“Bill Gates told us about the coronavirus in 2015.”

Explanation: Bill Gates gave a TED talk in 2015 about how we weren’t ready for the next outbreak of a virus. He didn’t mention coronavirus or COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,

You can’t say Bill Gates didn’t tell you so, according to a recent Facebook post. "Bill Gates told us about the coronavirus in 2015," claims the March 15 video published on the social media platform. The video begins with the Microsoft co-founder standing on stage underneath a giant projector screen. "The greatest risk of global catastrophe doesn’t look like this," Gates says as behind him appears a giant image of a bomb exploding. "Instead," Gates continues, "it looks like this." The picture overhead changes to what appears to be a giant microbe, an image similar to the graphics that news organizations and others use to illustrate their stories about the new coronavirus . "If anything kills a million people over the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war," Gates says. "Not missiles, but microbes." 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.) Gates did say these words on a stage. And the images that appear in the video on Facebook did show on a screen behind him as he spoke. But this post goes too far by suggesting Gates specifically predicted COVID-19. No mention of coronavirus in Gates’ original 2015 speech On March 19, Gates published a blog post addressing questions about COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus that was first reported in Wuhan, China, on Dec. 31, 2019. The post is an edited transcript of an Ask Me Anything session he did on Reddit on March 18. In it, he refers to a TED talk he did in 2015. Footage from this talk is what appears in the Facebook video. The Facebook video is only a clip of Gates’ comments. The actual talk begins with him discussing how when he was a kid, the disaster Americans feared most was a nuclear war. But his line that opens the Facebook video comes soon after. He goes on to say that "we’ve actually invested very little in a system to stop an epidemic. We’re not ready for the next epidemic." He doesn’t use the word "coronavirus" in his speech. He does discuss Ebola and the failures in combating the disease’s outbreak in West Africa in 2014 — the largest Ebola outbreak since the virus was discovered in 1976, according to the World Health Organization. In aftermath of Ebola, Gates did warn of another epidemic About 10,000 people died during the Ebola outbreak and nearly all deaths were in West Africa, Gates said in his TED talk. The disease didn’t spread more, in part, because it didn’t spread through the air, and by the time patients are contagious, they’re generally so sick they’re bedridden. "The failure to prepare could allow the next epidemic to be dramatically more devastating than Ebola," Gates said. "Next time we might not be so lucky. You can have a virus where people feel well enough while they’re infectious that they get on a plane or they go to a market. The source of the virus could be a natural epidemic like Ebola, or it could be bioterrorism. So there are things that would literally make things a thousand times worse." Gates cited the 1918 Spanish flu as an example of a virus that spreads through the air. "So here’s what would happen," he says. "It would spread throughout the world very, very quickly. And you can see over 30 million people died from that epidemic. So this is a serious problem. We should be concerned." He then discusses how we could build a good response system — how we could be prepared for the next epidemic. "There’s no need to panic," he says. "We don’t have to hoard cans of spaghetti or go down to the basement. But we need to get going, because time is not on our side. In fact, if there’s one positive thing that can come out of the Ebola epidemic, it’s that it can serve as an early warning, a wake-up call, to get ready. If we start now, we can be ready for the next epidemic." Our ruling The Facebook post says that Gates told Americans about the coronavirus in 2015. But in the 2015 TED talk featured in the video, he never actually uses the word coronavirus, nor does he mention COVID-19. His comments do sound prescient, though. He talks about an epidemic and we’re now in the midst of a pandemic. People could be infected with COVID-19 and not show symptoms for days, if at all. And it’s mainly spread between people in close contact through respiratory droplets when someone coughs or sneezes. We rate this Facebook post .


Thai PM asks rich for help with coronavirus fall-out.

Explanation: Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha called on the country’s 20 richest people on Friday to help in addressing the damaging economic fall-out from the coronavirus epidemic.

In a televised address that swiftly drew social media scorn, Prayuth did not say exactly what assistance he sought. He said he would send an open letter to the 20 magnates next week. “These rich Thais are very influential in the country’s economy and are categorized as some of the richest people in the world. I am asking them to play important role in working together to help the country,” he said. Wealthy families control some of the biggest businesses in Thailand, one of the world’s most unequal societies. The Southeast Asian country has reported 2,700 COVID-19 infections and 47 deaths, and the economic blow from losses of trade and tourism and restrictions on movement has been heavy. The Thai Chamber of Commerce said this week that job losses could reach 10 million if the coronavirus outbreak continues for a few more months. After Prayuth’s speech, the hashtag #BeggarGovernment was swiftly trending on Twitter, with more than 65,000 tweets in just over an hour. Prayuth did not identify the country’s 20 wealthiest people to whom he was referring. King Maha Vajiralongkorn, whose fortune makes him one of the world’s richest men, has donated medical equipment to Thai hospitals and provisions to poor communities. Topping the Forbes list of Thai rich people are the Chearavanont family who own Charoen Pokphand Group, one of the world’s largest producers of animal feed and livestock; Chalerm Yoovidhya, who co-owns the energy drink Red Bull; and Charoen Sirivadhanabhakdi, who controls Thai Beverage, Thailand’s largest brewer. Also among the wealthiest Thais is ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup and fled into exile abroad to avoid a corruption trial he said was politically motivated. Prayuth, a former junta leader, overthrew Thaksin’s sister Yingluck in a 2014 coup and won a disputed election last year.


The New York Police Department used to have "surveillance going on in and around mosques in New York City. ... Our mayor totally cut that out.

National, Civil Rights, Islam, Terrorism, Donald Trump,

Following the terrorist attacks in Paris that killed more than 120 this weekend, 2016 presidential candidates are debating how to prevent another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Republican front-runner Donald Trump, in an interview for MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Nov. 16, 2015, said he would consider surveillance of mosques as a protective measure against radical Islam -- an idea similar to that recently proposed by French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve. "You’re going to have to watch and study the mosques, because a lot of talk is going on at the mosques," Trump said. "In the old days, meaning a while ago, we had great surveillance going on in and around mosques in New York City. And I understand our mayor totally cut that out... I’m not sure it’s a fact." Well, the Donald’s sources have part of the story -- the New York Police Department used to have a squad dedicated to spying on Muslim communities, and the team was disbanded in 2014. Other aspects of the story, however, aren't so clear. Mapping out Muslims In 2003, the CIA helped the New York Police Department create a squad dedicated to surveilling Muslim communities, called the Demographics Unit, as part of broad policy changes following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The Demographics Unit typically consisted of a dozen members, and it focused on identifying places where potential terrorists might be able to blend in with the rest of society. The police essentially mapped out Muslim communities inside and outside the city, detailing where people in traditional Islamic clothes ate, worshipped, shopped and more. According to the New York Times, "plainclothes detectives looked for ‘hot spots’ of radicalization that might give the police an early warning about terrorist plots." The result of the surveillance operations: a rift between the Muslim community and law enforcement, two ongoing federal lawsuits and a failure to generate any terror cases. The Demographics Unit wasn’t the only Muslim-focused surveillance effort in New York. Informants for the NYPD also collected the personal information of members of Muslim student groups on college campuses. Analysts also kept tabs on influential Muslim figures and scholars through college websites and email groups. Police also investigated mosques in the city and labeled certain locations as "terrorism enterprises," which supposedly allowed the police to collect license plate numbers in parking lots, video worshippers and secretly record sermons. None of this surveillance ever led to charges that those mosques or Islamic organizations were related to terrorism. Shutting it down The program was kept under wraps until the Associated Press published an investigation into the police department’s intelligence operations in 2011. Following the AP’s report, John Brennan, President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, said he was "aware of things that NYPD has been doing, in an exceptionally good way, to protect the citizens of New York City on a daily basis." The NYPD received enormous backlash from civil rights groups over the new details on the Demographics Unit, but the surveillance program remained active until January 2014, when newly elected Mayor Bill de Blasio took office and appointed William J. Bratton as police commissioner. In April 2014, members of the Muslim American Civil Liberties Coalition (MACLC), a New York-based coalition, met with Bratton and other police officials to discuss shutting down the Demographics Unit. The surveillance squad was officially disbanded the next week. "The meeting resulted from a request by police reform and civil rights advocates, and the participants used the opportunity to articulate how the NYPD’s dragnet has harmed American Muslim communities and why it must come to an end," according to a MACLC press release. The move to shut down the Demographics Unit could have been political. But whether or not de Blasio himself "totally cut out" the surveillance program is debatable. According to the New York Times, the move was viewed as a sign that the new police commissioner was distancing himself from the sometimes controversial post-Sept. 11 intelligence practices under former mayor Michael Bloomberg. That’s not to suggest de Blasio wasn’t involved in the discussions surrounding the spying program. While running for mayor in 2012, de Blasio said he believed the surveillance program was legal and was created in good faith to protect New Yorkers. When the program was shuttered in 2014, de Blasio seemed to flip on the issue. "Our administration has promised the people of New York a police force that keeps our city safe, but that is also respectful and fair," de Blasio said in a press release. "This reform is a critical step forward in easing tensions between the police and the communities they serve, so that our cops and our citizens can help one another go after the real bad guys." Shutting down the Demographics Unit didn’t necessarily mean the NYPD stopped keeping tabs on the Islamic community. The New York Times reported that after the surveillance program was disbanded, the police continued to recruit Muslims to be informants for the department. While police officials said the interviews to recruit informants were voluntary, some of the Muslims who were probed said they were "shaken." One person whom police tried to recruit told the New York Times that an officer told him, "You just go to the mosque and the cafe and just say to us if somebody is talking about anything, anything suspicious." We should note that it is unclear if or how the New York Police Department is still surveilling Muslims, especially after new terrorist threats against New York City. Faiza Patel, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said the police have not shuttered its entire surveillance program related to Muslims. "The NYPD has not, to my knowledge, stopped spying on mosques," Patel said. De Blasio has continued to defend the Demographics Unit amidst renewed public attention and federal lawsuits. While a federal judge in New Jersey dismissed a lawsuit over the surveillance last year, a U.S. Court of Appeals in Philadelphia revived the case in October. Finally, Trump said the surveillance program was "great," but not everyone feels that way. Critics of the program have argued that the Demographics Unit only further alienated the Muslim community following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "The Demographics Unit created psychological warfare in our community," Linda Sarsour, a member of the Arab American Association of New York, told the New York Times. "Those documents, they showed where we live. That’s the cafe where I eat. That’s where I pray. That’s where I buy my groceries. They were able to see their entire lives on those maps. And it completely messed with the psyche of the community." When we reached out to the mayor’s office, de Blasio praised the NYPD’s anti-terrorism efforts but didn’t directly address the now-shuttered Demographics Unit. "First and foremost, we always will abide by the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits discrimination against religions," de Blasio wrote in a statement. "Mosques don't commit acts of terrorism. People do." Our ruling Trump said the New York Police Department used to conduct "surveillance in and around mosques in New York City. Our mayor totally cut that out." While Trump doesn’t paint the full picture, there is evidence that supports his point: the New York Police Department used to spy on Muslims. The program actually went further than just surveilling mosques -- detectives mapped out entire Muslim communities, tracked Muslims’ daily activities, investigated Muslim college students and more. The project was shut down, but it was the police commissioner, not the mayor, who officially closed the program. The commissioner is the mayor’s appointee and in all likelihood acted with the mayor’s approval. We can’t say with certainty what kind of surveillance the police department conducts now. But Trump is right that a high-profile program was shuttered. We rate this statement .


