Thursday, June 15, 2023

The shocking truth about Wikipedia’s Holocaust disinformation

Why Wikipedia cannot be trusted: It repeatedly allows rogue editors to rewrite Holocaust history and make Jews out to be the bad guys

Artistic rendering of an editor adding Holocaust distortions to wikipedia Photo by iStock/Creative Commons/Forward Montage

Shira KleinJune 14, 2023

Manipulating Wikipedia is all the rage these days. Companies, governments and even presidential candidates reportedly do it.

Yet we sleep well at night because we trust Wikipedia’s editors will protect us from blatant disinformation. After all, there are 125,000 active editors on English Wikipedia, 460 administrators and a 12-member Arbitration Committee, often dubbed Wikipedia’s Supreme Court. Above these volunteers towers the Wikimedia Foundation, with its 700-strong staff. Together, it comprises an entire security system.

This month, we are seeing the system fail. And it is time for the Wikimedia Foundation to get involved.

Holocaust disinformation is rampant

My colleague and I recently exposed a persistent Holocaust disinformation campaign on English Wikipedia.

The study, which I published with Jan Grabowski from the University of Ottawa, examined two dozen Wikipedia articles on the Holocaust in Poland and over 300 back pages (including talk pages, noticeboards, and arbitration cases, spaces where editors decide what the rest of the world will accept as fact).

To our dismay, we found dozens of examples of Holocaust distortion which, taken together, advanced a Polish nationalist narrative, whitewashed the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolstered harmful stereotypes about Jews.

People who read these pages learned about Jews’ supposed complicity in their own catastrophe, gangs of Jewish collaborators aiding the Gestapo and Jews supporting the communists to betray Poles. A handful of distortions have been corrected since our publication, but many remain.

A fraction of it is true: There were scattered instances of Jewish collaboration in WWII, for example. But Wikipedia inflates their scale and prominence. In one article that remains gravely distorted, alleged Jewish collaboration with the Nazis takes up more space than the Ukrainian, Belorussian and ethnic German collaboration combined.

In one glaring hoax discovered by an Israeli reporter, Wikipedia claimed for 15 years that the Germans annihilated 200,000 non-Jewish Poles in a giant gas chamber in the middle of Warsaw.

Wikipedia’s ArbCom just released a ruling responding to our study, sanctioning several editors. While this may seem promising, in fact, ArbCom’s actions should concern anyone who cares about disinformation.

The problem is not the individual arbitrators, nor even ArbCom as a whole; the committee’s mandate is to judge conduct, never content. This is a good policy. We wouldn’t want arbitrators, who are anonymous volunteers with no expertise in any particular subject, to control content. Wikipedia’s strength lies in its enabling anyone to edit, democratizing knowledge like never before.

But this leaves a gaping hole in Wikipedia’s security apparatus. Its safeguards only protect us from fake information when enough editors reach a consensus that the information is indeed fake. When an area is dominated by a group of individuals pushing an erroneous point of view, then wrong information becomes the consensus.

Rogue editors wreak havoc

Wikipedia’s structure leaves it vulnerable to be exploited by any small group of people willing to spend the time to control the content, whether they are from a government or a corporation or are simply ideologically driven private individuals.

In theory, anyone can edit Wikipedia; no editor has any ownership over any article. Yet over the years, anyone who tried to fix distortions related to Holocaust disinformation faced a team of fierce editors who guard old lies and produce new ones

These few editors, with no evident ties to any government, sport playful pseudonyms, such as “Piotrus” (Little Peter in Polish) or “Volunteer Marek.” But they are a resilient team whose seniority and prolific editing across the encyclopedia give them high status in Wikipedia’s editorial community. Methodically and patiently, they go from article to article, removing and adding content until it aligns with a Polish nationalist worldview. They misrepresent sources, use unreliable sources, and push fringe points of view.

To be sure, Wikipedia has policies in place to prevent source misrepresentation, unreliable sources and fringe claims. If an editor commits these violations repeatedly, administrators and arbitrators can kick them out.

