California is set to dismantle the largest death row in the US and transform it into a 'positive, healing environment'

Taiyler Simone Mitchell

Mon, January 31, 2022

California Governor Gavin Newsom at a June 2021 press conference.Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

• CA Gov. Gavin Newsom said Monday the state will dismantle the death row at San Quentin State Prison.

• Inmates in the country's largest death row will be moved to the general population in other prisons.

• Newsom said "wealth and race" are bigger factors to being on death row than "guilt or innocence."

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced the state will dismantle San Quentin State Prison's death row and turn it into a "positive, healing environment" over the next two years, the Associated Press reported Monday.

The inmates on death row in San Quentin — the country's largest death row — will be transferred to prisons that "typically house people serving life-without-parole sentences," Vicky Waters, a spokesperson for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, told Insider.

The vacant space at San Quentin will be transformed into a "positive, healing environment to provide increased rehabilitative, educational, and health care opportunities," according to a proposed budget.

"The prospect of your ending up on death row has more to do with your wealth and race than it does your guilt or innocence," Newsom said Monday. "We talk about justice, we preach justice, but as a nation, we don't practice it on death row."

While Newsom put a moratorium on state executions in 2019, the state hasn't executed any inmates since 2006.

California has the highest number of death row prisoners in the country, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, with 694 inmates.

Waters told the AP that the transformation will be "innovative and anchored in rehabilitation."

"For the first time in California's history, eligible death-sentenced individuals may be housed in general population areas where they can have more access to job opportunities, enabling them to pay court-ordered restitution to their victims when applicable," Waters told Insider.

"People on death row will not be resentenced, and would be rehoused following thorough reviews by Institutional Classification Committees, which will take several factors into account, including their security level, their behavior, and any safety concerns," she added.

A representative for Newsom did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

THIRD WORLD USA

Exclusive-U.S. diabetes deaths top 100,000 for second straight year, federal panel urges new strategy

 

Insulin supplies are pictured in the Manhattan borough of New York City,

Mon, January 31, 2022
By Chad Terhune and Robin Respaut

(Reuters) - More than 100,000 Americans died from diabetes in 2021, marking the second consecutive year for that grim milestone and spurring a call for a federal mobilization similar to the fight against HIV/AIDS.

The new figures come as an expert panel urges Congress to overhaul diabetes care and prevention, including recommendations to move beyond a reliance on medical interventions alone. A report released earlier this month calls for far broader policy changes to stem the diabetes epidemic, such as promoting consumption of healthier foods, ensuring paid maternal leave from the workplace, levying taxes on sugary drinks and expanding access to affordable housing, among other areas.

In 2019, diabetes was the seventh-leading cause of death in America and claimed more than 87,000 lives, reflecting a long-running failure to address the illness and leaving many more vulnerable when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, creating new hurdles to accessing care.

Since then, the nation’s toll from diabetes has increased sharply, surpassing 100,000 deaths in each of the last two years and representing a new record-high level, according to a Reuters analysis of provisional death data compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Diabetes-related deaths surged 17% in 2020 and 15% in 2021 compared to the prepandemic level in 2019. That excluded deaths directly attributed to COVID-19. The CDC concurred with the Reuters analysis and said additional deaths from 2021 are still being tallied.

"The large number of diabetes deaths for a second year in a row is certainly a cause for alarm," said Dr. Paul Hsu, an epidemiologist at UCLA's Fielding School of Public Health. "Type 2 diabetes itself is relatively preventable, so it's even more tragic that so many deaths are occurring."

In a new report, the National Clinical Care Commission created by Congress said that the United States must adopt a more comprehensive approach to prevent more people from developing type 2 diabetes, the most common form, and to help people who are already diagnosed avoid life-threatening complications. About 37 million Americans, or 11% of the population, have diabetes, and one in three Americans will develop the chronic disease in their lifetime if current trends persist, according to the commission.

