Peruvian shamans gather to make 2023 prophesies
Agence France-Presse
December 29, 2022

Peruvian shamans warned 2023 would be a year of 'many dead' due to natural disasters in North America © Cris BOURONCLE / AFP

A top a sacred hill in Lima, Peruvian shamans scatter coca leaves and flower petals while a snake named Maria slithers over posters of world leaders including Russia's Vladimir Putin and Brazilian president-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

It's the time of year that the shamans beat drums, chant, blow smoke and drink a potent hallucinogenic brew to make their divinations for the 12 months ahead.

What did they see on the proverbial cards for 2023?

The war in Ukraine will end. Brazilian football icon Pele will die. There will be "many dead" due to natural disasters in North America. And Lula will have a difficult start to his third presidential term.

"There will be peace (in Ukraine) this coming year, it will not go beyond August," shaman Cleofe Sedano told AFP after the vibrant ceremony.

Colleague Walter Alarcon, dressed in a colorful poncho and holding a conch that he blows like a bugle, said there would also be "many dead, many natural disasters," in North America.

As for Pele, Sedano said: "All of us in the whole world appreciate him because he was a good football player. We wish that he continues to accompany us, but next year is his appointed date."

Lula, who takes the reins in Brazil on Sunday, will see his mandate start "a little complicated because there will be opponents who will not agree with his thinking," said Alarcon.

"But then things will calm down and Lula will flourish."

The shamans, 13 in total from all over Peru, used the ceremony on the San Cristobal hill Wednesday to pray to the Pachamama Earth Mother goddess and Tayta Inti sun god for a good year ahead.


They spread oranges, tangerines, bananas and apples on colorful blankets on the ground -- symbols of abundance and prosperity -- and write out "Happy 2023" in yellow rose petals.

© 2022 AFP

Italy prompts outrage with clampdown on migrant sea rescuers

DPA
December 29, 2022

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni attends her end of year press conference. 

Fabrizio Corradetti/LPS via ZUMA Press Wire/dpa

The Italian government on Thursday approved a decree to significantly limit the operations of private charity vessels rescuing migrants in the Mediterranean Sea, in an attempt to reduce the flow of people reaching the country's shores.

International aid groups expressed outrage at the measure taken by the right-wing government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

The decree stipulates that after a rescue the vessel must arrive without delay at an assigned port, rather than continue to provide assistance to other migrant boats in distress at sea.

Normally, the ships carry out multiple rescues of people on small boats before seeking a port of call, which is often in Italy.

In addition, migrants and refugees should say while still on the ship whether they want to apply for asylum and, more importantly, in which European Union country, and then fill out the applications.

In case of violations of the new rules, Rome is threatening the captains of the civilian ships with steep fines of up to €50,000 ($53,000). The ships could also be confiscated by authorities and detained in Italian ports.

Meloni said on Thursday at an end-of-year press conference that her government has put the migration issue back on the international agenda.

She also claimed that the decree would make the sea operations of the non-governmental organizations in compliance with international law.

"The Italian government's new decree is an invitation to drown," said Oliver Kulikowski of the German association Sea-Watch, which regularly operates missions in the central Mediterranean.

"Forcing ships into port violates the duty to rescue, should there be more people in distress at sea. We will oppose this attempt to criminalize civilian sea rescue and deprive refugees of their rights."

Doctors Without Borders also slammed the decree.

"We are being forced to leave the rescue zone in the Mediterranean unprotected, which will lead to an increase in the number of deaths," said Marco Bertotto, of the group's Italy office, told La Stampa newspaper.

The operations of civilian ships have long been a thorn in the side of the right-wing in Rome.

In November, an attempt was made to ban two ships from bringing rescued people ashore. Most recently, authorities assigned ships only to very distant ports in order to harass them, according to aid workers.

The Ocean Viking vessel of the group SOS Méditerranée, for example, is currently travelling around 900 nautical miles from southern Italy to Ravenna in the northern Adriatic Sea with 113 rescued people.

The Italian government justifies its action against the organizations with the claim that they attract illegal migration from North Africa and help smugglers in the Mediterranean. The NGOs reject this.

