Russia used "GPS spoofing" to cause the USS John McCain to collide with a merchant vessel.

Explanation: In the wake of the USS McCain collision, the chief of Naval Operations “ordered a worldwide operational pause as fleet commanders assess practices.”

On 21 August 2017, the guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain collided with a large merchant vessel near the heavily trafficked Strait of Malacca, leaving five U.S. sailors injured and ten missing. The incident was the fourth collision of a U.S. vessel in a year, with the most recent — that of the USS Fitzgerald — occurring just two months before, on 17 June. These recurring incidents have led some to speculate about a connection, as suggested in a 21 August piece on the military news web site RealClearDefense: While accidents and mistakes do happen, the number of collisions in the past year is extremely rare, and it is now within the realm of possibility that these accidents were not accidents. Both China and Russia have tested their cyber-warfare capabilities at sea with success. The fear, according to these arguments, is that a person or government has used a hacking technique known as “GPS spoofing” to encourage maritime collisions. Unlike GPS jamming, which merely blocks access to the satellites a receiver uses to locate itself, GPS spoofing can covertly alter a GPS receiver to report that it is somewhere other than its actual location. University of Texas professor Todd Humphreys, an expert in GPS hacking, demonstrated this in 2013 when he successfully overtook a yacht in the Mediterranean by injecting its navigation systems with false GPS signals via an overhead drone: By feeding counterfeit radio signals to the yacht, the UT team was able to drive the ship far off course, steer it left and right, potentially take it into treacherous waters, even put it on a collision course with another ship. All the time, the ship’s GPS system reported the vessel was calmly moving in a straight line, along its intended course. No alarms, no indication that anything was amiss. The idea this technology would be used to disrupt maritime operations is not an absurd contention. In fact, there is sketchy evidence suggesting a GPS spoofing test in June 2017 in the Black Sea, which some have attributed to Russian interference. On 22 June, the United States Maritime Administration issued an unconfirmed warning that ships in the Black Sea off the coast of Russia were misreporting their GPS-derived locations: A maritime incident has been reported in the Black Sea in the vicinity of position 44-15.7N, 037-32.9E on June 22, 2017 at 0710 GMT. This incident has not been confirmed. The nature of the incident is reported as GPS interference. Exercise caution when transiting this area. Further updates may follow. This alert will automatically expire on July 4, 2017. Dana Goward, President of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, an NGO “that helps protect critical infrastructure by promoting resilient navigation and timing worldwide” wrote an editorial that detailed the backstory to this alert. First a ship reported to the Coast Guard that its GPS signal was intermittently not working or giving an inaccurate location. Later, the same ship told the Coast Guard: I confirm all ships in the area (more than 20 ships) have the same problem. I personally contacted three of them via VHF, they confirmed the same. Sometimes, position is correct, sometimes is not. That Russia, specifically, would be interested in testing such technology is, also not an unreasonable assertion. Russia has, at the very least, invested heavily in electronic warfare technology that “jams” GPS signals in such a way as to render them useless. A 2016 intelligence summary by the U.S. Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office noted that Russia had integrated a massive network of GPS jammers into their civilian cell phone network, which could be switched on to impede smart missiles or other threats that rely on GPS navigation. A 2014 report by the same office said that Russian media has been trying — at the very least — to convince the world it is capable of disabling American maritime navigation systems. After a much publicized 2014 confrontation in the Black Sea between the US Navy destroyer the Donald Cook and a Russian SU-24 fighter plane that made a number of provocative and close approaches, Kremlin-backed media claimed that it had successfully achieved this goal (and terrified the Americans to boot): In place of bombs or missiles, the SU-24s approaching Donald Cook carried a container with a Khibina radio-electronic warfare system. After approaching the ship, the Khibina systems turned off [the destroyer’s] smart radar, combat control links, and data transfer systems – in a word, the entire Aegis, like we turn off a television with the push of a button on a remote. Afterwards, the fighter-bombers conducted a simulated missile attack on the blind and deaf destroyer […]. Donald Cook never approached Russian waters again. Nor did NATO ships that relieved it in the Black Sea. The United States military denies this account of the event, but does allow that Russia has been at the forefront of developing electronic warfare: Russia does indeed possess a growing [electronic warfare] capability, and the political and military leadership understand the importance of technical advances in this type of warfare. Their growing ability to blind or disrupt digital communications might help level the playing field when fighting against a superior conventional foe, but to continue to publicize a story which is patently false illustrates an equally robust ability within the realm of information operations. Outside of reports that the USS McCain’s steering system failed prior to the collision, however, there is no evidence that an external actor caused these recent Naval collisions through electronic manipulation of GPS systems. Academics and analysts familiar with GPS hacking techniques argue that electronic warfare is not the most likely explanation for their occurrence. Goward told us that “it’s a good question to ask” but that it would be much more challenging to do this kind of thing to a military vessel rather than a commercial or private one: US adversaries have the ability to easily jam and spoof GPS. At a minimum this would cause some initial confusion on the bridge of a ship before the crew figured out what was going on. During that time they would be more vulnerable to collisions and other mishaps. At its worst, GPS spoofing can misdirect a vessel and cause it to sail into danger. Spoofing a US Navy vessel should be quite difficult because of the expensive and sophisticated equipment they carry, and the large number of people on watch at all times. Commercial vessels often have fairly unsophisticated electronics and only one person on watch. It would be much easier to spoof a commercial vessel and direct it into a Navy ship. Humphreys echoed this point, telling us via email that while hacking military navigation systems is possible, it is much more challenging because they use an encrypted radio frequency for their geolocation, which is separate from the civilian system: It’s possible that spoofing was involved in the USS McCain collision. But I still think that crew negligence is the most likely explanation. Military vessels use the encrypted GPS signals, which are harder to spoof (though not impossible). Humphreys suggested that, rather than hacking, the collision might be attributable to the US Navy’s policy to operate in the South China Sea without an automatic identification system (AIS) beacon, which automatically transmits information between ships and to other monitoring organizations. The Navy doesn’t use such a system in the South China sea for security reasons, Humphreys told us. “They train as they fight, and broadcasting one’s position during wartime is unwise,” he said. Unfortunately, almost any conclusion drawn at this point about the cause of the USS McCain incident or any of the other recent Naval accidents is speculative. The Daily Beast reported on concerns from military experts that these accidents were evidence that the Navy was overstretched: The accidents are symptoms of an overworked fleet with tired and under-trained sailors and poorly maintained equipment, experts said. Automatic “sequestration” budget cuts have sliced billions of dollars from Navy accounts in recent years, while at the same time the fleet has gotten busier bombing Islamic State and the Taliban and deterring North Korea and China. “The force is fraying,” Bryan McGrath, a naval consultant with the Maryland-based Ferry Bridge Group, told The Daily Beast.


In September 2020, former Vice President Joe Biden was unable to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, as demonstrated in a video.

