A new version of an old Internet legend that expired cake mix can be fatal has been making its way into email inboxes.

Explanation: Warnings About Expired Cake Mix

Expired cake mixes can be fatal for those who have allergies to mold or penicillin, but the dangers of expired cake mix have been greatly exaggerated in these warnings. Warning about expired cake mixes have been in circulation for more than a decade. Most often, a chain email urges people to rush home and throw out every box of cake mix that has passed its expiration date because it could be toxic, and even deadly. Then the email cites an example of a young man or boy who died or nearly died after eating moldy, expired pancake mix. A version of the cake mix warning making the rounds in early 2015 told the story of a high school student whose mother made him pancakes before dropping him off at school. A short time later he allegedly had trouble breathing and nearly died as paramedics rushed him to the hospital. Due to lack of details — like the name of the high school or student — we couldn’t verify the details in that story. TruthorFiction.com investigated another account of expired pancake mix nearly leading to the death of a 14-year-old boy that appeared in an April 2006 “Dear Abby” column. We weren’t able to verify the authenticity of that story, either, but the details are almost exactly the same. Still, there’s at least one verifiable account of a 19-year-old man dying from an allergic reaction after eating an expired box of pancake mix. That account was published in the American Journal of Forensic Medical Pathology in 2001: One morning, he and his friends made pancakes with a packaged mix that had been opened and in the cabinet for approximately 2 years. The friends stopped eating the pancakes because they said that they tasted like “rubbing alcohol.” The decedent continued to eat the pancakes and suddenly became short of breath. He was taken to a nearby clinic, where he became unresponsive and died. At autopsy, laryngeal edema and hyperinflated lungs with mucous plugging were identified. Microscopically, edema and numerous degranulating mast cells were identified in the larynx. The smaller airways contained mucus, and findings of chronic asthma were noted. Serum tryptase was elevated at 14.0 ng/ml. The pancake mix was analyzed and found to contain a total mold count of 700/g of mix as follows: Penicillium, Fusarium, Mucor, and Aspergillus. Witness statements indicate that the decedent ate two pancakes; thus he consumed an approximate mold count of 21,000. The decedent had a history of allergies to molds and penicillin, and thus was allergic to the molds in the pancake mix. The authors present this unusual case of anaphylaxis and a review of the literature. Pathologists who wrote the article called the man’s death an “unusual case of anaphylaxis.” But still, there has been at least one death from exposure to mold in an expired cake mix. Duncan Hines, the maker of various box mixes, has responded directly to the cake mix warning: Due to consumer inquiries regarding mold developing in expired mixes, we would like to assure you that there is no concern with products manufactured by Pinnacle Foods Group LLC. We place a “BEST BY” date on the packaging to ensure product quality in terms of appearance, texture and taste of the finished item. There is no food safety concern in using Duncan Hines cake mixes beyond their “BEST BY” dates. We do recommend that Duncan Hines® products be kept in a cool, dry place. In general, protecting mixes from moisture will prevent mold growth. The Gourmet Sleuth suggests storing boxed cake mix at pantry temperature for no more than six to nine months. After that point, the cake mix should be frozen or thrown out. So, it’s true that mold found in expired cake mixes can be toxic and even fatal for those with extreme allergies to mold. However, the cake mix warning is also misleading because it exaggerates the risk that expired cake mix poses. Comments


States have cumulatively cut over $1.8 billion from their mental health services between 2009 and 2011. This is the largest reduction in state mental health services in half a century.

Explanation: Rep. Marcy Kaptur says states have slashed funding for mental health services

As funerals proceeded for the 20 first-graders and six school employees massacred on Dec. 14, by a gunman at Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School, members of Congress including Toledo Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur took to the House of Representatives floor to decry the violence. Kaptur’s speech highlighted cuts in mental health funding during the recession, while urging a "more constructive federal role in assuring proper and early diagnosis and intervention of affected youth and appropriate treatment." During her speech, Kaptur said that "states have cumultatively cut over $1.8 billion from their mental health services between 2009 and 2011. This is the largest reduction in state mental health services in half a century." PolitiFact Ohio took a look at the numbers. Kaptur specifically cited the National Alliance on Mental Illness during her speech as a source of information. Her spokesman said she was citing data from a report the mental health advocacy group released in March 2011, after a paranoid schizophrenic gunman shot then-Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed six others in a supermarket parking lot outside Tucson, Ariz. The report observed that "the public often focuses on mental illness only when high visibility tragedies of the magnitude of Tucson or Virginia Tech occur." "Between 2009 and 2011, states cumulatively cut more than $1.8 billion from their budgets for services for children and adults living with mental illness," it continued. The report said that cuts during that period kept thousands of Ohioans with serious mental illness from accessing care in their communities, resulting in their living on the streets, or ending up in more expensive settings like jails and hospitals. The NAMI report stressed that people living with mental illness are, on the whole, no more violent than the rest of the population and are more frequently the victims of violence than perpetrators of violent acts. But it said the "risks of violence among a small subset of individuals may increase when appropriate treatment and supports are not available." In an email, NAMI spokesman Bob Carolla noted the 2011 report that Kaptur cited was based on funding information available from states at the time the report was issued. The National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors subsequently determined that total cuts were much higher than the figures cited in the NAMI report - $4.35 billion between 2009 and 2012. "The economic downturn has forced state budgets to cut approximately $4.35 billion in public mental health spending over the 2009-2012 period – the largest combined reduction since de-institutionalization," says a March 2012 report from the mental health program directors group. A year-by-year breakdown in that report says that $1.22 billion in was cut in FY 2009 in the 39 states that provided statistics to the organization; that $1.02 billion was cut in FY 2010 by 38 states, that $1.27 billion was cut in FY 2011 by 36 states, and $842 million was cut in FY 2012 by 31 states. Carolla said his organization accepts the accuracy of the mental health program directors group’s figures. He noted that de-institutionalization, which shifted mental health care from institutions like mental hospitals to community-based settings, "is generally considered to have begun with the passage of legislation under President Kennedy in 1963 - 50 years ago." That coincides with the half-century timeline cited in Kaptur’s speech. When asked for details on the comparison of current cuts with those that happened when de-institutionalization occurred, representatives of the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors said their funding statistics go back only 30 years. While they believe the statement about the cuts’ scope is probably correct, they can’t precisely compare the deinstitutionalization era’s budgetary cuts with today’s numbers. "It is by far the biggest cut in 30 years, but before that, the data doesn’t exist in a format where I can look at it and say it is apples to apples," says Ted Lutterman, the director of research analysis for the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors Research Institute. He said he did not provide the information on deinstitutionalization that Kaptur cited, and said that someone else must have inserted that tidbit into the group’s report. Robert Glover, who heads the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors Research, also could not provide details on the half-century figure that Kaptur cited, though he said the recent budget cuts are the largest he’s seen during his 40 years in the profession. He calls the $4.35 billion statistic that his group uses  "very conservative" because it omits numbers from several states that didn’t provide the group with their budget figures. He observed that mental health needs rise when financial problems fester in a sour economy and that mental health service cuts make it harder for those with difficulties to get the help they need. Glover says Ohio has provided a bright spot amid the cuts, developing programs designed to integrate mental health care with physical health care. "There are pockets of restoration in some states," Glover said. Ohio Department of Mental Health Communications Director Trudy Sharp said her organization’s general revenue budget went down by $67 million between the 2009 and 2010 fiscal years, then increased by $20 million in the 2011 fiscal year. She said her department trimmed its central office staff by 20 percent since 2008, and also shuttered three of the state’s nine psychiatric hospitals. Facilities in Cambridge, Cleveland and Dayton were closed and their beds absorbed by other hospitals, she said. Additionally, she said Ohio is consolidating its Department of Mental Health with its Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction services, and trying to stretch its mental health dollars by encouraging regional planning approaches between counties. So where does all this leave Kaptur’s statement? Kaptur accurately cited statistics about mental health budget cuts from a National Alliance on Mental Illness report. Those numbers appear to have downplayed the extent of cuts. But, her claim that "over $1.8 billion" was cut between 2009 and 2011 is accurate because the cuts surely exceeded $1.8 billion. Her contention that the cuts mark the "largest reduction in state mental health services in half a century," is harder to prove. She based her statement on information in a report produced by an often-cited authority on state mental health funding. While representatives of the group said they believe that statement is accurate, they acknowledged they didn’t have state funding numbers going back 50 years to document that assertion. That’s a point of clarification. On the Truth-O-Meter, her claim rates .


UN expert: Zimbabwe hunger ‘shocking’ for country not at war.

Explanation: Zimbabwe is on the brink of man-made starvation and the number of people needing help is “shocking” for a country not in conflict, a United Nations special expert on the right to food said Thursday.

