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Roughly 150 people from different sectors of the society took part in discussing the climate actions of Finland in Helsinki on Monday.
ACTION AID will be onsite at this weekend’s CARLING WEEKEND: READING AND LEEDS festivals ready to prick the conscience of unethical businesses.
The charity will have be running the ‘Brand Nasty’ tent as part of their campaign to call on the UK government to reign in abuses by British companies in some of the world’s poorest countries.
There’ll be comfy sofas, table tennis, table football and giant jenga by day, and karaoke from 7pm. At 9pm the ‘Nasty DJ’ line-up kicks in, featuring DJ Del Gazeebo, Peepshow Paddy and Queens of Noize.
Action Aid International work in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas to fight global poverty and tackle inequality.
Benjamin Netanyahu is so eager to see Mitt Romney elected president that he’s making a fool of himself.
For the last couple of weeks, the Israeli prime minister has been the featured player in a Republican-sponsored TV ad playing in Florida. It shows excerpts from Netanyahu’s United Nations speech last month in which he tacitly attacks President Obama for his failure to set a clear red line for Iran’s nuclear program.
No, Netanyahu didn’t plan or buy the campaign ad. Secure America Now, a group run by longtime Republican strategists, put it up. But Florida is filled with Israeli emigres and American Jews. There’s no question that Netanyahu knows all about the ad and has made no effort to criticize or blunt it. An anonymous Israeli official did tell the news media that the prime minister’s office had nothing to do with the ad and did not approve of it. That’s all.
If Netanyahu has no interest in taking sides in the American presidential election, then he should issue a strong statement or hold a press conference to declare that he does not support the use of his U.N. remarks in a partisan campaign ad.
But he didn’t say a word. Not one. And the reason is clear: He does not like Obama, and Obama doesn’t like him. Remember the Group of 20 summit in France late last year, when Obama was overheard chatting with Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president? Neither knew the mike was open.
But Israeli leaders seldom if ever benefit politically by picking a fight with America, the state’s only true ally and benefactor. Already, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, a former Labor Party prime minister, is turning away from Netanyahu after years of near-slavish loyalty ― all because of his rift with Washington, Barak says.
The way most Israeli politicians see it, however, they’re almost always better off with a Republican in the White House. That seems especially true for Netanyahu, who was Mitt Romney’s friend and colleague decades ago. Romney has said that if elected, he will turn to Netanyahu for Middle East advice ― a dangerous move, in my view.
Israeli politicians generally see Republican presidents as more friendly and loyal. The exception was George H.W. Bush and his secretary of state, James Baker. They got into a heated argument with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir about West Bank settlements ― the very issue that first began to sour Obama’s relationship with Netanyahu in 2009.
But since the Bush-Baker days in the early 1990s, evangelical Christians, millions of them, have become a powerful force in American politics. They are unwavering supporters of Israel, no matter what. Talk to them, as I have, and they sound as right wing as Israeli settlers.
President George W. Bush certainly had them in mind when he carried himself as Israel’s best friend during his eight years in office. And Netanyahu is certainly aware of them now. Thousands of evangelicals demonstrated in Jerusalem last week.
Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times. ― Ed.
The Department of Human Services will upgrade network components underpinning the National Disability Insurance Agency’s CRM following a fortnight of "intermittent" issues.
The work, scheduled over the weekend, was prompted by an "increased level of outages" of the system over the past couple of weeks, the insurance agency's deputy CEO Michael Francis told a senate estimates hearing.
The SAP CRM is one of the agency's core business systems. DHS is responsible for the National Disability Insurance Agency's (NDIA) technology environment.
The agency has offices in 14 regions across the country.
Francis was unable to say just how widespread the issues were, but said there had “not [been] a solid period of outage”.
Recently appointed CIO Ian Frew or other senior IT staff were not present at the hearing to answer questions.
But a statement provided by NDIA's office of the CIO said it was working with DHS on this issue.
“The issue is believed to be caused by [Microsoft] DirectAccess 2012 and an associated software-based load balancing process,” the statement said.
DirectAccess is a remote access technology that is built into Windows Server.
