‘All support to Dr. Baker’: Why PSU, local community continue to rally over professor facing termination


Josh Moyer
Fri, April 29, 2022

More than 75 Penn State students, faculty and community members staged a rally outside Old Main on Thursday afternoon in support of Oliver Baker, an assistant professor facing termination despite a court clearing him of all charges stemming from a scuffle with an anti-vaxx student.

Nearly a dozen organizations, ranging from the State College chapter of the NAACP to both student-based and faculty-based groups, have advocated for Baker’s return to the classroom. Three on-campus rallies have been held so far this calendar year. And members of Penn State’s faculty senate continue to ask questions — Why try to terminate him? Why has this gone on since August? — that the administration says it largely cannot answer because it’s a personnel matter.

The Chronicle of Higher Education shined a national spotlight on the case last month with a 6,000-word story. But little has changed since Baker was placed on paid administrative leave after the August 2021 incident — and anger and frustration among Baker’s supporters continue to mount.

“Every faculty member at Penn State at every campus should be alarmed, should be profoundly disturbed, by this case because it is every bit as outrageous as it looks,” said Michael Bérubé, a former chair of the faculty senate and a current member of several faculty-based organizations.

Questions about termination process

The controversy all stems from a faculty-organized pro-vaccine rally on the University Park campus Aug. 27. According to a criminal complaint, Baker was accused of trying to take the sign of a counter-protester — whom organizers characterized as “being physically aggressive toward peaceful attendees” — before pulling him to the ground and injuring him during the ensuing scuffle.

Two misdemeanor charges of simple assault and disorderly conduct were dropped in October after Baker’s lawyer described the counter-protester as having “antagonistic, menacing and aggressive behavior.” In November, Centre County District Judge Steven Lachman found Baker not guilty on his lone remaining charge, a summary count of harassment. But Penn State still opted to begin the preliminary termination proceedings, a move that rankled students and faculty alike.

“I am completely dumbfounded that this has dragged out for eight months,” said Rebecca Tarlau, an associate professor of education and a member of Coalition for a Just University. “We thought that the administration was waiting for the district attorney and local court to make the decision. But then Baker was exonerated on all charges several months ago. Why has the AC70 termination process not proceeded in a timely and transparent manner? Why are we heading into summer and there still has not been a hearing?”

Said the emcee of the event, a younger man who wore a dark face mask and did not reveal his identity: “Students, faculty and community members are united in their defense of Dr. Baker, their outrage over the administration’s corrupted mishandling of the AC70 dismissal procedure against this innocent professor and their commitment to have Dr. Baker immediately returned to his full university position.”

According to the university’s AC70 dismissal procedure, the Standing Joint Committee on Tenure — a jury of sorts — is supposed to convene within 60 days after the appropriate dean has referred the matter to the committee. The Chronicle of Higher Ed reported the College of the Liberal Arts dean told Baker on Jan. 10 that such a letter would be sent if Baker did not resign by Jan. 18. Baker refused.

Although the proceedings are largely veiled in secrecy — and the committee only provides a recommendation to the university president, who makes the final determination — it does not appear as if the committee has yet met.
Allegations and disruptions

The student group Students Against Sexist Violence (SASV), which primarily organized Thursday’s rally, saw several members burst into Tuesday’s faculty senate meeting, where they began loudly talking over speakers and demanding answers about the AC70 termination process. The hybrid meeting cut off audio so online listeners couldn’t hear what was going on, after the faculty chair began playing music on her phone in front of the microphone to drown out the group’s speech.

SASV passed around flyers explaining the issue — and some faculty senate members angrily asked one official at the meeting whether the allegation about the delayed process was true and, if it was, why that was the case.

Provost and executive vice president Nick Jones acknowledged that a member on the five-person committee had recused themselves. But he also alluded to language in the termination process that says a meeting shall occur within 60 days “if reasonably possible.”

“As you know, in our processes, things don’t always go according to script,” Jones said Tuesday. “And when that happens, we have to be flexible so that we can fairly represent the interests of all parties.”

Shortly after the outburst, university President Eric Barron released an open letter titled, “The importance of informed, respectful discourse.” Barron was not present at Tuesday’s faculty senate meeting and did not accept SASV’s invitation to speak at Thursday’s rally.

Students and faculty at the rally alleged that the university’s treatment of Baker came in retaliation for him advocating for a vaccine mandate, which the university had long opposed before the fall semester. Another speaker wondered aloud if the university was simply trying to run out the clock, making a decision over the summer when many of Baker’s supporters would not be on campus.

“We students will never know what happens during this AC70 process,” said one SASV organizer, who obscured her face with a gray neck gaiter and blue Dickies hat. “But we do know that if Dr. Baker can be fired based on disproven allegations while advocating for employee rights, then it seems that the retort of ‘shared governance’ is an illusion used to provide legal cover for retaliation against professors critical of administrative policy.”

Two oversized yellow banners, with large red text, were unfurled and held on both sides of the speakers’ podium that read, “Barron Listen To The People Don’t Fire Dr. Baker.” Before the rally, a large red banner was staked in the ground that read, “All support to Dr. Baker,” while scattered attendees held white placards with sayings such as, “No justice, no peace” and “Organize! Fight back!”
Groups, organizations band together

Thursday’s rally was contrasted by dozens of Penn State seniors posing for graduation photos near Old Main, so that students holding the large banners often had to side-step to allow women in white dresses and men in dress shirts to slide through.

