Los Angeles apologizes for Zoot Suit Riots 80 years later

Los Angeles County officials along with the city council have issued an apology for the "shameful" Zoot Suit Riots 80 years later. In 1943, white, uniform servicemen attacked young Mexican, Latino, Filipino and Black men for wearing the suits in a series of riots that swept the city for a week.

June 9, 2023

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/la-zoot-suit-riots-city-council-resolution/3167611

LA passes resolution condemning the 1943 Zoot Suit Riots 

12 hours ago ... The Zoot Suit Riot attacks began May 31, 1943 when a group of service members and Mexican American youth wearing zoot suits fought in downtown ...

 

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/zoot

Watch Zoot Suit Riots | American Experience | Official Site ... 

Apr 15, 2023 ... In June 1943, Los Angeles erupted into the worst race riots in the city to date. For 10 straight nights, American sailors armed with make-shift ...

https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/zoot-suit-riots

June 3, 1943: The Zoot Suit Riots - Zinn Education Project 

June 3, 1943: The Zoot Suit Riots ... On June 3, 1943, white U.S. servicemen and police officers descended upon a majority-Mexican American neighborhood in East ...

https://www.latimes.com/california/list/zoot-suit-riot-timeline-sleepy-lagoon-murder-trial

Where and how the Zoot Suit Riots swept across L.A. 

Jun 2, 2023 ... Eighty years ago this month, Los Angeles was engulfed in the lawlessness and violence that became known as the Zoot Suit Riots.

COLOMBIA PRESIDENT: 'THE JUNGLE SAVED THEM'

4 children found alive after surviving Colombian plane crash, 40 days alone in jungle

Mom of indigenous siblings aged 13, 9, 4, 11 months, died in crash; hopes for kids’ survival remained high when footprints, baby bottle, diapers, fruit bitten by humans were found

By MANUEL RUEDA

Today, 8:15 am

In this photo released by Colombia's Armed Forces Press Office, soldiers and Indigenous men tend to the four children who were missing after a deadly plane crash, in the Solano jungle, Caqueta state, Colombia, June 9, 2023 (Colombia's Armed Force Press Office via AP)


BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — Four Indigenous children survived an Amazon plane crash that killed three adults and then wandered on their own in the jungle for 40 days before being found alive by Colombian soldiers.

The announcement of their rescue on Friday brought a happy ending to a saga that had seized the attention of many Colombians, a watch with highs and lows as searchers frantically combed through the rainforest hunting for the youngsters.

President Gustavo Petro celebrated the news upon returning from Cuba, where he signed a cease-fire with representatives of the National Liberation Army rebel group. He said the children were getting medical attention and he hoped to talk with them Saturday.

The air force evacuated the children on a helicopter that used lines to pull them up because it couldn’t land in the dense rainforest where they were found. It said the craft was going to San Jose del Guaviare, a small town on the edge of the jungle, but gave no information on plans for dealing with the youngsters.

No details were released on how the four siblings aged 13, 9, 4 and 11 months managed to survive on their own for so long, though they belong to an Indigenous group that lives in the remote region.

Petro called them an “example of survival” and predicted their saga “will remain in history.”

In this photo released by Colombia’s Armed Forces Press Office, a soldier stands in front of the wreckage of a Cessna C206, May 18, 2023, that crashed in the jungle of Solano in the Caqueta state of Colombia 

(Colombia’s Armed Forces Press Office via AP, File)

The military tweeted pictures showing a group of soldiers and volunteers posing with the children, who were wrapped in thermal blankets. One of the soldiers held a bottle to the smallest child’s lips.

The crash happened in the early hours of May 1, when the Cessna single-engine propeller plane with six passengers and a pilot declared an emergency due to an engine failure.

The small aircraft fell off radar a short time later and a frantic search for survivors began. Two weeks after the crash, on May 16, a search team found the plane in a thick patch of the rainforest and recovered the bodies of the three adults on board, but the small children were nowhere to be found.

Sensing that they could be alive, Colombia’s army stepped up the hunt and flew 150 soldiers with dogs into the area. Dozens of volunteers from Indigenous tribes also helped search.

During the search, in an area where visibility is greatly limited by mist and thick foliage, soldiers on helicopters dropped boxes of food into the jungle, hoping that it would help sustain the children. Planes flying over the jungle fired flares to help search crews on the ground at night, and rescuers used speakers that blasted a message recorded by the siblings’ grandmother, telling them to stay in one place.

Rumors also emerged about the childrens’ whereabouts and on May 18 the president tweeted that the children had been found. He then deleted the message, claiming he had been misinformed by a government agency.

The group of four children were traveling with their mother from the Amazonian village of Araracuara to San Jose del Guaviare when the plane crashed.

They are members of the Huitoto people, and officials said the oldest children in the group had some knowledge of how to survive in the rainforest.


On Friday, after confirming the children had been rescued, the president said that for a while he had believed the children were rescued by one of the nomadic tribes that still roam the remote swath of the jungle where the plane fell and have little contact with authorities.

But Petro added that the children were first found by one of the rescue dogs that soldiers took into the jungle.

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro speaks to supporters during a rally in Bogota, Colombia, June 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

Officials did not say how far the children were from the crash site when they were found. But the teams had been searching within a 4.5-kilometer (nearly 3-mile) radius from the site where the small plane nosedived into the forest floor.

As the search progressed, soldiers found small clues in the jungle that led them to believe the children were still living, including a pair of footprints, a baby bottle, diapers and pieces of fruit that looked like it had been bitten by humans.

“The jungle saved them” Petro said. “They are children of the jungle, and now they are also children of Colombia.”

BBC Audience Applauds And Cheers After Being Told Boris Johnson Had Resigned

Any Questions presenter Alex Forsyth revealed the breaking news during last night's programme.


Kevin Schofield

HUFFPOST
10/06/2023


The audience at the recording of a BBC radio show burst into applause after being told Boris Johnson had quit as an MP.

‘Any Questions’ presenter Alex Forsyth broke the news during this week’s edition of the Radio Four programme.

She said: “We do record on a Friday evening, it goes out on a Saturday, but I do want to bring you some news that’s just broken on Friday evening, which is that Boris Johnson has resigned as an MP with immediate effect.”

At that point, the audience in Rhosygilwen, Pembrokeshire, began clapping, whistling and cheering loudly for several seconds.

Johnson stunned Westminster by unexpectedly announcing his resignation on Friday evening with a furious blast at the privileges committee investigating whether he lied to parliament over partygate.