Rome's new rules come amid broader political fights over the EU's response about the life-threatening boat journeys taken by the migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

Pressure on Mediterranean EU nations like Cyprus, Italy, Greece and Malta is growing due to more and more asylum-seekers arriving on their shores. In turn, they have accused other EU countries of not doing their part to shoulder the burden.

Big pharma and GOP allies aim to sabotage Medicare drug price reforms

Jake Johnson, Common Dreams
December 29, 2022

Senator Marco Rubio speaks to the American Enterprise Institute (AFP)


The pharmaceutical industry and its Republican allies in Congress are openly signaling their plans obstruct at every turn as the Biden administration looks to begin implementing a recently passed law that will allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices for the first time in its history.

In November, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and several other Republican senators introduced legislation that would repeal the new prescription drug pricing reforms, which Congress approved earlier this year as part of the Inflation Reduction Act—a measure that Republicans unanimously opposed.


"Though chances of this repeal effort succeeding are vanishingly slim with Democrats holding the Senate and White House, conservative lawmakers and their outside allies want to impede the law's progress before its expansion becomes inevitable," Politicoreported Thursday.

Big Pharma lobbied aggressively against the Medicare drug pricing provisions, hysterically claiming the modest and extremely popular changes could send the U.S. "back into the dark ages of biomedical research."

Speaking to Politico, Rubio echoed the pharmaceutical industry's talking points.

"I want drug prices to be lower but we have to do it in a way that doesn't undermine the creation of new drugs," Rubio said. "Companies are not going to invest in developing new treatments unless they believe they have a chance to make back their money with a profit."

While the drug price reforms are far less ambitious than what progressives wanted—and the specific provision requiring Medicare to negotiate prices for a small number of drugs doesn't take full effect until 2026—the changes could still have a significant impact on costs, given that a small number of medicines make up a sizeable chunk of Medicare's prescription drug spending.

Beginning next year, the law will also require drug companies to pay Medicare a rebate if they raise their drug prices at a faster rate than inflation. Additionally, the law will limit monthly insulin cost-sharing to $35 for people with Medicare Part D starting in 2023.

Politico noted Thursday that the deep-pocketed drug industry—which boasts nearly three registered lobbyists for every member of Congress—is "gearing up to fight the law's implementation, using whatever legal and regulatory tools are available."

Sarah Ryan, a spokesperson for Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), told the outlet that the industry will "keep working to mitigate the law's harm and continue to push for real solutions that will bring financial relief for patients."'

NPRreported in September that pharma lobbyists are likely to take aim at "seemingly technical details" that "could have major implications" for the law, which advocates and Democratic lawmakers hope to build on in the coming years.

According to NPR:

One area ripe for gaming is the formula known as average manufacturer price that Medicaid uses to determine whether companies owe money for hiking prices faster than inflation. The law gives companies ample discretion in how they calculate that average, and firms have used that discretion to include or exclude certain sales to avoid triggering rebate payments. Just one loophole in that formula, which Congress closed in 2019, had cost Medicaid at least $595 million per year in lost rebates.
The Inflation Reduction Act essentially duplicates the language of Medicaid's inflation rebate law, making Medicare now vulnerable to the same loopholes.

Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), who is set to be sworn in as a senator next month, told Politico that "it's going to be really hard to reverse" the drug price reforms once they take effect and begin having a material impact.

"If [negotiation] works in Medicare, it can work in the private market," said Welch, who cautioned that the drug industry is still a strong influence that must be overcome.

“All the contributions they make and all their lobbying money gives them a lot of power," Welch said. "But I think what gives them the most power is that everybody can imagine themselves in a position where someday, somebody they really love is going to need a pharmaceutical drug and won't be able to get it. They play on the fear we all have by basically saying, 'If you make us charge reasonable prices, that'll happen.'"

Welch stressed that he views such fearmongering as "bogus."

Patient advocates have similarly decried the pharmaceutical industry's scare tactics, which are often used to shield companies' power to drive up prices as they please.

"Patients like me and those who live with hemophilia need innovative medicine. But what use is there in developing groundbreaking new drugs if we can’t afford them?" Utah-based advocate Meg Jackson-Drage wrote in a letter to Deseret News earlier this month. "The drug price provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act aren't a political 'sound bite'—they are historic legislation that allow for the innovation we need at prices we can afford."

