Rolls-Royce plans two-week shutdown of civil aerospace business

Sun, February 7, 2021

File photo of an Airbus A350 with a Rolls-Royce logo at the Airbus headquarters in Toulouse

(Reuters) - Britain's Rolls-Royce said on Sunday it is proposing a two week operational shutdown of its civil aerospace unit over the summer as it manages costs due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The aero-engine maker has begun talks with unions on the shutdown and cost cutting at its civil aerospace unit, it said in an emailed statement.

"As we continue to manage our cost base in response to the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the whole commercial aviation sector, we are proposing a two week operational shutdown of Civil Aerospace over the Summer," it said.

Rolls-Royce's finances have been hit by the COVID-19 crisis as its airline customers have grounded planes. It warned last month that travel would be even more constrained than expected this year, leading to increased cash outflow.

(Reporting by Anirudh Saligrama and Sabahatjahan Contractor in Bengaluru; Editing by Alexander Smith)

How Scientists Shot Down Cancer's 'Death Star'

Gina Kolata
Fri, February 5, 2021, 

After 40 years of effort, researchers have finally succeeded in switching off one of the most common cancer-causing genetic mutations in the human body. The finding promises to improve treatment for thousands of patients with lung and colorectal cancer, and may point the way to a new generation of drugs for cancers that resist treatment.

The finding has already led to a new medication, sotorasib, by drugmaker Amgen. Other companies are close behind with their own versions.

Amgen tested its drug in patients with the most common type of lung cancer, called non-small cell cancer. The disease is diagnosed in 228,000 Americans a year, and for most patients in the advanced stages, there is no cure.

The new drug attacks a cancer-causing mutation, known as KRAS G12C, that occurs in 13% of these patients, almost all of whom are current or former smokers. Sotorasib made the cancers shrink significantly in patients with the mutation, Amgen reported last week at the World Conference on Lung Cancer.

On average, tumors in the patients stopped growing for seven months. In three out of 126 patients, the drug seems to have made the cancer disappear entirely, at least so far, although side effects included diarrhea, nausea and fatigue.

It already is routine to test lung cancer patients for the mutation, because they are often resistant to other drugs, said Dr. John Minna, a lung cancer specialist at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

Amgen’s drug is not as drastically effective as some new cancer medicines, said Dr. Bruce Johnson, chief clinical research officer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. But in combination with other drugs, those targeting specific mutations can change the course of the disease in many patients, he added.

For example, drugs targeting specific mutations in melanoma patients at first seemed unimpressive, but when combined with other medicines, they eventually changed prospects for patients with this deadly disease.

“The more I looked at it, the more optimistic I became,” Johnson said of Amgen’s new data.

While the KRAS G12C mutation is most common in lung cancer, it also occurs in other cancers, especially in colorectal cancer, where it is found in up to 3% of tumors, and particularly in pancreatic cancer. KRAS mutations of some type are present in 90% of pancreatic tumors.

How the off-switch was discovered is a story of serendipity and persistence by an academic chemist who managed the seemingly impossible.

In 2008, that chemist, Kevan Shokat, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, decided to focus on the mutated gene. It had been discovered 30 years earlier in rats with sarcomas, a type of cancer that begins in bones and soft tissues.

Researchers found the mutation in human tumor cells, and then discovered that it was one of the most frequently mutated genes in cancers of many types. Different cancers tend to spring from different mutations in the KRAS gene and the protein it encodes. The G12C mutation occurs mostly in lung cancers.

The search for drugs to block previously discovered cancer-causing mutations was always straightforward: Researchers had to find a molecule that attached to the mutated protein and could stop it from functioning. That strategy worked for so-called kinase inhibitors, which also block a protein created by gene mutations. There are 50 approved kinase inhibitors on the market now.

KRAS was different. The gene directs production of a protein that normally flexes and relaxes thousands of times a second, as if it is panting. In one position, the protein signals cells to grow; in the other, it stops the growth. With the KRAS mutation, the protein remains mostly in an “on” position, and cells are constantly forced to grow.

The standard solution would be a drug that would hold the mutated protein in the “off” position. But that seemed impossible. The protein is large and globular, and it doesn’t have deep pockets or clefts on its surface where a drug could slip in. It was like trying to drive a wedge into a ball of solid ice.

“Our medicinal chemists referred to it as the Death Star,” said Dr. David Reese, executive vice president for research and development at Amgen. “It was so smooth.”

So Shokat and his colleagues began looking for a molecule that could do the trick. Five years later, after screening 500 molecules, they found one and discovered why it worked.