Southern Africa, General News, Africa, Health, Zimbabwe, United Nations, International News

Hilal Elver said she found stunted and underweight children, mothers too hungry to breastfeed their babies and medicine shortages in hospitals during her 10-day visit to the economically shattered country. She said the southern African nation is among the four most food insecure states in the world. The others — Yemen, South Sudan and Somalia — have been ravaged by war. Zimbabwe’s food crisis has the potential to spark fighting, the U.N. expert said. “I urgently call on the government, all political parties and the international community to come together to put an end to this spiraling crisis before it morphs into a full-blown conflict,” she said. The consequences of hunger have been dire, Elver said. School dropouts, early marriage, domestic violence, prostitution and sexual exploitation are on the rise. She blamed widespread corruption, mismanagement, natural disasters, droughts and sanctions for the crisis. Zimbabwe is facing its worst economic difficulties in more than a decade. More than 60% of the population of 16 million is now considered food insecure. “It comes from (a) dysfunctional system,” the U.N. expert said. About 5.5 million people in rural areas face food insecurity. In urban areas, about 2.2 million people lack access to basic public services, including health and safe water, according to figures by U.N agencies and the government. Electricity is cut up to 19 hours a day. “These are shocking figures and the crisis continues to worsen,” Elver said. Where food items are available most people have no money to buy, she said. Critics blame the administration of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, who has struggled to fulfil promises of prosperity since taking power in 2017 after the forced resignation of longtime leader Robert Mugabe. Mnangagwa blames recurrent droughts and sanctions imposed by the United States for the crisis. The U.S. says the sanctions target entities and individuals, including Mnangagwa, over rights abuses, not the country at large. ___ Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa


Explanation: Sen. Tom Coburn says government is twice the size it was a decade ago

National, Deficit, Federal Budget, Tom Coburn,

EDITOR’S NOTE: Upon further consideration, we have changed the rating on this item from Mostly True. The new analysis is below. Our previous posting is archived here. On the July 24, 2011, edition of NBC’s Meet the Press, Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., sought to give some perspective on the size of federal spending -- a central factor in the current debate over raising the debt ceiling. Addressing host David Gregory, Coburn said, "David, everybody's talking about the symptoms of our problem instead of the real disease. The government's twice the size it was 10 years ago. It's 30 percent bigger than it was when (Barack) Obama became president. The problem is that we're spending way too much money, and it's not hard to cut it without hurting entitlement benefits. But we don't have anybody that wants to do that without getting a tax increase." We wondered whether Coburn was right that the size of government has doubled over the past 10 years. We began by looking at the size of outlays by the federal government, even though Coburn didn’t specify which level of government he was talking about. (Coburn communications director John Hart later confirmed that he had meant to refer to just the federal government.) We also decided to use outlays as our yardstick -- rather than, say, government employees or regulatory burden, as some readers later suggested -- since Coburn went on to say, "we're spending way too much money, and it's not hard to cut it without hurting entitlement benefits." Here are annual figures from the Office of Management and Budget for total federal outlays:     Fiscal year 2001: $1.86 trillion Fiscal year 2002: $2.01 trillion Fiscal year 2003: $2.16 trillion Fiscal year 2004: $2.29 trillion Fiscal year 2005: $2.47 trillion Fiscal year 2006: $2.66 trillion Fiscal year 2007: $2.73 trillion Fiscal year 2008: $2.98 trillion Fiscal year 2009: $3.52 trillion Fiscal year 2010: $3.46 trillion Fiscal year 2011 (estimate): $3.82 trillion     So, doubling the 2001 outlays over 10 years would have meant a 2011 figure of $3.72 trillion. Since the actual figure is higher than that, Coburn is right that the cost of government has doubled over the past decade. In our initial analysis, we stopped there and did not adjust these figures for inflation. After readers pointed this out to us, we ran the inflation-adjustment calculations and determined that the fiscal 2011 federal outlay of $3.82 trillion was equivalent to $3 trillion in 2001 dollars. That produced an increase in federal outlays of 60 percent over 10 years. That’s still a significant increase, but short of double. We also calculated that government outlays as a percentage of gross domestic product, rose from 18.2 percent in 2001 to 25.3 percent in 2011 -- an increase of 39 percent, which is also not double. Despite our initial focus on non-inflation-adjusted numbers, we have since decided that our readers had a point, and that Coburn would have been better off using inflation-adjusted numbers. So we have decided to change our ruling. Meanwhile, we also looked at Coburn’s second claim, that government expenditures are 30 percent bigger than they were when Obama became president. For this one, it depends when you start the clock. We’ll start with non-inflation-adjusted numbers. If you use fiscal 2008 as the baseline -- which we confirmed with Coburn’s staff was his intention -- then the comparison is just about right. Federal outlays increased by 28 percent between fiscal 2008 and fiscal 2011, which is just below the 30 percent Coburn cited. However, fiscal 2008 ran from Oct. 1, 2007, to Sept. 30, 2008, ending almost four months before Obama took office. The OMB only offers figures by fiscal year, so we can’t pinpoint a number that’s pegged precisely to when Obama took office. If instead you use as a baseline fiscal 2009 -- which started on Oct. 1, 2008 -- then federal outlays increased by about 9 percent, or well below what Coburn said. The inflation-adjusted numbers are a 22 percent increase if you start with 2008, and 3 percent if you start with 2009. Clearly, the shift of the calculation by just one year makes a big difference in the result. We also considered whether Coburn intended to blame Obama for this spending increase. This was a tough call. Re-reading his claim, we don’t feel that his use of the inauguration of a new president as the cutoff point necessarily invokes blame. The entirety of Coburn’s comment encompasses government growth over a 10-year period, most of which was clearly under a Republican president, George W. Bush, and not Obama. And the inauguration of a new president is a pretty natural dividing line for making mathematical comparisons. "No one has a more consistent record of being a nonpartisan critic of spending than Coburn," said Coburn’s communications director Hart. "He has been criticizing Republican and Democratic spending for many years." We agreed with this assessment, so we gave Coburn the benefit of the doubt on whether he intended to place the blame for government growth on Obama. And we stand by that decision. So what's the bottom line? We don’t think that Coburn was entirely wrong to use non-inflation-adjusted dollars, but it would have been better if he -- and we -- had adjusted for inflation. Doing it this way still means there was a significant increase in government over the period he studied, but not as high as he had indicated. On balance, we have decided to lower our ruling from Mostly True to this rating.


Explanation: This is not a good piece of health journalism. It is not balanced. It fails to discuss any evidence. The report demonstrates little curiosity and no rigor. With the exception of the brief (and rather understated) quote from a sleep specialist, the story reads like it should say "advertising" at the top of the page. The Daily News editors should be embarrassed for allowing this story into print.

The story states a price of $29.95 for 40 pills, but fails to indicate what the recommended dosage is. The author took two in the evening but the other user quoted took additional pills during the day. What are the true costs per person per week of this "magical new pill"? The reporter makes no attempt to quantify the benefits. What is the evidence? How many are helped? How many are not helped? The article fails to mention any potential harms. The evidence of benefit consists of the author’s experience, one other user’s experience, and the maker’s claims. Have there been clinical trials? What have they shown? What is the quality of the evidence? The story exaggerates the author’s waking difficulties in a way that makes this "condition" seem more widespread and harmful than it is. Sources used are the product’s maker, the reporter’s observations and quotes from a satisfied user. One physician is quoted briefly at the end questioning the ingredients’ capacity to improve sleep. There is improper balance in the story with the weight of terms like "magical…ingenious…unique…even more dramatic results" overwhelming the short comment from one physician. There are many options for treating sleep difficulties or morning fatigue. None is mentioned here. The story predicts the product will be available at "all major retail outlets" by August. There is no evidence to support this prediction. The article claims the coating used to delay release of the ingredients inside is unique. Time-release coatings have been used in pills for decades. The story echoes both the press release and the maker’s web site in its description of the episode that led the pill’s creator to develop the product, the contents of the pill, and the claims about the pill’s "unique" coating. However, because our criterion demands that we find the exact same language in the story as we found in a news release, we can’t be sure that the story relied solely or largely on a news release. Maybe this an example of where our criteria are too lax.


Spain's PM to seek longer but more flexible lockdown.

Explanation: Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday he would ask parliament for a 15-day extension until May 9 of the lockdown imposed in one of the world’s worst coronavirus’ outbreaks, but said the restrictions would be more flexible.

“We have left behind the most extreme moments,” Sanchez said at a press briefing. But he added: “These achievements are still insufficient and above all fragile. We cannot put them at risk with hasty solutions”. Spain’s death toll from the coronavirus rose at a slower pace on Saturday but surpassed 20,000 fatalities, the Health Ministry said. It increased by 565 deaths, down from 585 on Friday, while the number of coronavirus cases rose to 191,726 from 188,068. Spain began this week to ease a strict lockdown imposed on March 14 by opening up some sectors of the economy, including manufacturing. But most people are still confined to their homes except for essential outings such as food shopping, and not even children are allowed out for exercise. The country with the third highest coronavirus death toll will move slowly, carefully and progressively towards the “new normality”, Sanchez said. But he warned it would be a complex task and that the economic consequences of the outbreak will be “very negative”. Asked if citizens would be able to have regular summer holidays, the Socialist leader said he hoped so but that he could not give an answer, signalling the uncertainty on the scope of any de-escalation phase. As he seeks a third parliamentary extension of the state of emergency, the next lockdown phase could start being “asymmetric” on April 27, meaning it could be more relaxed for some regions or groups, Sanchez said, without specifying. For instance, children would be allowed out of their homes though it would be “limited and subject to conditions to avoid contagion,” Sanchez said. The prime minister plans to define the criteria in coming days, including in a meeting on Sunday with Spain’s 17 regional leaders. Despite stressing an improvement in the figures and defending his government’s measures, Sanchez said Western countries “reacted late” to the virus’ outbreak. He also admitted Spain could not initially provide all the protective equipment needed for its health workers. The health ministry plans to announce an order on Sunday to control and fix the prices of masks for citizens, Sanchez said. Health emergency chief Fernando Simon earlier said he hoped to see soon a steeper decrease in the number of coronavirus deaths. Simon said he expected a significant rise in registered coronavirus cases as the number of quick tests conducted has doubled in the past three weeks, but stressed that the tests have shown a lower infection rate among citizens. Spain’s labour minister Yolanda Diaz said on Friday her department was planning a two-phased economic resumption, the first for productive sectors up to the summer and a second for tourism and leisure which would last until the end of the year. But any final decision would depend on health authorities, her office said in a statement.


