Social media addiction linked to cyberbullying

Identifying as male and more hours spent online also contributed

UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

Research News

 

As social media platforms like Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok and others continue to grow in popularity, adolescents are spending more of their time online navigating a complex virtual world.

New research suggests that these increased hours spent online may be associated with cyberbullying behaviors. According to a study by the University of Georgia, higher social media addiction scores, more hours spent online, and identifying as male significantly predicted cyberbullying perpetration in adolescents.

"There are some people who engage in cyberbullying online because of the anonymity and the fact that there's no retaliation," said Amanda Giordano, principal investigator of the study and associate professor in the UGA Mary Frances Early College of Education. "You have these adolescents who are still in the midst of cognitive development, but we're giving them technology that has a worldwide audience and then expecting them to make good choices."

Cyberbullying can take on many forms, including personal attacks, harassment or discriminatory behavior, spreading defamatory information, misrepresenting oneself online, spreading private information, social exclusion and cyberstalking.

The study surveyed adolescents ranging in age from 13-19 years old. Of the 428 people surveyed, 214 (50%) identified as female, 210 (49.1%) as male, and four (0.9%) as other.

Exploring social media addiction

When adolescents are online, they adapt to a different set of social norms than when they're interacting with their peers in person. Oftentimes, they are more aggressive or critical on social media because of the anonymity they have online and their ability to avoid retaliation. Additionally, cyberbullies may feel less remorse or empathy when engaging in these behaviors because they can't see the direct impact of their actions.

"The perpetrator doesn't get a chance to see how damaging their bullying is and to learn from their mistakes and do something different," said Giordano. "It's a scary situation because they don't have the natural consequences they do with offline bullying."

Teenagers who are addicted to social media are more likely to engage in cyberbullying, as well as those who spend more time online. Participants in the study reported spending on average over seven hours online per day, and the reported average maximum hours spent online in one day was over 12 hours.

"Social media addiction is when people crave it when they're not on it, and continue their social media use despite negative consequences," said Giordano. "Some negative consequences could be they're tired during the day because they're scrolling all night long, they're having conflicts with their parents, they're getting poor grades in school or they're engaging in actions online that they later regret, but they still continue to use social media."

Social networking sites are designed to give people a dopamine hit, she added, and some people compulsively look for that hit. "It's feeding into that addictive behavior, and they may be using cyberbullying as a way to get likes, shares, comments and retweets," she said. "That's the common thread you see in behavioral addictions--people start relying on a rewarding behavior as a way to make them feel better when they're experiencing negative emotions. And so, I think the social media addiction piece is really interesting to show that there's another factor at play here in addition to the number of hours spent online."

The study also found that adolescent males are more likely to engage in cyberbullying than females, aligning with past studies that show aggressive behaviors tend to be more male driven. More research on the socialization process of men can help determine what's leading them to engage in more cyberbullying behaviors.

Next steps for counselors and clinicians

Giordano believes that counselors need to start assessing adolescents for social media addiction if they are engaging in cyberbullying and to provide treatment plans to help redefine their relationship with technology. These interventions may include helping adolescents examine how they define their self-worth and restricting the amount of time they spend on social media platforms.

"There's quite a few strong and reliable assessments for social media addiction for adolescents that have good psychometric properties," said Giordano. "I think when clinicians see cyberbullying happen, they really need to explore the individual's relationship with social media and to address social media addiction, not just the cyberbullying."

Often, school counselors are not aware of cyberbullying until after an incident occurs. To address this issue, Giordano recommends that schools start educating students earlier about cyberbullying and social media addiction as a preventive method instead of waiting to repair the damage. Whether it's through an awareness campaign or support group, schools can help students talk about cyberbullying to give them a chance to understand the consequences of their actions and prepare them for potential risks.

"We need schools and school counselors to do this preventative work early and educate students about the risk of addiction with some of these rewarding behaviors like gaming and social media," said Giordano. "We need to teach them the warning signs of behavioral addiction, what to do if they start to feel like they're losing control over their behaviors and help them find other ways to manage their emotions, rather than turning to these behaviors. There are a lot of programs already moving in this direction, and I think that's amazing and there needs to be more of it."

Counselors can help decrease the risk of some of these addictive behaviors at a young age by teaching and equipping children with emotional regulation skills and other ways to cope with their feelings.

"If you think about it, adolescents are not only figuring out who they are offline, but they're also trying to figure out who they want to be online," said Giordano. "We're giving them even more to do during this developmental period, including deciding how they want to present themselves online. I think it's a complex world that we're asking adolescents to navigate."

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The GOP (Rightly) Fears America’s Churchless Majority

By Eric Levitz@EricLevitz

THE MORAL MINORITY APR. 1, 2021

A shape less recognizable each week, a purpose more obscure. 

Photo: Mary Smyth/Getty Images

For the first time on record, a majority of U.S. adults do not belong to a church, synagogue, or mosque.

Since 1939, Gallup has been surveying Americans on their religious affiliations. From that year until the turn of the millennium, church membership in the U.S. never dipped below 68 percent. But over the past two decades, that figure has steadily declined — and now, the emerging churchless majority has arrived.