A new Facebook feature enabling users to report problems by shaking their phones has caused some users to be inadvertently reported for abuse and suspended.

Explanation: What's true: Facebook has begun rolling out a 'shake-to-report' feature in their mobile app. What's false: The feature does not collect reports about abusive posts or other terms-of-service violations and cannot accidentally trigger account suspensions.

Did you know Facebook’s mobile app has a new feature that allows users to report problems by shaking their phones? No? Neither did we, until readers alerted us to a viral Facebook post claiming that a new “shake-to-report” feature was inadvertently landing some people in “Facebook jail” (meaning their accounts had been suspended). Warnings such as this one started to appear online in mid-June 2019:  Here’s the text of the post, minus emojis: PSA FACEBOOK NEEDS TO STOP AVOID FB JAIL I shook my phone and it’s a REAL thing! It took me a little bit, but it really is a thing! I turned mine off! Your public service announcement for today: The recent FB update added this new feature for mobile fb users. Since this update – some people have landed in FB jail multiple times (yes, it’s a real place and there’s no fair trial or bail out options!) One has been in & out for over a week now It seems many of us are accidentally ‘reporting a problem’ and getting our friends thrown in jail. How can you fix it? When you’re in FB, shake your phone around until this shows up. Then slide that ‘shake phone to report a problem’ button to OFF! It’s CRAZY that none of us knew this had been added and that it was automatically ON with the update. Fix your phones – Let’s keep our friends (and me lol) out of FB jail! This is no joke shake your phone! Not fast or hard. I just removed mine. With little-to-no fanfare, Facebook began rolling out a new “shake-to-report” feature in their mobile app in late May 2019. The tech news website Engadget described the rollout on 28 May: Facebook wants to make reporting bugs as easy as shaking your phone. In fact, that’s all you’ll have to do. Thanks to a new feature, when you encounter a bug, you can simply shake your phone and file a report through a pop-up menu that will appear on the screen. The “shake to report” method was previously available as an opt-in feature on iOS, and it will soon be a default setting on both iOS and Android. You’ll still be able to report bugs through Facebook’s Help & Support menu, but the company says it’s hoping this new method will be easier to use. In addition to reporting when News Feed doesn’t load or a video won’t play, Facebook also wants users to report when they can’t figure out how to complete an action, like how to delete a story. Facebook is rolling this out to a small percentage of users globally, but within the next two weeks, it should be available to everyone. Facebook confirmed all this in an email to Snopes.com, including that “shake to report” is enabled by default. The easiest way to find out if you have it is to run the Facebook app, then give your phone a gentle shake. A pop-up screen should appear giving you the option of reporting a problem or disabling the shake-to-report feature altogether:  (You can access the same screen via the main Facebook app menu, under Help & Support > Report a Problem.) There are two more things to notice about the screen “Shake phone to report a problem”: First, it doesn’t automatically send a report to Facebook. It provides a link to a report form requiring the user to explain the problem. That means a report can’t be sent accidentally. Second, it clearly says that the shake-to-report feature is to report “something isn’t working,” not to report abusive posts or other terms-of-service violations. Note that a link is offered at the bottom to call up instructions for reporting abuse (see Facebook’s help page for those instructions). That means you can’t use the shake-to-report feature for issues other than technical ones. In summary, is the “shake-to-report” feature real? Yes, and if it has been rolled out to your app, it’s automatically enabled. You can disable it (if you wish to) by shaking your phone to call up the screen and turning it off, or by doing the same via the app’s Help & Support menu. Is it possible to inadvertently send reports or suspend someone’s account by using the feature? No, that’s not how it works. You might want to share this information with friends who are spreading the rumor.


Crop invaders: China's small farmers struggle to defeat armyworm.

Explanation: Yan Wenliu leans on the side of his cart as he prepares to leave his sugarcane field in Southwest China, bewildered by the formidable new pest that has ambushed his crops this year.

“I don’t know what it is,” says Yan, a 36-year-old farmer from Menghai county in Yunnan province. “But it is bigger than other ones. I have never seen this worm before.”  The creature Yan is unable to name is the fall armyworm, the larva of the fall armyworm moth. Known locally as the “heart-devouring worm,” the destructive pest has spread more than 3,000 km (1,865 miles) north since migrating from neighboring Myanmar seven months ago, reaching 21 provinces and regions in China and posing a grave threat to grain output. In Yunnan alone, where the pest struck first in China, some 1.29 million mu (86,000 hectares) had been affected by mid-June, including corn, sugarcane, sorghum and ginger crops. First found in the Americas, fall armyworm has spread through Africa and Asia since 2016, with the moths flying up to 100 km (60 miles) a night. It can’t be eradicated and its management is both costly and difficult. This poses a formidable challenge in China where about 90% of crop production comes from small farms of less than a hectare (2.5 acres) and owners lack basic knowledge and resources to tackle the pest. Beijing warned earlier this year that armyworm was a severe threat to the country’s food security and in May launched a campaign to “snatch grain from the insect’s mouth.”   Millions of yuan have been allocated to affected regions and experts sent to educate farmers. In Yunnan, the government has set up 3,500 monitoring sites at local agriculture bureaus and conducted frequent field inspections, the provincial agriculture bureau said in an email to Reuters. Local authorities have also provided training to farmers and pesticide dealers on identification and prevention of armyworm, the bureau added. (Graphic: Fall Armyworm invasion of Asia IMG, tmsnrt.rs/2XYNbIX)  PESTICIDE OR PENNILESSTo those in Yunnan, the solution to the worm problem seemed obvious - pesticide. “You have to keep spraying chemicals. If you don’t kill the worm, you will end up penniless,” says sugarcane farmer Yan in Mengkang village. But paying for the pesticide in the quantities required has left many farmers out of pocket, while a failure to follow the complex regime needed - using different pesticides at different crop growth stages and rotating them to prevent resistance - means the money is often wasted. “You just can’t kill them,” says Yan Hannen, a 44-year-old farmer, from nearby Nuodong. “I have been farming for 20 years but have never seen this many worms.”  A frustrated Yan applied pesticides fives times to his last crop of sweet corn, but output nearly halved. He has already sprayed his new crop twice, to little effect. “They told me to use one bucket but I used three. It still did not work. What can you do?” he asked. Local government has held many meetings to brief farmers on the pest and villagers have improved their approach to using pesticides, said Yan Xiangwa, a village official in Nuodong. But for farmers who have already battled severe drought this year, the latest threat has put their entire livelihoods at risk. Villagers tend to give up treatment due to the high cost, the Yunnan provincial government said in a report last month, adding that sufficient human resources for plant protection were also lacking at the local level. Yu Xianger, another Nuodong farmer, sprayed pesticide on her 2 mu (0.13 hectare) corn field without results and is thinking about finding work in the city. “The worms have devastated my corn crops this year. And there’s nothing much else I can do,” she said. (Graphic: Areas suitable for Fall Armyworm , tmsnrt.rs/2XYgvPY)  Experts say the fight against armyworms is difficult and the enemy is a tough one. Adept at hiding, the pest is hard to detect and prefers to venture out at night, to feast on plants and fly to new pastures. “Local farmers here didn’t use much pesticide before and wouldn’t buy chemicals until they saw the worms, meaning they might have missed the best time to kill them,” said Yao, a sales manager for pesticide supplier Jingbo Agrochemicals Technology Co Ltd in Xishuangbanna, Yunnan province. The villagers’ slow response to the arrival of armyworm was not helped by the absence of a trapping system involving lights and pheromones that Beijing says is currently being deployed nationwide. The Yunnan agriculture bureau says it has set up more than 30,000 such trapping systems in the province and is continuously carrying out preventive measures and treatment against the pest, involving chemicals and natural enemies. While some villages have been badly affected, the government says the province as a whole has been managing the problem. The damage has been “effectively controlled” in Yunnan, with total corn crop losses limited to within 5%, it said in the email. This year’s summer grain output in Yunnan increased by 16,200 tonnes from the previous year, the bureau said, citing official statistics. Despite the problems in the country’s south, the outlook for China’s main corn production area in the north is “much better,” says Hu Gao, professor of insect ecology at Nanjing Agricultural University. Control and prevention measures have given the region, which accounts for more than 70% of China’s corn production, more time to prepare for an invasion. The worm has yet to reach the northeastern provinces including Heilongjiang, the top grower of the grain, and some experts believe the lower temperatures in the region will protect it from a full attack. Back in Yunnan, however, farmer Yan Hannei is thinking about switching to other plants like vegetables. “I am going to lose so much money this year,” he says. “What can you do? I can only stop growing corn and grow something else.”