Explanation: ‘Joe Biden Completely Botches the Pledge of Allegiance’ Video

On September 21 2020, GOP “rapid response director” Steve Guest tweeted a video which he claimed showed that former U.S. Vice President (and Democratic Party presidential candidate) Joe Biden had “completely” botched the Pledge of Allegiance during a campaign appearance:Joe Biden completely botches the Pledge of Allegiance:"I pledge allegiance to the United States of America, one nation, indivisible, under God, for real." pic.twitter.com/Gct4AEVWog— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) September 21, 2020The eight-second-long video clip was completely stripped of any context, and Guest transcribed Biden’s words in the short video:I pledge allegiance to the United States of America, one nation, indivisible, under God, for real.Guest did not provide information about the date, location, or setting in which Biden made the remarks. In an extremely short September 21 2020 blog post by PJ Media (“WATCH: Joe Biden Just Completely Botched the Pledge of Allegiance”) the site embedded Guest’s tweet and claimed:During a campaign speech on Monday [September 21 2020], Joe Biden attempted to quote the Pledge of Allegiance, and instead delivered a jumbled version of it, saying, “I pledge allegiance to the United States of America, one nation, indivisible, under God, for real.”I suppose he’ll want credit for including “under God,” but I suspect he only included it because Trump has been calling out the Democrats for excluding it during their convention.Although the post was very short, PJ Media managed to shoehorn in reference to a previous viral falsehood, holding that Democrats struck out the phrase “Under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance at the 2020 Democratic National Convention (DNC):Did Dems Strike ‘Under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance at the 2020 DNC?In the course of that fact check, we obtained video of the opening portion from all three nights of the August 2020 DNC. “Under God” was recited as part of the pledge in all three official ceremony openings, and on one of the nights, it was also followed directly by a lengthy prayer:Almighty God, we confess that our nation needs you and has always needed you. We pray for your blessing upon all of us, Republican, Independent, and Democrat. As we strive to form perfect union, we pray for your strength, guidance, and wisdom. Lord, we recognize that we are living in challenging times that call us to live up to the highest angel of our national character. As we confront the turbulent winds of a global pandemic, economic uncertainty, and civil discourse, may your gracious hand lead us to the peaceful shores of love, justice and civility.Regarding Guest’s tweet in which Biden purportedly “botched” the Pledge of Allegiance, a separate commenter shared more complete footage of his remarks during a visit to Manitowoc, Wisconsin.Biden spoke in Manitowoc on September 21 2020:Joe Biden Delivers Remarks In Wisconsin | NBC News https://t.co/rW5EV2wyqg via @YouTube— Independent Commentary from a Patriot (@commentary_a) September 22, 2020Toward the end of the clip at around 22:30, Biden began the portion of the remarks leading to him “botching” the Pledge of Allegiance. In actuality, he was not reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, but rather referencing its content in the course of making a larger set of remarks.Biden said, in part:“Just a few days ago when I was asked about the death count approaching 200,000, the president said, and I quote, he said — I won’t quote him. The president said if you take out the blue states run by Democratic governors and just look at the red states, Republican governors are doing quite well.“Now, of course, it’s a simple factual matter, it’s just not true. If you just count all the deaths in the red states, we are number two in the world in deaths just behind Brazil. But more fundamentally it reflects on the part of Donald Trump that he has a deeply flawed and divisive view of the United States, this nation and the job he holds.“Think about what he’s saying.“He’s saying if you live in a state like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, states with Democratic governors, you’re not his problem. He has no obligation to you. He’s not responsible for you as president, your family or your well-being.“I don’t see the presidency that way. I don’t pledge allegiance to red states of America or blue states of America. I pledge allegiance to the United States of America, one nation, indivisible, under God, for real.“Biden concluded, reiterating his broader point:“I’m running as a proud Democrat. But I’m not going to govern as a Democratic president, I’m going to governor as president. I get criticized for saying that sometimes to some in my party, but that’s not what I’m going to do. I’m going to fight as hard for those who supported me as those who did not support me.“This is not a partisan moment, for God’s sake, this has to be an American moment. In the next few weeks, we have a chance to put anger and division and the darkness that’s overtaken this country behind us. We have to put it behind us. I know I’ve been criticized since I entered the primaries about what I said about uniting the country.“We have to unite the country. This is not who we are. And we can. We’ve done it so many times in our history. We’ve begun anew. If we get control of this virus, we can. We can reward work. We can fix the health care system. We can be a safe and just nation. We can deal with the existential threat of climate change, which aluminum is going to be a gigantic part of. We can be what we are at our best, one nation. One nation. One people. One America. You just have to remember who in God’s name we are. This is the United States of America.“In our long history, there’s been nothing we’ve been unable to do, nothing we’ve been able to overcome when we’ve done it together. And I’m confident going all over this nation, we can do it together. The American people are hungry. We have to bring the nation together. That’s going to be my primary job. And I want to thank you all. God bless you for what you’re doing. May you all stay safe and may God protect our troops. Thank you so much, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. And thank you ma’am. Appreciate it.”A Trump “rapid response director” shared a misleading clip to claim that in the video, Biden “completely botches” the Pledge of Allegiance; other sites devoted entire posts to the out-of-context clip to advance the claim that Biden had failed to recite it properly. In actuality, the portion of video was snipped from a far longer segment during which Biden referenced — but did not recite — the Pledge of Allegiance to illustrate a larger point.Comments


Senate panel: NY needs addiction treatment professionals.

Explanation: A New York state Senate panel is recommending the state do more to recruit and train health care professionals who work with recovering addicts.

Medication, Addiction treatment, New York, Medical marijuana, Marijuana, Health

That’s one of 11 recommendations included in a report issued Wednesday by the Senate’s Task Force on Heroin and Opioid Addiction. Other suggestions include more monitoring of opioid prescriptions and changes intended to expand access to overdose antidotes and alternative pain medication such as medical marijuana. Another recommendation would limit initial opioid prescriptions for pain to three days, down from the current seven day maximum. The task force was created to examine the state’s ongoing addiction epidemic and find ways to improve the state’s response. The group held hearings throughout the state and heard from former addicts, treatment experts and community advocates.


Left-wing protesters vandalized the home of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Explanation: Abcnews.live is a spoof website attempting to earn clicks and ad revenue off the name and reputation of ABC News. Its content appears to consist mostly, if not entirely, of material republished from America’s Last Line of Defense.

Junk News, abcnews.live, america's last line of defense, brett kavanaugh

On 30 September 2018, the same day a real act of vandalism connected to sexual assault accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was reported at the Republican Party headquarters in Rockford, Illinois, false reports emerged saying Kavanaugh’s family home had also been vandalized. The reports, published on the websites America’s Last Line of Defense (Trumpbetrayed.us) and abcnews.live, and shared widely on social media, said “left-wing protesters” caused at least $11,000 in damage to the residence: The family home of Judge Brett Kavanaugh was a scene right out of a frat party gone wrong yesterday, as over 200 left-wing protesters, many wearing masks, shouted profane slogans, waved signs, and threw calendars, bricks, and bottles at the property. Kavanaugh himself was not in the residence, as he is currently in Washington for a symposium on anger management. His wife and children vacated the premisis [sic] and are currently housed in an unknown location for their own safety. The Judge’s home, located at 1512 Whiteman [sic] Street in Mayo Lake, PA, was deluged early in the morning, at the 9:00 hour, as the protesters arrived by van and poured out onto the sidewalk and lawn areas. Neighbors and witnesses reported screaming and loud “jungle drum-like” noises and local police were notified. Officers were shown protest permits, most signed by Diane Fienstien [sic] and Kamala Harris, and chose to remain at the scene in a public-safety capacity. No charges were filed, and the authorities left the area by noon. It was then that the crowd became riotous, and caused upwards of $11,000 worth of damage. The articles included a photograph allegedly taken by Kavanaugh’s neighbors:  All the image shows is two individuals erasing graffiti from the garage door of a house, however. It pictures no mob of 200 mask-wearing protesters, nor any sign of thrown bricks or bottles, or any other visible evidence of vandalism. As well, no such incident was reported by reliable news sources, including ABC News, despite their logo’s appearance above the article published on abcnews.live. The reason the supposed incident wasn’t mentioned anywhere else is that it was completely fabricated. The Kavanaugh family doesn’t live on “Whiteman Street” in Mayo Lake, Pennsylvania — in fact, there’s no such place as Mayo Lake, Pennsylvania. The image dates from 2016 and originally accompanied an article in the Hamilton Spectator (of Ontario, Canada) concerning an act of vandalism prompted by a neighborhood dispute over the cutting down of a tree. America’s Last Line of Defense (LLOD) is a network of junk news websites and social media accounts that peddles fabricated, politically divisive content under the guise of “satire.” A disclaimer on the site reads: Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined. Any similarities between this site’s pure fantasy and actual people, places and events are purely coincidental and all images should be considered altered and satirical.


Barack and Michelle Obama were forced to surrender their licenses to practice law because of their unethical behavior.

Explanation: Were the Obamas Forced to Surrender Their Law Licenses?

In early October 2018, many people in the United States and abroad were closely watching the twists and turns around a Supreme Court nomination as multiple women accused the nominee of committing or abetting sexual assault. Almost immediately, bots, trolls, and useful idiots picked up on the controversy, muddying the waters with rumors, gossip, and outright fabrications about his accusers.As the investigation into the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh continued and the discussion about him spiraled into new territory, the usual suspects resurrected a years-old chain email, spreading it across social media.The original looked something like this, although there were some variations as time went on:Barack Obama — Editor of the Harvard Law Review — Has No Law License?I saw a note slide across the #TCOT feed on Twitter last night that mentioned Michelle Obama had no law license. This struck me as odd, since (a) she went to school to be a lawyer, and (b) she just recently held a position with the University of Chicago Hospitals as legal counsel — and that’s a pretty hard job to qualify for without a law license.But being a licensed professional myself, I knew that every state not only requires licensure, they make it possible to check online the status of any licensed professional. So I did, and here’s the results from the ARDC Website:She “voluntarily surrendered” her license in 1993. Let me explain what that means. A “Voluntary Surrender” is not something where you decide “Gee, a license is not really something I need anymore, is it?” and forget to renew your license. No, a “Voluntary Surrender” is something you do when you’ve been accused of something, and you “voluntarily surrender” you license five seconds before the state suspends you.Here’s an illustration: I’m a nurse. At various times in my 28 years of nursing I’ve done other things when I got burned out; most notably a few years as a limousine driver; even an Amway salesman at one point. I always, always renewed my nursing license — simply because it’s easier to send the state $49.00 a month than to pay the $200, take a test, wait six weeks, etc., etc. I’ve worked (recently) in a Nursing Home where there was an 88 year old lawyer and a 95 year old physician. Both of them still had current licensures as well. They would never DREAM of letting their licenses lapse.I happen to know there is currently in the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City Indiana an inmate who is a licensed physician, convicted of murder when he chased the two burglars who entered his home and terrorized his family into the street and killed them. (And I can’t say I blame him for that, either.) This physician still has an active medical license and still sees patients, writes prescriptions, etc all from inside the prison. And he renews his medical license every two years, too. I tried looking up why she would “Voluntarily surrender” her license, but Illinois does not have it’s 1993 records online.But when I searched for “Obama”, I found this:“Voluntarily retired” — what does that mean? Bill Clinton hung onto his law license until he was convicted of making a false statement in the Lewinsky case and had to “Voluntarily Surrender” his license too. President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a “lawyer”. He surrendered his license back in 2008 possibly to escape charges that he “fibbed” on his bar application.This is the former editor of the Harvard Law Review who doesn’t seem to give a crap about his law license.Something else odd; while the Search feature brings up the names, any searches for the Disciplinary actions ends quickly.As in, Too Quickly. Less than a half-second quickly on a Search Engine that can take five seconds to Search for anything. As in, “there’s a block on that information” kind of thing.So we have the first Lawyer President and First Lady — who don’t actually have licenses to practice law. There’s more to this story, I’m sure. I’ll let you know when I find it.Needless to say, in the years since, “more to the story” never appeared.A quick search of the state of Illinois’ Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission website shows that Barack Obama’s law license was changed to “retired” in 2008, when he was elected president (the year before, he had switched it to “voluntarily inactive” in order to focus on his presidential run, and Michelle Obama has been listed as “voluntarily inactive” since 1993, when she left law and entered the public sector. Since then, neither has been embroiled in any sort of scandal that would require them to turn in their (inactive) law licenses.As University of California, Los Angeles law professor Eugene Volokh wrote in 2010 about this very rumor:4. The article continues, “President Barack Obama, former editor of the Harvard Law Review, is no longer a ‘lawyer’. He surrendered his license back in 2008 possibly to escape charges that he ‘fibbed’ on his bar application.” And “possibly” because the Illuminati ordered the Bar to do it, but that’s just empty hypothesizing, with no actual evidence. The fact that someone who doesn’t actually practice law, and is unlikely to practice law, voluntarily retires is hardly a sinister signal: It costs money to be a member of the bar, and if you’re not going to practice, it may make sense to retire. Nor does this somehow undermine claims that he’s a lawyer; a retired lawyer is still commonly called a lawyer — as an indication of what he has studied, and his general professional field — even if he is no longer a member of the bar.5. It then says, “Michelle Obama ‘voluntarily surrendered’ her law license in 1993.” Again, I’m not sure what the quotes mean, but the bar record says that she is “Voluntarily inactive.” This is even more common for lawyers who don’t need a bar card, such as many lawyers who don’t appear in court or counsel clients other than employer. Being an active status lawyer costs more money (see Rule 756) than being inactive, and it requires one to do Continuing Legal Education classes (Rule 790), unless one is in certain jobs for which the CLE requirements are waived). The difference in bar fees, for instance, is why I myself was inactive in 2001. Moreover, it’s pretty easy to switch back to active status should one need to do that (as I did in early 2002); again, in Illinois, see Rule 756.Michelle and Barack Obama are also listed on the Illinois State Bar Association’s official website as honorary members (as are Hillary Clinton and Harper Lee for her portrayal of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird) which would be extremely strange if they had both lost their licenses in disgrace.While we cannot explain the search engine lag time, we did not experience anything like it during our own tests, suggesting that might be less to do with the engine and more to do with the person conducting the search to begin with.