Graphic: Gallup

This is not a story about the rise of “remote worship.” Declining church membership has been driven primarily by rising godlessness. On the eve of the 21st century, 8 percent of Americans identified with no religion in Gallup’s polling. Today, that figure is 21 percent.

Pew Research believes the ranks of the “nones” are even larger. In its polling, 26 percent of the U.S. public prostrates itself before no deity.

In assigning culpability for this trend, one could assemble a long list of plausible co-conspirators. The ascendance of the Evangelical right likely damaged Christianity’s brand with social liberals by associating the faith with theocratic politics, while pedophilic priests and their enablers surely drove no small number of American Catholics from the pews. In Gallup’s polling, the decline in church membership has been especially steep among self-identified Catholics, falling 18 points since 2000, compared to 9 points among Protestants.

But in all likelihood, these contingent developments only expedited America’s atheistic drift. Secularization is a secular trend. In both Gallup and Pew’s data, the main engine of ascendant faithlessness is generational churn. Two-thirds of Americans born before 1946 belong to a religious institution, according to Gallup. That drops to 58 percent among baby boomers, 50 percent among Generation X, and 36 percent among millennials (the pollster’s limited data from zoomers indicates that they are roughly as irreligious as their cooler, wiser immediate predecessors).

Pew shows a similar pattern on the question of religious identification: Each new generation is less religious than the last, while the drop-off between Gen X and millennials is especially sharp:

Graphic: Pew Research Center CLICK TO ENLARGE

To be sure, one might attribute American millennials’ disaffection with religion to the fact that the Christian right (and/or Catholic church sex abuse scandal) loomed especially large during their formative years. But declining religiosity is not limited to the United States. Rates of religious-service attendance are falling in nearly every Western country. And the United Kingdom — whose Conservative Party endorsed same-sex marriage before Barack Obama did — has witnessed a remarkably similar trend to the U.S. in religious identification, with the percentage of Britons who subscribe to no religion rising 12 points since 2000.

Given that religious identification has been declining continuously with each new generation, across a diverse array of national contexts, the fundamental cause of the phenomenon is likely structural (as opposed to contingent). I can’t tell you with much authority what this macrohistorical cause is. But I’m inclined to think that industrial development inherently undermines tradition and cultivates individualism, qualities that render it an adversary of faith-based, communitarian institutions. It also seems to me that late capitalism has robbed the church of its monopoly on a wide range of social functions: The welfare state provides social insurance; the universities, metaphysics; Marvel movies, community-binding myths (what are MCU Reddit forums but Bible studies persevering?).

Regardless, my point in emphasizing the deep-seated, structural nature of declining religiosity is simple: It suggests that this trend will not be drastically reversed, absent some kind of social cataclysm.

And that poses a major challenge to the Republican Party.
America’s loss of faith may have won Biden the presidency.

Everyone knows that religion is a major fault line in American politics. But its exceptional salience has been occluded a bit in recent years, as divisions rooted in race and educational attainment have attracted heightened attention. Much digital ink has spilled on the growing split between white voters with college degrees and those without them. And rightly so. Yet it remains the case that whether a white American identifies as an Evangelical Christian is a much more reliable predictor of her partisan preference than whether she went to college.

This reality helps explain some curious aspects of contemporary politics. For example, many pundits have puzzled over the divergent political trajectories of Wisconsin and Ohio. Although both states have shifted right since the Obama era, the former has remained competitive while the latter has gone solid red. If one focuses on race and education, this split is hard to explain. Both states are heavily working-class, with nearly identical percentages of Ohioans and Wisconsinites holding college degrees, while African Americans comprise roughly twice as large a share of Ohio’s population as they do of Wisconsin’s. Thus, if you only looked at these two variables, you’d assume that the Buckeye State was the bluer battleground. But religiosity presents a countervailing distinction. In Pew’s polling, 58 percent of Ohioans say they are “highly religious,” which makes their state the 17th-most religious in the country. By contrast, only 45 percent of Wisconsinites identify as highly religious; only five states demonstrate lower levels of religiosity, and all of them are blue.

As the GOP’s electoral fortunes in Ohio (and beyond) indicate, there are worse fates than being the party of white Christians in a time of deepening education polarization. The “moral majority” may in fact be an ever-shrinking minority. But it is also disproportionately concentrated in rural areas that are overrepresented at every level of government. This reality, combined with the GOP’s Trump-era gains among secular noncollege whites — who are also overrepresented in both rural America and the Midwest’s Electoral College battlegrounds — has enabled Republicans to assemble an extraordinarily efficient coalition. While Democrats waste votes by running up the score in urban House districts and a handful of coastal states, Republicans are spread comparatively evenly across the geography of most regions, and are superabundant in the wildly overrepresented Great Plains states.

Nevertheless, geographic efficiency isn’t worth much without numerical sufficiency. In 2020, the Electoral College’s tipping-point state was nearly 4 points more Republican than the nation as whole. But the nation as a whole gave Donald Trump the lowest share of the popular vote that any incumbent president had received since Herbert Hoover. So Trump lost.