"Patients fought hard for the reforms in the Inflation Reduction Act—and we won't let Big Pharma and its allies' fearmongering scare us," Jackson-Drage added.

Politico reported Thursday that "Senate Finance Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said his committee will be on the lookout for any political or corporate meddling" with regard to the drug price reforms.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is set to take charge of the Senate's Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, has vowed to use his position to challenge the "incredible greed in the pharmaceutical industry."

One Democratic pharmaceutical lobbyist lamented anonymously to The Washington Post last month that Sanders will "go after [the drug companies] at every turn, and they only have a couple friends left in the caucus anymore, so it's going to be tough."

RIP
Pele, Brazil's sublimely skilled soccer star who charmed the world, dead at 82

By Andrew Downie
2022/12/29

(Reuters) - Pele, the magical Brazilian soccer star who rose from barefoot poverty to become one of the greatest and best-known athletes in modern history, died at the age of 82, his daughter said on Instagram on Thursday.

He had been in and out of hospital in recent months after a tumor was found on his colon.

Pele, whose given name was Edson Arantes do Nascimento, scored a world record 1,281 goals, and is the only player ever to win the World Cup three times.

With sublime skills and a winning smile, he helped make soccer the world's most popular sport and he charmed popes, presidents and Hollywood stars in a seven-decade career as player and ambassador for the sport.

Born on Oct. 23, 1940, in the small Minas Gerais town of Tres Corações, or "Three Hearts", Edson Arantes do Nascimento learned the game from his father, a semi-professional player whose promising career was derailed by a knee injury.

Several aspects of his youth are obscured by myth, including the origin of his famous nickname. As Pele (sometimes) told it, he often played as goalkeeper in neighborhood games, and kids began comparing him to a local player named "Bile" - and the letters got twisted over the years.

Whatever the truth, he was soon dazzling scouts not as a goalkeeper but as an attacking forward - a prototype number 10.

He was respected for his range of talents, and more so than any player since, he could do it all: He was two-footed, had tremendous pace and stamina, he could head, pass, tackle - and of course, he could score goals.

He joined Santos at the age of 15 and turned the small coastal club into one of the most famous names in football.

Over a glittering 18-year spell at the club he won every honor in Brazilian football as well as two Copa Libertadores - the South American equivalent of the Champions League - and two Intercontinental Cups, the annual tournament held between the best teams in Europe and South America.

His talent was soon recognized by the national team and he was chosen for the Brazil squad heading to the 1958 World Cup in Sweden - although a team psychologist called the 17-year-old "obviously infantile" and advised against playing him.

Pele went on to score a hat-trick within one half of the semi-final against France, and another two goals in the final against the host Swedish team - helping Brazil to its first-ever championship.

Injuries kept him out of all but two games in the 1962 Cup, which Brazil won. At the 1970 tournament in Mexico, a now fully mature 29-year-old Pele won the title for a third time with a Brazil side that included other stars such as Carlos Alberto Torres and Tostão, and is considered by many to be the greatest team ever.

"I told myself before the game, 'He's made of skin and bones just like everyone else'," said Tarcisio Burgnich, the Italian defender charged with marking Pele in the 1970 final.

"But I was wrong."

NEW YORK STAR

Pele initially retired in 1974 but after finding that ill-advised investments had left him broke he accepted an offer the following year to play in the fledgling North American Soccer League for the then-astonishing sum of about $1 million a year.

Pele's charisma dazzled even hardened New Yorkers. He hobnobbed with celebrities and once shared a table at the famed Studio 54 nightclub with Mick Jagger, Rod Stewart and Andy Warhol - who called Pele the exception to his saying that everyone would have 15 minutes of fame.

"Pele was one of the few who contradicted my theory: Instead of 15 minutes of fame, he will have 15 centuries," the artist said.

Even in such company, Pele stayed away from alcohol and drugs, saying he needed to protect his body and serve as a role model for kids.

He admitted to other "weaknesses," though. His two divorces, numerous affairs, and the two children he acknowledged fathering outside of marriage fueled perceptions of a gap between the squeaky-clean corporate pitchman and the elusive real-life person who preferred to be called Edson.

On the field, Pele led the New York Cosmos to the league championship in 1977 and attracted millions of fans to a sport that had previously seemed inaccessible and European.

