Texas prisoners ‘paid $2 an hour to move bodies of coronavirus victims’


Louise Hall
Fri, 20 November 2020

An El Paso County detention inmate pushes a trolley while helping to move bodies to refrigerated trailers outside the Medical Examiner’s Office in El Paso, Texas (REUTERS)

Prison inmates in Texas are being paid two dollars an hour to move coronavirus bodies in Texas, reports have said.

Nine inmates are working to move the bodies of coronavirus victims at the medical examiner's office, Chris Acosta, public affairs director at the El Paso County Sheriff's Office told CNN.

The inmates recruited to do the work are said to be "low-level offenders", are provided full personal protective equipment (PPE) to work in, and are being paid two dollars an hour, reports said.

"The work is 100 per cent voluntary," Ms Acosta told CBS News. "It's great that these individuals are stepping up and volunteering to assist a community in dire need of help right now."

Refrigerated trucks for the bodies of victims were set up in the area as Texas continues to see a spike in cases and deaths, which has led to overcrowding in local morgues.

Prison labour is common practice across the US, but activists have questioned the ethics of allowing inmates to complete such “risky” work for such low wages.

"We think it's OK to put [inmates] in these risky situations, while at the same time denying them access to testing and medical care and free phone calls with their families," Krish Gundu, the co-founder and executive director of the Texas Jail Project, told KGTV.

"Is this what you would pay an essential worker who would be doing the job if you didn't have an inmate to do the job, right?" Ms Gundu said. "I mean, why the difference?"

Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists posted on Twitter: “They've been doing this tough work since Monday, before El Paso increased to 10 mobile morgues. I cry for El Paso.”

The average pay for inmates across the US varies from $0.14 an hour to $1.41 an hour depending on the work, according to the prison policy initiative.



📍NEW: Chilling video of El Paso jail inmates hired to move bodies of #COVID19 deceased patients into mobile overflow morgues. Inmates wear full PPEs & paid $2/hour. They’ve been doing this tough work since Monday, before El Paso increased to 10 mobile morgues. I cry for El Paso. pic.twitter.com/KgQBpzD1mZ

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) November 15, 2020

The inmates have been working at the medical examiner's office for a week now, Ms Acosta told CNN.

El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniegon told an affiliate of the broadcaster that over 100 bodies are being housed in the permanent morgue and mobile morgues at the medical examiner’s office.

Ms Acosta stipulated to media outlets that the county has requested help from the National Guard to move the bodies and If that happens the inmates will stop providing assistance.

The broadcaster reported that the inmates are also being housed together throughout the duration of the work and for two weeks after to prevent the spread of the virus in the prison.

Texas surpassed 20,000 confirmed coronavirus deaths on Monday, recording the second-highest death count overall in the US behind New York, according to researchers from Johns Hopkins University.

El Paso has become one of the hardest-hit areas in the state with the county having surpassed 70,000 coronavirus cases, leading to the deaths of 867 people.

AOC and squad members lobby for Biden to accept Green New Deal outside DNC

Louise Hall
Fri, 20 November 2020

Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, center, arrives for an event with Rep.-elect Cori Bush, right on Thursday, 19 November 2020, outside the Democratic National Committee (AP)

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressive members of “the squad” have rallied outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters demanding president-elect Joe Biden embrace the Green New Deal.

During the rally on Thursday outside the Washington headquarters, Rep Ocasio-Cortez, a Democratic New York congresswoman, urged Mr Biden to take bold action on climate change and racial justice.

“We are all here today because of the movement ... because at the end of the day, dollars don’t vote, people do,” Rep Ocasio-Cortez said.

The rally was broadcast online with the hashtag #BidenBeBrave by the Sunrise Movement, an American youth-led political movement.

“@JoeBiden must act on his mandate & deliver for those who delivered for him. #BidenBeBrave,” the movement said on Twitter.

AOC is part of a group of progressive first-term Democratic congresswomen, known as the “squad,” alongside Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.

This year, the progressive Democrats expanded their ranks with the election of three more candidates who replaced longtime Democratic incumbents: Mondaire Jones, Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush.

At the rally, Minnesota representative Ilhan Omar said: “This is a movement built out of the urgency people feel to protect our planet”

“Some of the leaders of the Democratic Party, or even some of our colleagues who are freshmen, talk about us getting back to basics,” she said, Bloomberg reported.

“We are all here today because of the movement... because at the end of the day, dollars don’t vote, people do” - @AOC

We are going to win a #GreenNewDeal through the power of the people and the power of movements. #BidenBeBrave pic.twitter.com/rYK0lk0yUO
— Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) November 19, 2020

“I was confused because what is more basic than fighting for clean water? What is more basic than fighting for a breathable planet?”

Rep Bush, the first Black woman elected to Congress from Missouri, urged the US to confront how climate change disproportionately affects minority communities.

“When we don’t act, people that look like me die,” Rep Bush said.

The Green New Deal is an ambitious environmental plan to combat climate change that AOC originally co-sponsored in 2019 and seeks to fight the climate crisis and tackle inequality simultaneously.

Mr Biden has previously said he “will work with Congress to implement a bold agenda that addresses the climate emergency, achieves environmental justice and creates good-paying jobs.″

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Development of polio vaccine has useful parallels for COVID-19: historian

UVic historian Mitchell Hammond studies epidemics and the development of various vaccines

CBC News · Posted: Nov 21, 2020 

Medical researcher Dr. Jonas Salk studies slides in his laboratory, following the invention of his pioneering polio vaccine, circa 1957. 