"Diabetes in the U.S. cannot simply be viewed as a medical or health care problem, but also must be addressed as a societal problem that cuts across many sectors, including food, housing, commerce, transportation and the environment," the commission wrote in its Jan. 5 report to Congress and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The federal panel recommended Congress create an Office of National Diabetes Policy that would coordinate efforts across the government and oversee changes outside health policy. It would be separate from HHS and could be similar to the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, according to Dr. William Herman, commission chairman and a professor of internal medicine and epidemiology at the University of Michigan.

"We aren’t going to cure the problem of diabetes in the United States with medical interventions," Herman told Reuters. "The idea is to pull something together across federal agencies, so they are systematically talking to one another."

U.S. Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington who chairs the Senate health committee, helped create the commission in 2017 and said she is studying the recommendations closely.

"People with diabetes and other chronic illnesses were already facing challenges well before the pandemic hit, and COVID has only made these problems worse," Murray said in a statement to Reuters. "It is absolutely crucial to research and find solutions to better support diabetes patients and get them the care they need."

MORE CASES, WORSE PROGNOSIS

As Reuters reported last year in a series, diabetes represents a major public health failure in the United States. The number of Americans with the disease has exploded in recent decades, and their prognosis has worsened, even though spending on new treatments has soared.

The pandemic has proven especially deadly for people with diabetes. People with poorly controlled diabetes have at least a two-fold greater risk of death from COVID-19, according to the report. And diabetes and its complications are more common in low-income Americans and people of color, longstanding disparities that were further exposed during the pandemic.

Dr. Shari Bolen, a commission member and an associate professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University and the MetroHealth System in Cleveland, said the staggering number of diabetes deaths is "disheartening but also a call to action."

The federal panel's report marked the first such review on diabetes since 1975. During that time, the prevalence of diabetes among U.S. adults has increased from 5.3% in the late 1970s to 14.3% in 2018, it said. Direct medical costs related to diabetes were $237 billion in 2017, and there was an estimated $90 billion lost to lower productivity in the United States.

High costs for doctor's visits, medications and supplies force many diabetes patients to forgo or delay routine care. Many patients and U.S. lawmakers have expressed outrage at the rising price of insulin, which type 1 diabetes patients must take their entire lives and which is sometimes required to keep type 2 patients’ disease under control. The commission endorsed proposals such as capping insulin price increases to the rate of inflation and government negotiation of drug prices.

Murray and other lawmakers have pushed for a provision in the Biden administration's proposed Build Back Better legislation that would cap the cost of insulin at $35 for many patients.

To further ease financial barriers, the panel recommended that patients’ out-of-pocket costs be waived for other "high-value" treatments, including certain diabetes drugs, continuous glucose monitors, basic supplies and diabetes education.

The commission also highlighted the risks of overtreatment in older adults with type 2 diabetes. Reuters wrote about that risk in November and how a drug industry campaign for an aggressive treatment target led to an epidemic of potentially lethal incidents of low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia. The panel asked federal health officials to track overtreatment among Medicare patients to "reduce the incidence of severe hypoglycemia and improve patient safety."

The commission said the United States should better promote the purchase of fruits and vegetables in food assistance programs and ensure mothers have paid family leave to aid breastfeeding, which can help reduce the risk of diabetes in mothers and is associated with a reduced risk of obesity and diabetes in children. The panel also recommended imposing taxes on sugary drinks that would raise their shelf price by 10% to 20% and using the revenue to expand access to clean drinking water and fund similar programs.

HHS deferred comment to Herman. In a statement, the CDC said the report's recommendations offer a detailed roadmap to "addressing rising health-care costs attributed to diabetes, and reducing racial, ethnic, and income-related disparities in diabetes outcomes."

(Reporting by Chad Terhune and Robin Respaut; Editing by Daniel Wallis)

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A Uyghur gets death sentence, as China bans once OK'd books







1 / 7
 Copies of the book on the governance of Chinese President Xi Jinping are displayed with booklets promoting Xinjiang during a news conference by Shohrat Zakir, chairman of China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, at the State Council Information Office in Beijing on July 30, 2019. As the Chinese government tightened its grip over its ethnic Uyghur population, it sentenced one man to death and three others to life in prison in 2021 for textbooks drawn in part from historical resistance movements that had once been sanctioned by the ruling Communist Party.

