials: U.S. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn; Gov. Rick Perry; Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst; Attorney General Greg Abbott; Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples and State Comptroller Susan Combs. None — plus Patterson, in his main speech to the convention — aired support for a guest-worker law. In fact, only Staples mentioned conditions near the Texas-Mexico border. Patterson spoke from floor during platform debate But as delegates discussed the party platform, Patterson stepped to a microphone on the convention floor after Munisteri adjudged that two-thirds of the delegates, by a show of hands, had agreed to suspend the rules to let him join the conversation even though he wasn’t a delegate. (Hear Patterson’s remarks starting about the 11:15 mark of the video here.) Patterson opened by describing himself as a conservative who believes the platform’s immigration plank and border security ""go hand in hand."" He then said he supported the then-pending state law requiring most voters to present photo identification at the polls as well as initiatives stressing English as the state’s primary language. Patterson said he also supported a physical barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border, including a fence in some cases. He added that he opposed ""unconditional birthright citizenship,"" bilingual ""balance"" and restrictions on police officers asking someone’s immigration status during an apprehension or investigation of a crime. Further, he said, he was opposed to amnesty for illegal immigrants. But, Patterson said, ""I will tell you… that I very loudly, firmly and with great fervor support… a guest-worker program as part of our border security."" ""We have folks in this country who are here to do us harm,"" Patterson said. ""They are criminal, they are coyotes, they run things back and across the border whether they are illegals, whether they are drugs or contraband. ""And we also have folks in this country,"" Patterson continued, ""who want to work hard, pay their taxes, obey our laws. And there is no way for those to come here and do that lawfully because our immigration system is broken. We need a guest-worker, temporary guest-worker program that is in the immigration plank in our platform,"" he said. Our ruling Patterson said he was unique among statewide elected officials in speaking for the guest-worker section that became part of the Republican Party of Texas platform in 2012. . – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing."
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24570
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Medicare has at least $80 billion worth of fraud a year. That's a full 20 percent of every dollar that's spent on Medicare goes to fraud.
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Coburn says 20 percent of every Medicare dollar goes to fraud
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mixture
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National, Health Care, Medicare, Tom Coburn,
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"On the Aug. 24 edition of Fox News Channel's On the Record With Greta Van Susteren , Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. — an ob-gyn who has taken a leading position against Democratic health care reform efforts — took aim at Medicare fraud. The senator said, ""If you look at Medicare and Medicaid, both vital programs today, they're highly inefficient. People claim that they're efficient. Medicare has at least $80 billion worth of fraud a year. That's a full 20 percent of every dollar that's spent on Medicare goes to fraud. And Medicaid is not much better. We don't actually have the numbers because half the states aren't reporting their Medicaid fraud. So when you have programs that are designed to be defrauded, even though they're well-intended and they are helping people, we ought to think about how do we get better value for that money and less money going out the door. "" In this item, we'll focus on Coburn's estimate that there is $80 billion in Medicare fraud annually. After speaking to health care experts and searching on the Internet, we found that while Medicare fraud is a notable concern, statistics offered to document the scale of the problem are slippery at best. On May 6, 2009, Daniel Levinson, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, testified before the Senate Special Committee on Aging that ""it is not possible to measure precisely the extent of fraud in Medicare and Medicaid."" As a result, estimates of fraud in the system vary — widely. The number Levinson offered lawmakers is one from the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association. Levinson said that the NHCAA — whose members include private insurance companies and government agencies — estimated that ""at least 3 percent — or more than $60 billion each year — is lost to fraud."" But as Levinson was careful to note, the $60 billion figure covers fraud in all U.S. health care expenditures — not just in Medicare, which would mean that Coburn is way off in his estimate. But before drawing any conclusions, we turned to the NHCAA for more background on that figure, which is, to be exact, $68 billion. Louis Saccoccio, the NHCAA's executive director, told PolitiFact that the 3 percent estimate is calculated from the experiences of the private insurers who belong to his group. But he emphasized that it is indeed an estimate, and a conservative one at that. ""No one has a hard number,"" he said, ""because you can't go out with a