Can blood from coronavirus survivors treat the newly ill?.

Explanation: Hospitals are gearing up to test if a century-old treatment used to fight off flu and measles outbreaks in the days before vaccines, and tried more recently against SARS and Ebola, just might work for COVID-19, too: using blood donated from patients who’ve recovered.

AP Top News, International News, Measles, General News, Flu, Health, Science, Racing for a Remedy, Asia Pacific, Virus Outbreak, Europe, Ebola virus, Weekend Reads, U.S. News

Doctors in China attempted the first COVID-19 treatments using what the history books call “convalescent serum” -- today, known as donated plasma -- from survivors of the new virus. Now a network of U.S. hospitals is waiting on permission from the Food and Drug Administration to begin large studies of the infusions both as a possible treatment for the sick and as vaccine-like temporary protection for people at high risk of infection. There’s no guarantee it will work. “We won’t know until we do it, but the historical evidence is encouraging,” Dr. Arturo Casadevall of Johns Hopkins University’s school of public health told The Associated Press. Casadevall drew on that history in filing the FDA application. The FDA is “working expeditiously to facilitate the development and availability of convalescent plasma” a spokesman said. Here are some questions and answers about this latest quest for a treatment. WHAT EXACTLY IS THIS POSSIBLE THERAPY? It may sound like “back to the Stone Age,” but there’s good scientific reason to try using survivors’ blood, said Dr. Jeffrey Henderson of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who coauthored the FDA application with Casadevall and another colleague at the Mayo Clinic. When a person gets infected by a particular germ, the body starts making specially designed proteins called antibodies to fight the infection. After the person recovers, those antibodies float in survivors’ blood -- specifically plasma, the liquid part of blood — for months, even years. One of the planned studies would test if giving infusions of survivors’ antibody-rich plasma to newly ill COVID-19 patients would boost their own body’s attempts to fight off the virus. To see if it works, researchers would measure if the treatment gave patients a better chance of living or reduced the need for breathing machines. One caution: While regular plasma transfusions are a mainstay of medicine, very rarely they can cause a lung-damaging side effect. COULD IT ALSO ACT LIKE A VACCINE? Sort of, but unlike a vaccine, any protection would only be temporary. A vaccine trains people’s immune systems to make their own antibodies against a target germ. The plasma infusion approach would give people a temporary shot of someone else’s antibodies that are short-lived and require repeated doses. Still, if FDA agrees, a second study would give antibody-rich plasma infusions to certain people at high risk from repeated exposures to COVID-19, such as hospital workers or first responders, said Dr. Liise-anne Pirofski of New York’s Montefiore Health System and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. That also might include nursing homes when a resident becomes ill, in hopes of giving the other people in the home some protection, she said. “We need both things desperately,” Pirofski said. “We need to be able to break the cycle of transmission and we also need to be able to help people who are ill.” WHAT’S THE HISTORY? These plasma infusions were used most famously during the 1918 flu pandemic, and against numerous other infections, such as measles and bacterial pneumonia, before vaccines and modern medicines came along. Long-ago research is sketchy. But in the Journal of Clinical Investigation earlier this month, Casadevall and Pirofski cited evidence that 1918 flu patients given the infusions were less likely to die. And a 1935 medical report detailed how doctors stopped a measles outbreak from sweeping through a boarding school using “serum” from prior patients. The old-fashioned approach still is dusted off every so often to tackle surprise outbreaks such as SARS in 2002, and in 2014 when Ebola survivors’ plasma was used to treat other patients during the West Africa epidemic. Even during those recent outbreaks, strict studies of the technique were not done, but Casadevall said there were clues that the plasma helped. Casadevall thinks that when it didn’t work, it may have been used too late. “Somebody at the end of their lives, it’s very hard to affect” any disease at that point, he cautioned. A more modern approach is to brew this type of antibody in the lab, something Regeneron Pharmaceuticals and other companies are working on. Using blood from COVID-19 survivors is a decidedly more labor-intensive approach — but researchers could start banking the plasma as soon as regulators give the OK. HOW WOULD DOCTORS GET THE PLASMA? Blood banks take plasma donations much like they take donations of whole blood; regular plasma is used in hospitals and emergency rooms every day. If someone’s donating only plasma, their blood is drawn through a tube, the plasma is separated and the rest infused back into the donor’s body. Then that plasma is tested and purified to be sure it doesn’t harbor any blood-borne viruses and is safe to use. For COVID-19 research, the difference would be who does the donating -- people who have recovered from the coronavirus. Scientists would measure how many antibodies are in a unit of donated plasma — tests just now being developed that aren’t available to the general public — as they figure out what’s a good dose, and how often a survivor could donate. Researchers aren’t worried about finding volunteer donors but caution it will take some time to build up a stock. “I get multiple emails a day from people saying, ‘Can I help, can I give my plasma?’” Pirofski said. —— 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.


Warren says getting to ‘Medicare for All’ will take 3 years.

Explanation: Elizabeth Warren announced Friday that she would expand public health insurance during her first 100 days in office, but wouldn’t push for passage of a “Medicare for All” program until the third year of her presidency, a timeline that acknowledges how tough it will be to shift to a system of government-run health care.

Election 2020, Health, General News, Politics, Health care reform, Elizabeth Warren, Medicare, Business