The former prime minister said he was the victim of a “witch hunt” and a “kangaroo court”.

He accused the committee - which has a Conservative majority - of trying to “drive me out”, all-but confirming that he has been found guilty and was facing a lengthy suspension from the Commons.

Johnson said: “It is very sad to be leaving parliament, at least for now, but above all I am bewildered and appalled that I can be forced out, anti-democratically, by a committee chaired and managed, by Harriet Harman, with such egregious bias.”

The former PM - who resigned in disgrace last year - also took aim at Rishi Sunak’s government, accusing it of destroying his legacy.

He said: “When I left office last year the government was only a handful of points behind in the polls. That gap has now massively widened.

“Just a few years after winning the biggest majority in almost half a century, that majority is now clearly at risk.

“Our party needs urgently to recapture its sense of momentum and its belief in what this country can do.

“We need to show how we are making the most of Brexit and we need in the next months to be setting out a pro-growth and pro-investment agenda. We need to cut business and personal taxes – and not just as pre-election gimmicks – rather than endlessly putting them up.

“We must not be afraid to be a properly Conservative government.”

Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson resigns as MP over 'Partygate' probe

Former prime minister blames a parliamentary probe into the "Partygate" scandal for driving him out

Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a confidence vote, on 6 June 2022 (AFP)

By MEE staff
Published date: 9 June 2023 

Britain's former Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Friday announced his resignation as an MP, accusing a parliamentary probe into the "Partygate" scandal for driving him out.

Johnson, 58, said he was stepping down with immediate effect, "triggering an immediate by-election" in his seat, which heaps political pressure on his successor, Rishi Sunak.

Johnson is currently being investigated by a parliamentary committee over whether he lied to MPs about lockdown-breaching parties at Downing Street.

In the statement, Johnson said he had received a letter from the committee "making it clear – much to my amazement – that they are determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of parliament.

"They have still not produced a shred of evidence that I knowingly or recklessly misled the Commons," he said.

Speaking to the committee in March, Johnson denied intentionally misleading parliament.

"I did not lie, and I believe that in their hearts the Committee know it," Johnson said in the statement on Friday.

"They know perfectly well that when I spoke in the Commons, I was saying what I believed sincerely to be true and what I had been briefed to say, like any other minister," he added.

Johnson said he "corrected the record as soon as possible".

He accused the committee of being a "kangaroo court" and said that its "purpose from the beginning has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts”.
Political scene

Johnson has loomed large over the UK political scene. During his tenure as prime minister, he oversaw some of the biggest crises to face the country in recent years, primarily the Covid-19 pandemic and the post-Brexit process of decoupling the UK from the European Union.

His last year in office on the foreign policy front was dominated by the war in Ukraine. He positioned himself as a staunch advocate of Kyiv, but he also had some notable Middle East moments.

Is Boris Johnson staging a political comeback?Read More »

Johnson faced criticism from British-Iranian aid worker Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe after her release from Iran for responding too slowly to her imprisonment. His government later announced that it had paid a debt owed to Iran dating back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution on the same day Zaghari-Ratcliffe returned to the UK.

While a series of ethics scandals led to Johnson’s downfall as prime minister and now exit from parliament, he also had some Middle East gaffes.

In 2016, Johnson, who often references his Ottoman and Turkish heritage, published a poem about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in which he described the Turkish leader as a "wankerer from Ankara" and implied he had sex with goats.

In one of his last foreign engagements before resigning as prime minister, Erdogan jokingly addressed Johnson on video during a Nato summit, saying: "This one is a disgrace to us", apparently in reference to his Turkish heritage. Johnson responded with "very nice, very nice" in Turkish.

Decrying 'witch hunt', Boris Johnson resigns from UK parliament

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson leaves his home in London.
PHOTO: Reuters
PUBLISHED ONJUNE 09, 2023 

LONDON - Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson abruptly quit as a member of parliament on Friday in a furious protest against lawmakers investigating his behaviour, reopening deep divisions in the ruling Conservative Party ahead of a general election expected next year.

Johnson had been under investigation by a parliamentary inquiry looking into whether he misled the House of Commons about lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street during the Covid-19 pandemic.

After Johnson received a confidential letter from the committee, he accused lawmakers investigating him of acting like a "kangaroo court" and being determined to end his political career.

Accusing the committee of mounting a "political hit job", Johnson said in a statement: "I am being forced out by a tiny handful of people, with no evidence to back up their assertions."

Parliament's privileges committee - the main disciplinary body for lawmakers - had the power to recommend Johnson be suspended from parliament. If the suspension is for more than 10 days, voters in his constituency could have demanded he stood for re-election to continue as their representative.

Johnson hinted that he could return to politics, declaring he was leaving parliament "for now".

But the decision to resign may be the end of his 22-year political career, where he rose from parliament to mayor of London and then built a profile that tipped the balance of the 2016 European Union referendum in favour of Brexit.

Johnson, whose premiership was cut short in part by anger in his own party and across Britain over Covid-19 rule-breaking lockdown parties in his Downing Street office and residence, said the committee had not found "a shred of evidence" against him.

"I am not alone in thinking that a witch hunt is underway to take revenge for Brexit and ultimately to reverse the 2016 referendum result," he said. "My removal is the necessary first step, and I believe there has been a concerted attempt to bring it about."

The investigation is chaired by a senior Labour Party lawmaker, but the majority of lawmakers on the committee are Conservatives.

The committee said it will meet on Monday (June 12) to conclude its inquiry and will publish its report soon. A spokesperson for the committee said Johnson had "impugned the integrity" of parliament with his resignation statement.

Attack on Sunak

The resignation will trigger a by-election for his constituency in west London. It is the second in a day for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak after an ally of Johnson, Nadine Dorries, announced she would step down.

Angela Rayner, deputy leader of the Labour Party, said: "The British public are sick to the back teeth of this never-ending Tory soap opera played out at their expense."

Johnson came to power nearly four years ago, promising to deliver Brexit and rescue it from the bitter wrangling that followed the 2016 referendum. He shrugged off concerns from some fellow Conservatives that his narcissism, failure to deal with details, and a reputation for deceit meant he was unsuitable.

Partygate panel to publish inquiry

report  after Boris Johnson quits as MP

(Victoria Jones/PA)
FRI, 09 JUN, 2023 - 
PATRICK DALY, PA POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

A report into whether Boris Johnson misled MPs over his partygate assurances will be published “promptly” after the former prime minister’s decision to dramatically quit the Commons.