“That’s what it should be about today, right?” asked Michelle Rodino-Colocino, president of the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors. “It should be about taking pictures and your graduation. ... I’m sad we have to meet like this; on the other hand, it’s really good to meet like this — the fact we have nine organizations representing students, representing faculty and representing community members.

“We are asking the administration to do the right thing.”

Last month’s rally featured a surprise march through downtown State College and culminated with entering Old Main. This time, the rally took a more subdued approach — although at least a half-dozen university police officers were stationed around Old Main. Two officers stood near the crowd, with assistant vice president for student affairs Danny Shaha situated behind the dozens in attendance.

The most tense moment of the rally came when a student speaker spotted Shaha and asked, from the podium, what he was doing there. “I’m just watching,” Shaha quipped, smiling. The student speaker later shouted, “We don’t appreciate you insulting our intelligence.”

Danny Shaha, assistant vice president of student rights & responsibilities at Penn State, reacts being booed Thursday during during a rally to protest the termination process for professor Oliver Baker.

SASV — whose members often shield their identities with sunglasses and face masks — primarily organized Thursday’s event, but eight other organizations also co-sponsored the 90-minute rally that featured more than 10 speakers. Those other groups included Alleghenies Abolition, American Association of University Professors (local chapter), Central Pennsylvania United, Centre County Democratic Socialists of America, Coalition for a Just University, Liberal Arts Collective at Penn State, NAACP (local chapter) and Schreyer Gender Equity Coalition.

Jennifer Black, of the local NAACP chapter, was one of the first to speak and helped set the tone Thursday.

“As the nation’s oldest and largest civil rights organization, we know what it feels like to face persecution from powerful institutional forces,” she said. “We know what the guises of injustice look like. We know the tactics and tricks of the system. Let it be known today, and make no mistake about it: The State College chapter of NAACP knows which side we are on and where we stand. We stand with you, Dr. Baker.”

At the end of the rally, held on a sunny but chilly day on the last week before finals, the emcee shouted, “One last time: All support to Dr. Baker!” And, before dispersing, the crowd yelled back once more.

“All support to Dr. Baker!”

Virus might be behind mystery child hepatitis cases: US agency


CDC recommends children stay up to date on their vaccinations and that parents and caregivers practice preventive actions such as hand hygiene, avoiding people who are sick, covering coughs and sneezes, and avoiding touch the eyes, nose or mouth

(AFP/Kevin C. Cox) 


Fri, April 29, 2022

Nine young children from Alabama affected by a mysterious hepatitis (inflammation of the liver) all tested positive for a common pathogen called adenovirus 41, a study by the US health agency said Friday.

The children, who ranged in age from about one to six years old and were all previously healthy, are among around 170 cases across 11 countries in recent weeks, according to the World Health Organization. Another state, Wisconsin, is investigating a death.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's new paper is specifically about the cluster in Alabama, even as investigations continue nationwide.

"At this time, we believe adenovirus may be the cause for these reported cases, but other potential environmental and situational factors are still being investigated," the CDC said in a statement that accompanied the study.

Adenovirus 41 is known to cause gastroenteritis in children, but "it is not usually known as a cause of hepatitis in otherwise healthy children," the agency said.

However, an investigation had ruled out other common exposures, including Covid; hepatitis viruses A, B, and C (the most common causes of hepatitis in the US); autoimmune hepatitis and Wilson disease.

The nine Alabama cases occurred between October 2021 and February 2022. Three experienced acute liver failure, two of whom required liver transplants.

"All patients have recovered or are recovering, including the two transplant recipients," the paper said.

Six tested positive for Epstein-Barr Virus but did not have antibodies, which implies an earlier infection, not active.

Before hospitalization, most of the children experienced vomiting and diarrhea, while some experienced upper respiratory symptoms. During hospitalization, most had yellowing eyes and yellowing skin (jaundice), and enlarged livers.

Last week, the CDC issued a health alert to notify doctors and public health authorities to be on the lookout for similar cases.

Wisconsin is investigating four cases, including two children who had severe outcomes, one who needed a liver transplant and one fatality. Cases have also been reported in Illinois and elsewhere.

CDC recommends children stay up to date on their vaccinations and that parents and caregivers practice preventive actions such as hand hygiene, avoiding people who are sick, covering coughs and sneezes, and avoiding touching the eyes, nose or mouth.

Adenoviruses are commonly spread by close personal contact, respiratory droplets and surfaces. There are more than 50 types of adenoviruses, which most commonly cause the cold, but also many other diseases.

ia/to

Bolsonaro responds after DiCaprio urges Brazil youth to vote

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, seen here at Netflix's 'Don't Look Up' premiere in December 2021 in New York, elicited a sarcastic response from far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, after calling for Brazil's youth to turn out in this year's election

 (AFP/Mike Coppola)

Fri, April 29, 2022

Jair Bolsonaro clapped back Friday after US actor and environmentalist Leonardo DiCaprio urged Brazilian youth to register to vote in the country's October elections -- implying they should vote against the far-right president.

The Hollywood star had posted a message on Twitter Thursday saying that "Brazil is home to the Amazon and other ecosystems critical to climate change.

"What happens there matters to us all and youth voting is key in driving change for a healthy planet," he said, adding a link with more information on how to register to vote in the upcoming poll.

Bolsonaro, who has been widely criticized by environmentalist groups, responded Friday with irony.

"Thanks for your support, Leo! It's really important to have every Brazilian voting in the coming elections," Bolsonaro tweeted in English.