 (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File

HUIZHONG WU
Mon, January 31, 2022, 

TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — As the Chinese government tightened its grip over its ethnic Uyghur population, it sentenced one man to death and three others to life in prison last year for textbooks drawn in part from historical resistance movements that had once been sanctioned by the ruling Communist Party.

An AP review of images and stories presented as problematic in a state media documentary, and interviews with people involved in editing the textbooks, found they were rooted in previously accepted narratives — two drawings are based on a 1940s movement praised by Mao Zedong, who founded the communist state in 1949. Now, as the party’s imperatives have changed, it has partially reinterpreted them with devastating consequences for individuals, while also depriving students of ready access to a part of their heritage.

It is a less publicized chapter in a wide-ranging crackdown on Uyghurs and other largely Muslim groups, which has prompted the U.S. and others to stage a diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics that open Friday. Foreign experts, governments and media have documented the detention of an estimated 1 million or more people, the demolition of mosques and forced sterilization and abortion. The Chinese government denies human rights violations and says it has taken steps to eliminate separatism and extremism in its western Xinjiang region.

The attack on textbooks and the officials responsible for them shows how far the Communist Party is going to control and reshape the Uyghur community. It comes as President Xi Jinping, in the name of ethnic unity, pushes a more assimilationist policy on Tibetans, Mongolians and other ethnic groups that scales back bilingual education. Scholars and activists fear the disappearance of Uyghur cultural history, handed down in stories of heroes and villains across generations.

“There’s much more intense policing of Uyghur historic narratives now,” said David Brophy, a historian of Uyghur nationalism at the University of Sydney. “The goalposts have shifted, and rather than this being seen as a site of negotiation and tension, now it’s treated as separatist propaganda.”

Sattar Sawut, a Uyghur official who headed the Xinjiang Education Department, was sentenced to death, a court announced last April, saying he led a separatist group to create textbooks filled with ethnic hatred, violence and religious extremism that caused people to carry out violent acts in ethnic clashes in 2009. He may not be executed, as such death sentences are often commuted to life in prison after two years with good behavior.

Details about the textbooks were then presented in a documentary by CGTN, the overseas arm of state broadcaster CCTV, on what it called hidden threats in Xinjiang in a 10-minute segment. It included what amounted to on-camera confessions by Sawut and another former education official, Alimjan Memtimin, who got a life sentence.

The Xinjiang government and CGTN did not respond to written questions about the material.

Drawings from the textbooks are presented as evidence Sawut led others to incite hatred between Uyghurs and China’s majority Han population.

In one, a man points a pistol at another. The image is flashed over an on-camera statement by Memtimin, who says they wanted to “incite ethnic hatred and such thoughts.”

But both men in the drawing are Uyghurs. One, named Gheni Batur, holds up a gun to a traitor who had been sent to assassinate him. Batur was seen as a “people’s hero” in a 1940s uprising against China’s then-ruling Nationalist Party over its repression and discrimination against ethnic groups, said Nabijan Tursun, a Uyghur American historian and a senior editor at Radio Free Asia.

The Communists toppled the Nationalists and took power in 1949. Mao invited then-Uyghur leader Ehmetjan Qasimi to the first meeting of a national advisory body and said, “Your years of struggle are a part of our entire Chinese nation’s democratic revolution movement.” However, Qasimi died in a plane crash en route to the meeting.

Despite Mao’s approval, this period of history has always been debated by Chinese academics, Brophy said, and the attitude has shifted more and more toward hostility.

Another element in the story came to the fore after a series of knifings and bombings in 2013-14 by Uyghur extremists, who were angered by harsh treatment by the authorities.

The Uyghur movement had briefly carved out a nominally independent state, the second East Turkestan Republic, in northern Xinjiang in 1944. It had the backing of the Soviet Union, which had real control.

A recently leaked 2017 document, one of a trove given to an unofficial Uyghur Tribunal in Britain last September, shows that a Communist Party working group dealing with Xinjiang criticized elements of the uprising.