The UK'sCommons Privileges Committee said the cross-party panel of MPs will meet on Monday to complete its inquiry.

It comes after Mr Johnson launched a blistering attack on the Conservative-majority committee, comparing it to a “kangaroo court” and a “witch hunt”, as he announced his intention to stand down as an MP and trigger an immediate by-election.

In a statement, a spokesman said: “The committee has followed the procedures and the mandate of the House at all times and will continue to do so.

“Mr Johnson has departed from the processes of the House and has impugned the integrity of the House by his statement.

“The committee will meet on Monday to conclude the inquiry and to publish its report promptly.”

Mr Johnson had accused the probe, chaired by veteran Labour MP Harriet Harman, of “bias” and suggested it was attempting to use its investigation to “drive me out of Parliament” in a move he said was motivated by a desire to reverse Brexit.

Several reports have suggested the committee had ruled that Mr Johnson did lie to the Commons when he said that covid rules were followed in Downing Street following reports that lockdown-busting parties were held during the pandemic.

Boris Johnson accused Harriet Harman’s committee of ‘bias’ (House of Commons/UK Parliament)

The committee was said to be recommending a 10-day suspension from the Commons, a conclusion which would have resulted in a recall petition among his constituents and a potential by-election in his Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency.

Mhairi Black, SNP deputy Westminster leader, said the former No 10 incumbent “jumped before he was pushed”.

The former Conservative Party leader’s announcement that he was quitting as an MP came only hours after his resignation honours list had been published, in which he gave peerages, knighthoods and damehoods to close allies.

Mr Johnson’s resignation means Rishi Sunak’s Tories face a tough battle to hold onto his old seat at an upcoming by-election.

Polling released by Savanta suggested Labour, which was 7,000 votes behind in second place at the 2019 election in Uxbridge, currently holds a 14-point lead over the Tories in Mr Johnson’s former west London constituency.

Even before Mr Johnson’s decision to stand down, the constituency was already in Labour’s top 100 target seats at the next election, which is expected to be held next year, as Sir Keir Starmer seeks a majority to put him into Downing Street.

The contest was the second by-election triggered on Friday following former culture secretary Nadine Dorries’ decision to quit the Commons immediately, rather than wait until the next election.

Boris Johnson criticised Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s administration in his resignation statement (Danny Lawson/PA)


Mr Johnson said he was “stepping down forthwith” after receiving a letter from Ms Harman’s inquiry setting out its position.

However, he left the door open to making a return to frontline politics, saying he was leaving Parliament “for now”.

In a scathing attack on the Privileges Committee, he accused the MPs of producing a yet-to-be-published report “riddled with inaccuracies and reeks of prejudice” while providing him with “no formal ability to challenge anything they say”.

“They know that I corrected the record as soon as possible; and they know that I and every other senior official and minister – including the current Prime Minister and then occupant of the same building, Rishi Sunak – believed that we were working lawfully together,” he said.

“I did not lie, and I believe that in their hearts the committee know it.”

He said he was “bewildered and appalled” at being “forced out, anti-democratically” by a probe that he claimed had set out from the beginning to “find me guilty, regardless of the facts”.

The Privileges Committee inquiry into Mr Johnson’s partygate comments is made up of seven MPs, with the four Tories – Sir Bernard Jenkin, Sir Charles Walker, Alberto Costa and Andy Carter – holding the majority.

Their inquiry took both written and oral evidence from Mr Johnson, along with other witnesses, with the former British leader giving testimony during a lengthy session held in March.

Boris Johnson pictured giving evidence to the Privileges Committee in March (House of Commons/UK Parliament)

In his resignation statement, Mr Johnson was also critical of Mr Sunak’s administration, questioning the decision to increase taxes and abandoning the prospect of a free trade deal with the US.

But he said the Tory Party has the “time to recover its mojo and its ambition and to win the next election”.

Mr Johnson became prime minister four years after returning as an MP, having stood down as MP for Henley in 2008 after being elected mayor of London, replacing Theresa May in Downing Street in 2019.

His landslide election victory at that year’s snap winter general election allowed him to deliver on taking the UK out of the European Union.

Mr Johnson left office in September after repeated scandals including the partygate row over lockdown breaches in Downing Street, the Owen Paterson lobbying affair and his handling of complaints against former deputy chief whip Chris Pincher.

Deputy Labour leader Angela Rayner said the British public was “sick to the back teeth of this never ending Tory soap opera played out at their expense” as she urged voters to “turn the page with a fresh start” under a Labour government.

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said it was “good riddance” to Mr Johnson.

UK: Boris Johnson quits as lawmaker after being told he will be sanctioned for misleading Parliament

Johnson accused the Commons inquiry of attempting to "drive me out"

 By PTI Updated: June 10, 2023

Boris Johnson | Reuters

Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has shocked the nation by abruptly quitting as a member of the parliament after being told by a parliamentary committee that he will be sanctioned for misleading Parliament over lockdown-breaking parties at Downing street during his premiership.

Johnson, 58, had been under investigation by a parliamentary inquiry looking into whether he misled the House of Commons about lockdown-breaking parties in Downing Street during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Johnson's decision came on Friday as he received a confidential letter from the MP-led privileges Committee over the crucial matter.

Johnson accused the Commons inquiry of attempting to "drive me out". In a statement he said: "They have still not produced a shred of evidence that I knowingly or recklessly misled the Commons."

Earlier on Friday, he received a copy of the yet-to-be-published report, which he claimed was "riddled with inaccuracies and reeks of prejudice".

In evidence given to the Privileges Committee in March, Johnson admitted misleading Parliament, but denied doing it on purpose. He said social distancing had not been "perfect" at gatherings in Downing Street during COVID lockdowns.

But he said they were "essential" work events, which he claimed were allowed. He insisted the guidelines - as he understood them - were followed at all times.

Announcing he would step down, Johnson issued a lengthy statement in which he said: "I did not lie, and I believe that in their hearts the committee know it."

"They know perfectly well that when I spoke in the Commons I was saying what I believed sincerely to be true and what I had been briefed to say, like any other minister," he said. Johnson said he corrected the record as soon as possible, and claimed committee members "know that".

He said the "current prime minister and then occupant of the same building, Rishi Sunak" also believed they were "working lawfully together". Johnson condemned the committee as a "kangaroo court", and claimed that its "purpose from the beginning has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts".

Johnson's departure from political life comes less than four years after he won an 80-seat political majority and nine months after he stood down as prime minister after a police fine for breaking his own COVID rules.