"Our people will decide if they want to keep our sovereignty on the Amazon or to be ruled by crooks who serve foreign special interest."

DiCaprio has openly criticized Bolsonaro since he took office in 2019, particularly for his management of fires in the Amazon rainforest.

The actor has also joined initiatives launched by various NGOs calling for all investment in Brazil to hinge on firm commitments from the government to preserve the Amazon.

Bolsonaro has rejected these demands, which he says infringe on Brazilian sovereignty.

Since Bolsonaro took office, average annual deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has increased by more than 75 percent from the previous decade, according to official figures.

His government is also accused of allowing rampant deforestation -- including illegal burning by gold miners, farmers and timber traffickers -- while environmental regulation agencies have seen budget cuts.

raa/mel/lab/am/to/jh

How Russia is framing the war: Critical race theory, organ harvesting and Nazis

Alexander Nazaryan

·Senior White House Correspondent

Thu, April 28, 2022,

“Americans are accustomed to walking on scorched earth,” Nikolai Patrushev, one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most loyal and most powerful aides inside the Kremlin, said in a jarringly expansive interview with Rossiyskaya Gazeta on Tuesday that touched on a variety of cultural and geopolitical grievances.

Using the kind of Soviet-era rhetoric that is more reminiscent of 1982 than 2022, Patrushev aimed his remarks not only at ordinary Russians but also, perhaps, to war dissenters in the West.

At other times, Patrushev seemed to borrow from the attacks that conservative Americans use against what they perceive as excesses in public education. (Russian media regularly amplifies the voices of Fox News host Tucker Carlson and other Biden administration critics seen as useful to the Kremlin’s purposes; Ria Novosti, the state news agency, ran a column this week praising Rod Dreher of the American Conservative for predicting that what he described as “transgender madness” would lead to “the collapse of Western civilization.”)

A couple in front of the Kremlin's Spasskaya Tower and St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. (Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images)

“Long ago, America divided the whole world into vassals and enemies,” he asserted, giving voice to the embittered views of a Kremlin inner circle that finds itself besieged by war losses and international condemnation. “From childhood in the United States they have it hammered into their heads that America is a shining city on a hill, while the rest of humanity is just a proving ground for [military] experiments and resource extraction.”

Patrushev predicted that Ukrainian dreams of unity would come to naught because “nationalist battalions” would sow division and lead Russia’s neighbor to shatter “into several nations.” Regions of eastern Ukraine, as well as the Crimean Peninsula, have been under Russian occupation since 2014, and the only real separatist movement that has threatened Ukrainian unity in recent years is the one backed by Moscow.

If nothing else, the interview offered a view into Putin’s thinking. Even as the invasion that began in late February descends into the kind of protracted confrontation that Russia’s generals promised their leader they could avoid, the official line remains as ambitious and bellicose as ever, rife with historical inaccuracies, lurid nationalist fantasies and arguments intended to fragment a Western coalition whose durability has surprised the Kremlin.

For his influence over the nation’s vast security and military apparatus, Patrushev has been called “the most dangerous man in Russia” by Kremlin analyst Mark Galeotti. He has pushed for an increasingly aggressive foreign policy ever since a KGB psychic was said to have revealed to him that the late U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had dreamed of conquering Russia for its natural resources.

Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev delivers a speech at the 2021 Moscow Conference on International Security. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP)

Putin also subscribes to the Albright conspiracy theory. A defender of American power, Albright died last week and was laid to rest in Washington on Wednesday.

Paranormal fantasies aside, there was no shortage of conspiratorial fearmongering in Patrushev’s interview. He said Ukrainian refugees would reintroduce “long-forgotten diseases” and revive “the shadow market for the purchase of human organs” while also, in his view, demanding to remain in the countries that have accepted them but refusing to work. (Most of the Ukrainians who have fled west long to return home.)

The xenophobic view of refugees fleeing cities ravaged by the shelling of civilian targets is sharply at odds with the Kremlin’s invocations of Russian-Ukrainian brotherhood. Defending the invasion, Patrushev said it had been necessary to conduct a “de-Nazification” and “demilitarization” of Ukraine “due to the fact that a weapons-saturated Ukraine poses a threat to Russia, including from the development and use of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.”

Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal — part of its Soviet legacy — in 1994, as part of what is known as the Budapest memorandum. Fictitious reports that Hunter Biden, the president’s son, and Jewish American philanthropist George Soros are funding bioweapons laboratories in Ukraine are commonplace in Russian media. The State Department has called such reports “total nonsense.”

Ukraine is not known to possess chemical weapons. Russia, meanwhile, helped the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad conceal his own use of chemical weapons.

Syrian President Bashar Assad in an interview with Agence France-Presse in Damascus in 2016. (Joseph Eid/AFP via Getty Images)

Russian propaganda often reflects charges made against the country back onto Russia’s adversaries. It also seeks to overwhelm its audience with a relentless procession of lies that are difficult to sort through, especially in a nation where access to information is already tightly restricted.

At one point, the nameless Rossiyskaya Gazeta interviewer tried to goad Patrushev into saying that “Western technology” was used by Nazi Germany for development of Zyklon B, the deadly gas it employed to exterminate Jews during the Holocaust. While the former intelligence chief did not exactly take the bait, he came close, reminding his listeners that it was on IBM’s “calculating machines that the Nazis kept records and planned the processes of extermination of people in concentration camps.”