Walker taking gas tax argument to voters at the pumps.

Explanation: Gov. Scott Walker is taking his argument against raising the gas tax straight to voters at the pump.

Health, Wisconsin, Scott Walker, Kavanaugh nomination, Elections, Prescription drug costs, Prescription drugs

Walker’s campaign on Tuesday unveiled an ad that will play on screens at gas stations as people are refueling their cars. In the spot, Walker hits Democratic opponent Tony Evers for being willing to raise the gas tax to pay for roads. Not to be outdone, Evers has a new pair of more traditional ads that will run on television screens across the state. They feature people talking about the high price of prescription drugs and health care in Wisconsin. He unveiled the new spots Tuesday as part of the rollout of a plan he released Monday designed to lower prescription drug costs. The new ads come exactly one month before the Nov. 6 election. Recent polls have shown Evers with a slight lead over Walker, who is seeking a third term. The latest Marquette University Law School poll, the first since the drama over Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation battle for the U.S. Supreme Court, was to be released on Wednesday. In his new ad, Walker wears a Milwaukee Brewers jacket and knocks on the screen saying, “Hi, it’s Scott Walker. Good thing you’re filling up because if Tony Evers wins, he’ll raise the gas tax by as much as a dollar a gallon.” While Evers is willing to raise the 32.9-cent per-gallon gas tax, he’s said it’s a “lie” to claim he’d want to increase it by as much as a dollar. Evers hasn’t said how much he’d be willing to raise it. Walker has also been open to raising the gas tax in the past, but only if there is a corresponding cut in another tax. Assembly Republicans in 2017 proposed raising the gas tax as part of a plan to shore up state road funding. The Legislature and Walker ultimately rejected that in favor of a plan that relied on increased borrowing. Evers highlights his health care cost-reduction plans with a pair of ads featuring people talking about their struggles to pay for medicine they need. In one , a woman from Oconomowoc says she can’t afford a pill that costs $200 a day that can help her fight kidney disease. In another , an Onalaska woman with breast cancer says the cost of health care in Wisconsin is “absolutely outrageous.” Under Evers’ plan to reduce prescription drug costs, a new state board would be created that would review price hikes and fine drugmakers for excessive increases. Walker’s campaign referenced a federal appeals court decision this year ruling that a similar Maryland law allowing its attorney general to sue drugmakers over price increases was unconstitutional. Also under Evers’ plan, flu shots would be covered under the popular SeniorCare program that holds down costs on prescription drugs for about 92,000 senior citizens. Walker tried twice to scale back SeniorCare, but after being rebuffed by lawmakers, he sought federal approval to continue it indefinitely instead of having to seek waivers. Evers’ plan also calls for reducing state expenses on prescription drug purchases and allowing imports of prescription drugs from Canada. Walker’s biggest attempt to lower health care costs this year came with a $200 million reinsurance program that is designed to lower premium rates for most people in the individual market starting next year. ___ Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sbauerAP ___ Sign up for “Politics in Focus,” a weekly newsletter showcasing the AP’s best political reporting from around the country leading up to the midterm elections: https://bit.ly/2ICEr3D


The Obama administration "supported Muslim allies trying to establish a new international blasphemy standard.

Civil Rights, Foreign Policy, Religion, Terrorism, PunditFact, Jonathan Turley,

France has braced itself for yet another round of Islamic extremist attacks as the latest issue of Charlie Hebdo hits the newsstands. Following the murders of most of the Paris-based satirical paper’s staff last week, the cover features a cartoon Mohammed with a tear rolling down his cheek, under a headline that reads in French, "All is forgiven." He holds the symbol of solidarity with the slain journalists, a sign that says "Je suis Charlie," or "I am Charlie." While that message might be somber, a powerful vein of Muslim thought sees any depiction of Mohammed as blasphemous. Cartoons like this were what drew death threats in the past. In this violent clash between the pen and the sword, politicians and pundits in the western democracies largely put the onus on the Islamic world to uphold the principle of freedom of expression. But a prominent American law professor wrote in a Sunday Washington Post op-ed that the Obama administration itself has abetted the forces of intolerance. In that op-ed, Jonathan Turley of George Washington University Law School primarily criticized the French for passing laws that criminalize speech that insults, defames or incites violence on the basis of religion, race, or other social marker. At the end of his piece, however, Turley brings his critique closer to home. "In 2009, the Obama administration shockingly supported Muslim allies trying to establish a new international blasphemy standard," Turley wrote, "And as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton invited delegations to Washington to work on implementing that standard." Has the administration really supported Muslim countries as they seek to spread an international standard forbidding blasphemy? We took a closer look. (For the record, Turley is representing House Republicans in their health care lawsuit against the president, but his stance on this issue came long before.) At the heart of Turley’s argument is American support for United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution 16/18. The U.S. goal was to establish common ground for religious tolerance. Or, as the opening lines of the resolution put it, "to promote and encourage universal respect for and observance of all human rights and fundamental freedoms without distinction as to, inter alia, religion or belief." Approved in March 2011, the document has many clauses. These three are the most relevant to our fact-check: It affirms "the positive role that the exercise of the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the full respect for the freedom to seek, receive and impart information can play in strengthening democracy and combating religious intolerance." It "condemns any advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence, whether it involves the use of print, audio-visual or electronic media or any other means." In a list of "actions to foster a domestic environment of religious tolerance, peace and respect," it calls on states to adopt "measures to criminalize incitement to imminent violence based on religion or belief." For Turley and other free speech advocates, the kicker is that last point and the green light it gives to criminalizing expressions that incite others to violence. "The president has said that he does not support criminalizing blasphemy, but the reality is that the language of the resolution criminalizes the same speech," Turley told PunditFact. A quick history of blasphemy at the UN The effort to give blasphemy laws international legal standing at the United Nations goes back 15 years. It was largely a project of Muslim nations working through the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, an umbrella group with 57 member countries. In committees like the Human Rights Council, they were able to win majority support for policies to rein in freedom of expression in the name of preventing religious defamation. The United States and Western European representatives opposed these moves on free speech grounds, but found themselves out-voted. The Islamic nations pressed the defamation issue until a few years ago. Then in 2011, compromise language emerged that dropped any reference to blasphemy or defamation. The measure passed by unanimous consent. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called it a landmark achievement. "The United States strongly supports today’s resolution, which rejects the broad prohibitions on speech called for in the former ‘defamation of religions’ resolution, and supports approaches that do not limit freedom of expression or infringe on the freedom of religion," Clinton said in a prepared statement. Human rights advocacy groups, such as Human Rights First and British-based Article 19, also endorsed the measure. Human Rights First wrote, "Resolution 16/18 ceases to provide cover for national blasphemy laws and charts a new course. The resolution omits any reference to ‘defamation of religions’ and — in accordance with international standards — focuses on the protection of individuals, rather than the protection of abstract ideas and religions." We reached out to the White House to learn how the "incitement to immediate violence" phrase is different from the religious defamation language sought by the Muslim governments. We did not hear back, but in a published letter, two high-level State Department officials, Michael Posner and Suzan Johnson Cook, explained how these words are in synch with American law. They cited the 1969 Brandenburg v. Ohio decision involving a member of the Ku Klux Klan. In its ruling,  the U.S. Supreme Court held that all speech is protected "except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action." Posner and Cook wrote, "drawing a caricature of the prophet Muhammad that resulted in violence by Muslim extremists would not constitute 'incitement to imminent violence' under the Brandenburg test." Accordingly, the resolution, they said, would protect freedom of expression. Reading the UN rules differently Blasphemy laws are not rare. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2012 nearly a quarter of all countries had them. The list includes some European countries, such as Germany and Ireland, but the greatest concentration is in the Middle East where every Muslim nation from Egypt to Pakistan has them. In Pakistan, for example, a person could, in theory, be executed for insulting the prophet Mohammed or the Koran. No executions have happened, but in 2012, Pakistan prosecuted a dozen blasphemy cases. Muslim governments consistently argue that it is okay to restrict speech when that speech incites others to violence. Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, Secretary-General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation until 2014, made that clear in a 2012 interview with the French news service France24. İhsanoğlu spoke more than a year after the UN resolution passed and about a month after the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. "The OIC — I as secretary — I am a staunch supporter of freedom of expression," İhsanoğlu said. "But freedom of expression, according to international law, does not entail freedom of insulting others, denigrating others, mocking others." For İhsanoğlu, just as no one has the right to randomly scream "Fire!" in a crowded theater, no one has the right to insult Mohammed if others might respond violently. When the interviewer pressed and said "making fun of a religion doesn’t necessarily equate with incitement to violence," İhsanoğlu was adamant and specifically said that cartoons that mock Mohammed should be banned, in France and elsewhere. "If you don’t respect the feelings of 1.5 billion people, and if you don’t feel yourself responsible not to insult them, then we have a problem here. And if we have a problem here, we will have a problem there, with the demonstrations and taking to street and using violence," İhsanoğlu said. The secretary-general went on to say that the anti-Islam video that contributed to the attack in Benghazi and the attack itself were two sides of the same coin. "We are equating these acts together as incitement to hatred, incitement to violence. And we say we should not be hostages to extremists on either side," İhsanoğlu said. A year later, in a speech in Moscow, İhsanoğlu praised Resolution 16/18 for advancing the principle that freedom of expression did not include the right to defame any religion. He called the western concept, "a "twisted negative logic that is incomprehensible; that one exercises his freedom by insulting others, and not insulting just a few people, but insulting 1.6 billion people all over the world for no reason." The record is clear. The governments of Islamic majority nations see no conflict between 16/18 and laws that ban cartoons of Mohammed or any other public act that might offend believers in Islam. A failed strategy? Adoption of the 16/18 resolution led to a series of meetings to put its lofty goals into practice. Turley’s op-ed referred to one such meeting held in Washington. On the issue of freedom of speech, those talks have yet to deliver the goods. Robert Blitt is an associate professor of law at the University of Tennessee College of Law and has studied this slice of international law very closely. Blitt told PunditFact that the process is faltering. "The west is confronting the realization that the compromise effort that halted resolutions on defamation of religion and replaced them with an incitement-based approach did nothing to resolve the underlying, and still overriding, desire for the OIC to secure a prohibition on expression deemed defamatory of Islam," Blitt said. The American support for 16/18, Blitt said, probably bolstered the voices of moderate Muslim states that wanted to dial down the bad publicity they were getting with the defamation of religion resolutions. But Blitt said that tactic hasn’t shifted the Muslim position. "I don’t think the administration is intentionally supporting efforts to establish a new blasphemy standard," Blitt said. "However, its current stance represents an inadequate and miscalculated effort to create common ground." This isn’t terribly far from Turley’s view. Turley told PunditFact that he has talked with administration officials about this. "They always insisted that they were taking a different approach to try to moderate the Muslim countries," Turley said. The claim in his op-ed, Turley said, was not based on intentions, but results. And so far, the results, in his view, have been nill. Our ruling Turley said that the Obama administration "supported Muslim allies trying to establish a new international blasphemy standard." The accuracy of this statement hinges on how you understand that word "supported." American diplomats did endorse a UN resolution that avoided words about restricting speech that defamed a religion, but left open the door to criminalizing speech that was "incitement to immediate violence based on religion." The administration, as well as some free-speech advocacy groups, saw this as progress. But blasphemy laws remain on the books in Muslim nations, and the largest international body that speaks for those nations has said plainly that such laws are appropriate and ought to be adopted in the west. Not even Turley argues that this is the result the administration wanted, and another critic of the administration's strategy said American diplomats do not support efforts to establish an international blasphemy standard. One could argue that by participating in the ongoing negotiations, the administration has de facto endorsed a vehicle for the Muslim nations, but that is not the same as supporting their efforts. The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. We rate the claim .


