In October 2019, Chick-fil-A's charitable donations were contributing to efforts to introduce the death penalty for homosexuality in Uganda.

Explanation: What's true: A Ugandan government minister announced an intention to make homosexuality punishable by death in October 2019; the National Christian Foundation has funded projects that opposed LGBT rights in Uganda; and the WinShape Foundation, closely linked to Chick-fil-A, has funded the National Christian Foundation. What's false: However, the Ugandan minister did not signal an intent to legalize the murder of LGBT people, and his remarks were quickly contradicted by the government; also, it's not clear to what extent National Christian Foundation-funded entities were involved in the creation or promotion of a bill to make homosexuality punishable by death.

In October 2019, we received multiple inquiries about the accuracy of a viral tweet that claimed the fast food chain Chick-fil-A had indirectly encouraged and facilitated a legislative proposal in Uganda that would make it legal to kill LGBT people. On Oct. 12, @sloppyposts wrote: “Today Uganda announced a bill to legalize murdering gay people. National Christian Organization paid a preacher to go to Uganda and help their lawmakers with the bill. Chick-fil-a funds National Christian Org. If you eat at Chick-fil-a, this is what your money goes to.” Today Uganda announced a bill to legalize murdering gay people. National Christian Organization paid a preacher to go to Uganda and help their lawmakers with the bill. Chick-fil-a funds National Christian Org. If you eat at Chick-fil-a, this is what your money goes to. — slop (@sloppyposts) October 12, 2019   The tweet was further promulgated when users on Facebook shared screenshots of it, including the popular, left-leaning page The Other 98%:    The tweet consists of three discreet factual claims: that in October 2019, Uganda’s government announced legislation that would legalize murdering LGBT people; that the U.S.-based National Christian Organization was involved in devising, encouraging, or lobbying for that legislation; and that Chick-fil-A funds the National Christian Organization. The following is our analysis of those claims: On Oct. 10, Uganda’s Minister for Ethics and Integrity, Simon Lokodo, told the Reuters news agency that the country’s government intended to revive a failed 2014 bill, known at the time as the “Kill the Gays” bill, that would make “grave acts” of homosexuality punishable by death. Reuters reported that: Uganda announced plans on Thursday for a bill that would impose the death penalty on homosexuals, saying the legislation would curb a rise in unnatural sex in the east African nation. The bill – colloquially known as “Kill the Gays” in Uganda – was nullified five years ago on a technicality and the government said it plans to resurrect it within weeks. “Homosexuality is not natural to Ugandans, but there has been a massive recruitment by gay people in schools, and especially among the youth, where they are promoting the falsehood that people are born like that,” Ethics and Integrity Minister Simon Lokodo told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Our current penal law is limited. It only criminalises the act. We want it made clear that anyone who is even involved in promotion and recruitment has to be criminalised. Those that do grave acts will be given the death sentence.” … Lokodo said the bill, which is supported by President Yoweri Museveni, will be re-introduced in parliament in the coming weeks and is expected to be voted on before the end of the year. Legislative moves to impose the death penalty for homosexuality in Uganda began in earnest in 2009. By 2014, however, a bill signed into law would have introduced life imprisonment for homosexuality, but the death penalty punishment had been removed from its text, in part as a result of international pressure. Later in 2014, Uganda’s Constitutional Court struck down the “Anti-Homosexuality Act” on the basis of a technicality relating to its passage through the country’s Parliament. Homosexuality remains outlawed in Uganda. Two days after Lokodo signaled the government’s intention to revive the introduction of the death penalty for homosexuality in October 2019, the government press office itself intervened, directly contradicting the minister’s assertions, and writing in a statement: “Government hereby clarifies that it does not intend to introduce any new law with regards to the regulation of LGBTQ activities in Uganda because the current provisions in the Penal Code are sufficient.”    Lokodo is a government minister and runs the department (Ethics and Integrity) that has in recent years overseen legislative efforts around homosexuality. As such, his initial Oct. 10 announcement was of significant import and should not be dismissed in light of the subsequent contradictory statement from the central government press office. Until or unless Lokodo issues a retraction of his remarks, or further clarification is forthcoming, it is simply not clear what the Ugandan government’s resolved intentions are, as of October 2019, regarding the possible introduction of the death penalty as a punishment for homosexual acts. In his interview with Reuters, Lokodo did not signal his intention to introduce a law that would “legalize murdering” LGBT people, as @sloppyposts claimed. Some observers might see an ethical equivalence between imposing state execution as a punishment for homosexuality, on the one hand, and legally permitting any and every civilian to murder another civilian, on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. However, they are not the same thing. The viral tweet published by @sloppyposts was accompanied by follow-up tweets that cited several sources — a 2010 article by the website Queerty, a 2012 article by Business Insider, and a 2014 report by the website Twocare, which describes itself as the “Center Against Religious Extremism.” Twocare’s article contained a detailed, in-depth examination of the financial and organizational links between the National Christian Foundation (which the tweet mistakenly called the “National Christian Organization”) and a number of other conservative Christian, non-profit groups, in particular as that collaboration related to campaigns and advocacy against LGBT rights, including in Uganda. The report features disbursement amounts from the Foundation to dozens of sample Christian charities and projects, including several that have been involved in anti-LGBT advocacy or preaching in Uganda, specifically, between the years 2001 and 2013. However, a brief skim of some of the thousands of pages of records on the National Christian Foundation’s (NCF’s) federal tax returns for 2014, 2015, and 2016, show that it has continued to fund many of the same anti-LGBT projects in Uganda. It’s not clear to what @sloppyposts was referring by writing that the “National Christian Organization” (read: the NCF) had “paid a preacher to go to Uganda and help their lawmakers with the bill.” However, as the Twocare report detailed, many American pastors and preachers — funded either directly or indirectly by the NCF — have in recent years met with, trained, and spoken alongside anti-LGBT Ugandan ministers. The journalist and author Jeff Sharlet has reported that, in interviews, the Ugandan M.P. David Behati — who first introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill in 2009 and was a key player in the ensuing campaign — described to Sharlet the influence of a controversial American Christian conservative movement known colloquially as “The Fellowship” and “The Family” in devising and encouraging the legislation, including at the early stages when it still included a death penalty provision. Speaking to Harper’s in 2010, Sharlet explained the purportedly close links: Bob Hunter, designated by the Family as a spokesman to respond to the Uganda fiasco, has referred to David Bahati, the author of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, as a member of the Family. Hunter and Bahati both told me that Hunter had paid a visit to Bahati in Kampala to assure Bahati that he remains in good standing, despite Hunter’s personal opposition to the bill. I give Hunter credit for being vocal about that; but there’s a profound lack of accountability at every other level. The Family built the prayer group structure from which the bill emerged. For readers not familiar with it, by the way, “harsh” is an understatement: life imprisonment for gay sex, death for “serial offenders,” seven years for “promotion,” and three years for failing to turn in a known homosexual. When I asked Bahati, in Kampala, whether there was a connection between the Family and the bill (he calls the group the Fellowship but also acknowledges it as the Family), he said, “There is no ‘connection.’ They are the same thing. The bill is the Fellowship. It was our idea.” An idea, he added, that he’d believed in alignment with the biblical principles they shared, based on his multiple visits to the National Prayer Breakfast and to the Cedars, their Arlington headquarters, and on the many visits to his Family prayer group in the Parliament by Family men such as Sen. Jim Inhofe and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who emphasize there what Inhofe calls the “political philosophy of Jesus,” something he says he learned from the Family. Bahati brought the bill to a private meeting of international Family leaders before he introduced it; he says he got a green light. The Family says they expressed caution. It’s possible both things are true, after a fashion—the Family rarely risks its access by holding its members accountable. Two non-profit organizations linked to the Fellowship (the International Foundation and the Fellowship Foundation) regularly received funding from the NCF. The link between the NCF and Chick-fil-A is that the NCF has received funding from the WinShape Foundation — the charitable organization started by Chick-fil-A’s founder Truett Cathy (who died in 2014) and his wife, Jeannette, (who died in 2015). The WinShape Foundation routinely disburses millions of dollars every year to Christian and conservative non-profit groups and projects, placing a particular emphasis on “family values.” As we detailed in a previous fact check, this commitment to “Biblical values” has seen Chick-fil-A’s leadership speak out against same-sex marriage, and the WinShape Foundation fund groups actively opposed to certain aspects of LGBT rights. For several years, the WinShape Foundation has provided some funding to the NCF, in particular, as shown in the charity’s annual tax documents, which are available here. Although it is important to note that Chick-fil-A and the WinShape Foundation are separate entities, the company and the charity are very closely linked. According to the WinShape Foundation’s 2017 tax returns, its CEO was Don “Bubba” Cathy, who is senior vice president at Chick-fil-A, and its vice president was Dan Cathy, who is CEO of Chick-fil-A. Furthermore, the vast majority of the contributions received by the Foundation each year comes from the company, including $21.3 million out of $22.1 million in 2017. A strong element of truth ran through the widely shared claims made by @sloppyposts in October 2019, but some details were lacking in accuracy. A Ugandan government minister did declare an intention, in October 2019, to introduce the death penalty for homosexuality. However, he didn’t propose legalizing the murder of LGBT people, and his remarks were quickly contradicted by his government. The National Christian Foundation (which the meme wrongly called the “National Christian Organization”) has for several years funded groups, projects and individuals involved in opposing LGBT rights in the United States and Uganda. However, despite plausible reports, it is not clear to what extent NCF-funded entities or individuals were involved in the nitty gritty of drafting and promoting legislation, beginning in 2009, which would have imposed the death penalty for homosexuality. Nor is it known whether NCF-funded groups are involved in any potential renewed efforts to introduce such a punishment in 2019, as signaled by Ethics and Integrity Minister Simon Lokodo Finally, it’s absolutely true that the WinShape Foundation, which was founded by the Cathy family, is still run by them, and receives almost all of its funding from Chick-fil-A, has for several years provided funding to several Christian conservative groups and projects, including the NCF. That means a real and substantive connection does exist between the funding disbursed by the WinShape Foundation and the activities of NCF-backed groups and individuals in Uganda.


