US Seniors are using marijuana more than ever before

Hannah Critchfield, 

Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburg, Fla.
Mon, November 1, 2021,

Marvin Yeoman, 74, had tried cannabis as a young adult, but for his wife, it was new.

“I never, never, ever even thought about marijuana when I was growing up — never in college, as a young adult or as a middle-aged adult,” said Rene Yeoman, 71. “It was just not even something that was on my radar.”

The Land O’ Lakes residents had both undergone recent major surgeries, so they gave in to their daughter’s suggestion to use the drug to treat chronic pain.


Rene Yeoman discovered she liked how edibles helped her sleep through the night and avoid the use of other medications.

And as seniors, the couple is in good company.

“When I go to the dispensary, there are more elderly people in there than there are young people,” said Marvin Yeoman.

Marijuana use is on the rise among older adults.

Last year, the proportion of adults 65 or older who reported recent cannabis use jumped by 18 percent, according to the 2020 National Survey of Drug Use and Health released last week, rising from 5.1 percent in 2019 to 6 percent in 2020.

The spike comes on the heels of a steady trend of increased cannabis use among seniors over the last five years.

What’s more, in 2020, more older adults also reported using marijuana sometime in their lifetime — a jump from roughly 32 percent to 36 percent — signaling a possible cultural shift in older adults’ willingness to open up about past tokes.

“It’s accepted now,” Marvin Yeoman said. “You used to have to sneak in the back alley to purchase it, but now you can just walk right into the store and buy it, just like you would go to Publix or Winn-Dixie.”

In Florida, people with a medical marijuana card can legally purchase THC products throughout the state.

Both Marvin and Rene Yeoman have one. While they said it’s expensive to renew — costing a few hundred dollars every eight months — obtaining a card was simple.

“It’s actually very, very easy,” Marvin Yeoman said. “They ask you a few questions, you fill out paperwork on if you’ve had surgery or any pain, and then the doctor reviews it. Nine times out of 10, you’re going to qualify.”

Taking cannabis means Rene Yeoman doesn’t have to take as many other prescription drugs, she said.

“I’ve been on just about everything, for either migraines or my back or whatever,” she said. “We don’t like to take those heavy medications, of which you can become addicted, you know? With the edibles, you just kind of seem to just relax.”

Sundays belong to seniors at Trulieve, a cannabis company that operates 19 dispensaries in the Tampa Bay area.

The business, which is one of the leading cannabis providers in Florida, offers a 10 percent Senior Sunday discount to customers over the age of 55.

Trulieve declined to provide data on the proportion of its clientele in this age range, but a spokesperson noted that “seniors represent a large percentage of registered patients in Florida” and that the company has seen “an upward trend in cannabis use among seniors” in recent years.

Prior to the pandemic, the company offered monthly Silver Tours, which sent a cannabis advocate to long-term care facilities throughout the state, including seven in Tampa Bay.

“We’ve found that, more than almost any other audience, seniors are incredibly receptive to cannabis and its medicinal benefits — in fact, seniors are some of our most educated and passionate Trulievers,” said Valda Coryat, chief marketing officer of Trulieve, in an emailed statement.

More research is needed on the impacts of marijuana use on older adults.

Dr. Juan Sanchez-Ramos, a researcher and professor of neurology at the University of South Florida, said studies show marijuana may help reduce symptoms like insomnia and irritability in Alzheimer’s patients, improve motor symptoms from Parkinson’s, diminish arthritic pain and combat sleep disorders — conditions that are all common among older adults.

Too high a dose of THC can cause confusion and short-term memory problems in older adults, however, Sanchez-Ramos said. CBD in excess doses can in turn interact with the metabolism of other drugs in the system — so it’s important for seniors to consult with their primary doctor prior to using cannabis products.

“THC is safe for older people and won’t cause confusion or disorientation at modest and low doses,” he said. “But it should be definitely supervised by a physician. If your physician has no experiences with cannabinoids and your condition, I would try to find a medical cannabis expert who does.”

Sanchez-Ramos said he still recommends more traditional treatments before referring patients to a cannabis expert he trusts.

“This is basically an alternative treatment for when individuals aren’t doing well with the standard pharmaceuticals,” he said. “In some people, it may be actually much better, but it isn’t the first thing that comes to mind.”

The Yeomans are pleased with their results. They’re trying to convince Marvin’s brother and sister-in-law, who both have chronic conditions, to give edibles a try.

“It should be legal, really,” said Rene Yeoman. “It’ll cut out a lot of the big pharma money that’s going into producing drugs like opioids — and you’d take away the punishment for it, so you don’t have millions of people in jail for doing it.”

These Young People Who Managed Their Own Abortions Say The Option Is Even More Important After Texas’s Crackdown



Nicole Fallert
Mon, November 1, 2021,

Makayla went to the restroom after a job interview only to find she’d bled through her skirt during the meeting. About three days prior, she took misoprostol, an abortion pill, at her home in San Antonio, Texas, to end her pregnancy less than six weeks into her first trimester in August 2018. She was still bleeding heavily as her body expelled the pregnancy, but she wanted a chance at the job opportunity.

She didn’t end up getting the job. But she told BuzzFeed News she considers it a blessing because she went on to start her own abortion fund. Makayla, 22, started the organization, known as the Buckle Bunnies Fund, in April 2020 and began educating people about self-managed abortions, the process of ending a pregnancy on one’s own without the help of medical professionals. The fund has raised at least $200,000 to support abortion access in Texas. Since her own procedure, she has given information about self-managed abortions to more than 400 people, said Makayla, who asked that, for privacy reasons, she only be referred to by her first name in this story.

Amid a heightened crackdown on abortion access in Texas, pregnant people are increasingly seeking answers from young advocates like Makayla about how they can end their own pregnancies, fearing a state law that could bar them from care at traditional clinical settings. The US Supreme Court allowed Texas to implement a six-week abortion ban, known as SB 8, in September.


SB 8 bans nearly all abortions after fetal cardiac activity can be detected, usually around the sixth week of a pregnancy. Pregnancy terms are counted from the first day of a person's most recent period, so week six is typically two weeks after a missed period, which is when many people realize they're pregnant.

Early-term state abortion bans are often referred to as “heartbeat” laws, but the term is misleading, since a fetus’s heart valves haven’t formed yet; an ultrasound at that stage is detecting electrical activity. So without the ability to go to a clinic to end their pregnancy, many people are turning to at-home alternatives out of sheer necessity.