The emerging churchless majority may well have been integral to Trump’s plight. In 2016, the mogul was all things to all white cultural conservatives: His reputation as an infamous philanderer reassured a critical mass of a secular, working-class Obama voters in the Midwest that his Bible-thumping was insincere, while his avid support from megachurch pastors (and Mike Pence) kept the Evangelical right in his corner. After four years in power, however, the voting public came to regard Trump as more of a conventional conservative. And his support among the religiously unaffiliated appeared to decline: In Pew’s data, Clinton won the godless by 41 points, while Biden won them by 49.

If those figures are broadly accurate, then the shift they reflect surely helped Biden secure his narrow margins in key Midwestern states. The pious aren’t as overrepresented in the Rust Belt battlegrounds as the non-college-educated are: On Pew’s list of America’s most religious states, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Wisconsin are all in the bottom half.
The GOP is caught between the median voter and the moral minority.

Of course, the difficulty for Republicans is less that their coalition is more religious than America writ large than that it is wildly more theocratic and reactionary. For decades, Gallup has taken the public’s temperature on the moral acceptability of various social practices. In 2017, it found that on 10 of its 19 “moral” issues, American opinion had become historically left-wing, while the electorate’s views had grown significantly more conservative on exactly zero.



This trend is all but certain to continue apace over the coming decade, since it’s driven by the same generational churn that’s emptying America’s pews. As millennials and zoomers replace silents and boomers, it will be increasingly difficult for the GOP to win national elections without distancing itself from moral traditionalism. Marijuana legalization, LGBT rights, and Roe v. Wade are all popular and becoming more so.

The challenge that declining religiosity poses to the Republican Party is therefore twofold. First, the trend directly shrinks the party’s core constituency of white Evangelicals, while expanding the core Democratic constituency of the irreligious. Until recently, the GOP may have actually benefited from the decline of Protestantism in the U.S., as erosion in church membership was concentrated in mainline congregations that were disproportionately affiliated with the Democrats. But over the past decade, the ascent of the millennials and sunset of the boomers have reduced the weight of conservative Christians in the electorate. Between 2009 and 2019, the share of the U.S. population that identified as white Evangelical (or born-again) Protestants dropped from 19 to 16 percent in Pew’s polling. At the same time, the growth in the unchurched population has directly increased the Democrats’ vote share: Since 2004, the Democratic nominee has never won less than 67 percent of the religiously unaffiliated.

The second problem is that the GOP’s most loyal and best-organized mass constituency — the Evangelical right — is increasingly out of touch with mainstream opinion. This tension has been further heightened by the exodus of college-educated professionals from the GOP coalition, which has allowed the “moral minority” to retain (if not increase) its clout within the party, even as its influence over the broader culture has steadily eroded.

Graphic: @xenocryptsite/Twitter

Republicans have responded to this challenge in part by strategically retreating on some culture-war issues and escalating hostilities on more ecumenical ones. In 2015, the Supreme Court neutralized the wedge issue of same-sex marriage, and the GOP proceeded to drop the subject from its national messaging. Republican presidential hopefuls still cling to radical positions on reproductive rights, with Marco Rubio supporting the prohibition of abortion even in cases of rape and incest. But most have followed Trump’s lead in centering issues that unite religious and secular reactionaries, from immigration to “cancel culture” to belligerent anti-China policy.

Given the GOP’s large structural advantage in the Electoral College, it could conceivably build a winning coalition atop terror of migrants and reverence for racist Dr. Seuss books. After all, not all of our polity’s long-term trends cut against Republicans. The assimilation of Hispanic Americans into white identity is one tailwind for the party. And even the decline of religion isn’t without its upside for the right. Although the development hurts Republicans with white voters, the decline of the Black church appears to be helping them with African Americans — both because such institutions are critical for promoting Black turnout, and because unchurched Black voters are a bit less likely to adhere to their community’s traditional partisan preference.

Nevertheless, the Republicans’ dependence on an increasingly minor religious movement will be a major liability in 2024. The days of Anthony Kennedy nullifying debates that divide the Christian right from the broader populace are over. Today’s conservative Supreme Court is far more likely to increase the salience of such wedge issues than it is to sideline them. And neither Marco Rubio nor Josh Hawley nor Tom Cotton boasts Donald Trump’s innate connection with those who disdain both political correctness and piety.
The Christian right’s answer to declining religiosity is the suspension of democracy.

Whatever its impact on the GOP, the implications of creeping secularism are more dire for social conservatives. The Republican Party can ultimately retain political power by bringing its policy commitments into slightly closer alignment with public opinion. That is not an option for the Christian right’s true believers. As a result, the movement is becoming forthrightly anti-democratic. On the one hand, the moral minority hopes to impose its will on the nation by judicial fiat. On the other, it aims to disenfranchise the heathen majority.