“The Three District Revolution is a part of our people’s democratic revolution, but there were serious mistakes made in the early stages,” the notice said.

Blaming interference by the Soviet Union, it said that ethnic separatists infiltrated the revolutionary ranks and “stole the right to lead, established a splitting regime, ... and committed the grave mistake of ethnic division.”

The document still said that Qasimi should be respected for his role in history.

The CGTN documentary, though, singles out a photo of Qasimi wearing a medal that was the symbol of the second East Turkestan Republic. “It shouldn’t appear in this textbook at all,” Shehide Yusup, an art editor at Xinjiang Education Publishing House, said in the documentary.

Another textbook illustration, drawn from the same period, shows what appears to be Nationalist solider pointing a knife at a Uyghur rebel sprawled on the ground.

Both stories come from novels by Uyghur writers published by government publishing houses. One of the writers, Zordun Sabir, is a member of the state-backed Chinese Writer’s Association. The textbooks themselves were published only after high-level approval, said Kündüz, a former editor at the Xinjiang University newspaper who uses only one name.

When the textbooks were reviewed in 2001, the Uyghur stories hardly got any attention, said Abduweli Ayup, a Uyghur linguist who as a then-graduate student translated some of the stories into Chinese for the review.

Stories that portrayed the Nationalists as the enemy were not considered controversial. Instead, the Uyghur editors worried about foreign stories, said Ayup, an activist who now lives in Norway, such as a line from a Tolstoy story and a Hungarian poem.

Another story cited by CGTN goes back to the Qing Dynasty, which ruled China until 1912. Yusup, the art editor tells CGTN: “This is the legend of seven heroic Uyghur girls. It’s all fabricated. Han Chinese soldiers trapped them at a cliff and they jumped to their death to defend their homeland. It’s meant to incite ethnic hatred.”

But the soldiers were not Han, they were ethnic Manchu who founded the Qing Dynasty in 1644. The text of the story visible in the CGTN documentary says so, reading in part, “The Manchu soldiers started to climb Mount Möljer from all sides. Maysikhan (a leader of the Uyghur girls) saw the Manchus clambering up the mountain and told the girls to roll rocks down at them.”

The story is based on a local rebellion against the Qing Dynasty. A shrine dedicated to the seven girls stands in the Xinjiang city of Uchturpan, which partially funded it. Epics, articles and dramas about the story are popular.

“For the Chinese government to praise the uprising and then criminalize the inclusion of the story in textbooks is shocking,” Tursun, the historian said.

From even earlier, officials have been increasing the amount of instruction in Chinese in Xinjiang, especially after ethnic clashes in 2009 in Urumqi, the regional capital, said Minglang Zhou, an expert on China’s bilingual education policies at the University of Maryland.

Xi, as China's leader, has stressed the consolidation of the nation, a move away from the “one unified nation with diversity” promoted by his predecessors, Zhou said. “He sees diversity as a threat to a unified nation.”

Kündüz lamented that her son, growing up in Urumqi, studied more in Chinese than in Uyghur. “They want to assimilate us, they want us to erase us,” she said from Sweden, where she now lives.

To this day, her son speaks Chinese better than Uyghur.

LABOR PARTY

South Carolina candidate for governor says he’s switching parties after $15 wage split


Tracy Glantz/tglantz@thestate.com

Joseph Bustos
Mon, January 31, 2022

Activist Gary Votour, who sought the South Carolina Democratic Party nomination for governor, is switching parties. Votour announced Monday he will run on the Labor Party ticket for governor after saying the state Democratic Party is falling short on pushing for a $15 minimum wage. 

Votour was the first candidate to announce he would be running for governor for the Democratic nomination.

On the way out of the party, Votour criticized former Congressman Joe Cunningham, who is leading the fundraising race in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, specifically citing Cunningham’s vote against a $15 minimum wage while in Congress.

“Although the S.C. Democratic Party has embraced those positions in its party platform, it now falls short of these goals by refusing to require that all candidates office running as Democratic Party candidates do so as well,” Votour posted to social media. “In particular, I am referring to former Congressman Cunningham who refuses to stand for a living wage of at least $15 per hour for all South Carolinians.”

