Rare birth of Sumatran rhino brings hope for endangered species

The rhino calf has yet to be named.

A Sumatran rhino has successfully given birth in an Indonesian sanctuary, environment officials said, in a boost for conservation efforts targeting the critically endangered animal.

The World Wide Fund for Nature estimates fewer than 80 Sumatran rhinos remain in the world, mainly on the Indonesian island of Sumatra and Borneo.

A rhino named Rosa gave birth to a female calf on Thursday in Way Kambas National Park in Sumatra, after suffering eight miscarriages since 2005, when she was brought in from the wild for a breeding programme.

"The birth of this Sumatran rhino is such happy news amid the government's and partners' efforts to increase the population," Wiratno, a senior official at Indonesia's environment ministry, said in a statement Monday.

Like many Indonesians he goes by only one name.

The calf, who has yet to be named, brings the number of Sumatran rhinos in the Way Kambas sanctuary to eight.

Successful births are rare. The calf's father, named Andatu, was the first Sumatran rhino born in a sanctuary in more than 120 years.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature classifies the Sumatran rhino, the smallest of all rhino species, as critically endangered.

Multiple threats have brought them to the brink of extinction, including poaching and climate change.

Rhino horn is often illegally traded for traditional Chinese medicine.

Indonesia is also racing to save another critically endangered species—the Javan rhino.

Once numbering in the thousands across Southeast Asia, fewer than 80 are alive today, mainly in a national park on Indonesia's main island of Java.

Efforts to conserve the species have shown promising results with the birth of five calves in Ujung Kulon National Park last year.

Endangered Sumatran rhino gives birth in Indonesia

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© 2022 AFP

Many in Mideast see hypocrisy in Western embrace of Ukraine

By JOSEPH KRAUSS

1 of 6

A Palestinian protester throws a Molotov cocktail towards Israeli soldiers during clashes in the West Bank city of Hebron, April 3, 2013. On social media, the world has cheered Ukrainians as they stockpile Molotov cocktails and take up arms against an occupying army. When Palestinians and Iraqis do the same thing, they are branded terrorists and legitimate targets. (AP Photo/Nasser Shiyoukhi, File)


JERUSALEM (AP) — Within days of the Russian invasion, Western countries invoked international law, imposed crippling sanctions, began welcoming refugees with open arms and cheered on Ukraine’s armed resistance.

The response has elicited outrage across the Middle East, where many see a glaring double standard in how the West responds to international conflicts.

“We have seen every means we were told could not be activated for over 70 years deployed in less than seven days,” Palestinian Foreign Minister Riad Malki told a security forum in Turkey earlier this month.

“Amazing hypocrisy,” he added.

The U.S.-led war in Iraq, which began 19 years ago this month, was widely seen as an unlawful invasion of one state by another. But Iraqis who fought the Americans were branded terrorists, and refugees fleeing to the West were often turned away, treated as potential security threats.

The Biden administration said Wednesday the United States has assessed that Russian forces committed war crimes in Ukraine and would work with others to prosecute offenders. But the U.S. is not a member of the International Criminal Court and staunchly opposes any international probe of its own conduct or of its ally, Israel.

When Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war on behalf of President Bashar Assad in 2015, helping his forces to pummel and starve entire cities into submission, there was international outrage but little action. Syrian refugees fleeing to Europe died on perilous sea voyages or were turned back as many branded them a threat to Western culture.

In Yemen, a grinding yearslong war between a Saudi-led coalition and Iran-backed Houthi rebels has left 13 million people at risk of starvation. But even searing accounts of infants starving to death have not brought sustained international attention.

Bruce Riedel, formerly of the CIA and National Security Council, and now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said it was “understandable” that many in the Middle East see a double standard by the West.

“The United States and the United Kingdom have supported Saudi Arabia’s seven-years-old war in Yemen, which created the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe in decades,” he said.

Israel’s occupation of lands the Palestinians want for a future state is well into its sixth decade, and millions of Palestinians live under military rule with no end in sight. The U.S., Israel and Germany have passed legislation aimed at suppressing the Palestinian-led boycott movement, while major firms like McDonald’s, Exxon Mobil and Apple have won praise by suspending business in Russia.

On social media, the world has cheered Ukrainians as they stockpile Molotov cocktails and take up arms against an occupying army. When Palestinians and Iraqis do the same thing, they are branded terrorists and legitimate targets.