survey and ask, 'How much are you robbing from Medicare?'"" Another prominent figure in the field, Malcolm Sparrow, argues that estimates in the range of 3 percent are low — ""ridiculously low,"" he put it in an interview. Sparrow, a onetime fraud investigator and detective chief inspector with the British police service, is now a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Sparrow agrees with Saccoccio that no one has put together an accurate accounting of Medicare fraud. But he argues that the kind of errors detected by current control systems are primarily technical glitches — not the products of criminal minds setting out to defraud the system. And given that Medicare offers a large pot of money, a high degree of automation in its claims-paying process and limited auditing capabilities, he argues, the program is a godsend for dedicated con artists. ""Criminals, who are intent on stealing as much as they can and as fast as possible, and who are prepared to fabricate diagnoses, treatments, even entire medical episodes, have a relatively easy time breaking through all the industry's defenses,"" Sparrow testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs on May 20, 2009. ""The criminals' advantage is that they are willing to lie. And provided they learn to submit their bills correctly, they remain free to lie. The rule for criminals is simple: If you want to steal from Medicare, or Medicaid, or any other health care insurance program, learn to bill your lies correctly. Then, for the most part, your claims will be paid in full and on time, without a hiccup, by a computer, and with no human involvement at all."" His evidence is anecdotal but suggestive. In a recent academic paper, Sparrow noted that then-FBI Director Louis Freeh testified in 1995 that cocaine traffickers in Florida and California were switching from drug dealing to health care fraud because they discovered that health care fraud was safer, easier and more lucrative than the drug trade, and that it carried a smaller risk of detection. In 1997, Sparrow added, the New York Times reported that organized crime families in New York City and New Jersey were abandoning extortion and bid-rigging in favor of new criminal enterprises such as health insurance fraud. Usually, he writes, major frauds are uncovered by whistleblowers rather than audit systems. One example is the case of Columbia HCA, a major hospital chain that in 2003 agreed to a $1.7 billion settlement with the Justice Department after 10 years of investigations initiated by whistleblower allegations. Sparrow also points to suits under the federal False Claims Act as evidence of a major fraud problem in the health care sector. The False Claims Act allows citizens to allege the existence of defrauding the government and then reap a share of the government's savings once the improprieties are rooted out. False Claims Act suits against HHS now account for a large majority of all such suits filed annually. ""There is apparently no other area of federal spending so vulnerable to fraud, and so deeply infected,"" Sparrow writes. Sparrow testified that because HHS audit procedures do not dig very deep, ""we now have no reliable indications of the overall fraud loss rates for the Medicare program."" (A spokeswoman for the HHS Inspector General's Office declined to comment on Sparrow's analysis.) Now, back to Coburn's assertion. When we called his office, his staff told us that his source for the comment was an article in the National Review , a conservative magazine. The July 15, 2009, article said of Sparrow, ""He thinks that as much as 20 percent of the federal health care budget is consumed by fraud, which would be $85 billion a year for Medicare."" That's pretty close to what Coburn said on Van Susteren's show. But is the senator right? It depends on whether you trust NHCAA or Sparrow. Total Medicare outlays were $431 billion in 2007, or 19 percent of total national health care expenditures. If one assumes that fraud is equally prevalent in Medicare and other types of health care, that would make the Medicare share of the NHCAA's $68 billion fraud estimate $13 billion. And $13 billion in fraud divided by $431 billion in total Medicare outlays would be 3 percent of total Medicare expenditures — a far cry from Coburn's 20 percent. (A rate of 20 percent is ""possible, but I don't think it's very plausible,"" Saccoccio said.) Skeptical that Medicare is only being defrauded at rates equal to the private sector? Let's triple that number to $39 billion in fraud. If you do that, it still comes out to 9 percent — less than half of what Coburn asserted it was. In the meantime, Coburn's dollar figure — $80 billion in fraud — would be no more accurate if the NHCAA is right. The group says there's $68 billion in fraud in all health care expenditures — but Coburn's figure for Medicare alone is bigger than that. However, by Sparrow's analysis, Coburn could indeed be in the ballpark. In an interview, Sparrow himself said the Coburn estimate is ""perfectly plausible."" He added that Coburn ""doesn't know any more than you or I do."" Because of the uncertainty about how much Medicare fraud actually exists, we think Coburn oversteps when he states definitively that ""Medicare has at least $80 billion worth of fraud a year."" Not only is there a statistical disagreement over how big the problem currently is, but all the key players also agree that there are simply no good data to rely on. Still, because Coburn's estimate is considered plausible by a leading academic in the field, we can't dismiss it as undeniably false."