Years later, when the United States won the right to host the 1994 World Cup, the head of the U.S. soccer federation called Pele the "most important" reason why.

Pele's 1,281 goals in 1,366 games, as tabulated by FIFA's website, came at a startling rate of 0.94 per match. Some of those were friendlies or came in games played as part of his military service, but he was just as prolific in official tournaments, with 757 goals in 812 games.

Pele had suffered from a series of health issues in recent years, including hip surgery that left him with recurring pain and trouble walking unaided. He reduced his public appearances, but remained active on social media.

Pele is survived by six known children. A seventh, whom he didn't recognize as his own for years, died of cancer in 2006.

(Reporting by Andrew Downie, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien and Hugh Lawson)









© Reuters

Cuban migrants awaiting deportation are freed after US accidentally leaked their information

Several Cuban migrants facing deportation were freed from the detention facility Thursday because their information was accidentally leaked. -

 John McCall/South Florida Sun Sentinel/TNS

2022/12/29

MIAMI — Several Cuban immigrants slated for deportation back to Cuba were instead freed from detention Thursday, after Immigration and Customs Enforcement accidentally posted their confidential data online last month and a U.S. official inadvertently passed the information on to the Cuban government.

“I am super happy. It was a saga to get out of Cuba. Thanks to my family who did everything possible and impossible to get me out of here,” said Ronaldo Rodriguez Torres shortly after leaving immigration custody at the Broward Transitional Center, a detention center for immigrants in Pompano Beach.

Mailien Gonzalez Rodriguez, his wife, told the Miami Herald that the couple had entered the U.S. together in late October. But while she was released following immigration processing, he had been detained. On Thursday, they were finally reunited after months of wondering what would happen to her spouse.

“I am so happy to finally have him here. It seemed like a dream, even yesterday,” she said.

Rodriguez Torres said that now that he has been released, he hopes to study and work so he can once again work in physical rehabilitation, the work he did in Cuba.

“Thanks to this country, that is giving me a fighting chance,” he said.

Four formerly detained Cuban migrants told the Miami Herald that there were at least 17 at Broward Transitional Center who had been affected by the government’s unprecedented data dump and who were in the process of being released.

Relatives first got word that their families would be freed from custody on Tuesday night, after receiving calls from ICE officials confirming the personal details of their loved ones in immigration custody. For the family members — who spent Christmas anguishing over whether their husbands, sons, brothers and cousins might be sent back to Cuba and experience persecution because of the leak — the development was welcome news.

Several family members waited for their loved ones to be released from the Broward facility on Thursday at noon, holding balloons that said “Welcome home” and others that had American flags printed on them.

Samuel Sanchez, 21, of Havana, was among them. He told the Herald that he and his 26-year-old brother Andy Garcia had surrendered to border authorities and gone through the same processing while crossing the border into Texas at Piedras Negras. But while he was released the next day, his brother was kept in immigration custody.

“Three months, day after day, I’ve been waiting for his release,” he said.

Once released and reunited with family, Garcia said that he “had finally been able to leave this nightmare behind.”

The release of the Cuban migrants at the Broward Transitional Center came a month after ICE mistakenly uploaded a document onto its website that contained the names, nationalities and detention centers of more than 6,000 migrants who had sought protection in the United States, claiming fear of persecution or torture if returned to their home countries.

Then, in early December, a Department of Homeland Security official linked a list of potential deportees to the data dump during a phone call with the Cuban government, indirectly confirming that some of the people the U.S. government wanted to send back to Cuba had fled the island and sought protection from persecution.

Relatives of the detainees organized protests over Whatsapp and consoled each other as they weathered the uncertainty. On Christmas Eve, they gathered outside the Broward facility, holding posters over their heads and demanding the freedom of the detained Cuban migrants.

Several of the Cuban detainees shared their stories with the Herald which had several things in common: They had been placed in detention after leaving Cuba and crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in October. Despite claiming political persecution, they had failed their so-called credible-fear screenings in front of asylum officers, and later a judge.

ICE sent them letters about the Nov. 28 leak, and later a second letter informing them about the Dec. 7 conversation between the U.S. and Cuban government. It said that Havana could assume they sought refuge in the U.S. and that their cases would be evaluated on a case-by-case basis to determine whether they should be freed from custody.