“DHS are in the process of replacing this platform with DirectAccess 2016 and a hardware-based industrialised load balancing process," the statement continued.
Francis said configuration of the upgraded network software would take place over the weekend, with testing to be undertaken on Monday June 3.
“If user testing is successful DHS will transition an increasing number of DirectAccess connections into the new platform,” he said.
An estimated 89 million people in the US watched some of the biggest names in music and film come together on Friday (September 21) to raise money for the victims of the terrorist attacks in NEW YORK and WASHINGTON.
Bruce Springsteen, Neil Young, Limp Bizkit‘s Fred Durst, Celine Dion, U2, Stevie Wonder, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, Bon Jovi and Paul Simon were amongst those who performed while Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, John Cusack, Cindy Crawford, Robert De Niro, Clint Eastwood and Muhammad Ali were amongst those who either spoke between songs, or answered phones taking public donations during the two-hour telethon ‘America: A Tribute To Heroes’.
The show was broadcast across 35 networks in the US and beamed to over 200 countries in the world, with both ITV and BBC1 in the UK carrying it live. During the first 15 minutes 300,000 calls were logged. Major organisations as well as individuals donated cash. Microsoft has pledged $10 million, while media company Vivendi have promised $5 million.
Performers avoided showcasing new material, focusing instead on tracks they felt fitted the occasion. Springsteen opened the show, dedicating his hymn-like ‘City In Ruins’ to all “our fallen brothers and sisters”. Later, Neil Young played a faithful version of ‘Imagine’ and Fred Durst and Wes Borland from Limp Bizkit covered Floyd Pink Floyd‘s ‘Wish You Were Here’.
Muhammad Ali, joined by Will Smith, made an impassioned plea for all Muslims not be branded as terrorists.
Willie Nelson closed the show, and was joined by Young, Tom Petty, Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder and all of the Hollywood stars.
It will not be known until later on Monday (September 24) just how much cash was raised.
The live special was broadcast from two studios in New York and Los Angeles, with U2 and Sting appearing in London. Producers refused to reveal the exact locations because of security fears.
The Trump administration will appear today before a federal judge to defend one of its most consequential and controversial moves on health insurance — a green light for states to require their Medicaid enrollees to work or volunteer.
And the administration’s prospects for success don’t look great at this point, considering the judge hearing the oral arguments previously called the Department of Health and Human Services “arbitrary and capricious” for approving work requirements at all.
U.S. District Judge Jeb Boasberg, an Obama appointee, will hear two separate but related lawsuits this morning at the federal courthouse in the District. The first is a challenge to Medicaid work requirements in Arkansas, one of just three states that have been allowed to put them into effect so far. The second is a challenge to similar requirements in Kentucky, which Boasberg blocked in June.
Expect the arguments to further inflame a passionate debate among lawmakers and health-care advocates about whether the low-income Americans who benefit from the Medicaid program should be required to show that they’ve obtained a job or engaged in other approved activities such as volunteering or job training.
“A frontal assault on the objectives of Medicaid is shocking and brazen,” Eliot Fishman, senior director of health policy for Families USA, told reporters earlier this week.
But HHS Secretary Alex Azar and Medicaid chief Seema Verma claim work requirements are legal because they are aimed at helping people move out of poverty entirely. The agency has approved work requirements for seven states that have requested them, although only Arkansas, New Hampshire and Indiana have implemented them so far.
Arkansas has become a focal point of the whole debate, as more than 18,000 of the state’s 234,000 Medicaid enrollees lost coverage last year either for failing to comply with the requirements or for failing to report their compliance to the state. Under the state’s new rules, beneficiaries lose coverage if they don’t meet the requirements for three months within one year.
Azar said Tuesday that HHS does “not yet have data as to why they fell off the program,” when queried about the Arkansas situation by Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.). In a heated exchange, Kennedy asked Azar why President Trump’s budget proposal this week backed enacting work requirements nationwide if it had incomplete data about the effects of the policy.
“We believe it’s a fundamental aspect for able-bodied adults, if you are receiving free health care from the taxpayer, that it’s not too much to ask you would engage in some form of community activity,” Azar responded.
“Healthier people working is not the same thing as work making people healthier,” Kennedy retorted.