Self-managed abortion options have always existed; according to Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, about 7% of US women will undertake one in their lifetimes. But attention to self-managed abortion has heightened since SB 8 went into effect. Plan C, which provides information about how to obtain abortion pills, reports that over 170,000 people have visited its website since SB 8 went into effect, and nearly 30% of that traffic has been from people in Texas.

“People who had never heard of [a self-managed abortion] are now asking about it,” Makayla said. “Girls in the strip club are talking about it. People who already have four kids and are in their 40s are talking about it. I think while this has been an option, out of necessity for so many people it’s becoming mainstream.”

Even though self-managed abortions are not a new phenomenon, young people are at the forefront of spreading awareness about the option, said Tamara Marzouk, a program director at Advocates for Youth.

“We’re really seeing a desire for people to have an abortion on their own terms, whatever that means,” she said. “The work around [self-managed abortions] is how you talk about it. … We don’t set up a hierarchy of methods. It’s so important to acknowledge the history of generations of people who have used other methods.”

Marzouk works with a group of about 300 people aged 14 to 24 who she said have seen an increasing number of people asking about self-managed abortions, learning what the concept is, and sharing their own experiences.

Marzouk said she’s noticed that younger people are more “comfortable” with the idea of a self-managed abortion as a safe and effective option, whereas other generations may be more reluctant to accept the idea of an at-home abortion.

“It’s not a one-size-fits-all model,” Marzouk said of abortion. “The whole purpose of self-managed abortion is to set up a circumstance in which folks can access abortion wherever they feel safe with the control in their hands.”

She has also noticed more and more young people have joined the fight for reproductive rights in the last few years.

“It’s a response to feeling helpless regarding policy and feeling like, This is something we can do,” she said.

Sharing information is a popular way to do that advocacy work, but Marzouk said young advocates she works with stray away from giving advice because of the “gray area” of legal risks surrounding self-managed abortions.

Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Nevada already have laws that criminalize self-managed abortions. And across the US, people have been arrested and charged for managing their own abortions, Marzouk said.

“People are criminalized for the bodies they’re in,” Marzouk said.

Makayla said pregnant people in Texas are also in the “unfortunate position” of having to ask themselves what legal risks they would be willing to take to end a pregnancy.

“These are the corners people have been pushed into,” Makayla said, adding that SB 8 hasn’t stopped people in Texas from trying to have abortions; it’s just posed new challenges for abortion access advocates to provide resources for those who cannot go to clinics. Her fund has also noticed an influx of people needing emergency contraception and pregnancy tests because, under the new law, they want to know if they’re pregnant much sooner.

“People over six weeks are still getting abortions because they’re taking matters into their own hands,” she said.


Makayla added that the criminalization of pregnant people in Texas is more likely to affect people living in poverty and communities of color, especially undocumented immigrants.

“I’m in a great position of privilege as a white [cisgender] person to be able to talk about [self-managed abortion] and not fear incarceration,” Makayla said. “A lot of people of color in Texas do have that fear.”

She added: “Because they’ve already been put in this box, it will be easier to surveil them. Those are the people who are likely going to be targeted first.”



“I felt that I deserved better and I deserved it on my own terms.”

The incident after the job interview was Makayla’s second abortion. The first time she became pregnant she was 18, when she was dancing at a strip club three nights a week. When she sought an abortion, she told the clinician that she was a sex worker and had a lot of strain on her body.

“In their eyes, I believe that they thought I was being careless, and that’s not what I needed at the time,” Makayla said. “I needed somebody to care for me as a full human being without judgment.”

When she became pregnant the second time, she knew the clinical setting wasn't for her. She didn’t have a lot of money and had “prior trauma” from her previous visit.

“I felt that I deserved better and I deserved it on my own terms,” she said.

Makayla had never heard of a self-managed abortion before until a reproductive justice organization posted about it on social media.

“I was feeling that self-managed abortion was sketchy … [and] was less-quality care than if I went to a clinic. Now I know that that’s not true, but it was an internalized stigma I had to deal with,” she said.

At the time, Makayla did not know about increasingly popular online pharmacies, such as Aid Access and Abortion on Demand, that mail people safe, generic versions of medication abortion at an affordable price. Instead, she obtained the abortion pill misoprostol for free from someone she knew.

She took the single pill at home after work. Although a friend had brought her a care package, Makayla said she was lonely throughout the process, especially in the Texas summer heat when her power went out. It was initially scary to initiate her own procedure, she said, but after about two weeks (she got her period right after) of bleeding she felt relieved she didn’t have to bear any financial burden to end her pregnancy. An abortion pill at a clinic typically costs about $600, while online pharmacies charge between $150 and $350.

Self-managing her abortion showed Makayla she could do more with her life.

“I don’t think I would be the advocate or the person I am today without my self-managed abortion, specifically,” she said.

Aryn, 24, also recalled a transformative feeling after administering their own abortion. When they became pregnant at 19 during their sophomore year of college, it was one of the first times they began to understand their gender dysphoria. They have since come out as nonbinary and pursued a full-time career in reproductive justice. They also asked to only include their first name in this story for privacy reasons.

A self-managed abortion is a cheaper option, and it provides the freedom for someone to take their healthcare into their own hands; for people who choose to self-manage their abortion, these two variables might outweigh the actual efficacy of the method, Aryn told BuzzFeed News. Being someone with a disability without much of a disposable income, they opted for an at-home experience that felt safe, private, and affordable.

“We should be open to folks who are not using efficacy as their number one concern,” Aryn said.

Through online research, Aryn came across herbal methods to induce an abortion. They took the remedy in their dorm room during a long weekend. Their roommate was out of town, so they curled up with water, snacks, The Office, and an electric blanket while the abortion proceeded.

“I think we need to move away from the narrative that self-managed abortion just means [misoprostol]. Self-managed abortion is anyone who is not going to a physician,” Aryn said, adding that it’s vital for people to think about what the best method is for them. “For me, I wanted something as natural and holistic as possible. ... I wanted to keep it as anonymous as possible.”

The COVID-19 pandemic initiated an early wave of new attention to self-managed abortion, but SB 8 has propelled that forward, according to Daena Horner, an abortion doula and founder of Holistic Abortions, which provides resources, security tips, and other support. She also said she’s noticed how young people are more equipped to access information online.

But state-level restrictions aren’t the only reason some turn to self-managed options, Horner said. Many people, she added, simply prefer the home-based option because they want privacy and agency over the process. Even picking the time and day of the week of the abortion can make a major difference for patients, she said.