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37875
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A meme likening the purpose of coronavirus masks to protecting from a random wild urinaters accurately describes the purpose of coronavirus mask recommendations.
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: Coronavirus, Face Masks, and the Peeing on People AnalogyAn r/funny post titled “Wear Your Mask: The Urine Test” employed an analogy to illustrate the most then-recent understanding of the value of face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its analogy was in line with then-current understanding of how masks might mitigate the spread of novel coronavirus: if no one wore masks the virus would spread more easily; if one infected person without a mask and one uninfected with a mask are in transmission range, the uninfected person has some protection from spread of SARS-CoV-2; when those infected wear masks and if others wear masks, the risk of infection for the uninfected likely drops significantly. While testing numbers remained low and the estimated rate of asymptomatic carriers was between 25 and 50 percent as of late April 2020, it made sense for everyone to wear masks — primarily to prevent spread by those same asymptomatic carriers.
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true
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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On April 29 2020, a post titled “Wear Your Mask: The Urine Test” appeared on r/funny (and soon r/all), aiming to explain the purpose of masks during the coronavirus pandemic to pants in the presence of a person uncontrollably urinating everywhere:Wear Your Mask: The Urine Test from funnyThe above meme was not the first analogy-based attempt to spread on social media as a way for users to encourage COVID-19 mitigation and suppression:Meme Comparing ‘Flattening the Curve’ of COVID-19 to Deploying a Parachute Goes ViralCoronavirus, Masks, and Peeing All Over the PlaceAt the top, a title read “WHY YOU SHOULD WEAR FACEMASKS[,] LET ME TRY AND MAKE [THIS] SIMPLE FOR YOU,” and “THE URINE TEST.” Underneath that were three small illustrations: one of a person projectile-urinating onto another person, the second showing the urinated-on person wearing pants, and the third depicting both parties (the one urinating and the one in spraying distance) wearing pants.To the right of each was a thumbs up or thumbs down image, and text reading:Although it wasn’t spelled out directly, the reference to masks and why people ought to wear them in public during an ongoing pandemic was fairly clear.This Mask AnalogyThe meme was in effect claiming:And much like several other common memes of the day about the purpose and efficacy of facemasks when it came to the spread of COVID-19, the meme more broadly claimed:How Public Health Shot Itself in the Foot on the Topic of COVID-19 and MasksAs we described on several previous pages, the role of masks as the coronavirus outbreak evolved into a pandemic has been confusing to the public, to say the least.On March 20 2020, we examined then-novel initiatives aimed at sewing large quantities of homemade masks for healthcare workers facing personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages:‘100 Million Masks’ — Are Homemade Masks Sufficient for COVID-19 First Responders?Around that time, we learned that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had relaxed standards for PPE and COVID-19; previously, the public had been advised masks were not helpful and ought to either be avoided or reserved solely for healthcare workers.By March 31 2020, public health authorities began recommending the general public wear masks — the same general public that had been cautioned less than one month earlier to avoid masks because they were of no use:Should You Make a No-Sew Coronavirus Mask During the COVID-19 Pandemic?Those directives sowed confusion and created a situation in which disinformation thrived, particularly since the United States Surgeon General essentially forbade their use in a series of adamant tweets:Just a few days before [on February 29 2020], Surgeon General Jerome Adams told Americans to “Seriously … STOP BUYING MASKS” on Twitter, claiming they are “NOT effective” in preventing the transmission of COVID-19 among members of the general public. Adams instead advised Americans to rely on hand-washing and staying home when sick[. ]Rapidly changing standards both in and outside healthcare settings ensured the change in directive (from “STOP BUYING MASKS” to “wear a mask”) led to impeded or limited compliance with the recommendations. However, evidence did support the wearing of masks as a partial measure to mitigate (but not completely stop) the spread of SARS-CoV-2:Nevertheless, masks clearly do work to some degree to reduce the transmission of aerosolized pathogens. A May 2013 study in the Journal of Hospital Infection was unable to say precisely to which degree face masks helped, but concluded “they are to some extent protective.” That research noted a number of variables, both in the structure of masks available in and outside clinical settings as well as inconsistency in their usage …… Although it is true public health initially discouraged general COVID-19 pandemic face mask usage, those warnings appeared to be predicated largely on averting shortages, which continued to be an issue as of late March 2020. That said, coronavirus masks do afford