Civil defense members prepare Molotov cocktails in a yard in Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 27, 2022. On social media, the world has cheered Ukrainians as they stockpile Molotov cocktails and take up arms against an occupying army. When Palestinians and Iraqis do the same thing, they are branded terrorists and legitimate targets. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

“We resisted the occupiers, even when the world was with the Americans, including the Ukrainians, who were part of their coalition,” said Sheikh Jabbar al-Rubai, 51, who fought in the 2003-2011 Iraqi insurgency against U.S. forces.

“Because the world was with the Americans, they didn’t give us this glory and call us a patriotic resistance,” instead emphasizing the insurgency’s religious character, he said. “This is of course a double standard, as if we are subhuman.”

Abdulameer Khalid, a 41-year-old Baghdad delivery driver, sees “no difference” between the Iraqi and Ukrainian resistance.

“If anything, the resistance to the Americans in Iraq was more justified, given that the Americans traveled thousands of kilometers to come to our country, while the Russians are going after a supposed threat next door to them,” he said.

To be sure, there are important differences between the war in Ukraine — a clear case of one U.N.-member state invading another — and the conflicts in the Middle East, which often involve civil war and Islamic extremism.

“By and large, Middle East conflicts are incredibly complicated. They are not morality plays,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former Mideast adviser to Republican and Democratic administrations.

He said the Ukraine conflict is unique in its degree of moral clarity, with Russia widely seen as launching an aggressive, devastating war against its neighbor. The closest Mideast analogy might be Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990, when Washington responded by assembling a military coalition including Arab states that drove out the Iraqi forces.

Still, Miller acknowledges that U.S. foreign policy “is filled with anomalies, inconsistencies, contradictions and yes, hypocrisy.”

The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan was a response to the 9/11 attacks, which Osama bin Laden planned while being sheltered by the Taliban there. The U.S. justified its war in Iraq with false claims about weapons of mass destruction, but the invasion also toppled a brutal dictator who had himself flouted international law and committed crimes against humanity.

A malnourished boy lies in a bed waiting to receive treatment at a feeding center at Al-Sabeen hospital in Sanaa, Yemen, Nov. 23, 2019. In Yemen, a grinding seven-year war between a Saudi-led coalition AGRESSORS and Iran-backed  YEMENI Houthi rebels has left 13 million people at risk of starvation. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed, File)

Still, the invasion is regarded by most Iraqis and other Arabs as an unprovoked disaster that set the stage for years of sectarian strife and bloodletting.

BULLSHIT FROM A WARMONGER
Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a White House adviser when the U.S. invaded Iraq, said there was a difference between Ukrainians battling Russian invaders and insurgents in Iraq who fought Americans.

“Iraqis who fought U.S. troops on behalf of Iran or ISIS were not freedom fighters,” he said, referring to the Islamic State group. ”Making these moral distinctions is not an act of hypocrisy.”

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict dates back more than a century — long before the 1967 war in which Israel seized east Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Most of the world considers those areas to be occupied Palestinian territory and Israel’s ongoing settlement construction to be a violation of international law. Israel portrays the conflict as a territorial dispute, accusing the Palestinians of refusing to accept its right to exist as a Jewish state.

“Only the severely context-challenged could compare Israel’s wars of defense to Russia’s invasion of its neighbor,” the Jerusalem Post said in a March 1 editorial on the topic.

Russia’s intervention in Syria was part of a complex civil war in which several factions — including the Islamic State group — committed atrocities. As IS seized large parts of Syria and Iraq, many feared extremists would slip into Europe amid waves of refugees.

Still, many in the Middle East saw harsh treatment of Arab and Muslim migrants as proof that Western nations still harbor cultural biases despite espousing universal rights and values.

Many feel their suffering is taken less seriously because of pervasive views that the Middle East has always been mired in violence — never mind the West’s role in creating and perpetuating many of its intractable conflicts.

“There’s this expectation, drawn from colonialism, that it’s more normal for us to be killed, to grieve our families, than it is for the West,” said Ines Abdel Razek, advocacy director for the Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy.