Liberal analyses of the GOP’s war on voting rights tend to characterize it as a reaction against the nation’s burgeoning racial diversity. And this is surely one driver of the phenomenon. But it’s worth noting that the eclipse of conservative Christian America is real, while that of majority-white America is a paranoid delusion. According to Census Bureau projections, white Americans will still comprise over 68 percent of the U.S. population in 2060, so long as one includes Hispanic Americans who identify as white in that category. The complexion of America’s white majority may shift, as it has many times before. But it’s not actually disappearing. White conservative Christians, by contrast, are already a minority of the U.S. electorate.

It’s not surprising then that many of the right’s most unabashed advocates for authoritarianism hail from its religious wing. And while no respectable conservatives will publicly argue that nonwhite Americans are unfit for self-government, many are quite comfortable saying as much about the nation’s socially liberal majority. Glenn Elmers, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute and research scholar at Hillsdale College, made the case vividly this week:


[M]ost people living in the United States today — certainly more than half — are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term … They do not believe in, live by, or even like the principles, traditions, and ideals that until recently defined America as a nation and as a people. It is not obvious what we should call these citizen-aliens, these non-American Americans; but they are something else …

Authentic Americans still want to have decent lives. They want to work, worship, raise a family, and participate in public affairs without being treated as insolent upstarts in their own country. Therefore, we need a conception of a stable political regime that allows for the good life. The U.S. Constitution no longer works.

The Republican Party can still compete for political supremacy within America’s existing institutions. But its moral traditionalists cannot regain cultural hegemony absent some kind of a counterrevolution. If such a project is practically implausible, it is increasingly ideologically permissible on the right side of the aisle. Thus, the coming decade of U.S. politics may be defined, in part, by the struggle to prevent conservative Christianity from taking democracy down with it.

Ancient coins may solve mystery of murderous 1600s pirate

"There's extensive primary source documentation to show the American colonies were bases of operation for pirates," 

1 Apr, 2021


An 18th-century depiction of Captain Henry Every, with the Fancy shown in the background. Image / Wikipedia
AP

By: William J. Cole


A handful of coins unearthed from a pick-your-own-fruit orchard in rural Rhode Island and other random corners of the American state of New England may help solve one of the planet's oldest cold cases.

The villain in this tale: a murderous English pirate who became the world's most-wanted criminal after plundering a ship carrying Muslim pilgrims home to India from Mecca, then eluded capture by posing as a slave trader.

"It's a new history of a nearly perfect crime," said Jim Bailey, an amateur historian and metal detectorist who found the first intact 17th-century Arabian coin in a meadow in Middletown.

That ancient pocket change — among the oldest found in North America — could explain how pirate Captain Henry Every vanished into the wind.

From top: A 17th century Arabian silver coin struck in 1693; 

a Spanish half real; and an Oak Tree Shilling minted in 1652

 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

On September 7, 1695, the pirate ship Fancy, commanded by Every, ambushed and captured the Ganj-i-Sawai, a royal vessel owned by Indian emperor Aurangzeb, then one of the world's most powerful men. Aboard were not only the worshipers returning from their pilgrimage, but tens of millions of dollars' worth of gold and silver.

What followed was one of the most lucrative and heinous robberies of all time.

Historical accounts say his band tortured and killed the men aboard the Indian ship and raped the women before escaping to the Bahamas, a haven for pirates. But word quickly spread of their crimes, and English King William III — under enormous pressure from a scandalised India and the East India Company trading giant — put a large bounty on their heads.

"If you Google 'first worldwide manhunt,' it comes up as Every," Bailey said. "Everybody was looking for these guys."

Amateur historian Jim Bailey scans for Colonial-era artifacts 

in Warwick, Rhode Island. Photo / AP

Until now, historians only knew that Every eventually sailed to Ireland in 1696, where the trail went cold. But Bailey says the coins he and others have found are evidence the notorious pirate first made his way to the American colonies, where he and his crew used the plunder for day-to-day expenses while on the run.

Waving a metal detector over the soil, he got a signal, dug down and hit literal paydirt: a darkened, dime-sized silver coin he initially assumed was either Spanish or money minted by the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
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Peering closer, the Arabic text on the coin got his pulse racing. "I thought, 'Oh my God'."

Research confirmed the exotic coin was minted in 1693 in Yemen. That immediately raised questions, Bailey said, since there's no evidence that American colonists struggling to eke out a living in the New World travelled to anywhere in the Middle East to trade until decades later.

Since then, other detectorists have unearthed 15 additional Arabian coins from the same era — 10 in Massachusetts, three in Rhode Island and two in Connecticut. Another was found in North Carolina, where records show some of Every's men first came ashore.

  

A 17th century Arabian silver coin in a 17th century brass spoon. Photo / AP

"It seems like some of his crew were able to settle in New England and integrate," said Sarah Sportman, state archaeologist for Connecticut, where one of the coins was found in 2018 at the ongoing excavation of a 17th-century farm site.

"It was almost like a money-laundering scheme," she said.

Although it sounds unthinkable now, Every was able to hide in plain sight by posing as a slave trader — an emerging profession in 1690s New England. On his way to the Bahamas, he even stopped at the French island of Reunion to get some Black captives so he'd look the part, Bailey said.