Rodriguez Torres said that he had been released with an order of supervision. He needs to report to ICE’s Miramar location next month. Meanwhile, at least three others were released on a year-long parole.

“I am going to go celebrate my freedom, something we have been waiting for for a long time,” said Garcia.

Words of the year 2022: We were gaslit in goblin mode

Kirk Swearingen, Salon
December 25, 2022


The words of 2022 were "goblin mode," in the United Kingdom, and "gaslight," in the United States.

In these times of the right's determined distribution of disinformation, conspiracy theories and lazy thinking, those choices make perfect sense.

We are all now more than familiar with gaslighting, which dates back to the original 1940 film "Gaslight," (remade by MGM in 1944, starring Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman), in which a deceitful husband repeatedly lies to his wife about many things, including the gas lamps dimming in the lower part of the house as he secretly lights lamps in the attic, in an effort to shake her sanity.

A real-life example of gaslighting, the word of 2022 selected by the folks at the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, would be, for instance, Donald Trump insisting that he is a good businessman or that the 2020 election was stolen. When any of the scores of open traitors in Congress, like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Josh Hawley, refer to themselves as patriots, that would also be gaslighting. The claim in no way fits the reality, and it refutes what anyone of good faith can plainly see, that these people violated their oaths of office and should not be allowed to serve again at any level.

Nazi propagandists knew all about gaslighting, about how if you repeat an untruth over and over again, a surprisingly large percentage of people come to believe it, even in the face of contrary evidence. In recent years there's been no end to the GOP's efforts to gaslight the public, from Trump's ceaseless lies about voter fraud to his claim that all presidents walk away with classified documents to his habit of referring to himself as one of the greatest presidents of all time ("Better than Lincoln, better than Washington").

Earlier this year, I wrote about how Republicans have tried to gaslight us on their "originalist" view of the Constitution, on liberals as sexual deviants, on liberals as an oppressive "elite," on mass shootings in America being "unthinkable" and on how somebody or other (it's never clear who) is coming for you and all your stuff.

"Goblin mode" was new to me. As the Oxford English Dictionary has it, the 2022 winner describes behavior that is "unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly or greedy, typically in a way that rejects social norms or expectations."

For some, the term can describe positive behavior, describing people who reject unnecessary societal norms, which many have done in the face of the pandemic. One could also say that many Republican leaders have been in goblin mode since their frat-boy days, or at least since the Age of Rush and Newt, when they were trained to despise members the opposing party and do absolutely everything to prevent government from functioning normally.

Let's try it in a sentence:

As president, Trump was in goblin mode from the first day he took office, when he watched television all morning in what he called "executive time" [spot the gaslighting?], to his determined effort to attack his own government and destroy all norms, all the way to his lazy, unconcerned response to the Department of Justice's attempts to retrieve stolen classified documents.

The disgraced, twice-impeached, document-stealing, insurrection-fomenting, perpetually lying former president has been in goblin mode since childhood, allegedly cheating to get into college; cheating on his wives, apparently even when they were expecting; harassing, groping and sexually assaulting women ("I don't even wait…"); and cheating competitors (not to mention taxpayers) while playing golf, a game based on personal honor.

But in our era of trolls (meaning those unhappy fellows who find deep satisfaction in annoying others, for example as the proprietor of Twitter), these words bubbling to the top make perfect sense. Because what the far right desires most is never again to have to present policy options — all that hard work of thinking things through and making compromises! — and just somehow "MAGA" a version of America that never existed or even a feudal state of play, where women and other serfs and peasants know their place and only the truly deserving people (who largely happen to be rich white Christian men) have a say in running a government devoted to keeping the masses down.

Think "Game of Thrones," with the dragons replaced by white nationalist cretins who now apparently are game to attack their own country's critical infrastructure and scientific advances like the COVID vaccines that are still saving lives.

Speaking of cretins, Elon Musk has repeatedly huffed and puffed and blown his ram's horn, inviting all exiled trolls back to Twitter so they can taunt and gaslight the public to their heart's content, while he himself, in hyper-goblin mode, repeatedly threatens the ever-shrinking staff of his own company.

Our twice-impeached, document-stealing, insurrection-fomenting former president is a master gaslighter, and has been in goblin mode since childhood.