___

Associated Press writers Josh Boak in Washington, Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad, Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Noha ElHennawy in Cairo contributed

GERONTOCRACY

Taliban hard-liners turning back the clock in Afghanistan
By KATHY GANNON

1 of 5

Afghan girls participate a lesson inside a classroom at Tajrobawai Girls High School, in Herat, Afghanistan, Nov. 25, 2021. Taliban hard-liners are turning back the clock in Afghanistan with a flurry of repressive edicts over the past days that hark back to their harsh rule from the late 1990s. Girls have been banned from going to school beyond the sixth grade, women are turned back from boarding planes if they travel unaccompanied by a male relative. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris, File)


ISLAMABAD (AP) — Taliban hard-liners are turning back the clock in Afghanistan with a flurry of repressive edicts over the past days that hark to their harsh rule from the late 1990s.

Girls have been banned from going to school beyond the sixth grade, women are barred from boarding planes if they travel unaccompanied by a male relative. Men and women can only visit public parks on separate days and the use of mobile telephones in universities is prohibited.

It doesn’t stop there.

International media broadcasts — including the Pashto and Persian BBC services, which broadcast in the two languages of Afghanistan — are off the air as of the weekend. So are foreign drama series.

Since the Taliban seized control of the country in mid-August, during the last chaotic weeks of the U.S. and NATO pullout after 20 years of war, the international community has been concerned they would impose the same strict laws as when they previously ruled Afghanistan.

The latest assault on women’s rights came earlier this month, when the all-male and religiously driven Taliban government broke its promise to allow girls to return to school after the sixth grade. The move stunned much of the world — and many in Afghanistan — especially after the Taliban had given all “the necessary assurances” that this was not going to happen.

The United Nations has called the banning of international media broadcasts “another repressive step against the people of Afghanistan.” The website of the BBC Pashto service said it was “a worrying development at a time of uncertainty and turbulence.”

“More than 6 million Afghans consume the BBC’s independent and impartial journalism on TV every week and it is crucial they are not denied access to it in the future,” BBC World Services’ head of languages Tarik Kafala said in a statement Sunday.

On Monday, members of the Taliban vice and virtue ministry stood outside government ministries, ordering male employees without traditional turbans and beards — seen as a symbol of piety — to go home. One employee who was told to go home said he didn’t know if and when he would be able to return to work. He spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing for his safety.

According to a senior Taliban official and Afghans familiar with the Taliban’s leadership, the push to return to the past — which resulted in the edicts — emerged from a three-day meeting last week in the southern city of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban.

They say the edicts stem from the demands of the Taliban’s hard-line supreme leader, Haibatullah Akhundzada, who is apparently trying to steer the country back to the late 1990s, when the Taliban had banned women from education and public spaces, and outlawed music, television and many sports.

“The younger among the Taliban do not agree with some of these edicts but they are not comfortable contradicting the elders,” said Torek Farhadi, an analyst who served as adviser to previous Afghan governments. Farhadi, who has been in contact with Taliban officials since their return to power, did not elaborate.

The more pragmatic among the Taliban are resisting the edicts — or at least silently ignoring them, Farhadi said.

Since their takeover of the country, the Taliban have been trying to transition from insurgency and war to governing, with the hard-liners increasingly at odds with the pragmatists on how to run a country in the midst of a humanitarian crisis and an economy in free fall.

The Taliban leadership today is different from the one-man rule of Mullah Mohammad Omar, the reclusive founder of the Taliban movement in the mid-1990s who reigned with a heavy hand. A divide is growing between some within the old guard, who uphold the harsh rule of the past and a younger generation of Taliban leaders who see a future of engagement with the international community.

The younger generation sees rights for both men and women, though still within their interpretation of Islamic law — but one that allows school for girls and women in the workforce.

“The younger Taliban need to speak up,” said Farhadi.

Still, Akhundzada has modelled himself on Mullah Omar, preferring to stay in remote Kandahar, far from the eyes of the public, rather than rule from the Afghan capital of Kabul. He also adheres to Pashtun tribal mores — traditions where women are hidden away and girls are married off at puberty.

Education Ministry spokesman Mawlvi Aziz Ahmad Rayan speaks during an interview in Kabul, Afghanistan, March 23, 2022. Taliban hard-liners are turning back the clock in Afghanistan with a flurry of repressive edicts over the past days that hark back to their harsh rule from the late 1990s. Girls have been banned from going to school beyond the sixth grade, women are turned back from boarding planes if they travel unaccompanied by a male relative. Men and women can only visit public parks on separate days. (AP Photo/Mohammed Shoaib Amin, File)

Akhunzada ran a madrassa, or a religious school, in Pakistan’s border regions before his 2016 rise as the new Taliban leader. Those with knowledge of Akhunzada say he is unconcerned about international outrage over the latest restrictive Taliban edicts and about the growing discontent and complaints from Afghans, who have become increasingly outspoken.