protection, and a number do-it-yourself face mask tutorials were available. At the very least, a secured piece of fabric covering your nose and mouth offers slightly better coronavirus protection than no mask at all.Essentially, the recommendations earlier in the outbreak of COVID-19 appeared to be an effort to ensure that healthcare professionals would have access to sufficient PPE. When the spread of the virus approached pandemic levels, public health officials were faced with a poorly aged initial directive.Ongoing Mask Confusion and the Spread of MisinformationGiven that the public was initially told that masks would necessarily not help mitigate the community spread of the COVID-19 virus and that those directives shifted dramatically over the course of a month, residual confusion existed about the relevance of masks as a safety measure.Healthcare workers, for whom masks were initially reserved, are aware of how masks can and cannot prevent the spread of infectious disease. But for the general public, there was no real centralized resource for regular people to figure out why and how to use masks to prevent the spread.Information (and disinformation) circulated in a scattershot fashion — with news articles here and there, circulating tutorials, and occasional explanations at press conferences. One controversial but well-explained piece of information came from a Nashville, Tennessee press conference in early April 2020. During that briefing to the public, the president of Meharry Medical College, Dr. James E.K. Hildreth Sr., provided several directives for a public just beginning to work the use of fabric and cloth masks into their daily routines:Did the President of Meharry Medical Advise Sterilizing Cloth Face Masks in the Microwave Between Uses?Hildreth famously advised the use of microwaves for sterilization when he spoke — but the contents of his overall remarks emphasized the overall goal in the use of masks by the general public to combat community spread.Hildreth first addressed the national shortage of PPE, and the need to reserve commercial masks for those on the frontlines. He indicated that consequently, members of the public “have resorted” to the use of homemade masks,” encouraged practices to ensure everyday citizens could safely use fabric masks, and emphasized the risk that proper use of masks could result in masks being contaminated (while having protected the wearer from some aerosolized viral vectors):There’s a national urgency — and I’m gonna repeat this — that the PPE must be reserved for healthcare providers and those on the front line. So many people have resorted to making homemade masks out of bandanas and other kinds of materials … there are a couple of things you really need to know if you’re doing this:If the mask has served its purpose, there’s every possibility it’s contaminated on the outer surface. What that means is that you should do two things: wash your hands when you take it off, and sterilize it or sanitize it if you’re gonna use it repeatedly.If possible, wash it in soap and water. And if it’s made out of cloth or has no metal staples in it, you can do what I do: stick it in a plastic bag, and microwave it for two or three minutes at the highest setting.Numerous studies show that many, many types of bacteria, fungus, and viruses are killed by microwave radiation. You must make sure that your improvised device is compatible with microwaving, and if it is, stick it in a plastic bag and zap it for two or three minutes at the highest setting.After providing this information about how masks blocked the spread of some diseases, Hildreth moved on to why masks and other protective measures were implemented. In that important portion, he urged the public not to be “a vector,” and expressed his sadness about situations in which people unwittingly spread the virus to those confined to places like nursing homes.In that portion, Hildreth’s commentary addressed the third panel of the viral meme — and he essentially explained everyone should wear a mask (“pants”) to avoid “becoming a vector” (or “peeing all over people”):I want to emphasize as you heard earlier that our best strategy still for controlling the virus is to stay at home. My heart breaks every time I hear a new story about a nursing home where the people have gotten infected.The virus is not floating in the air … someone delivered the virus to that facility, that’s how it started.Someone was a vector. Please stay at home — comply with the order to stay at home. Only go out when you absolutely have to, and if you have to go out, please cover your face to avoid becoming a vector.What Masks Do, and What They Don’t DoAs recommendations rapidly changed, the primary public reaction to the updated guidelines was “Why?” An April 3 2020 TIME article explained:Should Healthy People Wear Masks to Prevent Coronavirus? The Answer May Be ChangingIf you have no symptoms of the coronavirus, should you wear a mask? It’s one of the most-asked questions during this pandemic, and until recently, one of the most easily answered—if you follow the guidance of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC’s answer, up until April 3 [2020]? No. According to its initial guidelines, outside of health care settings, face masks should only be worn by people who are sick or who are caring for someone who is sick (when the person who is sick can’t wear a mask). A mask helps capture some of an ill person’s cough particles that might otherwise