A widely shared social media post accurately lists reprehensible acts committed by former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

Explanation: Arpaio’s successor, Sheriff Paul Penzone, closed the facility in 2017.

U.S. Senate hopeful Joe Arpaio, 85, who boasted of being “America’s Toughest Sheriff” while holding the office in Maricopa County, Arizona for 24 years, has had a few run-ins with the law himself, including a conviction for criminal contempt by a federal court in July 2017. Although President Trump pardoned him before sentencing could take place, Arpaio faced up to six months in jail, which time he spent instead preparing for a Senate run, announced in January 2018 (Arpaio lost a bid for re-election to the sheriff’s post two years earlier). The case came to court as a lawsuit (one of many such actions filed against Arpaio over two decades) accusing the sheriff of racial profiling, which is illegal under federal law. The conviction stemmed from Arpaio’s refusal to comply with the judge’s order to stop detaining suspected undocumented immigrants with no legal basis. That episode was all too typical of Arpaio’s blustery, controversial career, throughout which he was dogged by accusations of harsh, inhumane policies and practices. After he announced his Senate candidacy, several of those accusations resurfaced in a tweet that morphed into a widely shared Internet meme:  We’ll examine the accuracy of those claims one-by-one: CLAIM: Burned a dog alive and laughed when the dog’s owner cried STATUS: False. There is no evidence that Joe Arpaio ever personally burned a dog alive or laughed when the dog’s owner cried. However, it was reported in 2004 that a Maricopa County SWAT team serving a weapons burglary search warrant under Arpaio’s supervision did. According to an article in the 5 August 2004 edition of the alternative weekly newspaper Phoenix New Times, a two-story home in the Phoenix suburb of Ahwatukee caught fire after Arpaio’s SWAT team launched tear gas canisters into it during a raid (occupants of the house said the fire was caused by the canisters, though investigators determined the likely cause was a candle knocked over in the commotion). Two of the occupants, Andrea Barker and Eric Kush, told the New Times that an officer sprayed their 10-month-old pit bull puppy with a fire extinguisher as it attempted to escape outside, driving it back into a burning bedroom, where it died. “I was crying hysterically,” Andrea Barker was quoted as saying. “I was so upset. They [deputies] were laughing at me,” she said. A 15 October 2004 article in the East Valley Tribune confirmed that a dog burned to death during the fire, which completely destroyed the home. The Tribune cited a sheriff’s office spokesperson who said the dog was “aggressive,” and that spraying it with fire retardant was meant to subdue the animal without harming it. CLAIM: Made women give birth in shackles STATUS: Mixture. Miriam Mendiola-Martinez, an undocumented immigrant arrested on felony identity theft and forgery charges in 2009, filed a lawsuit in 2011 alleging that Maricopa County sheriff’s deputies violated her rights by placing her in shackles for transport to a medical facility after she went into labor, and again when she was in the recovery room after giving birth via C-section. She was not shackled during the birth itself, but a medical expert testified at trial that restraints on female inmates at any point during pregnancy or postpartum recovery pose a health hazard. The case was settled on appeal in 2016, with Mendiola-Martinez accepting $200,000 in compensation from the county and Arpaio agreeing to prohibit deputies from restraining female inmates during labor or the first two weeks after delivery. We found no other instances of Arpaio or the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office being accused of restraining women during labor, birth, or postpartum recovery. CLAIM: Refused to investigate alleged child sex crimes. As the East Valley Tribune‘s Ryan Gabrielson reported in a Pulitzer Prize-winning article in 2008, Sheriff Arpaio’s personal obsession with immigration enforcement sapped county resources and led to a sharp decline in criminal investigations and arrests. Many of the cases that fell by the wayside involved sex crimes. “By Arpaio’s own admission, the number of uninvestigated sex crime cases eventually swelled to more than 400,” Gabrielson wrote in 2017. “Many of the victims were children.” According to law enforcement officials cited in a 2011 Associated Press report, dozens of alleged child molestation cases in the county were inadequately investigated or “not worked at all”: In El Mirage alone, where Arpaio’s office was providing contract police services, officials discovered at least 32 reported child molestations — with victims as young as 2 years old — where the sheriff’s office failed to follow through, even though suspects were known in all but six cases. Many of the victims, said a retired El Mirage police official who reviewed the files, were children of illegal immigrants. CLAIM: Operated what he called “a concentration camp”. One of Joe Arpaio’s proudest accomplishments was the creation of a 7-acre outdoor jail he called “Tent City.” Erected in 1993, the compound was meant to relieve inmate overcrowding but won international notoriety for the cruel conditions imposed on those imprisoned there. Francisco Chairez, who spent a year in Tent City in 2014, recalled some of those conditions for the Washington Post: The rules of the tent city were strict, arbitrary and brutally enforced. There are no newspapers allowed; Arpaio hated newspapers. The only food allowed for those of us in the work furlough program was the food in the vending machines, which was grossly overpriced. During the sweltering summer, the temperature could reach 115 or 120 degrees. I was in the tents when we hit 120. It was impossible to stay cool in the oppressive heat. Everyone would strip down to their underwear. There was no cold water, only water from vending machines; and eventually, the machines would run out. People would faint; some had heatstroke. That summer, ambulances came about three times. One man died in his bed. Arpaio saved worse abuse for others. Those who were in full detention had to wear pink socks, underwear and flip-flops. They ate peanut butter and bread, and the only other meal they received was baloney and bread. They also had the option of “slob,” which was an unknown, disgusting substance that looked like some kind of thick stew and tasted like cardboard. (The poor people in the work furlough program who couldn’t pay for vending-machine food had no choice but to eat it.) Although Arpaio has since denied saying it, he was captured on video in 2008 responding to a question about using concentration camps to hold undocumented immigrants by boasting, “I already have a concentration camp. … It’s called Tent City.”


Up to 70% of Americans have been infected with a “Vampire Fungus” from eating unhealthy foods that causes weight gain, skin problems and indigestion.

Explanation: Vampire Fungus is Sucking the Life Out of You

There’s no scientific proof that anyone suffers from the so-called “Vampire Fungus.” The claim surfaced in January of 2015 when a  video posted online warned that 70% of Americans suffer from Vampire Fungus. The video doesn’t specify what Vampire Fungus is, or where it comes from. It begins with a narrator who identifies himself as Dr. Robert McIntire, director of health services at Leaf Origin, saying: Is the Vampire Fungus sucking the life out of you? If you suffer from weight gain, skin problems or indigestion, watch this public service report to see what to do next. Millions of men and women watching this public service report are affected, and the odds that your belly is infected are incredibly high. Put your hand on your belly right now, right below your chest. Do you feel any excess fat in this area? Is there fat peaking out from beneath your hand? Does your belly spill below your waistline? Do you have problems with indigestion? Have you taken antibiotics in the last five years? Do you regularly eat any sugary foods such as fruit or honey? If you said “yes” to any of the above, your belly is most likely swarming with what some doctors are calling “the Vampire Fungus.” This fungus grows and grows over time and often masquerades as fat because it can swell in your stomach to the size of a basketball. The warning signs described in the video — weight gain, skin problems, indigestion, use of antibiotics in the last five years — apply to virtually every adult in America. The narrator does not specify what Vampire Fungus is, where it comes from, or how the video can help viewers overcome it. The video does, however, cite a study carried out by researchers at Rice University that allegedly concluded that the Vampire Fungus affected up to 70% of Americans. An actual Rice University  study that was published in 2004 found that up to 70% of Americans had colonies of a yeast-like parasitic fungus called Candida living in their intestines: Candida is common in humans. It’s estimated that 70 percent of people have Candida colonies in their intestines, mouths or on their skin. In most cases, the organism is commensal, meaning it does not harm people, even though it depends upon them for food. However, colonies of Candida sometimes grow too large, as happens in the case of yeast infections. While not life-threatening, vaginal yeast infections are a common and painful problem for a significant percentage of American women. The oral form of Candida infection, known as thrush, is a common problem for infants. The researchers at Rice University did not refer to Candida as a “Vampire Fungus,” nor did they describe its effects on the human body in the same way as the eRumor does. Research dating back to the 1990s indicates that probiotic bacteria — live microorganisms and yeasts — may be an effective way to counter parasitic bacteria like Candida in the intestines. A 1997  study by the National Institutes of Health found: Four species of probiotic bacteria were assessed for their capacities to protect athymic bg/bg-nu/nu and euthymic bg/bg-nu/+ mice from mucosal and systemic candidiasis. Each bacterial species and Candida albicans colonized the gastrointestinal tracts of both strains of mice. The presence of probiotic bacteria (Lactobacillus acidophilus, Lactobacillus reuteri, Lactobacillus casei GG, or Bifidobacterium animalis) in the gastrointestinal tracts prolonged the survival of adult and neonatal bg/bg-nu/nu mice compared to that of isogenic mice colonized with C. albicans alone. The incidence of systemic candidiasis in bg/bg-nu/nu mice was significantly reduced by each of the four probiotic bacterial species. Leaf Origin, the company listed as the producer of the Vampire Fungus video, happens to sell a daily  probiotic supplement that claims to promote digestive immune system health. The supplement cost $157 for a 180-day supply. It would appear that the term “Candida” was changed to “Vampire Fungus” in the video  to scare up sales. TruthorFiction.com has reached out to Leaf Origin for comment on the video. Future updates will be posted here. Comments


Hurricane Harvey’s toxic impact deeper than public told.