It was Akhunzada who reportedly vetoed the opening of schools to girls after the sixth grade as the Taliban had promised to do in late March, at the start of the new school year. On Saturday, dozens of girls demonstrated in Kabul, demanding the right to go to school.

Ethnic Pashtuns elsewhere have resisted Taliban adherence to tribal laws. In Pakistan, where ethnic Pashtuns also dominate the border regions, movements such as the Pashtun Rights Movement have emerged to challenge backward tribal traditions and disavow Taliban interpretations of Islamic law.

Manzoor Pashteen, the movement’s leader, has been an outspoken opponent and has accused the Taliban of hijacking ethnic Pashtun sentiments and misrepresenting their traditions — and misinterpreting them as religious edicts.

Akhunzada’s onslaught against progress comes at a time when the health of the Taliban-appointed prime minister, also a hard-liner, Hasan Akhund, is reported to be deteriorating. Akhund did not meet with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi last week, when the top Chinese diplomat made a surprise one-day visit to Kabul.

Farhadi has hope the younger, more pragmatic Taliban leaders will find their voice and urged for an outreach to them by Islamic countries and scholars, as well as Afghan scholars and political figures.

“The Taliban movement needs a reform,” said Farhadi. “It is slow to come and it is frustrating for everyone involved. But we mustn’t give up.”

___

Follow Kathy Gannon on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Kathygannon.

AMERIKAN OLIGARCHS
EXPLAINER: How would US billionaire income tax work?
By FATIMA HUSSEIN

President Joe Biden speaks about Russian President Vladimir Putin and Russia's invasion of Ukraine after unveiling his proposed budget for fiscal year 2023 in the State Dining Room of the White House, Monday, March 28, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky)


WASHINGTON (AP) — A “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax” is included in President Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2023 budget proposal — part of the administration’s effort to reduce the federal deficit over the next decade and fund new spending. The proposal “eliminates the inefficient sheltering of income for decades or generations,” the White House says.

During a press conference highlighting the budget on Monday, Biden said one-hundredth of 1% of Americans would be subject to the tax. “The billionaire minimum tax is fair, and it raises $360 billion that can be used to lower costs for families and cut the deficit,” he said.

Whether Congress will approve is a major question as the administration outlines its hope to tax the nation’s highest earners.

Here’s how it would work:

HOW WOULD THE TAX APPLY?

The budget proposes that households worth more than $100 million pay at least 20% in taxes on both income and “unrealized gains”— the increase in an unsold investment’s value. For many wealthy individuals, the administration says, that “true income” never gets taxed since it can be held onto for decades and sometimes generations.

Biden’s proposal would allow wealthy households to spread some payments on unrealized gains over nine years, and then for five years on new income going forward. Stretching payments over multiple years is meant to smooth yearly variations in investment income, while still ensuring that the wealthiest end up paying a minimum tax rate of 20%. In effect, the Billionaire Minimum Income Tax payments are a prepayment of tax obligations these households will owe when they later realize their gains.

This is an extremely nuanced policy. The tax is targeting the ultra wealthy. It’s taxing gains achieved from their wealth, but it’s real and unrealized income rather than simply the underlying assets.

That’s why David Gamage, a tax law professor at Indiana University says “it’s not a wealth tax, it’s an income tax reform.” He says, “This is a minimum income tax that includes the true economic value” of income that can be held for a very long time, he said.

WHO WOULD SEE THE IMPACT?

Roughly 700 billionaires would be affected by the tax proposal, the White House says, estimating that these individuals increased their wealth in 2021 by $1 trillion, paying roughly 8% of their income and unrealized gains in taxes.

“A firefighter and a teacher pay more than double” the tax rate that a billionaire pays, Biden said during Monday’s press conference.

Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet and Michael Bloomberg are just a well-known few individuals who could see the earnings on their holdings taxed under this proposal if it were to become law.

HOW MUCH MONEY WOULD IT RAISE?


According to the White House, $361 billion over 10 years. The budget proposal contains an additional $1.4 trillion worth of revenue raisers, which would include a higher top tax rate of 39.6% on individuals and an increase in the corporate tax rate to 28%.

