WHO DIVERTED THEM?

Cargo ships divert gas from China to Britain


Lucy Burton
Tue, December 28, 2021

A liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker

Huge cargo ships carrying liquid gas that were destined for China have changed course and are now heading towards the UK as Europe remains trapped in a major supply crunch.

While the Continent’s energy crisis and high prices have attracted ships away from other parts of the world, the new arrivals are now bringing prices down. Benchmark Dutch front-month gas fell for a fifth day yesterday, dropping as much as 9.2pc in Amsterdam.

The UK gas price rocketed to a record 470p per therm last week, up from just 50p in April, but has since fallen to under 270p.

James Huckstepp, managing analyst at S&P Global Platts, said tankers are flocking towards British shores in a move that is “critical to ­tempering even more extreme prices and demand destruction in Europe”.

He said: “We are seeing cargoes previously destined for Asia now diverting to the UK. This is particularly the case for those cargoes originating in the US, given the journey between the US and Europe is much shorter than that to Asia.”

The number of US tankers heading for European ports jumped by one third last weekend, according to Bloomberg, with 20 vessels bearing American gas heading for Europe and another 14 heading in the general direction of Europe while awaiting final orders.

The number of cargoes travelling to the UK and elsewhere in Europe will raise hopes that new supplies can ease the energy crisis and help lower gas prices, which have declined after soaring to record highs last week. That will bring some relief to UK energy bosses, who met Downing Street officials this week for crunch crisis talks.

Ahead of the meeting, Stephen Fitzpatrick, the boss of Britain’s second-largest supplier Ovo Energy, warned that bills were “almost certain” to ­double to £2,000 per household.

It is understood that the Government could facilitate a deal that would see the industry given access to a £20bn fund, which they could repay at a rate of £2bn a year over 10 years.

Nathan Piper, head of oil and gas research at Investec, said European and UK prices have surged above Asian ­liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices, attracting volumes away from China.

The additional supplies will provide some much-needed respite ahead of looming winter shortages. However, one Singapore-based trader told S&P Global Platts earlier this month that they are not sure “how sustainable these diversions to the Atlantic will be”.

The cost of energy in Europe has been soaring this year due to low levels of gas storage, tight supplies from Russia and lower output from clean energy sources, in part because of weak wind speeds. Some 26 retail energy companies have gone bust since August.

The country gets most of its gas via pipes connected to the North Sea, ­Norway and continental Europe, but in ­normal times it also gets about 20pc via ships in the global market.

Russia has been accused of withholding extra pipeline gas supplies to mainland Europe in recent months, in an attempt to pressure Germany into starting up its new pipeline, Nord Stream 2.

It comes as new data show that shipments of gas from Russia to the UK increased this year.

As of last week, Russia had sent 29 shipments of LNG to the UK during 2021 – compared to 22 a year earlier – according to data from S&P Global Platts Analytics. It marks the second highest annual figure since the first Russian shipments to the UK in 2017.

Proponents of the North Sea industry argue that the Government could boost Britain’s energy security by granting permission for more domestic oil and gas drilling. About 10 licenced North Sea projects are expected to be up for development approval and final investment decisions in next year, but are likely to draw opposition from climate change activists.

Protesters have been emboldened by Shell’s decision earlier this month to pull out of the Cambo field development. Its partner, Siccar Point Energy, subsequently paused the project.

In October, Friends of the Earth, using analysis from campaign group Uplift, found in total about 30 licenced UK offshore oil and gas projects are in line for development approval by 2025.

The Government has said it supports domestic production as oil and gas still fulfils about 75pc of total UK’s energy needs – fuelling most boilers, cars and almost 40pc of UK power supply.

However, it has also introduced a “climate compatibility” checklist that new oil and gas projects need to pass if they are to get a licence. Supporters of North Sea drilling say it results in lower emissions than importing gas from other parts of the world.

Riot Games Settles Gender Discrimination Suit for $100 Million

Vlad Savov
Mon, December 27, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- Riot Games Inc., a Tencent Holdings Ltd. subsidiary, settled a 2018 gender discrimination class-action suit by agreeing to pay $100 million in compensation and legal fees.

The settlement agreement announced Monday stipulates that Riot will pay $80 million to all current and former employees and contractors who identify as women and worked for Riot at any time since Nov. 2014. The payment will be distributed via a fund, pending court approval. A further $20 million will cover attorneys’ fees and miscellaneous expenses, and Riot has agreed to have its pay processes overseen by a third party for a period of three years, the company said in a statement.

Video Games Struggle to Shake Sexist Attitudes: Tae Kim

“This is a great day for the women of Riot Games – and for women at all video game and tech companies – who deserve a workplace that is free of harassment and discrimination,” said Genie Harrison, whose law firm represented the plaintiffs. “We appreciate Riot’s introspection and work since 2018 toward becoming a more diverse and inclusive company, its willingness to take responsibility for its past, and its commitment to continued fairness and equality in the future.”

The video games industry has been going through a period of reckoning around sexism, both in the content of the entertainment it produces and in the workplace. The California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which took part in the suit against Riot Games, has been at the forefront of this push. It also sued Activision Blizzard Inc. over its “frat boy” culture this summer, leading to a settlement that produced an $18 million fund for alleged victims of discrimination or harassment at the company.

