Biden chooses tech critic Lina Khan to lead FTC

The move could signal a more progressive agenda for the Federal Trade Commission.

Abrar Al-Heeti

CNET
June 15, 2021 

Lina Khan was confirmed by the Senate to be commissioner of the FTC on Tuesday.

Getty Images

President Joe Biden selected big tech critic Lina Khan, a Democrat, to serve as chair of the Federal Trade Commission on Tuesday, the agency said. Her swearing in came soon after the Senate confirmed Khan in a 69-28 vote to be a commissioner of the FTC, according to CNBC.

"I look forward to working with my colleagues to protect the public from corporate abuse," Khan said in a statement.

Khan, 32, previously worked as an associate professor of law at Columbia Law School, and served as counsel to the US House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law, helping in the investigation of digital markets related to Google, Apple and other big tech companies.

Tuesday's move could indicate Biden hopes the FTC takes on a more progressive agenda, CNBC notes. The president said in March he would nominate Khan to be an FTC commissioner.

Khan will take over for FTC Acting Chairwoman Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, a Democrat. The FTC is comprised of five commissioners, of which no more than three can be from the same party. In her role, Khan will vote on enforcement issues involving competition and consumer protection.

Khan tweeted, "I'm so grateful to the Senate for my confirmation. Congress created the FTC to safeguard fair competition and protect consumers, workers, and honest businesses from unfair & deceptive practices. I look forward to upholding this mission with vigor and serving the American public."


First published on June 15, 2021 at 2:27 p.m. PT.

SHE BELIEVES IN GOD NOT EVOLUTION

Marjorie Taylor Greene leads conspiracy-heavy attack on Fauci

Alexander Nazaryan
·National Correspondent
Tue, June 15, 2021,

WASHINGTON — One after another, some of the most conservative members of the House of Representatives took to the stage at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday to denounce Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top medical adviser to President Biden, and to air other pandemic-related grievances.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who was introducing a bill to reduce Fauci’s salary to $0 and have him account for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, led the attacks. The proposed legislation, called the Fire Fauci Act, stands no chance of passage in a House controlled by Democrats.

Nevertheless, the highly vituperative affair — replete with reminders that Fauci was an “unelected bureaucrat” — was indicative of how the bespectacled, Brooklyn-born immunologist continues to be at the center of every ongoing debate related to the coronavirus, including the economic costs of lockdowns (low, says a new study, though there are, of course, social and psychic costs to isolation) and the efficacy of wearing masks (exceptionally high, the discomfort of masking aside).

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene at a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday. (Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Bitter recriminations over the handling of the pandemic continue to fill the national discourse, even as that pandemic ends. Conservatives believe that restrictions were onerous and unnecessary, while liberals and progressives have criticized former President Donald Trump’s response. Trump frequently undermined and threatened Fauci, eventually making Dr. Scott Atlas, a controversial Stanford-affiliated physician, his top coronavirus adviser.

Even as the pandemic ebbs in the United States, the attacks against Fauci have intensified. Critics have used his emails, released recently under a Freedom of Information Act request, to buttress their claims. Those show that he was uncertain about the efficacy of masks in the early stages of the pandemic. So were many others at a time early on when how the virus spread was poorly understood. One email Fauci received in January 2020 did raise the possibility of a lab escape, but there is no evidence he concealed critical information about the origins of the virus. Such information has been exceptionally difficult to come by for investigators outside China.

“Please cover his emails,” Greene said. “Get the truth out.” The emails were extensively covered by the Washington Post and other outlets, but conservatives who have been suspicious of Fauci and the scientific establishment from the start insist that the messages merit more investigation.

Taylor and her co-sponsors on the anti-Fauci bill (Republican Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky; Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar of Arizona; Mary Miller of Illinois; Buddy Carter of Georgia; Bob Good of Virginia; Matt Gaetz and Greg Steube of Florida; and Mo Brooks of Alabama) claim that Fauci knowingly funded research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that made the virus more lethal. Although that laboratory did receive National Institutes of Health funding through a New York-based organization called the EcoHealth Alliance, both Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins have explicitly said that Chinese grant recipients were prevented from using U.S. funds for so-called gain-of-function research, which makes a pathogen either more transmissible or more potent to see how it might then behave.