WHO rejects 'China-centric' charge after Trump criticism.

Explanation: World Health Organization officials on Wednesday denied that the body was “China-centric” and said that the acute phase of a pandemic was not the time to cut funding, after U.S. President Donald Trump said he may put contributions on hold.

The United States is the top donor to the Geneva-based body which Trump said had issued bad advice during the new coronavirus outbreak. U.S. contributions to WHO in 2019 exceeded $400 million, almost double the 2nd largest country donor, according to figures from the U.S. State Department. China contributed $44 million, it said. “We are still in the acute phase of a pandemic so now is not the time to cut back on funding,” Dr Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, told a virtual briefing when asked about Trump’s remarks. Trump told a news conference on Tuesday that the United States was “going to put a hold on money spent to the WHO,” however, he appeared to backtrack later when in response to questions he said: “We’re going to look at it.”  It was not immediately clear how Trump could “block” funding for the organization. Under U.S. law, Congress, not the president, decides how federal funds are spent. Dr Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the WHO Director-General, also defended the U.N. agency’s relationship with China, saying its work with Beijing authorities was important to understand the outbreak which began in Wuhan in December. “It was absolutely critical in the early part of this outbreak to have full access to everything possible, to get on the ground and work with the Chinese to understand this,” he told reporters. “This is what we did with every other hard-hit country like Spain and had nothing to do with China specifically.”  Aylward, who led a WHO expert mission to China in February, defended WHO recommendations to keep borders open, saying that China had worked “very hard” to identify and detect early cases and their contacts and ensure they did not travel. “China worked very, hard very early on, once it understood what it was dealing with, to try and identify and detect all potential cases to make sure that they got tested to trace all the close contacts and make sure they were quarantined so they actually knew where the virus was, where the risk was,” he said. “Then they made it very clear that these people would not and could not travel within the country, let alone internationally,” he added. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been lavish in his praise of China from early in the outbreak, praising President Xi Jinping’s “rare leadership”. David Heymann, a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine who led WHO’s response to the 2003 SARS outbreak, said that any U.S. funding cut would be a huge blow. “If the WHO loses its funding it cannot continue to do its work. It works on a shoe-string budget already,” Heymann said in London. “Of course it would be disastrous for the WHO to lose funding.”


In the current law, if you report harassment, you're the one that has to go into 20 hours of counseling before you can decide whether you were really harassed.

Explanation: Our ruling Blunt said, "In the current law, if you report harassment, you’re the one that has to go into 20 hours of counseling before you can decide whether you were really harassed." Blunt said, "In the current law, if you report harassment, you’re the one that has to go into 20 hours of counseling before you can decide whether you were really harassed." According to the Office of Compliance, any employee or member of Congress must go through counseling for a 30-day period before they can continue with further steps of reporting the harassment. According to the Office of Compliance, any employee or member of Congress must go through counseling for a 30-day period before they can continue with further steps of reporting the harassment. However, we were unable to find evidence detailing how many hours the 30-day period includes. However, we were unable to find evidence detailing how many hours the 30-day period includes. Blunt’s statement is on the right track but needs further clarification with the "hours" claim. Blunt’s statement is on the right track but needs further clarification with the "hours" claim.

Legal Issues, Women, Missouri, Roy Blunt,

The U.S. Senate needs to clean up its own house when it comes to sexual harassment charges, regardless of whether Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore wins his Dec. 12 election, Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt has argued. Some Senate Republicans, including Blunt have not endorsed Moore, who is accused of sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old girl and several other teenagers, saying it’s up to Alabama voters whether to choose him or Democrat Doug Jones. Others, including President Donald Trump, are backing Moore. The election comes amid fallout of sexual misconduct claims against Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., who announced his resignation on Dec. 7, and Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., who stepped down on Dec. 5. Blunt said he and a few colleagues are trying to address sexual harassment procedures for charges against members of Congress because "we need to be sure that we’ve got an environment where people want to come and be a part of that." "In the current law, if you report harassment, you’re the one that has to go into 20 hours of counseling before you can decide whether you were really harassed or not," Blunt said on Meet the Press on Nov. 19, 2017. "That’s just totally inappropriate." That seemed like an uncommon rule, so we wanted to dig into Blunt’s claim. Reporting harassment in Congress The standards for investigating employees and members of Congress is a lot different from ones laid out for the public in other states, and the process has come under scrutiny as allegations in Hollywood, politics and journalism have piled up. Congress’ rules for handling sexual harassment allegations are under the spotlight after reporting by The Washington Post and others found lawmakers essentially write their own rules for handling claims. Some lawmakers are working to fix their own workplace culture. The Post reported the story of a 19-year-old intern who said she was the victim of sexual misconduct but did not report it for fear of losing her job. The Post also shed light on another unique rule for reporting sexual harassment on Capitol Hill: The confidential payouts in settlements come from a special U.S. Treasury fund supported by tax dollars. Any member or employee of Congress who reports a violation of the Congressional Accountability Act (including sexual harassment) must go through mandatory steps to file a claim. This is known as the Dispute Resolution Process. Blunt’s statement addresses the first step: counseling. The person reporting sexual harassment must request counseling with the Office of Compliance within 180 days of the alleged harassment. According to the posted procedures, the counseling period normally lasts 30 days. But it may be reduced at the request of the employee. In Blunt’s statement, he said the counseling process takes 20 hours. We were unable to confirm the number of counseling hours each person receives during the 30-day period. When we asked Blunt’s office, spokesperson Katie Boyd pointed us to the Office of Compliance. Laura Cech, the outreach and publications coordinator for the Office of Compliance, did not specify whether Blunt was correct in saying 20 hours. She responded with a Q&A the office developed Nov. 13 outlining what they see as "the most common misconceptions" from the media about the process. The first question is about the required "counseling" — but it does not include how the 30-day process translates into hours. A counselor will "discuss with an employee the information that gave rise to their concerns, and inform them of their rights under the law," the document says. It also notes the counseling can be completed over the phone or through a designated representative, such as an attorney. Remaining steps continue after counseling if the employee still believes he or she has been sexually harassed. The steps include a 30-day mediation where both parties are allowed the opportunity to resolve the dispute, administrative hearing or civil action, and the appeals process where the employee can request the final decision be reviewed by the OOC Board of Directors. Sandy Davidson, a professor at the University of Missouri who teaches law in the journalism school, said, "The rules are bizarre and totally unfriendly to women." Davidson also noted the confidentiality aspect of the laws. The rules say all statements, communications and documents during the mediation process are confidential. In Missouri, you can file a complaint with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights, which investigates complaints in public accommodations about race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, sex, disability, age and familial status. There is no requirement for counseling. Once the complaint is filed, the commission investigates by interviewing both sides. If the investigator finds discrimination, the commission attempts to settle the case. If the case is not settled, a hearing process gives a final decision and determines whether remedies such as back pay, reinstatement or promotion are ordered. Our ruling Blunt said, "In the current law, if you report harassment, you’re the one that has to go into 20 hours of counseling before you can decide whether you were really harassed." According to the Office of Compliance, any employee or member of Congress must go through counseling for a 30-day period before they can continue with further steps of reporting the harassment. However, we were unable to find evidence detailing how many hours the 30-day period includes. Blunt’s statement is on the right track but needs further clarification with the "hours" claim. We rate it .


Florida researchers developing football helmets to reduce concussions.

Explanation: Researchers in Florida believe they have come up with a low-cost way to improve football helmets and better protect players against the glancing blows that experts say contribute to most concussions.

Protective sports helmets on the market today are largely designed to absorb shock from direct linear hits, like head butts, which force the head straight back, says University of Florida (UF) engineering professor Ghatu Subhash. But Subhash’s new strategy makes use of fluid-filled pouches that, his tests show, also protect the brain from the rotational or shearing force of off-center hits on helmets. “The fluid-filled cells within the helmet respond, so no matter the angle of impact, the helmet automatically protects any part of the head,” said Subhash, who came up with the idea while working on improving helmets and body armor for the military. Subhash, along with his collaborators - UF neurosurgeon Ian Heger and UF radiologist Keith Peters - is set to unveil the safer helmet on Thursday. He will demonstrate its effectiveness on January 20 for venture capitalists, who could fund wider scale testing and manufacturing. Subhash said he hopes to have low-cost pouches suitable for retrofitting existing helmets available in stores within two years. The pouches also can be used in helmets for the military, firefighters and constructions workers, he said. A growing body of academic research shows the repeated hits to the head to which football players are subjected can lead to chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a condition linked to the loss of decision-making control, aggression and dementia. The National Football League agreed last year to pay more than $760 million to settle a lawsuit brought by more than 4,500 former players. Subhash said cushions and water- or air-filled pouches typically have been used to help protect against linear blows. But to blunt shearing or rotational forces, he adds pouches filled with non-Newtonian fluids, which he says increase resistance when stressed. Think kids’ Flubber or Silly Putty, which can flow or break depending on stress, or chilled caramel ice cream topping which is easily spoonable yet stays put in an overturned jar. Non-Newtonian fluids also are used in some modern automobile shock absorbers, Subhash said. Subhash said when one of his fluid-filled cells is struck, the fluid squeezes through a tube into a second cell, thus neutralizing the force. The fluid then returns to its original cell, making the pouches reusable. Concern over the long-term impact of blows to the head has created a market for expensive helmets that claim to protect players from concussions. “There are no helmets that will protect against concussions,” said Frederick Mueller, research director for the standard-setting body, National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment. “Helmet manufactures may say that, but none at the present time protect against concussion injuries,” he said. Mueller’s organization has warned about the limitations of the testing used in a popular 5-Star helmet rating system created by Virginia Tech, including the lack of consideration of rotational forces. “Many people believe that the rotational forces are more important than linear when you talk about concussions,” Mueller said.


