COVID EXCUSE FOR OUTSOURCING

New Sask. government plan for getting through surgery backlog concerns experts, unions

Fri., December 10, 2021

Thousands of surgeries have been delayed in Saskatchewan since the onset of the pandemic. (CBC - image credit)

Saskatchewan's newly announced approach to make its way through 35,000 backlogged surgeries is garnering concern from unions, the Opposition and health policy experts.

The government says it plans on privatizing certain procedures and paying for them with public funds. It's not known which surgeries will be privatized.

According to Saskatchewan Health Minister Paul Merriman, emphasis will first be put on surgeries with the highest number of patients waiting for them.

The government said its goal is to achieve a three-month wait time by 2030. It has set a target beyond its pre-pandemic levels, planning to perform a total of 18,000 more surgeries over the next four years. The emphasis will be on operations with the highest wait-lists.

Details on the cost of the project were not available, as Merriman said it's in the "budget process" right now.

Many concerns raised by policy analysts and the NDP surrounding the plan have to do with the number of health-care workers there are to go around. The government was vague on plans to recruit and retain workers who are sorely needed in the province.

Dennis Kendel, health policy consultant and physician, wondered where the workers would come from.

"There isn't anybody sitting around on the sidelines not working at the moment. All of the people in these roles are working and very, very hard, in hospitals," he said in an interview.

"If you're recruiting people from the hospital market to try to convince them to work at a private facility, then you simply reduce capacity in the hospitals. There's a fixed supply of health-care professionals."

Some scans and tests have been privatized in the province, and Kendel said he doesn't want to see people being able to pay their way to the front of the line for surgery.

Ryan Meili, the leader of Saskatchewan's NDP, said the goals are unattainable without a solid plan.

"Nurses and doctors and folks on the front line are under incredible amounts of pressure. We need to see a real plan with training, with incentives, with recruitment and retention plans to get people in the door doing this work," he told reporters Thursday.

Steven Lewis, health policy analyst, said the ideal solution is to maximize what can be done in the public sector and when the limit is hit, "the government should tell us why there are limits and why it's a better option to go private."

Lewis said the goals are ambitious and that it's incredibly hard to ramp up capacity for things like post-operative care, for example, all at once.

New investment or old money?

Barbara Cape, SEIU-West president, said this problem began long before the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the announcement was more of an idea than a plan at this point.

"I think everybody would like to be a part of developing a plan to address the surgical backlog," Cape said.

One of Cape's main concerns was if it will be new money poured into the system or a reallocation of existing health-care money. She echoed concerns of an already strained system and not enough staff to go around.

And if the government wants to increase surgical capacity, it also has to increase every other service that goes along with that, like physical therapy and home care, she said.

"We really need to focus new investment in the whole public health-care system," she said.

Cape said this move did worry her in terms of more privatization of the health-care system.

"If we rob valuable public dollars out of the public health-care system and put them into the private system, we are simply prolonging the decline of a public health-care system that we all really pay taxes for," she said.

"It's not the beginning. It's the continuation of a very sad and disturbing saga that we've seen."

For recruitment into hundreds of unfilled health-care jobs, and keeping those jobs filled, Cape said the province needs better wages and more full-time positions at the very least.

Freed after 14 years in prison without charges, Guantánamo torture victim speaks out

Michael Isikoff
·Chief Investigative Correspondente
Fri., December 10, 2021

When the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the future of the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay this week, no Biden administration witnesses showed up — a glaring absence that underscored the paralysis among White House aides over how to achieve their publicly stated goal of shutting down the facility.

But Mohamedou Ould Slahi, who spent almost 14 years at Guantánamo and says he was brutally beaten and threatened with execution without ever being charged with a crime, has some advice for his onetime captors: Come clean about what was done to the detainees there, and transfer those accused of committing the Sept. 11 attacks to the United States so they can be openly tried in a court of law

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Former Guantánamo prisoner Mohamedou Ould Slahi at a press conference in Nouakchott, Mauritania, in 2016. (Stringer/AFP via Getty Images)

“They should take anyone who is alleged of those heinous crimes to court in America and let them face the music,” Slahi, 50, now a free man, said during an interview for the Yahoo News “Skullduggery” podcast. “How can you be the leader of the free world if you don’t respect the rule of law?”