Their drug held the protein steady, making a crevice visible on its surface. “We never saw that pocket before,” Shokat said. The protein normally flexes and relaxes so quickly that the narrow groove had almost been impossible to see.

There was more good news. The drug attached itself to cysteine, an amino acid that occurs in the groove only because of the KRAS mutation. The drug worked only against the mutated protein, and therefore only against cancer cells.

“It is really specific,” Shokat said. “That’s what’s amazing.” He published his findings in 2013, causing a sensation in the field.

Reese, of Amgen, said that the data “gave us the proof that we could actually do this,” and that “it silenced many of the doubters.”

Shokat, too, began working on a drug, which is now being developed by Johnson and Johnson. At least eight companies have their own KRAS inhibitors in clinical trials.

Lung cancer is only the beginning, Shokat said. The next challenge is pancreatic cancer, one of the most lethal types: “KRAS is the signature mutation for pancreatic cancer,” he added.

Most patients have such a mutation, and while it makes the disease very difficult to treat, now it may also make the cancer particularly vulnerable. Researchers have already found drugs that seem promising.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2021 The New York Times Company

#CLIMATECHANGE

Himalayan glacier breaks in India, around 125 missing in floods






People walk past a destroyed dam after a Himalayan glacier broke and crashed into the dam at Raini

By Devjyot Ghoshal and Manoj Kumar

Sun, February 7, 2021,

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Around 125 people were missing in northern India after a Himalayan glacier broke and swept away a small hydroelectric dam on Sunday, with floods forcing the evacuation of villages downstream.

A wall of dust, rock and water hit as an avalanche roared down the Rishiganga valley deep in the mountains of Uttarakhand, a witness said.


"It came very fast, there was no time to alert anyone," Sanjay Singh Rana, who lives on the upper reaches of the river in Raini village, told Reuters by phone. "I felt that even we would be swept away."

Uttarakhand Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat said 125 people were missing but the number could rise. So far, the bodies of seven people had been recovered.

The disaster took place around 500 km (310 miles) north of New Delhi.

Uttarakhand is prone to flash floods and landslides and the disaster prompted calls by environment groups for a review of power projects in the ecologically sensitive mountains.

Earlier state chief secretary Om Prakash said 100 to 150 people were feared dead. A large number of the missing were workers at the 13.2 MW Rishiganga Hydroelectric Project which was destroyed by the bursting of the glacier.

Footage shared by locals showed the water washing away parts of the Rishiganga dam and everything else in its path. At least 180 sheep were washed away.

Videos on social media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed water surging through a small dam site, washing away construction equipment.

Twelve people who had been trapped in a tunnel had been rescued and efforts were under way to save others caught in another tunnel, the federal home ministry said after a meeting of the National Crisis Committee, comprising top officials.

"India stands with Uttarakhand and the nation prays for everyone’s safety there," Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Twitter.

State utility NTPC said the avalanche had damaged a part of its Tapovan Vishnugad hydropower plant that was under construction further down the river. It gave no details but said the situation is being monitored continuously.

Indian military helicopters were flying over the area and soldiers deployed for help with relief and rescue.

The neighbouring state of Uttar Pradesh, India's most populous, put its riverside areas on high alert.

'HIMALAYAN TSUNAMI'

It was not immediately clear what had set off the avalanche at a time when it is not the flood season. In June 2013, record monsoon rains in Uttarakhand caused devastating floods that claimed close to 6,000 lives.

That disaster was dubbed the "Himalayan tsunami" because of the torrents of water unleashed in the mountainous area, which sent mud and rocks crashing down, burying homes, sweeping away buildings, roads and bridges.

Uma Bharti, India's former water resources minister and a senior leader of Modi's party, criticised the construction of a power project in the area.

"When I was a minister I had requested that Himalaya is a very sensitive place, so power projects should not be built on Ganga and its main tributaries," she said on Twitter, referring to the main river that flows from the mountains.

Environmental experts called for a halt to big hydroelectric projects in the state.

"This disaster again calls for a serious scrutiny of the hydropower dams building spree in this eco-sensitive region," said Ranjan Panda, a volunteer for the Combat Climate Change Network that works on water, environment and climate change issues.

"The government should no longer ignore warnings from experts and stop building hydropower projects and extensive highway networks in this fragile ecosystem."

(Additional reporting by Saurabh Sharma, Krishna N. Das and Jatin Das; Editing by Sanjeev Miglani, William Mallard and Frances Kerry)

 MARTINI GLASSES UNDER ICE

A unique formation of ice builds over 

flowing water

 

Global Unions?: Theory and Strategies of Organized Labour in the Global Political Economy (Routledge Ripe Studies I Global Political Economy).