The Massachusetts Democratic senator released a health care transition plan that first vows to build on existing programs, including the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act. Warren says she’ll then work with Congress to pass pieces of a universal coverage proposal more gradually, with the whole thing being ready “no later than” her third year in office. Allowing more time underscores Warren’s — or any candidate’s — difficulty in delivering on government-run universal health coverage. Winning congressional approval would be a heavy lift, no matter which party holds majorities in the House and Senate. “Every serious proposal for Medicare for All contemplates a significant transition period,” Warren wrote in an online post. “My plan will be completed in my first term. It includes dramatic actions to lower drug prices, a Medicare for All option available to everyone that is more generous than any plan proposed by any other presidential candidate, critical health system reforms to save money and save lives, and a full transition to Medicare for All.” Even as she continued to praise Medicare for All, though, Friday’s announcement represented a move toward the political middle on an issue that has been one of the most important to voters in the Democratic primary — which begins Feb. 3 in Iowa. “Warren is trying to thread a very tricky political needle here,” said Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. “Warren clearly still supports Medicare for All, but she is not putting all of her eggs in that basket.” Warren had previously said she would offer more details on how to implement her health care policy, but she laid out for the first time exactly how it will take up to three years. The senator also said that, rather than starting by shepherding Medicare for All through a divided Congress as a first priority, she’d first work to pass “anti-corruption” measures meant to curb the influence of lobbyists, insurance and pharmaceutical companies. This comes two weeks after Warren unveiled a much-scrutinized plan to pay for Medicare for All, which proposed raising most of the additional $20.5 trillion her campaign believes would be needed from taxes on businesses, wealthy people and investors — not the middle class. But some experts criticized that proposal for underestimating how much universal health care would really cost. Warren’s more centrist opponents, including former Vice President Joe Biden and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, both oppose fully government-run health care. They say Warren’s plan may scare general election moderates and swing voters who aren’t ready to fully scrap private insurance, and instead have called for expanding existing programs to cover more people who currently don’t have health insurance — something Warren’s proposal shows her embracing more of as she moves toward Medicare for All. Kate Bedingfield, a Biden deputy campaign manager, accused Warren of offering “a full program of flips and twists.” “Sen. Warren is now trying to muddy the waters even further,” Bedingfield said in a statement, adding that the latest proposal would “delay the introduction of her full Medicare for All proposals as far as three years into her term, after the midterms — a move that doesn’t exactly address the urgency of now.” Buttigieg spokeswoman Lis Smith called it “a transparently political attempt to paper over a very serious policy problem, which is that she wants to force 150 million people off their private insurance — whether they like it or not.” Taking years to get to Medicare for All would give Warren time to convince people happy with their current, private insurance to accept a fully government-funded system. But Friday’s announcement seems sure to raise more tough questions about health care for a candidate who has been struggling with it lately — following her riding improved polling throughout the summer to become one of the front runners in the crowded Democratic primary field. Warren previously offered details on financing Medicare for All after ducking questions about whether middle class tax increases would be needed during the last two debates. Now, word that fully implementing that plan will move slowly could unsettle progressive Democrats. The stakes are high since Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders wrote the original Medicare for All bill and has made it his signature issue. Still, Warren is essentially acknowledging the high degree of political difficulty that would be involved to pass Medicare for All — and the relatively low chances of success given that interest groups including employers, hospitals, drug companies and insurers will be arrayed against it. She is also recognizing that incremental measures that progressives often dismiss as not going far enough could have a real impact on people’s lives. That view was reinforced by a recent study by the Urban Institute and Commonwealth Fund policy centers, which concluded that Democrats have more than one way to get to coverage for all. “Warren’s proposals to shore up the Affordable Care Act, lower drug prices, and create a public option would still provide substantial health care cost relief for people,” said the Kaiser Foundation’s Levitt. __ Associated Press writer Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.


Brain-dead California girl ordered kept on ventilator for week longer.

Explanation: The family of a California girl who was declared brain dead after complications from a tonsillectomy won an 11th-hour court order on Monday requiring doctors to keep her connected to a breathing machine for at least another week.

Under the latest court order in the case, doctors at Children’s Hospital and Research Center in Oakland are barred from taking 13-year-old Jahi McMath off a ventilator without her family’s consent before 5 p.m. local time on January 7, relatives and hospital officials said. The eight-day extension gives the girl’s relatives, who refuse to accept that she is beyond recovery, more time to complete arrangements to have her transferred to an extended-care facility. But Alameda County Superior Court Judge Evilio Grillo’s decision to extend the previous deadline set in his own restraining order of last week was intended to allow time for appellate review of the case, hospital officials said. “This is a tragedy that has been postponed for another week,” hospital spokesman Sam Singer told reporters outside the hospital after family members announced Monday’s ruling about an hour before Grillo’s original deadline was due to lapse. A person declared brain dead is considered legally and physiologically dead under California law, as is the case in many states, and the hospital’s own statements about Jahi have referred to her as deceased. Grillo acted as the family filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on Monday asking a federal judge to intervene to keep Jahi connected to the machine that has kept her heart and lungs going for more than two weeks. The lawsuit claimed the hospital’s planned “removal of cardiopulmonary support over the objections” of the girl’s mother, and against her religious principles, amounts to an infringement of religious freedom and privacy rights under the U.S. Constitution. Grillo initially refused last week to extend his restraining order after two pediatric neurologists testified that Jahi had suffered an irreversible loss of all brain activity and was thus medically dead. Family members said they were seeking to have her moved to a licensed long-term treatment center in New York and had raised $20,000 in donations needed to pay for a cross-country airlift. Jahi’s grandmother Sandra Chatman, herself a registered nurse, told reporters outside the hospital Monday afternoon that the girl had started to move her legs and appeared to be responding to voices of loved ones around her. The girl’s uncle Omar Sealey also said Jahi was responding to her mother’s voice and touch and that he had video to prove it. “We have a pediatrician who has seen Jahi who has sworn that she is not dead,” Sealey told reporters. Hospital spokeswoman Melinda Krigel said it was not uncommon for spontaneous twitching or other body movements caused by spinal reflexes to occur in recently deceased individuals. The hospital has said it would not stand in the way of Jahi’s being moved to another facility. But officials there also refused last week to perform additional procedures that might be required, such as placing a tracheotomy and gastric tubes in her body before a transfer. As part of its request for federal court action on Monday, the family asked that the hospital be required to carry out those preparations. The hospital also has said it needs written assurances from a coroner that the transfer would be permitted. Jahi was admitted to Children’s Hospital on December 9 for surgery to remove her tonsils as a means of treating her sleep apnea. Shortly after the procedure, she began to bleed severely, suffered a heart attack and then brain swelling, according to the family’s lawyer, Christopher Dolan. Hospital officials declared her brain dead on December 12. According to medical experts, Jahi’s lungs and heart are only continuing to function because of air being forced in and out of her body by the ventilator, without which her breathing and heartbeat would cease. Unlike an individual in a coma or a vegetative state, Jahi lacks any brain activity whatsoever, rendering her unable to breathe on her own, doctors said. Hospital officials have said the facility and state health officials are investigating how a routine operation led to Jahi’s death and that they understand the family’s anguish. “We have the deepest sympathy for Jahi’s mother who wishes her daughter was alive; but the ventilator cannot reverse the brain death that has occurred, and it would be wrong to give false hope that Jahi will ever come back to life,” Dr. David Durand, the chief of pediatrics, said in a statement.


Louie Gohmert Says a Justice Department memo "directs that you must openly embrace gay marriage and homosexuality.

Families, Gays and Lesbians, Texas, Louie Gohmert,

President Barack Obama’s administration "has gone out of its way to thump Christians," a Texas U.S. House member said in a July 15, 2013, interview with Fox News. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, went on to say the nation’s top lawyers have been directed to embrace gay marriage, saying: "It's also been true in the Department of Justice right now, directly under this president, his buddy, Eric Holder. There's a memo that directs that you must openly embrace gay marriage and homosexuality. And silence is considered to be disapproval," Gohmert said, according to CQ Transcriptions. The Justice Department required workers to embrace gay marriage and more? Employee group brochure To our email inquiry, Gohmert spokeswoman Kimberly Willingham pointed out a May 28, 2013, blog post by Todd Starnes, a Fox News commentator, headlined: "DOJ Tells Employees to Verbally Affirm Homosexuality." Starnes, citing Liberty Counsel, a law firm that says it’s dedicated to "advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family," wrote that department employees were emailed a brochure,  "LGBT Inclusion at Work: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Managers." He wrote too that the brochure was created by DOJ Pride, an association of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender agency employees. The brochure lists about 20 "do’s" and "don’ts" running from appropriate language to dealing with offensive jokes to declaring one’s own sexual orientation and respecting someone who does so. Given Gohmert’s statement, we narrowed our focus to brochure references to gay marriage and to embracing homosexuality. Under the heading "Use Inclusive Language," the brochure encourages recipients to "use inclusive words like ‘partner,’ ‘significant other’ or ‘spouse’ rather than gender-specific terms like ‘husband’ and ‘wife.’" Another section says: "Do acknowledge important events in an LGBT employee’s life--e.g., same-sex marriage, birth of a child, illness of a spouse, or death of a partner’s parent--in the same way you would for a heterosexual employee." A theme of the brochure is respect for an employee’s sexual orientation. A section titled "Come Out" says: "Do let your employees know they’ll be treated with fairness and respect, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, by ‘coming out’ as a straight ally." Recipients are encouraged to display the brochure or a DOJ Pride sticker in clear view or request that their office receive follow-up training on gender identity in the workplace. Also: "Do consider coming out of the closet if you are LGBT and not out at work. The presence of visible LGBT managers communicates that your office is open and accepting." In another section, the brochure says that if an employee "comes out to you," don’t "judge or remain silent. Silence will be interpreted as disapproval. Do respond with interest and curiosity. Asking respectful questions will set a positive, supportive tone." By telephone, Matt Barber, a Liberty Counsel attorney, told us the brochure was sent to agency employees on May 14, 2013. At our request, Barber emailed us what he described as a copy of that email with the name of the whistleblower worker who brought it to the firm’s attention redacted. One agency's distribution The "To" line of the email says, "Global Distribution." The email message, under the subject "LGBT Pride Month," describes the attached brochure as complementing a planned LGBT Pride Month observance. The email expresses hope that the brochure, "drafted with input from key department stakeholders," will be a useful tool "as you work to create an office environment that is welcoming to, and supportive of, all employees, including LGBT employees." The email closes with: "This message has been authorized by Nelson A. Santos, Deputy Assistant Administrator, Office of Forensic Sciences." By phone, Justice Department spokeswoman Gina Talamona told us Santos works for the Drug Enforcement Administration. Talamona initially told us that the publication was distributed to "some employees" by email with the department’s awareness. However, she said, it is not an agency policy or directive. Department spokeswoman Dena Iverson later emailed a statement that seemed to indicate the DEA official sent the brochure to many of that agency's workers. All told, its employees account for some 9,000 of the Justice Department’s 115,000 workers, Iverson said. Iverson's statement said "DOJ Pride, an employee association, sent informational material, on its own behalf, to some DOJ employees. The material was clearly identified as a DOJ Pride product. We have also recently learned one component’s diversity official distributed the information via email to its employees on behalf of DOJ Pride. The single-page document was produced on a DOJ computer and involved limited use of a DOJ printer to make a few dozen copies, in line with the department’s de minimis use policy allowing employees to make minimal personal use of their DOJ computers when the cost to the government is negligible." Barber said that while the brochure was authored by an employee group, not the department proper, "it came under the auspices of the larger Department of Justice." He added that the agency "knows it would be unconstitutional to expressly compel department employees to openly embrace homosexuality and gay marriage." The brochure, he said, delivers a compliance threat that is implied rather than explicit. Diversity policy More broadly, the department says online it has a diversity management policy: "We work diligently to attract and retain a workforce that represents the range of personal and professional backgrounds, and experiences and perspectives that arise from differences of culture and circumstances. This includes persons of varying age, ethnicity, gender, disability, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, national origin, political affiliation, socioeconomic and family status, and geographic region." As noted in a May 24, 2013, blog post by WND, a conservative Internet news organization, Holder aired support for diversity in a June 6, 2012, speech marking the agency’s LGBT Pride Month celebration. After mentioning efforts to combat school bullying and to help students who feel unsafe or victimized, Holder said: "It is this same determination that guides the Justice Department’s internal efforts to create a more inclusive work environment, and to strengthen our mission to serve all Americans by attracting a diverse range of qualified individuals; and by providing the opportunities--and the support necessary--for every department employee to develop, to grow, and to thrive both personally and professionally." Our ruling Gohmert said a Justice Department memo "directs that you must openly embrace gay marriage and homosexuality." The department promotes diversity. But there doesn't appear to be a department memo or mandate that employees openly support gay marriage or homosexuality. That said, a subset of workers received a brochure from an agency-sanctioned employee group encouraging managers to respect and support gay workers. We rate this claim, which has an element of truth, as .