(Three Lions/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

As hopes rise for a COVID-19 vaccine, this isn't the first time millions of people have watched and waited for scientists and medical experts to develop such protection.

Historian Mitchell Hammond studies epidemics and the development of various vaccines at the University of Victoria and says there are parallels between today and the research done to develop a vaccine for polio.

"This was a disease that was feared in the first half of the 20th century. It's actually interesting that sort of like COVID today, polio was more severe in more developed countries," Hammond said on CBC's On The Island.

Polio is a viral disease that largely affected children under five years of age. In severe cases, the disease caused paralysis, trouble breathing and sometimes, death.

Developing the vaccine was something that researchers started on very early in the 1910s, Hammond said, even before the microbe had been isolated.

"They were experimenting with monkeys which was the closest analog that they could find as an animal model. But there wasn't much success with vaccine research until the late 1940s," he said.

Watch | New developments on the COVID-19 vaccine from Moderna:

9:11Minister of Public Services and Procurement Anita Anand says the government is putting in place contracts to boost refrigeration capacity to store millions of vaccine doses. 9:11

Eventually, a team led by Jonas Salk had a breakthrough with a vaccine in the mid 1950s. Another team led by Albert Sabin developed another successful vaccine in the early 1960s.

What are the side effects of Pfizer's, Moderna's vaccines? Your questions answered

However, there were setbacks.

The Cutter Incident — where the vaccine was prepared incorrectly by the Cutter pharmaceutical company and ended up infecting 40,000 children with polio and killing 10 — slowed down vaccination efforts.

Eventually, however, vaccination led to a point where polio is no longer a major danger in Canada. According to the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the last recorded case of wild poliovirus infection in Canada was in 1977.

"The combination of these two vaccines together really almost completely eradicated polio, certainly eliminated it from developed countries to the situation that we're in now where it just exists in a few pockets around the world," said Hammond.

A staff member sets up an antibody production line at the Ibex building of Lonza, where the Moderna mRNA coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine will be produced, in Visp, Switzerland, Sept. 29, 2020. (Denis Balibouse/Reuters)

Hammond says the world of 2020 is very different from the mid-century. For one, scientists are able to work with the latest technologies at a much more rapid pace.

So far, there have been promising results from Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, as well as Moderna. Russia's Sputnik V is also moving to advanced trials.There are at least 50 different vaccines at the human clinical trial stage around the world.

This crowded field of research brings its own challenges, says Hammond.

"Now, we face a situation where trust in scientists and scientific institutions is not quite the same as it was in the 50s and 60s and just hearing about competition and having vaccine development cast in a kind of race for prestige and profit, this is something that is certainly amplified when you have so many different corporate entities and governments that are pursuing this for different reasons," he said.

In addition, he says, the real test with the vaccine will come down to distribution to the most vulnerable members of the population.

"We've got to imagine rolling up our sleeves, not just for the vaccine but the team effort required."

Pfizer says COVID-19 shot 95% effective, seeking clearance soon

Listen to the interview with Professor Mitchelle Hammond on CBC's On The Island:

 A historical take on COVID and the race for a vaccine - Hear from a UVic History professor about polio, smallpox, and other past responses to medical emergency Gregor Craigie spoke with Mitchell Hammond, an assistant professor of History at University of Victoria who's studies epidemics and the development of various vaccines. 9:23 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/history-of-vaccines-1.5807401?cmp=rss

END TIMES PREACHER

Prominent pastor says 'Jesus' is the vaccine after recovering from Covid-19

CHRISTIAN KOOK

Sat 21 Nov 2020


A popular US pastor has returned to the pulpit after recovering from coronavirus. Speaking on Sunday, Pastor John Hagee, 80, said he'd spent 15 days in the hospital with double pneumonia, and that he was "still supposed to be home gasping for air". His miraculous recovery, he declared, was a testament "to the healing power of Jesus Christ".

“We have a vaccine,” pastor Hagee went on, “the name is Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God".

Hagee, was diagnosed with Covid-19 last month, as per an announcement by his son, pastor Matt Hagee. Despite some concern for his father's wellbeing considering his old age the younger Hagee quipped at the time that his dad was "feeling well enough to be frustrated with everybody in a white coat and a stethoscope".

In July, Hagee's ministry-run schools, Cornerstone Christian Schools, filed a lawsuit in a bid to be granted permission to hold in-person classes. The suit proved successful after Texas Governor Greg Abbott stepped in to remind local officials that they did not have the authority to delay reopening schools until after Labor Day as they had planned.

Earlier this year, Hagee, a well-known preacher on the End Times, said Covid-19 was a "dress rehearsal for the New World Order".

“Our economy sunk to the worst since the Great Depression, as we watched power-hungry dictators trample our freedoms in an extended crisis intended to crush the hope of the people," he said. "Make no mistake … the Great Tribulation is coming, and it will be worse.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

UK

Priti Patel repeatedly backed company accused of obtaining Nigerian gas contract through corruption
Solomon Hughes and Kim Sengupta
Fri, 20 November 2020

Priti Patel is already embroiled in a political row over bullying of civil servants (AFP/Getty)

Priti Patel sought to publicly intervene three times on behalf of an offshore company which has been accused in a British court of obtaining a £100m contract from the Nigerian government through corruption.

She repeatedly backed the company, Process & Industrial Development (P&ID), a British Virgin Islands-registered gas company, in its long legal dispute with the Nigerian government over a gas processing plant.

The home secretary is currently in the centre of a political storm after being accused of bullying staff in her department. She faces calls to resign after an investigation concluded that she had breached the ministerial code of conduct, although it also found her actions may have been “unintentional”.