HOW DO VOTERS FEEL?

The subject of tax avoidance has grown in recent years. A ProPublica report from last June outlined how the wealthiest Americans can legally pay income taxes that are a fraction of what middle income Americans pay on their income. And a Pew Research Center study from last April states that most Americans — some 59%— say they are bothered “a lot” that some corporations and wealthy people don’t pay their fair share in taxes.

A 2017 Gallup poll states that slightly more than six in 10 Americans say that upper-income people pay too little in taxes.

IS CONGRESS LIKELY TO APPROVE THIS MEASURE?

Donald Williamson, an accounting and taxation professor at American University in Washington, said “a couple of years ago, I would’ve laughed out loud. Today it’s conceivable.”

The highest likelihood is through “reconciliation” — a budget process for passing fiscal legislation with a simple majority of Senate votes.

That will require buy-in from West Virginia Sen. Joe Machin and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who have each objected to proposals to tax the ultra-wealthy in the past.

Steve Wamhoff, director of tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, says the Democrats “have got this reconciliation vehicle that they can use that to pass legislation.”

“This is a step toward a much fairer tax code.”

___

Associated Press writer Josh Boak contributed to this report.

'Magic mushroom' therapy may interact with other medicines

"Psilocybin has been around in Western society since the late 1950s, before many of our psychiatric medications have existed," 

By HealthDay News

A voter-approved initiative to allow psychoactive mushrooms as a therapy for mental health disorders will begin in Oregon early next year, but the drug has been edging toward being accepted as a mainstream medication in recent years. 

Photo by Shots Studio/Shutterstock.

Psilocybin, the psychedelic substance in "magic" mushrooms, is generating lots of interest as a potential treatment for a host of mental ills, but new research warns there is little data on how it might interact with more traditional psychiatric medications.

"There's a major incongruence between the public enthusiasm and exuberance with psychedelic substances for mental health issues -- and what happens when they combine with the existing mental health treatments that we have now," said study author Dr. Aryan Sarparast. He is an assistant professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), in Portland.

A voter-approved initiative to allow psychoactive mushrooms as a therapy for mental health disorders will begin in Oregon early next year, but the drug has been edging toward being accepted as a mainstream medication in recent years.

So, the researchers wanted to learn more about how psilocybin interacts with widely prescribed medications such as antidepressants.

RELATED 'Magic mushroom' drug psilocybin edges toward mainstream therapy

The investigators analyzed 40 studies dating back to 1958, including 26 randomized controlled studies, 11 case reports and three epidemiological studies.

Only one of the studies examined how psilocybin interacts with antidepressants, while all of the clinical trials were conducted with healthy volunteers who received a psychiatric medication and a psychedelic at the same time.

The findings highlight the need for further research on combining traditional mental health treatments with psilocybin, according to the authors of the paper published recently in the journal Psychopharmacology.

RELATED Study finds 'magic mushroom' hallucinogen as good as antidepressants

While Sarparast said some patients with mental health conditions may benefit from taking psilocybin, he is concerned that the lack of evidence on drug interactions will make many healthcare providers want to take patients off existing medications before being given psilocybin, forcing patients into a difficult choice.

"That's a very, very tough place to be," Sarparast said in a university news release.

Still, a review of scientific literature misses a lot of data gathered on the real-world use of magic mushrooms, noted study co-author Dr. Christopher Stauffer, an assistant professor of psychiatry at OHSU and a physician-scientist at the VA Portland Health Care System.

RELATED Oregon votes to legalize psychedelic mushrooms in therapy settings

"Psilocybin has been around in Western society since the late 1950s, before many of our psychiatric medications have existed," Stauffer said. "Nonetheless, people attempting to navigate Oregon's psilocybin services in the context of ongoing psychiatric treatment should work closely with knowledgeable professionals."

More information

There's more on psilocybin at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Study: Disinfectants use during pregnancy linked to childhood asthma, eczema


A member of Japan Ground Self-Defense Force sprays disinfectant. 

File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo

March 28 (UPI) -- Children whose mothers used disinfectants during pregnancy were more likely to develop asthma or eczema, a study published Monday found.

The study, published online in Occupational and Environmental Medicine, suggests that pregnant women's use of disinfects may be a risk factor for asthma and eczema in their children, but since it was an observational study, it was unable to establish cause.