The evidence in Arkansas of work requirements causing people to fall off Medicaid could make it even harder for HHS to convince Boasberg of the validity of its position this time around. In his ruling over summer, the judge said the agency didn’t adequately assess the impact of work requirements on enrollment overall.
And there’s something else that encourages opponents of work requirements. In November, the nonpartisan panel that advises on Medicaid policy sent HHS a letter urging it to pause Arkansas’s work requirements until it had taken steps to help enrollees comply.
“The low level of reporting is a strong warning signal that the current process may not be structured in a way that provides individuals an opportunity to succeed, with high stakes for beneficiaries who fail,” wrote Penny Thompson, chairman of the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission.
AHH: The Food and Drug Administration announced a new policy that aims to make it more difficult for minors to buy flavored e-cigarette products, the latest in an effort to curb youth vaping.
The policy, a key effort by outgoing FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, will limit the sale of fruity and kid-friendly flavors of vaping products to stores that prohibit minors or that have adult-only sections, our Post colleague Laurie McGinley reports. Online sellers of these products will also have to tighten age verification and limit the quantities that are sold. Any companies that violate these rules will be subject to enforcement actions from the agency, which can include stripping their products from the market.
Gottlieb had detailed a plan similar to the new draft guidance back in November.
OOF: The leader of one of the country's largest insurers expressed openness this week to Medicare-for-all. Humana CEO Bruce Broussard said he views the idea as a potentially enormous opportunity for the health insurance industry, Insider Louisville reports.
“For me, I think it’s a great opportunity for the industry to be able to expand the population that it’s coordinating care with,” Broussard said Tuesday at the Barclays Global Healthcare Conference in Miami Beach, Fla.
But Broussard said he would expect a Medicare-for-all plan to still involve the private sector working in conjunction with the federal government to provide care, comparing it to the way the U.S. manages its space program. And he warned that there are big, outstanding questions about how such a system would work and who would pay for it.
Partnership for America's Health Care Future -- the coalition of industry groups opposing all iterations of Medicare-for-all -- pushed back against Broussard's remarks.
“Facts show there simply aren’t circumstances under which would a Medicare for All-style proposal represents a ‘great opportunity,'" the group's Executive Director Lauren Crawford Shaver said in a statement provided to Health 202. "Whether you call it Medicare for All, Medicare buy-in, a public option, or single-payer, it would lead to a one-size-fits-all government-run system. It would disrupt Americans’ coverage including longer waits, lower the quality of care, force families to pay more, and threaten the Medicare program our seniors have been promised and rely on."
OUCH: Nearly 100 countries reported marked surges in measles cases last year over the previous year, according to a new U.N. report. The rise was in part due to complacency among parents and unwarranted concerns about vaccination, the report found.
Recent measles outbreaks have also led to questions in countries over the ramifications for families unwilling to vaccinate children, even as most countries say that decision is up to the parents, our Post colleague Rick Noack writes.
Critics of these sort of measures say it’s more important to debunk conspiracy theories related to vaccines and raise public awareness to their importance. In Finland, for example, there are no mandatory vaccination policies, but efforts such as vaccination in schools and public awareness campaigns have contributed to immunization rates of 95 to 99 percent.
—In December, officials in the county at the center of New York’s worst measles outbreak in decades, were compelled to ban unvaccinated children from going to schools that had vaccination rates lower than 95 percent. Months later, the parents of more than 40 of those children sued the Rockland County health department to get their children back in the classroom. But a federal judge rejected that request this week.
The parents are calling it an “exclusion order” that has “caused and continues to cause irreparable harm,” our Post colleague Reis Thebault reports.
— During Azar’s second day on Capitol Hill this week, Democratic lawmakers spent part of the two-hour hearing grilling him on the administration’s family separation policy.
— Two pharmacy benefit managers have agreed to appear before the Senate Finance Committee early next month, following an invitation from Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and the committee’s top Democrat, Ron Wyden (Ore.) to five of the country's top pharmacy middlemen who negotiate prices and coverage between insurers and drug makers.
