Battle for Brazil's Evangelical vote heats up

Brazil's leftist ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, seen here in December 2021, is leading in national polls against Bolsonaro, but lagging behind in Evangelical support (AFP/NELSON ALMEIDA)


Marcelo SILVA DE SOUSA
Thu, February 24, 2022, 

The campaign for Brazil's October presidential elections has not yet officially started, but the candidates are already bending over backwards to woo a powerful constituency: Evangelical Christians.

Evangelicals, who are estimated to make up a third of Brazil's population, were core supporters in President Jair Bolsonaro's victory in 2018, and the far-right leader is doing his best to make sure he keeps hold of the bloc.

But leftist ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who leads in the polls, is courting Evangelicals too, setting up a showdown for the fast-growing demographic in the Latin American giant.

"This is an administration that proudly says it believes in God... that defends Brazilian families," Bolsonaro said last month, summing up his pitch to Evangelical voters.

He had already delivered one key promise in July, following through on his pledge to place a "terribly Evangelical" judge on the Supreme Court by nominating Presbyterian minister Andre Mendonca.

Lula, the popular-but-tarnished ex-president (2003-2010), is not giving up the Evangelicals without a fight, though.

His Workers' Party plans to launch a podcast next month aimed at Evangelical listeners, and this week he met influential pastor Paulo Marcelo Schallenberger to enlist his help in crafting a strategy to win their votes.

Lula is particularly keen to assuage Evangelicals' fears on the question of values, given that many of them see the Brazilian left as too liberal on social issues, a party insider told AFP.

Third-place candidate Sergio Moro, a former graft-busting judge, has also joined the battle: this month he promised Evangelical leaders to follow a list of 14 moral principles, including maintaining Brazil's highly restrictive abortion laws.

"The candidates' actions show how important the Evangelical market is in Brazilian politics," said political scientist Andre Cesar of consulting firm Hold.

"Evangelicals have never had as much space as now," he told AFP.

- Bolsonaro bastion -

Bolsonaro's popularity has been sagging for months, dragged down by a struggling economy and his widely criticized handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

But he continues to enjoy broad support from Evangelical voters -- 44 percent to 32 percent for Lula, according to a poll published last week by PoderData.

That is almost the exact inverse of their poll numbers for the electorate as a whole: 40 percent for Lula and 31 percent for Bolsonaro.

Evangelicals played a decisive role in Bolsonaro's victory four years ago, when he won 70 percent of their votes in the runoff against Lula acolyte Fernando Haddad.

Bolsonaro is not an Evangelical himself -- he is Catholic -- but his wife is fervently Evangelical.

In 2016, he also had himself baptized by an Evangelical pastor in Israel's River Jordan.

The 66-year-old president "shares the same values as Evangelicals on homosexuality, abortion and the importance of the traditional family," said anthropologist Juliano Spyer, author of a book on Brazil's burgeoning Evangelical movement.

"He's not their absolute ideal candidate, but they see him as the best one out there."

- Value call -



Evangelical lawmaker Sostenes Cavalcante says he is confident the faithful will give their vote to Bolsonaro again.

"We haven't had to fight affronts to our values with this administration," he said.

Under Lula and the Workers' Party, he said, Evangelicals "were constantly fighting initiatives on legalizing abortion, gay marriage and sexualizing kids in schools."

However, Evangelicals are an awkward fit with the president's hardline base in demographic terms.

Mostly black, female and poor, they are ill at ease with some of Bolsonaro's stances, including his anti gun control policies.

Like all working-class Brazilians, they have also been hit hard in their wallets as the country has sunk into a malaise of recession and high inflation.

But according to Cavalcante, "even in an economic crisis, Evangelicals will be guided by their values."

msi/jhb/des/oho

AMERICAN EVANGELICAL POWER

'I lost my youth': Women jailed for miscarriages in El Salvador


Elsy, Kenia, Evelyn and Karen (L-R), freed after many years in prison for abortions they say they never had

 (AFP/MARVIN RECINOS)


Carlos Mario MARQUEZ
Thu, February 24, 2022

Kenia was 17 when, she says, she had a miscarriage after a fall and was sent to jail on suspicion of having had an abortion in El Salvador.