Slahi’s story serves as a reminder that when Martin Luther King Jr. said “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” the bending can take an excruciatingly long time. It is a story that is powerfully told in “The Mauritanian,” a movie released earlier this year starring Jodie Foster as Slahi’s defense lawyer who helped secure his release after years of legal battles.

An engineering student from Mauritania who had gotten a scholarship to study in Germany, Slahi was swept up in an unrelenting international dragnet in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. At the request of U.S officials, he was detained by Mauritanian police, flown to Jordan in a secretive procedure known as rendition, and then transferred to Guantánamo in early 2002, where he was accused — falsely, as it turned out — of recruiting the hijackers who flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

When Slahi denied the allegations, his interrogators didn’t believe him. Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered that he be subjected to harsh interrogations that went far beyond what was in the Army field manual.

That’s “when they start the torture,” said Slahi, recounting his experience via Zoom from Dakar, Senegal. “I remember one day I almost died because they put me in this fridge. And I’m telling you, like, when I say ‘the fridge,’ people don’t understand this because [another detainee] did not survive the fridge. He died in the fridge. It was too cold.

“And I remember this Marine guy, he was like, I was in the fridge and he was pouring water over me and I wore only a thin uniform and I was so cold. But I really wanted him to stop, I wanted to talk. But I couldn’t talk because my lips couldn’t move and my tongue, it was like a stone.”

A U.S. Army soldier outside the detention center at Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in 2016. (John Moore/Getty Images)

To be sure, U.S. intelligence officials had reason to be suspicious of Slahi. He seemed, at first blush, the Forrest Gump of Islamic terrorism. A devout Muslim, he had gone to Afghanistan in 1990 to fight with the mujahedeen against the Soviet occupation and joined al-Qaida. (This was during a period in which the CIA was arming the mujahedeen and years before al-Qaida was linked to acts of terrorism.)

When Slahi was studying in Germany, he had received a call from his cousin, a member of al-Qaida’s Shura Council, that was placed from Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone. (According to Slahi, his cousin wanted him to transfer funds for the medical expenses of his father.)

And when he returned to Germany, in 1999, a friend asked him to pick up and bring back to his apartment three visitors from the Middle East, one of whom was Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the organizers of the 9/11 attacks. (Slahi says he had no idea who Binalshibh was and the subject of terror attacks never came up.)

With so many suspicious links, Pentagon interrogators were determined to break him. He was, he says, beaten mercilessly and deprived of sleep for days at a time. Female interrogators — at times wearing masks — disrobed him. They taunted, humiliated, and, he said, sexually assaulted him.

“Still to this day, I have a lot of issues and problems when people touch me, you know, when people close to me touch me, I don’t want them to get close to me,” he said.

There was yet more: He was deprived of sleep for days at a time, bombarded with loud rock music, and, at one point, taken on a boat ride, force-fed seawater and threatened with execution. But what finally broke him was another ploy: His chief interrogator, an ex-Chicago cop with a checkered record of abusing prisoners, told him they were going to arrest his mother and bring her to Guantánamo.

The interrogator “came to me and he handed me a letter. He said this is a letter stating that my mother would be kidnapped, and he insinuated that she would be raped.” It was, he said, “like a stab through my heart.”

A detainee inside the U.S. military prison for “enemy combatants” at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in 2009. (John Moore/Getty Images)

“And the only way to stop that from happening was for me to confess to my, quote, unquote, ‘crimes.’ So I wanted to say anything, everything, whatever he wants.”

And so Slahi cracked, signing a lengthy detailed confession to being every bit the al-Qaida operative U.S. officials had accused him of being. In doing so, he was echoing a prewritten script based on what Binalshibh himself had confessed to — Slahi had recruited him for the 9/11 plot. As with Slahi’s confession, it was made only after similar torture.

“When I was tortured, I wanted only to please my interrogator,” said Slahi. “If they told me I was on Mars, I will tell them I was on Mars. If they told me, ‘You were the hijackers and you died on one of the planes,’ I would tell them I died on the plane.”