Partying and Sexism Were Long Part of Blizzard’s Office Culture

How Ancient Human and Animal DNA Is Preserved in Archaeological Sediments for Thousands of Years

By MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR EVOLUTIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY DECEMBER 27, 2021

Sampling of an undisturbed block of impregnated sediment for ancient DNA analyses. Credit: MPI f. Evolutionary Anthropology

Ancient human and animal DNA can remain stably localized in sediments, preserved in microscopic fragments of bone and feces.

Sediments in which archaeological finds are embedded have long been regarded by most archaeologists as unimportant by-products of excavations. However, in recent years it has been shown that sediments can contain ancient biomolecules, including DNA. “The retrieval of ancient human and faunal DNA from sediments offers exciting new opportunities to investigate the geographical and temporal distribution of ancient humans and other organisms at sites where their skeletal remains are rare or absent,” says Matthias Meyer, senior author of the study and researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.

To investigate the origin of DNA in the sediment, Max Planck researchers teamed up with an international group of geoarchaeologists — archaeologists who apply geological techniques to reconstruct the formation of sediment and sites — to study DNA preservation in sediment at a microscopic scale. They used undisturbed blocks of sediment that had been previously removed from archaeological sites and soaked in synthetic plastic-like (polyester) resin. The hardened blocks were taken to the laboratory and sliced in sections for microscopic imaging and genetic analysis.

Surface of a section of undisturbed block of impregnated sediment from Denisova Cave. Credit: Mike Morley

The researchers successfully extracted DNA from a collection of blocks of sediment prepared as long as 40 years ago, from sites in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. “The fact that these blocks are an excellent source of ancient DNA – including that originating from hominins — despite often decades of storage in plastic, provides access to a vast untapped repository of genetic information. The study opens up a new era of ancient DNA studies that will revisit samples stored in labs, allowing for analysis of sites that have long since been back-filled, which is especially important given travel restriction and site inaccessibility in a pandemic world,” says Mike Morley from Flinders University in Australia who led some of the geoarchaeological analyses.

Abundance of micro remains in the sediment matrix

The scientists used blocks of sediment from Denisova Cave, a site located in the Altai Mountains in South Central Siberia where ancient DNA from Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans has been retrieved, and showed that small organic particles yielded more DNA than sediment sampled randomly. “It clearly shows that the high success rate of ancient mammalian DNA retrieval from Denisova Cave sediments comes from the abundance of micro remains in the sediment matrix rather than from free extracellular DNA from feces, bodily fluids or decomposing cellular tissue potentially adsorbed onto mineral grains,” says Vera Aldeias, co-author of the study and researcher at the University of Algarve in Portugal. “This study is a big step closer to understand precisely where and under what conditions ancient DNA is preserved in sediments,” says Morley.

The approach described in the study allows highly localized micro-scale sampling of sediment for DNA analyses and shows that ancient DNA (aDNA) is not uniformly distributed in the sediment; and that specific sediment features are more conducive to ancient DNA preservation than others. “Linking sediment aDNA to the archaeological micro-context means that we can also address the possibility of physical movement of aDNA between sedimentary deposits,” says Susan Mentzer a researcher at the Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment (Germany).

Diyendo Massilani, the lead author of the study, was able to recover substantial amounts of Neanderthal DNA from only a few milligrams of sediment. He could identify the sex of the individuals who left their DNA behind, and showed that they belonged to a population related to a Neanderthal whose genome was previously reconstructed from a bone fragment discovered in the cave. “The Neanderthal DNA in these small samples of plastic-embedded sediment was far more concentrated than what we typically find in loose material,” he says. “With this approach it will become possible in the future to analyze the DNA of many different ancient human individuals from just a small cube of solidified sediment. It is amusing to think that this is presumably so because they used the cave as a toilet tens of thousands of years ago.”

Reference: “Microstratigraphic preservation of ancient faunal and hominin DNA in Pleistocene cave sediments” 27 December 2021, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2113666118

CTHULHU STUDIES

A Weird Paper Tests The Limits of Science by Claiming Octopuses Came From Space


(PlanctonVideo/iStock)

MIKE MCRAE
28 DECEMBER 2021

A summary of decades of research on a rather 'out-there' idea involving viruses from space raises questions on just how scientific we can be when it comes to speculating on the history of life on Earth.

It's easy to throw around words like crackpot, rogue, and maverick in describing the scientific fringe, but then papers like this one, from 2018, come along and leave us blinking owlishly, unsure of where to even begin.

A total of 33 names were listed as authors on this review, which was published by Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology back in August 2018. The journal is peer reviewed and fairly well cited. So it's not exactly small, or a niche pay-for-publish source.

Science writer Stephen Fleischfresser goes into depth on the background of two of the better known scientists involved: Edward Steele and Chandra Wickramasinghe. It's well worth a read.

For a tl;dr version, Steele is an immunologist who has a fringe reputation for his views on evolution that relies on acquiring gene changes determined by the influence of the environment rather than random mutations, in what he calls meta-Lamarckism.

Wickramasinghe, on the other hand, has had a somewhat less controversial career, recognized for empirically confirming Sir Fred Hoyle's hypothesis describing the production of complex carbon molecules on interstellar dust.