Nine years later, she is out after receiving a reprieve, but feels like she was robbed of her youth in a country with among the world's strictest abortion laws.

She was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

"I was deprived of my freedom for such an unjust reason," Kenia said this week at a press conference with three other women who were similarly punished.

"I lost my youth, I lost my family, all my aspirations were taken away from me," she said, in tears.

The four women, who wore face masks throughout the briefing, gave their real first names but withheld their surnames to avoid being further "stigmatized."

After her fall, Kenia recalled, "the last thing I remember seeing was lots of lights... I was in hospital on a stretcher and there were policemen guarding me and taking pictures of me."

One policeman told her he would make sure that she would "rot in prison" and "that is what happened," she said.

Kenia is one of 62 women to have had their "abortion" sentences commuted since 2009, thanks to the efforts of activist groups, said one such campaigner, Sara Garcia.

Ten remain behind bars, however, and two are still awaiting trial.

- 'Because we are women' -

El Salvador has had an outright ban on abortion since 1998, even in cases of rape or if the health of the woman or fetus are in danger.

Terminating a pregnancy can send a woman to jail for up to eight years, but Salvadoran judges often instead find women guilty of "aggravated homicide," which is punishable by up to 50 years in prison.

Many women are prosecuted after seeking medical help for complications in pregnancy, suspected of having attempted an abortion.

The law gives rise to "stigma and prejudice and creates conditions for women to be persecuted, denounced, prosecuted and unjustly imprisoned," said Morena Herrera of the ACDATEE abortion rights group.

Elsy, 38, was recently freed after "ten difficult years in prison" during which she was separated from her son.

Evelyn, 34, spent 13 years behind bars.

"This law is unfair," Evelyn said at the press conference. "We are considered criminals because we are women."

Karen, 28, recounted that she fell ill at home and woke up "in hospital, cuffed to a stretcher."

Even as a newly-free woman, she said she felt judged in El Salvador and regularly received "dirty looks."

"It is important to obtain the freedom of all women unjustly imprisoned, but we must also ensure that there are no more women reported at public hospitals," said Herrera.

cmm/mav/gm/mlr/des/oho

Plastic treaty would be historic for planet: UNEP chief



Curse of plastic: The beach at Hann Bay, a densely-populated district of the Senegalese capital Dakar (AFP/Seyllou)

Nick Perry
Thu, February 24, 2022, 11:40 PM·4 min read

The world has a rare opportunity to clean up the planet for future generations by uniting behind an ambitious treaty to tackle plastic trash, the UN environment chief told AFP.

Inger Andersen said a global plastics treaty being negotiated in Nairobi "holds the potential and the promise of being the biggest multilateral environmental breakthrough" since the Paris climate accords signed in 2015.

"This is a big moment. This is one for the history books," the executive director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) told AFP in an interview.

The framework for a legally binding plastics agreement is still being hammered out ahead of a UN environment summit starting on Monday in Nairobi, where UNEP is headquartered.

There are competing proposals being considered but more than 50 countries have backed calls for a treaty that includes tough new controls on plastics, which are largely derived from oil and gas.

This could include limits on the manufacture of new plastic, or the phasing-out of single-use products that choke oceans and marine life and take centuries to break down.

Delegates meeting in Nairobi are expected to agree on the broad template for a treaty and establish a negotiating committee to finalise the terms, a process that would take at least two years.

- 'Stop the plastic tap' -

Andersen said it was too early to speculate about specific details of the treaty but stressed it was "hopeless" to try to curb plastic litter without addressing the source.

Some 400 million tonnes of new plastic are manufactured every year -- a figure set to double by 2040.

Less than 10 percent of plastic is recycled, the rest burned or dumped on land where it often ends up in rivers and flows out to sea and drifts around the globe.

Large pieces of plastic are perilous for sea mammals and birds -- but even when the substance is broken down by the action of the sea into micro-particles, this too is absorbed by small organisms and passes up the food chain to fish or shellfish, which in turn are eaten by humans.