Votour added that by“refusing to adhere to this important party platform issue, Mr. Cunningham has created great division within the Democratic Party.”

Votour said party Chairman Trav Robertson refused to disallow Cunningham from running for governor because of a possible lawsuit.

Robertson told The State Monday he doesn’t know if he has the legal authority to stop Cunningham from running for governor.

“Gary Votour is a wonderful human being, (and) his heart is in the right place. The fact is he simply wants what’s best for people in our state and our country,” Robertson said. “We wish him the best of luck and we have more in agreement with Gary than we do in disagreement.”

In an interview in December, Cunningham said he always supported minimum wage that is in the double digits, but the bill in Congress he voted against would have eliminated tip wages, which would have hurt hospitality workers.

“Congressman Cunningham wishes Mr. Votour all the best as he continues his campaign in another party,” said Trevor Maloney, Cunningham’s campaign manager. “In the meantime, Joe is laser-focused on defeating Henry McMaster in November so we can legalize marijuana, increase teacher pay, and raise the minimum wage to at least $12 an hour.”

With Votour out of the Democratic Party race, Cunningham will face state Sen. Mia McLeod, D-Richland. Florence resident William H. Williams also is seeking the nomination.

Texas Governor Faces Key Test as Winter Weather Threatens Grid


Texas Governor Faces Key Test as Winter Weather Threatens Grid

Shelly Hagan
Mon, January 31, 2022, 2:26 PM·3 min read

(Bloomberg) -- Texas Governor Greg Abbott is facing a test of whether he and Republican lawmakers have done enough to shore up the electric grid, just weeks before his party’s primary vote.

Temperatures are expected to plummet beginning Wednesday with sleet and snow in some parts of the state. The freeze will test the electric grid almost one year after an arctic blast forced power plants offline and left millions in the dark and without heat for days. The storm was blamed for 246 deaths. Forecasters say the weather this week won’t be as extreme, but Texans are on edge after suffering through the February 2021 blackout.

“When the temperature drops, the most nervous person in Texas is Governor Greg Abbott,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.

Abbott has promised Texans that the “lights will stay on” this winter, citing legislation he signed over the summer that required the grid operator to increase reserve capacity and made it easier for industrial users to get paid to reduce their consumption. But critics say that politicians allied with the state’s oil and gas interests didn’t do enough to hold the industry accountable and prevent future disasters.

After the storm, Texas lawmakers approved measures that required power plants and parts of the natural gas network that supplies them to harden their systems against freezing weather -- but those rules have yet to be finalized.

Critics contend that the changes fall short of addressing the fundamental issues that led to the catastrophe. Some energy experts said the rule changes should have required more gas facilities to make upgrades and lacked sufficient enforcement mechanisms.

Most Texans see shoring up the electric grid as a bigger priority than improving security at the border with Mexico, according to a Dallas Morning News/University of Texas at Tyler poll released over the weekend. A separate poll in October from the Texas Tribune/University of Texas showed 60% of Texans disapproved of how lawmakers handled electric-grid reliability.

Abbott has also come under criticism from fellow Republicans ahead of the primary vote set for March 1, which he’s heavily favored to win. Don Huffines, a former state senator, says on his website it’s clear that “current leadership is not capable of fixing the problem.” Allen West, the former head of the state GOP, blamed last year’s blackout on Texas’s reliance on renewable energy. Most experts cite the shutoff in natural-gas flows for disabling power output during the storm.

Democrats have also sought to hammer Abbott and his allies on the deadly blackout and what they see as a lack of progress shoring up the system. Beto O’Rourke, who is running against Abbott for the governorship this year, said Monday that he will begin a 2,100-mile roadtrip across Texas to campaign on the issue.

“Texans literally froze to death in the energy capital of the world,” O’Rourke said in a statement. “It’s important that we step up once more to make sure this never happens again.”

Abbott had an 11-point advantage over O’Rourke in the Dallas Morning News poll of likely voters, leading him 47% to 36%.

Abbott and his advisers “recognize a broken promise to keep the grid operating would be a real body blow to his campaign,” Rottinghaus said.