Wickramasinghe and Hoyle also happened to be responsible for another space biology thesis. Only this one is based on more than just the origins of organic chemistry.

The Hoyle Wickramasinghe (H-W) thesis of Cometary (Cosmic) Biology makes the rather simple claim that the direction of evolution has been significantly affected by biochemistry that didn't start on our planet.

In Wickramasinghe's own words, "Comets are the carriers and distributors of life in the cosmos, and life on Earth arose and developed as a result of cometary inputs."

Those inputs, Wickramasinghe argued, aren't limited to a generous sprinkling of space-baked amino acids, either.

Rather, they include viruses that insert themselves into organisms, pushing their evolution into whole new directions.

The report, titled "Cause of Cambrian Explosion – Terrestrial or Cosmic?", pulls on existing research to conclude that a rain of extra-terrestrial retroviruses played a key role in the diversification of life in our oceans roughly half a billion years ago.

"Thus retroviruses and other viruses hypothesized to be liberated in cometary debris trails both can potentially add new DNA sequences to terrestrial genomes and drive further mutagenic change within somatic and germline genomes," the authors wrote.

Let that sink in for a moment. And take a deep breath before continuing, because that was the tame part.

It was during this period that a group of mollusks known as cephalopods first stretched out their tentacles from beneath their shells, branching into a stunning array of sizes and shapes in what seemed like a remarkably short time frame.

The genetics of these organisms, which today include octopuses, squid, and cuttlefish, are as weird as the animals themselves, due in part to their ability to edit their DNA on the fly.

The authors of the paper make the rather audacious claim that these genetic oddities might be a sign of life from space.

Not of space viruses this time, but the arrival of whole genomes frozen in stasis before thawing out in our tepid waters.

"Thus the possibility that cryopreserved squid and/or octopus eggs, arrived in icy bolides several hundred million years ago should not be discounted," they wrote.

In his review of the paper, medical researcher Keith Baverstock from the University of Eastern Finland conceded that there's a lot of evidence that plausibly aligns with the H-W thesis, such as the curious timeline of the appearance of viruses.


But that's just not how science advances.

"I believe this paper justifies skepticism of the scientific value of stand alone theories of the origin of life," Baverstock argued at the time.

"The weight of plausible, but non-definitive, evidence, great though that might be, is not the point."

While the idea is as novel and exciting as it is provocative, nothing in the summary helps us better understand the history of life on Earth any better than existing conjectures, adding little of value to our model of evolution.

Still, with solid caveats in place, maybe science can cope with a generous dose of crazy every now and then.

Journal editor Denis Noble concedes that 'further research is needed', which is a bit of an understatement.

But given the developments regarding space-based organic chemistry in recent years, there's room for discussion.

"As space chemistry and biology grows in importance it is appropriate for a journal devoted to the interface between physics and biology to encourage the debates," said Noble.

"In the future, the ideas will surely become testable."

Just in case those tests confirm speculations, we recommend being well prepared for the return of our cephalopod overlords. Who knows when they'll want those eggs back?

This research was published in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology.

A version of this article was first published in August 2018.

Businesses Have Manufactured Inflation Fear to Protect Profits Amid Rising Wages

People line up to check out at a grocery store in New York City, on November 14, 2021.

WANG YING / XINHUA VIA GETTY IMAGES

BYHadas Thier, Truthout

PUBLISHEDDecember 26, 2021

For weeks, a high-pitched panic about inflation has infused the mainstream media, most absurdly in CNN’s clip of a family struggling to keep up with the price of buying 12 gallons of milk per week (yes, 12).

Up until recently, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell pushed back against this kind of narrative, arguing that rising prices were a short-term and transitory problem due to supply chain shocks from the pandemic that will eventually return to normal. But now the Fed has shifted course and is preparing to institute policies to “cool off the economy” — a euphemism for shrinking the money supply in order to drive down business investment and thus scale back job growth.

The definition of inflation is simple enough: an increase in the prices of goods and services. If prices rise quickly, and outpace wage growth, this can cause problems for working families — even those who don’t drink 12 gallons of milk per week. But the media narrative about rising inflation has conveniently left out several important points.

First, the prices of some of our biggest expenses — health care, housing, higher education to name a few — have been rising (often explosively so) for decades with little discussion or concern from the punditry. Health care costs are in fact the leading cause of bankruptcy in the country. Global food prices, too, have been rising because of the impact of climate change on crop yields. Easing these kinds of costs — through a nationalized health care system, investment in affordable housing, student debt relief and decarbonization — would go a much longer way toward improving working people’s finances than monetary policies to tighten economic growth.

Second, although it’s true that there has been a noticeable uptick in prices (measured by the annual change on the consumer price index) by 6.8 percent over the last year, this is still not very high by historical standards. The last time the United States experienced a serious inflationary crisis in the 1970s, the rate of inflation regularly hit between 11-13 percent. It’s also the case that measures of current price increases are skewed by a few sectors of the economy, most notably the energy sector.

A more useful measure to look at is a comparison of the rise of prices to the state of wages. If prices are going up faster than wages, then our relative purchasing power declines. But if wages keep pace with inflation, or even outpace inflation, then our purchasing power stays the same, or is strengthened. The reverse is also true. Thus, even though inflation rates have remained relatively low for much of the last few decades, wages have grown even less, meaning that purchasing power for working people declined despite low inflation rates.