Rep. Thomas Massie calls for the firing of Dr. Anthony Fauci at the Capitol on Tuesday. (Sarah Silbiger/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Conservatives are unconvinced. Now that Fauci is associated with Biden, not Trump, their attacks are seemingly intended to imply that the new administration is incapable of holding China to account. Biden has, in fact, called for a more complete investigation of how the coronavirus originated.

“Were we all victims of a bioweapon?” wondered Greene, a onetime adherent of the QAnon conspiracy theory who has also mused about “Jewish space lasers” and more recently dismissed evolution. She demanded “reparations” from the Chinese government, which has sought to distance itself from any responsibility for the origins of the virus, going so far as to call for investigations of bioweapons at American facilities. Yet scientists have become increasingly emboldened in arguing that the lab escape theory needs a harder look, with greater cooperation from China. The notion that China unleashed a bioweapon on the world, however, is not considered a credible hypothesis.

Trump was sometimes irritated with Fauci’s media appearances, and by the high degree of trustworthiness he was afforded by the public. Those grievances plainly persist. “Dr. Fauci leveraged his position as a leading figure in the White House to become a celebrity,” charged Rep. Biggs.

Greene and others spoke standing beside a placard that said: “Fauci lied. People died.” The words were accompanied by a photo of a masked Fauci, who is head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He has been in the federal government for 40 years and has served seven consecutive presidents, including Trump.

Firing him would be difficult, since Fauci is a senior public servant, not an appointed official. Nor are congressional Democrats, or the president, bound to take personnel advice from the most radical members of the opposition party, some of whom called into question Biden’s legitimate victory in last November’s election.

Dr. Anthony Fauci at a Senate Appropriations Labor, Health and Human Services Subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill on May 26. (Sarah Silbiger/Reuters)

Among the participants in Tuesday’s anti-Fauci fusillade was Rep. Brooks, who last week was sued by Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., for his alleged role in inciting pro-Trump rioters on Jan. 6. In response to a question from Yahoo News, Brooks angrily denied that the anti-China rhetoric on display Tuesday could be fueling attacks against Asian Americans. He noted that Chinese Americans “are not necessarily members of the Chinese Communist Party.”

The purpose of Tuesday’s rally was largely symbolic, more significant in what it says about how conservatives plan to litigate the pandemic in the coming months, ahead of the 2022 midterm elections. Even as life returns to normal in many parts of the country, there remain uncertainties about the upcoming school year, about how long white-collar workers will continue to work from home and just how much effort should go into investigating the origins of the coronavirus, not to mention how to prevent the next pandemic.

“Let’s not divide people with politics,” said Greene, who less than 24 hours earlier had called a press conference to apologize for having compared pandemic restrictions to the horrific treatment of Jews by Nazis during World War II. A skilled cultural warrior with little interest in seeking legislative solutions, Greene understands that the pandemic remains a motivating issue for both sides of the nation’s gaping political divide.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene holds a press conference outside the Capitol following a private visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Monday. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)

Fauci has been living under heightened security for months. That is likely to continue as long as he remains at the center of conservatives’ ire. Last month the National Review ran a cover story on what it deemed “the unforced errors of America’s political doctor,” mockingly depicting him as a would-be saint. And the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is set to release a book highly critical of Fauci in September. As of Monday evening, that book was among the bestselling on Amazon.

Republicans introduce bill to fire Fauci, face of US Covid response

US Republicans including congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (2ndL) introduced a measure that would remove pandemic expert Anthony Fauci from his government job

 JIM WATSON AFP
Issued on: 15/06/2021 - 

Washington (AFP)

Several Republican lawmakers, eager to blame a US government official for the response to the coronavirus pandemic, introduced a bill Tuesday to fire Anthony Fauci, the face of American efforts to combat Covid-19.

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene led a handful of colleagues in announcing the so-called Fire Fauci Act, which would reduce the famed infectious disease expert's government salary to zero and require the Senate to confirm someone to fill his position.

Fauci, who has advised seven US presidents, had become a trusted figure in the government's Covid-19 response, beginning with his work during Donald Trump's administration.

But conservatives have taken aim at his performance, accusing him of misleading Americans and providing contradictory advice on masks and social distancing.

"Dr Fauci was not elected by the American people. He was not chosen to guide our economy. He was not chosen to rule over parents and their children's education," Greene told reporters.