"Stopping the plastic tap is critical... If you continue polluting over here, and cleaning up there, that is a forever job," said Andersen, who was appointed UNEP head in 2019.

Many countries, including major plastic producers like the United States and China, have expressed general support for a treaty but not publicly endorsed any specific measures.

Dozens of major corporations including Coca Cola and Unilever have called for a global treaty, as have some of the world's largest plastics manufacturers.

But environment groups have warned that plastic giants were resisting efforts to cap production, and would try and steer talks in Nairobi toward reusing and recycling waste.

Andersen said she was buoyed by the commitments of industry -- but voluntary efforts had fallen short of tackling the crisis.

"We can't recycle our way out of this mess. That's clear," Andersen said.

It is already so pervasive that plastic has been found inside fish in the deepest recesses of the ocean, flecked through Arctic sea ice, and floating in the air we breathe.

"We must understand that plastic is part of our lives -– we use it in construction, in medicine, in places where we need it. But we also use it in places where we do not," she said.

- Time running out -

Binding targets and a common framework would ensure a level playing field so countries and corporations felt confident they were playing by the same rules, she said.

Past global protocols had phased-out mercury and ozone-depleting substances once common in household goods, demonstrating it was possible to achieve consensus across borders and spur economy-wide change.

Some of those conventions took a decade to enshrine, by which stage tens of millions of tonnes of plastic trash could have entered the sea.

Already the amount of plastic entering the world's waterways is expected to triple by 2040 unless drastic action is taken.

"We don't have ten years to do this, and we need to get it done, and fast," Andersen said.

A treaty proposal from Rwanda and Peru has attracted the most support ahead of the UN summit, with the 27-member European Union among dozens of co-sponsors.

The text is still being negotiated, as are two other draft treaty resolutions.

But it bodes well: Andersen said it was "very unusual" for a UN resolution to have such broad backing ahead of a plenary.

"I have to be sure that this thing will land, and land with a degree of ambition. We are going to push very hard."

np/amu/ri

Lessons on climate grief from the people of the sea ice

Issued on: 25/02/2022 - 

Climate change means ice often forms later and melts earlier 

JOE RAEDLE Getty Images North America/AFP/File

Paris (AFP) – Marilyn Baikie's remote Inuit community has more wisdom than they could ever want about ecological grief.

These "people of the sea ice" have endured years of dramatic warming that is ravaging their beloved landscape at the edge of the Arctic, forcing them to reimagine a way of life that goes back centuries.

"It affects how you live your life, it affects the things you do with your children, it really is affecting people's mental health," said Baikie, a community health worker in Rigolet, a coastal village of 300 people in Canada's Labrador region.

Before this region became one of the fastest-warming places on the planet, people could travel across frozen waters until spring, to fish or go deep into countryside that is a profound part of their identity.

Now they often worry the ice won't hold.

So when in winter the thermometer goes to up to zero -- or higher -- Baikie knows people will need extra support.

She and colleagues organise activities to ease stress and fill the "empty time" for people stranded by the warmth, like craft workshops and knowledge sharing between elders and young people.

Other local projects include mapping safe routes over the ice and taking an active part in climate monitoring.

Still, people feel isolated, Baikie told AFP in a recent video call.

"When you talk about it, it really tugs at your heart."
Solastalgia

But it was talking about it that made the Inuit elders -- including Baikie's mother -- among the first to sound the alarm about the wrenching grief wrought by climate change.

Opening up to researchers more than a decade ago, they described the land like a family member.

"People would say it's just as much a part of your life as breathing," said Ashlee Cunsolo, who was studying climate impacts on water quality before pivoting to wellbeing as a result of the strong testimonies.

A decade later, these experiences and coping strategies are part of a growing understanding of the mental health toll of environmental destruction.

An increasing number of people are affected by the impacts of climate change Andrej Ivanov AFP/File

"It's not just something anymore that people say: 'that's in the future, or that'll be in 20 years, or that's only in the north'," she said.

"It's really everywhere."

Cunsolo is one of the authors of a major UN report on climate impacts due to be released on Monday.