In nine Democratic debates, "We've not had one question about a woman's right to make her own decisions about reproductive health care, not one question.

Abortion, National, Debates, Hillary Clinton,

Hillary Clinton said abortion has been ignored during the Democratic debates. Clinton got on the topic during the April 14 debate in Brooklyn, N.Y., when she said she would only appoint a Supreme Court justice who believed that Roe vs. Wade is settled law. "And I want to say something about this since we're talking about the Supreme Court and what's at stake. We've had eight debates before, this is our ninth," Clinton said. "We've not had one question about a woman's right to make her own decisions about reproductive health care, not one question." The line got a big applause from the audience. But was it correct? Abortion and debates We found no questions directly about abortion in nine debate transcripts, although at times the candidates brought up the topic themselves. We searched for the words "abortion," "Planned Parenthood" and "pro-choice" in debate transcripts in Washington Post transcripts: Oct. 13, Las Vegas: Clinton said the Republicans "don't mind having big government to interfere with a woman's right to choose and to try to take down Planned Parenthood." Nov. 14, Des Moines: Speaking about the Democratic candidates, Clinton said "all of us support funding Planned Parenthood." Dec. 19, New Hampshire: Clinton mentioned that a police officer was killed responding to "Planned Parenthood murders" and said that Republicans would defund Planned Parenthood. Jan. 17, South Carolina: No mentions. Feb. 4, New Hampshire: No mentions. Feb. 11, Milwaukee: No abortion questions were asked. Sanders said he had a lifetime 100 percent pro-choice voting record, and Clinton touted her endorsement by the Planned Parenthood Action Fund. March 6, Flint: No mentions. March 9, Miami:  The candidates were not asked their views on abortion, but a moderator mentioned that the Supreme Court was considering "the most significant abortion restrictions in a generation." But the question was about what qualifications Clinton would look for in a Supreme Court justice. April 14, New York: In the ninth debate, Clinton said governors are trying to restrict women's rights and that Donald Trump said women should be punished for abortion. " And we are never asked about this," she said. "And to be complete in my concern, Sen. Sanders says with respect to Trump it was a distraction. I don't think it's a distraction. It goes to the heart of who we are as women, our rights, our autonomy, our ability to make our own decisions, and we need to be talking about that and defending Planned Parenthood from these outrageous attacks." Sanders replied:  "You're looking at a senator and former congressman who proudly has a 100 percent pro-choice voting record, who will take on those Republican governors who are trying to restrict a woman's right to choose..." He called for expanding funding for Planned Parenthood. Several news articles including by the Washington Post, MSNBC, TIME, Vox stated that during the Democratic debates moderators haven’t asked about abortion. A spokesman for NARAL Pro-Choice America, James Owens, told PolitiFact, "It is correct that there has not been a single question about abortion in any of the Democratic debates." NARAL has advocated for Democratic moderators to ask about abortion, including a campaign on Twitter #AskAboutAbortion. Before the New York debate, NARAL sent a letter to CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer urging him to ask about abortion. Renee Bracey Sherman, a board member at NARAL, wrote a column for Glamour posted the day of the New York debate that argued that even though they both support abortion, there are questions that should be asked about their positions: "Will abortion be covered in Sanders’ Medicare-For-All plan? How will Clinton direct the Department of Justice to respond to the record number of attacks on providers? Will their administration step in to stop the prosecution of those who are self inducing their abortions? How will the candidates stop states from closing abortion clinics? Will their immigration policy ensure undocumented people are able to access abortion care? How will they ensure everyone is able to access safe, affordable abortion care in their community?" There was a town hall, however, where the moderator brought up abortion, a spokesman for Clinton told us. In a Fox News town hall March 7, moderator Brett Baier asked Sanders and Clinton questions about abortion. Baier asked Sanders: "Can you name a single circumstance at any point in a pregnancy in which you would be OK with abortion being illegal?" Sanders replied: "I happen to believe that it is wrong for the government to be telling a woman what to do with her own body." He then posed a similar question to Clinton: "Do you think a child should have any legal rights or protections before it's born? Or do you think there should not be any restrictions on any abortions at any stage in a pregnancy?" Clinton replied that she supports abortion rights. "I have been on record in favor of a late pregnancy regulation that would have exceptions for the life and health of the mother," she said. Our ruling Clinton says in nine Democratic debates "We've not had one question about a woman's right to make her own decisions about reproductive health care, not one question." We could not find any example of a moderator asking a direct question about abortion, however Clinton and Sanders both raised the topic in multiple debates. We rate this claim .


The best treatment for laryngeal cancer? This approach helps decide

Explanation: The release focuses on recent research published in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology – Head and Neck Surgery. The research assessed the effectiveness of a treatment technique for laryngeal cancer that exposed patients with advanced (stage 3 or 4) cancer to a one-time chemotherapy treatment that, theoretically, would allow physicians to determine whether patients were responding well to chemotherapy. The idea was that patients who responded well could be treated with chemotherapy and radiation, whereas patients who did not respond well would have surgery to remove the voice box immediately, rather than trying chemotherapy and radiation first. The goal was to improve the five-year survival rate of patients. The researchers reported that this technique — called “induction chemotherapy” — was effective, leading to 79 percent survival rates for patients with advanced laryngeal cancer — which is markedly better than the 66 percent survival rate for those patients who did not receive induction chemotherapy. The release does a nice job describing the historical context of these therapies, how available the techniques are and how the study was conducted, with one exception. The release doesn’t mention that this was a retrospective, observational study, not a clinical trial, which is an important limitation. Correlation does not equal causation. Nor does the release provide any costs associated with any approach. People don’t want to lose the power of speech. Whether it’s reading bedtime stories to one’s children or talking about your day with loved ones, speech is an important part of interpersonal communication. Our voices are part of who we are and how we connect with others. What’s more, being able to talk can be a key part of professional life for everyone from teachers and salespeople to reporters and, well, doctors. For that reason, many patients dealing with laryngeal cancer want to do whatever can be done to spare their larynx, or voice box, from surgery. If new techniques can help patients make more informed decisions about the trade-off between survival rate and laryngeal surgery, that’s important news for patients and medical personnel. The release does a fair job of addressing the new findings responsibly. It stresses that there are many options and no one-size-fits-all treatment.

This is the one area the release fails to address at all. Cost is simply not addressed. The release explains the benefits for patients with stage 3 and stage 4 laryngeal cancer: “Average disease specific survival at five years for the induction chemotherapy patients was 79 percent – equivalent to the results in patients with early stage disease, and significantly better than the 66 percent survival for patients who had chemo-radiation without the induction strategy.” However, there were some shortcomings here. According to the study, surgery achieved the best survival results. It may not be possible to conclude anything about the “chemo trial” group because the study was observational – taking a retrospective look at 10 years of patient charts – which does not prove cause and effect. In each of the 153 cases, patients and doctors chose which treatment type they preferred; 71 were given a test dose of chemotherapy and then had further treatment decided based on the response. The release doesn’t tell us how many were then treated with surgery due to lack of response and how many completed chemotherapy/radiation treatment. The release states: “Even that single [initial] dose of chemotherapy can be debilitating and toxic for some patients.” That’s enough to earn it a marginal satisfactory mark here. The release would have been better if it had noted that radiation, surgery and chemotherapy all carry serious side effect risks. The release does a good job of explaining the study design. It would have been even better if it had placed the work in the context of what is known from the literature about five-year survival rates for specific types of laryngeal cancer, which vary widely. It would also have been better to spell out the study limitations, the main one being its observational design No disease mongering here. Funding sources are clearly noted in the release and there do not appear to be relevant conflicts of interest. Our main take-away from the release is that there are many treatment alternatives and room for patient and physician joint decision-making. It’s clear that this approach to determining the best course of treatment could be implemented at any point — there are no new technologies or drugs involved. But the release does a particularly good job of addressing this, since it highlights a relevant challenge: “The induction approach can be done anywhere, but requires intense collaboration among surgeons, medical oncologists and radiation oncologists. All three must be involved to assess the patient and refer to the appropriate therapy.” Communication between all of the practitioners involved in the case of any given patient can be a significant challenge, and is well worth mentioning. The release makes clear what is novel about this approach and lays out the history and development of the approach over the past 10 years. That’s good context. We give this a satisfactory rating, but want to make two notes — one on something we particularly like to see, one on something that we don’t. First, kudos to the headline on the news release. It clearly conveys the relevance of the finding without overselling it. The headline doesn’t tell us that the technique picks the best course of treatment; instead, the headline tells us that the new technique helps patients and doctors make a decision about what course of action is best. That’s good to see. Lower down, the story refers to a survival rate as “unheard of.” What does that mean? People say and hear all kinds of things. Are they referring to clinical trial results? Longitudinal study findings? Hearsay? When possible, we discourage the use of this sort of vague language; it offers readers little insight, and does more to confuse a subject than to clarify it. The language in this instance was not sufficiently hyperbolic to warrant a “not satisfactory” rating, but it’s close.


Hassan highlights access to health care for female veterans.

Explanation: The director of a national veterans’ organization is joining U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan to highlight the struggles female veterans face in accessing health care.