Video shows President Donald Trump saying COVID-19 is Democrats’ “new hoax.”

Explanation: The video makes it look like Trump called coronavirus “their new hoax.”       In fact, there was nearly a full minute between when the president said “coronavirus” and “hoax” during a Feb. 28 rally in North Charleston, S.C.

In a video tweeted March 3, Joe Biden’s campaign made it look like President Donald Trump called the 2019 coronavirus outbreak a "hoax." "I’ll be damned if I’m going to lose my country to this man at all," Biden says at the start of the ad, which has been viewed more than 336,000 times. The video cycles through a slew of soundbites from Trump. One clip shows the president’s Feb. 28 rally in North Charleston, S.C. "Coronavirus — this is their new hoax," Trump is pictured saying. The video makes it seem like Trump is calling the disease itself a hoax, which he hasn’t done. The words are Trump’s, but the editing is Biden’s. During the North Charleston rally, there was nearly a minute between when Trump said "coronavirus" and "hoax." Here is the full context of his remarks: "Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus, you know that right? Coronavirus, they’re politicizing it. We did one of the great jobs. You say, ‘How’s President Trump doing?’ They go, ‘Oh, not good, not good.’ They have no clue. They don’t have any clue. They can’t even count their votes in Iowa. They can’t even count. No, they can’t. They can’t count their votes. "One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That didn’t work out too well. They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax. That was not a perfect conversation. They tried anything. They tried it over and over. They’d been doing it since you got in. It’s all turning. They lost. It’s all turning. Think of it. Think of it. And this is their new hoax." During a press conference Feb. 29, Trump was asked about his remarks. "I'm not talking about what's happening here; I'm talking what they're doing," he said, referring to Democrats. "That's the hoax." Trump’s comments feed into a conspiracy theory that claims Democrats and the media are fabricating the threat of COVID-19 to hurt the economy and, by extension, the president’s re-election chances. And the president appeared to downplay the threat of the virus at several points in recent weeks. But the Biden campaign’s ad is misleading. It’s an example of what the Washington Post calls "splicing," or "editing together disparate videos" that "fundamentally alters the story that is being told." On March 7, Dan Scavino, the White House social media director, tweeted a video that appears to show Biden saying "we can only re-elect Donald Trump." But the video only showed a snippet of Biden’s larger speech, in which he called for Democratic unity. A similar video tweeted by Michael Bloomberg on Feb. 20 made it look like he left other Democratic presidential candidates speechless during a debate when he didn’t. When we reached out to the Biden campaign for comment, it told us that Trump is "the most dishonest president in American history." "We don't trust his next-day clean-up attempt, and he has made many comments in that same vein," said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, in an email. Biden’s video is inaccurate. We rate it .


Musical Exercise Program Cuts Falls in Elderly

Explanation:
  This story parrots the fundamental error of a journal news release about a trial of an exercise program intended to improve the walking ability and reduce falls among older people. The release and this story claim that “exercising to piano music” appears to reduce falls, but the trial did not actually test that hypothesis. The trial randomized participants to either a series of exercise classes or to continuing their usual activities, so all it can say is that class participation appeared to offer benefits. As the researchers wrote in their journal article, they could “only speculate on the factors responsible.”   On a side note, the New York Times may want to claim credit for a huge scoop on reporting about the potential benefits of this type of exercising to music. It published a story on these classes almost 97 years ago.
  Regurgitating a news release violates the fundamental principles of journalism. It also leads to the second major flaw seen in this report: repeating the misinterpretation of research committed by news release writers.

The story does not mention costs. A web search of programs offered in the U.S. show prices ranging from a $200-1000 for a series of sessions which may last several months and include music instruction. This story fails this criterion because it reports that the trial showed benefits of exercising to piano music, when in fact the trial was not capable of showing that music or any other specific feature of the classes could claim credit for the lower rate of falls and improved walking technique that was observed. The story does include some of the specific information expected to meet this criterion, including the number of falls in each group of participants, although it gives readers only vague descriptions of “significant improvements in balance and overall function” and “increased their usual walking speed and stride length and improved their overall manner of walking” without providing any specific numbers. The story does not mention harms. While the researchers reported that there were no adverse events during the trial, it is possible that exercise classes could lead to falls or sports injuries, so the story should have addressed this point. The story commits a fundamental error on this criterion. The trial did not actually test the effects of piano music. It merely showed that elderly people who took a series of classes fared better than those who did nothing. This test could not shed any light on whether any specific components of the program, such as music, had any specific effect, since there was no comparison to exercise or other classes that did not have these features. The body of the story does give a brief description of the trial, telling readers that 134 older adults living in a senior citizen community were randomized to attend a series of exercise classes or simply go about their normal activities for six months and then taking the classes. Readers are left to figure out for themselves that this study design does not include any direct comparison of any of the components of the classes, so no claims can be made about whether music made any difference. Indeed, the researchers clearly pointed out that “We can only speculate on the factors responsible for the detected improvements in dual-task gait variability.” Readers should have been alerted to this and other limitations of this trial. There was no disease mongering in the story. Falls are indeed a serious hazard for older people. There is neither an independent source nor any discussion of potential conflicts of interest. The story does not put this trial in any context with the existing evidence on other types of physical activity or other methods of reducing the risk of falls by older people. The story does not report that this trial tested a specific type of exercise program known as Jaques-Dalcroze eurhythmics, so readers have no way of finding out whether it is available to them. The story does not include any claims of novelty of this approach. Another New York Times article did call attention to this form of exercise with the headline: “Dalcroze Eurhythmics Have Come to New York.” The article was published on January 25, 1914. There is indeed nothing new about the method of exercise. Reference: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F20E12FF355D13738DDDAC0A94D9405B848DF1D3    This story appears to be based on a news release issued by the Archives of Internal Medicine. The only direct quote in the story is identical to one featured in the news release. The news release introduces the fundamental misunderstanding of the trial design that is repeated in the news report. Archives of Internal Medicine News Release: Exercising to Piano Music Appears to Help Reduce Falls Among Older Adults http://pubs.ama-assn.org/media/2010a/1122.dtl#5


On whether or not the Philadelphia DA's office will recommend the possibility of parole for all juvenile lifers.