Statistically, law-enforcement officers die 10 years earlier than the general population.

Explanation: Retired police captain says law enforcement officers die 10 years earlier than most people

Rhode Island, Labor, Public Service, Retirement, Robert Barber,

Government pensions and other retirement benefits have provoked bitter debate between public employees, who have planned their retirements on the promise of a pension, and taxpayers who say the increasing costs of the benefits are more than they can afford. Retirement packages for police officers and firefighters often come under scrutiny because, in recognition of the extra stress and physical requirements of the job, they often permit workers to retire earlier. The threat of a pension cut in Cranston prompted Robert Barber, a 58-year-old retired captain in the city's Police Department, to argue that any reduction in benefits would be unfair. "The City of Cranston entered into a contract with me. The agreement was that I would serve my community and risk my life so that, at the end of my career, if I reached it, I would be able to live the rest of my life with some dignity," he wrote in a commentary in The Journal. And, he wrote, that life is not likely to be as long as most retirees’. "Statistically," he said, "law-enforcement officers die 10 years earlier than the general population." We were intrigued by that statistic. Police officers certainly experience a lot of stress in their jobs, but in some cases their level of physical fitness is higher. When we emailed Barber, who retired at age 50, he said he first heard the statistic in a Bryant University psychology class. He directed us to two documents. The first didn’t deal directly with longevity. It was a Reuters Health account of a 2009 study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, which compared 312 Buffalo, N.Y., police officers with 318 residents. Ultrasound showed that the officers tended to have thicker walls in their neck arteries, which might be an early sign of heart disease. The second was a 24-page report from 2002 on "Fitness in Law Enforcement" written by a member of the Pittsfield Township Police Department in Michigan. It promotes more fitness among officers and states, "Solid research has shown the life expectancy, after retirement, of a police officer is much shorter than that of the general population." But no research is cited. We were hoping for some harder evidence. So we went looking for some actuarial data on our own. When we called MetLife, the spokeswoman referred us to the Society of Actuaries. But the society didn't have any data either. "Unfortunately, we do not keep this type of data regarding life expectancy for various careers," spokeswoman Kim McKeown told us in an email. We examined two websites that calculate life expectancy, but they were more interested in income, education, smoking, drinking, exercise and seatbelt habits, and whether a person was in a manual or non-manual occupation. Being a law-enforcement officer wasn't a factor in the calculation. The creator of one of the sites, statistician Dean P. Foster of The Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania pointed us to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that fishermen, loggers, pilots, farmers, roofers and even garbage men face a higher risk of death on the job than police officers. A Google search helped us locate Steven Greenhut, director of the journalism center at the right-leaning Pacific Research Institute in California and author of "Plunder! How Public Employee Unions Are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives And Bankrupting The Nation." He sent us a copy of an April 2010 study by the California Public Employees' Retirement System, which covers 1.6 million public employees. It compared life expectancies for male police officers with male workers and retirees who were not in the public safety field. Whether a person was age 50, 55, 60 or 65, the life expectancies of the police officers were slightly higher than for other workers. For example, men age 60 who had taken regular retirement were projected to live to age 82.7, versus age 81.9 for workers who were not in the public safety field. (Firefighter rates were close to those for police officers.) Even when CalPERS added in all the men who had retired as a result of work-related injuries, the life expectancies of the police officers were essentially identical to other public employees. The life expectancy for someone age 60, regardless of why they stopped working, was 81.8 years, just a tenth of a year lower than for regular workers. In 2006, Oregon's Public Employees Retirement System did an analysis comparing the life expectancies of members who were age 60. Police officers and firefighters were expected to live to age 82.6. The ages were 84.3 for school workers and 83.4 for other public employees. Women in the police and fire departments, and workers outside the school districts were expected to live to age 85.7. Among women working in the schools, the life expectancy was 87.0 years. Where does that leave us? Barber said police officers die 10 years earlier than the general population. But the actuarial studies we found showed little difference in life expectancy. In the latest California study, police officers were actually expected to live a bit longer than other state employees. In Oregon, the combined life expectancy for police and fire was only slightly less than average.


The USWNT lost a game to a young teenage boys' team.

Explanation: Was the U.S. Women’s National Team Defeated by Teenaged Boys in a 2017 Soccer Match?