As ghastly as Slahi’s account sounds, much of it was documented in a searing 2009 report by the Senate Armed Services Committee. The report details how Guantánamo commanders, frustrated at Slahi’s lack of cooperation, proposed special interrogation methods to “shock” the prisoner into submission. He was to be hooded, shaved and doused in freezing cold water and subjected to sensory deprivation and “sleep adjustment,” the report states. Female interrogators were to “make close physical contact” in order to “increase his stress level.” Even before Rumsfeld signed off, some of those methods had begun, the report states. One of the interrogators told Slahi he would “very soon disappear down a very dark hole” and his “very existence will become erased.” He was “shown a fictitious letter” stating that his mother had been detained and might be “transferred to GTMO.”

Slahi’s confession never held up — and he ultimately renounced every word of it. (After reaffirming his denials, he was given two lie detector tests and passed both.) When a Marine officer, Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, was assigned to prosecute Slahi before a military commission, he secured access to the classified records of what was done to him and was appalled. “It became clear that what had been done to Slahi amounted to torture,” he said. Couch quit the case in protest. In 2010, Slahi’s lawyer, Nancy Hollander, persuaded a federal judge to order him freed in a habeas corpus hearing.

U.S. Navy guards escort a detainee at Guantánamo Bay in 2008. (Department of Defense/1st Lt. Sarah Cleveland/handout via Reuters)

But even that didn’t lead to Slahi’s release from Guantánamo. The Obama administration appealed the judge’s order, and his case dragged on for another six years. Finally, the government gave up and let Slahi return to his native Mauritania in October 2016.

By then, Slahi had written a book about his experiences, “Guantánamo Diary,” that became an international bestseller and turned him into a symbol of the U.S. government’s excesses in the war on terror. But still, Slahi says, he holds no personal animus against his interrogators. As documented in “In Search of Monsters,” a new documentary film by journalist John Goetz that was recently featured on the National Public Radio program “This American Life," he has even met and bonded with some of those interrogators.

“I tell you a secret, a lot of people really don’t believe that I don’t hold any grudge, and they’re wrong,” he said. Throughout his ordeal, “I took it upon myself to be a nice person and took a vow of kindness no matter what. And you cannot have a vow of kindness without forgiving people. This is what matters to me. I’m so selfish. I want to feel good, you know? And that’s my way to feel good.”

CHIROPRACTORS ARE NOT DOCTORS MANY ARE QUACKS
Chiropractors' statements on vaccines made B.C. minister question self-regulation, email shows
TRUMP'S DOCTORS WERE CHIROPRACTORS

Fri., December 10, 2021

Health Minister Adrian Dix phoned the executive director of the B.C. Chiropractic Association after CBC reported on a meeting where chiropractors shared false information about COVID-19 vaccines. (Ben Nelms/CBC - image credit)

The day after a majority of chiropractors attending a meeting of their regulator voted to oppose a COVID-19 vaccine mandate, B.C.'s health minister told an industry representative he was starting to doubt the wisdom of self-regulation, CBC has learned.

On Dec. 1, the College of Chiropractors of B.C. held its annual general meeting and registrants voted in favour of a non-binding resolution calling for the regulator to "take a stand" against an expected vaccine mandate for health professionals.

The next day, CBC published a story about the meeting, including comments from some chiropractors who argued, without evidence, that the vaccine isn't safe or effective.

According to a Dec. 3 email to members of the B.C. Chiropractic Association (BCCA), a voluntary professional organization, from executive director Angie Knott, Health Minister Adrian Dix then reached out to her in response to what she described as an "inflammatory" article.

Knott spoke with Dix by phone, and said he "expressed his extreme displeasure" about the remarks of some chiropractors.

"Minister Dix indicated it was an embarrassment that a health profession would in such resounding numbers … support such unfounded and false claims while people are dying from COVID-19," she said.

In bold and underlined text, she added, "He also stated that it made him question the validity of self-regulation."

Dix declined to comment on the phone call.