Criminal Justice, Pennsylvania, Seth Williams,

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams took to the opinion pages of The Philadelphia Inquirer last week to defend himself from criticism that he reversed his stance on the individuals who have been deemed "juvenile lifers" in the criminal justice system. Williams, a Democrat who is finishing out his second term as district attorney and will not seek re-election, apparently took issue with an early March Inquirer piece that indicated the DA had changed his previous stance on offering the chance of parole to those convicted of homicide when they were juveniles. In the piece, the Inquirer reported Williams and his staff intend to seek sentences of life without parole for at least three of the 300 Philadelphia juvenile lifers whose sentences are under review. The district attorney wrote in that letter to the editor published last week that "the article is contradicted by the paper's prior reporting" and that his "approach to these cases is fair, reasonable, and consistent with the judgments of the Pennsylvania legislature and the U.S. Supreme Court." So did Williams reverse his stance or not? We decided to put it to the test on our Flip-O-Meter, which specifically tracks whether politicians have gone back on their promises. Let’s look first at what Williams’ stance on juvenile lifers was, and why it’s been of interest over the last several years. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that it’s a violation of the Eighth Amendment for states to require a sentence of life without the possibility of parole for individuals convicted of committing homicide before they turned 18. The court ruled those sentences should be "uncommon" and reserved for "the rare juvenile offender whose crime reflects irreparable corruption." By the end of 2012, the Pennsylvania legislature passed new sentencing requirements for juveniles convicted of first- or second-degree murder, ranging from a 20-years-to-life sentence to a 35-years-to-life sentence, depending on degree and how old the person was when the crime was committed. That new legislation applied only to new sentences handed down after the Miller decision. But things got complicated last year when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Miller v. Alabama decision to prohibit mandatory sentences of life without the possibility of parole for juveniles would apply retroactively. That set off a chaotic process in the criminal justice system that’s being resolved by district attorneys, judges and criminal defense attorneys across the state resentencing individuals according to new requirements, but largely leaving it up to judge’s discretion to make a final determination on each individual. There were about 480 juvenile lifers across the state system; 300 of those are from Philadelphia. Last summer, Williams said in an Inquirer interview that it was his goal "to give all of these individuals some light at the end of the tunnel." "As long as I'm the D.A.," he said, "we will not be asking for cases going forward for life without the possibility of parole for people under the age of 18 because of the same exact reasons articulated by the Supreme Court in Miller." The promise earned Williams praise from progressive groups, and he was even lauded in a New York Times editorial that ended with: "Now that Mr. Williams has put that principle into practice, district attorneys in other counties with large numbers of juvenile lifers have a clearer path to follow." In the same Inquirer interview from last year, Williams said "I've got a lot of people who are tweeting every day about juvenile lifers without parole." Some of them he even responded to. On June 3, 2016, the district attorney tweeted to someone asking questions about his policy: "we will have hearings for all 300 chronologically they will get new sentences that will allow for the possibility of parole." He even doubled down when the person responded, asking: "does that mean the Philly DAs office will not seek LWOP (life without parole) in any of those 300 cases?" Williams tweeted back: "just keep reading my last tweet." So at the beginning of this month, the Inquirer wrote that it appeared Williams’ stance had shifted. Journalist Samantha Melamed reported Williams’ office, in a letter to a federal court, indicated it intends to seek life without parole in at least three of the cases it had reviewed so far. Officials from Williams’ office confirmed that this week, saying it’s so far made 96 offers, three of which were for life without parole. They refused to provide any information about those three cases, saying the offers are still under consideration by defense attorneys and the final determination will be made by a judge. The Inquirer reported one of the individuals who the DA’s office is recommending life without parole for is Andre Martin, who was 15 when he shot and killed police officer John Trettin in 1976. From the story: "According to Inquirer coverage from 1976, Martin had an IQ of 80 and was high on Valium and marijuana when he shot a police officer through the window of an apartment in a public-housing project." Following that March Inquirer story about Williams’ apparent shifting stance, Williams wrote in a letter to the editor that there was no change in his stance and quoted the Inquirer’s original June 2016 piece that read: "[Williams] said he won't rule out life without parole in the most heinous cases, but he has taken heed of the Supreme Court's opinion, in Miller, that neuroscience shows teens' brains are not fully formed, reducing their culpability." Melamed said the Inquirer stands by its reporting, which is "why the district attorney’s claim appeared in the form of a letter to the editor rather than a correction." Williams’ chief of staff Kathleen Martin said in an interview this week that "he hopes or expects not to have a lot of murderers who were juveniles remain, but in certain circumstances, including heinous crimes, that might in fact happen." She described the office’s process for reviewing each of the juvenile lifer cases, saying it’s assigned a team of assistant district attorneys and other stakeholders to review every case, starting with the oldest ones. They’re seeking out surviving family members of victims, combing through old case files and reviewing information from the Department of Corrections about how the inmates have operated in prison. After that process, the team determined that they’ll request life in prison without the chance of parole for at least three juvenile lifers from Philadelphia. When PolitiFact asked Martin, Williams’ chief of staff, about whether or not this move conflicts with Williams’ past statements saying "all" 300 individuals would have a chance at parole, she said the three inmates in question still do have that chance because "the judge is always going to have a final determination." But that would go against what the DA’s office is requesting. Martin also said Williams’ original quote to the Inquirer that he wanted "to give all of these individuals some light at the end of the tunnel" was referring to his goals "moving forward" in sentencing new juveniles. "It’s clear that the DA had a goal, but in the most heinous occasions, that goal cannot always be met," Martin said. "There are just unfortunately some cases in which the best interest of the community at large is that certain people remain in custody." Our ruling District Attorney Seth Williams told The Philadelphia Inquirer last year that it was his goal "to give all of these individuals some light at the end of the tunnel" when it comes to re-sentencing juvenile lifers still in the Pennsylvania prison system. His office says he made clear there could be exceptions in the most heinous cases. That’s why Williams’ team contends his stance didn’t shift when it didn’t offer the chance of parole to three individuals so far as it continues the process of reviewing 300 cases of juvenile lifers in Pennsylvania. But we keep going back to when he tweeted that "we will have hearings for all 300 chronologically" and that "they will get new sentences that will allow for the possibility of parole." He then doubled down on that stance when asked directly about it on Twitter. The district attorney also indicated he agreed with the Miller decision, and wouldn’t seek life without parole for juveniles convicted of homicide moving forward. That’s since changed for at least three people who could remain in prison for life without the possibility of parole. We rate this a .


Roche says EU panel backs lymphatic cancer drug for approval.

Explanation: Swiss drug company Roche said on Friday a European Union committee recommended its MabThera subcutaneous treatment for patients with non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Roche said the opinion of the EU Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) was based primarily on data from a phase III study, with a final decision from the European Commission expected in coming months. The Commission generally follows committee recommendations, though it is not obliged to. MabThera is a treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system, and is currently delivered by an intravenous infusion which takes 2-1/2 hours to complete. In contrast, the new MabThera subcutaneous formulation can be delivered over approximately five minutes, Roche said.


The Tim Allen show 'Last Man Standing' was cancelled due to the star's political beliefs.

Explanation: In May 2018, Fox announced they would be bringing back Last Man Standing for the 2018-19 television season.

When television network ABC announced that they were canceling comedian Tim Allen’s popular sitcom Last Man Standing, many people — including the show’s star — were shocked. After all, it was the third most-watched scripted show on the network, behind Grey’s Anatomy and Modern Family, and received solid ratings: Stunned and blindsided by the network I called home for the last six years. #lastmanstanding — Tim Allen (@ofctimallen) May 16, 2017  Some commentators accused ABC of canceling the show due to its conservative bent: Allen played an outspoken conservative on who often riffed on political issues such as Obamacare on the sitcom. Tim Allen’s personal politics somewhat mirrored the character’s, as the former Home Improvement star is a Republican who attended Donald Trump’s inauguration. A petition that garnered more than 300,000 signatures on Change.org claimed the show was canceled because it was the only entertainment program that was not constantly shoving “liberal ideals down the throats of the viewers”: Despite consistently high rankings, especially considering the time slot in which it is aired, Tim Allen’s show “Last Man Standing” has been cancelled by the network on which it is aired, ABC. Last Man Standing stands out in the sea of network television sitcoms. It is a show that appeals to a broad swath of Americans who find very few shows that extol the virtues with which they can identify; namely conservative values. Last Man Standing was not just selling conservative ideals though, as some of the characters in the show are clearly of the liberal persuasion, yet the characters on the show all manage to get along and take care of one another, despite their politically opposed views. The show is about more than politics though, it is about family. In fact, politics is only a secondary part of the show, but one in which many Americans can readily identify. Last Man Standing is one of the only shows on broadcast television, and the only sitcom, that is not constantly shoving liberal ideals down the throats of the viewers. And sadly, that is likely the real reason the show has been cancelled. Inevitably, this accusation was boiled down into a meme eventually shared by former Alaska governor Sarah Palin (a Republican):  Allen described his experience at Trump’s inauguration during an appearance on the late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live, saying that he was “almost afraid” to say he had been at the event. However, his support for Trump was already well known, making it unlikely that the show’s cancellation was directly related to his attendance at the inauguration. Although it’s true that Last Man Standing drew solid ratings, Vox took a closer look at the circumstances surrounding the show’s cancellation and found that a variety of reasons why the series might have gotten the axe. For one, Last Man Standing just finished its 6th season, and the show’s cast and staff were likely in line for a pay bump which would have made the show much more expensive to produce:  After season five, if a show isn’t a blockbuster (like The Big Bang Theory or The Walking Dead), every additional season becomes harder and harder to procure, even if the ratings are pretty good on the whole. The reason is simple — actors, writers, technicians, and other people who’ve stayed with the show for its full run begin to earn pay bumps, usually seeing solid raises in seasons six and seven especially. (You’ll often hear about studios agreeing to new “two- or three-year deals” with certain cast members post-season five, and that’s often to lock those cast members in at a rate the studio can live with for future seasons.) This makes a lot of sense. Traditionally, seasons four and five are when a studio starts to make back the money it’s invested into a series, from syndication and other means. And Last Man Standing has both lucrative syndication and cable rerun deals with various networks, which have paid off in solid ratings that fed back into the main program (which actually saw viewership increases in season six — almost unheard of). But it also probably caught the show in a weird Catch-22. Last Man Standing was successful — but not successful enough. It was doing well enough to justify better pay for the cast, especially, but it wasn’t doing well enough for the studio to demand more money from the network (more on this below). In addition to renegotiating contracts with the cast of Last Man Standing, ABC may have also had to look at its licensing deal for the show. ABC doesn’t actually own Last Man Standing; rather, they license the show from 20th Century Fox:  There’s one big reason this might be the case: Since ABC doesn’t own the show, it doesn’t get any of the show’s ancillary revenues — from streaming services and syndication and cable reruns and international broadcasts. Those all go to the studio, Fox. ABC pretty much just collects ad revenue at this point. Thus, ABC has no incentive to keep making more episodes of the show from a financial perspective, where Fox has huge incentive to do so. It’s easy to see how that situation could have grown unsustainable. ABC also recently announced that the tremendously popular American Idol program would be returning to their network lineup, which may have forced them to move or cancel other shows to make room for it. ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey said on a press call with reporters that she canceled Last Man Standing for the same “business and scheduling reasons” that led to the cancellation of other shows: On a call, ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey called the decision to not renew Last Man Standing the type of “tough calls” she needs to make in her job. Asked whether the show’s content and the fact that Allen is a prominent Republican played a role in the decision, she said, “I canceled Last Man Standing for the same business and scheduling reasons I canceled The Real O’Neals, Dr. Ken, The Catch, American Crime.” “It was a challenging (call) because it was steady performer but when we made the decision not to continue with comedies on Friday that’s where it landed,” she added. ABC’s Friday comedy block will be gone next fall, replaced by Once Upon a Time and Marvel’s Inhumans/Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. for a fantasy/sci-fi block. Did the fact that Last Man Standing is not owned by ABC — it comes from 20th TV — play a role in its demise? “The truth of the matter is that there are many factors that go into the decision-making process: ratings, critical acclaim. Of course we look at ownership structure, I don’t think we are alone,” Dungey said, quickly noting that the network has shows from multiple independent studios, including Warner Bros. TV and Sony TV. “I wouldn’t say that was the deciding factor.” It’s unlikely that Tim Allen’s politics were the sole or primary reason behind the cancellation of Last Man Standing. However, when asked whether politics played a role in deciding the network’s lineup, Dungey said: There’s a lot of news, and I think that people are definitely looking to television as a place they want to feel, they want to laugh, they want to cry … the mood of the country has told us that television is a little bit of an escape … What people want to do now is connect and experience and to feel … that did frame a lot of our development thinking this season. Despite these claims, the network will soon have another Trump supporter on the air. The network is reviving Roseanne, which will star Roseanne Barr, who once said she became a Republican because of Donald Trump: Y I became a Republican: Because Trump was th ONLY candidate who talked about the working classes, not just the middle classes. When was 1/2 — Roseanne Barr (@therealroseanne) November 18, 2016