It is expected to underscore the severe global health implications -- physical and mental -- of warming and the need to adapt to the challenges ahead.

But unlike the spread of disease by growing numbers of ticks or mosquitoes, Cunsolo said the effects on people's minds are myriad and overlapping.

In Labrador, "it's slow, it's cumulative. It's about identity", she said.

Cunsolo calls this ecological grief, one of a range of new terms for environmental emotions that also includes solastalgia -- "the homesickness that you have when you're still at home".

Overall impacts range from strong feelings -- sadness, fear, anger -- to anxiety, distress and depression, while people caught in an extreme event might suffer post-traumatic stress disorder.

Canada alone has seen a catalogue of disasters in recent years, including floods, wildfires and what used to be a once-in-a-thousand-year heatwave.

"How do we support more and more people who are coping with this type of trauma? They're not isolated events anymore," said Cunsolo.
Climate anxiety

There is growing concern about climate anxiety in children and young people worldwide.

One survey of 10,000 16 to 25-year-olds in 10 countries, published in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health in December, found almost 60 percent were very worried about climate change.

In the Philippines that rose to 84 percent.

Manila-based researcher and psychologist John Jamir Benzon Aruta, who was not involved in the survey, said concerns are highest among young people with access to the internet and social media.

"They worry about how much stronger the typhoons will become, whether it's a safe place for them and their future children," said Aruta.

His research includes support for environmental defenders, in a country with one of the world's highest rates of murders of these campaigners.

Climate anxiety can be seen as a "normal response to the actual threat", he said, calling for therapies and responses that counteract feelings of helplessness.

People around the world are faced with a barrage of negative news and a popular culture saturated with dystopian visions of the future.

What they need, experts say, is hope.

Earth emotions

"There is a need to maintain a sense of meaningfulness in life and that's really the core of my interpretation and emphasis of hope," said Finnish researcher Panu Pihkala, an ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church.

Pihkala, who stopped presiding over weddings and funerals in 2010, says his religious background has helped him contemplate these "deep existential issues" and host ecological grief workshops in Finland.

Even the creator of the term solastalgia, Glenn Albrecht, is looking to shift the focus away from the grief-laden term he created in 2003 as a response to the environmental destruction of coal mining in Australia.

His ever-expanding lexicon of "earth emotions" and concepts includes the hope that humanity will soon commence the "symbiocene" -- living in harmony with the planet rather than destroying it.

"We needed to reinvent the way we talk about our present and our future," he said in a recent online lecture.

In Labrador, Baikie said recognition of the emotional impact of climate change had not just given people an outlet for their feelings, but enabled research they hope will help others around the world.

She wants people and governments to shake off the idea that climate catastrophe is "inevitable".

"Every little bit counts and (if people) really devote money and attention to it, I think we could start seeing some changes," she said.

"The time has come to stop talking about it and to actually do something."

© 2022 AFP

Opinion: Ukraine will survive — but the West should be ashamed

The war has arrived. Russia has invaded Ukraine. If the West had not looked away in 2014, this catastrophe might have been averted, writes DW's Roman Goncharenko.

Ukrainians will never willingly succumb to Russian occupation

Thursday, February 24, 2022. This is a day we will never forget.

The day on which an insane Russian leader decided to launch a major war against Ukraine. The day that Ukrainians and their friends all over the world had prepared themselves for, all while hoping that it would never come. The day when the Kremlin brought war to Europe.

Many seem surprised today, asking, "How it could come to this?" The answer can be found in these lines by Winston Churchill: "You were given the choice between war and dishonor.  You chose dishonor and you will have war."

There is no doubt. Russian troops have invaded Ukraine just as they did around 100 years ago when Ukraine first declared independence. The impact of this monstrous step will send shockwaves around the world.

Some believe that Russia has been preparing for a massive war for years

The fatal mistake of the West

The West bears partial responsibility for these developments. 

In 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine for the first time since the latter gained its independence in 1991, and then annexed Crimea, the West decided on the kind of dishonor that Churchill had spoken about.

The leaders of the US, Germany and other Western powers took both of the Ukrainian government's hands and begged it to not push back. In no instance, they urged, should Russian President Vladimir Putin be "provoked."