Five conservative Catholics dominate the Supreme Court, a few of whom appear to definitely hold medieval views on personal freedom and "religious liberty." They gaslight the public by claiming not to be partisan hacks while being wined and dined by conservative groups. Both Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas are perpetually and gleefully in goblin mode, the former overturning Roe while quoting 17th-century English jurist Matthew Hale, who was happy to excuse marital rape and to put women to death for witchcraft, and the latter refusing to recuse himself from cases pertaining to Trump's attempted coup, which Thomas' wife worked diligently to foment.

Filmmaker, activist and all-around mensch Michael Moore may dress like he's in goblin mode, but is decidedly not. He correctly predicted there would be no red wave in the 2022 midterms and worked hard to convince the rest of us not to give up hope. He describes those five justices as "priests" in their robes handing down theocratic decisions. As Moore has put it, though the corporate media did its utmost to downplay this, one of the top reasons Republicans did not do nearly as well in the midterms as they hoped was pretty simple: "The right-wing Supreme Court issued a religious edict on June 24 reminding women they are second-class citizens."

In addition, Florida senator and infamous Medicare fraudster Rick Scott annoyed Mitch McConnell and others in the GOP by not gaslighting the public about Republican intentions. He did us all a favor by publishing his infamous 11-point plan to remake our democracy into a theocracy headed by religious zealots, one free of those endless "entitlements" of Medicare, food stamps and Social Security.

As it turned out, most Americans prefer living in a democratic republic that offers at least some semblance of a social safety net.

Armed with these two highly useful and relevant terms, "gaslighting" and "goblin mode," we can hope a majority of Americans will continue to see the endless nonsense coming from the right — especially from its abusive cult leader — in a way many on the right no longer can. As the people who run these high-profile dictionaries know, words matter.

Stan Lee is remembered on 100th birthday, Disney releases new documentary in his honor

The Marvel legend died in 2018 when he was 95

By Caroline Thayer | Fox News

More than four years after the death of legendary creator Stan Lee, Marvel Entertainment has announced an original documentary on the late star is in the works.

In a tweet shared Wednesday, it was revealed "Stan Lee," an original documentary, will debut on Disney+ in 2023. The announcement comes on what would have been the Marvel creator's 100th birthday.

Lee passed away one month shy of his 96th birthday in 2018, a year and a half after his dear wife of 69-years Joan Boocock died.

Working his way up to publisher of Marvel Comics, Lee was the visionary behind several beloved characters, including Spider-Man and Iron Man.

In 2023, Disney+ will be offering a documentary on Stan Lee. (Frazer Harrison)

MARVEL COMICS CREATOR STAN LEE TO GET SUPERHERO SEND-OFF AT HOLLYWOOD MEMORIAL

In a 25-second video posted to Twitter, a montage of Lee's work within the industry is shown before it pans out to a cartoon illustration of the creator.

"100 years of dreaming. 100 years of creating. 100 years of Stan Lee." the caption reads.

Frequent collaborator James Gunn, the filmmaker behind Marvel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" franchise and DC Comic's "The Suicide Squad," wrote on Lee's birthday that he missed his friend. "Happy 100th Birthday to Stan Lee. You are missed, my friend,"  

At the time of his death, Lee had been suffering with a bout of pneumonia.

After his passing, floods of Hollywood stars who portrayed characters Lee had created expressed their sorrow for his loss.

Stan Lee is credited as being the mind behind several famous comic book characters, including Iron Man, Hulk, Spider-Man and Thor. (Amanda Edwards)

Chris Evans, who played Marvel Comics' Captain America wrote on Twitter at the time, "There will never be another Stan Lee. For decades he provided both young and old with adventure, escape, comfort, confidence, inspiration, strength, friendship and joy. He exuded love and kindness and will leave an indelible mark on so, so, so many lives. Excelsior!!"

Robert Downey Jr. who played Iron Man wrote on his Instagram, "I owe it all to you…Rest In Peace Stan" alongside a photo of the two together.

Tom Holland, one of the many actors who have played Spider-Man, wrote on Instagram, "How many millions of us are indebted to this guy, none more so than me. The father of Marvel has made so many people so incredibly happy. What a life and what a thing to have achieved. Rest in peace Stan."