Today, wages are finally rising. The New York Times recently reported that about 13 percent of workers have not seen pay increases this year and many retirees receive pensions that are constant. But it has been “middle- and high-income earners whose pay gains were least likely to have kept up with inflation. Over the 12 months that ended in September, those in the top quarter of earners experienced 2.7 percent gains in hourly earnings, compared with 4.8 percent for the lowest quarter of earners.” The combination of wage increases and COVID-19 relief checks have put more money in the pockets of the bottom half of earners than they had at the start of the pandemic.Inflation is a question of class politics — which class gains at whose expense — rather than technical monetary policies.

Most importantly, the media spin has left out the elephant in the room. It is business owners who are the ones raising prices. They are currently setting record profits, so do they have to raise prices? The answer to this question ultimately reveals that inflation is a question of class politics — which class gains at whose expense — rather than technical monetary policies.

What Exactly Is Inflation, and Where Does It Come From?

Inflation is an increase in prices, generalized across the economy, i.e., not just the rise of one particular good but goods across wide swaths of the economy.

How does this happen? The classic explanation is that inflation occurs when too many dollars chase too few goods. That is, if demand for goods and services exceeds the world’s capacity to supply those goods and services, this creates an upward pressure on prices. Business owners can get away with charging more from consumers, who essentially bid against each other for limited supply.

Today, the rapid reopening of economies following lockdowns has created heightened demand for goods and services, far outpacing the rate at which supply chains have come online. The free market allows producers of items in short supply to “pick their price,” as anyone looking to buy a used car right now knows.

This can also lead to good old-fashioned price gouging. The oil industry, for instance, curtailed production at the height of the pandemic due to cratering demand for fuel. Now that demand is back up, Bloomberg News reports, “oil companies are keeping production flat while using profits to reward shareholders.” And although wholesale prices of oil have fallen somewhat, retail gas stations are still selling gas at high prices. “When wholesale prices decline rapidly, it provides a window for retail operators to sell at high prices for a few weeks before lowering prices,” oil storage broker Tank Tiger CEO Ernie Barsamian told Bloomberg. He noted that eventually gas prices will come down, but for now, many refiners and gas stations are enjoying the higher profits.

The other half of the inflationary equation is the role of increased workers’ wages. In a situation like today, where wages have begun to rise, this will feed an increased demand for goods, as working people have more money to spend. At the same time, higher wages also raise the cost of production for employers. If businesses pay higher wages to workers, the argument goes, this cuts into profit margins, leading capitalists to pass on their added costs to consumers.Falling unemployment, rising wages and increased social spending does not have to automatically translate into inflation of prices if we allow bosses’ profit margins and their share of the national income to decrease.

Most mainstream economists assume that even if an external factor (a spike in oil prices due to geopolitical shifts, or supply chain chokeholds due to pandemic lockdowns) triggers the rise in prices, ultimately higher wages are the primary culprit of any sustained inflationary trends. Finally, mainstream economics draws a line between higher wages and low unemployment rates. A tight labor market, where workers are not easily replaced, gives workers more bargaining power to demand higher wages.

This line of argument was first championed by economist Milton Friedman, who stated that a ”natural rate of unemployment” exists below which inflation begins to take off. Friedman’s “monetarist” ideas took hold after the inflationary crisis of the 1970s, and ever since have been used as a battering ram against policies in which governments actively promote full employment or better jobs for workers.

In one sense, conservatives have a point. Karl Marx himself similarly argued that capitalism depends on unemployment — a “reserve army of labor” — to keep workers desperate enough to agree to whatever terms of work they can get. Unemployment, in other words, is a means to prevent wages from growing so far that they threaten profitability.

Class Conflict

The question that economic pundits conspicuously avoid is: What if instead of raising prices, businesses just made do with smaller profit margins? After all, U.S. corporations are currently making record profits, posting their fattest margins since 1950. Even at John Deere, the site of the highest-profile strike this year, Bloomberg News reports, “workers held out to get a 10% raise, yet the company is still expected to earn even more next year than the record profit it posted [in November].”A left economic agenda must push back against the inflation panic to maintain demands for higher wages and increased social spending, while guarding against real inflation through policies that protect working people’s pockets.

Workers don’t set prices, the bosses do. And they do so on the basis of maintaining the greatest possible profit margins. If workers’ wages go up but prices stay the same, this would simply mean that a greater share of profits went to workers rather than capitalists. System-wide, workers’ share of the economic pie (i.e., the “national income”) would increase. Falling unemployment, rising wages and increased social spending does not have to automatically translate into inflation of prices if we allow bosses’ profit margins and their share of the national income to decrease.

Even the dire rates of inflation in the 1970s, in the context of a strong labor movement “hurt capital more than it did workers, while neoliberal repression of workers’ power has kept inflation low from the 1980s onward,” sociologists Ho-fung Hung and Daniel Thompson have argued. The question of inflation is therefore a matter of class conflict over who gains at whose expense.