Obscure records show a ship called the Sea Flower, used by the pirates after they ditched the Fancy, sailed along the Eastern seaboard. It arrived with nearly four dozen slaves in 1696 in Newport, Rhode Island, which became a major hub of the North American slave trade in the 18th century.

"There's extensive primary source documentation to show the American colonies were bases of operation for pirates," said Bailey, 53, who holds a degree in anthropology from the University of Rhode Island and worked as an archaeological assistant on explorations of the Wydah Gally pirate ship wreck off Cape Cod in the late 1980s.

Bailey, whose day job is analysing security at the state's prison complex, has published his findings in a research journal of the American Numismatic Society, an organisation devoted to the study of coins and medals.

An 18th-century depiction of Captain Henry Every, with the Fancy shown in the background. Image / Wikipedia

Archaeologists and historians familiar with Bailey's work say they're intrigued, and believe it's shedding new light on one of the world's most enduring criminal mysteries.

"Jim's research is impeccable," said Kevin McBride, a professor of archaeology at the University of Connecticut. "It's cool stuff. It's really a pretty interesting story."

Mark Hanna, an associate professor of history at the University of California-San Diego and an expert in piracy in early America, said that when he first saw photos of Bailey's coin, "I lost my mind.

"Finding those coins, for me, was a huge thing," said Hanna, author of the 2015 book, Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire.

"The story of Captain Every is one of global significance. This material object — this little thing — can help me explain that."

Every's exploits inspired a 2020 book by Steven Johnson, Enemy of All Mankind; PlayStation's popular Uncharted series of video games; and a Sony Pictures movie version of Uncharted starring Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg and Antonio Banderas that's slated for release early in 2022.

Bailey, who keeps his most valuable finds not at his home but in a safe deposit box, says he'll keep digging.

"For me, it's always been about the thrill of the hunt, not about the money. The only thing better than finding these objects is the long-lost stories behind them."

SCHADENFRUEDE 
Ivanka Trump's women's initiative branded a failure by US government auditors


An initiative championed by Ivanka Trump has been branded a failure. 

Photo / Getty Images news.com.au

1 Apr, 2021 

By: Natalie Brown

The women's empowerment initiative championed by Ivanka Trump throughout her father's presidency has been branded a failure, in a damning new report by America's Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Donald Trump's 39-year-old eldest daughter, former senior adviser and "heir apparent" – who is supposedly working to "redeem" and "rebrand" herself as she sets her eyes on the White House – spent most of her time in Washington claiming to be working on behalf of women both at home and abroad.

The Women's Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act, which Ms Trump helped usher through Congress in 2018, was a legislative overhaul of programmes assisting small businesses run by women around the world.

Now, a review by officials at the GAO has found that programmes funded through the initiative were deeply flawed and hampered by poor oversight, never working out "an explicit definition" of who was eligible to receive US$265 million per year in aid.

While the mother-of-three didn't directly oversee the programme, she promoted her role in expanding federal aid programmes to target female entrepreneurs. In an early 2019 interview, she vowed to "rigorously track the execution and efficacy of the money that we were spending".

Donald Trump and daughter Ivanka Trump walk on the South Lawn of the White House. Photo / Getty Images

"(Ivanka) Trump's stump speech on the global conference circuit was anchored in stories about the legal and regulatory barriers many women face around the world in establishing their property rights and starting businesses, and she had a solution: W-GDP (Women's Global Development and Prosperity Initiative)," Ryan Heath wrote in an article for Politico.

"Launched weeks after President Trump signed the WEEE Act in early 2019, supporters of W-GDP saw it as a groundbreaking whole-of-government approach to female empowerment. Critics of W-GDP derided the work as too limited to make a real difference."

Supposedly, the programme's hope "was that poor women entrepreneurs would receive the financial kick start they needed to build a business". Half of the annual funds were required to go to women, the other half to the "very poor", with some overlap between the two groups expected.

But despite its intentions, and Ms Trump's claims of "rigorously" tracking the "execution and the efficacy of the money that we are spending", there were "extensive failures in both the targeting of the money, and the measurement of its impact", the GAO audit found.

The initiative "was unable to say what proportion of funds went to the very poor, and women-owned and managed businesses".

"Shockingly, the agency couldn't even define what actually constitutes a business owned and run by women, the GAO concluded," Heath wrote.

A senior Trump administration official who worked on W-GDP, speaking to Politico, attributed the issues to the initiative inheriting a "tangled mess of women's policy programmes in 2017".

"Everything was scattered with no real clear goal or purpose. That is not a good use of taxpayer dollars and doesn't help people anywhere," the former official said.

The report's release comes as rumours continue to swirl about Ms Trump's political future.

According to some, she plans to run for President herself in the not-too-distant future; others say that she could serve as Vice-President under her father if he were to win in 2024; that she aims to challenge Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio in 2022 – although that path now seems to have been ruled out – or run for Florida governor.