Explanation: A toxic onslaught from the nation’s petrochemical hub was largely overshadowed by the record-shattering deluge of Hurricane Harvey as residents and first responders struggled to save lives and property.

Houston, AP Top News, Hurricane Harvey, Health, Storms, North America, Environment, Business, Science, Hurricanes, Texas, U.S. News

More than a half-year after floodwaters swamped America’s fourth-largest city, the extent of this environmental assault is beginning to surface, while questions about the long-term consequences for human health remain unanswered. County, state and federal records pieced together by The Associated Press and The Houston Chronicle reveal a far more widespread toxic impact than authorities publicly reported after the storm slammed into the Texas coast in late August and then stalled over the Houston area. Some 500 chemical plants, 10 refineries and more than 6,670 miles of intertwined oil, gas and chemical pipelines line the nation’s largest energy corridor. Nearly half a billion gallons of industrial wastewater mixed with storm water surged out of just one chemical plant in Baytown, east of Houston on the upper shores of Galveston Bay. Benzene, vinyl chloride, butadiene and other known human carcinogens were among the dozens of tons of industrial toxic substances released into surrounding neighborhoods and waterways following Harvey’s torrential rains. In all, reporters catalogued more than 100 Harvey-related toxic releases — on land, in water and in the air. Most were never publicized, and in the case of two of the biggest ones, the extent or potential toxicity of the releases was initially understated. Only a handful of the industrial spills have been investigated by federal regulators, reporters found. Texas regulators say they have investigated 89 incidents, but have yet to announce any enforcement actions. Testing by state and federal regulators of soil and water for contaminants was largely limited to Superfund toxic waste sites. Based on widespread air monitoring, including flyovers, officials repeatedly assured the public that post-Harvey air pollution posed no health threat. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency official in charge now says these general assessments did not necessarily reflect local “hotspots” with potential risk to people. Regulators alerted the public to dangers from just two, well-publicized toxic disasters: the Arkema chemical plant northeast of Houston that exploded and burned for days, and a nearby dioxin-laden federal Superfund site whose protective cap was damaged by the raging San Jacinto River. Samuel Coleman, who was the EPA’s acting regional administrator during Harvey, said the priority in the immediate aftermath was “addressing any environmental harms as quickly as possible as opposed to making announcements about what the problem was.” In hindsight, he said, it might not have been a bad idea to inform the public about the worst of “dozens of spills.” Local officials say the state’s industry-friendly approach has weakened efforts by the city of Houston and surrounding Harris County to build cases against and force cleanup by the companies, many of them repeat environmental offenders. “The public will probably never know the extent of what happened to the environment after Harvey. But the individual companies of course know,” said Rock Owens, supervising environmental attorney for Harris County, home to Houston and 4.7 million residents. The chairman of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Bryan Shaw, declined when asked by lawmakers in January to identify the worst spills and their locations. He told a legislative subcommittee hearing he could not publicly discuss spills until his staff completed a review. The amount of post-Harvey government testing contrasts sharply with what happened after two other major Gulf Coast hurricanes. After Hurricane Ike hit Texas in 2008, state regulators collected 85 sediment samples to measure the contamination; more than a dozen violations were identified and cleanups were carried out, according to a state review. In Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina’s floodwaters ravaged New Orleans in 2005, the EPA and Louisiana officials examined about 1,800 soil samples over 10 months, EPA records showed. “Now the response is completely different,” said Scott Frickel, an environmental sociologist formerly at Tulane University in New Orleans. Frickel, now at Brown University, called the Harvey response “unconscionable” given Houston’s exponentially larger industrial footprint. Reporters covered some environmental crises as they happened, such as AP’s exclusive on the flooding of toxic waste sites and the Chronicle’s Arkema warnings before fires broke out. But the sheer quantity of spills was impossible to document in real time. Academic researchers are now trying to fill in the gaps in environmental monitoring, helped by grants from the National Science Foundation and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. One project, a Harvey-related public health registry for Houston, was funded just this month but is not yet underway. “People are left in a state of limbo of not knowing if they were exposed or not — or if they were, what the implications are for their health,” said Dr. Nicole Lurie, who oversaw federal public health responses to the Superstorm Sandy and Deepwater Horizon disasters while at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Scientists say the paucity of data also could hamstring efforts to prepare for and mitigate damage from future violent weather events that climatologists predict will happen with increasing frequency. ___ ‘NOTHING SHORT OF CATASTROPHIC’ When it meets moisture, hydrogen chloride gas becomes hydrochloric acid, which can burn, suffocate and kill. Between lulls in Harvey’s pounding torrents on Aug. 28, an 18-inch pipeline leak at Williams Midstream Services Inc. unleashed a plume of the chemical near the intersection of two major highways in La Porte, southeast of Houston, where the San Jacinto River meets the 50-mile ship channel. It’s the petrochemical corridor’s main artery that empties into Galveston Bay. A toxic cloud spread about a quarter-mile in an industrial sector as firefighters and police rushed to shut down roads, blared neighborhood sirens and robo-dispatched phone and text messages warning people to stay indoors. Two hours ticked by before a county hazardous materials response unit — lucky to find a road not under water — arrived and ended the danger with the help of a crew from a nearby plant. The spill was among dozens barely noticed at the time, records show. A county pollution control inspector, Johnathan Martin, wrote in his report that he could not safely monitor the toxic plume but believed it did not reach homes less than a mile away. There were no reports of injuries. On land, the deluge — five feet of rain in some spots — appears to have scoured the top soil, according to separate testing efforts by scientists from Texas A&M and Rice universities. The Texas A&M collection of 24 samples — taken in September from lawns mainly in a neighborhood near Valero Energy Corp.’s refinery — turned up only low traces of petroleum and petrochemical-related compounds. “As expected the rains washed most things out,” said Texas A&M research leader Anthony Knap. Rice researchers tested soil at a school and park in Baytown, east across Upper Galveston Bay, where residents said floodwaters rushed in from the 3,400-acre ExxonMobil refinery and chemical plant. They also sampled in Galena Park, a community of 11,000 hemmed in by heavy industry along the ship channel, just east of downtown. Only one of the nine samples collected by Rice researchers showed elevated levels of petroleum-related toxic substances, according to an independent chemical analysis funded by the AP-Chronicle collaboration. Collected in Galena Park, it showed the presence of benzo(a)pyrene, a known carcinogen, at levels just above what the EPA deems a cancer risk. Jessica Chastain lives a block away. During Harvey’s three-day downpour, the nearby Panther Creek swallowed Chastain’s home, forcing the 36-year-old mother and four of her children to swim across the street to the safety of her parents’ two-story house, through slimy brownish-black water that smelled like a “rotten sewer,” said Chastain. “It had a coat of film over it. I’m not sure what it was. It was probably oil.” Her children — 15, 11, 9 and 6 — all developed skin infections and strep throat, she said. Her youngest still “cries when it rains hard,” she said. ”‘Is it going to flood?’ he asks.” The creek, which empties into the nearby ship channel, had backed up from flooded chemical plants and tank farms. A number of Harvey-related spills occurred near Chastain’s home, including the 460,000-gallon gasoline spill at a Magellan Midstream Partners tank farm and nearly 52,000 pounds of crude oil from a Seaway Crude Pipeline Inc. tank. Samples taken in October at a Houston park upstream of the ship channel showed elevated levels of dioxins, PCBs and hazardous chemicals typically created in the burning of oil, coal and gas, said Jennifer Horney, an A&M epidemiology professor who conducted testing for the city. Benzo(a)pyrene was among the chemicals found in sediment on the banks of Brays Bayou at the park, a popular recreation site with baseball diamonds, soccer pitches and bicycle pathways. “It’s coal tar and it’s a known carcinogen and mostly you find it in industrial settings,” said Horney. “We know the ship channel — or the bayou — was (up) in that park.” While worrisome, the levels at the park were not high enough to trigger a cleanup under EPA standards, she said. Neither Houston nor Texas A&M officials have publicly released those test results, which the city health department’s chief environmental science officer, Loren Raun, said showed “nothing of concern for human health risk.” The surface soil scrubbing that scientists believe occurred during Harvey means contaminants likely migrated downstream, said Hanadi Rifai. The head of the University of Houston’s environmental engineering program, she has been studying pollution in the watershed for more than two decades. “That soil ended up somewhere,” Rifai said. “The net result on Galveston Bay is going to be nothing short of catastrophic.” _ VAPOR CLOUD Residents of the tidy, mostly Latino neighborhood off Old Industrial Road in Galena Park are accustomed to the foul odors that wind shifts can bring. But no one told them about the gasoline spill at the Magellan terminal a mile away — one of more than a dozen Harvey-related releases in a two-mile radius. The release was initially reported to the Coast Guard at 42,000 gallons — and residents would only learn of it a week later through news reports. Not until 11 days after the spill did Magellan report that it was actually more than 10 times bigger. Asked about the discrepancy, Magellan spokesman Bruce Heine said floodwaters prevented the company from accessing the ruptured tanks until Sept. 5. He said the company later removed 15 dump trucks of tainted soil. The spill was reported to the Coast Guard on Thursday, Aug. 31 at 11:35 p.m. — six days after Harvey made landfall. An explosion risk prompted workers to evacuate upwind as the nearly half-million gallons of gasoline gushed out failed storage tanks, state environmental and Coast Guard records show. The spill ranked as Texas’ largest reported Harvey-related venting of air pollutants, at 1,143 tons. The local fire department put down foam to suppress the fumes, records revealed, and a police report described “a vapor cloud.” Claudia Mendez, a 42-year-old housewife, said she later saw foam by the side of the road and wondered about its origin. The fumes were so strong, Mendez said, “I thought my husband had brought the lawnmower gas can inside.” Magellan has been cited for 11 environmental violations since 2002 by Texas regulators and fined more than $190,000, more than half in August 2012 for a single violation of air quality standards. Its spill is among at least three post-Harvey releases about which Harris County officials have withheld information, saying they remain under investigation. The second involves W&P Development Corp., owner of an industrial park where about 100,000 gallons of oily wastewater were reported to have spilled into the San Jacinto from Aug. 29 to Aug. 31. The site was formerly Champion Paper Mill and a landfill there received wastes including turpentine- and lead-contaminated soil and mercury until 2008. For most of 2015 and 2016, the property was in violation of federal anti-pollution laws, EPA records show. A spokesman for W&P Development, Dennis Winkler, said the company later determined that a smaller amount — 30,000 gallons — had escaped from a water treatment plant when the river overtopped a berm. The third site is Channel Biorefinery & Terminals, where some 80,000 gallons of methanol spilled from a tank rupture into Greens Bayou, which enters the ship channel just downstream of the Magellan terminal. Highly flammable and explosive, methanol can cause brain lesions and other disorders. The property, once the site of the nation’s largest biofuels refinery, was in violation of federal hazardous waste-management rules the first half of 2017. Texas cited the property’s owners for failing to prove they could manage licensed wastes, including oily sludge and petroleum distillates, records show. Dennis Frost, the on-site manager for Gulf Coast Energy, the tenant of Channel Biorefinery, said he and co-workers did their best to prevent the spills. “They were impossible to contain,” he said. “The water here down by our facility was up over 20 feet.” ___ INDUSTRY: NO DANGER Companies are required under federal law to report spills to the state and federal government but not to counties, which are the first line of defense against industrial pollution. Harris County pollution control investigators queried more than 150 plants on Harvey-related spills, but many did not provide estimates. “Spill information is provided as a courtesy,” said Latrice Babin, deputy director of the county’s pollution control office. “Likewise, there is no requirement of notification of evacuation.” The largest spill, by far, was at ExxonMobil Corp.’s Olefins Plant in Baytown, east of the ship channel. Two days after Harvey hit, some 457 million gallons of stormwater mixed with untreated wastewater, including oil and grease, surged into an adjacent creek. The spill was not reported to the public. In a water quality report filed with the county and obtained through an open records request, ExxonMobil said “available information does not indicate any potential danger to human health or safety or the environment.” It did not include results of third-party water testing that the company said had been done. The plant has a history of federal air pollution violations and reported emitting 228 tons of airborne pollutants during Harvey. Other large spills found in official records include: — More than 3,000 pounds of benzene from Royal Dutch Shell PLC’s Deer Park complex on the ship channel’s south bank. Initially, the company reported a half ton of phenol, which can burn skin and be potentially fatal, was spilled. It later revised that downward to just two pounds. —About 34,000 pounds of sodium hydroxide, or lye, which can cause severe chemical burns, and unpermitted airborne emissions, including 28,000 pounds of benzene, from the Chevron Phillips Chemical Co. plant in Baytown, near where thousands of residents live along Cedar Bayou. A spokesman, Bryce Hallowell, said a containment pond kept about 38 percent of the lye from escaping the facility. — About 60,000 tons of what Dow Chemical Co. called “non-hazardous biosolids” at the company’s plant in Deer Park. The company now says that roughly 50 tons of that consisted of biosolids and that the rest was “primarily” stormwater. Yvette Arellano of the advocacy group Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services surveyed the area by helicopter on Sept. 4. She reported seeing flooded tank farms, fluorescent liquid streaming from Exxon’s outfalls, and refineries and chemical plants flaring gas intensely like giant candles. “The entire skyscape looked like a birthday cake,” Arellano said. ___ “HOT SPOTS” As Harvey bore down on Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott’s administration decreed that storm-related pollution would be forgiven as “acts of God.” Days later, he suspended many environmental regulations. On Sept. 1, just as residents in some areas of Houston started dragging soggy belongings to the curb, the city experienced Texas’ worst ozone pollution of the year. A top city health official emailed the EPA on Sept. 1 with a request marked “urgent,” asking for help in determining whether spills and leaks at industrial and Superfund sites threatened the public. Three days later, after getting no response, she emailed again, records obtained in a public information act request show. “We are finding alarming levels of benzene in the neighborhood next to Valero . Should EPA evacuate the residents?” There was no record of an EPA email response, though the agency did send a mobile air-monitoring van on Sept. 5. By then, Houston had done its own air monitoring, recording a high benzene level of 324 parts per billion — more than three times the level at which federal worker safety guidelines recommend special breathing equipment. The city was aided by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund, which dispatched a mobile van from California to track the toxic benzene plume. On Sept. 7, state investigators took air samples near Valero and reported suffering headaches and dizziness, though they said they found pollutants “below levels of short-term health and/or welfare concern,” according to a state report. The EPA said it also conducted 28 flights over 12 days beginning Aug. 31 using a plane equipped to evaluate “unreported or undetected” chemical releases. It flew over nearly 700 industrial sites, municipal wastewater treatment plants and other facilities, and EPA said it found no pollution exceeding state-permitted levels. In at least seven “status reports” the EPA and TCEQ posted online from Sept. 3 and Oct. 6, they said all measurements “were well below levels of health concern.” Coleman, who retired in January after 29 years with EPA, said he was comfortable with the advisories, saying they were general assessments. “Were there hotspots? Absolutely,” he said in a recent interview. “But on any given day, within some isolated area, there could be a problem.” AP and Chronicle reporters asked the EPA and state regulators for a detailed accounting of any soil and water testing they did after Harvey, along with any investigations or sanctions. The responses mostly cited online bulletins, in which the EPA said it had assessed all 43 Superfund cleanup sites in the hurricane-affected area and cleared all but one — the San Jacinto River Waste Pits, which was leaking dioxins. An examination of the 17 state Superfund sites found “no major issues,” regulators said. State officials said they didn’t test any sediment that may have been deposited elsewhere by floodwaters. The EPA tested water at an unspecified number of industrial sites but did not disclose results. Without elaborating, the state said it had a number of open investigations. The EPA refused to discuss whom it might be investigating, beyond Valero and Arkema. With a few exceptions, companies with spills did not call local emergency responders, meaning the public was not informed in real time. Instead, the companies handled the spills in-house, the Chronicle and AP found in surveying local and county fire officials. The Harris County Sheriff’s Office, which handles countywide emergency response and routinely dispatches a special investigator to major spills, said it was not alerted to 22 of 23 spills that reporters asked about, based on size and potential toxicity. The Arkema plant was the exception. Impossible to go unnoticed, its containers of liquid organic peroxides exploded after floodwaters disabled backup generators. Sickened first responders have filed suit, as have Harris and Liberty counties, which claim the company violated numerous environmental and safety regulations. Bob Royall, emergency operations chief for the county’s Fire Marshal office, said his agency was alerted to Arkema and the Williams’ hydrochloric acid leak but no one informed it at the time of the nearly half-million-gallon Magellan spill. Like spills on land, unpermitted releases of toxic air substances are self-reported in Texas — a state that has long been friendly to heavy industry. As attorney general, prior to being elected governor, Abbott had sued the federal government more than a dozen times to challenge environmental regulations that he deemed over-reaching. The governor’s Harvey disaster declaration suspended environmental reporting and record-keeping rules as well as liability for unauthorized emissions for the duration of the disaster declaration, which was most recently renewed on March 16. A spokesman for the state environmental agency said the suspensions only apply when rules would hinder disaster response. An attorney for the nonprofit Austin-based Environmental Integrity Project said that while federal environmental laws remained in effect, the governor’s action essentially put state regulators on the sidelines and made it more difficult to hold polluters accountable. “The state tied its own hands before it knew the scope or the magnitude or any of the effects of the storm,” said attorney Ilan Levin. The TCEQ itself has a long track record of industry tolerance. State auditors in 2003 found it was late in ordering and collecting fines, giving polluters $25 million a year in discounts. A study by Levin’s group found the agency penalized only 3 percent of air pollution incidents reported by all companies statewide from 2011 to 2016. Two Texas laws enacted since mid-2015 have weakened counties’ ability to police polluters. The first caps at $2.15 million what they can collect from polluters in lawsuits. The rest must go to the state. The second law took effect Sept. 1. It obliges counties to give the state right of first refusal on any pollution enforcement cases, which local officials say could mean less punitive action. “Every time we’ve been able to make something — you get a large judgment against one of these companies, get some significant process-changing injunctive relief — they come back around behind us to the legislature,” said Owens. “And they have clipped our wings.” ___ Associated Press reporter Justin Pritchard in Los Angeles and Houston Chronicle reporter Alex Stuckey contributed to this story. ___ For more AP coverage of Hurricane Harvey: https://apnews.com/tag/HurricaneHarvey ___ Contact Frank Bajak at fbajak@ap.org and http://twitter.com/fbajak , and Lise Olsen at Lise.olsen@chron.com and https://twitter.com/chrondigger