Watch: Boris Johnson tried to water down Priti Patel bullying report, say Whitehall sources



Ms Patel’s intervention in the court case took place before she was appointed home secretary by Boris Johnson. She was joined in supporting the company by Shanker Singham, a prominent fellow Brexit advocate, who is now a government trade adviser, in the bitterly contested legal action.

The case had been an issue of huge public interest in Nigeria with accusations of bribery and collusion between public officials and private concerns. President Muhammadu Buhari raised the matter during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in September. “The present Nigerian government is facing the challenges of corruption head on,” he said. “We are giving notice to international criminal groups by the vigorous prosecution of the P&ID scam attempting to cheat Nigeria out of billions of dollars.”

P&ID had an agreement with Nigeria to build a massive plant to process natural gas. No work, however, was carried out on the plant. The company blamed the government for not supplying the gas; the government claims the contract was part of a fraudulent scheme.

P&ID had won compensation of $10bn over the failed deal. But the Nigerian government are appealing against the judgment, claiming that massive bribes had been paid to secure the contract.

P&ID denies any wrongdoing and holds that the Nigerian government had invented the corruption allegations in an effort to avoid paying compensation and to delay the seizure of assets.

In September, a judge in London granted the Nigerian government the right to appeal. He ruled that “Nigeria has established a strong prima facie case” that the contract was “procured by bribes paid to insiders as part of a larger scheme to defraud Nigeria”. Sitting in the High Court earlier this month, Sir Ross Cranston added that there is “also a strong prima facie case” that one of the firm’s directors, and a main witness in the court case “gave perjured evidence”.

The Nigerian government had a separate ruling in their favour when the court ordered the release of £200m it had put in place as security while the appeal is being heard. Judge Cranston had rejected the request by P&ID to increase the security level to £400m.

Ms Patel first publicly supported P&ID in an article for the newspaper City AM in November 2018, saying that Nigeria “must honour its obligations to companies like P&ID” and pay the firm “almost $9bn” (as the sum in legal action was at that stage). She condemned the further legal action by the Nigerian government as a “running scandal”, “obstinate”, and “flouting international law and convention”.

In May last year, Ms Patel wrote an introduction to a pamphlet by Shanker Singham which also backed P&ID against Nigeria. The pamphlet had been produced by a consultancy firm run by Mr Singham, called Competere.

The same month Ms Patel co-wrote an article in the Daily Telegraph newspaper with Mr Singham about post-Brexit aid and trade, offering support once again for P&ID, and an apparent warning to Nigeria on the consequences for its alleged failure to adhere to laws.

The article said: “The erosion of Nigeria’s commitment to the rule of law is highly worrying. Currently, Nigeria is a defendant in multiple investor disputes, including with telecoms firm MTN; an energy project with P&ID and a hydroelectric contract with Sunrise Power. In the P&ID case, Nigeria owes the company over $9bn, due to Nigeria’s failure to honour a gas supply contract.”

It continued: “The UK’s national interest is best-served by an open system that encourages free trade, protects property rights, and upholds the rule of law. Our development strategy and our independent trade policy post-Brexit can be harnessed to ensure maximum value for the British taxpayer.”

There were already recurring allegations of corruption in Nigeria over the deal when Ms Patel and Mr Singham expressed their support for P&ID in the second article.

The day before the Telegraph article appeared there was an interview with Brendan Cahill, from Ireland, one of the co-founders of P&ID, in a Nigerian newspaper during which he was asked “there has been a persistent claim that P&ID is a ‘fake’ company that made a ‘fraudulent arrangement’ with some persons in Nigeria. How do you react to this claim?”

Mr Cahill replied: “We are well aware of the government’s efforts to characterise P&ID, and its founders, as frauds. This is absolutely false. The arbitrators in London spent five years carefully reviewing the written agreement and all the facts surrounding the deal, and in the end they unanimously concluded that Nigeria was to blame for the deal’s collapse and had to pay damages to P&ID.”

The Nigerian government alleges that P&ID paid more than $390,000 (almost £303,000) in bribes to secure the contract. The country’s attorney general, Abubakar Malami, submitted a witness statement to the Property Courts of England and Wales, High Courts of Justice in January this year.

Mr Malami, in his statement, alleges that P&ID indirectly paid more than $300,000 (£225, 850) to a company linked to an official who reviewed the contract. It also alleges two P&ID executives dropped a duffel bag packed with $50,000 in the trunk of his car in the capital, Abuja, in April 2009.

Grace Taiga, a former petroleum ministry lawyer in Nigeria who oversaw a contract review committee, has also been charged with accepting bribes from P&ID-linked companies between 2015 and 2019. Ms Taiga was scheduled to retire in September 2010, say investigators, but she remained in her position for another 16 months as the P&ID contract was being finalised.

Ms Taiga has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Ms Patel and Mr Singham did not respond to questions about their public support for P&ID and whether they were aware of the corruption allegations.

P&ID did not respond to questions about the legal action or why Ms Patel and Mr Singham was supporting them, or what their working relationship was with Ms Patel and Mr Singham.

The company said previously: “The economic cost to Nigeria of fighting and losing this case is substantial. Nigeria, which emerged from recession in 2017, approved a three-year plan in 2016 to borrow more from abroad.

“The government wants 40 per cent of its loans to come from offshore to lower borrowing costs and help to fund its record-high budgets. In addition, the Buhari administration continues to incur costs in fighting this battle in the UK and US courts, and due to its failure to comply with court procedures, has been forced to pay some costs of P&ID’s counsel.