In his statement, Johnson hit out at political enemies for targeting him after he was shown the privileges committee findings against him earlier this week.

"It is very sad to be leaving parliament at least for now but above all I am bewildered and appalled that I can be forced out, anti-democratically, by a committee chaired and managed, by [the Labour MP] Harriet Harman, with such egregious bias," he said.

The resignation will trigger an immediate by-election in Johnson's Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency. It was the second in a day for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak after Nadine Dorries resigned as MP for Mid Bedfordshire after her inclusion on Johnson's peerage list was blocked.

Labour sources view both the seats as winnable.

Boris Johnson's resignation statement in full as he quits as MP

The former PM suggested he was the victim of a 'witch hunt' as he criticised the Privileges Committee investigating him.

Boris Johnson will step down as MP for Uxbridge and South Ruislip. / PA

Political Correspondent Harry Horton reports on the latest as Boris Johnson resigns from Parliament

Boris Johnson has announced his resignation as an MP after receiving the findings of a report by the Privileges Committee investigating him over the Partygate scandal.

In a lengthy resignation speech, the former prime minister said the panel was “determined” to use proceedings to drive him out of Parliament.

It comes hours after the approval of Mr Johnson’s resignation honours list and the resignation of former Cabinet member Nadine Dorries.

Here is Mr Johnson’s resignation speech in full:

“I have received a letter from the Privileges Committee making it clear – much to my amazement – that they are determined to use the proceedings against me to drive me out of Parliament.

“They have still not produced a shred of evidence that I knowingly or recklessly misled the Commons.

“They know perfectly well that when I spoke in the Commons I was saying what I believed sincerely to be true and what I had been briefed to say, like any other minister.

“They know that I corrected the record as soon as possible; and they know that I and every other senior official and minister – including the current Prime Minister and then occupant of the same building, Rishi Sunak – believed that we were working lawfully together.

“I have been an MP since 2001. I take my responsibilities seriously.

I did not lie, and I believe that in their hearts the Committee know it.

“But they have wilfully chosen to ignore the truth because from the outset their purpose has not been to discover the truth, or genuinely to understand what was in my mind when I spoke in the Commons.

“Their purpose from the beginning has been to find me guilty, regardless of the facts. This is the very definition of a kangaroo court.

“Most members of the Committee – especially the chair – had already expressed deeply prejudicial remarks about my guilt before they had even seen the evidence. They should have recused themselves.

“In retrospect it was naive and trusting of me to think that these proceedings could be remotely useful or fair.

“But I was determined to believe in the system, and in justice, and to vindicate what I knew to be the truth.

“It was the same faith in the impartiality of our systems that led me to commission Sue Gray. It is clear that my faith has been misplaced.

“Of course, it suits the Labour Party, the Liberal Democrats, and the SNP to do whatever they can to remove me from parliament.

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. / Credit: PA

“Sadly, as we saw in July last year, there are currently some Tory MPs who share that view.

“I am not alone in thinking that there is a witch hunt under way, to take revenge for Brexit and ultimately to reverse the 2016 referendum result.

“My removal is the necessary first step, and I believe there has been a concerted attempt to bring it about. I am afraid I no longer believe that it is any coincidence that Sue Gray – who investigated gatherings in Number 10 – is now the chief of staff designate of the Labour leader.

“Nor do I believe that it is any coincidence that her supposedly impartial chief counsel, Daniel Stilitz KC, turned out to be a strong Labour supporter who repeatedly tweeted personal attacks on me and the government.

“When I left office last year the government was only a handful of points behind in the polls. That gap has now massively widened.

“Just a few years after winning the biggest majority in almost half a century, that majority is now clearly at risk.

“Our party needs urgently to recapture its sense of momentum and its belief in what this country can do.

“We need to show how we are making the most of Brexit and we need in the next months to be setting out a pro-growth and pro-investment agenda.

“We need to cut business and personal taxes – and not just as pre-election gimmicks – rather than endlessly putting them up. We must not be afraid to be a properly Conservative government.

“Why have we so passively abandoned the prospect of a Free Trade Deal with the US? Why have we junked measures to help people into housing or to scrap EU directives or to promote animal welfare?

“We need to deliver on the 2019 manifesto, which was endorsed by 14 million people. We should remember that more than 17 million voted for Brexit.

“I am now being forced out of Parliament by a tiny handful of people, with no evidence to back up their assertions, and without the approval even of Conservative party members let alone the wider electorate.

Johnson accused the Privileges Committee of a politically motivated ‘witch hunt’ to drive him out. / Credit: Andrew Boyers/PA

“I believe that a dangerous and unsettling precedent is being set.

The Conservative Party has the time to recover its mojo and its ambition and to win the next election.

“I had looked forward to providing enthusiastic support as a backbench MP. Harriet Harman’s committee has set out to make that objective completely untenable.

“The Committee’s report is riddled with inaccuracies and reeks of prejudice but under their absurd and unjust process I have no formal ability to challenge anything they say.

“The Privileges Committee is there to protect the privileges of parliament. That is a very important job.

“They should not be using their powers – which have only been very recently designed – to mount what is plainly a political hit-job on someone they oppose.

“It is in no-one’s interest, however, that the process the Committee has launched should continue for a single day further.

“So I have today written to my Association in Uxbridge and South Ruislip to say that I am stepping down forthwith and triggering an immediate by-election.

“I am very sorry to leave my wonderful constituency. It has been a huge honour to serve them, both as Mayor and MP.

“But I am proud that after what is cumulatively a 15-year stint I have helped to deliver among other things a vast new railway in the Elizabeth Line and full funding for a wonderful new state of the art hospital for Hillingdon, where enabling works have already begun.

“I also remain hugely proud of all that we achieved in my time in office as prime minister: getting Brexit done, winning the biggest majority for 40 years and delivering the fastest vaccine rollout of any major European country, as well as leading global support for Ukraine.

“It is very sad to be leaving Parliament – at least for now – but above all I am bewildered and appalled that I can be forced out, anti-democratically, by a committee chaired and managed, by Harriet Harman, with such egregious bias.”

Arizona governor vetoes youth trans bathroom ban; vows to ‘veto every bill that aims to attack children’

2023/06/09

Governor-elect of Arizona Katie Hobbs speaks to attendees at a rally to celebrate Hobbs's victory on Nov. 15, 2022, in Phoenix. - Jon Cherry/Getty Images North America/TNS

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs has vetoed a bill that would ban public school students from using restrooms and changing rooms that align with their gender identity, calling it “yet another discriminatory act against LGBTQ+ youth passed by the majority at the state legislature.”