The Kremlin has argued that the West has repeatedly been caught sleeping on a rise of fascism, most recently in Ukraine. More than eight of 10 Russians back Putin’s unprovoked attack on Ukraine, according to the Levada Center. Support is especially strong among older Russians, who are bound to remember the pride at defeating Hitler that sustained the Soviet Union in the postwar decades.

Patrushev appeared to be appealing to these supporters during Tuesday’s interview, as well as to Westerners concerned about the rise of right-wing nationalism, an all-of-the-above approach that is another hallmark of Russian propaganda, which tends to show little interest in coherence. The goal, instead, is to find sympathetic Westerners wherever they can be found, from the antiwar left to the reactionary far right.

Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting in the Kremlin on April 20. (Mikhail TereshchenkoSputnik/AFP via Getty Images)

The specter of Nazism has featured especially prominently in these efforts when it comes to Ukraine, a country that lost millions of residents during World War II. “Europe is already facing the intensification of officially prohibited manifestations of fascism and neo-Nazism,” Patrushev said, predicting a “revival of Nazi ideas in Europe, to manifestations that not so long ago were considered impossible.”

Ukraine is governed by a Jewish president and does not have any claims to territorial expansion, as Hitler did. Instead, it was Russia that invaded Ukraine first in 2014, then again earlier this year. And it was Putin who helped fund far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen’s political campaigns, not Ukraine’s Volodomyr Zelensky, who had family members perish in the Holocaust. Others served in the Red Army to defend the Soviet Union.

Few in Moscow are as thoroughly equipped to speak for Putin as Patrushev, who has been by his side for half a century since they served together in the Soviet intelligence services in the early 1970s. Patrushev’s appropriately opaque official title — “secretary of the Security Council” — belies the power he wields inside a cloistered Kremlin.

Galeotti, the Russia analyst and host of the podcast “In Moscow’s Shadows,” has described him as the director of national intelligence, the national security adviser and the chief political strategist all rolled into one. A single person in charge of a portfolio that large in scope would be unthinkable in the West but is not seen as unusual in a country whose flirtation with democracy hardly survived a single decade.

Patrushev is believed to have been involved in the 1999 apartment bombings that were likely ordered by Putin as a pretext for starting the second Chechen war. Early success on the battlefield helped pave the way for Putin to win Russia’s presidency in 2000. After that, the Boris Yeltsin-era experiment with Western-style liberalism was quickly concluded in favor of the autocratic arrangements that remain in place to this day.

An apartment block in the Pechatniki suburb southeast of Moscow after an explosion destroyed it in 1999. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

Patrushev was the face of the official response to the bombings, which blamed Chechen terrorists. He was, at the time, a director of the KGB successor agency FSB, which Putin had also headed, albeit much more briefly. When, in 2006, the dissident Alexander Litvinenko was fatally poisoned in London with a radioactive isotope that had been slipped into his tea, it was almost certainly at Patrushev’s direction, a British investigation would later conclude.

"Patrushev is the most hawkish hawk, thinking the West has been out to get Russia for years," Russian politics expert Ben Noble of University College London told the BBC earlier this year.

At least some of Patrushev’s animosity toward the West appears to be rooted in the paranormal vision of KGB psychic Georgy Rogozin. According to Guardian journalist Oleg Kashin, Rogozin “used a photograph to penetrate Madeleine Albright’s subconscious, where he discovered thoughts about the need to strip Russia of Siberia and the Far East.”

The United States has emerged as the top Russian adversary in the past two months, a replay of the state of international affairs at the time Patrushev and Putin were young KGB officers. In many ways, both men are much more comfortable operating on a Cold War footing than under the rules of 21st century democracy.

On Tuesday, Patrushev even appeared to wade into American culture wars over critical race theory and gender identification, denouncing the “the so-called progressive models of education” that he said had become the norm in the United States and had no place in Russia.

“In the USA, for example, many people already say that in mathematics lessons one should sing and dance, because solving problems and equations depresses and discriminates against someone,” Patrushev said, praising Soviet education as the finest in world history.

He also condemned the internet, which he said can serve as a font of “politicized disinformation.”

‘Chickenshit’ Move: Columbia Quietly Cuts Ties With Dr. Oz

Roger Sollenberger
Fri, April 29, 2022

Riccardo Savi/Getty Images for Concordia Summit

After years of criticism, Columbia University Medical Center has finally—quietly—cut public ties with celebrity doctor turned Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz.

The acclaimed teaching hospital, where Oz held senior positions like vice chair of surgery and director of integrated medicine for years, stripped his personal pages from their website in mid-January.

The move came a day after HuffPost reported on Jan. 12 that Columbia had established a new distance from Oz, changing his title to “professor emeritus.” The truth, however, was that Columbia had made that change years ago, as HuffPost later clarified in an updated version of its article.

But what HuffPost seemed to get wrong actually set off a chain of events, ironically, making the post right—albeit a day too early.

John Oliver Reveals How He’s Been Trolling Dr. Oz for Years

The next day, on Jan. 13, as a Columbia page documenting website modifications shows, the university removed Oz’s profile from the site and disconnected hyperlinks to that bio on a number of pages that mention Oz. (One page was modified on Friday, shortly after The Daily Beast emailed a communications official for comment.)

His name no longer appears in website searches for doctors with the school’s Irving Medical Center. A Columbia faculty listing still says Oz has an office, along with the role of special lecturer—though not “professor emeritus.” But as with a handful of other names on the list, Oz’s listing no longer links to his faculty page, as it did one week before he launched his campaign. (Nearly every other faculty member without a link is no longer affiliated with the medical center; one of them died last year.)