Stan Lee received an abundance of tributes after his passing. (Frazer Harrison)

Lee is survived by his daughter Joan Celia "J. C." Lee.

Caroline Thayer is an entertainment writer for Fox News Digital. Follow Caroline Thayer on Twitter at @carolinejthayer.

Dr. Birx to Newsmax: United States 'Still Not Ready for Pandemics'

Dr. Deborah Birx (AP)

By Sandy Fitzgerald | Thursday, 29 December 2022

The administration's response to the surge of COVID-19 in China, including waiting until Jan. 5 to mandate tests for anyone coming into the United States from there, along with the lack of monoclonal antibodies that are effective against new variants of the disease, shows that "we're still not ready for pandemics in this country," Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House COVID-19 response coordinator under former President Donald Trump, said on Newsmax Thursday.

"I'm glad we're testing rather than just relying on symptoms, which we did three years ago, but this testing should have started weeks ago," Birx told Newsmax's "Wake Up America." "In order for the hospitals to be overwhelmed like we are seeing in China, it means that they've had widespread community spread for weeks. The No. 1 tenet in pandemic response is to act early, and so we're once again acting late."

Birx added that Chinese New Year, which precipitated the vast global spread of COVID-19 three years ago, is approaching, and "we're reacting late."


"For all the money we've spent on pandemic preparedness, for all of the planning, we still don't respond, and that's the key piece is detection," said Birx. "You have to respond, and we're still responding extraordinarily late like we did with monkeypox. I'm worried that we just don't have a sense of urgency when we see these global things happening."

Wednesday, U.S. health officials said the United States will impose the mandatory tests after Beijing's decision to lift the country's zero-COVID policies, requiring that a negative test be taken no more than two days' departure from China, Hong Kong, or Macao.

But Birx told Newsmax that the two-day guideline is not enough, as passengers should also be tested upon landing in the United States.

"We know with these highly transmittable variants that we are seeing for the last year, that having a negative test two days ago does not mean anything," she said. "We're telling Americans before they go and spend time with their vulnerable relatives to test right before going. We should be testing upon arrival and everybody who's positive on arrival, we not only have to tell them to isolate, but we need to find what their sequences are that they're carrying into the country."

The Chinese population is particularly vulnerable now not because of lockdowns, but because of a lack of immunizations among elderly people, Birx added.

"We know clearly three years in who is vulnerable to severe disease and that's why I was very careful to say testing is relevant before you go and visit your vulnerable relatives," she said.

Meanwhile, the monoclonal antibodies that are effective against new variants are no longer available, and immunosuppressed Americans who don't develop a good immune response to a vaccine aren't protected, said Birx.

"We don't have the same number of tools that we had even a year ago," she added.

Birx said it's important that people keep taking steps to protect the vulnerable members of their family, but that people must also realize that the current issues concerning China and COVID-19 mark the "third time" that "they've not been transparent."

"They weren't transparent with SARS in 2003; they weren't transparent at the beginning of this pandemic; and they haven't been transparent now," said Birx. "I think it's very telling that the reason they say that there shouldn't be any restrictions or any testing is because they have it under control.

"That tells me that the reason they weren't transparent three years ago was because they believed that they had it under control. That's not a country's decision when the whole globe is at risk."

Birx also noted that because China has not had as many waves of COVID-19 infection as the United States, its people have less natural infection immunity from the disease.

"We don't know who was vaccinated or how protective that vaccine was," said Birx. "What creates variants is previous infection, and so in a way, we're flying blind.

"They may actually have old variants rather than the new variants we're seeing now, and that's why it's really important that any Chinese national that comes to the country and is hospitalized, we need to sequence those variants so that we know what's circulating."

NFLPA reviews how Miami Dolphins handled Tua Tagovailoa’s last concussion 

GMA/ABC News

There is a new investigation into how it the NFL team handled the quarterback’s concussion during a Dolphins loss to the Packers last week.

Tragic Rosewood massacre to be commemorated in January 2023

by Karen Juanita Carrillo

December 29, 2022

Ruins of a burned African American home—Rosewood, Florida. 01-04-1923.

Florida is set to start the year 2023 with a remembrance of the horrific massacre at Rosewood.

This January will mark 100 years since the small Black community of Rosewood in north Florida was burned to the ground after a mob of white vigilantes came to town, looking to avenge the reported rape of a white woman.