New Hampshire, Access to health care, Health, Maggie Hassan, Womens health, Veterans, Veterans affairs

Allison Jaslow, an Army veteran, is executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. She and Hassan will speak with female veterans Monday at Southern New Hampshire University. Hassan, a Democrat, will speak about a bill she sponsored to address gender disparities at Veterans Affairs facilities. She says many VA facilities lack specialists who deal with women’s health, and maternity and newborn care isn’t covered at the level it should be. The bill is named the Deborah Sampson Act after a woman who disguised herself as a man to serve in the Army in the Revolutionary War.


MAPs (Minor Attracted Persons) created a pride flag

Explanation: A 1994 study, led by Carole Jenny of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, surveyed 269 cases of children who were sexually molested by adults. In 82 percent of cases, the alleged offender was a heterosexual partner of a close relative of the child, the researchers reported in the journal Pediatrics. In only two out of 269 cases, the offender was identified as being gay or lesbian.

A number of fear-mongering campaigns over the years have attempted to link pedophilia to the LGBTQ community, despite an utter lack of scientific proof of any such connection. In December 2017, for instance, internet trolls spread a false rumor that the letter “P,” representing “pedosexual,” was being added to the initialism LGBT (for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender”). An eerily similar rumor was spread via social media in June 2018 in the form of an image purportedly showing a “MAPs (Minor-Attracted Persons) Pride Flag” supposedly created for Gay Pride Month:  This picture does not represent a “MAPs Pride Flag.” Rather, the image was created as part of a troll experiment on Tumblr. When pictures of this “MAP flag” began circulating on Facebook, the posts typically included messages warning other social media users to be wary of anyone displaying this flag: This is a Minor Attracted Person (MAP) (polished term for pedophile) flag. If you happen to see this flag on any Social Media Profile or someone using the term MAP in their bio, please REPORT the Pedophile running that account. Do your bit. Websites such as the Daily Caller and “Attitude” picked up on this alleged “MAPs Pride Flag” and reported that pedophiles were “rebranding” themselves as “Minor Attracted Persons” in an attempt to be accepted by the LGBT community: Paedophiles are trying to gain acceptance to the LGBT community by rebranding themselves. In a bid to gain acceptance, they have rebranded themselves as MAPs or “Minor Attracted Persons” and have gone so far to even create a rainbow “Pride” flag for Gay Pride, but Twitter user, Communist Fish, posted a picture back in June to warn children to stay away. The group attempt to claim that paedophiles are misunderstood people and if they do not act upon their attraction to children, they shouldn’t be marginalised. Sites like The Prevention Project have started to post testimonials from paedophiles who are seeking help with their attraction, claiming everyone “needs support”. Pedophiles did not coin the term “minor attracted persons” (or MAPS) to rebrand themselves in 2018 in order to gain entry to the LGBT community. Organizations such as B4UAct have been using the term “minor attracted persons” for years to refer to “adults who experience feelings of preferential sexual attraction to children or adolescents under the age of consent.” The Prevention Project, an organization that helps minor-attracted persons find professional treatment, explicitly denied that the term “MAPs” was an attempt to “rebrand” pedophiles. Rather, they explained that this term was preferred as a broader reference that could accurately encompass hebephiles, pedophiles, and ephebephiles: The term minor is defined as anyone under the age of 18. Therefore, someone attracted to a 14 year old is actually called an ephebephile not a pedophile. Someone attracted to a 13 year old is called a hebephile. Pedophiles are attracted to 6-12 year old children; not teens. Hence why we accurately use the term “Minor Attracted Person” when we discuss providing treatment to men and women with attractions to various ages of minors. We are not trying to “soften the term” or “rebrand” pedophilia to fit in with certain groups. We treat individuals who are attracted to various ages of minors, thus it is accurate to use the term “minor attracted person.” We also found no evidence that this flag originated in earnest as a MAPs Pride Flag. We reached out to the “Prevention Project, who told us they had never heard of this pride flag: “We’re experts in treating MAPs who have zero desire to harm anyone but want support to deal with the stigma of being a pedophile, hebophile or ephebephile. MAPs encompass these 3 terms. None of the MAPs we know (we know a lot) have talked about this [flag].” This alleged “MAPs Pride Flag” appears to have originated on the Tumblr page “Don’t Mistake Our Geography” on 13 June 2018, where it was posted with a brief explanation about what the colors in the flag supposedly symbolized to NOMAPS (Non-Offending Minor Attracted Persons) and an acknowledgement that the “pride flag” had just been created out of whole cloth: The NOMAP community doesn’t really have a pride flag, so in honor of pride month I designed a NOMAP pride flag. The top two stripes are blue to represent NOMAPs attracted to young boys. The bottom two stripes are pink to represent NOMAPs attracted to young girls. The inner stripes are yellow to represent childhood and general attraction to minors, regardless of their gender. The middle stripe is white to represent our innocence and unwillingness to offend. Please feel free to use this flag and make icons out of it etc! Hope you enjoy At the time this Pride flag image was originally posted, the Tumblr page operated under a banner in support of MAPs and included a tagline claiming that the author was “possibly a MAP” and “definitely a supporter.” However, the title of this page was later changed to “Y’all need a therapist, not a community,” and the tagline was altered to read “Not an anti, not an ally, just a training psychologist with some fucking sense.” Here’s a look at how the page was changed. The top image shows the Tumblr page as it was in mid-June, while it was claiming to be a MAP ally; the bottom image shows the page at the time of this writing, after it was revealed that the flag was bogus:  Although we don’t know the motivations of this Tumblr user, it should be noted that the person claimed to be a CSA (child sexual assault) victim. Pedophiles are not rebranding themselves as MAPs to gain entry to the LGBT community, nor did they release an official “MAPs Pride Flag.” As we noted in our article about the homophobic and false rumor that a “P” for pedosexual was being added to the initialism LGBT, no link has been established between pedophilia and homosexuality: An especially pernicious myth is that most adults who sexually abuse children are gay. A number of researchers have looked at this question to determine if homosexuals are more likely to be pedophiles than heterosexuals, and the data indicate that’s not the case. For example, in a 1989 study led by Kurt Freund of the Clarke Institute of Psychiatry in Canada, scientists showed pictures of children to adult gay and straight males, and measured sexual arousal. Homosexual men reacted no more strongly to pictures of male children than heterosexual men reacted to pictures of female children.


The Department of Homeland Security is secretly moving and releasing crowds of undocumented people into the United States.

Explanation: It’s possible, even probable, that the unnamed sources in this Judicial Watch saw families being bused from one detention center to the next or sent to transportation hubs in order to join family members in the United States pending further immigration hearings. This has been standard policy and practice for years in the U.S. However, it’s also possible — and maybe probable — that given there are no names, dates, or facts given in the article, that none of this happened as described at all, and that the article is little more than empty conjecture.

Crime, central america, immigration, immigration controversies

The international border that separates the United States in Mexico seems to grow exponentially in the public’s interest the closer the U.S. presidential elections loom. While it is often difficult to find actual information, misinformation about the region abounds  — often calculated to shock, enrage, or annoy would-be voters, such as an article that showed up on JudicialWatch.org on 3 June 2016: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is quietly transporting illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to Phoenix and releasing them without proper processing or issuing court appearance documents, Border Patrol sources tell Judicial Watch. The government classifies them as Other Than Mexican (OTM) and this week around 35 were transferred 116 miles north from Tucson to a Phoenix bus station where they went their separate way. Judicial Watch was present when one of the white vans carrying a group of OTMs arrived at the Phoenix Greyhound station on Buckeye Road. The OTMs are from Honduras, Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala and Border Patrol officials say this week’s batch was in custody for a couple of days and ordered to call family members in the U.S. so they could purchase a bus ticket for their upcoming trip from Phoenix. Authorities didn’t bother checking the identity of the U.S. relatives or if they’re in the country legally, according to a Border Patrol official directly involved in the matter. American taxpayers pick up the fare for those who claim to have a “credible fear,” Border Patrol sources told JW. None of the OTMs were issued official court appearance documents, but were told to “promise” they’d show up for a hearing when notified, said federal agents with firsthand knowledge of the operation. The article was quickly picked up by other sites despite its lack of vetted information or named sources. It claimed that thanks to a lack of room in detention facilities, busloads of people in the U.S. illegally were getting put into buses and driven away to be released elsewhere in the country — and all on the taxpayer’s dime: Outraged Border Patrol agents and supervisors on the front lines say illegal immigrants are being released in droves because there’s no room to keep them in detention. “They’re telling us to put them on a bus and let them go,” said one law enforcement official in Arizona. “Just move those bodies across the country.” Officially, DHS denies this is occurring and in fact earlier this year U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske blasted Border Patrol union officials for denouncing this dangerous catch-and-release policy. The Department of Homeland Security is denying this because it isn’t happening  — at least, not as described. The article quoted above is conflating “illegal immigrants” with refugees and asylum seekers, who often show up on the southern border of the United States because that is the most accessible route from South and Central America, particularly from “Northern Triangle” countries (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador) that are plagued by violence and political and economic instability. Refugees and asylum seekers are subject to entirely different definitions and laws under the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, and are considered a protected class: (42) The term “refugee” means: (A) any person who is outside any country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, or (B) in such circumstances as the President after appropriate consultation (as defined in section 207(e) of this Act) may specify, any person who is within the country of such person’s nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, within the country in which such person is habitually residing, and who is persecuted or who has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. The term “refugee” does not include any person who ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the persecution of any person on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion. For purposes of determinations under this Act, a person who has been forced to abort a pregnancy or to undergo involuntary sterilization, or who has been persecuted for failure or refusal to undergo such a procedure or for other resistance to a coercive population control program, shall be deemed to have been persecuted on account of political opinion, and a person who has a well founded fear that he or she will be forced to undergo such a procedure or subject to persecution for such failure, refusal, or resistance shall be deemed to have a well founded fear of persecution on account of political opinion. Many people show up asking entry into the U.S. on humanitarian visas, particularly women and children, the two most vulnerable groups in any unstable situation. In 2014, the number of families applying for asylum or refugee status through the United States’ southern border reached historic numbers, overwhelming shelters and detention centers while their applications were processed and creating uproars from one end of the country to the other. It’s possible to apply for asylum in the United States two ways: through the affirmative asylum process (if the party applying is already present in the country) or through the defensive asylum process (when you request asylum as a defense against removal from the United States). Refugee status is very similar, but asylum can be requested before entering the U.S. When asylum-seekers appear at a border of the United States, they are transported to a detention center pending their interview with an immigration judge to see whether they are fleeing what’s considered a credible threat. If they are denied, they’re deported or can appeal, in which case they remain in immigration detention until their case can be heard again. Increasing numbers of people requesting asylum or refugee status means immigration judges are overwhelmed — and that detention centers equipped to hold families are full to overflowing. (The use of detention centers is controversial and strongly discouraged in international law.) When minors are entering the United States without adult family members, the general policy is to release them to family members within the country pending their immigration hearings, or to keep them in the least restrictive environment possible if they must be detained. When children and families are moved from site to site, they are often processed together and bused from one place to the next. It’s also true that minors from countries other than Mexico and Canada have a different classification than Mexican and Canadian nationals: Children from Mexico and Canada can either choose to leave voluntarily or be sent home within 48 hours under repatriation agreements. Children from all other countries must be transferred to HHS within 72 hours for court review of their immigration claims. The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in HHS reunites the child with family or a friend, or in approximately 10 percent of the cases, places them in foster care. After being placed, every child is put into deportation proceedings. The children may then be granted permission to stay (for example, through family visas, special immigrant juvenile visas or asylum) or be removed from the United States. (Court review is required, under a 2008 trafficking law, for children from countries other than Mexico and Canada.) Sometimes, particularly when the bureaucratic controls over refugee status are overwhelmed, some people do slip through the cracks. However, they’re never released en masse on unsuspecting suburban populations.