The outgoing message on Oz’s voicemail for the listed number is quite dated, directing callers to medical services when Oz stopped taking patients four years ago. The message also advertises audience tickets to his now-extinct daytime TV show.

Columbia’s affiliation with Oz had been under fire long before he launched a surprise Senate run in late November. In 2015, when Oz testified before the Senate about his endorsement of shady “miracle” cures, a group of some of the country’s top medical professionals sent Columbia a blistering letter demanding the renowned medical school fire the Oprah-blessed daytime star.

“Dr. Oz has repeatedly shown disdain for science and for evidence-based medicine, as well as baseless and relentless opposition to the genetic engineering of food crops,” the physicians wrote. “Worst of all, he has manifested an egregious lack of integrity by promoting quack treatments and cures in the interest of personal financial gain.”

Dr. Daniel Summers, a Boston-area pediatrician and writer, called Columbia’s stealth purge a “chickenshit” move.

“Their handling of his status there is a massive blot on their reputation. What a chickenshit thing to do,” Summers told The Daily Beast.

Fainthearted as it may seem, Columbia’s move did wipe its public connection with Oz. And that, Summers observed, is more than can be said for an arguably more influential cultural institution: talk show legend Oprah Winfrey.

The Backlash Over Trump’s Dr. Oz Endorsement Shows His Hold on the GOP Is Slipping

“Were it not for Oprah, Oz would have played out his career as an eminent and widely respected cardiothoracic surgeon, and everyone would have been better off,” he said. “His celebrity, and thus his candidacy, stems directly from her own fame and her promotion of him.”

As Oz “continues to debase himself” in pursuit of the GOP nomination in Pennsylvania, Summers said, it is “long past time for her to acknowledge her role in making him what he is, and make some attempt to stop the damage he is causing by repudiating him.”

At one time a distinguished thoracic surgeon, Oz long ago morphed into a controversial public figure—largely on Oprah’s watch.

He parlayed Oprah’s endorsement and his guest appearances on her show into his own daytime program, where he built a multimillion-dollar brand as a celebrity doctor. And this year, he parlayed that success into another endorsement—from ex-President Donald Trump, who earlier this month backed Oz’s Senate bid in Pennsylvania.

Along the way, however, Oz drew criticism from the medical community, including accusations of “quackery” for espousing false claims about genetically modified foods and pushing “sham” weight-loss supplements to fatten his own wallet.

“‘You may think magic is make-believe, but this little bean has scientists saying they’ve found the magic weight-loss cure for every body type,” Oz said in a 2012 episode of his show. The secret: “It’s green coffee extract.’”

Three years later, that exact quote was thrown back in his face when he answered to the Senate for hawking that product, among a number of spurious “miracles.”

Oz didn’t do much actual answering in that hearing, however. His evasiveness flustered Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Insurance.

“I’ve tried to do a lot of research in preparation for this trial and the scientific community is almost monolithic against you,” McCaskill said.

The “quackery” continued unabated.

As the COVID pandemic descended in spring 2020, Oz went on cable news to stump for hydroxychloroquine, an unproven and occasionally dangerous treatment that became one of then-President Trump’s favorite fixations.

Trumpworld Goes Into Meltdown After Trump Endorses Dr. Oz

The Daily Beast reported that, between March 24 and April 5, the physician appeared on Fox News 21 times, including at a virtual forum where he pumped up hydroxychloroquine and spoke with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. He also advised White House officials, reportedly at Trump’s personal request.

In late March of that year, he revealed on Fox & Friends his involvement with a hydroxychloroquine trial.

“My biggest challenge was getting pills, and we finally, thankfully got enough to do a trial and a couple of hundred people, but America is going to want pills,” he said.

Earlier this month, The New York Post reported that Oz had purchased, out of pocket, 2,070 doses of the anti-malarial drug to contribute to that unnamed study. A campaign spokesperson told the outlet that Oz had initially offered $250,000 to fund Columbia University’s clinical trial, but after his own employer rejected the proposal, Oz said he gave the pills to a hospital he would not name.

Oz cited the pandemic as his motivation to run for office, writing in his op-ed announcement that a large number of COVID deaths in the United States—more than 750,000 at the time—had been “preventable.”

“Dissenting opinions from leading scholars were ridiculed and canceled so their ideas could not be disseminated,” Oz wrote, blaming the government for instituting policies that had “caused unnecessary suffering.”

Two and a half years prior, Oz suggested on Fox News in the middle of the pandemic’s first wave that a 2-3 percent bump in national COVID mortality might be an acceptable trade for reopening all U.S. schools.

The Daily Beast reached out to the Oz campaign, Columbia University, and Oprah, but did not receive a response.

A Boston doctor says it's 'long past time' for Oprah to acknowledge how she helped make Dr. Oz who he is, and 'make some attempt to stop the damage he's causing"

Sarah Al-Arshani

Sat, April 30, 2022, 

Media personality and physician Dr. Mehmet Oz (left center) and media personality Oprah Winfrey (right center) cut the ribbon to signal the start of the "Live Your Best Life Walk" to celebrate O, The Oprah Magazine's 10th Anniversary at Intrepid Welcome Center on May 9, 2010 in New York City.Jemal Countess/Getty Images

• Medical professionals have long accused Dr. Oz of promoting "quack" cures on unfounded evidence.