Fannie Taylor was the name of that white woman; she lived in the nearby mostly white settlement of Sumner. When she told her neighbors that a Black man, Jesse Hunter, had assaulted her in her home it caused outrage. Sumner’s whites turned on Rosewood, a nearby unincorporated community where Blacks owned their land and homes, had local businesses, a school, three churches and a Masonic lodge. From January 1-7, 1923, hundreds of whites and local county officials came looking for Hunter. In that week the white mob looted livestock and property; shot, hung and murdered residents; and burned Rosewood to the ground. It was an event covered in national media by papers like The New York Times and the Gainesville Daily Sun––most of the reportage was from Associated Press stringers. Rosewood residents had fled into nearby swamps, hid in wells, and escaped by foot to get out of the area: some were placed on a train by helpful local whites. Officially, two white men and four Blacks were killed but others contend that the number of dead ranged between 27 and 100.

  

Florida State University’s Maxine D. Jones led the investigation on the Rosewood massacre 

Credit: Karen Juanita Carrillo photo

When Rosewood burned, residents lost everything but were not compensated for their losses. For 60 years, Rosewood’s survivors did not speak about the massacre. After media coverage about the incident picked up again in the 1980s, survivors came forward in 1994 to file a claims bill in the Florida legislature. On May 4, 1994, Gov. Lawton Chiles signed a $2.1 million compensation bill that gave a total of nine survivors $150,000 each, plus a state university scholarship fund for Rosewood families and their descendants.

“The survivors, who were, of course, all elderly, got a chance to tell their story,” said Maxine D. Jones, professor of history and director of the Women Studies Program at Florida State University. Dr. Jones was the lead investigator for the report “documented history of the incident which occurred at Rosewood, Florida, in January 1923” which was commissioned by the state of Florida. “I think that was important because this had been buried. It was a secret, even within the families. They really didn’t talk about it.”

The $150,000 given to survivors was not a lot of money, Jones acknowledged. “But no amount of money could make up for what happened. Lives have been, you know, destroyed. Legacies have been lost. And to be honest, there is more than one way to die. I think spiritually, we talk about, you know, generational trauma. I’m sure how the descendants raised their children can probably be traced back to some of the trauma that they themselves experienced. So sometimes you can’t put a price on something.

“But the state of Florida did acknowledge that it had failed in its efforts to protect all of its citizens and it did make an attempt to compensate them for that. Now the money that was awarded was just a drop in the bucket to what the families originally asked for. I mean, it was in the millions of dollars, and then it was reduced to $7.2 million and then I think that they appropriated $2.1 million and gave the $150,000 to the survivors. It also provided for scholarships for descendants of the Rosewood families, but again I think getting their story out there was important and I think the governor, in the state of Florida, acknowledging what had happened was huge. This is probably the first time that the government, at any level, has acknowledged something like that since the Japanese internment. So that part was huge, and I also think that Rosewood encourages other people to tell their stories as well.”

The story of the Rosewood massacre is the kind of history that, ironically, Florida’s current governor does not want to be taught to the state’s students. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has promoted a Stop W.O.K.E Act, which prohibits any teaching that could make students feel they bear personal responsibility for historic wrongs.

The state of Florida is, as of this writing, not planning a commemoration of the Rosewood centennial. The University of Florida is hosting the remembrance activities and events that will kick off on Jan. 7, 2023. They feature a wreath-laying ceremony presided over by descendants of the eight surviving families, screenings of the John Singleton-directed 1997 film “Rosewood,” and panel discussions that examine the importance of maintaining communities in the past and in the present. The governor and his staff have been encouraged to attend the activities but have not yet responded to their invitation.

“Varying history doesn’t help any of us,” Jones commented. “I think it helps us to understand why there is sometimes tension between, you know, various groups. I think that Black people have a right to know their history, how they’ve been treated. The history is there, and it should be made available to anyone who is interested. But imagine you are a descendant of the Rosewood families and you’ve been denied a part of your history. I mean, I can’t control how people feel, I don’t have an agenda: I’m just presenting the facts. My intent is not to make anyone feel guilty, but this is our history. How can you not acknowledge it? How can you walk away from it and pretend that it never happened? …You cannot sweep it under the rug: the intent is to inform.”