"But yet Dr Fauci very much controlled our lives for the past year."

The bill is not expected to receive a floor vote in the Democratically-controlled House.

Greene, whose extremist statements have made her a controversial figure in Congress, pointed to a series of Fauci emails that Republicans seized on to argue that he misled Americans and initially dismissed the idea that Covid-19 may have originated in a Chinese laboratory.

"It's time to fire Dr. Anthony Fauci and give answers to the American people," she said.

The White House defended Fauci this month after the emails surfaced, calling him "an undeniable asset" in the pandemic response.

Greene also aimed a fiery accusation at China, voicing suspicion that a Wuhan laboratory was seeking to weaponize the virus.

"Why would there ever be viruses created, taken out of nature, that can be shared and passed among bats or other creatures, and then harnessed and changed into some sort of virus that can be spread among people? There's a word for that: it's called bioweapon," she said.

"Were we all victims of a bioweapon? We demand answers."

China also must be held accountable, she said, noting the Wuhan Institute of Virology's "gain-of-function" research, in which scientists increase the strength of a virus to better study its effects on hosts.

This week the Chinese scientist at the center of theories that the pandemic originated with a leak from her specialized Wuhan lab denied her institution was to blame for the health disaster.

"How on earth can I offer up evidence for something where there is no evidence?" Dr Shi Zhengli told The New York Times.

Another fire Fauci sponsor, congressman Mo Brooks, expressed support for Greene's bioweapons theory, saying a country would only make a virus more contagious for "militarization purposes."

Coronavirus was likely present in US from December 2019: study

Issued on: 15/06/2021 

A phlebotomist takes blood through a finger prick during a Covid-19 antibody test Frederic J. BROWN AFP

Washington (AFP)

A new antibody testing study published Tuesday has found further evidence that the coronavirus was present in the United States from at least December 2019, weeks before the first confirmed case was announced on January 21.

The National Institutes of Health study analyzed 24,000 stored blood samples contributed by volunteers across the country from January 2 to March 18, 2020.

Antibodies against the SARS-CoV-2 virus were detected via two different serology tests in nine patient samples, according to the paper, which was published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases.

The participants were outside the major hotspots of Seattle and New York City, thought to be the key entry points of the virus to the United States.

The first positive samples came from participants in Illinois and Massachusetts on January 7 and 8, 2020, respectively, suggesting that the virus was present in those states in late December.

"Antibody testing of blood samples helps us better understand the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the US in the early days of the US epidemic, when testing was restricted," said lead author Keri Althoff, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The research builds on a similar investigation published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last November that reached the same conclusion.

But since there are uncertainties surrounding serology testing, further confirmation builds extra confidence in the finding.

To help minimize the possibility of false positives, the team used two separate tests on each sample, searching for antibodies that bind to different parts of the virus.

The types of antibodies they were looking for are called Immunoglobulin G, or IgG, which "neutralize" the virus' ability to invade cells and do not appear until two weeks after a person has been infected.

It therefore follows that study participants with these samples were exposed to the virus at least several weeks earlier.

Limitations include that the number of samples taken from many states was low -- just a few dozen or hundred,

The authors also do not know whether the participants became infected during travel, or within their own communities, and would like to see their work confirmed in further study.

Finally, there is a possibility that the antibodies they detected were formed against infection to other coronaviruses, such as the four that cause common colds.

But since other research has shown that "cross-reactivity" between these coronaviruses is low, the team estimated that the probability all nine samples were false positives was one in 100,000.

The US death toll from Covid-19 surpassed 600,000 on Tuesday, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University.

THE UNDEAD PARTY

Algeria’s establishment FLN wins parliamentary poll

Issued on: 15/06/2021 

The president of the National Independent Elections Authority (ANIE), Mohamed Charfi, speaks during a press conference in Algiers on June 15, 2021. © Ryad Kramdi, AFP

Text by:NEWS WIRES

Algeria's National Liberation Front (FLN) party won weekend parliamentary elections with a significantly reduced number of seats and with the country's lowest ever turnout at 23 percent, the electoral board said Tuesday.

According to initial figures, the FLN, the North African country's single party for decades and the main component of the outgoing parliament, led with 105 out of 407 seats in Saturday's poll, the head of the National Independent Elections Authority (ANIE) said.