• Oz, now running for Senate, gained fame after serving as a health expert on Oprah Winfrey's show.

• A pediatrician told the Daily Beast it's time for Winfrey to acknowledge her role in Oz's career.

A pediatrician based in Boston area said it's time for Oprah Winfrey to acknowledge the role she played in Dr. Mehmet Oz's career and speak out against him as he bids for a Senate seat, the Daily Beast reported.

"Were it not for Oprah, Oz would have played out his career as an eminent and widely respected cardiothoracic surgeon, and everyone would have been better off," Dr. Daniel Summers said. "His celebrity, and thus his candidacy, stems directly from her own fame and her promotion of him."

Summers' comments come as the Daily Beast reported that Columbia University's medical school has quietly distanced ties with Oz, who has long been criticized by medical experts for promoting unfounded medical advice on his show, The Dr. Oz Show.

Before getting his own show in 2009, Oz grew in popularity thanks to his role as a health expert on "The Oprah Winfrey Show," for several years.

NBC News reported that in 2020, Oz promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug to treat COVID-19 despite lack of evidence and concern among medical experts.

The New York Times reported in December 2021, that the British Medical Journal analyzed 80 medical recommendations on Oz's show and found that less than half had been supported by evidence.

Summers' told the Beast that it's "long past time" for Winfrey to "acknowledge her role in making him what he is, and make some attempt to stop the damage he is causing by repudiating him."

Oz's show was canceled after Oz announced his bid as a GOP candidate for the US Senate in Pennsylvania. Oz has also been endorsed by former President Donald Trump, who also touted unfounded coronavirus cures during his presidency.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Why this 11-year-old transgender activist is fighting for the right to medical care in Texas: 'I have to speak up'

Brittany Jones-Cooper

·Reporter

Thu, April 28, 2022, 

In the U.S. there are currently 238 proposed anti-LGBTQ bills in state legislatures. More than half target transgender people and, in states like Texas, they specifically target gender-affirming care for trans youth.

But fighting for equality has become a mission for Kai Shappley, an 11-year-old transgender activist who says her identity is not up for debate.

“I was always a girl,” the Texas-native tells Yahoo Life. “I was about 3 when I realized my mom and some of the people around me didn't know who I was. It took a little bit, obviously, but at about 4 and a half, my family and I came out publicly.”

While her family has always loved and supported Kai, others in their Texas community did not. In 2016, her mother Kimberly fought back when an elementary school in Pearland, Texas refused to let Kai use the girl's restroom. That same year, when Kai was 5 years-old, Kimberly testified before Texas lawmakers to oppose bills that would limit the rights of her child and other trans youth. With her daughter sitting on her lap, Kimberly declared that she was a "Republican, a Christian and the mother of a transgender child."

"I was really proud of her, honestly. Just seeing how she went up there and she started talking, I was like, 'That is my mom. That is a very powerful woman,'" says Shappley. "If it weren't for her, I probably wouldn't have found my own voice. That moment happened and I was like, you know what? I have to speak up. I have to start talking too."

In 2018, Kimberly and her children moved out of Pearland to a different city, where the school is more inclusive.

Since that moment, Shappley has become an outspoken activist for trans rights. Along with her mother, she has traveled around the country sharing her story at LGBTQ rallies, and has pushed for lawmakers to reject bills that target the transgender community.

At 8, Shappley got an opportunity to use her voice in front of lawmakers. That's when she went to Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. and shared her story with several representatives. Then, in April 2021, Shappley confidently sat in front of the Texas Senate Committee to share her experiences as a transgender child. She was there to protest Senate Bill 1646, which would have banned doctors from providing gender-affirming care to transgender children in the state. The bill failed, and Shappley’s testimony went viral.

“To the people that can't get the treatment that they need, and they have no way to work around it, it can be very harmful. It can make harmful changes to their body that can never be erased,” says Shappley, recalling the experience. “I knew that I had to do something to stop that.”

“I have a pretty loud mouth,” she adds. “My story is important, and it's my mom's job to worry. It's my job to tell my story. I'm not supposed to worry,” says Shappley.

While Bill 1646 was struck down, the fight for trans rights in Texas continues to make national headlines. In February, Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton classified gender-affirming surgery for trans youth as "child abuse" that required an investigation from the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. Families of trans youth filed lawsuits, and a Texas judge declared the directive to be unconstitutional. There is currently a halt on any parental investigations until at least July, when a trial will be held.

Kai Shappley protesting in front of the Texas capitol in 2021. (Photo: Instagram @kai_shappley)

Outside of her activism, Kai is just like every other 11-year-old kid. She likes to sew, ride her bike and listen to music. She loves fashion and cats and wants to meet Dolly Parton one day. She’s also pursuing a career as an actress. In 2020, she earned a role on the Babysitter’s Club reboot, and hopes that opportunity will be the first of many in the entertainment industry.

“I hope that she [Kai] is a successful, rich, famous actress, and that she got her mom that little ranch in the middle of nowhere that she wanted. And I hope that she's able to spread peace to everybody around her,” says Kai of her hopes and dreams.

In the meantime, the fourth grader encourages everyone to educate themselves on trans issues and use their own gifts and talents to protect trans children. She’s moved by the community of support surrounding her, and feels motivated to make lasting change for other kids.

“Knowing that I'm inspiring other people is inspiring me to keep on inspiring people,” says Shappley. “No matter what anybody tells you, there are more people for you than against you, and who aren't trans."