Explanation: Snooki says Obama put a 10 percent tax on tanning

In a video promo for the new season of MTV's Jersey Shore, Snooki gets all, like, political. "I don't go tanning-tanning anymore because Obama put a 10 percent tax on tanning," Nicole "Snooki" Polizzi says after her boyfriend is shown spray-tanning her face. "And I feel like he did that intentionally for us." "McCain would have never put a 10 percent tax on tanning," she said, adding, "because he's pale, so he'd probably want to be tan." McCain entered the discourse via Twitter: "Snooki, u r right, I would never tax your tanning bed! Pres Obama's tax/spend policy is quite The Situation. but I do rec wearing sunscreen!" We should hope so. McCain has a history of battling skin cancer. But let's get to the facts. Did President Barack Obama put a 10 percent tax on tanning? On March 23, 2010, Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka the health care bill) into law. And Chapter 49, SEC. 5000B makes this all very clear: "There is hereby imposed on any indoor tanning service a tax equal to 10 percent of the amount paid for such service." We were pretty sure Snooki was kidding about Obama passing that provision specifically to stymie the Jersey Shore crew. But it turns out that the president had mentioned her by name on May 2, 2010, and said she'd be exempt: "This next provision is called the Jersey Shore-Up," Obama said. "It reads: 'The following individuals shall be excluded from the indoor tanning tax within this bill: Snooki, J-WOWW, the Situation, and House Minority Leader John Boehner.'" ("The Situation" and "JWOWW" are other members of the Jersey Shore cast.) Alas, Obama's comment was made during the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. In other words, it was a joke. (Yes, it scares us too that Obama and McCain are so familiar with Jersey Shore.) If we really wanted to pick a fight with Snooki, we could take issue with her saying it was a tax on tanning. There's no fee on sunshine, just indoor tanning. Or that it's Obama's tax. There's no indication an indoor tanning tax was Obama's idea. It was proposed by Senate Democrats in December as an alternative to a proposed tax on cosmetic surgery. The cosmetic surgery lobby (funded by plastic surgeons) apparently held more sway than the indoor tanning lobby. The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation projected the tax will raise $2.7 billion over 10 years to help offset the cost of expanding medical coverage. Legislators said they also hoped it might discourage teens from indoor tanning, as some studies suggest it is linked to higher risk of cancer. The bill was passed by Congress, but Obama signed it, so we think Snooki's assigning the tax to Obama is fair. One other small point. The indoor tanning tax goes into effect on July 1, 2010. So when Snooki made her comment, she still could've gotten her tan on sans Uncle Sam's extra reach. But we're assuming Snooki isn't so much worried about the money as the principle. We rate her comment friggin' .


Panel favors continuation of ArQule liver cancer drug study.

Explanation: ArQule Inc said an independent committee recommended a late-stage study of the company’s cancer drug continue with a lower dose, months after liver cancer patients who received a greater dose showed a higher incidence of a blood disorder.

ArQule shares were up nearly 30 percent after soaring as much as 81 percent in trading after the bell. A lower dose of the company’s drug, Tivantinib, reduced the incidence of a low white blood cell count, ArQule said on Thursday citing a recent review of safety data. The drugmaker and its partner Daiichi Sankyo Inc are testing the drug as a treatment for patients with previously treated hepatocellular cancer, the most common type of liver cancer. A Data Monitoring Committee recommended last September that the drug’s dosage be reduced from 240 mg twice daily to 120 mg, and that patients be monitored to confirm the safety profile of the lower dose. The drug, however, failed to show statistically significant improvement in overall survival in another late-stage trial on patients suffering from a type of lung cancer, ArQule said. Woburn, Massachusetts-based ArQule shares closed at $2.36 on the Nasdaq on Thursday.


The White House staff risks violating federal ethics rules if they participate in Donald Trump’s "fake news awards.