“The re-elected Buhari administration must come to terms with the award and decide whether to continue with delaying tactics to postpone the inevitable, or if the new government has the courage to atone for its previous mistakes and reach a settlement that will allow the country to move forward.”

RIP

John Fraser: ‘Dam Busters’ star who shunned Hollywood


Anthony Hayward
Fri, 20 November 2020

Fraser believed his sexuality held back his career(Rex)

John Fraser, who has died aged 89, was a British film star who captured the public’s imagination when he appeared in The Dam Busters as Flight Lieutenant JV “Hoppy” Hopgood, taking part in a daring Second World War RAF operation – and offering a pint of beer to the beloved dog of his wing commander.

He followed the 1955 box-office hit two years later by taking the role of Inigo Jollifant in The Good Companions, a screen musical version of the JB Priestley play. He and Janette Scott acted the romantic leads, with his schoolteacher-turned-songwriter joining her in a touring variety troupe.

The film, an attempt to compete with American musicals, flopped with cinemagoers but helped to give Fraser heart-throb status and launch a brief singing career. He released “Bye Bye Love” in 1957, but it failed to chart – in a year when several other versions were released, notably the Everly Brothers’ first hit.

Fraser’s star was on the rise again when he appeared in the biopic The Trials of Oscar Wilde (1960) as Lord Alfred Douglas, known as “Bosie”, poet lover of Peter Finch’s title character. One critic praised his “suitably vain, selfish, vindictive and petulant” portrayal of the Marquis of Queensberry’s son.

Fraser, who acted opposite Hollywood legends such as Sophia Loren over the years, believed his own homosexuality held back his career in an industry where discretion was paramount during the days when it was illegal.

In Close Up: An Actor Telling Tales, his 2004 autobiography, Fraser spilled the beans on his own sexual exploits and those of some of the film world’s most famous names.

He had a six-week fling with Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev that ended only when his agent told him: “If you don’t stop this madness instantly, your career will be over!”

Producer Jimmy Woolf had “taken a serious shine” to Fraser, according to the actor’s memoirs, and showered him with presents while considering who to cast in the title role of Lawrence of Arabia (1962), the epic directed by David Lean. He resisted the advances and Woolf gave the part to Peter O’Toole.

Meanwhile, he wrote, Woolf was known to be the lover of Laurence Harvey, who “kept marrying to further his career”.

Living a lie like this made Fraser want to shun Hollywood and, while promoting The Good Companions in Los Angeles, he turned down an offer by an American producer to further his career.

He observed how having different private and public personas affected one major star’s life when, in the late 1950s, he was invited to supper at the mansion of Dirk Bogarde, who kept out of the public eye his long-term relationship with Tony Forwood, whom he simply described as his business manager.

“Do you and Tony still make love?” Fraser asked Bogarde, who replied: “We’ve been together a long time. Now, we’re like brothers.” So Fraser asked what the star did for sex – embark on casual affairs, perhaps? “God, no,” said Bogarde. “How could I possibly in my position? I can’t go anywhere without being recognised.”

Then, Bogarde took Fraser to the loft to reveal his pride and joy, a Harley-Davidson motorcycle standing on a plinth – his substitute for sex.

Fraser confronted his own sexuality by visiting a brothel and consulting a psychiatrist with the idea of changing his sexual orientation but eventually resigned himself to being what was then described euphemistically as a “confirmed bachelor”.

He saw his career out in television and brought his intelligent insights to print as the author of several novels and autobiographical books.

John Alexander Fraser’s life began in poverty on a Glasgow council estate in 1931. At the age of 11, he was sexually abused by a soldier.

Two years later, the death of his father, John, an alcoholic who ran an engineering business until being hospitalised, was followed within six months by that of his mother, Christina (née MacDonald). He and his two sisters were brought up by an aunt.

On leaving Glasgow High School aged 16, he joined the city’s Park Theatre company as an assistant stage manager and was soon landing acting parts.

Following national service as a lieutenant in the Royal Corps of Signals on the Rhine, he became a member of the new Pitlochry Festival Theatre company, set up by the director of the Park Theatre after its closure.

In 1952, Fraser made his television debut by starring as David Balfour in a BBC serialisation of Kidnapped.

It led to a seven-year contract with the Associated British Picture Corporation, which thrust him into the spotlight in Valley of Song (1953), romancing Maureen Swanson, a fellow Glaswegian who later became a lord’s wife.

Fraser’s other significant film roles included a Scottish piper in Tunes of Glory (1960), alongside Alec Guinness and John Mills; Prince Alfonso in El Cid (1961); and Catherine Deneuve’s ill-fated suitor in the psychological thriller Repulsion (1965), directed by Roman Polanski.

On stage, he gained valuable experience in the classics during two seasons at the Old Vic, London (1955-57), with parts that included Claudio in Much Ado About Nothing.

There were also starring roles in the West End, but Shakespeare became his lasting love. In 1976, he was a founder member of the London Shakespeare Group, directing the actors on annual tours abroad, funded by the British Council.

His 1978 book The Bard in the Bush recounted a tour of Africa, when costumes and props for five plays were typically carried in one trunk, which doubled as the set.

Fraser also devised his own one-man stage show, JM Barrie: The Man Who Wrote Peter Pan, performed at the National’s Olivier Theatre in 1998.

His TV roles included Julius von Felden in A Legacy (1975), Lieutenant Commander “Monty” Morgan in Thundercloud (1979) and Dr Lawrence Golding in The Practice (1985-86).