After the United States Women’s National Team beat the Netherlands 2 to 0 to win the World Cup in July 2019, the fans of the nation’s soccer team were delighted. It also lent serious heft to the players’ demand for pay and treatment equal to that of the U.S. Soccer mens’ teams in a lawsuit that USWNT players filed on International Women’s Day — March 8, 2019 — to which the organization’s president responded publicly:U.S. Soccer believes that all female professional athletes deserve fair and equitable pay. We will continue to work with and listen to the USWNT players to achieve our shared goals as partners. pic.twitter.com/p81qhlYVdR— Carlos Cordeiro (@CACSoccer) March 15, 2019And then, the backlash began when a chorus of people on social media began claiming that the USWNT victory was mitigated by the fact they had at one point been beaten by a team of boys under 15:Remember…..#MeganRapinoe led the #USWNT squad that lost to a local boy’s under 15 soccer club https://t.co/nqWb7MKMdV— Andrew Wilkow (@WilkowMajority) July 10, 2019Why would the #USWNT deserve equal pay with men when they can be beaten by an under 15s boys team?Pay on ability, reward on performance, promote on merit.15 year old boys are more able than this teamFacts don’t care about your feelings. pic.twitter.com/iY4jziil1Z— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) July 8, 2019Needs to humble herself pic.twitter.com/nLBlXf9E9Y— Swanny🔴🇾🇪 (@ftbIswanny) July 10, 2019In the context in which it typically appeared, people on social media (apparently piqued that they themselves are terminally unable to win any football tournament anywhere at any point) began to opine that football captain and player Megan Rapinoe ought to “humble herself” due to the purported defeat at the hands of boys. Another common take was that female athletes do not warrant salaries near those commanded by their male counterparts, pointing to the same purported defeat as proof.People appeared to infer that just before their 2019 World Cup win, the USWNT had been handily beaten by a team of young boys. Some tweets linked to an article from April 2017, originally published by CBS Sports. That article’s headline, “FC Dallas under-15 boys squad beat the U.S. Women’s National Team in a scrimmage,” indicated that the event in question was not a match:In preparation for two upcoming friendlies against Russia, the U.S. women’s national team played the FC Dallas U-15 boys academy team on Sunday and fell 5-2, according to FC Dallas’ official website.It seemed that many newly self-anointed soccer pundits on social media relied on nothing more than the article’s headline and subheading to inform their views about the scrimmage between the Dallas boys’ team and the USWNT. But this article went on to describe the event as part of a structured practice undertaken primarily for the benefit and development of the boys’ team:Of course, this match against the academy team was very informal and should not be a major cause for alarm. The U.S. surely wasn’t going all out, with the main goal being to get some minutes on the pitch, build chemistry when it comes to moving the ball around, improve defensive shape and get ready for Russia.The game will, however, serve as a great anecdote for the kids on the FC Dallas squad to tell their grandchildren about one day. It also speaks highly of the level of academy development MLS teams are doing these days.In context, the 2017 scrimmage between the Dallas boys’ team and the USWNT was described as a chance for the boys to learn from the women’s team. But even at that point, much of that contextual information was left out.The U.S. Soccer Federation has a “Development Academy” program specifically for the training and conditioning of young athletes, in which FC Dallas readily participates:U.S. Soccer’s Development Academy program is driven by the game and its players, coaches and referees. This game-centric approach allows for long-term development to occur through a deep understanding of what makes players successful around the world. As the sport of soccer grows in the United States, young players in our country need the proper environment to compete against the world’s elite. The U.S. Soccer Development Academy program provides the optimum developmental environment for the nation’s top youth soccer players, coaches and referees by emphasizing development through quality training and limited, meaningful competition. Currently, FC Dallas has seven boys Academy teams: U-12, U-12 South, U-13, U-14, U-15, U-16/17 and U-18/19. U.S. Soccer has also added a Girls’ Academy in 2017 with FC Dallas teams in the U-14, U-15, U-17 and U-19 divisions.An April 2017 analysis published to football news site 90min.com (“Some People Think it’s Funny That the USA Women’s National Team Were Apparently Beaten by U15 Boys”) explained to American sports fans often unfamiliar with soccer that a scrimmage is not the same as a formal game. It began noting that information originally provided by the Dallas team had been re-reported elsewhere without context:The original [2017] post is now blocked by Dallas, most likely because a nice thing about youngsters having the chance to have an informal kick-about with World Cup winners and national heroes was later twisted into an attack by banter-obsessed pages and tweeters, suggesting that even a group of U15 boys could comfortably beat what is the best women’s team in the world.Observing that both teams were “all smiles afterwards as both sets of players happily posed for a group picture, not the utter humiliation and embarrassment some seem keen on making it,” the piece explained the manner in which such scrimmages are handled by professional athletes and teen hopefuls:It’s imperative to state that this ‘game’ between the USWNT and Dallas boys was not really a game at all. Before the official post was blocked it was described as a ‘scrimmage’ between the two squads, an informal practice. […]With many of the Dallas boys unlikely to make it all the way to professional level, when would the chance to share a pitch, even a training pitch, with a genuine global superstar come around again? The answer for nearly all of them is undoubtedly ‘never’.The fact that the women lost the ‘game’ means literally nothing.The only thing that needs reporting here is that some young hopeful footballers were able to meet and ‘jam’ with some very famous other footballers. If you find the alleged score-line funny, try learning the facts, step into the 21st century and just plain grow up.American fans unfamiliar with soccer or football mistook original reporting of the April 2017 scrimmage between the USWNT and the Dallas boys’ team as a sincere and serious game, rather than what it actually was: an informal match conducted as part of a larger program to train promising young athletes, which is what it was. When the FC Dallas under-15 team originally posted about the event they noted it was a scrimmage, but later reporting neglected to add in important contextual information about the event and the program.


Apollo 11 moon landing had thousands working behind scenes.

Explanation: It took 400,000 people to put Apollo 11′s Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon a half-century ago.

Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, AP Top News, Apollo 11 moon landing, General News, Moon, Science, U.S. News

That massive workforce stretched across the U.S. and included engineers, scientists, mechanics, technicians, pilots, divers, seamstresses, secretaries and more who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to achieve those first lunar footsteps . Some of them will be taking part in festivities this week to mark the 50th anniversary . A brief look at four: ___ Amid the sea of white shirts, black ties and pocket protectors inside NASA’s firing room for the liftoff of Apollo 11 sat JoAnn Morgan. July 16, 1969 was her prime-time debut as the first female launch controller. It wasn’t easy getting there. Morgan, 78, who began working for NASA in 1958 while in college, typically got the overnight shift before launches. She’d be replaced by a male colleague a few hours before showtime. “The rub came on being there at liftoff,” she recalled. And there was the taunting. She’d get obscene phone calls at her desk at Kennedy Space Center and lewd remarks in the elevator. The situation was even more strained next door at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The old launch-pad blockhouses there had a single restroom — for men. So Morgan found herself dashing to a nearby building for a women’s restroom, just as portrayed in “Hidden Figures,” the 2016 hit movie. “I was there. I wasn’t going anywhere. I had a real passion for it,” Morgan said. “Finally, 99 percent of them accepted that ‘JoAnn’s here and we’re stuck with her.’ ” As Apollo 11 loomed, Morgan’s boss went to the top to get her on liftoff duty. By then, the harassment had pretty much stopped. While NASA’s countdown clocks ticked toward a 9:32 a.m. launch, Morgan monitored ground instrumentation, everything from fire and lightning detectors to guidance computer data. When the official firing room photo was later taken — showing Morgan with her left hand raised to her chin — she was listening to Vice President Spiro Agnew address the team after the launch. With Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael Collins on their way, her job was done, at least for Apollo 11. Morgan and her husband Larry, a high school band director, slipped away on vacation and watched the July 20 moon landing on a hotel TV. As they toasted the first lunar footsteps, he told her, “Honey, you’re going to be in the history books.” Morgan went on to become Kennedy’s first female senior executive. Retired since 2003, she splits her time between Florida and Montana, and encourages young women to study engineering. ___ Tedd Olkowski was on emergency standby for the launch countdown of Apollo 11. His job was to help Collins — should the unlikely need arise before liftoff — escape from the Saturn V rocket, descend 32 stories in a high-speed elevator and then slide down a 200-foot (61-meter) tube into a bunker deep beneath the pad. Armstrong and Aldrin had their own guardian angels, according to Olkowski, space center workers who, like himself, had volunteered for the potentially dangerous assignment. NASA figured the astronauts, impeded by their cumbersome white spacesuits, could use extra help getting from a burning, leaking or even exploding rocket, all the way down to the so-called rubber room. The rubber-padded, shock-absorbing room led to a domed, blast-proof chamber 40 feet (12 meters) under Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Complex 39A. The dungeon had strap-in chairs, two-way radio and enough food to ride out a cataclysmic event. There was a similar setup under Pad 39B. Neither bunker was ever needed and later abandoned. Olkowski’s regular job was working with the pad’s closed-circuit TV system. He was a skinny 24-year-old from Cocoa Beach, but stood 6-foot-3 (1.9 meters) and jumped at the chance to be on an emergency team since he was already out there keeping tabs on the cameras. With an hour remaining in the countdown, the pad was evacuated by everyone except the Apollo 11 crew. Olkowski joined other workers a safe three miles (5 kilometers) away and watched the world’s biggest rocket thunder away on humanity’s first moon landing. “Even though we weren’t considered major players in it, we were just there to help the astronauts if they needed help, yeah, I mean it was exciting, especially now when I look back,” he said. Soon afterward, Olkowski quit his job to go to college, then spent a career with General Telephone and Electronics Corp. Now 74 and retired, he lives in League City, Texas, next door to NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Olkowski got a chance to meet up with Collins a decade or so ago. “I said, ‘Mike, I know you don’t remember me. It was a long, long time ago ...’ ” ___ You might say Spencer Gardner was NASA flight director Gene Kranz’s right-hand man for Apollo 11. As Mission Control’s flight activities officer in Houston, Gardner occupied the console to the right of Kranz, just across the aisle. Barely 26, Gardner was one of the youngest flight controllers on duty when the Eagle lunar lander settled onto the Sea of Tranquility with Armstrong and Aldrin on July 20, 1969. His job was to stay on top of the astronauts’ timeline. What if, for instance, the moon landing had to be aborted? Everything downstream would need to change. So Gardner constantly was thinking ahead, considering how best to rejuggle the flight plan if necessary. Looking back, Gardner wishes he’d savored the moment of touchdown more. But he had a job to do and there was no time for reflection. After the Eagle landed and his shift ended, Gardner went to a friend’s home, where everyone gathered around a black-and-white TV that night to watch Armstrong’s “small step” and mankind’s giant leap. Gardner wasn’t on duty for the July 24 splashdown. But he went to Mission Control anyway, joining the flag-waving, cigar-smoking crowd as Apollo 11′s astounding voyage came to an end in the Pacific. Gardner ended up working five more Apollo missions and also attended night law school. He left NASA in 1974 and became an assistant district attorney, then joined a law firm. He still practices law in Houston at age 76. “This is, to use the ‘Hamilton’ expression, the room where it happened,” he said inside the newly restored Apollo-era Mission Control last month. “Other than the lunar module and the command module, you couldn’t get any closer to it than this. We were in the room when it happened, and the sense of completion, I guess, struck me later. We had done what President Kennedy had asked us to do.” ___ Navy frogman Clancy Hatleberg was the first to welcome Apollo 11′s moonmen back to Earth. His mission on July 24, 1969, was to decontaminate Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins and their command module, Columbia, immediately after splashdown in the Pacific. The astronauts needed to be quarantined. Otherwise, who knows what moon germs might escape. It may seem silly now, but the possibility of lunar bugs was “a really serious concern” back then, according to Hatleberg, who was 25 at the time and fresh from an underwater demolition team rotation in Vietnam. Hatleberg was one of four frogmen on the recovery team who jumped into the ocean from a helicopter. The others secured the capsule, then moved upwind in a raft. That’s when Hatleberg moved in, carrying disinfectant. Covered in a protective garment, Hatleberg momentarily opened Columbia’s hatch to toss in a bag with three of the outfits. Once the astronauts had the gray garments on, they emerged from the capsule one by one onto a waiting raft. The first spaceman out offered his hand to shake. Hatleberg paused — shaking hands was not part of the NASA protocol that he’d practiced. He recalled thinking, “I was the last person who could screw the whole thing up.” Hatleberg shook hands anyway. Once the astronauts were wiped down by Hatleberg with a potent bleach solution, they were lifted into a helicopter and flown to the USS Hornet, where their quarantine mobile home awaited them along with President Richard Nixon. Hatleberg scoured Columbia before it, too, was transported to the aircraft carrier. He cleaned the raft and the flotation collar that had been around the spacecraft, then punctured them and watched them sink with his own decontaminated garment, any moon bugs swallowed by the sea. “There were so many other people whose jobs were more important than mine,” Hatleberg said. Looking back, he’s still in awe at what the Apollo astronauts accomplished. “They were the ones who risked their lives to take that giant leap for all mankind. They’re the heroes and they always will be — in my heart.” Hatleberg — who at 75 is working again as an engineer in Laurel, Maryland — said he always thought Aldrin was the first one he helped from the capsule. That is until a year or so ago, he said, when a Hornet curator pulled out old footage and zoomed in on the name tag. It read Armstrong. ___ Follow AP’s full coverage of the Apollo 11 anniversary at: https://apnews.com/Apollo11moonlanding ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content