This is not to say that inflationary pulls aren’t a problem; if prices of common goods rise much faster than wages, or if the spikes in inflation are so high that businesses aren’t able to operate smoothly and fall into bankruptcy, laying off workers, this could have dire consequences. But the cures that are typically on hand are worse than the disease. Thus, in response to the crisis in the 1970s, the U.S. ruling class, led by President Ronald Reagan and Fed Chair Paul Volcker (though begun by President Jimmy Carter), was willing to induce a severe recession in order to stop inflation. The ensuing decades of neoliberalism created astronomical levels of class inequality.

But there are other tools to stop inflation, which do so in favor of workers. Price controls have been used in wartime throughout U.S. history, most significantly by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s administration. As political scientist Todd Tucker recently pointed out, FDR employed 160,000 federal employees in the Office of Price Administration to control prices “on goods from scrap steel to shoes to milk.” Even President Richard Nixon briefly implemented price controls.

Immediate reforms in the form of rent control, expanding Medicare, and allowing the government to negotiate lower drug prices are a good start to such policies, along with capping CEO pay and taxing the rich. Other reforms like investment into public housing and public education also indirectly cap prices.

Ultimately, a left economic agenda must push back against the inflation panic to maintain demands for higher wages and increased social spending, while guarding against real inflation through price controls and policies that protect working people’s pockets.

 

SOHR: Syria’s war claimed 3,700 lives in 2021, lowest annual death toll in 10 years

On Dec 23, 2021

Syria’s ongoing war has claimed a total of 3,746 lives this year, the lowest death toll in its history, according to recent data by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) on Wednesday, December 22.

The SOHR figures indicate that 1,505 of the casualties were civilians, which included 360 children.

By far, this is the lowest figure of casualties since the war in Syria began. The numbers confirm the downward trend of the death toll from last year, with 6,800 deaths reported in 2018, compared with over 10,000 deaths in 2019.

According to the Observatory, a nongovernmental organization (NGO) based in the UK with extensive sources throughout Syria, landmines, and various other explosive remnants has killed 297 people in 2021.

The Landmine Monitor, a global initiative dedicated to monitoring progress in eradicating landmines, cluster munitions, and other explosive remnants of warfare, reported in November that Syria had now surpassed Afghanistan in the number of fatalities attributed to landmines and other explosive remnants of warfare.

Syria’s ongoing conflict, which broke out in 2011 after the violent repression of anti-regime protests, has subsided in the past two years.
While Russian-backed regime forces occasionally attack opposition militants in the northwest opposition enclave of Idlib, the cease-fire agreement has mostly held.

Daesh members, who fled underground after being defeated in 2019, have also been responsible for deadly hit-and-run attacks in eastern Syria.

To date, the Syrian conflict has claimed over half a million lives and has resulted in the largest conflict-induced displacement since World War II.

Protesters storm Guadeloupe legislature over vaccine mandate  better access to clean water, pension and wage increases and mass employment.

By Dw News

| Updated: Saturday, December 25, 2021

Basse-Terre, Dec 25: Protesters in Guadeloupe on Friday occupied the local legislature in the French Caribbean overseas territory, in a new standoff with Paris sparked by coronavirus prevention measures

Tensions have been building in Guadeloupe and the neighboring island of Martinique over the last weeks, particularly over the management of the territories as well as coronavirus measures including obligatory vaccinations for healthcare workers.

The protesters are also seeking better access to clean water, pension and wage increases and mass employment.

Demonstrators first entered the debating chamber of the Regional Council while it was meeting on Thursday, with several staying the night and deciding to continue their action through Friday.

The protesters aim to negotiate with France over the COVID measures, and are calling for sanctions to be halted against healthcare workers who have refused the vaccine. However, officials have indicated that they will not engage in talks as long as demonstrations are carried out.

Inside the council building, the protesters strung a banner reading "No to Obligatory Vaccination, No to the Health Pass,'' according to images posted online by local officials. A Christmas tree was shown knocked over.

'We have absolutely nothing'

"We're here and as long as we don't have a commitment, because we have nothing at all, we have absolutely nothing, so as long as we don't have a firm commitment, an urgent meeting, we'll stay here," said Maite Hubert M'toumo, general secretary of the general union of Guadeloupean workers, in the legislature.

"If we have to, we'll spend Christmas here. But we'll stay here," she added. Raphael Cece, of the newspaper Rebelle, added: "We are not against the vaccine, but we are fighting against this injustice, the sanctions, the mandatory vaccines for health workers."

Last month, protesters set up barricades around major roads, bringing traffic on the island to a standstill.

France's Overseas Territories Minister Sebastien Lecornu tweeted in response: "No demand justifies hindering the smooth running of an assembly of elected officials in the middle of a plenary session."

Health care workers who refused the vaccine are set to be suspended from December 31.

Low vaccination rates in the territories

Vaccination rates in France's Caribbean territories are significantly lower than those on mainland France, and there are concerns that the new wave created by the omicron variant could create serious health problems in the region.

One-third of the island's population lives below the poverty line, and the cost of living is higher than in the French mainland. Water supplies have been a major problem in recent years because of obsolete pipes.

Anger over France's handling of a toxic pesticide in Caribbean banana fields has fueled mistrust in the government's COVID-19 vaccine polices, along with misinformation shared on WhatsApp and Telegram groups.

FDA-approved Vuity eyedrops could replace your reading glasses

Linda Carroll
Tue, December 28, 2021

It’s one of the more irritating side effects of aging: blurred close-up vision, or presbyopia. But a novel therapy, eyedrops that can improve near vision for hours, may help those who’ve gotten tired of wearing reading glasses.