“The more people that are doing it, they are realizing they can create a space however they want,” Horner said.
More on this


For These Abortion Clinic Escorts, The Vitriol From Protesters Has Gotten Way Worse As States Try To Restrict AccessNicole Fallert · Oct. 16, 2021


Cori Bush Shared A Powerful Story Of Getting An Abortion When She Was Nine Weeks PregnantNicole Fallert · Sept. 30, 2021


We Asked And Lots Of People Don’t Know They’re Pregnant By Six WeeksNicole Fallert · Sept. 17, 2021

ECOCIDE

MEXICO
Pemex Pipeline Explodes After Attempted Fuel Theft

Amy Stillman
Mon, November 1, 2021

(Bloomberg) -- A pipeline operated by Petroleos Mexicanos in the central state of Puebla exploded over the weekend due to an attempted tapping of the pipeline by fuel thieves, leaving at least one person dead and many injured.

Firefighters were deployed at the site since the early hours of Sunday and families have been evacuated from the area, Mexico President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Twitter, lamenting the death of at least one person. The president, known as AMLO, also said that the fire had been controlled by Pemex. A Pemex official said no further information has been provided on the explosion.

Since the start of his presidency in late 2018, Lopez Obrador has made it his mission to crack down on the pilfering of fuel from Pemex pipelines, which had previously cost Pemex about $3.5 billion a year in losses. Pemex says that pipeline taps have fallen by almost 93% in the past three years, according to a company presentation. In January 2019, a pipeline tap resulted in the deaths of 137 people, after AMLO’s government shut off valves and installed military personnel at pipeline sites.

Puebla governor Manuel Barbosa said on Monday that 14 of 17 people remained in hospital after suffering injuries from a series of explosions due to the pipeline tap, according to national newspaper Milenio, and that there would be two days of mourning in Puebla for the victims.

NATIONALISM IS RACISM
'Squid Game' Filipino actor says racist cabbage-throwing incident in South Korea left him 'crying inside'



Michelle De Pacina
Mon, November 1, 2021, 

Christian Lagahit, the actor behind Player #276 of “Squid Game,” shared his experience as a foreign worker in South Korea in an interview video posted to YouTube last week.

The racist incident: On Oct. 23, South Korea-based Asian Boss posted their interview video of Filipino actor Lagahit on their official YouTube channel.

In the interview, Lagahit recalls a Korean woman in her 50s throwing a cabbage at his face while on a small village bus ride home.



“There was this woman who was just staring at me. At first, I didn’t pay attention because I thought she was maybe looking at the boys, because there were boys in front of me. I thought that she was looking at the students. A few minutes passed by... I was just surprised when something hit my face. She threw a cabbage at my face — straight to my face,” Lagahit shares.

His glasses fell off and were broken by the impact. Another woman on the bus explained to him that the cabbage thrower wanted him to get off the bus because he was not Korean. Lagahit says that there are no foreigner buses in Korea and the ride he was on was the last trip home.

“The hardest part was that no one was paying attention to me. There were a lot of people inside the bus. It was filled, but no one was there to at least help me,” Lagahit says in the video.

“I was crying inside. For me, there was nothing I could do anymore. I couldn’t complain, but what I didn’t understand was there were other people inside that small bus. I just felt so bad that no one was ready to help,” he adds.

The woman also went on to verbally attack him. Lagahit recalls her saying, “All foreigners here in Korea are bad people!”

When the host asks if discrimination in South Korea is common, Lagahit admits to hearing other foreigners’ stories of prejudice and poor treatment. He also recalls a time when Korean locals did not want to sit next to him on another bus.



The foreign actor: Along with Anupam Tripathi, the actor behind Player #199 Ali Abdul, Lagahit also played the role of a migrant worker from Pakistan.

He moved to Korea from the Philippines in 2015 as an English teacher. Lagahit also had part-time gigs acting in films such as "Space Sweepers" and "The Negotiation."

The actor originally auditioned for the character of Ali before landing Player 276. He believes that the story of Ali reflects the real lives of many migrant workers in Korea. “There’s still a lot of foreign workers out there who get the same treatment the way Ali had on the drama ‘Squid Game,’” Lagahit tells Asian Boss. “I hope that this would be a wake-up call for the government to also check the welfare of foreign workers here in Korea because I believe that the foreign workers are contributing a lot for the growth of this country.”

He also says he hopes that the success of “Squid Game” will open doors for foreign actors to play roles other than that of factory workers or background characters.

“I’ve seen some non-Koreans achieving success here in Korea, but most of those people are from the U.S. or Europe,” Lagahit says. “It’s about time Asian people, non-Korean people, can also succeed and achieve those big dreams here. At the end of the day, everyone is allowed to dream big. If those white people can, we also can.”

Featured Image via @chrisyan8 (left), Asian Boss (right)

HINDUTVA IS FASCISM

Facebook Let an Islamophobic Conspiracy Theory Flourish in India Despite Employees' Warnings

Billy Perrigo
Mon, November 1, 2021,

Facebook-india
Credit - Photo-illustration by Lon Tweeten for TIME; Getty images

In a video posted to Facebook in November 2020, an extremist priest called for Hindus to rise up and begin killing Muslims in India.

“People need to learn that this is not the time to protest, but the time to go to war,” said Narsinghanand Saraswati, who has been named by at least one international watchdog as an extremist hate preacher. “This is a global war where Islam’s jihadis are fully prepared. It’s our choice if Hindus should fight or not. But Muslims will not spare Hindus.”

“It’s time for every Hindu to invoke the warrior in them,” Saraswati said in Hindi in the Facebook video. “The day Hindus take weapons and start killing these Love Jihadis, this Love Jihad will come to an end. Until then, we can’t stop it.”

With 1.4 million views as of late October this year, the video was one of the top posts on Facebook about “Love Jihad,” a popular Islamophobic conspiracy theory that suggests Muslim men are attempting to wage a holy war against Hinduism by marrying and converting Hindu women to Islam.

Facebook banned the QAnon conspiracy theory in October 2020, designating it a “militarized social movement.” But the company has not applied the same definition to Love Jihad, which began as a fringe conspiracy theory but began to enter the Indian political mainstream around 2016 after being taken up as a narrative by Hindu nationalist groups.

Read More: Indian States Are Passing Laws Based on the ‘Love Jihad’ Conspiracy Theory

Facebook is aware of the danger and prevalence of the Love Jihad conspiracy theory on its platform but has done little to act on it, according to internal Facebook documents seen by TIME, as well as interviews with former employees. The documents suggest that “political sensitivities” are part of the reason that the company has chosen not to ban Hindu nationalist groups who are close to India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

“​​We make decisions on content based on whether they violate our policies, not because of someone’s political position, party affiliation, or political point of view,” Facebook said in a statement. “We have removed several pieces of ‘Love Jihad’ content on the platform that violated our policies and will continue to remove violating content as we become aware of it.”