During last week's meeting, 78 per cent of those in attendance voted in favour of the motion. The college has since provided attendance numbers showing the meeting was attended by 261 chiropractors out of 1,379 fully licensed and practising registrants.

A total of 173 voted in favour of the resolution — or about 13 per cent of chiropractors in B.C.

BCCA representatives chose not to speak out during the meeting because they didn't feel it was appropriate to comment on mandates, Knott said last week. She added that they weren't expecting chiropractors to make explicitly anti-vaccine statements.

Chiropractors are not trained in treating or preventing infectious disease and are prohibited from offering advice on vaccinations in B.C.

'Potentially devastating impact' of story

Knott's Dec. 3 email lays out a timeline for the next day and a half after the meeting, as the CBC story was published and then widely shared on social media, even attracting a satirical treatment from The Beaverton, a news parody website.

After the phone call with Dix, BCCA leadership drafted a statement responding to CBC's report "ensuring that the concerns expressed by Health Minister Dix were clearly addressed," Knott wrote.

She went on to say that any member chiropractors who were contacted by the media should direct those inquiries to the BCCA, which she said "has responded quickly to mitigate the potentially devastating impact this situation could have."

Early on the evening of Dec. 2, Knott emailed the association's statement to CBC with a message saying the BCCA "was disappointed to not be contacted" before the story was published.

During an interview the next day, she said the association was "appalled and disappointed at the misrepresentations made by that handful of chiropractors concerning the safety and science behind the COVID-19 vaccine."

Albina Glisic/Shutterstock

Dix made similar comments during a press conference.

Knott told CBC on Wednesday she informed members about her phone call with Dix in an effort to be transparent.

"We wanted to ensure that our members were well-informed about the seriousness of this issue, the impact the media coverage made to date, and the actions being taken on their behalf to ensure that the B.C. Chiropractic Association's support for public health measures, including vaccination, were made clear," Knott said.

Previous concerns about self-regulation

This is not the first time health ministry officials have expressed concerns about the ability of the profession to regulate itself.

In 2018, CBC reported on an anti-vaccination video that had been created and shared by the college's then-vice chair Avtar Jassal, in violation of college policy and despite complaints from a member of the public.

A Freedom of Information request to the ministry later showed that the day after the story was published, the ministry's director of regulatory initiatives wrote an email saying he was asked to outline "what options we have when a college is not meeting its legal obligation as set out under the HPA [Health Professions Act]."

A draft plan was titled "Options to Act when College dysfunctional."

Those emails also contained messages from the BCCA saying the association had tried to complain about anti-vaccine statements made publicly by multiple college board members, but the college hadn't accepted their evidence.

Rights group calls for ICC probe into Myanmar crackdown

Fri., December 10, 2021



THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — A human rights group has called on the International Criminal Court to open an investigation into the crackdown on dissent by Myanmar's military rulers, alleging that the leader of the February coup in the Southeast Asian nation is responsible for widespread and systematic torture.

The Myanmar Accountability Project said in a statement on Friday that there was sufficient evidence to open an investigation into the head of the country's military-installed government, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

“The leader of the illegal coup is criminally responsible for the security forces under his command committing mass atrocity crimes,” project director Chris Gunness said.

The documents filed with prosecutors at the court in The Hague were not made public, but Gunness said they contain testimony from a defector “that shows responsibility for the torture goes all the way up to Min Aung Hlaing himself.”

Gunness said the testimony corroborates findings by the Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar, which was established by the U.N. Human Rights Council.

The head of the mechanism, Nicholas Koumjian, said in November that preliminary evidence collected since the military seized power on Feb. 1 shows a widespread and systematic attack on civilians “amounting to crimes against humanity.”

Koumjian said his organization had received over 200,000 communications since the army takeover and has collected over 1.5 million items of evidence that were being analyzed “so that one day those most responsible for the serious international crimes in Myanmar will be brought to account.”

Earlier this week, witnesses and other sources said that Myanmar government troops rounded up villagers, some believed to be children, tied them up and slaughtered them. A video of the aftermath of Tuesday’s assault — apparently carried out in retaliation for an attack on a military convoy — showed the charred bodies of 11 people lying in a circle amid what appeared to be the remains of a hut.