Researchers used data on 78,915 mother-child pairs who participated in the Japan Environment and Children's Study to analyze whether mother's exposure to disinfectants in the workplace was associated with higher risk of allergic diseases in their 3-year-old children.

Exposure to disinfectants in the workplace previously has been linked to asthma and dermatitis in the workers exposed to them, but the new study looked specifically at the impact of disinfectant use during pregnancy and subsequent development of allergic disease in children.

Children were significantly more likely to have asthma or eczema if their mothers used disinfectant one to six times a week compared to mothers who never used disinfectants.

Moreover, children of women who used disinfectants every day during pregnancy had the highest risk of a diagnosis -- 26% greater for asthma and 29% greater for eczema --than children of mothers who were never exposed to disinfectants.

Disinfectants are used frequently in hospitals and medical facilities, and the COVID-19 pandemic has increased their use, researchers noted.

They also noted some limitations of the study, including that the mothers self-reported use of disinfectants and that the specific type of disinfectants were not identified.

Still, "our findings indicate that exposure [to disinfectants] during pregnancy exerts an effect on allergies in offspring regardless of whether the mother returns to work when the child is 1- year-old, and suggest an effect by exposure during pregnancy alone," researchers said in a statement.

"Given the current increased use of disinfectants to prevent new coronavirus infections, it is of great public health importance to consider whether prenatal disinfectant exposure is a risk for the development of allergic diseases."

State takes over troubled Baltimore wastewater treatment plant

March 28 (UPI) -- Maryland's environmental secretary has directed a state agency to take control of Baltimore's troubled Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant, the largest such facility statewide.

Secretary Ben Grumbles ordered the Maryland Environmental Service take over the Back River plant in Dundalk, an unincorporated community in Baltimore County, in a directive on Sunday to ensure public and environmental health protection after pollution and compliance issues.

"The Department determined that the decline in the proper maintenance and operation of the plant risks catastrophic failures at the plant that may result in environmental harm as well as adverse public health ... effects," Grumbles said in the directive.

Grumbles also directed the MES to do a comprehensive evaluation and assessment of the Back River plant's operation, maintenance, staffing and equipment issues and submit a report by June 6 to the Maryland Department of the Environment on findings and recommendations.

"This action is unprecedented, but needed to correct long-standing pollution problems at the state's largest wastewater treatment plant," Chesapeake Bay Foundation's Maryland Executive Director Josh Kurtz said in a statement Monday. "The Maryland Environmental Service has a strong record of maintaining wastewater plants and we expect that experience will be used to address the operational and maintenance issues prevalent throughout the sewage treatment process at the Back River plant."

"MES's report on what happened must be fully transparent," Kurtz added. "Residents are demanding answers as to how this integral plant was able to deteriorate to its current condition and who allowed it to happen. Residents who live near the plant need information about water quality risks."

The new directive came after Grumbles ordered Baltimore City on Thursday to operate the Back River plant in compliance with a permit, including providing an adequate number of operating staff, and to cease all unpermitted discharges within 48 hours.

A follow-up inspection Saturday found that the city had failed to comply with the order.

The Back River plant has faced regulatory scrutiny since last summer after Blue Water Baltimore detected elevated levels of bacteria there and at its city-based counterpart, Patapsco Wastewater Treatment Plant in Wagner's Point, and reported the pollution to MES.


State environmental inspections also found last summer the same two wastewater treatment plants illegally discharged millions of gallons a day of partially treated sewage into Chesapeake Bay.

By late January, the state of Maryland and Blue Water Baltimore had both sued Baltimore over the pollution issues at the treatment plants.

The latest Back River inspection came after boaters discovered hundreds of dead fish floating in the waters of the Back River near the plant alongside algae, which looked like sewage.

"It has long been plagued as gross and the poop river, and there is so much more potential for it," Desiree Greaver, a Rosedale resident and project management with Back River Restoration Committee, told The Baltimore Sun. "With the proper agency in there running it and doing proper maintenance and doing simple things, the river can be so much healthier."

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott said in a statement that both plants "had issues that long predate my administration."

"We are committed to working with the Maryland Department of the Environment and the Maryland Environmental Service to get both of these facilities into compliance," Scott added. "This will not be an overnight fix but we must work collaboratively and combine our resources in order to ensure clean and healthy communities not just for our residents, but also for the wildlife that calls the Chesapeake Bay home."