spread to other people …What has changed recently?Scientists now know that people who are infected with the new coronavirus can spread it even when they don’t have symptoms. (This was not known in the early days of the current pandemic.) Up to 25% of infected people may not show symptoms, said CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield in a recent NPR interview. They’ve also learned that people who are symptomatic shed the virus up to two days before showing symptoms. “This helps explain how rapidly this virus continues to spread across the country,” Redfield said.This silent spread also bolsters the case for people in the general population to always wear masks when in public, since anyone could be sick. “Now with the realization that there are individuals who are asymptomatic, and those asymptomatic individuals can spread infection, it’s hard to make the recommendation that only ill individuals wear masks in the community setting for protection, because it’s not clear who is ill and who is not,” says Allison Aiello, a professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Gillings School of Global Public Health, who has researched the efficacy of masks.Less than one month later, the evolving knowledge about the novel coronavirus had again shifted as of April 30 2020 — and the number of asymptomatic spreaders was possibly as high as 50 percent:‘Quarantine is When You Restrict the Movement of SICK People’ Facebook MemeTIME‘s article appeared on the same day the CDC last reviewed a page of recommendations for face masks and community spread of COVID-19. But that information matched the guidance provided by the CDC:Recommendation Regarding the Use of Cloth Face Coverings, Especially in Areas of Significant Community-Based TransmissionCDC continues to study the spread and effects of the novel coronavirus across the United States. We now know from recent studies that a significant portion of individuals with coronavirus lack symptoms (“asymptomatic”) and that even those who eventually develop symptoms (“pre-symptomatic”) can transmit the virus to others before showing symptoms. This means that the virus can spread between people interacting in close proximity—for example, speaking, coughing, or sneezing—even if those people are not exhibiting symptoms. In light of this new evidence, CDC recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain (e.g., grocery stores and pharmacies) especially in areas of significant community-based transmission.About a week after those recommendations were provided, LiveScience explained the general gist of how face masks might inhibit the spread of the virus:[An amount of] leakage in surgical and fabric masks are why public health officials generally don’t believe that wearing a mask prevents anyone from catching a virus that is already floating around in the environment. Airflow follows the path of least resistance, said Rachael Jones, an associate professor of family and preventive medicine at the University of Utah who was not involved in the new research. If viral particles are nearby, they have an easy path around a surgical or fabric mask. And in the case of a fabric mask, wearers may well be wafting in particles small enough to flow right through the fabric.But what about the other way around? When the wearer of a mask coughs or sneezes, the barrier might be enough to contain a lot of that initial jet of grossness — even if there are gaps in the fabric or around the sides. That’s what the new mask studies aimed to address: Whether surgical or fabric masks did a good job of containing viruses.That article referenced several studies focused on the efficacy of face masks to prevent viral spreading. Based on the best available information at the time (April 2020), public health directives favored their use for one specific reason:The results from influenza and seasonal coronaviruses suggest that surgical masks can help keep people with COVID-19 from spreading the virus, [study author Ben Cowling, head of the Division of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at The Hong Kong University] said. SARS-CoV-2 probably behaves similarly to the [earlier known] viruses he and his team studied, he said, and the fact that people can spread the virus before they experience symptoms is an argument for recommending masks for everyone.As of April 30 2020, a World Health Organization page about coronavirus and masks maintained that people who are “healthy … only need to wear a mask if [they] are taking care of a person with COVID-19.” But as demonstrated repeatedly in the excerpts above, “people who are healthy” are not infrequently asymptomatic spreaders of SARS-CoV-2; that recommendation completely ignores the widespread problem of asymptomatic carriers.A longer April 6 2020 WHO interim guidance document [PDF] (“Rational use of personal protective equipment for coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and considerations during severe shortages”) weighed the need to preserve PPE for healthcare professionals against its value as a community health measure. Again, that document emphasized the efficacy of masks in symptomatic individuals; we now know that as many as half of those who contracted and may spread the virus which causes COVID-19 have no symptoms at all.On April 7 2020, Kaiser Health News (KHN) summarized:Many experts agree that wearing a mask probably won’t keep people from getting the coronavirus, but it might help prevent those with the