Myanmar’s military-installed government described the reports as “fake news.”

Myanmar is not one of the International Criminal Court's 123 member states, meaning the Netherlands-based court does not automatically have jurisdiction over crimes committed there. However, Myanmar's self-styled National Unity Government sent a declaration to the court in July saying it accepted the ICC's jurisdiction dating back to 2002, when the global court started work.

“So the question is, will (ICC prosecutor) Karim Khan accept the jurisdiction of the NUG?” Gunness told The Associated Press. “We believe there is strong diplomatic, legal justification for the ICC moving ahead with an investigation.”

The ICC prosecution office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The National Unity Government bills itself as the country’s legitimate administrative body, as opposed to the the State Administration Council, the military-installed junta that came to power by force. The National Unity Government stakes its claim to legitimacy to its appointment by the Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, a body formed in the days following the coup by elected lawmakers who were prevented by the army from taking their seats.

The United Nations General Assembly approved a resolution on Monday delaying action on requests by Myanmar’s military junta — and Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers — to take their countries’ seats at the United Nations, a decision that leaves the ambassadors from the two countries' ousted governments in their jobs.

The International Criminal Court already is investigating mass expulsions of members of the Rohingya ethnic minority by the Myanmar military as a possible crime against humanity. However, the court based its jurisdiction in that case on the fact that hundreds of thousands of Rohingya were forced over the border into neighboring Bangladesh, which is an ICC member.

Mike Corder, The Associated Press

'Change, of course, must happen:' N.W.T. gov't releases draft MMIWG action plan

Fri., December 10, 2021

A beaded heart tapestry by he Native Women's Association of the NWT was displayed at the opening ceremonies of the Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls in Yellowknife. The N.W.T. released its draft action plan in response to the inquiry's final report.

 (Claudiane Samson/CBC - image credit)

The government of the Northwest Territories released its draft action plan in response to the 2019 final report of the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

Minister Responsible for the Status of Women Caroline Wawzonek said the action plan, Changing the Relationship, takes a multi-pronged approach to reducing gender-based violence in the territory.

"Change, of course, must happen if we are to end violence directed at Indigenous women and girls and gender-diverse people," she said. "This draft action plan is a step towards that change.

"It lists 95 actions that outline how the G.N.W.T. will work to address the calls for justice and address systemic causes of violence, inequality and racism."

'We're being asked to end a genocide'

The actions include increasing funding for the Native Women's Association of the N.W.T., supporting more on-the-land healing programs and starting a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls advisory committee.

The government is also looking to do more cultural safety and anti-racism training for employees, review grade school curriculum through an Indigenous lens, and develop culturally-relevant gender-based analysis tools to determine the impact of policies, programs and services on Indigenous women, girls, and LGBTQ2S+ people.

And, said Wawzonek, there will be a lot more work to do, even once the plan is in place.

"Really, we're being asked to end a genocide," she said. "That's what the national [report on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls] found — that there was a genocide — and we're being asked to find a way to end it.

"I'm not sure there's one magic thing that will do that until we have a paradigm shift in how we govern, why we govern and why we do the things we do. [And] for now, we're starting here."

According to the RCMP, there are currently at least nine open cases of missing Indigenous women in the N.W.T., and in 2019, there were over 2,500 police-reported instances of violence against women and girls in the territory.

The N.W.T. government intends to finalize the action plan by the summer of 2022. In the meantime, the government is consulting with affected communities to make sure their priorities are included in the plan.

"Before we finalize the document, we will be engaging with Indigenous governments, community governments, people with lived experience and indeed all Northwest Territories residents on our proposed responses to the calls for justice," said Wawzonek.

She said she believes the plan can start to have an impact well before the final version is tabled.

"I'm not waiting on the final [version] for us to start making sure that we are aligning ourselves to the actions here, and I don't believe other ministers necessarily are either," she said.

'We're going to fight this': Deportation of Inupiaq man living in Canada deferred

Fri., December 10, 2021


Herman Oyagak first travelled to Aklavik, N.W.T., from his home in Alaska by snowmobile in 2018, a trip that takes about 18 hours.