Republican lawmakers, who have a slim majority in both legislative chambers, have advanced a slate of bills targeting the rights of LGBTQ people, which the Human Rights Campaign described as an effort to “assault the LGBTQ+ community and attack transgender children to appease their base.”

Hobbs, who recently rejected a bill that would have banned school employees from using a trans student’s preferred name or pronoun, wrote Thursday she would continue to “veto every bill that aims to attack and harm children.”

Bills aimed at restricting the rights of trans youth have been at the forefront of an ideological battle in GOP-majority statehouses across the country, where Republican lawmakers have been using anti-LGBTQ sentiment in an attempt to appeal to socially conservative voters.

On Tuesday, the HRC issued its first-ever state of emergency for LGBTQ people in the U.S., citing an unprecedented number of newly signed laws restricting the rights of queer and trans people across the nation — at least 76 this year alone.

That’s already more than double the number of laws enacted in all of 2022, which was previously the worst year for LGBTQ equality in the U.S.

At least 11 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced in Arizona this year, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Hobbs, a former Arizona secretary of state, won a tight race against Republican Kari Lake in last year’s elections. Her first official act as governor was to sign an executive order to strengthen anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ state employees and contractors.

Lake, a Trump-backed former television anchor, has yet to concede to Hobbs.

© New York Daily News

Exclusive: DOJ investigating conservative-backed efforts in Wyoming to infiltrate DNC ahead of 2020 election, sources say

By Kara Scannell, CNN
 Fri June 9, 2023

CNN —

Federal prosecutors are investigating conservative-backed efforts in Wyoming to infiltrate the Democratic National Committee ahead of the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the matter.

Prosecutors have subpoenaed Richard Seddon, a former British intelligence official, and Susan Gore, a Republican donor and heiress to the Gore-Tex fortune, as part of the investigation, the people said.

The investigation appears to stem from a 2021 New York Times article that, citing interviews and documents, detailed “an undercover operation by conservatives to infiltrate progressive groups, political campaigns, and the offices of Democratic as well as moderate Republican elected officials during the 2020 election cycle.”

One of the subpoenas, which was sent in the past two weeks, seeks documents and communications from January 2018 through the present involving numerous limited liability companies and individuals, including Gore; Seddon; Erik Prince, the security contractor and brother to former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos; and James O’Keefe, the former head of Project Veritas.

The people familiar with the investigation said prosecutors are looking into whether any campaign finance laws were violated. No one has been accused of any wrongdoing.

The investigation is being handled by the public corruption unit of the US attorney’s office in Washington, DC. A spokeswoman for the office said that it does not confirm or deny investigations.

Gore recently retained Nicholas Gravante Jr., a New York defense attorney who previously represented Allen Weisselberg, the former chief financial officer of the Trump Organization. Weisselberg cut a deal with prosecutors and testified at the tax fraud trial of the Trump Organization entities resulting in their conviction.

Gravante confirmed he represents Gore and declined further comment.

Seddon has retained Robert Driscoll, a well-connected Washington, DC, attorney who has represented numerous high-profile clients. Driscoll declined to comment.

Matthew Schwartz, a lawyer for Prince, said, “As far as we know, there are no federal criminal investigations involving my client whatsoever.”

An attorney for Project Veritas and O’Keefe referred CNN to the company. Project Veritas and O’Keefe could not immediately be reached.

According to the Times, Seddon, working with Prince, secured funding from Gore by the end of 2018 to train activists to infiltrate political groups. Seddon, according to the Times, recruited former operatives from Project Veritas, where he previously worked.

The Times reported that two operatives trained by Seddon pledged sizable political donations ranging from $1,250 to $10,000 to Democratic organizations and candidates. Some of the donations gained the operatives, a couple, entry to fundraisers and even a Democratic primary debate in Las Vegas.

It is not clear where the couple got the money to make the donations. It is illegal to use another person’s name to make political donations and prosecutors have brought numerous so-called straw donor prosecutions in recent years.

One of the subpoenas also seeks any communications involving the couple as well as the individuals and organizations that received the donations, a source said.

LIV Won. It’s Still a PR Disaster for Saudi Arabia.

The desert kingdom wanted to change its image by embracing the beloved sport of rich Americans. Instead, it drew attention to everything it wanted to hide.

Saudi Arabia — led by Crown Prince Muhammad Bin Salman, shown here at a 2022 summit in the city of Jeddah — supported the LIV Golf/PGA merger. But it's hardly a PR win for the kingdom, argues Michael Schaffer. | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

By MICHAEL SCHAFFER
Updated: 06/09/2023 
Michael Schaffer is a senior editor at POLITICO. His Capital City column runs weekly in POLITICO Magazine.

Maybe in a decade, we’ll all think of Saudi Arabia as a pleasant land of caddies and duffers, a desert golf oasis — like Scottsdale, Ariz, but with hundreds of ultra-rich royal princes.

For the time being, though, the kingdom has a rather different reputation — one that the wild latest twist of its foray into big-time golf has done nothing to allay. The stories about Tuesday’s out-of-the-blue merger between the PGA Tour and its Saudi-backed upstart rival LIV Golf were all full of words you’d rather banish if your goal is rebranding a problematic monarchy: “September 11,” “hijackers,” “Jamal Khashoggi,” “human rights abuses,” “dismemberment” and other tourist-unfriendly terms.

Weirdly, it could have been a good news cycle for the kingdom: The U.S. Secretary of State was literally in Riyadh to chat up a government that Washington once promised to shun. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had just won plaudits for bringing Ukraine’s heroic president to an OPEC meeting. In a country that hadn’t gotten a lot of media love, it was a rare bounce.

And then they had to go and buy the PGA.

Amid a torrent of headlines, the dynamics of the world’s worst sportswashing campaign asserted themselves anew: LIV may have pulled off an upset victory, but the news was all full of things the kingdom would rather not discuss. And now the long-dominant American golf organization was getting slimed, too.

This raises the question: Is this the dumbest PR campaign in the history of the Beltway’s influence industry?

LIV, of course, has always denied that its goal had anything to do with Saudi Arabia’s international reputation: It was always about a business opportunity, not “sportswashing,” the effort to soften a country’s reputation via association with a pleasant, apolitical pastime. Either way, as the two sides spent big on D.C. communications pros and legal stars, the conversation inevitably morphed from golf into refrains about terrorism, national sovereignty and foreign meddling.