Ivanka is Donald Trump's eldest daughter. Photo / Getty Images

US political commentator and author Spencer Critchley, a former communications consultant for Barack Obama's presidential campaigns, previously told news.com.au's Alexis Carey that Ms Trump's recent behaviour indicated she was seriously considering a political move.

He said some clues regarding her political ambitions include her adoption of "ostentatiously virtuous positions on non-controversial topics like motherhood or being kind to each other", ensuring she remains in the public eye, being "very carefully groomed and presented" in public and attending official state events during the Trump administration, such as the G20 summit in Japan in 2019.

But, attention was now turning to a string of "questionable" actions undertaken by Ms Trump before and during her time as adviser to the president, possibly threatening her future career path, he said.

"It seems clear with the hints she's dropped over the years that she thinks (running for office) is the logical next step," he told news.com.au.

"But Ivanka is obviously completely unqualified in terms of her experience but also in terms of her character – in many ways she's similar to her father and she has certainly had some very shady dealings.

"Ivanka, from the beginning and even before the Trump administration, had been involved in very questionable stuff."

Court issues stay on hog slaughter inspection rule


USDA photo by Preston Kere  

A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Inspector shows Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue around the processing floor of the Triumph Foods pork processing facility April 28, 2017. The facility houses 2,800 employees in St. Joseph, Mo.

USDA has 90 days to determine next steps in how to address courts’ criticisms of considering impact of worker safety.

Jacqui Fatka | Apr 02, 2021

The U.S. District Court of Minnesota issued a decision in United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local No. 663 v. U.S. Department of Agriculture, requiring the new administration’s USDA to decide how to proceed on the 2019 rule to change line speeds on hog slaughter inspection lines.

The decision essentially threw out the elimination of line speed limits because USDA did not adequately consider the impacts of the increased slaughter speeds on worker safety, the court says. The rest of the rules remained in place, and the court stayed its order for 90 days, giving the new administration the opportunity to rewrite the policies. Public Citizen Litigation Group represented four UFCW locals and UFCW International, which represents 33,000 workers in the pork processing industry.

The court held that USDA acted "arbitrarily and capriciously" when it refused to consider the impact of eliminating line speeds on worker health and safety in a rule it issued creating the New Swine Inspection System in October 2019. The court also rejected the meatpacking industry’s arguments that increased line speeds do not put workers at increased risk of harm, citing evidence showing a relationship between high speeds and musculoskeletal injuries, lacerations and amputations.

“The court’s decision recognized that Trump’s USDA violated basic principles of administrative law when it refused to consider the impact of its actions on plant workers and claimed, contrary to its longstanding practice, that it was not allowed to do so,” says Adam Pulver, the Public Citizen attorney who serves as lead counsel on the case.

The court vacated the provision of NSIS that eliminates line speed limits but placed its order on hold for 90 days to allow USDA time to develop a plan with respect to those plants that have converted to NSIS.

“The Administration is deeply committed to worker safety and a safe, reliable food supply. This is an important decision, and we are reviewing it closely in light of the authorities, mission and mandate of the Food Safety and Inspection Service,” according to a statement from a FSIS spokesman.

The North American Meat Institute also says it offered compelling evidence about the safety of workers under NSIS in its amicus brief. “For these reasons, we would like to see the agency appeal and ask for a stay,” says Meat Institute spokeswoman Sarah Little.

Line speeds are adjusted in all plants to optimize efficiencies without jeopardizing worker safety, animal welfare, food safety or quality. Line speeds depend on many factors, such as livestock conditions, staffing, equipment capabilities and food safety controls.

“NSIS comes with new, additional requirements, such as monitoring to ensure process control. FSIS inspectors may slow the line,” explains Little.

FSIS’s analysis shows that plants operating under the pilot program – HACCP Inspection Models Project or HIMP - averaged line speeds of 1,099 head per hour, with speeds varying from 885 head per hour to 1,295 head per hour, the Meat Institute shares.

FSIS states, “Although they are authorized to do so, market hog HIMP establishments do not operate at line speeds that are significantly faster than the current maximum line speeds for market hogs.” Maximum line speed for the traditional system is 1,106 head per hour.

FSIS compared establishment injury rates between HIMP and traditional establishments from 2002 to 2010. The preliminary analysis shows that HIMP establishments had lower mean injury rates than non-HIMP establishments. Plants that elect to operate under NSIS must provide safety attestations annually. In addition, FSIS inspectors have the authority to reduce speeds if they believe the line speed poses a worker safety risk, the Meat Institute adds.

FSIS evaluated the HIMP inspection program and found that HIMP market hog establishments receive more off-line food safety related inspection verification checks than the traditional non-HIMP market hog establishments, the Meat Institute adds.

“HIMP market hog establishments have higher compliance with Sanitation SOP [standing operating procedures] and HACCP regulations, lower levels of non-food safety defects, equivalent or better Salmonella verification testing positive rates than traditional non-HIMP market hog establishments, and lower levels of violative chemical residues. Under NSIS, market hog establishments are receiving an increased level of Sanitation SOP and HACCP inspection,” the Meat Institute explains.