Global Unions?: Theory and Strategies of Organized Labour in the Global Political Economy (Routledge Ripe Studies I Global Political Economy) - SILO.PUB

117 inmates take over section of downtown St. Louis jail

Minyvonne Burke and Cristian Santana

Sat, February 6, 2021

More than 100 inmates took over a section of the City Justice Center in downtown St. Louis, injuring a corrections officer at the facility, officials said.

The incident began around 2:30 a.m. Saturday in a fourth-floor unit when a "defiant" inmate "who was very, very upset" got into a fight with the corrections officer, Public Safety Director Jimmie Edwards said at a news conference.

The officer was then jumped by other inmates in the unit.

During the fight, several detainees were able to "jimmy" the locks on their cells, open them and get into the unit, according to Edwards.

As jail employees were trying to get the corrections officer to safety, the inmates accessed a lock panel system and “other detainees were released from their cells into the unit.”

Edwards said the unit was breached and inmates were able to get into a hallway. A second unit on the floor also "started to have defiant detainees," he said.

"Those detainees were also very aggressive, very violent. They too were able to be released from their cells because those locks were also jimmied. And they were also able to breach their unit," he told reporters.

The incident involved 117 inmates.

According to NBC affiliate KSDK, the inmates threw items out of broken windows and started small fires inside the jail.

Chairs and other items were scattered across the street and at least one car had a shattered windshield, the outlet reported. Several of the inmates were seen holding signs and chanting.

None of them were able to gain access to other floors, Edwards told reporters. By 10 a.m., the situation had been contained after sheriff's deputies and police assisted.

Officials have not identified the injured corrections officer but said he was in the hospital and expected to recover.

This is the third disturbance at the facility, which Edwards said houses inmates with "very serious offenses."

In late December and early January, the jail was disrupted by inmates expressing concerns over unsafe conditions amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Edwards said the detainees involved in Saturday's incident did not make any demands. He said there are no cases of Covid-19 at the facility.

“This was a bunch of folks that were defiant," he said. "This was a bunch of people that decided that they were going to engage in criminal mayhem, and that’s exactly what they did and they should be held accountable for what they did."



Fifty-five prisoners were moved to the segregation unit at the jail. Another 65 of "some of the most violent offenders" were taken to the Medium Security Institution, which Edwards said is more secure than the City Justice Center.

The damage from Saturday's takeover left only one usable unit. Edwards said he hopes the others will be available in the next couple of weeks.

The public safety director also acknowledged the jail is understaffed and said the issue with the cell locks is something the facility has been trying to fix since December

Former CIA officer explains why Biden is right not to 'run the risk' of sending Trump intelligence briefings

Tim O'Donnell
Sat, February 6, 2021, 8:55 AM


President Biden told CBS News' Norah O'Donnell he doesn't think former President Donald Trump should receive classified intelligence briefings, questioning whether there's any upside to it and suggesting Trump's "erratic behavior" could lead to him eventually revealing sensitive information pertaining to national security. It's not clear if Biden will officially cut off Trump's access, but such a move would be unprecedented — traditionally, former presidents can request and receive briefings.

David Priess, who briefed former President George H.W. Bush for many years after he left office, told The Washington Post that ex-presidents continue to receive intelligence briefings because even though they're no longer in an official position of power, they are considered representatives of the United States, especially by foreign leaders, for the rest of their lives. He added that presidents also may turn to their predecessors for advice on international affairs. That said, Priess agrees with Biden that an exception could be made for Trump since "there's no chance of Biden reaching out to Trump ... So why would Biden run the risk of Trump's disclosure of sensitive information by agreeing to such briefings?"

Journalist Yashar Ali did note that former presidents can also interact with other governments privately, as former President Bill Clinton did when he traveled to North Korea in 2009 to secure the release of two journalists being held there. Clinton, Ali, notes was briefed even though it wasn't an official U.S. government trip.

  

Of course, Trump wasn't exactly known for devouring his daily briefings while in office, so it's not clear sending them now would offer the Biden administration much comfort, either way.

Human rights body calls on El Salvador to protect reporters

In this image taken from UNTV video, Nayib Armando Bukele, President of El Salvador, speaks in a pre-recorded video message during the 75th session of the United Nations General Assembly, Tuesday, Sept. 29, 2020, at U.N. headquarters in New York.

 (UNTV via AP)More

MARCOS ALEMAN
Fri, February 5, 2021

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — An investigative news outlet in El Salvador said Friday that a decision by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights confirming it has been the victim of harassment sets an important precedent defending press freedoms in the region.