Britons warned some coronavirus lockdown measures could last months.

Explanation: Some lockdown measures to combat coronavirus in Britain could last months and only be gradually lifted, a senior medical official said on Sunday as Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned the situation will get worse before it gets better.

Britain has reported 19,522 confirmed cases of the disease and 1,228 deaths, after an increase of 209 fatalities as of 5 p.m. local time on Saturday compared with the previous day, the health ministry said. “The important thing is this is a moving target,” Deputy Chief Medical Officer Jenny Harries said. “If we do well it moves forward and comes down and we manage all our care through our health and care systems sensibly in a controlled way and that is what we are aiming for,” she told a news conference. “This is not to say we would be in complete lockdown for six months but it means that as a nation we have to be really, really responsible and keep doing what we are all doing until we are sure that we can gradually start lifting various interventions.”  Her warning came as Johnson wrote to 30 million households in Britain urging them to stick to strict rules to prevent the publicly funded National Health Service (NHS) from being overwhelmed by a surge in cases. “We know things will get worse before they get better,” Johnson said. “At this moment of national emergency, I urge you, please, to stay at home, protect the NHS and save lives.”   The number of tests being carried out has hit 10,000 a day, senior minister Michael Gove said and authorities are trying to acquire more ventilators. Britain has placed an order for thousands of the devices to be made by a consortium of companies including Ford (F.N), Airbus (AIR.PA) and Rolls-Royce (RR.L). The repurposing of industry echoes Britain’s Second World War effort, with housing minister Robert Jenrick saying that all parts of the country are now on an “emergency footing” as strategic coordination centers are established. “This is an unprecedented step in peacetime,” he said.