Which has been consistently bad news for the Saudis, whatever their goal may have been.

The immediate aftermath of the merger, in fact, made the spotlight worse. Atop the references to 9/11 and the murder of a journalist, this week’s stories also include a new theme: betrayal. An endlessly wealthy foreign entity enticed an American institution to abruptly reverse itself, letting down the golfers who had nobly refused the Saudi money while making a liar of the commissioner who begged them to stick with PGA in the name of all that is decent and true.

White House: ‘No comment’ on PGA merger with Saudi-backed LIV

Is it short-term thinking to assume it’ll always be thus — that, now that Saudi Arabia’s sovereign-wealth fund has taken a huge stake in PGA, all golf stories, not just stories about LIV, will contain references to the most troubling parts of the Saudi reputation? Probably. Memories are short and, who knows, perhaps the ruling Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman will turn out like one of those American robber barons who buys the local football team, wins a Super Bowl and turns himself into a man of the people.

But before that, it’s worth noting that the golf contretemps was also a huge Washington story — one that shows both the promise and the pitfalls of using a real-life commercial battle in order to push non-financial things like human rights, transparency and national pride.

Ever since LIV’s launch, the face-off with PGA has felt a bit like an economic-stimulus program for Washington’s power influencers. The muscle engaged on LIV’s behalf has included the PR giant Edelman, former GOP Rep. Benjamin Quayle’s lobbying firm, Bush-era White House spokesman Ari Fleischer and McKenna & Associates, the consulting firm that previously worked with the National Rifle Association. A New York Times report from December said that McKinsey & Co., which had worked on the Vision 2030 plan to diversify the Saudi economy, did a lengthy study on the golf scheme, too. According to a 2021 FARA filing, the consulting firm Teneo also contracted that year with the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund for early work on Project Wedge.

Last week, the communications firm Gitcho Goodwin registered as foreign agents for their work representing LIV, something that contradicted the league’s claim that they weren’t part of an overseas government. The firm’s relationship with the league ended soon after.

The PGA spent big, too. It bumped up its lobbying outlays, via the firm DLA Piper, by 50 percent. It also brought in Jeff Miller, the Republican power broker and close associate of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

The ironic upshot: For critics of Saudi Arabia, the golf war of the last 18 months was like a surfer catching the perfect wave. All of a sudden, there was an entire industry propelling the sorts of stories they’d long struggled to highlight.

The handiwork of the various pros and activists involved was impressive. When LIV golfers made the rounds on Capitol Hill, they were trailed by 9/11 families. A member of Congress demanded a federal investigation of whether the new league was in violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act. As the legal battle became more convoluted, the PGA side made a habit of referencing Saudi Arabia’s autocratic regime and human-rights record in their filings.

In ordinary times, absent a horrific story like the cold-blooded murder of a Washington Post contributor in a foreign consulate, it’s difficult for a human-rights campaigner to seed the U.S. media with stories about repression in a distant country. But when those stories advance the commercial interests of a multibillion-dollar sports behemoth, allies seem to come out of the woodwork, directing reporters and members of Congress and other troublemakers to just the right source or the deliciously newsy legal filing.

Anyone who’s covered the capital knows that stories about craven FARA violations or appalling foreign governments often come not from the plucky human-rights type or good-government activist quoted in the piece, but via the much more handsomely compensated comms person who made the connection or suggested someone look up the potentially incriminating legal brief.

The funding for that essential, off-camera work typically materializes when someone stands to make money off the news.

Until those funders’ calculations change and the backstage actors vanish.

This week, the perfect wave turned into a riptide — and Saudi Arabia’s critics saw the flip side of what happens when you advance a high-minded cause like human rights via a real-world business battle involving the profit motive. Instead of hyping attention to the kingdom’s flaws, the merged company that succeeds PGA will be chaired by the chair of the Saudi sovereign-wealth fund, Yasir al-Rumayyan. You can bet he won’t be paying for PR folks and lobbyists to slime Saudi Arabia in the media and Congress.

It turns out that a lot of that PR effort may have just been about helping the PGA to get a better price.

“So weird,” Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy tweeted. “PGA officials were in my office just months ago talking about how the Saudis’ human rights record should disqualify them from having a stake in a major American sport. I guess maybe their concerns weren’t really about human rights?”

That was also the question on the mind of Brett Eagleson, who leads 9/11 Justice, which represents survivors of the September 11 terrorist attacks as well as family members of those who died. A year ago this week, when PGA and LIV were facing off, Eagleson reached out to the established golf tour.

“I wrote the initial outreach email and said we have a lot to talk about,” he told me this week. “We have some experience with your enemy. We have some information to share with you.” Eagleson said his email led to a phone call and a meeting. “They listened with a sympathetic ear,” he said. “But I think that everybody in the room knew that what was good for us was good for them.”

Among other things, he said, he looked up Clout, the Washington PR firm that represented the PGA, and hired them to represent 9/11 Justice, too. “We consciously injected ourselves into PGA and LIV,” he said.

For a year, an organization struggling to keep alive the legacy of a 2001 event suddenly had a bunch of allies who were focused on ongoing, right-now news. The LIV-PGA battle enabled Eagleson to get his group’s story out to folks who might otherwise not listen.

Now the biggest of those allies has gone to ground, having merged with the very folks they’d criticized alongside Eagleson.

In good Washington fashion, it’s not just the PGA side that has rubbished the talking points of its Beltway operatives. One of LIV’s notable arguments was a David-and-Goliath claim that the established golf tour was a monopoly trying to quash the new alternative. But the merger means the creation of a bigger behemoth than existed before. So much for antitrust.

“Was it all, for lack of a better term, BS?” Eagleson asked this week. “I don’t think they actually gave two shits about Khashoggi or the carpet bombing of Yemen or women or 9/11. As soon as they were offered a deal, they folded like a beach chair.” One bit of news that pleased him: Clout announced that they’re dropping PGA and keeping 9/11 Justice — a somewhat surprising move given the depth of the two parties’ respective pockets. But he’s not under any illusion that a lot of the PGA-aligned folks who so energetically excoriated the Saudis will keep it up.

Whoever his allies are, they’ll have their work cut out for them. The end of the LIV-PGA battle is like turning off a music box that everyone has been dancing to. With no big-money battle to be waged in the court of public opinion, there’s less reason to push or chase stories about LIV’s ownership situation, which in theory could mean less attention to things the Saudi government would rather not talk about.