Grassley and Wyden sent letters to Cigna, Prime Therapeutics, OptumRx, Humana, and CVS Health and CVS Caremark, inviting them to testify in an April 3 committee hearing. It will give the PBMs -- often targeted for their confusing role in the drug-pricing chain -- a chance to defend their own role, after lawmakers grilled pharmacutical executives in a hearing last month.
— Sen. Martha McSally (R-Ariz.) is asking the Air Force to have a summit on sexual assault in the military. The freshman senator, who revealed last week during a congressional hearing that she had been raped by a superior while serving in the Air Force, sent a letter to Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson calling on her to gather with senior leaders and policy experts for a discussion within the next month, our Post colleague Colby Itkowitz reports.
— The National Institutes of Health and a group of scientists and ethicists from seven countries have separately called for a moratorium on gene-editing experiments meant to alter certain heritable traits in babies.
“The new call for a moratorium is an acknowledgment that the many warnings emerging from conferences on the ethics of gene editing have not been sufficiently clear and emphatic and, in the case of the Chinese twins, have failed to prevent an ethical violation,” he adds.
Separately, NIH Director Francis Collins issued a statement supporting the call for a moratorium and told The Post this was the position of the federal government and was cleared at the highest levels.
“What we’re talking about here is one of the most fundamental moments of decision about the application of science to something of enormous societal consequence. Are we going to cross the line toward redesigning ourselves?” Collins said.
The paper in Nature does not call for a permanent ban on gene editing of heritable traits.
The Committee on Energy and Commerce will probe companies offering the short-term coverage and "hold them accountable," Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., including those run by UnitedHealth and Anthem.
Medics responded to nearly 50 cases of suspected overdoses of synthetic drug.
Dr. Carl Eriksson, who works in OHSU’s pediatric intensive care unit, couldn’t reveal anymore about the family but offered insight into the rarity of the disease and the challenges in treating it.
Utah Legislators passed a bill Tuesday banning pelvic examinations on patients under anesthesia who have not knowingly given consent. This practice has been done to help train medical professionals.
The report stresses that “unsustainable human activities globally have degraded the Earth’s ecosystems, endangering the ecological foundations of society."
The governor argued the death penalty discriminates against racial minorities and the poor.
The Senate Finance Committee holds a hearing on the president’s 2020 budget request.
From the Fact Checker: Has Trump's tax cut 'virtually' paid for itself?
The Commander-in-Chief and President of the Economic Freedom Fighters, Julius Malema, was tonight stopped by a white unmarked van just by the Grayston drive offramp in Sandton & immediately surrounded by plus/minus 10 police cars. The police then all came out pointing guns at his car and forced him out. The entire intersection at the Grayston Drive offramp was blocked, isolating him from the rest of the traffic.
The CIC Julius Malema got out and the police all did nothing, claiming it was a mistake. He forced his way around the police cars, driving over the pavements and drove off.
The EFF takes this as a clear act of intimidation and demonstration that the enemy is following our CIC Julius Malema around. The CIC was from Soweto, attending an EFF Manifesto Launch Preparatory Meeting. We believe that the white unmarked van which stopped him first could have been following and tracking him from Soweto.
Now that their criminal charges and SARS cases were not successful to subdue the rising Lion of the North. Now that they failed to stop him from building what has become the largest left revolutionary movement in the country in form of the EFF. Now that even the highest courts of the country have given rulings of no confidence in the government of the day due to the relentless, brave and uncompromising fight that the CIC Julius Malema has sustained, the enemy is going for his security, physically seeking to subdue him into fear.
If the enemy thinks harassing our CIC Julius Malema will subdue him or the EFF they are lying. We want to send a strong message to them that we are unshaken and declare that their days in government are numbered. The spirit of the people of South Africa is awaken for good and no amount of security threats, particularly using the venomous, blood thirsty security forces, will ever silence it.
The bravery of our CIC Julius Malema is stronger than 10 million armies. He is the generational gift that not only this country, but the continent and the world will benefit from. If the people of South Africa can take the murderous apartheid regime down, this zombified, kleptocratic government is nothing.