Gardens at VA Hospital provide recreation and therapy.

Explanation: Raised garden beds at the Alexandria VA Hospital are providing recreation and therapy for the veterans who tend to them daily.

The gardens are located outside the hospital’s nursing home and acute psychiatric units. They were planted in April, thanks in part to an outreach agreement between the Alexandria VA Health System and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a USDA agency. “For USDA and NRCS, there is a big focus on reaching out to veterans,” said Amy Robertson, public affairs specialist for NRCS. ” ... This was a way for them (the VA) to be able to use agriculture and gardening for recreation and therapy, and it was a great way for us to reach veterans. It’s really a perfect partnership.” Garden beds outside the VA’s Community Living Center are raised to a height that allows access for people in wheelchairs. “I come out here three or four times a day,” said Don Jones, a Navy veteran and resident of the Community Living Center. “It’s therapeutic.” Studies back up the idea that gardening is a therapeutic outlet and good for mental health. Robin Joffrion-Sawyer, the hospital’s supervisory recreation therapist, said fresh air and sunshine also benefits patients, particularly in the psychiatric unit. In addition to PTSD, the psychiatric unit treats veterans for things like depression and substance abuse problems. “In this setting, they can tend to focus on the negative aspects of what brought them into the hospital,” she said. “Bringing them outside, giving them something to focus their attention on and a reason to socialize, I think that makes their mood better, makes their self-esteem improve, and it makes them more willing to interact with others.” Eric Smith worked for a landscaping business in the Lafayette area after serving in the military as an Air Force security officer. Gardening is something he’s missed since moving into the Community Center. “I like being outside, being in nature — even the bugs,” he said. So far, veterans are growing fruit and vegetables like tomatoes, bell peppers, cucumbers, watermelon, cantaloupe and strawberries. The cucumbers and a few tomatoes already have been harvested as a snack for patients to enjoy. “It reminds of when I was a kid, and we got our vegetables out of the garden,” said Gary Polk, another VA resident, who served in Vietnam. ”. We ate pretty good, and our neighbors did, too.” “A goal of ours is to work with our dietary department to begin using the vegetables to cook for the patients,” Joffrion-Sawyer said. Everything in the gardens was planted during a workday coordinated by NRCS. From there, the agency has provided technical support as needed. “At one point many years ago we had a big horticultural program. (Until recently,) we had the facilities. We had the ground. We just didn’t have really the funding,” Joffrion-Sawyer said. “Once we were able to network with USDA and NCRS, they came in, provided the funding, but also gave us guidance as far education, because didn’t know exactly what is was we needed to plant and what would work the best.”


A video shows a chicken being hypnotized by holding its head down and "drawing" a line in the sand extending from its beak.

Explanation: While Hemingway may be taking some artistic license with his “an hour or more” sentence, and although this trick isn’t guaranteed to work on all breeds of chicken, the above-displayed viral video showcases a technique to “hypnotize” chickens that has been used for centuries.

In July 2019, a video supposedly showing a chicken being hypnotized went viral on social media: Hypnotizing a chicken pic.twitter.com/vfdzGfjWsc — Because I’m a Guy (@CauseWereGuys) July 22, 2019  This is a genuine, unaltered video of a chicken reacting to a line being drawn in the sand directly in front of it. However, while this practice is often described as “hypnosis,” Dimitrios Beredimas, an agronomist and blogger at Strange Animals, noted that it would be more accurate to say that this chicken is in a state of “tonic immobility.” This video appears to have originated on the Insane Monkey YouTube page in April 2019. That version was accompanied by the following description:  This video shows you how it really works by drawing a single line in front of a chicken or a rooster and they become hypnotized almost instantly and will not move until the line is gone. This really works and i have done it many times and so have all my neighbors and family who have chickens and roosters. While many people may be seeing this chicken hypnotism video for the first time, this behavior has been acknowledged since at least 1648, when it was mentioned in “Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae” (“The Great Art of Light and Shadow”) by Athanasius Kircher, a German Jesuit scholar:  So what’s happening here? The video shows a chicken entering a catatonic-type state after experiencing a “fear-potentiated response” to a line drawn in the sand. This animal behavior is called “‘tonic immobility,” but readers may be more familiar with the colloquial terms “playing dead” or “playing possum.”  While this is typically a defensive mechanism, Beredimas notes that the chicken isn’t particularly good at pretending to be dead: This strange animal behaviour is officially called ‘tonic immobility’, a natural state of semi-paralysis that many animals exhibit when under threat. Commonly known as apparent death, playing dead and playing possum, this state serves as a defensive mechanism as most predators prefer live prey. In chickens, this is most probably a vestigial trait as it doesn’t seem to have a useful purpose. The chicken doesn’t make a good job hiding the fact it’s still alive. Its obvious that is breathing and we can see some eye movement and blinking. Since this phenomenon may be new to city folk, let’s take a look at a few other videos showcasing this technique:    If you have access to a chicken and want to try this, the Strange Animals blog provided the following instructions: The trick is quite simple. All you have to do is hold the chicken’s head down against the ground, and draw a straight line using a stick, your finger, a piece of chalk or whatever. The line should start at the beak and extend straight outwards, in front of the chicken. If done properly, the chicken — or rooster — will be put into a state of trance and lie still for anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes! To de-hypnotize the chicken, just clap your hands or give it a gentle push. It may take a few tries to awaken the bird. This isn’t the only way to hypnotize a chicken. Other methods include swirling your finger in a circle around the birds head or tucking its head underneath its wing. The latter method was briefly mentioned in Ernest Hemingway’s posthumous 1985 book, “The Dangerous Summer“: You can lay the chicken down with its head still under its wing and it will lie, hypnotized, for an hour or more or until you wake it. It was a parlor trick that had much success in East Africa. Sometimes I would have a dozen chickens lying asleep in a row on the porch of some native hut in a village under Kilimanjaro when we needed something badly and it was necessary to make magic to obtain it.


The attorney general requires that rape victims pay for the rape kit.

Explanation: Radnofsky says the attorney general requires rape victims pay for rape kits.

Crime, Women, Texas, Barbara Ann Radnofsky,

In her campaign to become the next attorney general of Texas, Democratic candidate Barbara Ann Radnofsky is using a crime-victim issue to attack her opponent, GOP incumbent Greg Abbott. In a video on her Web site, Radnofsky makes the provocative claim that "the attorney general requires that rape victims pay for the rape kit" — a reference to forensic examinations given to victims of sexual assault. We wondered whether Radnofsky's statement was true. This is what we found:  Under current state law, sexual assault victims in Texas should never have to pay for their forensic exams, which are done by medical professionals to collect physical evidence for the investigation and prosecution of sexual assault suspects. Local law enforcement agencies are responsible for paying hospitals for rape kits in cases in which the victims report the crimes. Those agencies can seek reimbursement of up to $700 through the Crime Victims’ Compensation Fund, which is administered by the attorney general’s office. If a victim chooses not to report the crime, the Texas Department of Public Safety is responsible for paying for the exam and getting reimbursement from the fund. When asked about Radnofsky’s statement in the video, Torie Camp, deputy director of the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, a victims advocacy organization, said, "That’s not true, and if any rape victims are paying for rape kits, that shouldn’t happen. State law is very clear on this issue, and the attorney general can’t trump state law to make rape victims pay for rape kits." But Texas law hasn't always read that way. In the past, rape exams were done by medical professionals and then paid for by law enforcement agencies only if sexual assault victims reported the crimes. The reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, signed by President George W. Bush in 2006, gave states three years to eliminate such reporting requirements so that all victims could obtain free forensic medical exams. In 2009, the Texas Legislature finally changed the law, directing the Department of Public Safety to cover the cost of a rape kit for any victim who chooses not to report. For Radnofsky, that change took too long. She says that Abbott could have -- and should have -- acted earlier to bring administration of the victims' compensation fund into compliance with the federal act. A spokesman for Abbott's office says the attorney general did not have the authority to change a policy that was mandated by state law. When asked if she knew of any instances when victims had paid for their own rape kits, Radnofsky said she did not. But she isn't the first person to wade into this gnarly issue. In May, a Houston television station aired a report, picked up by CNN, that caused an uproar in the advocacy community because it implied that sexual assault victims were being billed for forensic exams, Camp said. In response, both the attorney general’s office and TAASA issued public statements that termed the TV story inaccurate and misleading. The attorney general's office said that as of Jan. 1, the office had paid for 57,702 rape exams since December 2002 and had not denied any requests for reimbursements for the kits from law enforcement agencies. TAASA said the TV report implied that billing victims for their rape kits "was a common practice in Texas despite being told by several sources … that this was not the case. … The problem is there isn’t really a problem." Officials from other organizations that deal directly with sexual assault victims, including SafePlace and the Austin Police Department’s sex crimes unit, also said that they were not aware of any large-scale problems with victims receiving bills for forensic exams. That leaves this question: Before the Texas law was changed, did sexual assault victims who did not want to report a crime have to pay for their forensic exams? No, according to officials contacted for this story. In those cases, victims were not given the exams to begin with, so payment was not an issue. However, hospitals have sometimes mistakenly sent bills to victims for their forensic exams, according to the attorney general’s office. But none of the officials we contacted knew of any data on how often that happens. Summing up: Regardless of whether Abbott took the initiative on this issue and regardless of whether some sexual assault victims have been mistakenly billed on occasion, Radnofsky’s claim is wrong. The attorney general does not require rape victims to pay for rape kits and never has. That's why we give Radnofsky a .