The result comes somewhat as a surprise, as the party had been considered moribund after the rule of ousted former autocrat Abdelaziz Bouteflika.

However, it would also indicate that the FLN has lost more than 50 seats and controls less than a quarter of the new assembly.

Independents were second with 78 seats while the moderate Islamist party Movement of Society for Peace (MSP), which had previously claimed its candidates were ahead in most regions, was third with 64, electoral commission chief Mohamed Chorfi said.

"The foundations of this parliament have been built in total freedom and transparency for the people," he added.

Democratic National Rally (RND), traditional ally of the FLN and also linked to Bouteflika's rule, was on 57 seats.

Only 5.6 million of more than 24 million eligible voters lodged a ballot at Saturday's polls -- a record low turnout of just 23.03 percent -- with more than a million invalid votes cast, the ANIE said in provisional figures.

The long-running Hirak protest movement which ousted Bouteflika from power had boycotted the vote, as with a constitutional referendum in November that gave additional powers to the presidency and the army.

(AFP)

FASCISTS PASS ANTI HUMAN RIGHTS LAW
Lawmakers in Hungary pass anti-LGBT law ahead of 2022 election

Issued on: 16/06/2021 - 

FILE PHOTO: Demonstrators protest against Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the latest anti-LGBTQ law in Budapest, Hungary, June 14, 2021. © REUTERS/Marton Monus

Text by:NEWS WIRES

Hungary's parliament passed legislation on Tuesday that bans the dissemination of content in schools deemed to promote homosexuality and gender change, amid strong criticism from human rights groups and opposition parties.

Hardline nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who faces an election next year, has grown increasingly radical on social policy, railing against LGBT people and immigrants in his self-styled illiberal regime, which has deeply divided Hungarians.

His Fidesz party, which promotes a Christian-conservative agenda, tacked the proposal banning school talks on LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) issues to a separate, widely backed bill that strictly penalises paedophilia, making it much harder for opponents to vote against it.

The move, which critics say wrongly conflates paedophilia with LGBT issues, triggered a mass rally outside parliament on Monday, while several rights groups have called on Fidesz to withdraw the bill.

Fidesz lawmakers overwhelmingly backed the legislation on Tuesday, while leftist opposition parties boycotted the vote.

Under amendments submitted to the bill last week, under-18s cannot be shown any content that encourages gender change or homosexuality. This also applies to advertisements. The law sets up a list of organisations allowed to provide education about sex in schools.

The U.S. Embassy in Budapest said it was "deeply concerned" by anti-LGBTQI+ aspects of the legislation.

"The United States stands for the idea that governments should promote freedom of expression and protect human rights, including the rights of members of the LGBTQI+ community," it said in a statement on its website.

Restrictions

Gay marriage is not recognised in Hungary and only heterosexual couples can legally adopt children. Orban's government has redefined marriage as the union between one man and one woman in the constitution, and limited gay adoption.

Critics have drawn a parallel between the new legislation and Russia's 2013 law that bans disseminating "propaganda on non-traditional sexual relations" among young Russians.

Poland's conservative ruling party Law and Justice (PiS), Fidesz's main ally in the European Union, has taken a similarly critical stance on LGBT issues. Budapest and Warsaw are at odds with the European Union over some of their conservative reforms.

The European Parliament's rapporteur on the situation in Hungary, Greens lawmaker Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield, slammed the new law on Tuesday: "Using child protection as an excuse to target LGBTIQ people is damaging to all children in Hungary."

Orban has won three successive election landslides since 2010, but opposition parties have now combined forces for the first time and caught up with Fidesz in opinion polls.

Hungary passes ban on LGBTQ+ content in schools tied to child sex abuse law
By Sommer Brokaw

Protesters march to oppose LGBTQ+ related amendments to a national child sex abuse law at the parliament building in Budapest, Hungary, on Monday. The amendments include changes in sex education curricula in schools. Photo by Szilard Koszticsak/EPA-EFE


June 15 (UPI) -- Hungarian lawmakers on Tuesday passed a ban against certain LGBTQ+ content in schools through amendments that were made to a national child sex abuse law.

Hungarian Parliament voted to adopt the law that increases sentences for sex crimes and creates a public database of sex offenders. But it also includes late changes that restrict LGBTQ+ content for students under 18 in schools.