“Food and Water Watch claims HIMP/NSIS FS-2 rates of violations are higher than traditional plants, but this is incorrect,” adds Little. “Under the traditional system, inspectors check 11 carcasses for violations, but in a HIMP/NSIS facility inspectors check twice as many (24) carcasses for violations.”

FDA investigating cause of bad batch of Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine

Batch had to be thrown out after mistake at Emergent manufacturing plant

Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine. AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Published: April 1, 2021 
By Peter Loftus and
Thomas M. Burton

The Food and Drug Administration is investigating what caused a batch of the active ingredient for Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine to be scrapped for failing to meet quality standards at a contract manufacturing plant, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The FDA may send an inspection team to assess the situation at the Baltimore plant operated by contractor Emergent BioSolutions Inc. EBS, -13.40%, the person said.

The regulatory scrutiny follows J&J’s disclosure Wednesday that a batch of the main ingredient for its COVID-19 vaccine manufactured at the Emergent plant didn’t meet standards. The batch didn’t reach the vial-filling and finishing stage, and no doses from it were distributed.

J&J JNJ, -0.92% says the quality lapse didn’t affect vaccine doses that have been distributed in the U.S. since the vaccine was authorized in late February, and the company still has enough supply to meet near-term commitments. J&J also makes the main ingredient for the vaccine at its own plant in the Netherlands.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com.

US Manufacturing sector marks highest growth since December 1983


Boxes containing the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine are prepared to be shipped at the Pfizer Global Supply Kalamazoo manufacturing plant in Portage, Michigan. File Photo by Morry Gash/EPA-EFE

April 1 (UPI) -- Economic trends show that U.S. manufacturing activity hit its highest point in more than 37 years in March, the Institute For Supply Management said Thursday.

The last month alone marked the fastest rate of growth in the last 12 months, with the ISM index of national factory activity growing to a reading of 64.7% in March from 60.8% in February, figures show in the ISM report.

A reading above 50% indicates the manufacturing economy is expanding and below 50% indicates it's contracting, according to ISM, which uses the Purchasing Managers' Index for economic trends.

The employment index has grown for four consecutive months. It rose to 59.6% in March, its highest reading since February 2018, and 5.2 percentage points higher than February reading of 54.4%.

The manufacturing economy has been expanding for 10 consecutive months after contracting in April and May, figures show, amid closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, the pandemic has shot up demand with companies struggling to keep up with it.

"The manufacturing economy continued its recovery in March," ISM Chair Timothy Fiore said in a statement Thursday. "However, Survey Committee Members reported that their companies and suppliers continue to struggle to meet increasing rates of demand due to coronavirus (COVID-19) impacts limiting availability of parts and materials."

The manufacturing sector makes up about 11.39% of the U.S. economy, according to the National Association of Manufacturers.

The S&P 500 hit a new milestone above 4,000 amid investor reaction to the manufacturing growth, MarketWatch reported.

On Wednesday, the S&P 500 closed the month with a previous record high of 3,972.89.

Technology stocks contributed to the gains as investors reacted to President Joe Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure plan. The plan would raise the corporate tax rate to fund the plan within 15 years.

RELATED ADP, Moody's: U.S. added 517,000 new jobs in March


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London police officer found guilty of membership in banned neo-Nazi group

Hannam's conviction for a terrorism offense marks a first for a British officer


Met officer Benjamin Hannam has been found guilty

 of involvement in a proscribed terrorist group. 

Photo courtesy of Met Police

April 1 (UPI) -- A London police officer has been found guilty of membership in a banned neo-Nazi group, the Metropolitan Police said Thursday.

Probationary Police Constable Benjamin Hannam, 22, of North London, was found guilty of membership of proscribed terrorist organization National Action, following a trial at the Old Bailey, Met Police said in a statement. He was convicted of two counts of fraud by false representation and two counts of possession of document likely to be of use to a terrorist.

The Home Secretary proscribed the racist neo-Nazi group National Action as a terrorist group on December 16, 2016.

"The public expect police officers to carry out their duties with the very highest levels of honesty and integrity," said Commander Richard Smith of the Met's Counter Terrorism Command. "Sadly, PC Hannam showed none of these qualities, firstly by joining with a far-right proscribed organization, and then when he lied about his past links to this group when applying to become a police officer."

Hannam is slated for sentencing on April 23.

He was suspended from duty following his arrest on March 5 of last year. His arrest stemmed from a Counter Terrorism Command investigation in February of last year into individuals, including suspected National Action members, linked to a far-right extremist Internet forum 'Iron March.'

Smith said in a statement Hannam was arrested shortly after investigators were able to "link his online profile to his real-world identity."

After his arrest, investigators found that he had not only engaged with National Action offline since March 2016, but also had direct involvement with the group offline after it was banned. Hannam joined the Met in March 2018 after lying about his involvement with the banned group when applying the prior year.

His involvement with the banned group ended prior to the start of his police training, according to the police statement. Until the summer of 2017, when he applied to the Met, he had attended various activities and events organized by the group.