By the middle of the 1990s, he had retired to Tuscany and La Contadina, the 10-room mountain-top house near Cortona that he bought in 1971, having fallen in love with Italy while playing Hedy Lamarr’s young lover in the 1954 film L’Amante di Paride (Loves of Three Queens).

“I loved the paintings, the towns, the soupy music of Puccini and Verdi and, above all, the people,” he said.

Fraser, who returned permanently to the UK in 2010, is survived by Rodney Pienaar, an artist and his partner of 42 years.

John Fraser, actor and author, born 18 March 1931, died 7 November 2020

Meet Pennsylvania’s anger translator, and Donald Trump’s worst nightmare

Richard Hall
Sat, 21 November 2020

Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman (AP Photo/Marc Levy)

When Donald Trump set his sights on overturning the results of the election in Pennsylvania, there were a few things working against him. First, the margin of Joe Biden’s victory put it beyond the need for a recount. Second, Pennsylvania is the birthplace of American democracy, and they take this stuff very seriously. Third, John Fetterman.

Fetterman, the burly lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, has been a constant thorn in the side of the Trump campaign’s efforts to undermine the election in his state. In doing so, he has emerged from the chaos of campaign season with a new legion of fans.

He was a familiar presence on television throughout the state’s arduous and pivotal ballot count, often on hand to swat away Trump campaign attacks against the integrity of the counting process. At 6ft 8in tall, tattoos on his arms, a long goatee and often in short sleeves, he stood out amid the parade of suits. He once said of his appearance: “I do not look like a typical politician. I do not even look like a typical person.”

He doesn’t talk like a typical politician either. His Twitter feed is full of dry humour, memes and barbs. In the weeks since the election, he has continued his crusade against disinformation and played down any talk of a Trump longshot coup. While others have cloaked themselves in sober and diplomatic language, he has been Pennsylvania’s anger translator.

“Everybody, including and especially the president, knows how this movie is gonna end,” he tells The Independent by phone, on a break from his day job presiding over the Pennsylvania state senate.

“They are just these little Twitter storm freakouts. It's just sad and pathetic that the president of the United States has become just some sad internet troll.”

Fetterman has been pretty clear from day one that there is no way Trump can overturn the will of Pennsylvanian voters (“math doesn’t care about your feelings or lies,” is one of his favourite refrains), but he is also stark in his assessment of the president’s norm-shattering behaviour.

“I've said this time and time again, the media needs to turn its back on the president's reckless claims of voter fraud. He is and has been for some time now yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre. This is not free or protected speech. This is dangerous and damaging speech. And it really just comes down to that,” he says.

He is fiercely proud of the job that Pennsylvania did in pulling off an extraordinary election, coming as it did in the midst of a pandemic, with a record number of mail-in ballots, and in the face of daily attacks from the White House.

Trump singled out Pennsylvania early on for a campaign of falsehoods about the integrity of mail-in ballots. The president claimed without evidence that voting by mail was susceptible to fraud, and that Pennsylvania would be the centre of that fraud. He famously remarked during one of his presidential debates: “Bad things happen in Philadelphia.”

I don’t know who needs to hear this but there’s not one single suit that can stop legal votes being counted + PA going for Biden.
SCOTUS could gift every “late ballot” to the President. 🥱
That’s what happens when you sue a ham sandwich, it’s still well, just a ham sandwich.
— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) November 16, 2020

“This was a campaign of misinformation from the biggest microphone in the world,” says Fetterman. “And it was [my job] to push back against that. This idea that there was any fraud, well actually, no, there were exactly three cases of documented fraud in Pennsylvania.”

“We pulled up the biggest election in Pennsylvania history, and there wasn't any of that, none of that, and this idea that it was anything other than a fair, free and full accounting of the democratic will of Pennsylvania voters has been widely debunked in every courtroom at every juncture,” he adds.

Fetterman has used his Twitter feed to refute some of the wilder claims of voting fraud from the president. “The President just tweeted this article and said “DEAD PEOPLE VOTED” and in Pennsylvania he’s RIGHT. In Luzerne County, a Republican attempted to vote for the President for his dead mother,” he wrote in response to one of Trump’s tweets.

He also tried to claim a reward from his Republican counterpart in Texas, lieutenant governor Dan Patrick, who offered a $1million for reports of voter fraud that lead to a conviction. Sharing the same two examples above, he asked for his reward to be paid in gift cards for Sheetz — a Pennsylvania convenience store.

Hey, Governor Patrick- it’s your counterpart in Pennsylvania.
I’d like to collect your handsome reward for reporting voter fraud.
I got a dude in Forty Fort, PA who tried to have his dead mom vote for Trump.
I’d like mine in Sheetz gift cards pls.
ps. The Cowboys blow. https://t.co/Y21Q3ZkSEH
— John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) November 10, 2020

Fetterman began his political career in the eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh. He won his first election by one vote to become the mayor of Braddock, a gritty former steel town, and won two more times after that.

In Braddock, Fetterman championed a community-led approach to tackling crime and poverty, both of which blighted the town. He took the job seriously — very seriously. On his right arm he has tattooed the dates of murders that took place in Braddock while he was mayor. He currently has nine dates and is due to add one more. On his left arm he has the town’s zip code.

He made an unsuccessful run for the US senate in 2016, before eventually winning election as lieutenant governor in 2018. During that campaign, he was endorsed by Bernie Sanders, who called Fetterman the "candidate of the working people". After he won, he refused to take up the residence his position afforded him, and chose to live in a converted car dealership.