The law restricts education and advertising deemed to "popularize" homosexuality or gender identification outside of the that assigned at birth. It also restricts sexual education to teachers and organizations approved by the government.

The national assembly passed the law 157-1 after a plea from one of Europe's leading human rights officials to abandon it as "an affront" against the LGBTQ+ community.

"This is a dark day," Amnesty International Hungary Director David Vig said in a statement. "This new legislation will further stigmatize the [LGBTQ+] people and their allies. It will expose people already facing a hostile environment to even greater discrimination."

"Tagging these amendments to a bill that seeks to crack down on child abuse appears to be a deliberate attempt by the Hungarian government to conflate pedophilia with [LGBTQ+] people," he added.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who is also president of the ruling Fidesz political party, has been accused of using the child abuse law to gain support in his conservative base ahead of elections next year and to shifhe focus away from other scandals.

The majority Fidesz-controlled Hungarian Parliament previously enacted legislation barring gay couples from adopting children.

WHACKADOODLE

Trump cited conspiracy theories to pressure DOJ to overturn 2020 election results, emails show

MICHAEL MCAULIFF AND DAVE GOLDINER NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
JUNE 15, 2021 

Former President Donald Trump repeatedly pressured the Justice Department to overturn Joe Biden’s victory, at one point urging prosecutors to file a Supreme Court lawsuit to nullify the election, according to new emails released Tuesday by the House Oversight Committee.

The emails from Trump and his aides during the last weeks of his presidency revealed bogus claims of fraud and conspiracy theories to win then-Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen’s support, prompting outrage from Rosen’s deputy.

“Pure insanity,” wrote then-Deputy AG Richard Donoghue, after receiving a YouTube link from Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows about a theory involving Italian spies.

Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., called the 232-page report a smoking gun that proves Trump wanted to block certification of Biden’s win — a campaign that eventually led to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol.

“Trump tried to corrupt our nation’s chief law enforcement agency in a brazen attempt to overturn an election that he lost,” said Maloney.

The emails cited debunked claims of voter fraud in various swing states and outlandish claims spouted by far right-wing conspiracy theorists that Italy used military satellites to switch votes to Biden.

Maloney said the new documents prove the necessity of forcing officials like Meadows, Rosen and former Attorney General Bill Barr to testify under oath about Trump’s and their own actions.

“Those who aided or witnessed President Trump’s unlawful actions must answer the committee’s questions about this attempted subversion of democracy,” the New York Democrat said.

The emails date back to Dec. 14, right as Barr resigned from his post after declaring there was no evidence of widespread fraud or any other substantial issues with the presidential election.

Trump and his acolytes clearly hoped to take advantage of Rosen’s tenuous position to obtain ammunition for their campaign to block Congress from certifying the election.

Meadows demanded in one email that Rosen order prosecutors to look into possible issues with signature matching on absentee ballots in the county that includes Atlanta after Biden narrowly won Georgia.

“Engage on this issue immediately to determine if there is any truth to this allegation,” Meadows wrote.

Rosen resisted the efforts. He wrote to Donoghue deriding the request, according to the documents.

“Can you believe this?” Rosen asked. “I am not going to respond to the message.”

Rosen also said he “flatly refused” Meadows’ demand that he meet with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, to discuss the Italian spy claims.

“(I) said I would not be giving any special treatment to Giuliani or any of his ‘witnesses,’” Rosen wrote.

GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, a ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, argued Tuesday that it’s the Justice Department that should be probed for ignoring Trump and Meadows’ demands.

“When the president, when the chief of staff to the president of the United States asked someone in the Executive Branch to do something, and they basically give him the finger, I think that’s the problem we should be looking into. But that’s not what the Democrats are going to look into,” said Jordan, R-Ohio.

CASINO CAPITALI$M

Hindenburg Research reveals DraftKings short position, says company is hiding black market operations

Will Daniel Jun. 15, 2021, 10:39 AM

DraftKings CEO Jason Robins.
Angela Rowlings/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald via Getty Images

Hindenburg Research revealed its latest short position in a report on Tuesday, setting sights on online betting company DraftKings.

The short seller claimed DraftKings is hiding "black market operations."

Hindenburg says 50% of DraftKings' SPAC partner SBTech's revenue comes from markets where gambling is banned.