WHITE SUPREMACIST SOCIETY

Bystander CPR less likely for Black, Hispanic Americans, study shows

By Cara Murez, HealthDay News

Researchers found that Black and Hispanic people were 41% less likely to receive CPR in public settings and 26% less likely to receive the care at home compared with White people. 

File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo

If you collapse in a public place from a cardiac arrest, your chances of receiving lifesaving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) are substantially better if you're White instead of Black or Hispanic, a new study finds.

Black and Hispanic individuals who have out-of-hospital cardiac arrests that others witness are less likely to receive bystander CPR than White people are, whether the cardiac arrest happens at home or in a public place, researchers discovered.

"In the U.S., there are approximately 350,000 cardiac arrests that occur outside of the hospital each year. Through prior reports, I learned that there are significant disparities in surviving this condition in Black and Hispanic communities," said Dr. Raul Angel Garcia, lead study author and fellow in training at Saint Luke's Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, Mo. "I found that this disparity was a little unsettling, but at the same time important to better understand."

Not a heart attack

Cardiac arrest is the sudden loss of heart function, often because the heart's electrical system has malfunctioned, according to the American Heart Association. It is not a heart attack and it can be fatal if proper steps aren't taken immediately.

The researchers had hypothesized that the racial disparities in CPR would be narrower in public places, but found that not to be true, said study co-author Dr. Paul Chan, a professor of medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine.

"We don't understand why those disparities not only persisted in the public arena but were apparently even greater. The speculation is that there could be issues of bias, whether explicit or implicit," Chan said. "And what was striking for us was that this was not only present in White communities, but also Black and Hispanic communities."

RELATED Study: Black patients get worse care after cardiac arrest

If a White person had a cardiac arrest in a community where more than 50% of the residents were Black or Hispanic, they were still much more likely to get bystander CPR than a Black or Hispanic individual, Chan explained. That was consistent whether it was a predominantly White community, an integrated community or a majority Black or Hispanic community, he said.

WE INTERNALIZE OUR OPPRESSION, EACH OF US REPEATING THE RULES OF THE RULING CLASS

To study the issue, the investigators analyzed 110,000 bystander-witnessed cardiac arrests that happened in settings other than hospitals between 2013 and 2019.

The researchers found that Black and Hispanic people were 41% less likely to receive CPR in public settings and 26% less likely to receive the care at home compared with White people.

RELATED CPR is less effective than most people think, study suggests

In public settings, Black and Hispanic individuals received CPR 46% of the time and White individuals received it 60% of the time. In the home, just 39% of Black and Hispanic people received CPR compared with 47% of White people.

Not enough training?

Less access to CPR training or to emergency dispatchers who can communicate in a language other than English could help to explain some of the disparities in receiving CPR at home, Chan said.

One solution may be thinking creatively about offering low-cost CPR instruction to vulnerable populations who may not historically have had access to training, the authors suggested.

Revising training materials may also help, Chan said. For example, training videos could include scenarios where bystanders or a person experiencing cardiac arrest are people of color. The mannequins used for training could also have more diverse skin colors.

"That's the first thing we need to do," Chan said. "We also need to make a really aggressive effort to offer bystander CPR training for free in Black and Hispanic communities."

If a community has a large population that speaks a specific language, such as Nigerian or Cuban, for example, it may help if there are dispatchers available who also speak those languages, Garcia suggested. That would enable someone in a home or public setting to provide guided CPR assistance in a crisis, without language as a barrier.

"Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of data that can capture, nationally, what is the success of dispatcher-assisted CPR," Garcia said.

He called for better tracking of that data for future study.

The researchers also noted that overall rates of bystander CPR were low across all racial groups.

Dr. Gina Lundberg is a cardiologist in Atlanta and a member of an American College of Cardiology work group on disparities of care.

She expressed surprise at the study results, including the disparities for those experiencing cardiac arrest in their homes. Ensuring that Black and Hispanic communities receive more access to training and opportunities to practice CPR skills might help, she suggested.

Sometimes people are not comfortable initiating CPR, Lundberg explained, because they are uncertain about hurting someone, not knowing how hard to press or how fast to go.

"That's a place to start," said Lundberg, who was not involved in the study.