Universal health care bill fails to pass in California

 Supporters of single-payer health care march to the Capitol, Wednesday, April 26, 2017, in Sacramento, Calif. On Monday, Jan. 31, 2022, California Democrats face a deadline to advance a bill that would create a government-funded universal health care system. The proposal has the support of some Democratic leaders and powerful labor union, but it faces strong opposition from business groups who say it would cost too much. 

(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File)


ADAM BEAM
Sun, January 30, 2022, 10:03 PM·4 min read

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — A bill that would have created the nation's only government-funded universal health care system died in the California Assembly on Monday as Democrats could not gather enough support to bring it for a vote ahead of a legislative deadline.

The bill had to pass by midnight on Monday to have a chance at becoming law this year. Democrats needed 41 votes for that to happen, a threshold that did not seem impossible given that they control 56 of the 80 seats in the state Assembly and universal health care has long been a priority for the party.

But intense lobbying from business groups put pressure on more moderate Democrats, who face tough reelection campaigns this year in newly-redrawn districts. Plus, Democrats were missing four lawmakers from their caucus — including three of their more liberal members — who had resigned recently to take other jobs.

“Especially with four democratic vacancies in the Assembly, the votes were not there today, but we will not give up,” Assemblymember Ash Kalra, a Democrat from San Jose and the bill's author, said in a news release.

Kalra's decision not to bring the bill up for a vote incensed his allies in the California Nurses Association, who have been pushing for this bill for years — including campaigning heavily for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's 2018 election. While Kalra had authored the bill and gotten it out of two legislative committees to reach the Assembly floor, the Nurses Association said in a statement they were “outraged that Kalra chose to just give up on patients across the state.”

Progressives have dreamed about a universal health care system in the U.S. for decades. Health care is so expensive, they say, in part because the nation's health care system is paid for by multiple parties, including patients, insurance companies, employers and the government. Instead, they say the U.S. health care system should have a single payer — the government — that would keep prices under control and make health care available to all.

But while other nations have adopted such systems, it’s been impossible to establish in the United States. Vermont enacted the nation’s first such system in 2011, but later abandoned it because it would have cost too much.

In California, voters overwhelmingly rejected a universal health care system in a 1994 ballot initiative. Former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger twice vetoed similar legislation in the 2000s. And a 2017 proposal stalled in the state Assembly.

The biggest hurdle is cost. A study of a 2017 proposal for universal health care in California estimated it would cost $331 billion, which is about $356 billion today when adjusted for inflation. Meanwhile, California is expected to account for about $517 billion in health care spending this year, with the largest chunk coming from employers and households, according to an analysis by a commission established by Gov. Gavin Newsom to study universal health care.

For comparison, California's entire state operating budget — which pays for things like schools, courts, roads and bridges and other important services — is about $262 billion this year.

To pay for the plan, Democrats had introduced a separate bill that would impose hefty new income taxes on businesses and individuals, which fueled much of the opposition to the plan.

“Today's vote in the Assembly was a vote to protect their constituents from higher taxes and chaos in our health care system,” said Ned Wigglesworth, spokesperson for Protect California Health Care, a coalition of health care providers opposed to the bill.

Supporters say consumers are already paying exorbitant amounts for health care, saying a single-payer system would save money by eliminating deductibles, copays and expensive monthly insurance premiums.

Both bills are now likely dead for the year. But Kalra appeared to indicate he would try again next year, saying “this is only a pause for the single-payer movement.”

He'll have to navigate a new Legislature next year following the midterm elections that will see lots of turnover in the state Assembly because of term limits. Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, a Democrat from the Los Angeles area who will be termed out in 2024, said he was “deeply disappointed” Kalra did not call the bill for a vote on Monday.

“I support single-payer and fully intended to vote yes on this bill,” Rendon said. “With time, we will have better and more successful legislation to bring us closer to this goal. I expect more and more of my colleagues to sign on, so we can make California a health care justice leader.”

Republicans, meanwhile, seemed to welcome Democrats' persistence.