Short seller Hindenburg Research revealed its latest short position against DraftKings in a report on Tuesday.

Hindenburg said that one of DraftKings' SPAC merger partners, Bulgaria-based gaming technology company SBTech, "brings exposure to extensive dealings in black-market gaming, money laundering, and organized crime."

The short seller claimed that, according to their estimates based on SEC filings, "supporting documents," and conversations with former employees, roughly 50% of SBTech's revenue comes from markets where gambling is banned.

DraftKings did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment about the report.

Hindenburg said the company's illicit customer relationships were shuffled into a newly formed "distributor" entity called BTi/CoreTech when DraftKings went public via a SPAC merger with Diamond Eagle Acquisition Corp. in April 2020.

The short seller has been a frequent critic of popular startups, many of which have gone public via SPAC. Previous targets include electric vehicle makers Nikola and Lordstown Motors, as well as Chamath Palihapitiya-backed Clover Health.

Hindenburg also noted that DraftKings insiders have dumped over $1.4 billion in stock since the company went public, and SBTech's founder personally sold around $568 million in shares.

Finally, the short seller argued DraftKings' business model of aggressively spending cash to acquire customers that may or may not be loyal to the platform could be a risk moving forward.

DraftKings stock traded down 4.24% as of 1:14 p.m. ET after news of the short-seller report broke.

Queer Video Game Life Is Strange Coming to Nintendo Switch



Both Life Is Strange: Remastered and Life Is Strange: True Colors are coming to the platform.

BY MEY RUDE
JUNE 15 2021 

Today was Nintendo's presentation at this year's virtual Electronic Entertainment Expo (more commonly known as E3), and apart from announcing a new Metroid game and a classic Tekken character coming to Super Smash, the gaming giant also gave some good news to the queer gamers this morning!

Nintendo just announced that the groundbreaking series of LGBTQ-inclusive video games, Life Is Strange, will be coming to the Switch later this year.

In a preview shown during the Nintendo Direct, we saw cute, cartoon-styled versions of Chloe and Max, as well as Life Is Strange: True Colors' main character Alex Chen. The trio is riding in a train boxcar together through the Pacific Northwest.

Life Is Strange: True Colors launches on Nintendo Switch on September 10, and no release date for the Life Is Strange: Remastered Collection has been announced just yet.

The Remastered Collection stars Max and Chloe in their adventures from both the original game and Before the Storm. There’s no announcement on whether or not Life Is Strange 2 will come to the platform.

The original Life Is Strange featured Max, a queer teen who learns that she can rewind time and must embark on a journey to save her friends and her hometown. In the game, she sparks up a romance with her childhood friend Chloe. The prequel, Life Is Strange: Before the Storm shows Chloe having romantic feelings for another female character, Rachel.

The protagonist of Life Is Strange 2, Sean Diaz, is a bisexual teen with latent telekinetic abilities. Now, in the newest installation of the game, you play as Alex Chen, a young, Asian-American queer woman with the power to read and manipulate other people’s emotions. In the game, you have two potential love interests, one named Ryan, and one named Steph.

It’s going to be queer autumn for gamers everywhere, and we can’t wait to play as tragic, psychic queer teens once again!

MacKenzie Scott, the billionaire philanthropist and Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife, has given $2.7 billion to a variety of charities

Scott, who is worth almost $60bn, has donated to 286 organisations from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre to racial equity funds in philanthropy and journalism 

[File: Jorg Carstensen/AFP/Getty Images]

By Sophie Alexander

Bloomberg
15 Jun 2021

MacKenzie Scott, the billionaire philanthropist and Jeff Bezos’s ex-wife, has given $2.7 billion to a variety of charities, she wrote in a blog post Tuesday, bringing her total donations since her first giving spree in July 2020 to $8.5 billion.

Scott, 51, shook up the philanthropy world last year with the pace and magnitude of her giving. This time she donated to 286 organizations from the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre to racial equity funds in philanthropy and journalism. This is her first time announcing donations since she remarried to Dan Jewett, a Seattle science teacher.

“Me, Dan, a constellation of researchers and administrators and advisors — we are all attempting to give away a fortune that was enabled by systems in need of change,” Scott, who is worth almost $60 billion, wrote in the post. “We are governed by a humbling belief that it would be better if disproportionate wealth were not concentrated in a small number of hands, and that the solutions are best designed and implemented by others.”