That’s why Eagleson hopes Congress will investigate the merger and provide new opportunities to make a stink. Within a day, there was legislation to take away the PGA’s tax-exempt status. An effort to somehow block the merger could keep the story in the news longer still. Golf enthusiasts would be transfixed by the hearings — and, as a fringe benefit, Eagleson’s group would have a new opportunity to get their own story out.

It’s just going to be a lot harder when no one on his side stands to profit from muddying up the sportswashing.

Moderna, Pfizer sued over technology developed by Scripps researchers that made COVID-19 vaccine possible

2023/06/07

A syringe containing the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine at the Jewish Federation/ JARC's offices in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan - Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images North America/TNS

SAN DIEGO — Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech were named in lawsuits Tuesday that accuse them of stealing a patented method developed by researchers from The Scripps Research Institute that made the COVID-19 vaccine possible.

The two separate patent infringement lawsuits — one against Moderna for its Spikevax vaccine and one against Pfizer and its partner BioNTech for its Comirnaty vaccine — were filed in federal court in San Diego by Promosome. The firm, which has offices in San Diego and New York City, develops and commercializes discoveries from the late Nobel Prize laureate Gerald Edelman and Vincent Mauro both of whom conducted research at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla.

As of late Tuesday, Moderna, Pfizer and BioNTech could not be reached for comment on the lawsuit.

The patent at the center of the complaints is a novel method for modifying messenger RNA, or mRNA — which delivers instructions to a cell for protein production. The modification from researchers ultimately made mRNA vaccines safer and significantly more effective by helping the immune system produce sufficient proteins to fight the virus with small doses of mRNA. The technique was developed by Scripps scientists Edelman, Mauro, Stephen Chappell and Wei Zhou in 2009, the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit against Moderna contends that in 2013, under a confidential disclosure agreement, the patented method was shared with the biopharmaceutical company's highest leadership, including CEO Stéphane Bancel and President Stephen Hoge. However, Moderna did not license the technology.

The lawsuit filed against Pfizer and BioNTech alleges that in 2015, Promosome shared the technology with BioNTech scientist, Dr. Katalin Karikó, but neither company licensed the technology.

In each complaint Promosome seeks "to receive its rightful share of the tens-of-billions in revenues," each company "already has earned and countless billions it will earn by willfully infringing the '179 Patent."

Moderna netted $18.4 billion in sales for its coronavirus vaccine last year, according to SEC filings. Pfizer and BioNTech brought in $37.8 billion from sales of its COVID-19 vaccine, Comirnaty, last year.

"Our client's cutting-edge technology has helped spare hundreds of millions of people from the harmful effects of COVID-19," said Bill Carmody, lead lawyer on the matter and partner at the firm Susman Godfrey. "Unfortunately, these big pharma companies have failed to give Promosome what it deserves."

Patent infringement lawsuits are not uncommon in the realm of biotechnology and pharmaceuticals.

Multiple lawsuits have previously been filed related to the coronavirus vaccines and the technology that made it possible.

For example, in February Moderna paid the federal government $400 million for a chemical technique it employed in its COVID-19 vaccine. In August, Moderna sued Pfizer and BioNTech for patent infringement related to the mRNA technology used in its COVID-19 vaccine.

© The San Diego Union-Tribune

Experiment halted in Norway after whale drowns
Agence France-Presse
June 7, 2023,


Under the project, run by the Norwegian Defence Research Establishment (FFI) each summer since 2021 minke whales are captured in the Lofoten archipelago and submitted to hearing tests before they are released into the wild again.

They are run in cooperation with the US National Marine Mammal Foundation.

The experiments, aimed at gathering knowledge in order to set limits on how much noise humans should be allowed to make in the ocean, have been criticised by animal rights defenders and scientists who consider the project dangerous.

In the night between June 2 and 3, bad weather damaged the project testing site, causing a barrier line to break free. A whale became entangled in it and died, the FFI said.

The incident occurred before the official start of this year's experiments.

The project has been put on hold indefinitely while the incident is reviewed and the site repaired.

"Our aim is to protect Minke whales and other baleens, and to protect them from harmful human-made noise," Petter Kvadsheim, chief researcher at FFI, said.

"We will continue our work on this. The health of the animals is our main priority in this experiment."

The project had been due to continue until the summer of 2024.

In an interview with AFP, Kvadsheim blamed the incident on bad weather rather than the experiment, and said he hoped the project could resume "in the next few days".

"It's never been done before and unexpected things can happen," he said, adding that it was unfolding "step by step" and "on schedule".

He said only "a handful" of whales were needed to complete the project.

One whale entered the testing site the first year, in 2021, but it quickly escaped.

In 2022, another minke was captured but it was released immediately because it showed signs of stress.

"We have warned that these cruel and pointless experiments would lead to whales being killed and it is sadly ironic that this poor minke has died even before the experiments have got underway," said a spokesman for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation, Danny Groves.

"No whales should have to face being bundled into a cage and have electrodes implanted under his or her skin. These experiments should be halted permanently," he added.


In 2021, 50 international scientists had written to the Norwegian government to protest against the experiments.

© 2023 AFP

Nearly 20% of the cultural differences between societies boil down to ecological factors – new research

The Conversation
June 7, 2023

Chinese farmers harvest rice crops using combines in Xinghua in China's eastern Jiangsu province on October 23, 2017. © AFP

In some parts of the world, the rules are strict; in others they are far more lax. In some places, people are likely to plan for the future, while in others people are more likely to live in the moment. In some societies people prefer more personal space; in others they are comfortable being in close quarters with strangers.

Why do these kinds of differences exist?

There are a number of theories about where cultural differences come from. Some social scientists point to the role of specific institutions, like the Catholic Church. Others focus on historical differences in philosophical traditions across societies, or on the kinds of crops that were historically grown in different regions.

But there’s another possible answer. In a growing number of cases, researchers have found that human culture can be shaped by key features of the environments in which people live.

Just how strong is this ecology-culture connection overall? In a new study, ourlab, the Culture and Ecology Lab at Arizona State University, set out to answer this question.
How does ecology shape culture?

Ecology includes basic physical and social characteristics of the environment – such factors as how abundant resources are, how common infectious diseases are, how densely populated a place is, and how much threat there is to human safety. Variables like temperature and the availability of water can be key ecological features.


What impact does a dry climate have on the culture of the people who live in it? 