This story is partially based on whistleblower Frances Haugen’s disclosures to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which were also provided to the U.S. Congress in redacted form by her legal team. The redacted versions were seen by a consortium of news organizations, including TIME. Many of the documents were first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Facebook has deemed India a “tier one” country—its highest ranking in a tier system that decides how the company prioritizes its resources building safety systems in countries at risk of violence. But the documents show that Facebook spends only a small minority of its total investment in the safety of its platforms on languages other than English, and on jurisdictions outside the U.S. In India, Facebook’s biggest market, with more than 300 million users, the company has been accused by watchdogs and opposition politicians of wilfully turning a blind eye to incitement to violence by Hindu nationalists.

Facebook only removed the video of Saraswati calling for Hindus to eradicate Muslims after TIME asked about it in late October. “We don’t allow hate speech on Facebook and we remove it when we find it or are made aware of it,” a company spokesperson said in a statement. “We know our enforcement is not perfect and there is more work to do, but our regular transparency reports show we are making progress combating these issues.”
‘Political sensitivities’ may have played a role

In one internal company presentation, which is undated but includes a screenshot of a post from March 2021, Facebook employees wrote that they had carried out research that found “a high volume of Love Jihad content” on the platform. Groups and pages on Facebook, it said, are “replete with inflammatory and misleading anti-Muslim content,” a problem exacerbated by what the report said was a lack of algorithms that work to detect such content in the languages Hindi and Bengali.” TIME was unable to ascertain when the report was written.

In a statement to TIME, Facebook said it had brought in algorithms in early 2021 to detect incitement to violence in Hindi and Bengali, and that it has had algorithms to detect hate speech in these languages since 2018. But those algorithms appeared not to have detected or flagged the video of Saraswati for deletion, even though it had amassed 1.4 million views.

Political factors may be at play in the company’s handling of Hindu nationalist content, the internal Facebook presentation suggested. Much Love Jihad content, it said, was “posted by pro-BJP and pro-RSS pages.” The RSS is the largest Hindu nationalist group in India, with close ties to the government.

The presentation acknowledged that the RSS regularly shares “fear-mongering, anti-Muslim narratives [targeting] pro-Hindu populations with V&I [violence and incitement] content,” which is against Facebook’s rules.

The presentation says that “political sensitivities” meant that RSS had not been designated as a dangerous organization by the company—a designation that would have resulted in the group being banned from Facebook’s platforms. “We have yet to put forth a nomination for designation of this group given political sensitivities,” the presentation says.

In October, the Intercept revealed Facebook’s list of banned terrorist and hate groups and individuals. The list includes hundreds of Islamist groups from all over the world but just one Hindu extremist group, the Sanatan Sanstha. Saraswati, the preacher who called for Muslims to be killed, is not on the list.

Read More: Facebook Banned a Hindu Extremist Group—Then Left Most of Its Pages Online for Months

The internal Facebook presentation reveals that employees knew content shared by Hindu nationalist groups posed a risk to vulnerable populations. One slide in the presentation suggests the posts fall under the term “politicized hate,” which the report defines as “a term used to describe a category of discriminatory practices from political parties which target vulnerable populations often done in a coordinated, authentic way.” (In this context, “authentic” means that the people posting are not using fake accounts.)

One former Facebook employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear that being named could invite retaliation, told TIME that some employees had raised the issue of the Love Jihad conspiracy theory as early as 2019, but that the company had decided against banning it from the platform, choosing instead to down-rank the content in users’ feeds.

Facebook did not respond to a question from TIME asking for confirmation that it currently down-ranks Love Jihad content rather than deleting it. It also did not respond to questions asking what signals the company uses to inform algorithms that could detect such content, and in what languages those algorithms are operational, if any. In a statement, the company said: “We’ve invested significantly in technology to find hate speech in a variety of different languages, including Hindi and Bengali. As a result, we’ve reduced the amount of hate speech that people see by half this year.”

Still, a TIME review of public-facing Facebook posts reveals that Love Jihad conspiracy theory content remains wildly popular on Facebook, even in 2021.

Of all the posts on the platform that contain the Hindi term for “Love Jihad,” the top one, with 16.3 million views, is a fictionalized video shared by BJP worker Pradeep Tyagi in February of this year. The video depicts a woman meeting a man at a Hindu temple and falling in love. They marry, only for the woman to find out the man is a Muslim. He forces her to wear a burqa and begins physically abusing her. He is shown receiving a wad of cash from an imam (an apparent allusion to the conspiracy theory that Muslim men are being paid large sums of money by religious officials to convert Hindu women). When the woman tries to run away, the man beats her, covers her in gasoline, and sets her alight. She is shown dying in agony in the hospital, covered in blood. The video ends with the same man returning to a temple and meeting a new woman. The clear implication is that he is beginning the process of so-called Love Jihad all over again.

Tyagi, the BJP worker who shared the video, did not respond to a request for comment.
Facebook’s inaction over Hindu extremism

One civil society organization told TIME that it is tracking a group of at least 27 “highly toxic” pages that regularly post Love Jihad content, whose videos had cumulatively been viewed more than 1 billion times as of October 2021. The Indian diaspora-led foundation, called The London Story, told TIME it has reported these pages and the content they share to Facebook but that the company had not removed any of the posts or accounts.

Many of the pages are run by “vigilantes,” says Ritumbra Manuvie, a legal scholar who is the foundation’s policy and research director. Some of the page administrators include their WhatsApp contact number on their pages, she says, and encourage their followers to report Muslim men perpetrating so-called Love Jihad against Hindu women.

To date Manuvie’s impression has been that “Facebook is just not bothered,” she tells TIME. She said that her group had shared evidence of the 27 pages’ activity with Foley Hoag, a Boston-based law firm hired by Facebook to carry out a forthcoming assessment of its human rights impact in India. “We did say very categorically that Facebook is providing these tools to vigilante armies who are using them to gather bigger crowds,” she says.

Facebook said it was carrying out a review of the pages after TIME asked the company about Manuvie’s complaint.

Read More: Facebook’s Ties to India’s Ruling Party Complicate Its Fight Against Hate Speech

Facebook’s apparent tolerance of the Love Jihad conspiracy theory, Manuvie says, often results in the company turning a blind eye to rhetoric that could radicalize users into committing violent acts—and has likely already resulted in real-world harm.