It’s tempting to look at Fetterman and wonder where he sits in the Democratic Party nationally. There isn’t an easy answer. He is liberal on most issues: he is an advocate of a higher minimum wage, the legalisation of cannabis and campaigned for the US to accept more Syrian refugees during the height of the crisis there.

And while he is a proponent of fighting climate change head-on, he has also advocated a transition to a carbon-free future that takes into account the impact on places like rural Pennsylvania — one that goes beyond asking miners to learn to code. He has said previously that Democrats need to “get honest” about energy and advocated for a “bipartisan Marshall Plan” to battle climate change.

It was former mining towns in western Pennsylvania that sent Donald Trump to the White House in 2016, and where he still retains support today. Fetterman’s time spent in the working-class communities of Braddock has also given him an insight into Trump’s unique appeal in those areas. In fact, he was sounding the alarm bells long before November.

“I said this from before the election, he is a uniquely distinctive and popular individual in Pennsylvania. Don't ever make the mistake of underestimating his appeal. I warned our party that this was going to be a brawl. And that's exactly what it turned out to be,” he says.

“He was a transformative figure in American politics. I mean that pejoratively,” he says. “He speaks to and engages a segment of our population that is intensely loyal and that's what's going to make him relevant and dangerous going forward because he is just not planning to go quietly into the night.”

But how do you reach those voters who turned away from Democrats and embraced Trump in the last two elections — the people who made this one a nail-biter?

“Some of them aren’t reachable,” he says. “But there is an extraordinary number of thoughtful Pennsylvanians that care very deeply about good, solid public policies. We've demonstrated that,” he says.

“Right now we're at a point in Pennsylvania where we all have to come together because we're headed for a tough winter with these record high Covid cases. We have to recover from this pandemic.”

He is also not quite ready to take his eye off Trump just yet. He believes the outgoing president will run in 2024 without much opposition from Republicans.

“We need to be mindful,” he says. But, he adds, “you can only run on chaos for so long before it collapses on itself."

Hong Kong UPDATES: 

Joshua Wong remains defiant in face of potential five years in prison

Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong told DW that defying "the greatest human rights abuser is essential" ahead of his trial next week. He faces up to five years in prison for his role in pro-democracy protests.


Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong on Friday told DW that he faces up to five years in jail if found guilty of instigating unlawful protests last year.

Wong rose to prominence during the pro-democracy demonstrations that were triggered by the introduction of the Fugitive Offenders amendment bill by the Hong Kong government. The now-aborted legislation would have potentially meant the extradition of Hong Kong citizens to mainland China, where Wong and other activists felt residents would be subjected to Beijing's stricter approach to civil liberties.

Wong, whose trial starts on Monday, remained defiant, despite the threat of a lengthy jail term. "Prison bars have never stopped me from activism and thinking critically. Even though more than 10,000 Hong Kongers have been arrested since last summer and 2,000 people — including me — were prosecuted, it's still important for us to stay and fight."

Wong not expecting a fair trial

But Wong has little confidence in the judicial process ahead. "Courts in Hong Kong are being interfered with by the Beijing authorities, and the rule of law in Hong Kong exists in name only."

Police arrested Wong on September 24 for participating in an unauthorized assembly in October 2019, as well as for violating the city’s anti-mask law by covering his face during the protests.

That arrest added to several unlawful assembly charges, or suspected offenses he and other activists have been accused of related to last year’s protests.
'The greatest human rights abuser'

Despite the pressure, Wong showed no signs of easing up as he said: "No matter what happens, to defy the greatest human rights abuser is essential to restore democracy for our generation and the generation following us."

Watch video  https://p.dw.com/p/3lcGL

'To defy greatest human rights abuser is essential'

Wong hopes others will keep a watchful eye on developments in Hong Kong should he go to prison.

"It's important that the new [US] administration holds China accountable. It's important to seek bipartisan support because supporting Hong Kong is not a matter of left or right, it's a matter of right or wrong."

Read more: Opinion: Hong Kong's rule of law is at its end

"I only wish that during my absence, people around the world can continue to stand with the people of Hong Kong by following closely the developments, whether it's the canceled election, the large-scale arrests under the national security law and the 12 activists being detained in China."

At the beginning of last month, China formally approved the arrests of 12 Hong Kong activists caught last month while allegedly trying to flee the former British colony for Taiwan.

Families of detained Hong Kong dozen protest on island near Chinese prison

By Jessie Pang and James Pomfret
Sat, 21 November 2020

Families of detained Hong Kong dozen protest on island near Chinese prison

Relatives and supporters of the 12 Hong Kong people detained in mainland China release balloons in Hong Kong

By Jessie Pang and James Pomfret

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Relatives and supporters of 12 Hongkongers, detained in China after trying to flee the city by speedboat, protested on Saturday on an island near the Chinese prison where they have been held virtually incommunicado for nearly three months.

The 11 men and one woman were captured by the Chinese coastguard on Aug. 23 aboard a speedboat believed to be bound for Taiwan.

All had faced charges linked to the protest movement embroiling Hong Kong, including rioting and violation of the a national security law China imposed in June.

Family members and supporters of some of the 12 hiked to the peak of Kat O island in Hong Kong's remote northeastern reaches, looking onto China's high-tech boomtown of Shenzhen, and the Yantian district where the dozen are being held.

Some peered through binoculars at a hill where the detention centre is located. Several told Reuters they want the Chinese authorities to deal with the cases in a just, fair and transparent manner.