It's a journey he does regularly now with his wife Carol, who grew up in the town of about 600 people above the Arctic Circle.

The couple, who are in their 50s, share a home in Aklavik and follow a traditional lifestyle of hunting and travelling on the land.

Their lives nearly changed when a call from the Canadian Border Services Agency said Oyagak was to be deported to Alaska on Monday.

The deportation order was deferred on Dec. 2. The couple is relieved but also uneasy.

"When I first walked into the house, I didn't know anything about it, and my wife started crying, giving me a hug," Oyagak told The Canadian Press.

His wife showed him the letter from the agency saying his deportation had been deferred.

"I just couldn't believe it until I started reading it. As I was reading it, over and over and over, I just started crying."

The deportation is based on Oyagak's criminal conviction in 2015 for property damage under $250 when he broke a phone by throwing it at a wall.

"They started explaining to us that they were coming on Dec. 13 to pick up Herman," his wife said.

"I said, 'We're going to fight this. We're going to fight this.' We were trying not to cry."

Oyagak said he was deemed inadmissible to Canada because of the conviction. He was arrested and taken to Yellowknife where he was released on bond.

Border services said it could not comment on Oyagak's case for privacy reasons.

The couple, like many Aklavik residents, still lives a traditional Inuit life living off the land.

"I just wake up and I think about hunting," Oyagak said.

One of the conditions of his bond is that he has to make weekly calls to the border services agency, which means he has to be near a phone.

"We'd rather be out on the land. But since this came about, we're kind of restricted from living our traditional life," Oyagak's wife said.

"We have the inherent right to go back and forth. We've been doing that for thousands of years and still continue to do it today," she added.

Nick Sowsun, Oyagak's lawyer, argues that his client has a right to be in the Northwest Territories and the deportation order violates his Indigenous rights.

"The Inuvialuit of Aklavik and the Inupiat in Alaska have very close cultural ties, social ties, and blood relations. They are both Inuit. Before land claims ... these were considered to be one people," Sowsun said.

"The land-claims process separated them into two different groups, and the border now divides families and friends. For these people, this border is arbitrary and is an affront to their social and cultural traditions."

In a statement, Duane Ningaqsiq Smith, of the Inuvialuit Regional Corp. said deporting Oyagak is about Canada "blindly following process."

“This failure to consider the rights of Indigenous people and their unique relationship with Canada is deeply concerning to Inuvialuit and should be concerning to all Canadians," he said. "Indigenous rights take legal precedence over process."

Although Oyagak is back home with his wife in Aklavik, he knows there is still a risk he could be deported.

"We're going to fight the fight to continue our lives together," he said.

Oyagak has applied for permanent residency based on humanitarian and compassionate grounds. If approved, the deportation order would be nullified.

"I'm just glad that I'm still here with my wife and I pray every day that we continue to live together in Aklavik."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 10, 2021.

___

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Emma Tranter, The Canadian Press

Probe by Poland refutes Belarus account of diverted flight



Fri., December 10, 2021, 5:51 a.m.·2 min read

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The diversion to Minsk of a Lithuania-bound flight carrying a self-exiled Belarusian journalist was an act of “state terrorism” carried out to detain an opponent of Belarus' government, Polish security officials said Friday.

Poland’s Internal Security Agency and prosecutors investigated the May 23 incident in which a Ryanair jetliner registered in Poland was ordered to land in the capital of Belarus due to an alleged bomb threat. Journalist Raman Pratasevich, who lived in Lithuania, was removed from the plane and arrested. He remains under house arrest in Belarus.

The fact that there were Polish citizens among the other 125 passengers led to the probe.

A security services spokesperson, Stanislaw Zaryn, presented findings from Poland’s investigation, which concluded there was no bomb and that Belarusian security officers were at an air traffic tower in Minsk where they gave a controller instructions to order the plane to turn back and land.