“The fact that a proposal for a government takeover of our state's entire health care system even made it this far shows just how out of touch the Democratic party is from the needs of everyday Californians,” Assembly Republican Leader Marie Waldron said.

A NATION COVERING ITS EARS

U.S. COVID hospitalizations would be halved with European vaccination rates, analysis finds


Peter Weber, Senior editor
Mon, January 31, 2022, 

The Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus pushed U.S. hospitalizations to a pandemic peak of about 161,000 cases a day in mid-January, but that number would be much lower if the U.S. had the same vaccination rate as many European countries — 91,000 hospitalizations with Denmark's numbers, 100,000 with Britain's, and 109,000 with Portugal's vaccination rates, according to a Financial Times analysis unveiled Monday.

"Across the seven months since July, spanning the Delta and Omicron waves, U.S. daily patient numbers would have averaged 39,000 — rather than the 80,000 recorded — had its vaccination coverage tracked that of Portugal," Oliver Barnes, John Burn-Murdoch, and Jamie Smyth report in the Financial Times.

The U.S. got off to a faster start with vaccinations than European nations, but then the U.S. rates stalled and Europe pulled ahead. The U.S. has fallen even farther behind when it comes to booster shots, a key tool against the Omicron variant. President Biden "is right when he says we're facing a pandemic of the unvaccinated — but it's also now becoming a pandemic of the unboosted," said Peter Hotez at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine. He added that opposition to vaccination is the "leading killer" of middle-aged Americans and is "perpetuating the pandemic emergency state unnecessarily."

The Financial Times graphed the case fatality rate (CFR) in the U.S. versus more widely vaccinated European nations.

New data published Friday by France's directorate of research highlighted the importance of booster shots, finding that two doses of vaccine make an infected 70-year-old less likely to end up in the ICU than an unvaccinated 40-year-old, and that risk drops further after a booster shot.

"The truth is that an 80-year-old that's vaccinated and boosted and gets COVID most of the time has nothing more than a cold," Phillip Coule, professor of emergency medicine at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, tells the Financial Times, while "a healthy 50-year-old who's a little bit overweight, has problems with blood pressure or diabetes, and is not vaccinated at all ends up in the ICU." Read more, including the newspaper's methodology, at the Financial Times.

El Salvador angrily rejects IMF call to drop Bitcoin use


"We accept Bitcoin" is announced at a barber shop in Santa Tecla, El Salvador, Sept. 4, 2021. The IMF urged the government of El Salvador on Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2022 to eliminate Bitcoin as legal tender. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez, File) 

Mon, January 31, 2022

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — The government of El Salvador on Monday rejected a recommendation by the International Monetary Fund to drop Bitcoin as legal tender in the Central American country.

Treasury Minister Alejandro Zelaya angrily said that “no international organization is going to make us do anything, anything at all.”

Zelaya told a local television station that Bitcoin is an issue of "sovereignty.”

“Countries are sovereign nations and they take sovereign decisions about public policy,” he said.

The IMF recommended last week that El Salvador dissolve the $150 million trust fund it created when it made the cryptocurrency legal tender and return any of those unused funds to its treasury.

The agency cited concerns about the volatility of Bitcoin prices, and the possibility of criminals using the cryptocurrency. After nearly doubling in value late last year, Bitcoin has plunged in value.

Zelaya said El Salvador has complied with all financial transaction and money laundering rules.

The trust fund was intended to allow the automatic conversion of Bitcoin to U.S. dollars — El Salvador’s other currency — to encourage people wary of adopting the highly volatile digital currency.

The IMF also recommended eliminating the offer of $30 as an incentive for people to start using the digital wallet “Chivo” and increasing regulation of the digital wallet to protect consumers. It suggested there could be benefits to the use of Chivo, but only using dollars, not Bitcoin.

“In the near-term the actual costs of implementing Chivo and operationalizing the Bitcoin law exceed potential benefits,” the report said.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele had been dismissive of the IMF’s recommendation’s concerning Bitcoin.

Government officials told the IMF that the launch of “Chivo” had significantly increased financial inclusion, drawing millions of people who previously lacked bank accounts into the financial system. They also spoke of the parallel tourism promotion targeting Bitcoin enthusiasts.