Explanation: This was correct when the viral post began to appear. Reported new cases declined from their peak in late February, and have been roughly level since mid-March

Doctors in India have been successful in treating coronavirus with a combination of drugs (Lopinavir, Retonovir, Oseltamivir along with Chlorphenamine) and are going to suggest the same medicine globally. India’s ministry of health has advised that the anti-HIV drugs, Lopinavir and Retonovir, are used in some groups of Covid-19 patients. But it is unclear how successful this treatment has been. The other two drugs from the claim are not mentioned in their guidance. Researchers at the Erasmus Medical Center claim to have found an antibody against coronavirus. Researchers in the Netherlands have released research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, on an antibody against the new coronavirus. A 103 year-old Chinese grandmother has made a full recovery from Covid-19 after being treated for 6 days in Wuhan, China This has been widely reported in the media. Apple has reopened all 42 China stores. Correct. On 13 March 2020, Apple announced that it had reopened all 42 stores in mainland China after a closure of almost six weeks. Cleveland Clinic developed a Covid-19 test that gives results in hours, not days. The number of new cases in South Korea is declining. Italy is hit hard, experts say, only because they have the oldest population in Europe. Whilst it is true that an older population has contributed to a high number of deaths in Italy, it may not be the sole reason. Scientists in Israel are likely to announce the development of a coronavirus vaccine. Scientists in Israel and elsewhere are working on developing a vaccination to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, but it won’t be ready for the public for over a year. Three Maryland coronavirus patients fully recovered and are able to return to everyday life. Correct. On 13 March 2020, Montgomery County, Maryland confirmed that three residents who previously had the virus no longer tested positive. A network of Canadian scientists are making excellent progress in Covid-19 research. At least one group of Canadian scientists has recently announced some progress in understanding Covid-19. A San Diego biotech company is developing a Covid-19 vaccine in collaboration with Duke University and National University of Singapore. Tulsa County's first positive Covid-19 case has recovered. This individual has had two negative tests, which is the indicator of recovery. Correct, this patient has recovered according to official Tulsa County sources. Two negative tests is one of three official indicators of recovery among people with Covid-19 (who showed symptoms). All seven patients who were getting treated for Covid-19 at Safdarjung hospital in New Delhi have recovered. There is a news story reporting that seven patients in this hospital in New Delhi had recovered. However, these were not the only Covid-19 patients in the city. Plasma from newly recovered patients from Covid -19 can treat others infected by Covid-19. This is being used as a treatment in some countries, but clinical trials have not yet proved that this is effective. Claim 1 of 15


Anxiety, anger and hope as women face childbirth during coronavirus pandemic.

Explanation: To prepare for the birth of her first child, Veronika Legat, a 35-year-old Czech lawyer, has cut off contact with her family and friends to avoid getting ill from the coronavirus or even catching a mild cold.

Her hospital told her that if she had any symptoms of a cold, a fever or runny nose, her newborn baby, due in April, may be isolated from her for two weeks as a precaution against the new disease. She might not be allowed to breastfeed. “I’m not afraid of the virus but I feel angry,” Legat said from her home in Prague. “Until the birth, we are staying home, and won’t meet with anyone.”  As the coronavirus pandemic sweeps across Europe, prompting restrictions on public life and putting unprecedented strain on hospitals, pregnant women like Legat are preparing to give birth with a mixture of anxiety, anger and hope. Some are worried about being separated from their babies. Others regret not being able to have a partner present at the birth. Many are having to accept reduced pre-natal medical appointments. Healthcare authorities have introduced varying rules in different countries, deciding whether a woman can be accompanied during childbirth, for example, of if she must be separated from her baby if she is sick. In some cases these rules are more stringent than recommendations issued by the World Health Organization (WHO), reflecting global uncertainty about how the virus acts and how best to prevent it spreading. The WHO says there is no evidence that pregnant women are at higher risk of severe illness than the general population if they contract the COVID-19 disease, caused by the new coronavirus. It recommends that women who have tested positive for the virus should be encouraged to care for and breastfeed their newborns as normal, provided they maintain stringent hygiene. Marika Antolec-Walczak, 34, a judge from Tychy in southern Poland, knew if she went into labour early she would not have been able to travel to her nearby hospital, converted into an infectious disease unit because of the pandemic. But what she was most afraid of was being alone. “The first two times I gave birth, my husband was indispensable in helping me cope with the pain,” she said. Most hospitals in Poland do not allow women to be accompanied during childbirth, even though the WHO recommends “having a companion of choice present during delivery”. “It’s a threat not only to the patient and the child but also to medical personnel,” said Michal Bulsa, an obstetrician in Szczecin, a city in northwestern Poland. “I wouldn’t allow it.”  For women elsewhere in Europe, having a partner share the experience of childbirth is an option. In Italy, which has been the hardest hit by the disease in Europe, some hospitals allow women to be accompanied during the birth, but not afterwards. The challenges of giving birth during the coronavirus crisis do not end there. Some women have been told not to arrive at the hospital too early - a tough call to make, especially for first-time mothers - to minimise the chance of infecting others or being infected. Shopping for a newborn is also tough, with most stores closed in many parts of Europe. Borrowing a crib from a friend in another town may no longer be possible with travel restricted across much of the continent. Valentina Draghi, a 41-year-old speech therapist from Milan, started her maternity leave in February, weeks before her April 7 due date. She had hoped to go shopping for clothes with her baby girl’s grandmothers and attend prenatal classes. “All of a sudden nothing of what I had planned is left,” she said. She was told she would have to go through labour wearing a protective mask. “My partner may be present, but in two weeks I do not know what will happen,” she said. “My biggest fear is that they won’t let him in. I know it’s forbidden elsewhere.”  “It’s my first pregnancy. I’m 41 years old. I’d like it to be a unique and important event,” she said. For Louise Koldsgaard, trusting the healthcare system in Denmark gives her a sense of calm. “My midwife told me: maternity wards have never been cleaner,” she said. “I try not to let it get to me too much. I still walk my dog every day and drink coffee at the local shop.”  But Brandon Allen, 48, from Detroit in the United States, fears what awaits his family beyond the birth of his fourth child due next week. “It’s surreal. I’ve never seen anything like this in my life,” he said. “People around me I know are dying. “I’m freaking out about that. We are bringing a baby into this pandemic,” he said.


GSK hands back failed muscular dystrophy drug to Prosensa.

Explanation: GlaxoSmithKline has handed back rights to an experimental drug for Duchenne muscular dystrophy to U.S.-listed Dutch biotech firm Prosensa after it failed last year in a critical clinical trial.

Both companies said on Monday that Prosensa would now have full and unencumbered rights to drisapersen, as well as other compounds at an earlier stage of development. The move marks the termination of a 2009 collaboration deal between the two firms. Hopes for the drug slumped last September when it did not show a statistically significant improvement in the distance that patients could walk in six minutes compared with a placebo in a final-stage Phase III test run by GSK. [ID:nL5N0HG1JP]  Currently, there is no approved drug to alter the course of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) - a rare muscle-wasting genetic disease affecting boys that puts most of them in wheelchairs by the age of 12 and leads to early death. Shares in Prosensa, which raised nearly $90 million in an initial public offering on Nasdaq in June, fell 17.5 percent to $4.63 on the news GSK had thrown in the towel. They were priced at $13 in the IPO and hit a high of $34.55 in August. Despite the latest setback, Prosensa’s chief executive Hans Schikan said he had not given up on drisapersen, adding the company was analyzing results from various studies of the drug. “Based on the data we’ve seen so far we feel it absolutely justifies a discussion with experts, with patient advocacy groups and most importantly with regulators to define what the next steps could be, including a potential regulatory path forward,” he said in a telephone interview from the J.P. Morgan healthcare conference in San Francisco. Schikan will present an update on the company’s prospects at the meeting on Thursday, including a high-level update on various analyses that have been carried out so far. He declined to specify the likely next step, but industry analysts at Leerink said the fact GSK had handed back rights suggested that pooling and sub-group analyses had failed to provide strong enough evidence to justify a filing for approval. There had been speculation that younger DMD patients might benefit more from the drug or that combining results from different clinical trials might show a statistically significant drisapersen effect. Leerink estimated that Prosensa ended 2013 with around $98 million in cash, which depending on its new development plans for drisapersen would likely be enough to fund operations into mid- or late-2015. Last summer GSK and Prosensa had been seen as ahead of the pack in making a drug for DMD - a belief underscored by it having been awarded a “breakthrough therapy” designation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In the event, the key trial results in September dashed those hopes, dealing a major blow to Prosensa but causing relatively little damage at its much larger partner GSK. Overall GSK’s research laboratories have done well in the past 12 months, with new drug approvals in HIV, cancer and respiratory disease. But Britain’s biggest drugmaker has been less successful in higher risk areas. In addition to the DMD setback it has also reported disappointing results with a new kind of therapeutic cancer vaccine and a novel heart medicine.


Encouraging clinical results for an antibody drug to prevent or treat HIV

Explanation: While this study of a clinical trial of a new biologic agent called 10-1074 is understandably exciting for HIV researchers — it involved just 33 people (19 individuals who were infected with HIV and 14 who were not) — and lacked important detail which would have made it more meaningful for the rest of us. We give the release credit for acknowledging that the biologic drug is still preliminary and needs to be tested in a larger trial, but that caution seems overshadowed by the other premature projections made in the release. The stated purpose of the research was “to determine whether the antibody was safe and whether it had antiviral activity in humans” but the news release didn’t tell us the actual results of the trial and what this might mean in the larger context of HIV treatment. We know that antiretrovirals — the current therapy  — can cause severe side effects and require lifelong treatment. But highlighting a new approach without talking about its potential drawbacks seems to be premature. We hope that “broadly’ neutralizing antibodies is part of an alternate treatment strategy, but without more detail, is it too soon to be getting HIV-infected patients hopes up?