Zaryn played journalists a recording of what he said was the conversation between the pilot of the Ryanair flight and an air traffic controller in Belarus. The pilot is heard asking where the bomb threat information came from and is told the source was Belarusian special services. Someone speaking Russian gives the controller information to relay to the pilot,

Belarusian authorities have said the plane was diverted after they received a warning that a bomb was on the plane. Poland’s investigators said an email with the alleged threat was sent some 30 minutes after the controller relayed the message to the pilot, and came from an address that likely was generated for that purpose only.

Zaryn said the diversion was aimed at detaining a “political opponent of the regime of (Belarusian President) Aleksander Lukashenko” and can be considered an “act of state terrorism.”

The Associated Press

Indian farmers end year-long agitation and return home


Sat., December 11, 2021

NEW DELHI (AP) — Tens of thousands of jubilant Indian farmers on Saturday cleared protest sites on the capital’s outskirts and began returning home, drawing an end to their year-long agitation against controversial farm laws that were repealed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government in a rare retreat.

Farmers dismantled their makeshift accommodations at multiple protest sites and started to vacate long stretches of highways ringing New Delhi where they have camped since November last year. Hundreds of them waved green and white flags and danced to celebrate their victory as they rode tractors, jeeps and cars.

After a year of insisting that the laws would benefit farmers, Modi made a surprise announcement to withdraw them last month. A bill to repeal the laws was officially passed in parliament on Nov. 30. But the farmers did not immediately vacate the demonstration sites and said they would continue to protest until the government agreed to other demands, including guaranteed prices for key crops and the withdrawal of criminal cases against protesters.

On Thursday, the government set up a committee to consider those demands.

Modi’s government had insisted that the laws were necessary reforms to modernize Indian farming and would lead to a deregulated market with more private-sector control of agriculture.

The farmers said the laws would drastically shrink their incomes and leave them at the mercy of big corporations. In protest, they pressed for the complete repeal of the laws.

They also demanded the government guarantee prices for certain essential crops such as wheat and rice. Currently, an overwhelming majority of farmers sell only to government-sanctioned marketplaces at fixed prices.

Farmers form one of India’s most influential voting blocs and Modi’s decision to scrap the laws came ahead of elections early next year in key states like Uttar Pradesh and Punjab, both significant agricultural producers and where his Bharatiya Janata Party is eager to shore up its support.

Political analysts say the upcoming elections are a major reason behind the surprise move, but that it’s too early to say whether it will work.

The protests drew international support and were the biggest challenge Modi’s government faced since coming to power in 2014.

They were largely peaceful but violence erupted on Jan. 26 when thousands of farmers briefly took over New Delhi’s historic Red Fort in a deeply symbolic move. At least one farmer died and a number of protesters and police were injured.

Farmers’ leaders say more than 500 protesters have died due to suicide, cold weather and COVID-19 since November last year and they insist the government should pay 500,000 rupees ($6,750) in compensation per family. But the government says it has no figures on the number of deaths during the movement.

The leaders said they will review next month the steps taken by the government and decide their future course of action.

The Associated Press

MALE SURGEONS 

Study: Removing ovaries during hysterectomy before 50 carries health risks

By HealthDay News

New research on hysterectomies among women who don't have cancer determined there is an age at which it is safer to also remove the ovaries and fallopian tubes and an age at which it isn't.

Canadian scientists studied the cases of more than 200,500 women who had a hysterectomy for noncancerous reasons.

They found an increased risk of death in women under 50 when the ovaries and fallopian tubes were also removed during the surgery. But they did not find the same association in women over 50.

The data had been limited for older women, which created uncertainty for surgeons about what to recommend.

RELATED Fibroid treatments can provide relief without hysterectomy

"Our core goal was to try to understand the health risks associated with bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy [removal of fallopian tubes and both ovaries] for women of different ages, and provide information that patients and surgeons need to make the right treatment decisions," lead study author Dr. Maria Cusimano said in a news release from St. Michael's Hospital of Unity Health Toronto.

She is a resident physician in obstetrics and gynecology at the hospital.

Bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, or BSO, is the most common major surgery performed on non-pregnant women worldwide, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Patients often have the surgery to prevent the development of ovarian cancer later in life.

The researchers followed the women who had hysterectomies either with or without ovary and fallopian tube removal from 1996 to 2015.