State agency says Ohio suicide deaths rose 45% since 2007.

Explanation: The number of suicides in Ohio increased 45% from 2007 to 2018 amid a growing national public health crisis, according to a report released Wednesday by the Ohio Department of Health.

Health Department Director Dr. Amy Acton said suicide has also increased by more than 50% in young people between the ages of 10 and 24 over the same time period. It’s the leading cause of death for Ohio residents ages 10 to 14 and the second leading cause of death for residents 15 to 34, she said. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine responded to the report by saying his RecoveryOhio initiative seeks to address mental illness and issues leading to suicide. “If you know someone is struggling, you may be able to help save someone’s life by recognizing the warning signs and steps to take,” DeWine said. There are five suicide deaths each day in Ohio and over 1,800 such deaths last year, the report said. Other findings in the report include: — The number of suicides for those age 10 to 24 increased 56% while the rate increased 64% from 2007 to 2018. — The rate for people 65 and older increased nearly 48% between 2007 and 2018. — White, non-Hispanic males had the highest suicide rate. — The suicide rate among black non-Hispanic males increased 54% from 2014 to 2018. The Department of Health says some of the warning signs for people at risk of committing suicide include: —Major mood changes with someone appearing unhappy, depressed and withdrawn from family and friends. — Poor grades in school. — High-risk behaviors, including the use of alcohol and other substances. — Expressions of hopelessness. — Self-harm, including cutting or burning. — A personal or family history of depression. The Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services offers suicide prevention information and resources at https://mha.ohio.gov/.


Hogan announces environmental agreement with dam operator.

Explanation: Exelon Corp., the energy company that runs the Conowingo Dam, will invest more than $200 million in environmental projects, according to an agreement announced Tuesday by Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan.

Water quality, Chesapeake Bay, General News, Environment, Larry Hogan, Maryland

Maryland officials have been focusing on how to address the environmental impact of trash and debris that has been swept downstream from Pennsylvania to Maryland through the dam after heavy rains. State officials also are concerned that sediment buildup behind the dam’s walls could be released and wreak havoc on the fragile Chesapeake Bay ecosystem. The money in the proposed settlement will be used to improve water quality in the Lower Susquehanna River and the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary, Hogan said. “This settlement is a significant and positive step in the right direction, and with the cooperation of Exelon and upstream states, we can continue making progress in our efforts to preserve and protect this great national treasure,” Hogan said in a statement. Parts of the agreement will be submitted for approval to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, as part of the licensing renewal for the dam. The proposal includes $52 million to implement new requirements for flow control to create more natural conditions in the Lower Susquehanna. It also includes $41 million to increase efforts to remove trash and debris that flows down the Susquehanna from upstream states. Other parts of the agreement include: $47 million for climate resiliency projects like submerged aquatic vegetation, clams, oysters and the restoration of living shorelines and $25 million for an initiative to restore mussels in the Susquehanna. “Exelon Generation and the State of Maryland share a commitment to restoring and sustaining the health of the Chesapeake Bay, which has been strengthened by this agreement,” said Chris Crane, president and CEO of Exelon. But a group that advocates for the bay said it’s concerned the settlement falls short of mitigating the negative water quality impact associated with operating the dam, as Exelon seeks a 50-year licensing agreement to operate it. While the Chesapeake Bay Foundation says the projects outlined for funding in the agreement are laudable, the group says a majority of any money should be spent on upstream practices to reduce the sediments and pollution that reaches the dam. “We still need more details on the settlement agreement,” said Alison Prost, CBF’s Maryland executive director. “However, we believe Exelon’s identified projects and the roughly $4 million per year commitment over the dam’s nearly 50-year licensing agreement are insufficient investments to offset the negative water quality impacts caused by the dam’s operations.” The agreement settles Exelon’s legal challenges to the water quality certification issued last year under the Clean Water Act and ends the prospect of years of litigation, Hogan said. Exelon has contended it’s not fair to force the company to pay for pollution the dam doesn’t produce. The proposed settlement includes $500,000 for a study of management options for dredged material. Scientific reports confirm that the dam has reached full capacity and can no longer stop pollution from entering the bay, threatening the state’s ability to meet cleanup goals for the nation’s largest estuary. The Hogan administration says it’s working to address the problem with conditions relating to the relicensing of the dam, a pilot project on beneficial reuse of dredged material and a multistate plan to address upstream discharges and the lost sediment-trapping capacity of the dam.


India bans export of drug being tested for coronavirus treatment.

Explanation: India said on Wednesday it had banned the export of hydroxychloroquine and formulations of the malaria drug while experts test its efficacy in helping treat patients infected with coronavirus.

There are currently no approved treatments, or preventive vaccines for COVID-19, the highly contagious, sometimes deadly respiratory illness caused by coronavirus. Researchers are studying existing treatments and working on experimental ones, but most current patients receive only supportive care such as breathing assistance. Hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug, is among the medications undergoing testing as a potential treatment for patients with the disease. Earlier this week, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), which maintains a list of drug shortages, said there was a shortage of hydroxychloroquine. “Chloroquine has demonstrated toxicity in certain patients,” Dinesh Dua, chairman of the Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council of India, told Reuters. “You have to tread with caution because there is no comprehensive data to prove it works.”    The group said India, the world’s largest supplier of generic drugs, was not short of the drug but that companies were acutely short of staff to run operations. Cadila Healthcare Ltd, part of the Zydus group and one of India’s top makers of the drug, said it was ramping up production to about 200 million pills a month. “The priority is to work with the government in these challenging times and do all that we can in combating the coronavirus,” a spokesman said. Earlier on Wednesday, Cadila Healthcare’s stock fell more than 5% after the export ban was announced. Late on Tuesday, India ordered a 21-day lockdown of its 1.3 billion people to try to protect the world’s second most populous country from the fast-spreading coronavirus. “It is impossible to maintain operations due to lockdown, because employees don’t want to come (to work),” Dua said. India has already banned the export of ventilators, sanitizers and personal protection equipment such as masks and clothing used in the fight against the virus, which has so far infected more than 500 people and killed nine in the country. The ban came after India this month curbed the export of 26 pharmaceutical ingredients and the medicines made from them, including Paracetamol - a common pain reliever also sold as acetaminophen - as the coronavirus outbreak plays havoc with supply chains. Some of those restrictions have since been relaxed. For an interactive graphic tracking global spread of coronavirus: open tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser.


Walt Disney was an illegitimate child, born out of wedlock to a woman from a town near Almeria in southern Spain and adopted by Flora and Elias Disney.