National, Ethics, Fake news, Legal Issues, Norm Eisen,

On the campaign trail, Donald Trump honed his craft of slamming media organizations that covered him critically, a practice he’s carried over to the White House. His efforts will culminate soon in the so-called "fake news awards," an idea Trump first floated last November on Twitter. "We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including Fox, is the most dishonest, corrupt and/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me). They are all bad. Winner to receive the FAKE NEWS TROPHY!" he tweeted Nov. 27, 2017. We should have a contest as to which of the Networks, plus CNN and not including Fox, is the most dishonest, corrupt and/or distorted in its political coverage of your favorite President (me). They are all bad. Winner to receive the FAKE NEWS TROPHY! Trump’s idea got poor reviews from government watchdogs, who warned White House staff that the event would breach federal ethics rules designed to keep government honest and impartial. "WARNING to White House staff: the president may be exempt from the rules at 5 CFR § 2635.701 et seq. on misuse of position BUT YOU ARE NOT. If you help @potus with the below, you risk violating §§ 702, 704 & 705 forbidding use of gov time & $$$ to harm some media & aid others," Norm Eisen, President Barack Obama's former ethics czar, tweeted on Jan. 7. WARNING to White House staff: the president may be exempt from the rules at 5 CFR § 2635.701 et seq. on misuse of position BUT YOU ARE NOT. If you help @potus with the below, you risk violating §§ 702, 704 & 705 forbidding use of gov time & $$$ to harm some media & aid others. https://t.co/gHxzJcCEAW Experts who practiced government ethics at the highest levels told us the fake news awards could land White House staffers in hot water, for violating government rules and encroaching on the First Amendment. Eisen, now chair of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, referred to a set of federal regulations that lay out the ethical conduct of executive branch employees. (As Eisen noted, Trump, as president, is exempt.) These rules are overseen by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, or OGE, an executive branch agency whose 4,500 ethics officials serve as watchdogs over the executive branch to prevent (or resolve) conflicts of interest, with the aim of safeguarding governmental integrity. Eisen specifically pointed to a section of the rules that deal with executive branch employees misusing their government jobs. The section states that an executive branch employee "shall not use his public office for the endorsement of any product or enterprise." Because of that rule, the ethics office also has long considered it improper for an executive branch employee to condemn a company, said Walter Shaub, who led the OGE until his resignation in July 2017. "You can't use your government position to endorse a company, and you can't trash a company to the advantage of a different company," said Shaub, who is now the senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center. It's unclear if Trump’s event is being held by the White House or the Trump/Pence campaign, and neither organization replied to our questions. (Eisen's tweet — and this analysis — deals with official government events. A separate set of laws, including the Hatch Act, would apply if White House staffers participated in a campaign event, sources said.) Absolutely, according to Shaub, who retweeted Eisen’s warning to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. "Hey @PressSec & @RajShah45, Norm is right. If you or ANY WH staffers work on this or post it on the WH website, it will be a violation of the Standards of Conduct. Beware of laws on using federal appropriations too, if there are any visuals, certificates, handouts, or trophies," Shaub tweeted Jan. 7. Hey @PressSec & @RajShah45, Norm is right. If you or ANY WH staffers work on this or post it on the WH website, it will be a violation of the Standards of Conduct. Beware of laws on using federal appropriations too, if there are any visuals, certificates, handouts, or trophies. https://t.co/3tlyrkNc9H Shaub told PolitiFact that a staffers' participation in an official Trump administration event designed to publicly humiliate certain media outlets would clearly constitute a misuse of their government position. "It’s not even a close call," he said. "Sending out tweets talking about how great Fox News is, which is a business, and now he’s going to give awards trashing CNN and others, which are businesses, is preferential treatment." Richard Painter, the chief White House ethics lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, said that while some ethics rules can be ambiguous, a Trump staffer's participation would be out of bounds. "The endorsement of some news outlets and the condemnation of others crosses the line under the OGE regulations," he said. "It’s hard to show where that line precisely is, but what I can tell you is it has been crossed in this instance." Absent some kind of serious government study showing systemic failures by certain media organizations, there’s no compelling government interest that justifies the staging of fake news awards, he said. Painter said Trump’s tweets, as well as other administration actions affecting the media industry, raise First Amendment concerns. This makes it more likely an ethics official would find a staffer broke the rules by participating in Trump's fake news awards, he said. During his time in office, scores of Trump’s tweets have followed a familiar pattern: praise for Fox News and scorn for its competitors. On Twitter, Trump mentioned Fox News, its programs or its hosts in more than 70 tweets that describe the right-wing media outlet in positive, if not glowing, terms. Trump uses Twitter to promote Fox News reporting, highlight favorable coverage of him and his administration and lavish praise on the network while condemning their competitors. "The fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred. @MSNBC & @CNN are unwatchable. @foxandfriends is great!" Trump tweeted Feb. 15, 2017. The fake news media is going crazy with their conspiracy theories and blind hatred. @MSNBC & @CNN are unwatchable. @foxandfriends is great! Over the same period, Trump has mentioned Fox News' rivals more than 50 times. Aside from two tweets promoting his own interview on ABC News, these tweets have ranged from negative to scathing. "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" Trump tweeted Feb. 17, 2017. In addition to Trump's tweets, Painter said there’s other evidence the administration has used its power to play favorites in the media industry, raising First Amendment concerns that bolster the case that the fake news awards are out of bounds. He pointed to the Justice Department's antitrust suit against Time Warner, which has raised questions about whether this was done as retribution against CNN; Trump’s threat against NBC's license over reporting he disputed; and Trump’s repeated — and false — attacks on Amazon and its chairman Jeff Bezos, who owns the Washington Post. Painter also noted Trump congratulated Rupert Murdoch, who co-chairs 21st Century Fox, over a deal to sell significant Fox assets to Disney, after Trump reportedly sought reassurance that Fox News wouldn’t change hands. "There's some concrete evidence that they're playing favorites with the media organizations in official action, and penalizing those who do not give them the news coverage they like," Painter said. "Couple that with the president's tweets, including several that suggest he wishes he were in a country without the First Amendment, and this is viewed as a part of a pattern of conduct." Both Painter and Shaub noted the ethics rules also require loyalty to the rule of law and the constitution. "In effect the president is trying to establish official news media, establish that Fox is good and CNN is bad," Painter said. "That does loop back into what's a reasonable application of the OGE rule if what you're doing is treading really close to a First Amendment problem." Eisen and Painter are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, which unsuccessfully sued Trump for violating a constitutional bar on presidents and federal officials accepting gifts and payments from foreign governments. Eisen said the White House staff risks violating federal ethics rules if they participate in Donald Trump’s "fake news awards." Two experts, who practiced government ethics at the highest levels, said participation by White House staffers would violate federal ethics rules. Trump, for the record, is exempt. They added that the president and his administration’s pattern of playing favorites among media outlets raises First Amendment issues that would subject this event to heightened scrutiny by ethics officials. We rate this statement .


American Atheists are opposing the incorporation of a steel-beam cross found in the World Trade Center rubble into a September 11 memorial and museum.

Explanation: The judges concluded that the “stated purpose of displaying The Cross at Ground Zero to tell the story of how some people used faith to cope with the tragedy is genuine, and an objective observer would understand the purpose of the display to be secular.”

The discovery of a 17-foot steel-beam cross in the rubble of the World Trade Center towers two days after the 2001 terrorist attacks on America provided a tangible symbol of comfort and faith to many of those horrified by the events of September 11. Some of those who had access to the WTC site at that time made pilgrimages to pray before the cross and leave behind written messages such as “God Bless Our Fallen Brothers.” A few weeks later the cross (since dubbed the “Ground Zero Cross”) was hoisted atop a 40-foot-high mound of debris on what was formerly a pedestrian walkway so that it could be viewed by a wider audience, and a religious service was held, during which the Rev. Brian Jordan sprinkled the cross with holy water and declared: “Behold the glory of the cross at ground zero. This is our symbol of hope, our symbol of faith, our symbol of healing”: Countless other ceremonies and prayer vigils were held at the site of WTC cross in the weeks and months that followed. Two years later, the cross remained in place along Church Street on the eastern border of the 16-acre WTC site. After the unearthing of the steel-beam cross from the WTC rubble, a number of groups supported the idea of incorporating the steel cross into the design of a future September 11 memorial display at the site. The American Atheists organization opposed such plans for reasons expressed by their president, Ellen Johnson, at least as far back as June 2002: Efforts to make the steel cross part of a permanent display at the site in Lower Manhattan come as officials mull a suitable way to re-develop the former World Trade Center location. A final blueprint for the area is to be chosen by December 1, and will include a memorial of some kind to the 2,823 people killed during the attack on the twin towers.The redevelopment group has already received more than $2 billion in public funds to construct new buildings on and around the former WTC site. “None of this money should be used to construct any religious memorial,” said Ellen Johnson, President of American Atheists. “This is a public area, and it’s being rebuilt with public funds. Tax money must not be used to construct any sectarian memorial.” Johnson added that calls to include the cross as part of a permanent memorial “insult the victims, rescue workers and other Americans who are not Christians, who do not believe in a deity and are not religious.” Ms. Johnson reiterated American Atheists’ position in the 8 September 2003 edition of The Trentonian: “Many people who died on September 11 weren’t Christian. There were Jews, Muslims, and atheists who died. This is a Christian religious advertisement, and allowing it to stay there is an insult to everyone who doesn’t believe in that particular religion.” This position brought opposing campaigns from those who favored incorporating the cross into a permanent 9/11 memorial: Dear Conservative Friend, This is one e-mail that you NEED to forward to ALL of your contacts, across the country and around the world. We MUST NOT let the travesty below take place. According to a recent article, with the upcoming 2-year anniversary of the deadly 9/11 attacks, “an atheist organization is once again warning against using a steel-beam cross at the site of the World Trade Center disaster from being used in a permanent memorial to the victims who died there.” The organization American Atheists (founded by the late Madalyn Murray O’Hair) is protesting a proposal to use a large steel cross found in the rubble of the World Trade Center in a memorial to victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. We all remember that cross. A construction worker came across it in the midst of the WTC wreckage just a few days after the attacks. It was standing straight, 20-feet high, surrounded by many smaller crosses. After it was discovered, construction workers, firefighters, police officers and family members began holding weekly Sunday services at the site. The names of fallen police officers and firefighters were also scribbled on the cross, along with the message “God Bless Our Fallen Brothers”. And now, this group of atheists is threatening a lawsuit to prevent the cross from becoming part of any permanent memorial. You and I can help to stop their assault by signing ConservativeAlerts.com’s online petition. ACTION ITEM: The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, the agency overseeing the rebuilding of the area, has made no decisions on what a Ground Zero memorial would include. There’s still time for hundreds of thousands of people to voice their opinion, that the “Ground Zero Cross” should remain as part of any future memorial to the WTC victims. Go to our site below to sign the “Ground Zero Cross” petition NOW: http://www.conservativealerts.com/cross.htm NOTE: In order to have an impact on the folks at the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, we need HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of signers, from across America and all over the world, on this petition, which we will present to the agency. Be sure to forward this e-mail to everyone you know who wants to help STOP the atheists from blocking this powerful symbol of healing after disaster. Thank you! Plans called for the 17-foot World Trade Center crossbeam to be on display at the museum portion of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum when that facility opened. In 2011 American Atheists filed a lawsuit to prevent that display, contending that the museum would be violating the Constitution’s establishment clause and New York state civil-rights law by exhibiting a religious symbol. In August 2012, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum filed court papers seeking a dismissal of the lawsuit on the grounds that the museum is operated by an independent non-profit corporation and its decisions about what to display are therefore not state actions subject to constitutional protection, that the crossbeam is being exhibited as a relic of the 9/11 attacks and not as a religious symbol, and that the museum’s merely displaying an object with religious significance does not amount to an endorsement or promotion of a particular religion. In July 2014, a the three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court denied the American Atheists’ appeal and ruled that the Ground Zero cross could remain in the museum, holding that it served more as a “genuine historical artifact” than as a symbol of Christianity: The judges noted that the cross — comprised of a 17-foot steel column and a crossbeam — became a “symbol of hope and healing for all persons” in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy. [American Atheists has] appealed, arguing that displaying the cross at the museum violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, and state constitutions of New York and New Jersey. The atheists contended the display of the cross at the museum “gave the impression of a Latin cross, a symbol associated with Christianity.” They asserted that displaying the cross was unconstitutional, “particularly without any accompanying plaque or similar item acknowledging that atheists were among those” who died on 9/11 or participated in the rescue efforts. The appellate judges ruled the atheists’ “challenge fails on the merits.”


County offers vaccinations after hepatitis scare.

Explanation: Somerset County is offering free hepatitis A vaccinations after a deli worker at a supermarket was found to have the virus.