disease — especially those without symptoms ― from spreading it.TL;DR: Coronavirus, Face Masks, and the Peeing on People AnalogyAn r/funny post titled “Wear Your Mask: The Urine Test” employed an analogy to illustrate the most then-recent understanding of the value of face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its analogy was in line with then-current understanding of how masks might mitigate the spread of novel coronavirus: if no one wore masks the virus would spread more easily; if one infected person without a mask and one uninfected with a mask are in transmission range, the uninfected person has some protection from spread of SARS-CoV-2; when those infected wear masks and if others wear masks, the risk of infection for the uninfected likely drops significantly. While testing numbers remained low and the estimated rate of asymptomatic carriers was between 25 and 50 percent as of late April 2020, it made sense for everyone to wear masks — primarily to prevent spread by those same asymptomatic carriers.Comments
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9526
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Pets Help People Manage The Pain Of Serious Mental Illness
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The story focuses on a recent study published in BMC Psychiatry that reports some patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder consider their pets as part of their social network. The finding highlights the importance that some patients with mental illness place on pet ownership, and how some of those patients draw support from their interactions with pets and the routine of caring for their pets. This story accurately describes the study, but — in our opinion — doesn’t go far enough in placing the work in context. For example, the headline uses strong language: “Pets help people manage the pain of serious mental illness.” However, that headline is based on the self-reporting of 25 patients in the United Kingdom who already own pets and consider them part of their social network. A small, observational study may be interesting, but it needs to be followed up with more robust research to figure out what role — if any — pets can play in treatment for patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. The story needed to make that more clear. Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder directly affect thousands of people in the U.S. each year, and indirectly affect the loved ones of patients who are dealing with these mental disorders. Treatment is a lifelong process, and these disorders can pose challenges for patients in terms of maintaining social ties with family and friends. Because these conditions do affect the quality of life for a great many people, stories about treatment options for people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder can carry a lot of weight. Patients, or their loved ones, may jump at ideas for new forms of treatment. That makes it particularly important for news stories on new research findings to place the work in context.
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mental illness
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Costs aren’t addressed. There is the hint that it might be out of reach for some people with this quote in the story: “He feels this study is important because, although there’s a lot of work looking at the benefits of trained therapy animals, they can be expensive and out of the reach of many patients.” The story does not quantify the benefits associated with pet ownership for patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder–perhaps because the study being reported on doesn’t quantify benefits. But, in this case, where the benefits can’t be quantified, the story should tell us why that’s case (i.e. the researchers didn’t systematically measure the effects of pet ownership). What the story does instead is essentially present a series of anecdotes from people who are already benefiting from pet ownership, which isn’t reflective of the full range of experiences. No harms are mentioned. It is important to recognize that the patients reporting positive influences of pets are having a good experience already. Giving a pet to someone with a major mental illness, who has not previously cared for an animal, could go very poorly without the right support systems in place. The story should have emphasized that this was a purely observational study of a small group of people, which means that it is difficult — if not impossible — to ascertain the value of pet ownership as a therapeutic practice based on these results. No disease mongering here. The story clearly highlights one source’s role in the research and incorporates input from a second source who was not associated with the research. The story doesn’t mention other elements of treatment for schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, such as therapy groups that encourage peer support, pharmaceutical or psychosocial interventions. We’re going to act under the assumption that readers are familiar with the idea of pet ownership. While not directly addressed, the story does hint at what’s novel about this new study–that the relationship between pets and people with severe mental illnesses hasn’t been researched with the same vigor as the benefits of trained therapy animals. The story does not appear to be drawn primarily from a news release.
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