Jimmies, the sprinkles used on confections, are so named as a reference to Jim Crow.

Explanation: It may be the case that among those who refer to dark brown or chocolate sprinkles as “jimmies” and other colors simply as “sprinkles,”  someone simply assumed a potentially racist connection was at work and retroactively invented an explanation for it.

While many of us like our ice cream unadorned, some could not properly enjoy a cone of their favorite flavor without its first being dipped into or sprinkled with jimmies, a colored candy decoration commonly used on ice cream, cupcakes, and donuts. However, as the example above illustrates, for some it’s a guilty pleasure because they’ve been told their preferred name for the multi-hued sweet sprinklings packs a racist wallop:  “Jimmies” is the Boston/New England word for “chocolate sprinkles.”  Ask any ice cream vendor for jimmies on your sundae, and so long as you’re within a 200-mile radius of Boston, chances are he’ll understand you. When I was 16 or 17, I heard for the first time this doozy of an urban legend, causing me to feel guilt for taking pride in this linguistic quirk — although I never stopped using the word. My friend told me, after I had ordered jimmies on my ice cream, that it was racist to say jimmies. She explained that because chocolate sprinkles are black, early Bostonian racists referred to them as jimmies — because of the Jim Crow laws. As little sense as this makes to me now, I was taken aback as a teenager, and was vaguely ashamed every time I got a chocolate-sprinkled sundae. I’ve heard it about 20 times since then, from all different sources, inside and outside of Boston, each accompanied by a dire warning not to perpetuate this racist expression! The Dictionary of American Regional English defines jimmies as “tiny balls or rod-shaped bits of candy used as a topping for ice-cream, cakes and other sweets.” This confection goes by many names, including ‘sprinkles’, ‘nonpareils,’ and ‘hundreds and thousands,’ but even among those who refer to them as ‘jimmies’ there is contention — some say all colors of this topping are properly styled ‘jimmies,’ while others assert only the brown ones are called that, with other shades of the sweet stuff being termed ‘sprinkles.’  There are two theories as to why anyone might think there’s a racist connotation to the name: One focuses on the brown color of what some say are the only true jimmies; the other posits that the name is a reference to Jim Crow, the title character in a well-known minstrel song of the 1830s. (Jim Crow quickly became a slang term for anything having to do with African-Americans, particularly items of a racist bent, such as the Jim Crow laws that segregated blacks from whites in the South.) No valid reason exists to suppose that ‘jimmies’ carries a racist meaning or had a racially-charged origin. However, it’s difficult to definitively disprove the claim because the term’s entry into the English language is downright murky. The theory cited most often attributes the naming of the confection to the Just Born company, a candymaking operation founded in Brooklyn in 1923 who now produce such popular treats as ‘Peeps’ and ‘Mike and Ike.’  Just Born have long maintained that not only did they come up with the name “jimmies,” but they invented the product (i.e., chocolate sprinkles) as well:  Yes, jimmies were invented at Just Born and we have in our archives some of the advertisements from that time period and containers with the word “jimmies” and the Just Born logo on them. Although there is nothing in writing to confirm it, it is commonly known here that the chocolate sprinkles were named after the Just Born employee who made them. The notion that Just Born “invented” chocolate sprinkles is specious, however, as newspaper references to chocolate sprinkles antedate the founding of the company:  Company histories often include a fudge factor, and this claim of invention seems dubious: Chocolate sprinkles, so called, were already popular in the 1920s, the newspaper archives show. The Nashua, N.H., Telegraph is advertising a treat made with chocolate sprinkles in 1921, before Just Born was born. Later that decade, the sprinkles show up in Ottawa and Spokane newspapers, and by 1927, Sunshine is producing a Chocolate Sprinkle cookie topped with marshmallow and sprinkles. (There’s even a laxative consisting of “tasty Swiss-like milk chocolate sprinkles”; a 1928 ad in the Pittsburgh Press says it has given “Thousands of Pennsylvanians … the Glorious Complexion of a Regulated Body.”)  But even if Just Born didn’t invent chocolate sprinkles, could they at least have been the source that first called them “jimmies”? Beth Kimmerle, author of Candy: The Sweet History, ventured the opinion that Just Born created the term “jimmies” as a way of branding an extant product as their own:  [Kimmerle] believes the name was a way for Just Born to put its mark on an already-existing product, just like Hershey’s branded its conical chocolate drop the “Kiss.” “I think jimmies were a way to brand sprinkles,” said Kimmerle. She thought the reason why some people call only the chocolate version of sprinkles jimmies is because Just Born initially made only chocolate sprinkles. Some sources identify the Just Born employee for whom jimmies were supposedly named as Jimmy Bartholomew, a fellow who began working for Just Born in 1930 and manned the machine that made the confection. However, that too may be myth, as Just Born co-CEO Ross Born couldn’t positively confirm “Jimmy”‘s surname. Also, certain respected slang dictionaries (such as Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang and Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang) trace “jimmies” to the 1920s, which would place the naming of the item prior to the purported machine operator’s stint with Just Born in 1930. As to how else the term could have entered the language, another theory suggests it as a short form of the venerable English slang word jim-jam. While jim-jam has a number of meanings, one that’s been around since the 16th century is “a trivial article or knick-knack.” By the lights of the jim-jam theory, the “trivial” aspect of that one particular meaning translated to the confection now called jimmies. However, that theory has a number of holes in it. First, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (which is the bible of word histories for the English language), the only meanings common to both jim-jam and jimmies have to do with delirium tremens and the heebie-jeebies — the “trivial” meaning of jim-jam does not seem to have moved over to jimmies. Second, at no point have the candy sprinkles been called jim-jams, a link in the etymological chain one would expect if the one were a shortening of the other. Throwing yet another log on the fire, a 1993 Boston Globe item stated that “The origin of the name is apparently unknown, but we found this hard-to-take-too-seriously reference in an old file: An (unnamed) ice cream maker claims that in 1901 Constance Bartlett of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, after grating chocolate over ice cream for her son’s birthday, reportedly told other children they couldn’t eat them because ‘they’re Jimmy’s. '” Sometimes words just sneak into a language without anyone’s knowing, years after the fact, how that process came about. Yet no matter how jimmies became part of common parlance (as with many other terms, its origin may ultimately prove untraceable), no substantive evidence demonstrates anything denigrative of African-Americans was tied to the origin of the name:  Whatever the source of the name, though, nothing in the record suggests that jimmies was ever racially tinged. If it had been, it’s not likely anyone would have been coy about it, as racist brand names and artwork were unremarkable in the 1930s and ’40s. So where did the “racist” rumor come from? It’s possible that people old enough to remember the candies of the ’40s wrongly assumed that “jimmies” was also a slur. But there’s no evidence that this notion was ever widespread. If the idea hasn’t died out, that’s surely because it’s so hard to prove a negative.