Their motivation: One hundred years after the First World War, the West feared another. This was understandable. Yet, it was also a fatal mistake.

West hesitated for too long

Russia became intoxicated with its success in Crimea and perpetuated the war in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas. Still, the West hesitated to provide Ukraine with weapons (Germany refused to do so altogether) and shied away from imposing tough retaliatory measures on Moscow.

It was only after the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was shot down that targeted sanctions were imposed on certain sectors of the Russian economy. But even these were so restricted and weak that Russia came to the conclusion that it would probably be allowed to continue its actions without facing any serious resistance.

Ukraine also underestimated the degree of madness in the Kremlin and the widespread perception among many in Russia that Ukraine is not really an independent state.

Many Ukrainians lulled themselves into a false sense of security, thinking: "We're neighbors, relatives —  Russia will never dare to wage an open war."

Even the government in Kyiv did not break off diplomatic relations with Russia, sending the wrong signals to its Western allies, something along the lines of "it's not that bad, really."

Some Western leaders chose to appease Russia rather than prepare for the worst

Time to help Kiev

In this way, the chance to avoid the war that has now started was wasted. Hoping to appease the aggressor, Western leaders decided to negotiate with Russia. But, throughout human history, this approach has rarely been successful. And it has failed once again — in Ukraine.

Russia has used the income from its oil and gas exports to develop new weapons and prepare an apocalyptic war, not only against Ukraine but against the entire West.

There were plenty of warnings. It all happened out in the open. The Kremlin and its propagandists never hid their intentions. But the West preferred to keep its eyes shut. Western politicians should be blushing with shame.

The Russian troop build-up happened openly

It is now time for the West to rectify its past mistakes and to help Ukraine by any and all possible means. There will be battles, there will be bloodshed, there might be an occupation and a long partisan war. Ukraine will lose many of its best sons and daughters.

But there is no doubt that Ukraine will survive. Ukrainians will never resign themselves to being back on Moscow's leash. Those times are over. They are not coming back.

And Russia? Moscow's chosen path of aggression against Ukraine and the whole of the Western world will end in disaster, sooner or later. Maybe then Russia will have a chance to start over. For now, all those who love freedom are Ukrainians.

This opinion piece was originally written in German.

Moderna says it expects almost $20 billion in COVID-19 vaccine sales in 2022

Moderna's forecast of $19 billion in COVID-19 vaccine sales in 2022 is far above what most analysts expected.

 File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo

Feb. 24 (UPI) -- Biotech company Moderna said Thursday that it expects to make almost $20 billion this year from sales of its COVID-19 vaccine -- the only product that it has on the market.

Moderna said in its earnings report that it generated $4.9 billion in the final quarter of 2021 and sold almost $18 billion worth of the vaccine for all of last year, its first full year of selling the coronavirus shot.

"In 2021, we delivered 807 million doses with approximately 25% of those doses going to low- and middle-income countries, and we will continue to scale in 2022 to help end the COVID-19 pandemic," Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel said in a statement.

"Moderna has experienced exponential growth and we have more than doubled the size of our team over the last year with a global team of 3,000

Bancel said that COVID-19 might move from the pandemic phase to an endemic setting sometime this year, and that people will need booster shots in the fall.

The forecast of $19 billion in sales in 2022 is far above what most analysts expected. Moderna's vaccine is available in more than 70 countries.

The company is presently conducting clinical trials for a booster shot specifically geared toward fighting the Omicron variant.

More than 200 million doses of Moderna's vaccine have been administered in the United States since it was first authorized in December 2020.

US initial jobless claims fall, total benefits tumble to 52-year low


A now hiring sign is seen in the window of a fast-food restaurant in Orange California on January 27, 2021. The Labor Department said first-time unemployment filings dropped last week and the total number of people filing for benefits reached a 52-year low. 

File Photo by Jim Ruymen/UPI | License Photo


Feb. 24 (UPI) -- First-time unemployment claims fell last week, and overall filings dipped to their lowest level in 52 years, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

The department had reported three straight weeks of initial unemployment claim decreases until the week ending Feb. 12, when filings increased to a seasonally adjusted 249,000. Last week, claims dropped to 232,000.