They analyzed them by age groups: under 45, 45 to 49, 50 to 54, and over 55. The median follow-up to assess survival was 12 years after the procedure.

The risks declined gradually in the years approaching menopause and were eliminated after the average age of menopause, the study found.

While researchers acknowledged it's unlikely that there's a sudden drop in mortality between women aged 49 and those who are 50, they used a more advanced modeling technique and still found the overall relationship gradually shifted from harmful to not harmful around the average age of menopause.

"We know that bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy can prevent ovarian cancer, but this benefit must be weighed against other potential risks of the procedure," said study co-author Dr. Sarah Ferguson, a professor from the University of Toronto's Division of Gynecologic Oncology.

"There are definite cancerous and noncancerous conditions where we actually do need to remove the ovaries, even if a woman is premenopausal," Ferguson said in the release.

"Our study shows that surgeons need to be cautious about removing the ovaries without a clear reason in premenopausal women. However, this strategy may be a safe and effective way to prevent ovarian cancer in older postmenopausal women," Ferguson said.

The reason the risks may be higher in younger women is because the surgery prematurely stops all ovarian hormone production, the researchers suggested.

This puts patients in "sudden menopause."

The production of estrogen affects multiple organs, so the loss of the hormone may predispose them to serious health problems later in life.

These same downsides would not be expected to occur in postmenopausal women, whose ovaries have already stopped producing estrogen.

The findings were published Wednesday in the BMJ.

More information

The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more on surgical removal of the fallopian tubes and ovaries (BSO).

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One in 10 on Medicare delays care, struggles with medical debt, study finds


Nearly one in 10 people using Medicare delay care due to costs or struggle with medical bills, according to a new study. Photo by TBIT/Pixabay


Dec. 10 (UPI) -- Nearly one in 10 people on Medicare experiences debt because of medical expenses despite receiving health coverage under the federal program, an analysis published Friday by JAMA Health Forum found.

About 8% of Medicare beneficiaries have ongoing medical debt, have been contacted by a collection agency or both, the data showed

Enrollees age 65 and older with annual incomes between $15,000 and $25,000 were three times more likely to report problems paying medical bills than those with incomes above $50,000.

In addition, older adults with four to 10 chronic health conditions covered under the program were more than twice as likely to have problems paying medical bills as those with no or one chronic condition, according to the researchers.

"Financial accessibility of care within Medicare is very uneven over the population [and the program] has substantial cost-sharing requirements for patients, and it's all pretty complex," study co-author Jeanne M. Madden told UPI in an email.

"With all these complex moving parts, it is not terribly surprising that there is a lot of inequality there, despite good intentions," said Madden, an associate professor of pharmacy and health systems sciences at Northeastern University in Boston.

Established in 1965, Medicare is a national health insurance program that primarily serves people age 65 and older, as well as certain adults with disabilities, according to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees it.

The program provides coverage for about 60 million people nationally, including 52 million seniors and 8 million younger adults, the agency estimates.

Although it covers most health expenses for eligible, legal residents of the United States, enrollees are still responsible for significant out of pocket costs, including co-pays and the costs of uncovered services, such as dental, hearing and vision care.

For this study, Madden and her colleagues analyzed data from more than 13,000 respondents to a nationwide survey of Medicare beneficiaries conducted in 2017.

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Nearly 11,000 of the respondents were 65 years and older, while the rest were younger adults, the researchers said.

Just over 30% of the older respondents had annual incomes below $25,000, while about two-thirds of the younger respondents earned below that threshold.

About 8% of older respondents reported delaying medical care because of cost, while one in four younger respondents said that they did so.

And just over 7% of older enrollees said they had problems paying medical bills, compared with 30% among younger respondents, the researchers said.

Of all respondents, 11% reported having problems paying medical bills.

"The study shows that unaffordability is really concentrated among people who have very low incomes or who have poor health and high health care needs [as] the former don't have enough money to pay, and the latter have great needs that overwhelm their ability to pay," Madden said.

"Getting more assistance to those at the low-income end and [implementing] a cap on out-of-pocket spending for beneficiaries would address the people with major healthcare needs," she said.