Some "20,000 Delphi salaried retirees lost up to 70 percent of their pensions" as a result of "political favoritism and backroom deals.

Explanation: Mike Turner says Delphi retirees lost pensions to political favoritism and backroom deals

Ohio, Corporations, Economy, Financial Regulation, Pensions, Unions, Michael Turner,

In April 2012, PolitiFact Ohio issued a "Mostly False" rating to a claim by a congressman from Dayton, Michael Turner, over the loss of pension benefits of salaried retirees from Delphi, the auto parts maker. Turner had said that some "20,000 Delphi salaried retirees lost up to 70 percent of their pensions" as a result of "political favoritism and backroom deals." This rating means that the statement contains some element of truth, but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. In this case, the loss of pensions was not in question. The pensions were cut after Delphi, which once was part of General Motors, hit deep financial problems. But the rest of the claim, ascribing blame to political favoritism and Obama administration backroom deals, was not supported by facts. We based the ruling on the available evidence, which included Government Accountability Office reports and congressional testimony. We also noted that eventually, a fuller accounting of the Delphi matter would come out from a special inspector general. When it did, we said, we’d consider taking another look. That report is out. And based on it, we are upgrading the rating a notch to . Some background: In 2009, GM was in financial trouble and the federal government bailed it out with a financial package worth more than $50 billion, including a loan and an equity stake in a post-bankruptcy, restructured company. There were others in the auto industry also in trouble, including Delphi. And GM and Delphi were the corporate equivalent of step brothers, if not blood relatives. Delphi was a division of GM until the parts maker was spun off as an independent company in 1999. Before the spinoff, Delphi maintained separate pension funds for its unionized and non-unionized workforces. The non-unionized workers were salaried, many in white-collar or support jobs, and their pension fund was flush. The union pension fund, however, was not. In other cases, this might have meant that the unionized workers would eventually get smaller pensions than planned. But in this case, GM made a deal that kept the United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, or UAW, happy, which helped facilitate the Delphi spinoff. The deal was this: GM would make up, or "top-up," the difference between the underfunded pension payments and the amounts the workers would have gotten if their pension fund were in fine health. This was not just benevolence. By agreeing to the top-up, GM was able to hand off Delphi operations without union opposition and keep its outside supply chain running. And so the parties codified the top-up provision and kept it in force. But a decade later, the twin bankruptcies of GM and Delphi created a wrinkle. GM had the right in bankruptcy to void its contracts. That could have meant the end to the top-up agreement. It so happened that by now, the fortunes of Delphi’s nonunion workforce and retirees had turned. The once-full pension fund for non-union, or salaried, retirees was underfunded as well. But unlike their unionized colleagues, the salaried or non-unionized retirees had no top-up deal. So what would happen? Two things: First, the Obama administration would agree to bail out General Motors and give it money to keep operating. But before the final sign-off,  the administration through its Treasury Department-appointed auto task force would need to review GM’s obligations and make decisions about what and whether it owed Delphi retirees. Bankruptcies typically involve many parties being told to accept the fact that they are never going to get every penny they are owed. Yet that’s not what happened in the case of the Delphi unionized-worker pensions. GM, with considerable help from the Treasury auto team, agreed that even as it exited bankruptcy as a new organization, it would continue to top-up the UAW pensions from its parts supplier. It also agreed to continue top-ups for the International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried, Machine and Furniture Workers, and the United Steelworkers of America. But GM and Treasury’s auto team left the salaried retiree pensions alone. The non-union retirees would get no top-up. As a result, those retirees would only collect 30 percent to 70 percent of their expected pensions, which would be paid by the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corp., or PBGC, the federal agency that takes over failing pension plans. Was this fair? Turner and other lawmakers from auto states said no, as did Delphi retirees. They said that despite the pre-existing top-up agreements, GM’s bankruptcy gave the automaker the right to rewrite the top-up contracts, just as it rewrote a number of unrelated terms with the union’s consent. Even better, they said, GM and Treasury could have worked out a way to make all Delphi retirees whole. But that didn’t happen. There were winners (the union) and losers (the non-union retirees), and that looked like political favoritism and backroom dealing to Turner and other critics. But in 2012, congressional testimony and GAO reports led PolitiFact Ohio to conclude that Treasury and GM made the decision because: (a) the union had long-standing top-up agreements and salaried retirees did not, and (b) any attempt to end those agreements would have caused the UAW to balk or even strike. Treasury maintained that it was vital to get GM stabilized quickly, and an interruption to its ability to get parts for its cars -- due to labor unrest -- could be fatal. There was nothing to back up Turner’s claim that the top-up decision was made because of political favoritism and backroom dealing. The GAO said that "court filings and statements from GM and Treasury officials support that Treasury deferred to GM’s business judgment."." That’s where matters stood until Aug. 15, when additional information was released though the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or SIGTARP. The Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, provided federal funds for bank bailouts as well as the auto rescue, and was overseen by Treasury. The report by the special inspector general, an independent watchdog, provided a long-awaited assessment of Treasury’s role in the pension controversy. The SIGTARP report confirmed much of what the GAO already said. It reported that GM and Treasury were concerned about getting the automaker back on its feet quickly -- and that, in the words of Steven Rattner, head of the auto team, trying to get more on pensions "was a game of chicken we didn’t want to play. We were under incredible time pressure." Why, then, upgrade PolitiFact Ohio’s rating? The SIGTARP report contained new information about the dominant role that Treasury’s auto team played. The team’s role in the decision to top-up the pensions of UAW workers was not just advisory, the SIGTARP report said. Treasury’s financial role gave it a dominant position. GM could not make decisions without Treasury. GM’s chief financial officer at the time, Ray Young, told SIGTARP that Treasury’s influence, a result of its financial stake, was such that GM "put forward recommendations, but at the end of the day (Treasury) makes the final decision." This was all done privately. Those with leverage, particularly Treasury and the UAW, were able to make their demands. Delphi’s salaried retirees, who believed the government could make them whole, had no leverage and were largely kept on the outside. That is a clear impression from the SIGTARP report. This is the way most negotiations occur, including many involving individual Congress members, as a Treasury spokesman noted as we discussed this with him. But Turner’s claim did not involve other deals. He was speaking specifically of the Delphi pension matter. So we return to Turner’s claim about "political favoritism and backroom deals." A rating of  means the statement is partially accurate, but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. Turner’s claim is partially accurate. Treasury’s heavy role, well-reasoned or not, was largely played out in closed meetings. It was not subject to transparency -- a key reason why the White House and members of the House of Representatives government oversight committee, on which Turner serves, continue to spar over the committee’s demands for more information and testimony. Was there political favoritism? We can’t know for sure because of the lack of transparency, nor can Turner, but there isn’t evidence to prove it. And the claim still requires a considerable amount of context to understand fully. But until the SIGTARP report’s release, the extent of Treasury’s role -- the backroom considerations -- were more a matter of speculation than fact. We believe this warrants an upgrade. On the Truth-O-Meter, the claim rates .


Virus-hit Carnival cruise ship docks in Australia as country's death toll hits 40.

Explanation: Carnival Corp’s (CCL.N) troubled Ruby Princess cruise liner, the biggest single source of coronavirus infections in Australia, docked south of Sydney on Monday to get help for sick crew members requiring urgent medical treatment.

The Ruby Princess, now the target of a criminal investigation led by the homicide squad in the state of New South Wales (NSW), has more than 1,000 crew still on board, after passengers disembarked in mid-March without health checks. There have been at least 360 COVID-19 cases, including passengers and staff, associated with the vessel, which includes at least six deaths. As a popular Pacific port destination, Australia is among numerous countries around the world negotiating arrangements with cruise ships unable to find somewhere to dock. NSW Police said in a statement on Monday that the vessel may remain in place for up to 10 days, but the crew will not disembark unless approved by state authorities. Sick crew members were being treated on board or transferred to hospital, police said, and the vessel will be refuelled in preparation for departure. Australia has more than 5,700 confirmed COVID-19 cases and its death toll rose to 40 on Monday after five additional deaths were recorded overnight. An investigation into Ruby Princess protocols will focus on communications and actions that led to the docking and disembarking of the ship’s 2,700 passengers on March 19 at Sydney Harbour to see whether biosecurity laws or state laws were broken, authorities said. State health authorities had classed the ship as low risk, and the Australian Border Force issued a notice allowing the passengers to travel home freely. They were required to self-isolate for 14 days. A Carnival Australia spokesman said on Monday the company would cooperate with the probe. The ship has remained in Australian waters and on Monday docked at Port Kembla, with the remaining crew from 50 different countries on board to stay in isolation. The government banned cruise ships from docking except for emergencies as of mid-March and has sent off most of the cruise ships that remained in Australian waters over the past week. Australia has seen a sharp drop in the rate of new cases after closing national and state borders, quarantining people on all incoming flights in hotels for 14 days, restricting public gatherings to two, and shutting pubs, restaurants, and gyms. While the growth in new cases slows, the number of people contracting the virus from an unknown local source is steadily growing, particularly in NSW. Australia’s Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said 8% of coronavirus cases are now locally acquired. Authorities remain concerned that some Australians are flouting social distancing rules, particularly around the country’s renowned beaches. After weekend crowds gathered on Sydney’s northern beaches and beaches along Queensland’s famed tourist strip the Gold Coast, local governments announced several beach closures. Australia’s most famous beach Bondi has been closed for the past two weeks, with police fining people who trespass. In efforts to better monitor local infections testing criteria will be widened beyond people who have been in contact with COVID-19 cases. The state of Victoria will now test anyone over 65, teachers and child care workers if they display any of symptom of coronavirus, while Western Australia will do the same. “If we can focus on those with compatible symptoms, coughs, sore throat, runny nose with or without a fever, and get them tested, then we will be able to see how much community transmission there might be,” said Victoria state’s Chief Medical Officer, Andrew Wilson. Pacific nations have so far avoided some of the more devastating effects of COVID-19 suffered in China, parts of Europe and the United States. New Zealand, which has been in lock-down since March 25, has recorded just over 1,100 confirmed cases. It has suffered one death linked to the virus. New Zealand’s Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said on Monday that the rate of increase in COVID-19 cases was “levelling off”.