Hannam was also a recruiter for National Action, Sky News reported.

Detectives spotted an image of Hannam online after his arrest, which showed him in a police uniform, with a Hitler-style mustache superimposed on his face and a Nazi badge on his lapel, according to Sky News.

They also discovered Hannam had a knife-fighting manual, and a copy of the "manifesto" of right-wing extremist Anders Breivik, which included bomb-making instructions and "exhaustive justifications for his mass-casualty attacks," prosecutors said, Sky News added.

Breivik killed 77 people in a terrorist bombing and shooting rampage in Oslo, Norway, in 2011.

Hannam's conviction for a terrorism offense marks a first for a British officer, the BBC reported.

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Climate change, biodiversity loss the top concerns

 in UNESCO survey

Many respondents in the UNESCO survey said better education is probably a key tool in the fight against concerns like climate change. File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo

April 1 (UPI) -- Ongoing climate change and declines in biodiversity have been identified as the world's chief environmental concerns in a new United Nations survey.

The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said more than 15,000 people, mostly under the age of 35, participated in The World in 2030 survey.

As part of the survey, respondents were asked about their most pressing concerns. Apart from climate change and biodiversity decline, most identified violence and conflict, discrimination and equality and lack of food, water and housing as other top worries.

"At a time of massive disruption linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, our goal was to listen to the challenges being faced by people all over the world, and they have told us loud and clear," UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay said in a statement.

RELATED Survey: Innovation, oversight needed to make aquaculture more sustainable

"Greater efforts are needed to address people's specific concerns, and multilateralism is the way to do this. Restoring confidence in multilateralism requires the implementation of concrete and impactful projects."

Many respondents answered that improvements in education are likely a prime solution to fighting many of their most pressing concerns.

"This reflects a collective conviction in the importance of education not only as an end in and of itself but as a valid and wide-reaching solution to our many and varied global challenges," the report states. "Education was also considered the area of society which will most need to be rethought in light of the COVID-19 crisis."

RELATED North American deserts are home to tremendous butterfly diversity

On Wednesday, the International Energy Agency also sounded an alarm over climate change -- saying that new commitments, substantial policy changes and far less reliance on fossil fuels are needed to achieve environmental goals around the world established to slow global warming.

Boxed in by poachers, African elephants only use fraction of potential range

Elephants alter their movement patterns and feeding times to avoid poachers, today occupying just 17% of their potential range in Africa as a result of threats posed by humans. Photo by David Giffin

April 1 (UPI) -- African elephants have habitat to spare, but new research suggests their range has been constrained by 2,000 years of human pressure.

Despite human development and population growth across Africa, a new survey of the African elephant's potential range -- published Thursday in the journal Current Biology -- suggests there is still plenty of suitable habitat.

Humans have been targeting elephants for their tusks for thousands of years, but the ivory trade began rapidly expanding during late 17th century.

The growth of the ivory trade, as European colonizers arrived on the continent, dramatically shrank the size of the African elephant population, as well as the species' geographic range.

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Today, the continent's elephants remain hemmed in by poachers, unable to utilize the full scope of Africa's available habitat.

According to the new study, roughly 62% of Africa, or 7 million square miles, is suitable for elephant habitation. Much of the potential habitat is only sparsely populated by humans.

For the study, scientists used GPS collars to track where elephants roam today.

RELATED Botswana government says toxic algae bloom caused mass elephant deaths

Researchers analyzed the habitat features present across their current range, including vegetation type, tree cover, surface temperature, precipitation, slope and human influence.

Finally, scientists extrapolated the data to determine where else the megafauna could live but don't.

Researchers found large swaths of unused habitat in the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, where not long ago massive forests hosted hundreds of thousands of elephants.

RELATED Older bulls hold important leadership roles in elephant societies

Today, the two nation's are home to just 5,000 to 10,000 elephants.

The authors of the new study also pinpointed places where elephants are unable to survive.

"The major no-go areas include the Sahara, Danakil and Kalahari deserts, as well as urban centers and high mountaintops," study co-author Iain Douglas-Hamilton said in a press release.

RELATED Bird companions help black rhinos avoid poachers

"That gives us an idea of what the former range of elephants might have been. However, there's a dearth of information about the status of African elephants between the end of Roman times and the arrival of the first European colonizers," said Douglas-Hamilton, a zoologist at Oxford University and founder of Save the Elephants.

Historical evidence suggests elephants once occupied nearly every part of the African continent.

But through the centuries, these highly intelligent animals have learned to avoid humans and the threats they pose, concentrating themselves into a drastically reduced range.

"Elephants are quick to recognize danger, and find safer areas," said Douglas-Hamilton.

Previous studies have shown elephants alter their migration and feeding patterns to avoid poachers.

The latest findings are a reminder of what the African elephant's range and population size might look like if the threat of poaching was eliminated, researchers said.

"Elephants are generalist mega-herbivores that can occupy fringe habitats," Wall concludes. "Their range may have shrunk, but if we gave them the chance they could spread back to parts of their former habitat."


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