Just approved by the Food and Drug Administration, Vuity's eyedrops have been found to work in as little as 15 minutes, with effects that last up to six hours, according to clinical trial data presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery this past summer.

“Vuity is the first and only FDA-approved prescription eyedrop treatment of presbyopia — an age-related blurring of near vision — in adults,” said Dr. George Waring, IV, a LASIK and cataract surgeon and director of the Waring Vision Institute in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. Waring was a principle investigator for the clinical trials that led to the FDA’s approval of Vuity.
Who are these eyedrops for?

“Nearly half of the U.S. adult population currently lives with presbyopia,” Waring said. “And most people over 40 struggle with some age-related near vision loss.”

The clinical trials showed that the eyedrops were safe and well-tolerated, Waring said, adding that no serious adverse events occurred.

"This is for all patients between 40 and 55 years of age who have presbyopia," said Dr. Ralph Chu, an ophthalmologist based in Minnesota. "So, difficulty seeing near vision. It’s not just reading vision, but it’s our daily activities. It’s eating the food on our plate. It’s putting makeup on in the morning. It’s seeing the dashboard of your car."
How do Vuity eyedrops work?

The eyedrops contain a medication that has been used for more than a hundred years, at a higher concentration, to treat glaucoma, so it’s a drug that doctors have a lot of experience using. The low dose in the Vuity eyedrops works by temporarily decreasing the size of the pupil.

Waring compares this to changing the f-stop on a camera to decrease the size of the opening allowing light to pass to the film in older cameras. “It’s an age-old optical principle that by reducing the aperture extends the range of focus,” he said. “So this increases the ability to read close up while maintaining distance vision.”

Since the smaller pupil allows less light in, the drops are not recommended for use while driving at night, Waring said.

The clinical trials showed that people’s near vision improved. In fact, compared to those who received placebo eyedrops, 22.9% more of those treated with Vuity drops could read at least three more lines on an eye chart than they could before the treatment.

NBC News correspondent Kristen Dahlgren tried the eyedrops on TODAY. She said the drops burned a little going in and her eyes became red, but within 30 minutes her vision had drastically improved.

“I haven’t been able to read letters that small in years without glasses," Dahlgren said.

There are a number of products coming to market that improve close-up vision, said Dr. Tamiesha Frempong, an ophthalmologist with New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai and assistant professor in ophthalmology and pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

“This one constricts the pupil and expands depth of focus to see well at near distances without impacting distance vision or compromising peripheral vision,” Frempong said. “One thing we don’t know is if there will be any long-term consequences.”

An advantage of the drops over other therapies, such as surgery, is that you can stop it whenever you want, Frempong said.

“I’m really excited about them,” she added. “I would like to try it myself and would like to have my patients try it. Presbyopia affects so many people and really impacts their ability to function and their quality of life.”

A bottle of the eyedrops costs $80 and lasts about a month. They're available only by prescription and are not covered by health insurance.

Devin Nunes said he will leave Congress. 

Why is he still trying to sue a Twitter cow?


Gillian Brassil
Mon, December 27, 2021,

Outgoing California Congressman Devin Nunes can’t sue Twitter over mean social media posts, but he hasn’t stopped trying to bring two of his anonymous hecklers into court.

Nunes, R-Tulare, is still attempting to sue the writers behind anonymous Twitter accounts that badger him under the fictional personas of a cow and his mother.

It does not look like he will let up on this lawsuit or other ones he has filed against media companies and critics as he starts his new gig as the chief executive officer of former President Donald Trump’s social media venture. His attorney has filed new briefs in the cases since Nunes announced his retirement.


The anonymously written Twitter accounts known as “Devin Nunes’ cow” and “Devin Nunes’ Alt-Mom” were among his first targets when the congressman launched a barrage of lawsuits in 2019 against media companies and people that he alleged skewed news and conspired against conservatives like him.

Two and a half years after declaring his legal challenge on the so-called Twitter cow, @DevinCow, and mom, @NunesAlt, Nunes has not been able to serve them with a legal complaint. His lawyer told the court that they do not know who they are.

Even though they have not been served like other people Nunes has sued, the people behind those accounts continue to rack up legal fees as they seek to protect themselves from a costly lawsuit. They regularly ask for donations to help them with those charges.

The lawsuit against the Twitter users technically can continue indefinitely because laws in Virginia, where the suit was filed, effectively allow the case to remain dormant until Nunes serves the defendants or the defendants appear and move to dismiss the case. Nunes has asked for hundreds of millions of dollars from various defendants, including the Twitter writers.

“Unfortunately, the experience of being sued by Devin Nunes for $400 million has offered me no insight into what goes on in his mind,” Republican political consultant Liz Mair, who Nunes also sued in the case with @DevinCow and @NunesAlt, told The Fresno Bee. “I’m sure it would be a fascinating place to visit for a day, but not having done so, I lack even a single solitary clue as to why he would sue a fake barnyard animal that only exists on the internet.”
Nunes’ next steps include lawsuits

Nunes has filed 10 lawsuits against media companies and others he characterizes as adversaries since 2019.