This new process sounds very expensive but the release doesn’t give us any clues as to how costly it might be. Biologic therapies used for other indications are very expensive. It would be helpful if the release had at least mentioned cost, even to say that they are as yet unknown. The release could do a better job of explaining that this is a very limited study looking primarily at safety. There are no meaningful clinical outcomes reported. When the release states “among 13 HIV-infected people who received the highest dose of 10-1074, 11 showed a rapid decline in the amount of virus” — we need to know what that means. What is rapidity and how is it important? Is it relevant to patients that the trial drug was “sensitive to other broadly neutralizing antibodies, including 3BNC117?” What does this mean? The release doesn’t include a discussion of actual safety results of the study drug, although this is the primary goal of the study. Was this safe? Were there any adverse events? The discussion about “resistant virus” found in some patients is not well described. Was this a resistance identified at the beginning of the trial or related to use of 10-1074? We get no sense of whether the study drug was safe and whether it had antiviral activity in humans. This is a small and very limited study looking at safety and antiviral activity of broadly neutralizing antibodies in a short-term sense (very different end-point than prior studies of antiviral therapy). While these results may support a larger study, the current data cannot be extrapolated to clinical outcomes. We applaud the release for including at least one cautionary comment, that of the study’s first author Marina Caskey: “Based on our findings we think these types of antibodies could be a viable substitute for the drugs currently being used in PrEP. But to clearly demonstrate that these antibodies have an advantage over the pill that’s currently used, we would need to test them in large numbers of people and show that they remain active for a prolonged period of time in the body.” The suggestion that the antibodies under study could replace current therapies goes well beyond the study results. Several steps are going to be needed between this preliminary safety study and using broadly neutralizing antibodies clinically as treatment and/or prevention. There was no overt disease mongering but the release states that “people who do not have HIV are at substantial risk of getting it,” especially those with multiple sexual partners or an HIV-infected partner. The release didn’t provide context on HIV prevalence. However, it did offer context on current antiretroviral therapy and its drawbacks. “Today, HIV is typically treated with antiretroviral therapy, a drug regimen that became available in the 1990s. Although it has been a lifesaver for people infected with the virus, antiretroviral medications have significant drawbacks: they can cause severe side effects, and patients have to take them for life. This is why researchers continue to look for other ways to control the virus—and broadly neutralizing antibodies could prove to be part of an alternate treatment strategy.” The major funding sources for the study are listed at the end of the release. The online version of the published study notes that Tibor Keler, one of the study authors, is employed by Celldex Therapeutics which manufactures 10-1074. This should have been noted in the release. The release mentions that broadly neutralizing antibodies may eventually be an alternative to currently available antiviral therapy as well as pre-exposure prophylaxis, PrEP, (a lower dose of antiviral therapy taken as prevention). The current study doesn’t look at clinical outcomes so the comparison may be premature, although it’s presented in a pretty general way. We can assume that this is preliminary data collection but it would have been useful if the release included information about how long the research process may be before eligible patients might have access to this new therapy. Next steps regarding future clinical trials are mentioned in the last paragraph. The release states this was the first human trial involving a new drug agent and that is indeed novel. The drug must still undergo considerable research on larger groups of patients before its value is proven. The release doesn’t include overtly sensational language. But some of the claims, such as “the most potent of its kind so far” and “showing early promise,” may not be wholly justified by the research so far. The author quotes contain some statements that go beyond the results as well.


Typhoon lashes Japanese capital, one dead, power, transport disrupted.

Explanation: One of the strongest typhoons to hit eastern Japan in recent years struck just east of the capital Tokyo on Monday, killing one woman, with record-breaking winds and stinging rain damaging buildings and disrupting transport.

More than 160 flights were canceled and scores of train lines closed for hours, snarling the morning commute for millions in a greater Tokyo area with a population of some 36 million. Direct train service between Narita airport and the capital remained severely limited into the evening, with thousands of irritated travelers packed into a key transport hub for both the Rugby World Cup starting later this month and next year’s Tokyo Olympics. “They simply had no contingency plan...,” one weary traveler who lives in Tokyo said of the scene, in which people crowded the exit areas and food ran out in airport stores. “They let planes land ... and thousands of passengers were disgorged into an airport that was cut off - no buses, no JR trains. The only connection was a private train running every half hour half way to Tokyo.”  The man, who said he arrived just before 4 p.m. local time and only caught a bus at 7:30 p.m. after standing in line, added: “My wife said: what if this happens during the Olympics?”   Typhoon Faxai, a Lao woman’s name, slammed ashore near the city of Chiba shortly before dawn, bringing with it wind gusts of 207 kmh (128 mph), the strongest ever recorded in Chiba, national broadcaster NHK said. A woman in her fifties was confirmed dead after she was found in a Tokyo street and taken to hospital. Footage from a nearby security camera showed she had been smashed against a building by strong winds, NHK reported. Another woman in her 20s was rescued from her house in Ichihara, east of Tokyo, after it was partly crushed when a metal pole from a golf driving range fell on it. She was seriously injured. “There was a huge grinding noise, I couldn’t figure out what it was. Then I looked up and saw a big hole in the roof, but I was so keyed up I couldn’t figure out what had happened,” a neighbor said. Some minor landslides occurred and a bridge was washed away, while as many as 930,000 houses lost power at one point, NHK said, including the entire city of Kamogawa. But the number of homes without power had dropped to 840,000 by early Monday afternoon, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry said. Some concrete electric poles were snapped off at their bases, while electricity towers in Chiba were toppled over. Some panels of a floating solar power plant southeast of Tokyo were on fire. The Japan Atomic Energy Agency said a cooling tower at its research reactor at Oarai, which has not been in operation since 2006 and is set to be decommissioned, had fallen, but there was no radiation leakage, impact on workers or the surrounding environment. A Sony Corp (6758.T) spokesman said operations at its plant in Kisarazu, southeast of Tokyo, were suspended due to power outages. The company could not say when the plant, which assembles PlayStation gaming consoles, would reopen. Two Nissan factories west of Tokyo, including its Oppama plant, suspended operations due to flooding, NHK said. About four to five typhoons make landfall in Japan every year, but it is unusual for them to do so near Tokyo. NHK said Faxai was the strongest storm in the Tokyo area in several years. Streets normally busy with commuters walking or bicycling were deserted, with winds just east of Tokyo shaking buildings. Metal signs were torn from buildings, trucks overturned, the metal roof of a petrol station torn off and glass display cases destroyed, scattering sidewalks with broken glass. Trees were uprooted throughout the metropolitan area, some falling on train tracks to further snarl transport. Some 2,000 people were ordered to leave their homes at one point because of the danger of landslides, NHK said. Parts of the high-speed Tokaido Shinkansen train line were halted but service resumed after several hours. It took hours for other lines to resume, packing stations with impatient commuters fanning themselves in the humid air. Temperatures shot up to unseasonably hot levels in the wake of the storm, prompting authorities to warn of the danger of heatstroke.


3 win Nobel Prize for showing how cells sense low oxygen.

Explanation: Two Americans and a British scientist won a Nobel Prize on Monday for discovering details of how the body’s cells sense and react to low oxygen levels, providing a foothold for developing new treatments for anemia, cancer and other diseases.

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Drs. William G. Kaelin Jr. of Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Gregg L. Semenza of Johns Hopkins University and Peter J. Ratcliffe at the Francis Crick Institute in Britain and Oxford University won the prize for advances in physiology or medicine. The scientists, who worked largely independently, will share the 9 million kronor ($918,000) cash award, said the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. They “revealed the mechanism for one of life’s most essential adaptive processes,” the Nobel committee said. Cells can encounter lowered oxygen not only from situations like living at high altitudes, but also from things like a wound that interferes with local blood supply. Their response triggers reactions that include producing red blood cells, generating new blood vessels and fine-tuning the immune system. The Nobel committee said scientists are focused on developing drugs that can treat diseases by either activating or suppressing the oxygen-sensing machinery. Such manipulation could help in attacking cancer cells, experts said. Another payoff is pills to boost production of red blood cells in anemia, which can appear in people with chronic kidney disease. One such drug has been approved in China and Japan and a filing for approval in the U.S. is expected soon, Kaelin said. Still other potential targets include heart attack and stroke, and a condition of reduced blood flow in the limbs that can lead to amputation, the researchers said. Kaelin, 61, said he was half-asleep when the phone rang Monday morning with the news of his award. “I don’t usually get phone calls at 5:00 in the morning, so, naturally, my heart started racing and I could see the call was from Stockholm,” he said. “And so I think at that point I almost had an out-of-body type of experience.” Kaelin is paid by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which also supports AP’s Health and Science department. Ratcliffe, 65, said he learned the news after he was summoned out of a meeting this morning by his secretary, who had “a look of urgency.” Trained as a kidney specialist, Ratcliffe said his research began when he and colleagues simply wanted to figure out how cells sense oxygen. “I thought it was a definable problem and just thought we’d find out how it worked,” he said. It was about two years into their research program, which began in 1990, that they realized the discovery had much wider significance, Ratcliffe said. “We saw that it wasn’t just cells in the kidney that know how to sense oxygen, but all cells in the body. ... There are hundreds and thousands of processes the body uses to adapt to and regulate its oxygen levels.” He said while some promising drugs have been developed, it will be years before it’s clear whether such discoveries are going to change the lives of tens of thousands. In Baltimore, Semenza, 63, said he slept through the Nobel committee’s initial phone call. “By the time I got to the phone it was too late,” he said. He went back to sleep but was able to answer the second call from Stockholm. He said kidney cancer may be the first malignancy in which a drug based on the prize-winning work might make chemotherapy more effective, and that he hopes many other cancers will follow. Speaking at a news conference at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Medicine, Semenza paid tribute to his biology teacher, Rose Nelson, at Sleepy Hollow High School in Sleepy Hollow, N.Y., for inspiring his pursuit of medicine. “She used to say, ‘Now when you win your Nobel Prize, I don’t want you to forget that you learned that here,’” he said. “It’s my great sadness that she is not still alive to share the moment because I know it would have meant a lot to her. She was my inspiration.” “That’s the importance of teachers,” he added. “To make that kind of spark.” Steven McKnight of the UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas noted that the process discovered by the three researchers is widespread in the animal kingdom, found even in the worm. He said the honored work is “of a heroic nature.” Last year, James Allison of the United States and Tasuku Honjo of Japan won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Medicine for their work in immunotherapy, activating the body’s natural defense system to fight tumors. Monday’s announcement kicked off this year’s Nobel Prizes. The physics prize will be handed out Tuesday, followed by the chemistry prize on Wednesday. This year there is a double-header for the Nobel Literature Prize — one each for 2018 and 2019 — which will be awarded Thursday. The Peace Prize will be announced on Friday. The 2018 Nobel Literature prize was suspended after a sex abuse scandal rocked the Swedish Academy, the body that awards the literature prizes, so two prizes are being awarded this year. The economics prize will be awarded next Monday. Officially known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, it wasn’t created by Nobel, but by Riksbanken, Sweden’s central bank, in 1968. The laureates will receive their awards at elegant ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on Dec. 10 — the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896. ___ Read more stories on the 2019 Nobel Prizes by The Associated Press at https://www.apnews.com/NobelPrizes ___ Cheng reported from London. Associated Press writers Regina Garcia Cano in Baltimore, Christopher Chester in New York, Michael Warren in Atlanta, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, and David Keyton in Stockholm contributed to this report.