While the jobless claims marked a decrease of 17,000, the total was still higher than the 225,000 unemployment filings reported on Feb. 5. It also remained off the pandemic low of 188,000 reported on Dec. 4.

The overall number of people filing for unemployment benefits for Feb. 12 was 1.476 million, a decrease of 112,000 from the previous week. That marked the lowest overall total of people filing for unemployment insurance since March 14, 1970, when the level was 1.456 million.

The four-week moving average for total claims also fell to 1.576 million, its lowest amount since June 30, 1973, when it hovered at 1.57 million applicants.

The four-week moving average for first-time unemployment filings for the week ending Feb. 12 filings decreased 7,250 to 236,250. The filings reported last week were adjusted to 243,500, the report said.

The actual unadjusted initial claims under state programs totaled 214,873 in the week ending Feb. 19, a decrease of 24,824 or 10.4%, from the previous week. Seasonal factors had expected a decrease of 7,928, or 3.3%, from the previous week.

British union says rail workers will strike next week across London tube network

The London underground system, also known as the tube, is expecting severe disruptions on the rail line next week due to labor strikes that are scheduled for two days and involve thousands of workers. File Photo by Andy Rain/EPA-EFE

Feb. 24 (UPI) -- A British union said on Thursday that as many as 10,000 rail workers across the London underground will walk out in a labor strike next week -- protests that are expected to seriously disrupt tube service for at least two days.

The Rail, Maritime and Transport union confirmed that the strikes will happen, and accused London Mayor Sadiq Khan of blocking progress in unresolved labor talks that hinge on concerns about job and pension cuts.

The union said the strikes will occur across the entire underground system for the entire day -- midnight to midnight -- on both Tuesday and next Thursday.

The strike is part of a complaint from RMT workers about multiple issues. The union cited the underground's "continuing refusal to give assurances on jobs, pensions and working conditions in the midst of an on-going financial crisis driven by central government."

"Our members will be taking strike action next week because a financial crisis at [the underground] has been deliberately engineered by the government to drive a cuts agenda which would savage jobs, services, safety and threaten their working conditions and pensions," RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch said in a statement Thursday confirming the strikes.

Transport for London Chief Operating Officer Andy Lord responded that cuts to workers' pensions have not even been proposed.

"It is extremely disappointing that the RMT is planning to go ahead with this action," he said in a statement. "We haven't proposed any changes to pensions or terms and conditions, and nobody has or will lose their jobs because of the proposals we have set out."

Lord urged the RMT union to "get around the table with us, continue talks and call off this disruptive action, which will cause huge frustration for our customers and further financial damage to TfL and London's economy when we should be working together to rebuild following the [COVID-19] pandemic."

"During [prior] talks, [the underground] confirmed all the union's worst fears that nothing is off the table in terms of the threat to jobs, pensions, conditions and safety," the union, which represents 10,000 British workers, added.

FDA approves condom for use during anal intercourse for first time

By UPI Staff

One Male Condom, available in three versions and 54 different sizes, is the first condom approved by the FDA for use during anal intercourse, as well as during vaginal intercourse. Photo courtesy of One Male Condoms

Feb. 24 (UPI) -- For the first time, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved condoms specifically indicated for anal intercourse.

Sexual health experts have long sought such an authorization because the risk of sexually transmitted diseases spread through anal intercourse is much greater than through vaginal sex, previous research has shown.

"The FDA cited low risk of breakage for One Condoms, which are now approved for both anal and vaginal sex," Planned Parenthood of Southern New England said Thursday on Twitter.

The agency's decision backing the One Male Condom, announced Wednesday, may help reduce transmissions of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV, officials said.

RELATED CDC: Sexually transmitted diseases increase for fourth straight year

"The FDA's authorization of a condom that is specifically indicated, evaluated and labeled for anal intercourse may improve the likelihood of condom use during anal intercourse," Courtney Lias, director of the FDA's Office of Gastro Renal, ObGyn, General Hospital and Urology Devices in the Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a press release.