The government did not see a need to scale back the scope of its Bitcoin law, but agreed regulation could be strengthened, according to a report.

Bukele led the push to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender alongside the U.S. dollar. El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly made the country the first to do so in June and the Bitcoin law went into effect in September.

El Salvador and the IMF have been negotiating $1.3 billion in lending for months.

A woman claimed she was virtually groped by a gang of male avatars in Meta's metaverse, report says

THERE IS A METAVERSE FOR THAT

Joshua Zitser
Sun, January 30, 2022

Stock image of a woman using a virtual reality headset.

A woman claimed that a gang of male avatars virtually groped her in Meta's metaverse, The Mail on Sunday reported.

The 43-year-old said she was also verbally harassed by the avatars in Meta's Horizon Venues.

Last month, another woman said she was virtually groped while working as a beta tester for Meta's Horizon Worlds.

A 43-year-old British woman claims she was virtually groped by a gang of male avatars in Meta's metaverse earlier this month, The Mail on Sunday first reported.

Nina Jane Patel, who works as the vice president of research for a rival metaverse, said in a Medium post that she was "verbally and sexually harassed" by three or four male avatars in Meta's Horizon Venues.

The London-based mother said that within a minute of joining the virtual world's lobby earlier this month, male avatars began harassing her.

According to Patel's Medium post, the avatars touched her character's body inappropriately, made sexual comments, and took screenshots for several minutes.

After trying to flee the virtual world, Patel told The Mail on Sunday that she had to tear off her virtual reality (VR) headset to bring an end to the ordeal. She told the paper that she has been suffering from anxiety ever since.

"We're sorry to hear this happened," a Meta spokesperson told Insider by email. "We want everyone in Horizon Venues to have a positive experience, and easily find the safety tools that can help in a situation like this - and help us investigate and take action."

The spokesperson noted that Patel did not use the platform's reporting tools, allowing users to block, mute, and report anyone near them. Patel told Insider that she wasn't able to do so quickly enough.

"Horizon Venues should be safe, and we are committed to building it that way," the Meta statement continued. "We will continue to make improvements as we learn more about how people interact in these spaces, especially when it comes to helping people report things easily and reliably."

Horizon Venues is a digital experience, which Meta is still developing, that allows people to use a virtual reality headset to create avatars that can watch online events together.

Last month, Insider's Stephen Jones reported that another woman said a stranger also groped her on one of Meta's other digital platforms — Horizon Worlds. A Meta internal investigation concluded that the victim hadn't enabled safety features.

US says allied forces in Syria have retaken prison after ISIS attack

Sun, January 30, 2022


The United States said on Sunday that allied forces in Syria have successfully retaken a prison following an attack by ISIS that left dozens dead.

In a statement, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were able to "re-take full control" of Hasakah prison, ending the prison break attempt from ISIS.

"Thanks to the bravery and determination of the SDF, many of whom paid the ultimate sacrifice, ISIS failed in its efforts to conduct a large-scale prison break to reconstitute its ranks," Sullivan said in a statement.

U.S. officials condemned the attempted prison break on Tuesday, extending their condolences to guards who died in the attack.

More than 100 militants attacked the prison in an effort to free detained ISIS members, prompting a firefight with U.S.-backed Kurdish fighters that left dozens dead, according to The Associated Press.

Reports of the death toll ranged from six to 23 Kurdish fighters and 28 to 39 ISIS militants, according to the AP.

The forces' commander, Mazloum Abadi, tweeted that all fugitives had been arrested.

The U.S. provided airstrikes to support the forces as they fought to retake the prison, according to the Pentagon.

Sullivan added Sunday that ISIS's violent prison break attempt showed why the terrorist organization must be contained, saying nations "must work together to address the thousands of ISIS detainees in inadequate detention facilities."

"ISIS remains a global threat that requires a global solution. The United States remains committed to working with our partners in Iraq and northeast Syria, and the Defeat-ISIS Coalition, to counter the ISIS threat to our homelands," Sullivan concluded in his statement.