The group inflated blue and white balloons and wrote the names of the detainees on them, before releasing them into a leaden sky. They chanted for their "immediate safe return" while holding white banners reading "SAVE 12" and "Return Home".

"I hope he can see the balloons and know we didn’t give up yet," said the 28-year-old wife of detainee Wong Wai-yin.

A Hong Kong marine police vessel later docked on the island, with police questioning and taking down the details of several reporters present.

Authorities have denied family and lawyers access to the 12, insisting they be represented by officially appointed lawyers. Last week seven detainees wrote handwritten letters to their family, but the group said in a statement that "they seem to have been compiled under duress".

Eddie Chu, a former lawmaker who recently quit his post in protest against political suppression by authorities under the national security law, said it was important to keep fighting.

"We are so close to them, just a few kilometres in reality, but in fact it's like ... something unreachable. So we need to have the balloons to do this for us.”

(Reporting by Jessie Pang and James Pomfret; Editing by William Mallard)

COVID-19 UPDATES

 UK volunteer first in the world to trial coronavirus antibody treatment

Fri, 20 November 2020


The UK is to become the first country to begin clinical trials of a new coronavirus antibody treatment aimed at people with a weakened immune system who cannot be vaccinated.

A volunteer in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, will be the first in the world to receive AstraZeneca's new "antibody cocktail" as part of the trial to test whether it will prevent COVID-19 for up to year.

The clinical trial programme will recruit 5,000 participants, which includes 1,000 people from nine sites in the UK.

The aim of the trial is to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of a combination of two long-acting monoclonal antibodies - man-made proteins that act like natural human antibodies in the immune system.

Sir Mene Pangalos, executive vice president of biopharmaceuticals R&D at AstraZeneca, said the treatment can be injected or administered intravenously.

"There is going to be a significant number of people - even in a world where vaccines are highly effective - who will not respond to vaccines, or in fact will not take vaccines," he added.

"So having monoclonal antibodies as potential therapeutics is also important."

The UK government has an in-principle agreement to secure access to one million doses of the antibody combination, dubbed AZD7442, if it is successful in the phase three trials.

The trial aims to enrol adults who are at increased risk of coronavirus infection or who are more likely to have an inadequate response to vaccination, and will include people from health care and care home settings.

Initial results from the randomised control trial are expected to be published in the first half of 2021, although the trial is expected to last for 12 months.

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While it is unclear how much the antibody treatment will cost, Sir Mene said it will be "more expensive than vaccines", but added "we hope to make it cost effective".

Business Secretary Alok Sharma said: "As we move closer to a COVID-19 vaccine, we must keep driving forward clinical trials for new and alternative treatments that protect our vulnerable, particularly those who cannot receive a vaccine."

Childhood vaccine linked to less severe COVID-19, cigarette smoke raises risk

By Nancy Lapid
Fri, 20 November 2020

An illustration, created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), depicts the 2019 Novel Coronavirus


By Nancy Lapid

(Reuters) - The following is a roundup of some of the latest scientific studies on the novel coronavirus and efforts to find treatments and vaccines for COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus.

Childhood vaccine may help prevent severe COVID-19

People whose immune systems responded strongly to a measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine may be less likely to become severely ill if they are infected with the new coronavirus, new data suggest. The MMR II vaccine, manufactured by Merck and licensed in 1979, works by triggering the immune system to produce antibodies. Researchers reported on Friday in mBio that among 50 COVID-19 patients under the age of 42 who had received the MMR II as children, the higher their titers -- or levels -- of so-called IgG antibodies produced by the vaccine and directed against the mumps virus in particular, the less severe their symptoms. People with the highest mumps antibody titers had asymptomatic COVID-19. More research is needed to prove the vaccine prevents severe COVID-19. Still, the new findings "may explain why children have a much lower COVID-19 case rate than adults, as well as a much lower death rate," coauthor Jeffrey Gold, president of World Organization, in Watkinsville, Georgia, said in a statement. "The majority of children get their first MMR vaccination around 12 to 15 months of age and a second one from 4 to 6 years of age." (https://bit.ly/3kPnW6P)

Cigarette smoke increases cell vulnerability to COVID-19

Exposure to cigarette smoke makes airway cells more vulnerable to infection with the new coronavirus, UCLA researchers found. They obtained airway-lining cells from five individuals without COVID-19 and exposed some of the cells to cigarette smoke in test tubes. Then they exposed all the cells to the coronavirus. Compared to cells not exposed to the smoke, smoke-exposed cells were two- or even three-times more likely to become infected with the virus, the researchers reported on Tuesday in Cell Stem Cell. Analysis of individual airway cells showed the cigarette smoke reduced the immune response to the virus. "If you think of the airways like the high walls that protect a castle, smoking cigarettes is like creating holes in these walls," coauthor Brigitte Gomperts told Reuters. "Smoking reduces the natural defenses and this allows the virus to enter and take over the cells." (https://bit.ly/3kPAYRx)

AstraZeneca's COVID-19 vaccine shows promise in elderly

AstraZeneca and Oxford University's experimental COVID-19 vaccine produced strong immune responses in older adults in a mid-stage trial, researchers reported on Thursday in The Lancet. Late-stage trials are underway to confirm whether the vaccine protects against COVID-19 in a broad range of people, including those with underlying health conditions. The current study involved 560 healthy volunteers, including 240 age 70 or over. Volunteers received one or two doses of the vaccine, made from a weakened version of a common cold virus found in chimpanzees, or a placebo. No serious side effects were reported. Participants older than 80, frail patients, and those with substantial chronic illnesses were excluded, according to an editorial published with the study. "Frailty is increasingly understood to affect older adults' responses to vaccines," the editorialists write. "A plan for how to consider frailty in COVID-19 vaccine development is important." 