The fitted condoms come in 54 different sizes and three different versions, with efficacy rates for anal intercourse over 99% in clinical trials, according to the FDA.

Until now, there wasn't enough data to prove that condoms are safe during anal sex.

The efficacy of One Male Condom was tested in a clinical trial including 252 men who have sex with men and 252 men who have sex with women. All participants were between the ages of 18 and 54 years old.

"While today's authorization underscores the public health importance of condoms tested and labeled specifically for anal intercourse, all other FDA-cleared condoms can continue to be used for contraception and STI prevention," the FDA said.

One Condoms on Wednesday noted, while celebrating the approval on Twitter, that it's products continue to be effective during vaginal sex, in addition to the protection they offer during anal sex.

"There have been over 300 condoms approved for use with vaginal sex data, and never before has a condom been approved based on anal sex data," lead study author Dr. Aaron Siegler said in a press release from One Condoms.

"This is despite two-thirds of HIV transmission in the United States being linked to anal sex. Having condoms tested and approved for anal sex will allow users to have confidence in using condoms to prevent HIV transmission," said Siegler, an associate professor of epidemiology at Emory University and associate director of the Emory Center for AIDS Research.

According to Planned Parenthood, the FDA is also exploring approvals for other brands that demonstrate similar reliability

Study: Suicide rate 3 times higher for people in jail than prison, general public

Feb. 24 (UPI) -- The rate of suicide is nearly three times higher among people detained in U.S. jails compared with those in prisons or in the general public, a study published Thursday indicates.

Of the 736 men and women held in a large metropolitan jail in the Midwest, 6.7% said they had threatened suicide or self-harm in jail in the previous three months and 4.5% said they attempted suicide or self-harm in jail over the past year.

Over the previous three months to one year, 8.4% said they threatened or attempted suicide or self-harm.

The attempted suicide rate in the general population, meanwhile, is 0.6%, according to the study.

In general, jails hold people who have been arrested for crimes and are either awaiting court appearances or have been sentenced to shorter imprisonments, while prisons hold convicts who have received longer prison sentences. According to the study, the average jail stay is about 23 days.

"The reality is that many more individuals attempt, contemplate or threaten suicide prior to a fatal suicide attempt in a jail setting, and self-harming behaviors may be a risk factor or precursor for more serious attempts on one's life," said Calli Cain, senior author and an assistant professor in Florida Atlantic University's School of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Researchers said there is one death for every 80 suicide attempts at U.S. correctional facilities, and suicide is the leading cause of death within U.S. jails. Forty percent of deaths take place within seven days of the person's admission to jail.

"The high rate of suicide in our jails over the last 20 years also suggests that the conventional approach of isolating individuals such as on suicide watch who admit to or are suspected of wanting to hurt themselves is insufficient, especially since most individuals who die by suicide in jail are not on suicide watch at the time of their passing," Cain said.

The study, carried out by FAU's College of Social Work and Criminal Justice, was published in the journal Corrections.

Study authors said their findings show "very little attention" has been paid to understanding why the suicide and self-harm rate is higher among jail detainees and what factors play a role.

"Researchers have long recognized the shock and lack of control associated with circumstances and surroundings in jail such as disorientation, abrupt separation from social support and society, and the degree of degradation and interpersonal conflict that arise from being incarcerated," Cain said. "However, the extent to which these experiences culminate in a propensity for suicide and self-harm remains understudied."

Other findings from the study indicate:

-- Detainees in protective custody are seven times more likely to threaten or attempt suicide or self-harm compared with the general population.

-- First-time jail detainees are 61% more likely to threaten suicide or self-harm.

-- Men are 64% less likely than women to threaten or attempt suicide or self-harm.

-- People with substance dependence issues are two times more likely to attempt suicide or self-harm.

-- For every violent incident witnessed in jail, detainees' rate of threatening or attempting suicide or self-harm more than doubled.

-- People who were homeless prior to detention were more than twice as likely to threaten or attempt suicide or self-harm.

-- Detainees assaulted by another detainee were 2.5 times more likely to threaten suicide or self-harm.