The regional body called on El Salvador’s government to take steps to protect 34 journalists at the online outlet El Faro who have faced threats and harassment.

“The commission is saying that in El Salvador there is an alarming, worrisome situation and that really the press or the reporters who do the investigative work and who have a critical function for the citizens are at risk,” said El Faro’s Deputy Editor Sergio Arauz. “What the commission also does is sound an alarm and a spotlight for the international community.”

“It is a grand precedent in legal terms on the freedom of expression and also sends a message to all those bureaucrats accustomed to bullying and intimidating journalists,” he said.

El Faro has argued that since President Nayib Bukele took office in June 2019, its journalists have been blocked from government news conferences, threatened by government institutions, the news outlet has faced a government audit and anonymous articles appearing in government-connected outlets have waged a campaign against its work.

The commission on Thursday issued a statement calling on El Salvador’s government to adopt measures that would allow El Faro to go about its work without interference and harassment. The petition to the commission was made by the Foundation for Due Process and the Center for Justice and International Law.

Bukele’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As an outside candidate, Bukele rode a wave of popular discontent with El Salvador’s traditional parties into the presidency. His brash style includes savvy use of social media to communicate directly with his supporters. He has been criticized for sharp attacks on the press, as well as other government institutions, including the Supreme Court and congress.

Biden administration suspends Trump asylum deals with El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras

Honduran migrants, sent back to Guatemala from the U.S., sit at the table after arriving at Casa del Migrante shelter in Guatemala City

Sat, February 6, 2021,

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Biden administration said on Saturday it was immediately suspending Trump-era asylum agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, part of a bid to undo his Republican predecessor's hardline immigration policies.

In a statement, State Department Secretary Antony Blinken said the United States had "suspended and initiated the process to terminate the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with the Governments of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras as the first concrete steps on the path to greater partnership and collaboration in the region laid out by President Biden."

The so-called "safe third country" agreements, inked in 2019 by the Trump administration and the Central American nations, force asylum seekers from the region to first seek refuge in those countries before applying in the United States.


Part of a controversial bid by Trump to crack down on illegal immigrants from Central America who make up a large part of migrants apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border, the policies were never implemented with El Salvador and Honduras, the State Department said on Saturday.

Transfers under the U.S.-Guatemala agreement have been paused since mid-March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, the statement added.

The moves announced Saturday came after Biden unveiled a host of measures last week aimed at revamping the U.S. immigration system, including a task force to reunite families separated at the United States-Mexico border and another to increase an annual cap on refugees.

One of the orders called for Blinken to "promptly consider" whether to notify the governments of the three countries that the United States intended to suspend and terminate the safe third country deals. It also called on the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Attorney General to determine whether to rescind a rule implementing the agreements.

(Reporting by Alexandra Alper; Editing by Kim Coghill)

TOO NUTTY FOR TRUMP AND NEWSMAX & OAN

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's election conspiracy documentary starts with an epic disclaimer from OAN

Kathryn Krawczyk
Fri, February 5, 2021


Mike Lindell's election fraud conspiracies are too wild even for OANN.

The MyPillow CEO and big fan of former President Donald Trump has been spouting unproven and unhinged conspiracy theories alleging Trump actually won re-election for months now. And on Friday, he bought out a three-hour spot on the far-right One America News Network to host a so-called documentary outlining his very false claims.

OANN is no stranger to airing falsities about the 2020 election; the lies it promoted often even ended up in Trump's tweets until his Twitter suspension last month. But Lindell's documentary apparently went too far, leading the network to put a massive disclaimer ahead of the presentation that both disavows Lindell's claims and encourages viewers to "hear from all sides," even Lindell's patently false one.

OANN is the latest right-wing network to display a bit of hesitation when dealing with Lindell. NewsMax had Lindell on as a guest the other day to discuss his ban from Twitter, but when he immediately turned to the election, one of the hosts stormed off the set. The NewsMax host has since apologized to Lindell.

Jason Campbell

@JasonSCampbell

Newsmax invites Mike Lindell, who advocated for a coup and spews dangerous conspiracy theories, on air. It didn't go well.

2:43 PM · Feb 2, 2021

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MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell is releasing a 3-hour movie he made over the past 5 days pushing a baseless election claim involving China

UNEDITED DIRECTORS CUT

Julie Gerstein
Fri., February 5, 2021, 

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell outside the White House on January 15. 

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has announced a three-hour film pushing baseless election-fraud claims.

He said on a Christian YouTube channel that it'd "mean the end times" if the film didn't catch on.

Early this week, Lindell was cut off by a Newsmax anchor for spouting election conspiracy theories.