—Video produced by Jacquie Cosgrove

Largest U.S. wildfire rages out of control in New Mexico


Drought-driven wildfire leaves "moonscape" in New Mexico

Fri, April 29, 2022
By Andrew Hay

MORA, N.M. (Reuters) -Firefighters in New Mexico failed on Friday to pin back the flames of the United States' largest wildfire, which is burning perilously close to a string of mountain villages.

The blaze is the most destructive of dozens in the U.S. Southwest that are more widespread and burning earlier than normal in the year due to climate change, scientists say.

Thousands of people in the Mora valley, about 40 miles (64 km) northeast of Santa Fe, prepared to evacuate as smoke billowed from forest around the nearby farming community of Ledoux.

High winds blew embers over a mile, spreading a wildfire that has scorched about 75,000 acres (30,351 hectares), or 117 square miles (303 sq km), of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains since April 6, destroying hundreds of homes and structures.


"It looks very scary out there," incident commander Carl Schwope told a briefing. "With the rate of spread, it's very difficult for us to get any fire control."

Winds were expected to blow from the south on Saturday, pushing the blaze towards villages such as Mora, as well as the city of Las Vegas, with a population of 14,000, fire officials said.

"It's coming, and it's here," said Mora County sheriff's official Americk Padilla, urging residents to evacuate to the towns of Taos and Angel Fire if requested.

More than two decades of extreme drought have turned forested mountains and valleys into a tinderbox, said fire expert Stewart Turner.

"It's moving a lot faster than we anticipated," Turner said of the blaze. "This is a very, very serious fire."

Locals lashed out at the U.S. Forest Service for a deliberate, "controlled burn" meant to reduce fire risk that inadvertently started part of the blaze.

"The U.S. Forest Service needs to be held accountable," said Skip Finley, a former Mora County commissioner, as he loaded his car to evacuate his home.

(Reporting by Andrew Hay in Mora, New Mexico; Editing by Aurora Ellis and Clarence Fernandez)

"Unprecedented": New maps​ show nearly all of the West is in drought

CBS News
Fri, April 29, 2022

In an unprecedented move, Southern California officials declared a water shortage emergency and asked roughly 6 million residents to limit all outdoor watering to just once a week.

"We knew climate change would stress our water supplies and we've been preparing for it but we did not know it would happen this fast," said Gloria Gray, chairwoman of the Metropolitan Water District Board of Directors.

The latest government maps show nearly all of the West is in drought, and 95% of California is suffering severe or extreme drought.

"This is real. This is serious. This is unprecedented," said Adel Hagekhalil, general manager for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

The latest government map drought. / Credit: droughtmonitor.unl.edu

California is not alone as reservoirs across the West are draining.

Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the nation formed by the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River, needs a new pump to ensure water can flow to Las Vegas.

"The problem with climate change is that it takes all the historical patterns and kind of shifts them," NASA scientist Dr. JT Reager told CBS News' Ben Tracy.

Reager said the West is in a 22-year megadrought, as climate change makes it hotter and drier.

"We're just starting to see the dominoes fall. It's drier, we're starting to see less water in our reservoirs, and we have fires, and in California, there's just this series of consequences that we anticipate," said Reager.

N. American oil companies scramble to find workers despite boom



 An aerial view of a DWS Snubbing crew performing an Oil & Gas intervention on a well site located in the heart of the Appalachian Basin

Thu, April 28, 2022
By Liz Hampton, Stephanie Kelly and Nia Williams

(Reuters) - When Jeremy Davis was laid off from his oilfield job in Texas in 2020, he did not want to leave the industry after 17 years in oil and gas.

But his next jobs brought one mishap after another. He was hospitalized for almost a week following a shift at a chemical manufacturing facility; another company he worked for never paid him, leaving him short $5,000.

"There comes a point and time where you also get extremely frustrated with the unpredictability and (lack of) stability," said Davis, 38, who now works in construction closer to his home and family near Austin, Texas.

Davis says he would be open to returning to energy, but for now, he is one of thousands of workers in the United States and Canada who have left oil and gas jobs, put off by arduous conditions, remote locations, and insufficient compensation, or lured to the renewables sector as the world transitions to cleaner energy.

Governments are pushing oil and gas producers to increase output with prices hovering around $100 a barrel amid a worldwide supply shortage. The shortage of workers is limiting how much producers in the United States and Canada can increase oil output this year as governments try to find ways to offset the effect of lost Russian barrels following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Oil workers left the industry in droves after the COVID-19 pandemic started. Now, the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen to 3.6%, just a hair above the pre-pandemic low, but there are still roughly 100,000 fewer oil and gas workers now in the country than before the pandemic.

Oil industry employment in Canada has rebounded more swiftly, which has allowed workers to drive a harder bargain in negotiations for benefit and wage packages as companies try to maintain their workforce.

"At a job fair in a place like San Antonio, pre-COVID, maybe 200 people would show up. Now it's 50 or 100," said Andy Hendricks, chief executive of Patterson-UTI Energy, which is currently running about a sixth of the 695 drilling rigs operating in the United States.

His company may hire another 3,000 workers this year after hiring back 3,000 in 2021, and even has recruiters set up at a shopping mall in Williston, North Dakota, to find potential workers.

HELP WANTED

Canadian producer Peyto Explorations and Development Corp would drill more wells if they could staff more rigs, said CEO Darren Gee. Calgary-based Peyto produces 98,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day of oil and natural gas.