Peter Adams/Stone via Getty Images

The three examples of cultural differences we started with illustrate how this can work. It turns out that the strength of social norms in a given culture is linked to the amount of threat, from such factors as war and disasters, a society faces. Stronger rules may help members of a society stick together and cooperate in the face of these dangers.


Places with less access to water tend to be more future-oriented. When fresh water is scarce, the thinking goes, there is more need to plan so that it doesn’t run out.

And in places with colder temperatures people feel less need for lots of personal space in public, perhaps because there tend to be fewer germs, or maybe from an impulse, on some basic level, to keep warm.

All of these examples show that cultures are shaped, at least in part, by the basic features of the environments people live in. And in fact, there are many other examples in which researchers have linked particular cultural differences to particular differences in ecology.

Quantifying the connection

For over 200 societies, we gathered comprehensive data on nine key features of ecology – such as rainfall, temperature, infectious disease and population density – and dozens of aspects of human cultural variation – including values, strength of norms, personality, motivation and institutional characteristics. With this information, we created the open-access EcoCultural Dataset.

Using this data set, we were able to generate a range of estimates for just how much of human cultural variation can be explained by ecology.

We ran a series of statistical models looking at the relationship between our ecological variables and each of the 66 cultural outcomes we tracked. For each of the cultural outcomes, we calculated the average amount of the cultural diversity across societies that was explained by this combination of nine different ecological factors. We found that nearly 20% of cultural variation was explained by the combination of these ecological features.

Importantly, our statistical estimates take into account common issues in cross-cultural research. One complicating factor is that societies that are close to each other in space will be similar in ways beyond the variables measured in any particular study. In the same way, there will likely be unmeasured similarities between societies with shared historical roots. For example, cultural similarities between southern Germany and Austria may be accounted for by their shared cultural and linguistic heritage, as well as similar climates and levels of wealth.

Twenty percent may not sound impressive, but in fact this is several times larger than the average effect in our field of social psychology, in which typically up to around 4% or 5% of the variation in an outcome is explained.

Population density is one factor that can leave its mark on a place’s culture.

  Photo Patrick Altmann/Moment via Getty Images

More left to discover

In testing over 600 relationships among features of ecology and culture, we identified a number of intriguing new relationships. For example, we found that the amount of variation over time in levels of infectious disease was linked to the strength of social norms. This link suggests that it’s not just places with high levels of threat from germs, but also places where that threat varies more over time, such as India, that have stricter social rules.

There’s also a growing body of research suggesting that as the ecology of a place changes, so too does the culture. For example, a general decline in rates of infectious disease in the U.S., up until the current pandemic, is correlated with a loosening of social norms over the past century. Similarly, increases in population density appear to be linked to declines in birth rates around the world in the past several decades.

Because the EcoCultural Dataset contains not only contemporary measures of ecology, but also information about their variability and predictability over time, we believe it will be a rich resource for other scholars to mine. We’ve made all of this data free for anyone to accessand explore.

Ecology isn’t the only reason people around the world think and behave differently. But our work suggests that, at least in part, our environments shape our cultures.

Alexandra Wormley, Ph.D. Student in Social Psychology, Arizona State University and Michael Varnum, Associate Professor of Psychology, Arizona State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

World's first vaccine against deadly swine fever nears approval in Vietnam

Reuters
June 7, 2023


By Francesco Guarascio

HANOI (Reuters) - Vaccines against African swine fever being tested in Vietnam are close to approval, global and U.S. veterinary officials said, in what would be a major breakthrough to tackle the deadly animal disease that regularly ravages pig farms worldwide.

African swine fever has for years disrupted the $250 billion global pork market. In the worst outbreak in 2018-19, about half the domestic pig population died in China, the world's biggest producer, causing losses estimated at over $100 billion.

After decades of failed attempts due to the complexity of the virus, two vaccines co-developed by U.S. scientists being tested in large pilot schemes by Vietnamese companies are showing "very promising" results, Gregorio Torres, head of the science department at the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH), told Reuters in a telephone interview.

"We have never been so close to get a vaccine that may work," Torres said, noting the two shots had "probably the highest chances to succeed" and be authorised for sale worldwide.

Both vaccines have received approval in Vietnam for pilot commercial use, now completed. The next step will be nationwide authorisation, the first ever for an African swine fever vaccine, and possible sales overseas.

U.S. agriculture secretary Thomas Vilsack said there was likely to be interest in precautionary purchases in the United States, despite the country having so far been spared from the virus.

"There will be a specific interest obviously," Vilsack said in an interview with Reuters in April, speaking about possible purchases of the Vietnamese vaccines.

The vaccines were tested in Vietnam, where swine fever is a constant threat, because they could not be developed in the U.S. as the virus is not present there.

Since 2021, swine fever, which is not deadly to humans, has been reported in nearly 50 countries and caused about 1.3 million pig deaths, WOAH said in a regular report last week.

Currently there are no major outbreaks, but agribusiness lender Rabobank warned in April that the possible spread of the disease, especially in China, remained among the top risks to the global pork industry.

NO SAFETY ISSUES

United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) researchers have reviewed the results of one of the vaccines, NAVET-ASFVAC, which they co-developed with Vietnamese company NAVETCO, a USDA spokesperson said.

After the vaccine showed a high level of efficacy and no safety risks in trials, 600,000 doses were approved for initial sales to pig farmers in Vietnam, of which the first 40,000 "have been delivered without any safety problems," USDA said.

That followed an initial hiccup when use of the vaccine was suspended after dozens of pigs died last summer following inoculations in farms that used the vaccine off-label, USDA said, administering it to hogs that were not supposed to be inoculated, such as pregnant sows.

No problems emerged after deliveries resumed with adequate veterinary monitoring, USDA said.

NAVET-ASFVAC is an attenuated live-virus vaccine, like those used in childrens' routine vaccinations around the world. Use of unlicensed live-virus vaccines in China in past years raised concerns they caused the emergence of new strains of swine fever.

Only limited data are available from China's trials on a live-virus vaccine against swine fever.

The second vaccine tested in Vietnam, AVAC ASF LIVE, which was discovered by U.S. researchers and commercialized by Vietnamese firm AVAC, has been delivered to more pigs than NAVET-ASFVAC under its pilot deployment, but USDA said it had not yet reviewed the data.

NAVETCO, AVAC and Vietnam's agriculture ministry, which is responsible for approval of veterinary vaccines, did not respond to requests for comment.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio; additional reporting by Phuong Nguyen and Khanh Vu in Hanoi and Dominique Patton in Beijing; editing by Sonali Paul)


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