Studies: New type of osteoporosis drug cuts fracture risk in women, men in cancer treatment

Explanation: This was an excellent report on two recent randomized trials which found that a new osteoporosis drug, denosumab, reduced the rate of fractures and increased bone density in at-risk men and women. While the results appear promising, the story tempered excitement by providing potential annual cost estimates of the drug at $10,000 and pointing out that Amgen, the manufacturer of denosumab, funded both of the studies, handled data collection and analysis and took part in writing the journal articles. Additionally, many of the researchers involved were in receiving fees from Amgen. The story also discusses the drug’s potential harms and compares it to existing osteoporosis treatments. Providing outcome data in terms of absolute risk in addition to relative risk would have further strengthened this story.

Pricing for this drug is not yet available; however, the story suggests that it could be expensive, with similarly engineered drugs costing more than $10,000 a year. In addition, the costs of currently prescribed osteoporosis medications are provided. The relative risk reduction for each of the trials is provided, but the story fails to provide the absolute risk reduction (62% of what?). The writer also mentions that spine bone density loss in the men receiving denosumab was “far smaller” compared to the placebo group; however, the reader is not given any quantitative data to determine the clinical significance of this. In addition to comparing the absolute risk reduction observed in the denosumab group to the placebo group, it would have been helpful to the reader to know what the risk reduction was for approved and potentially more affordable medications. Citing the FDA’s review of denosumab, as well as the adverse risks reported in the trials, the story mentions that this drug is associated with an increased risk of skin infections and some tumors. The story also points out that its long-term effects on cancer risk and the immune system are unknown. This story adequately describes the methodology of each trial, as well as the patient population. The story also does a service by alerting the reader that the drug manufacturer, Amgen, funded both of the studies and nearly all of the researchers were receiving fees from said manufacturer. Additionally, it was pointed out that Amgen designed the trials, handled data collection and analysis, and assisted in writing the journal articles. This story did not exaggerate the prevalence or seriousness of osteoporosis. Several independent sources were interviewed for this story. The writer also points out that both trials were paid for by Amgen, the manufacturer of denosumab, and nearly all the researchers were employed by the company or received consulting or advisory fees from them. This story discusses several alternative drug options for treating osteoporosis, including vitamins, pills, patches, nasal sprays, and intravenously and subcutaneously injected drugs. Comparisons in efficacy between denosumab and some of these alternatives are provided. More information comparing the absolute risk reduction for spine fractures would have been a nice addition, as well. The story makes it clear that the study drug, denosumab, is not yet approved by the FDA, but indicates that it could be available this fall. Up front the story states that this is a “first-of-its-kind” drug treatment for osteoporosis. This piece included several independent sources and therefore, does not rely on the news release.


U.N. wants better life for world of 7 billion.

Explanation: Instead of worrying about sheer numbers when the world’s population hits 7 billion next week, we should think about how to make the planet a better place for people to live in, the United Nations said in a report.

Indian children ride in a cart on the way home from school in the outskirts of New Delhi in this file picture taken, February 26, 2001. REUTERS/Pawel Kopcznski/Files “It is both about consumption and population,” the U.N.’s Population Fund Executive Director Babatunde Osotimehin said at a media conference to launch the report, referring to people’s impact on the environment and economic growth. While growing populations could be a drain on the world’s resources, the U.N.’s Population Fund’s “The State of World Population 2011” released Wednesday said a contributing factor was overconsumption by the existing population. “With planning and the right investments in people now, to empower them to make choices that are not only good for themselves ... our world of 7 billion can have thriving sustainable cities, productive labor forces that fuel economies, and youth populations that contribute to the well-being of their societies,” Osotimehin said in the report. It was vital to engage with the world’s youth and to harness their entrepreneurial skills to boost economies and prevent potential alienation, the report said. Those under the age of 25 make up 43 percent of the population, and as much as 60 percent in some countries, and this group must be educated and trained if countries are to have a dynamic work force, it said. Failure to do so would see a loss of ideas, innovation as well as tax income. A major contributor to the recent Arab uprisings was a youth unemployment rate of nearly 25 percent, the report quoted the International Labor Organization as saying. The U.N. also said migration will become more significant in the coming century, with people moving across borders as well as within their own countries. The report looked at nine countries to see how they were responding to different rates of fertility and migration. In some of the poorest countries, high fertility rates have stunted development and perpetuated poverty, the report said. Getting girls to school and providing women with jobs and equal opportunities as well as sexual and reproductive healthcare including family planning was essential, it said. In some of the richest countries, low fertility rates and too few people entering the job market have raised fears about the prospects for sustained economic growth and the viability of social security systems. Every country has a population that is aging to some degree. The global proportion of people over the age of 60 is expected to grow from 11 percent in 2009 to 22 percent in 2050. In Finland, which enjoys a high standard of living but where low fertility rates have led to a quarter of the population being over 60 years old, the emphasis is on excellent social services to make parenthood easier. Academics have said that in countries such as China, which is getting older before it gets richer, there is need for old-age security, medical care and social services. More funding, including from governments and foundations, was needed, Osotimehin told reporters at the media conference. “Family planning, for instance, has not been funded as much as it should have been,” he said. A U.N. Secretary General report showed that $68 billion would be needed in 2011 if its program on sexual and reproductive health initiatives set out in Cairo in 1994 was to be met, Wednesday’s report said. Countries were expected to contribute $34 billion, with a further $10.8 billion coming from international and bilateral donors, leaving a shortfall of around $25 billion. Growing global interdependence meant governments had to work out how to deal with record populations if they were to avoid future competition for limited resources such as food and water. Reports already suggest a 40 percent global shortfall in water supply by 2030, while developing countries are buying up land in Africa to offset any future shortages at home.


Clamor for GSK shingles shot points to bigger profits.

Explanation: GlaxoSmithKline is facing “unprecedented” demand for its new shingles vaccine Shingrix, suggesting the product could be a bigger money-spinner than the company and analysts initially thought.

In the short term, though, GSK faces a problem. While more than 1.5 million Americans have received Shingrix since the end of last year, others are having to wait, prompting the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to warn of shortages. GSK said it had increased deliveries significantly and was vaccinating people against shingles far faster than in the past, when Merck & Co’s Zostavax was the only product available. But it acknowledged it was struggling to keep up. “The arrival of Shingrix has been met with an unprecedented level of demand from patients and healthcare professionals,” a spokesman said. “Healthcare professionals are vaccinating with Shingrix at a rate many times that of prior years, so ordering limits and intermittent shipping delays should be expected for Shingrix during 2018.”  The CDC has recommended Shingrix over Merck’s older and less effective vaccine in adults 50 years and older, spurring the current strong demand. Consensus forecasts currently point to peak annual sales for Shingrix of around 1.5 billion pounds ($2 billion), according to Thomson Reuters data, with the U.S. market the main driver. But this number may prove to be too low, according Exane BNP analysts. The brokerage reckons sales could rise to 3 billion pounds if Shingrix can achieve market penetration rates of around 60 percent - double the level seen with Zostavax but similar to levels achieved by Pfizer’s pneumonia vaccine Prevnar. GSK said in April that Shingrix had got off to a flying start, with sales of 110 million pounds in its first full quarter on the market and 2018 sales expected to top 400 million. A company spokesman declined to give any update on that forecast ahead of second-quarter results next month. Shingrix is a key new product for GSK Chief Executive Emma Walmsley as she strives to improve the company’s commercial performance. It is also crucial for showing the profit potential of GSK’s large vaccines business, where GSK is looking to expand margins. GSK has already achieved its mid-term goal of getting vaccine margins to 30 percent and Exane BNP believes it could hit 35 percent by 2020, helped by the roll-out of Shingrix and other premium vaccines like Bexsero and Menveo against meningitis. Shingrix is given in two doses, separated by two to six months, while Zostavax is a single shot. Ensuring patients adhere to the two-shot regimen will be important in achieving the vaccine’s full sales potential. Shingles is caused by reactivation of the varicella zoster virus that is also responsible for chickenpox. Nearly all adults over 50 have the virus dormant in their nervous system and are at risk of it being reactivated with advancing age.