"We probably would increase the capital budget this year if we could get people," Gee said, adding that new workers often lack experience. He pointed to the University of Calgary's move to suspend its oil and gas engineering program last year as an example of why the industry is struggling for new talent.

Employment in the U.S. oilfield services and equipment sector was nearly 609,000 in March, the highest since September 2021, but still below pre-pandemic levels of about 707,000, according to the Energy Workforce and Technology Council.

Mark Marmo, CEO of Deep Well Services, an oilfield firm based in Zelienople, Pennsylvania, said fracking work in places like West Texas is currently delayed about two weeks to a month because of a lack of labor.

"We hired 350. If we could hire another 350, we'd put them all to work," he said.

In the mining and logging industries, which includes oil and gas work, an estimated 14,000 workers quit in January, the highest level since early 2020, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. About 13,000 workers were estimated to have quit in February.

"We've had companies in the Permian that have gone out and hired 100 new employees and within six months there's only eight to nine original employees still working," said Tim Tarpley, with the Energy Workforce and Technology Council, a trade group whose members include Halliburton Co and Schlumberger.

U.S. and Canadian production is anticipated to grow even with a tight labor market, but executives said output could surpass expectations if more workers were available.

In the United States, output is expected to grow by about 800,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2022 to average 12 million bpd, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecast, short of 2019's all-time high of 12.3 million bpd. Canada's production, including natural gas liquids, is forecast to rise by 190,000 bpd to 5.75 million bpd, the EIA said.

COMPETING WITH AMAZON

Fewer skilled workers are willing to travel to the remote Canadian oil sands region for turnaround season, when thousands are needed for essential maintenance on oil sands plants, said Terry Parker, executive director of the Building Trades of Alberta, because companies no longer pay a big enough premium for the inconvenience.

Parker said oil sands labor rates ranged from C$30 ($23.78) an hour for less skilled work, to C$50 an hour for high-skilled workers like pipefitters, boilermakers and millwrights.

Unite Here, a union representing hospitality workers in industry accommodation camps, negotiated agreements for better overtime for workers at camps operated by Civeo Corp in the oil sands, the union's Canadian director, Ian Robb, told Reuters.

In March, the union also secured a wage increase of up to 22% for workers at an Atco Ltd camp serving the long-delayed Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion project, according to a news release.

In Alberta, the average weekly wage including overtime for all employees in mining, quarrying and oil and gas extraction is up 7.3% since February 2020, according to data from Statistics Canada.

In the United States, hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory employees are currently about 5% higher on average than the year-ago level, and oilfield wages are due to rise about 10% for the year, according to oilfield consultancy Spears & Associates.

However, average hourly wages in the U.S. oil and gas extraction industry are still below pre-pandemic levels, currently estimated at $45.45 an hour for February 2022, versus $48.37 an hour in February 2020, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Patterson-UTI raised wages last year because of competition from retailers that historically paid less than the oil industry, Hendricks said.

"We're competing against Amazon hiring drivers, or Target with positions in air-conditioned warehouses. It's easier than a drilling rig in west Texas in the summer," he said.

Oil and gas workers leave industry in droves https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/ce/egvbkelekpq/Pasted%20image%201651180865162.png

($1 = 1.2618 Canadian dollars)

(Reporting by Liz Hampton in Denver, Stephanie Kelly in New York and Nia Williams in Calgary; Editing by Marguerita Choy)

'Drivers took white people and animals over us': Indian student recounts racism while fleeing Ukraine

Khier Casino
Fri, April 29, 2022

A student from India who left his family for Ukraine to attend university and find a better job says he experienced discrimination and robbery in the midst of an ongoing war.

Mohammad Sajid, 23, arrived in Kyiv in February to study at the National University of Physical Education and Sport and find a part-time job to be able to support his family in India. But they had no idea that a war would erupt in Ukraine a week later.

"It was hard going as I didn’t know the language and also how things work in Ukraine but one thing was for sure, I had left behind a country that I knew I could never progress in, where a culture of corruption means bribes often matter more than your skill set,” Sajid shared in an essay for Metro.

He and his friends encountered some challenges while trying to escape Ukraine because of the language barrier. He claimed taxis would charge Indians double the price, while white people only paid half.

“The drivers took white people and animals over us,” Sajid wrote. “I felt like an outsider – I had never experienced the scale of discrimination and racism I saw there – it was sickening and heart-breaking.”

Other locals were generous enough to offer money and food during Sajid’s nine-day journey from Kyiv to Lviv. He shared that he was robbed of his clothes and money while attempting to leave Kyiv, but a local Good Samaritan managed to help him escape to a refugee camp in Poland.

“It felt like crossing the border both practically and emotionally – it was quite stressful because I thought I may get stopped and then sent back,” he continued.

Sajid remains at the camp and has since received new clothes, money and food from Khalsa Aid, which provides humanitarian aid in disaster areas and civil conflict zones. He is now searching for a place to live as the camp has limited space, but he says he doesn’t feel Ukraine nor India is safe for him.

Sajid has since been in contact with his family, but he has barely gotten any sleep because of his memories from the first days of trying to flee from Kyiv. He hopes that both Ukrainian people and Indian students stranded in the country get the help and support they need.

“I hope I can find somewhere to go and that my life takes a positive turn but until then I am safe here and am really grateful for the support I have been given so far,” Sajid said.

“While I have concerns about my own future and other students – the main thing I pray for is the end of the war.”