https://bit.ly/35OVrlq; https://bit.ly/3kKXDhP; https://reut.rs/2IVeod0

Researchers look into cells infected with new coronavirus

Cells infected with the new coronavirus die within a day or two, and researchers have found a way to see what the virus is doing to them. By integrating multiple imaging techniques, they saw the virus create "virus-copying factories" in cells that look like clusters of balloons. The virus also disrupts cellular systems responsible for secreting substances, the researchers reported on Tuesday in Cell Host & Microbe. Furthermore, it reorganizes the "cytoskeleton," which gives cells their shape and "serves like a railway system to allow the transport of various cargos inside the cell," coauthor Dr. Ralf Bartenschlager of the University of Heidelberg, Germany told Reuters. When his team added drugs that affect the cytoskeleton, the virus had trouble making copies of itself, "which indicates to us that the virus needs to reorganize the cytoskeleton in order to replicate with high efficiency," Bartenschlager said. "We now have a much better idea how SARS-CoV-2 changes the intracellular architecture of the infected cell and this will help us to understand why the cells are dying so quickly." The Zika virus causes similar cell changes, he said, so it might be possible to develop drugs for COVID-19 that also work against other viruses. https://bit.ly/2UI9BOT

Open https://tmsnrt.rs/3a5EyDh in an external browser for a Reuters graphic on vaccines and treatments in development.

(Reporting by Nancy Lapid, Kate Kelland and Alistair Smout; Editing by Tiffany Wu)

Cesarean section-born children may face higher risk of infection-related hospitalisation

November 22, 2020 


Children born via cesarean section may be more likely to be hospitalised for infection during early childhood. A study published in PLOS Medicine by Jessica Miller at the Murdoch Children's Research Institute, Australia and colleagues suggests that compared to vaginally-born children, cesarean-born children may have a higher risk of infection-related hospitalisation for up to five years of age.

While the researchers were able to observe an association between birth by cesarean section and an increased risk of infection, the study was limited in that postnatal factors that influence infection risk, such as breast feeding, vaccination status, and postnatal smoke exposure were unavailable, which could potentially confound the results.

The authors stress that the findings should not discourage women from having cesareans when medically indicated and despite the small increased risk of childhood infections, cesarean births may be the safest option for some women and babies.

UK
Public sector pay freeze puts manifesto promise to boost new teacher pay to £30,000 in doubt


Harry Yorke
Fri, 20 November 2020

Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson’s election pledge to raise newly qualified teachers’ pay to £30,000 appeared in doubt on Friday as Rishi Sunak prepares to usher in "pay restraint" across the public sector.

The £6,000 pay hike was a central plank of the Conservative Party’s election manifesto, with Mr Johnson promising to make teaching one of the “most competitive” jobs in the graduate labour market.

However, Downing Street refused to say whether the commitment, which represents a 25 per cent uplift and is supposed to be fulfilled by 2022, would still be met after the Chancellor sets out the one-year spending review next week.

Ministers have previously said the rises would have to be funded from planned increases to school budgets over the next three years.

It came as the Office for National Statistics yesterday confirmed that public sector debt hit £2.08 trillion in October, with Government borrowing in the first seven months of the financial year rising to an estimated £215bn.

Government spending as a share of GDP has also risen from 40 per cent to 60 per cent of GDP in 2020, the highest level seen since the Second World War, according to an analysis by the Resolution Foundation think tank.

Mr Sunak said that the figures showed that “over time it’s right we ensure the public finances are put on a sustainable path”, with the Chancellor now expected to announce a one-year freeze or cap.

Teachers, police officers, soldiers and civil servants are expected to be included, although NHS workers could be exempted in recognition of their efforts during the coronavirus pandemic.

The reports prompted a widespread backlash from trade union leaders yesterday, with Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services union, warning that “industrial action cannot be ruled out.”

Frances O’Grady, leader of the Trades Union Congress, added: “TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said: "A pay freeze would be a bitter pill for care workers, refuse collectors, emergency workers and all the key workers in the public sector who have helped keep the country going through this pandemic.”

While the freeze or cap is expected to last for one year, there are fears that the scale of the blackhole in the public finances created by the crisis will require continued restraint throughout the course of this Parliament.

The Centre for Policy Studies think tank has estimated that a three-year freeze could save the Exchequer up to £23 billion, falling to £11.7bn if Mr Sunak opts for a one per cent pay cap, and £7.7bn if healthcare workers are excluded.

Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, told The Telegraph that it was “difficult” to see how the Government could maintain the commitment to increasing qualified teachers’ salaries to £30,000.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said: “The teaching profession has already endured a decade of pay freezes, in contrast to pay growth in the private sector.

“This made teaching an uncompetitive career option for graduates who have looked to other sectors to build their careers. The government’s plans will make a dire situation even worse.”

Speaking to reporters yesterday, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said that there would be “no return to austerity” but refused to rule out a public sector pay freeze.

Asked whether newly qualified teachers would be exempt, he added: “You wouldn’t expect me to comment on what could, or may or may not be in the spending review next week.”

The Telegraph understands that Mr Sunak is also unlikely to bring forward any long-term solution for fixing Britain’s social care system.

Government insiders had previously suggested that Downing Street had been considering a cut to university tuition fees, as recommended by the Augur review.

However, the idea is also believed to have been dismissed following the decision to opt for a one-year spending review.