Scott, who ended up with a 4% stake in Amazon.com Inc. following her divorce with Bezos, has quickly become one of the most consequential philanthropists in the world.

Last year she likely set a record for the largest annual distribution by a living person. Scott has been lauded by experts and philanthropy critics alike not only for the speed and scope of her gifts, but also for what organizations she’s giving to — smaller ones typically overlooked by big donors — and for the no-strings-attached that come with her gifts.

“Because we believe that teams with experience on the front lines of challenges will know best how to put the money to good use, we encouraged them to spend it however they choose,” she wrote in her post Tuesday. “Many reported that this trust significantly increased the impact of the gift.”

#PFAS

Study: Many cosmetics contain unlisted, toxic 'forever chemicals'

HEALTH NEWS
JUNE 15, 2021 / 11:00\

 
Cosmetics contain high levels of potentially dangerous "forever chemicals," according to a new analysis. File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

June 15 (UPI) -- Commonly used cosmetics, including certain types of mascara and lipstick, contain high levels of potentially toxic chemicals that are not listed on labels, according to an analysis published Tuesday by the journal Environmental Science and Technology Letters.

As a result, some makeup wearers may be absorbing and ingesting these chemicals, called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, the researchers said.

Several of the products tested, including multiple brands of waterproof mascara, liquid lipstick and foundations, had high fluorine levels -- a sign of the "probable presence of PFAS," which are also known as "forever chemicals."

Products with the highest fluorine levels that underwent further analysis were found to contain at least four PFAS of concern, with the majority not listed on the label.

RELATED DoD expects to wrap investigation of PFAS pollution by 2024

"Lipstick wearers may inadvertently eat several pounds of lipstick in their lifetimes," study co-author Graham Peaslee said in a press release.

"But unlike food, chemicals in lipstick and other makeup and personal care products are almost entirely unregulated," said Peaslee, a professor of physics at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind.

In addition to potentially ingesting PFAS from lip products, cosmetic wearers may be absorbing the chemicals through their skin and tear ducts so that they enter the bloodstream, the researchers said.

RELATED Legislation calls for 'forever chemicals' to be regulated as hazardous substances

PFAS, which have also been found in drinking water, soil and in food packaging, can accumulate in the human body and persist in the environment -- hence their nickname "forever chemicals."

Some studies have linked them with fertility problems, birth defects, obesity, diabetes and cancer, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Working Group.

RELATED PFAS should be classified as carcinogens, researchers say

The chemicals are often intentionally added to personal care products such as dental floss, lotion, cleanser, foundation, lipstick, eyeliner, eyeshadow, water-proof mascara, nail polish and shaving cream to improve their durability, texture and water resistance.

The Environmental Working Group has been pushing federal lawmakers to more strongly regulate PFAS, including labeling some of these chemicals as carcinogens, designating them as hazardous to human health.

"The public shouldn't have to worry that they're putting their own health at risk by doing something as routine and mundane as applying personal care products," Scott Faber, the group's senior vice president for government affairs, said in a press release.

"The only way to adequately protect the public from toxic chemicals like PFAS being used as ingredients in cosmetics is for Congress to step up and change the law," he said.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., are expected to introduce legislation this week that would ban toxic PFAS in cosmetics.

For the new study, Peaslee and his colleagues screened 231 cosmetic products purchased in the United States and Canada for fluorine, a sign of the presence of PFAS, using particle-induced gamma-ray emission spectroscopy.

More than three-quarters of waterproof mascara, nearly two-thirds of foundations and liquid lipsticks and more than half of eye and lip products had high fluorine concentrations, they said.

All 29 products selected for targeted analysis contained detectable levels of at least four specific PFAS, including those known to break down into other forever chemicals that are highly toxic and environmentally harmful.

Nearly all of the 29 products in the separate analysis did not have any PFAS listed on their ingredient labels.

Many of the products containing PFAS were advertised as "wear-resistant" or "long-lasting." In many cases, PFAS listed on product labels often include "fluoro" in the ingredient name, the researchers said.

"PFAS are not necessary for makeup," study co-author Arlene Blum said in a press release.

"Given their large potential for harm, I believe they should not be used in any personal care products," said Blum, executive director of the Green Science Policy Institute in Berkeley, Calif.