In one video from January, which Manuvie says she reported to Facebook but which remains online, a spokesperson for the Hindu nationalist group Karni Sena threatens violence against people who engage in interfaith marriage. “If anyone subscribes to this kind of thinking … we will beat you so bad you won’t be able to comprehend it,” the spokesperson, Mahipal Singh Makrana, says in the video, which has received 1.5 million views on the platform.

In the video, Makrana refers to a specific alleged Love Jihad incident in the village of Kolai, in the northwest-Indian state of Rajasthan. He explains that he and his “regional spokesperson” would visit the village to support the family of the alleged Love Jihad victim in the coming days, and threatened: “If someone has to die, it will be the other, not them.” He is speaking Hindi in the video.

There appear to be no reports of that specific incident leading directly to real-world violence in the village of Kolai, but mob attacks against Muslims are on the rise in India, and many participants appear to use Love Jihad as justification. A viral video posted in August documented a terrified 8-year-old girl clinging to her father, a 45-year-old Muslim man, as he was beaten by a mob chanting “Jai Shri Ram,” a Hindu nationalist slogan. One of the man’s relatives had been accused of marrying a Hindu woman to convert her to Islam. The mob threatened to kill the man and his family members, as his young daughter pleaded with them to stop.

Three men were arrested after the mob attack, which was reportedly coordinated by the Bajrang Dal, one of the biggest Hindu extremist groups in India, which is close to the ruling party. The Bajrang Dal regularly posts Love Jihad misinformation on its Facebook pages. The Journal reported in 2020 that Facebook had chosen not to ban the Bajrang Dal, citing risk to Facebook’s business prospects in India.

— With reporting by Abhishyant Kidangoor / Hong Kong

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/10/hinduism-is-fascism.html

WE NEED AIRSHIPGS

VIPs including Jeff Bezos flew to a climate change conference on 400 private jets, sparking fury over the carbon emissions caused

Huileng Tan
Mon, November 1, 2021,

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26.) Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images

More than 400 private jets are ferrying over 1,000 VIPs and their staff to the COP26 environment summit in Scotland.

US President Joe Biden, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and other world leaders took private jets to the summit.

Private jets have a "disproportionate impact on the environment," says European campaign group Transport and Environment.

As hundreds of private jets ferry world leaders and top business executives to the United Nations' COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, environmentalists are up in arms over the environmental damage caused by the travel.

Scotland's Sunday Mail, citing aviation sources, reported that more than 400 private jets are expected. They are shuttling over 1,000 VIPs and their staff to the talks - which, according to the conference website, seeks to "bring together world leaders to commit to urgent global climate action."


Prince William: Great minds should save Earth not travel space

During a BBC interview aired on Thursday (October 14), William appeared to criticise Jeff Bezos, the world's richest person, Elon Musk and Briton Richard Branson, whose rival ventures are all vying to usher in a new era of private commercial space travel.

"We need some of the world's greatest brains and minds fixed on trying to repair this planet, not trying to find the next place to go and live," William said of the space race.His comments come after Musk has spoken about missions to Mars, and Bezos described his inaugural space flight in July as part of building a road to space "so that our kids and their kids can build a future".

"We need to do that to solve the problems here on Earth," said Bezos, who on Wednesday celebrated sending Star Trek actor William Shatner into space in his New Shepard spacecraft.Speaking out on green issues has become a major feature of the British royal family, and William, 39, is following in the footsteps of his late grandfather Prince Philip, Queen Elizabeth's husband, and his father, Prince Charles.

Charles, the 72-year-old heir to the throne, has for decades called for action to stop climate change and environmental damage, long before the issue became mainstream, often facing ridicule along the way.

"It's been a hard road for him. He's had a really rough ride on that, and I think he's been proven to being well ahead of the curve," William said.In an echo of his father's message earlier this week, William also said the upcoming U.N. Climate Change Conference COP26 summit in Scotland had to deliver.

"We can't have more clever speak, clever words but not enough action," William said.The prince's personal response to the issue has been to create the Earthshot Prize, which aims to find solutions through new technologies or policies to the planet’s biggest environmental problems.

The first five winners, who will each collect 1 million pounds ($1.4 million), will be announced at a ceremony on Sunday (October 17).

US President Joe Biden, along with the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, India, Israel, and Japan, have all traveled to the climate crisis symposium via private jet, according to the Sunday Mail. Amazon's Jeff Bezos also flew in on his $65 million Gulfstream jet, British media reported.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is also planning on returning to London from Scotland on a private jet - running on sustainable fuel, the Guardian reported. His official spokesperson told the British news outlet, "it is important that the Prime Minister is able to move round the country, and obviously we face significant time constraints."

According to the International Council on Clean Transportation, commercial aviation currently accounts for about 2% of global carbon emissions, but that number is set to triple by 2050.

Private jets have a "disproportionate impact on the environment," said European campaign group Transport and Environment. The group noted in a May 2021 report that private planes are five to 14 times more polluting than commercial planes on a per passenger basis, and 50 times more polluting than trains.

"It can't be stressed enough how bad private jets are for the environment, it is the worst way to travel by miles," the group's UK policy manager told Scotland's Sunday Mail. "Private jets are very prestigious but it is difficult to avoid the hypocrisy of using one while claiming to be fighting climate change," he said.

Christian boarding school: 'Invasive' background checks violate rights

CNS International Ministries, which offers drug and alcohol recovery programs for children and adults under the name Heartland at its campus, alleges in a federal lawsuit that new requirements on background checks violate due process and parental rights, federal privacy laws and freedom of religion rights. Photo courtesy of Heartland community/Facebook

By Pamela Manson
NOV. 1, 2021 / 

Nov. 1 (UPI) -- A Missouri nonprofit that operates a Christian boarding school is suing to stop enforcement of a new law that mandates background checks for all staff members at unlicensed youth residential facilities and requires notification to the state of the identities of everyone 18 or older who lives on the property.

CNS International Ministries Inc., which offers drug and alcohol recovery programs for children and adults under the name Heartland at its campus, alleges in a federal lawsuit that the requirements in the Residential Care Facility Notification Act violate due process and parental rights, federal privacy laws and freedom of religion rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.

"The Free Exercise and the Establishment Clauses together vest in churches and other religious organizations the autonomy to order their own affairs, to decide for themselves, free from governmental interference, matters of ecclesiastical government, doctrine, the communication of that doctrine and the internal administration of their institution," the suit says.