The people of South Africa and the world must know that the regime is turning violent. We shall keep them updates on each and every incident, because they must know the conditions we are operating under. We wish to also reiterate that we shall stop at nothing to defend our constitution. We are prepared to defend it, using whatever revolutionary means possible, we are not scared.
Shuffling around among my papers in my box of notes, I came across some press cuttings from Italian papers of last autumn. They tell the chilling and puzzling story of an Italian family composed of a widowed middle-aged mother and her three adult sons, who all together one morning threw themselves over a viaduct almost 100 meters high on the Rome-Aquila highroad.
A little earlier that morning they had stopped their Alfa Romeo 164 in the emergency lane. A police car drew up, and asked what was the matter. Nothing, said the eldest son, mildly. Our mother wasn’t feeling very well and we just stopped for a minute. On the return journey the police patrol was surprised to see the Alfa still standing there. It had doors flung wide open, as well the baggage section. Not a soul in sight, except that, when they looked over the guardrail, they saw four dead bodies lying fairly close to each other. The proximity of the bodies, according to the fire brigade, seemed to point to the family having jumped hand in hand.
There was something almost of Greek tragedy in the story of an Italian mother consenting to take her adult sons to their death with her, and of their consenting to the plan. It was generally believed that the mother was the dominant spirit, although there was no proof that one of the three adult sons had not the upper hand. The sons had fiancées and women friends: The eldest, Robert, 38, was head of a society of intermediary finance, whatever that means. His two brothers, Silvio, 34, and Marco, 27, were commercial travelers in costume jewelry and watches. The mother, Annamaria, was 64, and had retained her striking good looks.
One psychiatrist who was approached about this event suggested that there was a high charge of depression in the family, probably transmitted genetically, a common anguish accumulating day after day and month after month within the family nucleus.
They had not been poor people. The working colleagues and friends of the young men were taken completely by surprise. The family had financial worries, to the extent that they owed, collectively, about a million dollars. That, divided by four, gives us debts of 250,000 dollars each, which surely three healthy young men could have made some arrangement to pay up, at least in part. But that was possibly their trouble–they could not divide by four where the family was concerned.
Suicide is the fatal sickness of any hope, the death of any future. Possibly this family faced a form of bankruptcy. But they seemed to abhor bankruptcy; it was literally worse than death. This is the respectable bourgeois mentality at its most pathetic. On a beautiful day amid beautiful scenery, they threw themselves in unison over a 100-meter viaduct. What fools! What absolute fools!
NEWPORT County manager Dean Holdsworth has pulled off a triple transfer coup just in time for Christmas.
The table-topping Exiles squad has been severely hit by injuries in recent weeks and the manager has acted decisively, bringing in a new defender, midfielder and extending the deal of an attacker already at the club.
Holdsworth has swooped to sign defender Aaron Morris, a current Wales U21 international with Cardiff City, on an initial one-month loan. He has agreed a similar deal to sign the vastly experienced 28-year old midfielder Ashley Nicholls who joins from Bishop’s Stortford, also for an initial month, pending the paperwork being concluded in Nicholls’ case.
Morris, 21, has featured four times for Wales U21s in the current campaign under boss Brian Flynn and is a first year professional at the Bluebirds. Nicholls, a graduate of Ipswich’s academy, arrives after spells with Darlington, Rushden and Diamonds, Grays, Boston and Maidenhead United.
However, perhaps the most exciting news for supporters is that Kerry Morgan, the popular forward on loan from Swansea City, has agreed to stay for the remainder of the season, a move backed by his parent club.
These transfers will not impact Holdsworth’s plan to sign a central defender once the transfer window opens in January and with Ashan Holgate, Danny Rose, Nathan Davies, Dave Gilroy and Takumi Ake all sidelined by injury, and come at a perfect time according to the boss.
“It’s perfect timing for us really, we’re thrilled to welcome Aaron and Ashley on board and they can both contribute for us at a time when we’re a little short,” Holdsworth said.
"Aaron has the right pedigree, physique and ability to make an impact and he’s desperate for some game time. I’ve spoken in depth to Terry Burton at Cardiff and it’s a win, win move for both clubs, particularly with Paul (Bignot) facing a suspension,” added Holdsworth.

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