Trump administration drops Obama-era water protection rule.

Explanation: The Trump administration on Thursday revoked an Obama-era regulation that shielded many U.S. wetlands and streams from pollution but was opposed by developers and farmers who said it hurt economic development and infringed on property rights.

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Environmental groups criticized the administration’s action, the latest in a series of moves to roll back environmental protections put into place under President Barack Obama. The 2015 Waters of the United States rule defined the waterways subject to federal regulation. Scrapping it “puts an end to an egregious power grab, eliminates an ongoing patchwork of clean water regulations and restores a longstanding and familiar regulatory framework,” Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler said at a news conference in Washington, D.C. Wheeler and R.D. James, assistant secretary of the Army for civil works, signed a document overturning the rule and temporarily restoring an earlier regulatory system that emerged after a 2006 ruling from a sharply divided Supreme Court. The agencies plan to adopt a new rule by the end of the year that is expected to define protected waterways more narrowly than the Obama policy. The Clean Water Act requires landowners to obtain federal permits before developing or polluting navigable waterways such as rivers and lakes. But disputes have long persisted over what other waters are subject to regulation — particularly wetlands that don’t have a direct connection to those larger waters, plus small headwater streams and channels that flow only during and after rainfall. Environmentalists contend many of those smaller, seemingly isolated waters are tributaries of the larger waterways and can have a significant effect on their quality. Denying them federal protection would leave millions of Americans with less safe drinking water and allow damage of wetlands that prevent flooding, filter pollutants and provide habitat for a multitude of fish, waterfowl and other wildlife, they said. “By repealing the Clean Water Rule, this administration is opening our iconic waterways to a flood of pollution,” said Bart Johnsen-Harris of Environment America. “The EPA is abdicating its mission to protect our environment and our health.” Wheeler said regulators had gone far beyond the intent of Congress under the 1972 clean water law. “The 2015 rule meant that more businesses and landowners across the U.S. would need to obtain a federal permit to exercise control over their own property, a process that can cost tens of thousands of dollars and take months or even years to complete,” he said. “It also put more local land-use decisions in the hands of unelected bureaucrats. Many Americans balked at this idea, and rightfully so.” President Donald Trump had ordered the EPA and Army Corps to develop a replacement policy that has a more restrictive definition of protected wetlands and streams. The Natural Resources Defense Council said the administration’s action would be challenged in court. “The Clean Water Rule represented solid science and smart public policy,” the group said in a statement. “Where it has been enforced, it has protected important waterways and wetlands, providing certainty to all stakeholders.” Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said the 2015 rule had generated a greater sense of urgency among its membership than any other issue. “When you take the private property rights from a man that’s worked all his life ... to grow the food and fiber for all of us to sit down and enjoy three times a day, it’s something he just can’t stand,” Duvall said. But Laura DeYoung, who runs a small sheep farm near Peninsula, Ohio, said she favored federal oversight to protect Lake Erie, where agricultural phosphorus runoff is blamed for large algae blooms. “Nothing in the Obama regulations that came out prevented me from farming the way I was previously farming,” she said. The question of which waters are covered under the Clean Water Act has inspired decades of lawsuits and numerous bills in Congress. The Supreme Court in 2006 produced three differing opinions, leading the Obama administration to craft its rule. It provided federal oversight to upstream tributaries and headwaters, including wetlands, ponds, lakes and streams that can affect the quality of navigable waters. The regulation drew quick legal challenges from 31 states and court rulings blocking its implementation in some. It was effective in 22 states, Washington, D.C., and U.S. territories before Thursday’s action. Betsy Southerland, who was director of science and technology in EPA’s Office of Water during the Obama administration, said revoking its policy would create further regulatory confusion. “This repeal is a victory for land developers, oil and gas drillers and miners who will exploit that ambiguity to dredge and fill small streams and wetlands that were protected from destruction by the 2015 rule because of their critical impact on national water quality,” Southerland said. Sen. John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican and chairman of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, applauded the Trump administration move, saying the Obama rule “would have put backyard ponds, puddles and prairie potholes under Washington’s control.” Democratic Rep. Dan Kildee of Michigan, where two disputes over federal wetlands permits led to the 2006 Supreme Court case, said Trump “has decided to weaken protections for our water and reward corporate polluters.”


Mitch McConnell Says he "voted for even stronger protections (in the Violence Against Women Act) than Obama's agenda will allow.

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Sen. Mitch McConnell enlisted the help of his wife, former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, to push back against claims from Democratic challenger Alison Lundergan Grimes that the Kentucky Republican is anti-women. "Have you ever noticed how some liberals feel entitled to speak on behalf of all women? As if every woman agrees with Barack Obama," Chao says in an ad released Aug. 5, 2014. A narrator adds: "Mitch McConnell co-sponsored the original Violence Against Women Act – he’s always supported its purpose. Mitch voted for even stronger protections than Obama’s agenda will allow." We took a look at Grimes’ ad in a separate fact-check. We said the claim that McConnell voted "two times against the Violence against Women Act" was Half True, given McConnell’s history of voting in favor of the law at times. But what about McConnell’s response that he "voted for even stronger protections" than the Violence Against Women Act that President Barack Obama signed? The Violence Against Women Act first passed Congress in 1994 and, according to the Congressional Research Service, was "intended to change attitudes toward domestic violence, foster awareness of domestic violence, improve services and provisions for victims, and revise the manner in which the criminal justice system responds to domestic violence." The bill was reauthorized and expanded several times in the succeeding two decades, most recently in 2013. While the Violence Against Women Act sailed to reauthorization in 2000 and 2005, attempts to do so in 2012 and 2013 were marred by partisan fighting in Congress. Democrats presented a bill with three new components that many Republicans rejected: including victims of discrimination for sexual orientation and gender identity among "underserved populations"; increasing the cap on U-Visas, a visa that grants nonimmigrant status to immigrant victims of domestic violence who assist police in prosecuting their attackers; allowing non-American Indian residents on tribal land to be prosecuted by tribal courts for domestic violence. The 2012 Senate bill died in the House, but the 2013 version passed Congress and was signed by Obama. Both years, Republicans offered their own versions of the Violence Against Women Act. Those measures, McConnell’s campaign said, included provisions that made them "stronger" than the bill Obama signed into law. What were those provisions? For starters, Republicans proposed mandatory minimum sentences — ranging from 5 to 15 years — on certain sexual assault crimes. However, advocates of domestic violence awareness were specifically against the inclusion of these provisions. The National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence Against Women, an umbrella group for many stakeholders advocating on this issue, worried that long mandatory minimums would "keep victims who were assaulted by someone they know from reporting" and would create other issues in sentencing. "These proposals are solutions in search of problems, and will only serve to exacerbate the already existing problem of prison overcrowding," the organization wrote. McConnell’s campaign also noted that the Republican amendments required that 30 percent of the grant money given to states and localities to train and assist law enforcement in combating violence against women must be set aside for sexual assault. The Democratic bill put the figure at 20 percent. But this was more a shift in priorities than anything. It wasn’t allocating extra money to combat violence against women, just mandating how much of the pot must be spent on a specific type of violence. Advocates of the Democratic bill said the Republican bill was weaker because it did not include the additional protections for LGBT, immigrants and American Indian women who are abused on tribal land by non-natives. While there were may have been considerable political differences on whether those provisions should be part of the Violence Against Women Act, it’s hard to claim that bills that didn’t include them — the ones McConnell supported — had "stronger protections." Our ruling McConnell’s ad claimed that he "voted for even stronger protections than Obama’s agenda will allow." Perhaps McConnell could argue that the mandatory minimum sentences Republicans required in their alternative made for a "stronger" bill, but advocates of domestic abuse awareness opposed this measure as unnecessary. And the Republican measure was absent several protections for certain groups that were included in the bill Obama signed. McConnell is within his right to oppose those provisions, but it makes it hard for him to prove that he supported "stronger" legislation. We rate the claim .