However, by requiring "invasive" background checks, the Missouri Department of Social Services, which drafted the regulations implementing the new law, presumes to tell the ministries who is eligible or ineligible to be an officer or employee at Heartland, the suit alleges

"The department's regulations restrict the freedom of CNSIMI to form an expressive association of those who share a common commitment to education, addiction recovery and religious faith," the suit says.

The law also deprives students' parents of a fair opportunity to get the kind of instruction for their children that they selected at least in part for religious reasons, the suit alleges.

Before the new law went into effect on July 14, boarding schools operated by religious organizations were exempt from licensing requirements. Now, license-exempt residential care facilities, or LERCFs, must notify the state of their existence, conduct background checks and meet various health and safety standards.

A summary by the Missouri Senate says that "nothing in this act shall give any governmental agency jurisdiction or authority to regulate or attempt to regulate, control, or influence the form, manner, or content of the religious curriculum, program or ministry of a school or facility sponsored by a church or religious organization."

But the suit, filed Oct. 12 in U.S. District Court in St. Louis, says the DSS regulations do not contain a required exception for the employment of "ministerial" employees, including teachers, house parents and other staff members. The ministerial exception, which stems from a 2012 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School vs. EEOC, gives Heartland the right to decide who will promote its message, the suit says.

Heartland is asking the court for a judgment that declares it is unlawful to condition participants' eligibility to be present at a recovery program on the disclosure of their identity and the outcome of a background check; to interfere in CNS Ministries choice in officers, staffing and contractors; to demand a list of staff members and people who live on the facility's property; and to criminally penalize people for failure to undergo background checks.

Heather Dolce, DSS media director, said in an email to UPI that the department does not comment on pending litigation.

Missouri KidsFirst, a chapter of the National Children's Alliance and the Missouri Chapter of Prevent Child Abuse America, praised the law, saying it creates safeguards for children.

"This law closes a loophole in our child protection system that had gone unaddressed for decades," Jessica Seitz, interim executive director of the organization, said in a statement.

Heartland is asking the court for a judgment that declares it is unlawful to condition participants' eligibility to be present at a recovery program on the disclosure of their identity and the outcome of a background check among other issues. Photo courtesy of Heartland community/Facebook

Recovery programs

Heartland, which says it carefully vets staff and anyone directly involved in the unsupervised care of children, is an LERCF because of its boarding school, the Heartland Children and Youth Home. The organization runs separate recovery programs for girls, boys, women and men at its campus.

There are four boys and one girl in the children's recovery programs, the suit says.

Also on campus are the two-year Heartland Christian College and a K-12 school that is attended by the girls and boys in recovery, staff members' kids and children from the community. The men live in a part of the campus that is in Knox County and are separated by a lake from the children, women and college students, who live in Shelby County.

"Heartland's recovery programs, which have been continuously operating since the mid-1990s, seek to introduce the concepts of Christian living and personal responsibility, helping men and women and boys and girls who are bound with life-controlling addictions, attitudes and behavioral problems," the suit says.

A background check includes an FBI fingerprint check and searches on national and state sex offender registries and Missouri's Family Care Safety Registry and its Central Registry for Abuse and Neglect.

Under the law, people are considered ineligible to be employed or be present at Heartland if they have pleaded guilty or no contest to or been found guilty of, among other crimes, child endangerment, child abuse or neglect, a sex crime, robbery, a pornography-related offense, arson, certain weapons crimes, making a terrorist threat or a felony drug-related offense in the preceding five years.

"These individuals are ineligible to remain at Heartland regardless of whether they have any contact with children and in many cases regardless of whether their criminal offenses have anything to do with children," the suit says.

People can be barred from working or living at Heartland if their names are placed in a central registry on the basis that there is probable cause or reasonable suspicion of an offense and regardless of whether they got to appeal the placement in court, the suit says. A facility is not told why someone is determined to be ineligible.

It is a Class B misdemeanor for someone to knowingly fail to complete a criminal background check that is required under the act. Facilities can be closed for not complying.

A second chance

Heartland alleges that the provision making people with felony drug-related offenses on their records in the past five years ineligible to be at its facility threatens the viability of its recovery programs.

David Melton, general counsel for CNS International Ministries, told UPI that many participants in the recovery program are there because they committed drug-related crimes and are in diversion. People who have make a mistake deserve a second chance, Melton said, emphasizing that he was not talking about offenders who have committed abuse or sex crimes.

"We're the redemption business," Melton said. "That's what we do. Redemption is all about people who have sinned."

He added that some of the best leaders in the recovery programs have rap sheets.

"They've cleaned their lives up and we're not going to let the state of Missouri tell us that they're not eligible to be on our premises, let alone running our recovery programs," Melton said.

The change in the law this year came after The Kansas City Star ran a series of stories about abuses at faith-based reform schools.

Heartland was not part of those stories. The suit says that "to Heartland's knowledge, there is no listing in Missouri's Central Registry for Abuse and Neglect that has resulted from any incident between an adult and a child in the boys' or girl's recovery program in the past 20 years, and no felony or misdemeanor convictions resulting from such interactions in the entire history of Heartland, going back to its beginning in the mid-1990s."

"We're a safe place for kids," Melton said.

In 2001, several abuse allegations were lodged against the Heartland, leading authorities to remove 115 children from the facility and bring criminal charges against five employees, according to The Star.

The newspaper said a series of lawsuits and challenges followed and, in the end, all charges were either dropped or the staff members were acquitted and the state paid extensive attorney fees and court costs to settle a lawsuit filed by Heartland.

HE PAID MORE TAXES THAN THE 1%
Lottery win means SC man can pay mortgage — and help family out, too. 

‘Great feeling’



Bailey Aldridge
Mon, November 1, 2021,

A South Carolina man said he’ll use his North Carolina lottery winnings to pay off his mortgage and help his family.

Nathaniel Geathers of Bennettsville, South Carolina, stopped at Nic’s Pic Kwik on U.S. 401 in Laurinburg during a trip to North Carolina on Oct. 28 and bought $10 Fast Play tickets, according to a news release from the North Carolina Education Lottery.

His first ticket won $20, and his second won $15, according to the lottery. His third won a $153,045 jackpot.

“It was good,” Geathers told lottery officials of winning. “It was a great feeling to get what I was looking for.”

Geathers took home $108,282 after taxes, according to the lottery. He told lottery officials he plans to use the money to pay off his mortgage, help some family members in need and put a new motor on his boat.  HE PAID OVER $44,000 IN TAXES

“A $10 Jackpot 7’s Fast Play ticket wins all of the progressive, rolling jackpot,” the lottery said. “The odds of winning a Fast Play jackpot are 1 in 240,000.”