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell appeared on the Christian YouTube channel The Revival Channel to announce that he's releasing a three-hour film Friday in support of his baseless claims of issues in the 2020 election.

"Absolute Proof" was made, he said, over a five-day period "holed up with people guarding me."

Speaking in front of a drab wall with a fake screen of trees, in a location he refused to disclose, Lindell, a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump, said the documentary proved "100%, the theft by China and these different international locations, this cyberattack on our nation right here, that took, that flipped votes."

Elections officials and even Trump officials such as Attorney General Bill Barr and acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf said there was no evidence of widespread election fraud.

"There are no indications that a foreign actor has succeeded in compromising or affecting the actual votes cast in this election," Wolf said in a November 3 press conference.

Lindell said his film would prove there was "a communist coup."

"We prayed over every word that was in this piece," he told The Revival Channel's host. "The last four days, 12 people, three hours of sleep a night, A lot of stuff was done in one take because the Holy Spirit was just speaking it out."

This is not Lindell's first foray into film. He's served as a producer on several conservative films, including 2019's "Unplanned," and in 2016 was the subject of the documentary "The Mike Lindell Story: An American Dream."

Lindell is among several Trump surrogates and supporters who were threatened with litigation by Dominion Voting Systems after repeatedly making baseless claims about election fraud involving its machines.

Lindell appeared on the conservative cable channel Newsmax early this week, ostensibly to talk about "cancel culture" but instead reviving his claims of election interference. The anchor Bob Sellers grew visibly irritated when Lindell instead began rattling off his Dominion Voting Systems election-fraud claims and cut in to remind viewers that Lindell's claims were unsubstantiated. Sellers then appeared to walk off set in frustration.

Last month, Lindell was permanently barred from Twitter for repeatedly making baseless election-fraud claims that Twitter said violated its user policy.

News of the documentary came as the gun-control activist David Hogg, a survivor of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, announced he would be launching a rival pillow company "to put MyPillow out of business."

Read the original article on Business Insider

Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg plans to take down MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell with a new progressive pillow company

Sophia Ankel
Sat., February 6, 2021

Parkland shooting survivor and activist David Hogg (L) in Los Angeles on July 20, 2018 and MyPillow CEO Michael Lindell (R) at the White House on January 15, 2021.

Emma McIntyre/Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Parkland shooting survivor David Hogg Hogg is teaming up with William LeGate, a progressive tech entrepreneur.

The gun-control advocate tweeting the news on Thursday said the company is still in its "early stages."


MyPillow CEO and ardent Trump supporter Mike Lindell responded: "Good for them."

David Hogg, a Parkland school shooting survivor who has become a leading advocate of gun control, announced plans to launch his own pillow company to put MyPillow CEO, Mike Lindell, out of business.

Hogg said he is teaming up with William LeGate, a progressive tech entrepreneur, to compete with Lindell, who is a fervent Trump supporter and has spent the last few weeks repeatedly promoting baseless claims of election fraud.

Taking to Twitter on Thursday, the 20-year-old said the company is still in the "early stages."

It aimed to "run a better business and make a better product all with more happy staff than Mike the pillow guy while creating US-based Union jobs and helping people."

Read more: The MyPillow guy says God helped him beat a crack addiction to build a multimillion-dollar empire. Now his religious devotion to Trump threatens to bring it all crashing down.

In another tweet, Hogg said the company would "put an emphasis on supporting the progressive cause and "not attempt a white supremacist overthrow of the United States government."

"This pillow fight just got very real," Hogg added.

The 20-year-old said that he and LeGate are hoping to "sell $1 million of product within our first year," Axios reported.

"[W]e would like to do it sooner but we have strict guidelines on sustainability and [U.S.] based Union producers," Hogg said.

The company is expected to launch in about six months. Hogg said he would only have an advisory role for now to concentrate on finishing college. He currently attends Harvard University.

Responding to the news of his possible competitors, Lindell told Axios: "Good for them...nothing wrong with the competition that does not infringe on someone's patent."

Hogg recently found himself back in the spotlight after a video emerged showing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene harassing him on Capitol Hill as he walked toward the Capitol in March 2018 to advocate for gun control.

The video shows Greene calling Hogg, who was 17 at the time, a "coward" just weeks after he survived the deadly February 14 shooting.

Hogg responded to the video going viral on Twitter, saying it's an example of the kind of intimidation fellow gun-violence survivors face while trying to prevent other mass shootings.

"As we fight for peace, we also face massive amounts of death threats and armed intimidation simply for not wanting our friends to die anymore," Hogg wrote. "This is not the country we should be and it's not the country we have to be."

Read the original article on Business Insider