Another starting point could be emulating a program in Georgia in which all high school seniors are required to learn CPR before graduation, Lundberg suggested.

Minutes can make a huge difference for someone who has had a cardiac arrest. CPR keeps the blood circulating to the brain, heart and vital organs until someone can use an AED or defibrillator, Lundberg said.

"CPR is a bridge until the real treatment arrives. Most people don't recover, just getting CPR. They need the electrical shock that you would deliver with the AED or the defibrillator," Lundberg said.

The findings will be presented Sunday at the American College of Cardiology's annual meeting in Washington, D.C. Findings presented at medical meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

More information

The American Heart Association has more on CPR.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

South Korea files complaint for Japan history books over sex slaves, other WWII claims

By Thomas Maresca

The issue of comfort women, the euphemism for sex slaves used by Japan during World War II, has remained a deeply contentious issue between Seoul and Tokyo. 

File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo

SEOUL, March 29 (UPI) -- Seoul lodged a complaint against Tokyo on Tuesday over new history textbooks which South Korean officials say distort facts about Japan's use of forced labor and sexual slavery against Koreans during World War II.

South Korea's foreign ministry expressed "deep regret" over the textbooks, which were approved Tuesday by Japanese authorities for use by second- and third-year high school students starting in 2023.


The books "distort historical facts of the past in accordance with [Japan's] self-centered view of history, and call for correction," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Expressions such as "forced labor" were watered down to "conscription" or "mobilization," South Korean officials said, while references to so-called "comfort women" sex slaves were downplayed.

The ministry summoned a senior official from the Japanese Embassy in Seoul to deliver a formal protest, Yonhap reported.

Protesters demonstrate near a statue of a South Korean "comfort women" in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, on February 8, 2017. "Comfort Women" were Koreans who served as sex workers for Japanese soldiers during World War II. 

File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI

Japan occupied Korea from 1910 to 1945, a period of colonization that ended with Tokyo's defeat in World War II. Some historians estimate that as many as 200,000 girls and women, mainly Koreans, were used as sex slaves by Japan in military brothels.

The issue of comfort women -- the euphemism used to describe the sex slaves -- has long been a deeply contentious issue in the relationship between South Korea and Japan.

Tokyo contends that the matter was settled in a 1965 treaty that normalized relations between the two countries and a 2015 deal that included an $8 million fund to support victims.

However, a South Korean government task force in 2017 declared the deal inadequate, saying it did not sufficiently address the opinions of the victims themselves. Lawsuits by survivors seeking reparations from Japan have made their way through Seoul courts with conflicting decisions issued last year.

An international group of survivors and advocates sent a petition to United Nations human rights investigators earlier this month, pushing for the comfort women issue to be brought before the U.N. International Court of Justice.

Seoul also protested the textbooks' claims of the Dokdo Islands as Japanese territory that South Korea is illegally occupying.

The tiny islets, which Japan calls Takeshima, are administered by South Korea and have been the source of a long-running territorial dispute.

THREE YEARS LATE
Spotify rolls out COVID-19 content advisory tab


A banner advertising Spotify's public trading debut hangs from the facade of the New York Stock Exchange on April 3, 2018. Spotify rolled out a new COVID-19 advisory tab on its site Monday. File Photo by Monika Graff/UPI | License Photo


March 28 (UPI) -- Spotify on Monday introduced a COVID-19 content advisory tab on podcasts, a long-awaited feature the company promised after controversy over Joe Rogan's podcast led to an exodus of entertainers from the platform.

The small blue tab on Spotify directs users to its coronavirus information hub. Rogan and Spotify had been hit with complaints that vaccine misinformation was spread on The Joe Rogan Experience.

The Spotify COVID-19 hub will lead users to authoritative sources like the World Health Organization and the National Health Service in Britain.

Musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell pulled their work from Spotify along with author Brene Brown over Rogan's COVID-19-related podcasts.

Spotify has not released a statement on the tab and the tech website Engadget said it does not appear to everyone. It said the tab did not appear on services located in Canada as of Monday.

In February, Spotify removed some 79 episodes of Rogan's podcast from 2009 and 2018, before the pandemic began. Rogan has also been criticized for using racial slurs.

He previously faced criticism for referring to transgender female MMA fighter Fallon Fox as a "man" and featuring guests including conspiracy theorist Alex Jones of Infowars and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, who used Rogan's show to argue that Muslim people are inbred.