So Elon Musk wants to build a tunnel to the beach in Florida. And that may be just the beginning


Susannah Bryan, South Florida Sun Sentinel
Mon, November 1, 2021


FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Inquiring minds want to know just how Elon Musk’s Boring Company will dig a pair of underground tunnels from downtown Fort Lauderdale to the beach in flood-prone South Florida on the cheap.

The Boring Company’s 29-page pitch, submitted to the city in June but only recently made public, holds some clues to the ambitious plan.

The tunnels would not be for your car or mine, but would eventually use self-driving Teslas as a form of public transportation, shuttling riders east and west from the Brightline Station to the famous beachfront intersection of Las Olas and A1A. To start out, the Teslas would have drivers.

Mayor Dean Trantalis has been championing the project for months, saying underground tunnels could be one way to lessen the pain of downtown gridlock and get more cars off the road.

Here’s how things would work, based on details laid out in The Boring Co. documents and interviews with city officials.

Las Olas Loop

The plan’s Las Olas Loop would send passengers through a pair of 2.7-mile tunnels spanning several blocks under Las Olas, with up to five stops, leading all the way to the beach. Teslas would speed along at 50 to 70 mph, slowing down at bends.

“We figure the ride from one end to the other will be about three to four minutes,” Trantalis said, adding, “It’s not going to be just a dark cave. There’ll be lights. There will be music. There may be a narration: ‘Welcome to Fort Lauderdale,’ talking about who we are.” Passengers will also be able to use their cellphones during the ride.

The city has not yet worked out how much fares will be. The mayor at one point mentioned charging $5, but that’s not set in stone.

Fear factor

Critics are still wondering if underground tunnels make sense in South Florida, with its king tides, hurricanes and porous limestone bedrock. Some worst-case scenario questions: What happens if there’s a fire in the tunnel? What if a Tesla being driven on Autopilot goes rogue? What happens if the tunnel floods?

“What happens if Mars hits Earth?” an exasperated Trantalis said after hearing the list of safety concerns. “There are multiple safety features to anticipate any type of calamity. Not just fire safety equipment, but escape routes, sprinkler systems, ventilation systems. We have a long history in this country of using tunnels for transportation.”

Final approval is likely months away as the city’s experts and consultants embark on a due diligence journey.

“This has to be properly and thoroughly vetted,” Commissioner Steve Glassman said. “In my opinion, there’s no rush because this has to be done right. The geology has to be studied. We have to talk to everyone who’s an expert on soil. We have to really pick the brains of everyone who is an expert.”

Glassman says he’s heard from fans excited about the beach tunnel and from critics who think it’s a dumb idea.

“People made fun of the Wright brothers,” he said. “People made fun of Thomas Edison. We have to be a little bit bolder. We have to look to the future. People are moving here in droves. And we have to figure out how to move them around. If this is successful, we need to create a network of tunnels. We are going to face a transportation crunch and we need to consider all options.”

How can Musk build tunnels fast and cheap?

Underground tunnels usually cost around $1 billion a mile, but Musk’s team claims they can build them for $10 million a mile using special technology that’s faster and cheaper than traditional methods.

New technology allows crews to excavate the hole, remove the dirt and install segments of the concrete superstructure simultaneously. That means the equipment operates 15 times faster.

Traditional tunneling requires the construction of special drills for each project, but Musk is standardizing tunnel size and reusing his equipment, much the way SpaceX reuses rockets. Additionally, the boring machinery operates on electric power rather than diesel, allowing equipment to operate longer without having to ventilate the tunnel.
Will the technique change to accommodate South Florida soil?

That remains to be seen. When The Boring Co. made its original proposal, Trantalis says it was based on general conditions. Now they’re doing a deeper dive on their investigation. The city’s Public Works Department is also hiring consultants to collaborate with The Boring Co., Trantalis said.
How the transit loop works

A station won’t require all traffic to stop when a passenger wants to disembark. Each station will have a pull-off area to allow other vehicles to speed on by.

Stations can range from the size of a car to a large subway-style venue depending on the needs of the station location.

The loop could start out with a small number of vehicles for start-up operations or non-peak periods and add more for high-demand times.

Service would start with drivers, with automated transit as the eventual goal.

Why use Teslas and not trams?

With a tram system, riders might wait 20 minutes for a tram to arrive.

In the Musk setup, a Tesla would be waiting at the station to immediately take passengers to the next stop on their destination. While trams would stop at each station, the Tesla would take passengers from pickup to drop-off without stops in between.
Potential expansion

The Las Olas Loop project would cost under $100 million, the mayor says.

In theory, Musk’s loop tunnels can be expanded to connect to other key destinations within the city and beyond. The tunnel network could provide service to the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport and Port Everglades to the south, the Tri-Rail Station to the west and the Galleria mall and Inter Miami’s DRV PNK soccer stadium to the north.
What are the hurdles?

Fort Lauderdale has to find a way to pay for it.

Even if the city had the money in hand, several government agencies could stand in the way.

The project is located predominantly within city right-of-­way.

But right-of-way permits and easements will be required from other agencies: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, state Department of Transportation, Broward County, Florida East Coast Railway and potentially private property owners.
How did this all start?

It started with a tweet.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, sparked a flurry of tweets in January with this message: “Cars & trucks stuck in traffic generate megatons of toxic gases & particulate, but @boringcompany road tunnels under Miami would solve traffic & be an example to the world. Spoke with @RonDeSantisFL about tunnels last week. If Governor & Mayor want this done, we will do it.”

Trantalis tweeted back: “Fort Lauderdale would love to be a part of this discussion. We have #tunnelvision in the #magicregion!”

The following month, Trantalis was in Las Vegas to discuss the possibility of building tunnels in Fort Lauderdale to help alleviate gridlock.

Officials with The Boring Co. visited Fort Lauderdale in March to look over the terrain and get a better feel for how the beach loop would work.

Musk started The Boring Co. in 2016 after growing weary of traffic gridlock in Los Angeles. In a tweet, he said “traffic is driving me nuts” and promised to “build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging.”

Two years later, Musk and his team built a mile-long test tunnel at his SpaceX headquarters in the Los Angeles suburb of Hawthorne. It was built at a cost of $10 million and accommodates Teslas at speeds of up to 150 mph.

Elon Musk says Tesla has not signed deal with Hertz

Tue, November 2, 2021

Tesla boss Elon Musk

Elon Musk has said a deal between Tesla and car rental company Hertz, which led the carmaker's market value to surpass $1 trillion last week, has not yet been signed.