In some ways, the lawsuits foreshadowed his next career change. He is resigning from the United States House of Representatives at the beginning of 2022 to lead Trump’s platform, which aims to counter the social media companies — including Twitter — that exiled the former president.

Several Republicans, including Nunes, jumped from Twitter to conservative social media platforms like Parler and GETTR since 2020.

In an announcement telling constituents of his career journey, cutting his term in Congress short by a year, Nunes said, “I was presented with a new opportunity to fight for the most important issues I believe in.”

Nunes contested coverage of his career change in at least one lawsuit.

Three days after the congressman announced his retirement, Nunes’ lawyer filed a supplemental complaint against The Washington Post in a lawsuit over a story that referenced a March 2017 trip he made to the White House grounds to obtain information about the FBI’s monitoring of Trump’s 2016 campaign advisers.

The new filing cites a story The Post published the day after Nunes announced his resignation that referred to that 2017 visit as a “midnight run.” The filing says the congressman has contested that characterization of the trip throughout litigation, and that “republication of these false statements by WaPo is evidence of WaPo’s reckless disregard.”

That trip sometimes is referred to as Nunes’ “midnight run” because of early press reports suggesting it occurred at night and Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff’s characterization of the White House visit as a “dead of night excursion.”

Nunes has told author Lee Smith that the visit actually took place in daylight, and that he went to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House and “I got my hands on the documents I was looking for and the next morning briefed (former House) Speaker (Paul) Ryan on it.”

This is the second lawsuit Nunes filed against The Post; the other was dismissed this year.

Nunes has lawsuits open against CNN, NBCUniversal, the owner of Esquire magazine, a former constituent and Mair in litigation that’s separate from the case involving the anonymous Twitter accounts.
Nunes’ Twitter setbacks

Nunes lost his effort to make Twitter pay in the ongoing lawsuit against @DevinCow and @NunesAlt when a judge last year dismissed the social media company from the case. The judge, Judge John Marshall, cited a federal law that states social media companies are not liable for what their users post.

Marshall dismissed Mair from the lawsuit this summer, writing that Nunes failed to substantiate his allegations against her.

Twitter has refused to give Nunes’ attorney the real names of “Devin Nunes’ cow” and “Devin Nunes’ Alt-Mom.”

It has rejected requests to identify them from Nunes and from the Trump administration.

The U.S. Justice Department under Trump issued a grand-jury subpoena to Twitter in November 2020 for “all customer or subscriber account information” for the Twitter mom. The Justice Department also sought a gag order blocking Twitter from telling the account owner about about the subpoena.

When Twitter’s attorneys moved to quash the subpoena, they wrote that the company was concerned the government was aiding Nunes’ legal efforts to attack and unmask his online critics.

“Given Congressman Nunes’s numerous attempts to unmask his anonymous critics on Twitter—described in detail herein—Twitter is concerned that this Subpoena is but another mechanism to attack its users’ First Amendment rights,” Twitter’s attorney’s wrote.

The Justice Department then dropped the subpoena, according to documents released in March.

A journalist sued the Justice Department to determine whether government officials attempted to use FBI resources to identify the Twitter cow after the intelligence agency declined to release information in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. The suit is ongoing.

“Democracy only works when the awesome power of the federal law enforcement apparatus can only be brought to bear on people who are suspected of federal crimes, and every deviation from that practice erodes the civil liberties of every American just a little bit more,” Kel McClanahan, the attorney for the reporter, told The Bee in an email. “If a senior member of Congress attempts to weaponize this capacity against his critics, that should be a problem for everyone, and transparency is vital to ensuring that such abuses of authority do not occur behind closed doors.”

The lawsuit has led to public run-ins for the congressman, including an incident on an airplane in which a director at a Democratic advocacy group approached him, asked if he had “sued any more cows lately” and mooed. Nunes did not respond to the provocation, video of the event shows. The director blogged about the experience.

Nunes cited the incident in another lawsuit he filed against Twitter along with a former constituent, Ben Paul Meredith. Nunes in the case claims that Meredith started a harassment campaign against him online. The congressman dropped the social media giant from the suit, which is ongoing in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.

The writer behind @NunesAlt did not respond to a request for comment. Neither a spokesperson for Nunes nor his lawyer responded to a request for comment. The writer behind @DevinCow declined to comment on the case. Meredith’s attorney also declined to comment.

Immigrants welcome Afghan refugees, inspired by own journeys



1 / 11
Afghan Refugees Silicon Valley Clinic Mohammad Attaie and his wife Deena, newly arrived from Afghanistan, get assistance from medical translator Jahannaz Afshar making a doctor's appointment at the Valley Health Center TB/Refugee Program in San Jose, Calif., on Dec. 9, 2021. The staff of Silicon Valley's decades-old refugee health clinic may not all speak the language of the Afghan refugees starting new lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. But they know the anxiety and stress of newcomers who fled war and chaos to end up in a country where they don't speak the language and everything is different. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)
JANIE HAR
Mon, December 27, 2021

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Tram Pham tears up recalling how tough life was at first in the U.S. But she also remembers the joy she felt as a 22-year-old refugee from Vietnam when a nurse spoke to her in her native language and guided her through a medical screening required of new arrivals.

Nearly three decades later, Pham hopes to pay that comfort forward as a registered nurse at the same San Jose, California, clinic that treated her family. The TB and Refugee Clinic at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center is screening people from Afghanistan who began seeking asylum in the U.S. after American troops withdrew from the country in August.