Explanation: That Walt Disney was born in 1901, not 1890, is beyond dispute. Even though a birth certificate might not exist, photographs and school records clearly demonstrate that Walt was not more than ten years older than commonly believed. He could not possibly be the result of a liaison between Señora Zamora and Elias Disney that occurred in 1890. Even if Eliot were wrong about the date and the two hooked up in 1900 or 1901 (although, once again, this contradicts Eliot’s earlier explanations of how and why Zamora came to be in America in the first place), a baby resulting from that union could simply not have been passed off as Flora and Elias’s own child, unless we are to believe that nobody — not friends, not relatives, not fellow church members, not even the Disneys’ own children — ever noticed that Flora “gave birth” to a child without having been pregnant in the first place.

No real evidence exists to defend the claim that Walt Disney’s natural parents were anyone other than Flora and Elias Disney (shown above). Support for Walt Disney’s having Spanish parentage is based solely on fragmentary and contradictory bits of hearsay and rumor, without the backing of a single piece of substantive documentation. One version of the legend, as recounted by Mosley, identifies a young woman named Consuela Suarez from the Spanish town of Mojacar (or Mojacca) as Disney’s “real” mother. Señorita Suarez, the story goes, was engaged to a young man from her village who was killed in Morocco before the marriage could take place, leaving her unwed and pregnant. After giving birth, Consuela allegedly enlisted the aid of a local priest to arrange for an American couple to take the child back to the USA, where she (having arrived later) “signed the papers which enabled her son to be formally adopted and made a US citizen.” Only shortly before her death, when she finally returned to her native Spain, did Conseula learn that the son she had given up many years before was now the world-famous Walt Disney. The tale is charming as a modern-day fairy tale, but it hardly stands up to critical examination. Why did Conseula Suarez give up her child for adoption? Presumably it was to avoid the scandal of being an unwed mother in a primarily Catholic country, yet both Señorita Suarez and her son immediately relocated to America, where no one would have known about the circumstances of the child’s birth, thus allowing her to keep her son without fear of censure. And who was this mystery couple who brought Consuela’s son to America? Certainly not Flora and Elias Disney, who never visited Spain and had no ties of any kind to that country. How and why did this couple come in contact with the Disneys? The question also remains (regardless of how the child came to the USA) as to why the Disneys, who could barely make ends meet and already had three sons of their own, would adopt a stranger’s child. (The notion that Flora and Elias might have adopted a child because of their own inability to produce further offspring is belied by the fact that Flora gave birth to a daughter a few years later.) Lastly, where are the adoption and naturalization records for this mystery child? Local adoption papers might disappear (or be made to disappear), but not so federal citizenship records. Marc Eliot revived this legend in a more expansive (and a much more contrived and convoluted) form in Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince. In Eliot’s version, Walt Disney’s “real” mother was a washerwoman named Isabelle Zamora (Ascensio) from Mojacar, who became pregnant by a man from the same village, the already married Dr. José Guirao. Dr. Guirao, who passed away shortly after the child’s birth, named his son after himself; Señora Zamora left Spain with the child and headed for the east coast of the United States soon afterwards, claims Eliot, “because she and Dr. Guirao were devout Catholics and wished to protect both their families.” (Why a couple desirous of protecting their families from the scandal of an out of wedlock birth would draw attention to their adulterous affair by naming their child after its father remains unexplained.) Isabelle eventually made her way to the west coast, where she was “taken in by Franciscan missionaries.” Even if we proceed from the assumption that Señora Zamora and her child actually existed, the legend breaks down when any attempt is made to link them to Flora and Elias Disney. Eliot claims that Elias Disney met up with Señora Zamora in 1890, after he “took leave of his wife and children . . . to take part in the second wave of the California Gold Rush,” not returning home until early in 1891. Elias’ departure for California is apparently a fact known only to Eliot, for no other source of biographical information about the Disney family mentions it. (Indeed, there is no evidence that Elias Disney ventured anywhere close the west coast after moving his family to Chicago in 1889, and Eliot offers no source for his assertion that Elias made such a trip. Mosley does write that Elias once set out for the California goldfields with his father and brother, but that was in 1878, and Elias reportedly made it no further west than Kansas.) How Elias managed to father a different child (Raymond Arnold Disney, born late in 1890) with his wife Flora — despite spending the year away from her — is another inconsistency for which Eliot offers no explanation. Let’s say Señora Zamora and her child were real, and Elias Disney somehow managed to end up in California and meet up with them in 1890. Why would Elias Disney, already married and the father of three sons, offer to adopt this Spanish washerwoman’s child? The answer is simple, says Eliot: Elias Disney had an affair with Señora Zamora in California, brought her back with him to Chicago as a “kept woman,” then forced Flora to raise the child as their own to avoid the shame and humiliation that would befall them if his scandalous affair were revealed. (Hedging his bets at this point, Eliot suggest that perhaps Señora Zamora’s child wasn’t born until after her arrival in America, maybe even as the result of an affair with Elias Disney. These hypotheses, of course, completely contradict Eliot’s earlier explanations of why and how Señora Zamora came to be in America in the first place.) But one simple fact demolishes this theory: Walt Disney was born in 1901, not 1890. Eliot is left with a gap of over ten years between Elias’ alleged affair with Señora Zamora and Walt’s birth. Eliot disingenuously tries to skirt around the eleven-year discrepancy by pointing out that there is no official record of Walt Disney’s birth in Cook Country, Illinois, on the birthdate that has always been claimed for him (December 5, 1901), yet there is a record of a “Walter Disney” having been born to Flora and Elias Disney more than ten years earlier, on January 8, 1891. This, Eliot deceptively argues, demonstrates that Walt Disney’s official date of birth has been manipulated in an attempt to cover up his true origins. The official record of birth from Cook County on which Eliot bases his claim does not report the birth of someone named “Walter Disney” on January 8, 1891, however; it merely shows that the birth of someone by that name was recorded on that date. The actual date of birth for the person named is clearly printed on the same document: December 30, 1890. Not coincidentally, this is the exact birth date of one of Walt’s older brothers, Raymond Arnold Disney. The birth record refers to Raymond’s birth, not Walt’s. For whatever reason, Disney’s parents, after initially deciding to name their second son Walter Elias, changed their minds and christened him Raymond Arnold instead. The discrepancy in birth records is not difficult to explain. Birth certificates were not required by law in Illinois at the turn of the century, and official paperwork for a child born at home without a doctor in attendance (as Walt was) often went unfiled. The lack of a birth certificate for Walt Disney is therefore not unusual. (Despite Mosley’s statement that Disney “was indubitably a native-born American as his birth certificate, a copy of which can still be obtained in Chicago, will testify,” no birth certificate for Walt Disney is known to exist.) The confusion of names on the record of Raymond’s birth cannot be definitively explained, but most likely either Flora and Elias Disney had not firmly agreed on a name for their son at the time the birth was recorded, or else they later changed their minds. (Mosley reports a similar disagreement between Flora and Elias Disney over the choice of name for their third son, Roy Oliver Disney.) Quite possibly the Disneys had intended to honor a promise they made to their preacher, Walter Parr, to name their next son after him, but then decided against it. Several years later — perhaps as a belated fulfillment of that promise — they named their fourth son Walter.


Study challenges health benefits of moderate drinking.

Explanation: It might just be enough to kill your buzz: A new study challenges the idea that a drink or two a day could actually be good for you.

Health, China, Stroke, Heart attack, AP Top News

In a study conducted in China, the researchers found that moderate drinking slightly raised the risk of stroke and high blood pressure. They weren’t able to figure out, though, whether small amounts of alcohol might also increase the chances of a heart attack. People who have a drink or two a day have long been thought to have a lower risk of stroke and heart problems than nondrinkers. But scientists were unsure if that was because the alcohol was beneficial or if the people who didn’t drink had other health issues. “The claims that alcohol has some magical, protective fix ... has no particularly serious scientific basis,” said Richard Peto, of the University of Oxford, one of the study’s senior authors. Peto said their findings should apply to other populations beyond China and to any alcoholic drinks like beer or wine, even though the study participants mostly drank spirits. The research was published online Thursday in the journal, Lancet . For their research, the Chinese and British scientists took genetics into account. They focused on two variants common among East Asians that can make drinking unpleasant. For those with the variants, drinking alcohol can result in quickly turning red, a fast heart rate, nausea or headaches. Because such gene variations occur randomly, the researchers were able to design the equivalent of a randomized study. Much of the previous research on alcohol and health effects has relied on studies that can’t prove cause and effect. The scientists tracked more than 500,000 people across China, following them for a decade. They recorded their medical history, including whether they smoked or exercised, and how much they drank. A third of the men reported drinking most weeks, compared with few of the women. About 160,000 of the participants had the two gene variants. Among the men in that group, drinking ranged from none to up to four drinks a day. The researchers looked at how many had strokes or heart attacks, and compared them to participants without the variants and to the women with the variants. Overall, the study found alcohol increases the stroke risk by about one-third for every four additional drinks per day. The researchers found no protective effects for moderate drinking. For people who drink up to two drinks a day — which would qualify as moderate drinking — scientists said they would have an increased stroke risk of about 10% to 15% when compared to nondrinkers. There weren’t enough heart attacks among the participants to be able to draw a conclusion about heart risks, the researchers said. In a journal commentary, the authors called for stricter controls on alcohol, saying its risks have been underestimated. “The alcohol industry is thriving and should be regulated in a similar way to the tobacco industry,” wrote Shiu Lun Au Yeung and Dr. Tai Hing Lam of the University of Hong Kong. ___ 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.