Last week, shares in Tesla jumped 12.6% after Hertz said it had ordered 100,000 vehicles by the end of 2022.

However, Mr Musk tweeted: "I'd like to emphasize that no contract has been signed yet."


Both companies have been asked for comment.

The deal announced by Hertz with Tesla was the biggest-ever rental car order for electric vehicles.

"Electric vehicles are now mainstream, and we've only just begun to see rising global demand and interest," said Hertz interim boss Mark Fields.

It was reported Hertz would pay $4.2bn for 100,000 Model 3s over the next 14 months, which amounts to about a fifth of its fleet. The rental firm would also build a network of charging stations.



But on Tuesday, Tesla boss Mr Musk tweeted: "Tesla has far more demand than production, therefore we will only sell cars to Hertz for the same margin as to consumers.

"Hertz deal has zero effect on our economics."

Tesla became the fifth company to surpass a market value of $1 trillion on 25 October, behind Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google-owner Alphabet.

Hold the meat: Burger King, Chipotle, Starbucks top fast-food rankings on World Vegan Day 2021

Steve Kiggins, USA TODAY

Mon, November 1, 2021

Sofritas at Chipotle. The Impossible Whopper at Burger King. Fresco style at Taco Bell.

Plant-based eaters, once limited to wimpy salads minus cheese and often without dressings that contained dairy, have increasingly more options at some of the most recognizable U.S. fast-food restaurants amid growing company commitments to diversify protein offerings and cut greenhouse gas emissions created by animal farming.

But for every Starbucks, which introduced its Impossible Breakfast Sandwich in 2020, and Pizza Hut, which is testing a plant-based pepperoni topping, are “Dining Dawdlers” like McDonald’s, Subway and Chick-fil-A, according to a first-of-its-kind report to be released Monday on World Vegan Day by World Animal Protection.

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Cameron Harsh, programs director for the nonprofit animal welfare organization, described the 24-page report as a guide to help “individual consumers align with the restaurants that share their values,” but stressed that “a lot more progress” is needed to reduce the production and consumption of animal proteins for the sake of the climate and general health.

“What the ‘Menu Movers’ in this report have done is not just added plant-based alternatives to their menus and called it good, they’ve actually talked publicly … about the benefits of these products,” Harsh told USA TODAY.

In its “Moving the Menu” report, shared first with USA TODAY, World Animal Protection graded the country’s 50 largest fast-food chains on their efforts to vary protein offerings, highlight the benefits of plant-based eating in their corporate social responsibility reporting and make public commitments to reduce the use of meat and increase vegan and vegetarian menu options.

A Chipotle burrito bowl including sofritas, a shredded firm tofu flavored with chipotle chiles, poblano peppers and a blend of spices.

Only seven chains were designated as “Menu Movers,” the report card’s top ranking: Burger King, Chipotle, Starbucks, KFC, Panera Bread, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell.

World Animal Protection, while not a vegan or vegetarian organization, advocates eating less meat as part of its mission to “change animals’ lives for the better,” according to its website. One of the group’s primary initiatives is Meating Halfway, a 21-day custom plan designed to give individuals and families accessible tools to reduce meat and increase plant-based foods in their diets.

An early trendsetter with sofritas, a menu staple since 2014, Chipotle remains focused on pushing more vegetables and plant-based products to the “center of plate,” said Stephanie Perdue, the company’s vice president of marketing. The Mexican grill is now testing a meatless chorizo – free of gluten, soy, nuts and grains – at its Denver and Indianapolis locations.

What is COP26? Your quick guide to United Nations climate change summit in Glasgow

The popularity of sofritas, made from shredded tofu flavored with chipotle chiles, poblano peppers and a blend of spices, has only reinforced Chipotle’s thinking. The company expects to source 4.9 million pounds of organic tofu this year from Hodo Soy Beanery in California, up from 4.2 million pounds in 2020.

“We knew that if it’s craveable, you wouldn’t miss the meat,” Perdue told USA TODAY. “You still get all those layers of flavors.”

Taco Bell, which already offers more than 15 items on its “Veggie Cravings” menu, is also testing additional plant-based options – including its Cravetarian meatless protein made from a seasoned blend of chickpeas and peas.

“With more than 7,000 restaurants nationwide and consumers’ growing sustainability concerns, we see the opportunity – and responsibility – to make a positive environmental impact,” said Missy Schaaphok, Taco Bell's director of global nutrition and sustainability, adding that consumers shouldn’t have to “choose between crave-ability and responsible dining.”

Starbucks and Panera, meanwhile, have highlighted their respective commitments in recent sustainability reports noted by World Animal Protection.

In its 2020 Global Environmental and Social Impact Report, Starbucks said, “To meet our 2030 goals, we set five key strategies, rooted in science, grounded in Starbucks Mission and Values, and informed by comprehensive market research and trials: Expand plant-based menu options.”

While the COVID-19 pandemic delayed plans to test several plant-based dishes, Panera said its “long-term aspiration is to have a menu where half of our entrees are plant-based,” according to its most recent sustainability report.

Thirty-nine of the top 50 fast-food restaurants, however, aren’t taking meaningful steps to provide vegans and vegetarians with much more than the ketchup packets next to the napkin dispensers, according to the World Animal Protection report.

• While McDonald’s began testing its McPlant vegan burger at eight U.S. locations across four states this month, the American fast-food icon has lagged behind Burger King, long its primary rival. BK launched the Impossible Whopper at its 7,000-plus locations more than two years ago, and the company has reported U.S. guests who chose the meatless burger in 2020 “avoided the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of driving about 520 million miles in an average passenger vehicle.”

• Subway, with nearly 24,000 locations – the most of any chain – has yet to provide a plant-based meat option nationally and failed to make a public commitment to expand its menu or reduce meat consumption.

• Unlike KFC, which has carried out plant-based chicken trials, Chick-fil-A hasn’t featured a plant-based alternative on its menu, publicly detailed any such plans or recognized the benefits of reducing animal proteins.

The World Animal Protection list of “Dining Dawdlers” also includes Arby’s, Dairy Queen, Domino’s, Dunkin’, Panda Express and Wendy’s.

The message for those straggling chains, Harsh said, is to recognize the plant-based movement as an “important and necessary direction” for the sustainability of the planet – and for their bottom line.

“To not catch up,” he said, “is going to be detrimental to their business.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Burger King, Chipotle, Starbucks get top marks at World Vegan Day 2021