Pham can't speak Farsi or Pashto. But she can soothe patients stressed out over the job they can't find or the rent that's due. The other day, she held the hand of an older Afghan woman as she cried out her fears.

“I can see patients from all over the world come in. I see, you know, Vietnamese patients. I see a lot of refugee patients," she said. “I see myself.”

The TB and Refugee Clinic joins a vast network of charities and government organizations tasked with carrying out President Joe Biden's plan to relocate nearly 100,000 people from Afghanistan by September 2022. Nearly 48,000 Afghans have already moved off U.S. military bases and settled in new communities, the U.S. Department of State said in an email, including more than 4,000 in California.

The operation has been hampered by the need to scale up quickly after steep cutbacks to refugee programs under President Donald Trump. But the community response has been overwhelming and enthusiastic, said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, one of nine national resettlement agencies.

“We know that resettlement isn’t a weeks long or months long process. Success requires years of effort. And so that’s where it’s really important to have strong community ties,” Vignarajah said.

The nonprofit, which operates in at least two dozen states, has resettled roughly 6,000 newly arrived Afghans since summer, including 1,400 in northern Virginia, 350 in Texas, 275 in Washington and Oregon and 25 in Fargo, North Dakota.

The state of Oklahoma has received about half of the 1,800 people it was told to expect, said Carly Akard, spokeswoman for Catholic Charities of Oklahoma City. Akard said that in their rush to escape, many of the refugees arrived without identification.

“They fled and didn’t have anything,” she said.

In San Jose, the clinic is scrambling to hire more people and reallocate staff for the more than 800 people expected in the county through September. Not only is the number a large increase from the 100 people the clinic assessed in all of the last fiscal year, it is uncertain when they will arrive, said health center manager Nelda David.

But David said that won't stop the staff of roughly three dozen from rolling out the welcome mat at the clinic, founded four decades ago specifically to assist Southeast Asians after the Vietnam War. Most of the nurses, assistants and other staff are immigrants or former refugees themselves, and understand the shock of starting over in a new country.

Medical interpreter Jahannaz Afshar welcomes Farsi speakers at the front door even before they check in for their first visit. In a windowless office, she explains what to expect over at least four visits as part of a comprehensive health assessment, which includes updating immunizations and checking for infectious diseases. A medical exam is required of all refugees.

But Afshar, who moved from Iran in 2004, also explains cultural differences, such as the American preference for personal space and chitchat. She'll tell newcomers how to take the bus or use the public library, and reassure them that in the U.S., people help without expectation of getting anything in return.

Most staff members are bilingual, and come from a number of countries, including China, Myanmar, Sierra Leone and Mexico, said Mylene Madrid, who coordinates the refugee health assessment program. But staff can help even without speaking the same language.

An Afghan woman was tense and nervous when she arrived the other day for her first medical exam. By the end of the hourslong visit, however, she was cracking jokes and sharing photos with public health assistant Nikie Phung, who had fled Vietnam decades earlier with her family.

Another new arrival from Afghanistan dropped by the clinic complaining of chest pains but was so anxious she couldn’t elaborate on her symptoms. Pham, the nurse, asked if she could hold her hand. They sat as the woman sobbed, then finally spoke of the stress of having her entire family living in a cramped hotel room.

By then, her pains had receded. Pham noticed that the woman’s daughter and son-in-law were upbeat and more comfortable speaking English. She pulled the daughter aside.

“Would you please spend time with your mom?” she asked her. “Talk to her more.”

Mohammad Attaie and his wife Deena, newly arrived from Afghanistan, look over items in a holiday gift basket they received after completing a program at the Valley Health Center TB/Refugee Program in San Jose, Calif., on Dec. 9, 2021. The staff of Silicon Valley's decades-old refugee health clinic may not all speak the language of the Afghan refugees starting new lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. But they know the anxiety and stress of newcomers who fled war and chaos to end up in a country where they don't speak the language and everything is different. (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

Staff members have gone out of their way to connect patients to jobs, furnish empty apartments and tap the broader community for rent and other relief. They've stocked diapers for babies and handed out gift baskets at Thanksgiving. During a routine visit, a patient mentioned he needed car repairs for work. Within weeks, the clinic had raised $2,000 to give him.

“Your heart is different," says Jaspinder Mann, an assistant nurse manager originally from India, of immigrants' desire to help.

Afshar says she can't imagine what refugees are going through. The former apparel designer and her husband were not fleeing strife and shootings when they chose to leave Iran. And yet, she too struggled at first.

“And this is one of the things that I always share,” she said. “That even though it’s going to be hard, later you’re going to be happy because ... you’re going to learn so much and you’re going to grow so much.”

At the clinic, she hops on the phone to arrange an eye exam for Mohammad Attaie, 50, a radio technician who fled the capital of Afghanistan, Kabul, this summer with his wife, Deena, a journalist, and their daughter. Sana, 10, adores her new school in San Jose but the couple worry about finding work when they can’t speak the language.

Still, seeing people like Afshar and Pham gives them confidence.

“They are successful. They’re working here. Their language skills are good. I am hoping that in less than a year I can stand on my feet,” Deena Attaie said, speaking in Farsi.