The vaccinations will be given at the county health department from noon to 8 p.m. on Wednesday and Thursday. Officials say the Somerville ShopRite was contagious with the virus between Oct. 13 and Oct. 30. Officials say anyone who bought food from the deli should throw it away. Hepatitis A is usually spread when a person comes into contact with objects, food or drinks contaminated by an infected person. State health officials have confirmed 533 hepatitis A infections this year, including six deaths.


Ebola 'no longer incurable' as Congo trial finds drugs boost survival.

Explanation: Scientists are a step closer to being able to cure the deadly Ebola hemorrhagic fever after two experimental drugs showed survival rates of as much as 90% in a clinical trial in Congo.

Two experimental drugs - an antibody cocktail called REGN-EB3 developed by Regeneron (REGN.O) and a monoclonal antibody called mAb114 - will now be offered to all patients infected with the viral disease in an ongoing outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The drugs showed “clearly better” results, according to U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in a trial of four potential treatments being conducted during the second-largest Ebola outbreak in history, now entering its second year in DRC. The drugs improved survival rates from the disease more than two other treatments being tested - ZMapp, made by Mapp Biopharmaceutical, and Remdesivir, made by Gilead Sciences (GILD.O) - and those products will be now dropped, said Anthony Fauci, one of the researchers co-leading the trial. The agency said 49% of the patients on ZMapp and 53% on Remdesivir died in the study. In comparison, 29% of the patients on REGN-EB3 and 34% on mAb114 died. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, director general of Congo’s Institut National de Recherche Biomédicale in DRC, who co-led the trial, said the results meant that “from now on, we will no longer say that Ebola is incurable.”  “These advances will help save thousands of lives,” he told reporters. Anthony Fauci, NIAID’s director, also said the results were “very good news” for the fight against Ebola. The agency said that of the patients who were brought into treatment centers with low levels of virus detected in their blood, 94% who got REGN-EB3 and 89% on mAb114 survived. In comparison, two-thirds of the patients who got Remdesivir and nearly three-quarters on ZMapp survived. Ebola has been spreading in eastern Congo since August 2018 in an outbreak that has now killed at least 1,800 people. Efforts to control it have been hampered by militia violence and some local resistance to outside help. A vast Ebola outbreak in West Africa from 2013 to 2016 became the world’s largest ever when it spread through Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone and killed more than 11,300 people. The Congo treatment trial, which began in November last year, is being carried out by an international research group coordinated by the World Health Organization (WHO). Mike Ryan, head of the WHO’s emergencies program, said the trial’s positive findings were encouraging but would not be enough on their own to bring the epidemic to an end. “The news today is fantastic. It gives us a new tool in our toolbox against Ebola, but it will not in itself stop Ebola,” he told reporters. Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust global health charity, also hailed the success of the trial’s findings, saying they would “undoubtedly save lives”. “The more we learn about these two treatments ... the closer we can get to turning Ebola from a terrifying disease to one that is preventable and treatable,” he said in a statement. “We won’t ever get rid of Ebola but we should be able to stop these outbreaks from turning into major national and regional epidemics.”  Some 681 patients at four separate treatment centers in Congo have already been enrolled in the Congo treatment clinical trial, Fauci said. The study aims to enroll a total of 725. The decision to drop two of the trial drugs was based on data from almost 500 patients, he said, which showed that those who got REGN-EB3 or mAb114 “had a greater chance of survival compared to those participants in the other two arms”. The two promising drugs are made from Ebola antibodies - a protein produced by the immune system to defend against infection. Regeneron’s product is a cocktail of three Ebola antibodies, while mAb114 is a single antibody developed by scientists at NIAID.


A photograph shows a memorial for aborted babies with an angel crying over the empty cradle of the infant that it was supposed to guard.

Explanation: Guardian Angel Crying at the Cradle of an Aborted Fetus?

A February 28 2019 Facebook post (archived here) shared the image reproduced above with the following text:I shared this picture a few minutes ago, then about 5 minutes after I shared it, the post was removed from my page and also from the page of who I shared it. The statue represents a guardian angel who is crying over the crib of the baby it was supposed to guard but the baby was aborted.We could not help but observe that the post had actually not been deleted as of late March 2019. Other versions of the claim circulated on sites like Pinterest with a slightly different caption:That version was captioned:An Angel crying at the cradle of the aborted child he was to guard.An identical version of the text and image above was shared to Reddit’s r/4chan in June 2018, and the image captioned “empty crib” was shared to Imgur at roughly the same time as the Facebook post linked above. The earliest appearance of a related image we were able to locate was from January 2016, when it appeared in a Tennessee newspaper:This “I knew you in the womb” bronze statue sits outside the entrance to Our Lady of Fatima Catholic Church, where a Celebration of Life and Remembrance will take place [in January 2016].In June 2016, a Canadian anti-abortion site posted about plans to install a version of the statue as a “monument to Canada’s unborn children.” However, abortion was not explicitly mentioned in that post:MyCanada is working with supporters to install a national monument to Canada’s unborn children. The bronze sculpture, created by Canadian-born artist Timothy Schmaltz, features an angel weeping over an empty crib. Titled “I Knew You in the Womb”, this will be a beautiful testimony to the value of the unborn. The organization hopes it “will also be a place for Canadians to pray, mourn and pay their respects to the deceased unborn.”A short description of “I Knew You in the Womb” on the artist’s website explains:An angel weeps over an empty cradle, offering a memorial for any unborn children making it a very powerful monument to the unborn.A separate page for miniatures of the image states that it is “a powerful pro-life image and a touching memorial for any children that have been lost.” In a video, Schmaltz says he was inspired to create the sculpture in 2013. He explains that it is “not necessarily” about abortion, but also that it was prompted by “abortions and miscarriages.” In an August 2016 interview with a Catholic outlet, Schmaltz answered a question about overall anti-abortion themes in his work:Abortion in our culture is a serious concern of mine. I know it from firsthand experience because I am a victim of abortion. I had a relationship when I was in my early 20s, and the woman I was dating became pregnant. We were duped by our culture to do the supposedly “responsible” thing. I experienced what it’s like to sit in a clinic waiting for my girlfriend to have an abortion and what it was like to be with her after the abortion. I saw firsthand the devastation that it did to my heart and to my soul — and also to my girlfriend’s. It was absolutely overwhelming.When asked about miscarriage, he referenced the sculpture shown above, explaining:The sculpture of the angel weeping over a cradle was done after my wife miscarried [in 2013]. It was a time when we thought for sure we were going to have our third child, and we were so excited that our kids were going to have another sibling. Then we had to tell them that it wasn’t going to happen. I remember sitting in my studio feeling so empty. That’s when I did the cradle piece, which I called I Knew You in the Womb. When our family experienced that miscarriage, it brought back similar feelings to when I had lost my first child through abortion.I envisioned an angel weeping over an empty cradle; there was something so subtle, so absent, and so touching about him. The idea was borrowed from cemeteries in France where you often see an angel weeping over a tombstone.Artist Timothy Schmaltz was inspired to create the sculpture after his wife suffered a miscarriage in 2013. Schmaltz states that it is a “monument to the unborn,” not specifically about, but not excluding,  aborted fetuses. Miniatures of the image are for sale on his site, and at least two versions of the sculpture have been installed in its larger form. Typically, they are as Schmaltz describes — monuments to any sort of pregnancy loss. However, he explicitly states that the imagery is not entirely about abortion.


Joe Jackson — patriarch of the entertainment family that includes singers Janet Jackson and the late Michael Jackson — has died of cancer.

Explanation: According to their “About Us” page, the Weekly Observer purports to offer “researched content that appeals to our readers,” though a quick scan of their published articles reveals a backlog of shallow, poorly-vetted clickbait content aimed more at accumulating advertising revenue than providing reliable information.

Junk News, celebrity death hoaxes, fake news, joe jackson

Update: Joe Jackson passed away on 27 June 2018, just four days after the death hoax appeared. You can read our story here. On 23 June 2018, an article appeared on a site called The Weekly Observer (no connection to the Hemingway, South Carolina newspaper of the same name) saying that Joe Jackson, the father of Janet, Jermaine, and the late Michael Jackson, had succumbed to cancer at the age of 89: Joe Jackson, the father of the famous family Jackson, lost the fight against cancer as he suffered from incurable illness and was in the final stage, many American media reported. The TMZ.com website, citing family sources, reported that 89-year-old Jackson suffered from cancer at the final stage. The Variety magazine supports a source that knows its status confirmed this information while DailyMail.com, based on family members and other unspecified sources, wrote that Joe Jackson suffered from cancer in the pancreas. Zerman Jackson, one of Joe Jackson‘s sons, confirmed on Twitter that his father died. Despite inspiring a rash of erroneous death notices and remembrances on Twitter and Facebook, however, the claim that Jackson had passed away was a fabrication. As of 25 June 2018, no legitimate media sources had reported that Jackson was dead. TMZ.com did report on 22 June that Jackson was hospitalized with untreatable “terminal cancer.” An article on DailyMail.com offered more details about the illness, saying Jackson is suffering from stage four pancreatic cancer. It quoted Jermaine Jackson, 63, as saying his father was “very, very frail” and didn’t have long to live (Jermaine later tweeted that he had confirmed details about Joe Jackson’s condition to the reporter.) False rumors of Jackson’s death had circulated before in May 2016 after he was hospitalized with a high fever. In that case he responded with a notice on his web site saying “I Am 100% Alive,” and that the rumors were “greatly exaggerated.” He has not yet posted a reaction to the more recent false reports.