But administrators and arbitrators lack the expertise to recognize when a source has been misrepresented. Instead, they focus on editors’ interpersonal conduct. Editors who are uncivil, aggressive or long-winded find themselves sanctioned, while those who are polite and show a willingness to compromise generally emerge unscathed, regardless of the content they author.

This problem is not unique to Wikipedia’s treatment of the Holocaust. A similar disinformation campaign is taking place in Wikipedia’s articles on Native American history, where influential editors misrepresent sources to the effect of erasing Native history and whitewashing American settler colonial violence. The Wikipedia article on Andrew Jackson, plagued by such manipulations, attracts thousands of readers a day.

Wikimedia Foundation should intervene

This was the third ArbCom case on the Holocaust to make the same mistakes. ArbCom paid lip service to the importance of tackling source manipulations, while completely disregarding dozens of such problems presented to them by our study and by concerned editors. By ignoring egregiously false content, and focusing only on editors’ civility, ArbCom sends the message that there’s no problem with falsifying the past, as long as you are nice about it.

The results are tragic:Tthe arbitrators have banned one editor who, as our article showed, had brought in trustworthy scholarship to rebut the distortions. They sanctioned another editor for documenting the distortionists’ whitewashing of current Polish antisemitic figurines (called, tellingly, “Jew with a Coin”).

Worse still, they have described as “exemplary” a distortionist editor who has defended Holocaust revisionist Ewa Kurek. Kurek has claimed that Jews “had fun” in the Warsaw ghetto and that COVID-19 is a “Jewfication” of Europe. Two additional editors who were banned are indeed distortionists, but the ban (appealable in 12 months) responded to their bad manners, not their manipulation of history.

The Wikimedia Foundation needs to intervene, as it has already done to stem disinformation in Chinese Wikipedia, Saudi Wikipedia and Croatian Wikipedia, with excellent results. It must do so in English Wikipedia as well.

In a statement they issued last week in response to press inquiries about our study and the recent ArbCom decision, the foundation said, “Wikipedia’s volunteer editors act as a vigilant first line of defense.”

But what is the second line of defense? What happens when cases keep bouncing back to ArbCom, as has occurred with the Holocaust in Poland, India-Pakistan, Armenia-Azerbaijan and gender and sexuality, to mention just a few controversies?

A Holocaust history advisory board

The Wikimedia Foundation must harness subject-matter experts to assist volunteer editors. In cases where Wikipedia’s internal measures fail repeatedly, the foundation should commission scholars — mainstream scholars who are currently publishing in reputable peer-reviewed presses and work in universities unencumbered by state dictates — to weigh in.

In the case of Wikipedia’s coverage of Holocaust history, there is a need for an advisory board of established historians who would be available to advise editors on a source’s reliability, or help administrators understand whether a source has been misrepresented.

The foundation certainly has the resources to build more bridges with academia: It boasts an annual revenue of $155 million, mostly from the public’s donations. The public deserves a Wikipedia that provides not just any knowledge, but accurate knowledge, and asking for academics’ help is a necessary next step in Wikipedia’s ongoing development.

This is no radical departure from Wikipedia’s ethos of democratized knowledge that anyone can edit. This is an additional safeguard to ensure Wikipedia’s existing content policies are actually upheld.

Academia must also play its part to keep Wikipedia accurate. Scholars should uncover Wikipedia’s weaknesses and flag them for editors to fix, instead of snubbing Wikipedia as unreliable. Wikipedia is the seventh-most-visited site on the internet, most people’s first and last stop for information. All the more so with ChatGPT, which amplifies online content to a deafening pitch.

Volunteer editors and professional experts need to work together to get it right.

To contact the author, email opinion@forward.com.

Shira Klein is an associate professor of history at Chapman University in California and co-author of the study, “Wikipedia’s Intentional Distortion of the History of the Holocaust” in The Journal of Holocaust Research.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward. Discover more perspective in Opinion.

Studies spotlight burnout, online harassment of health workers during COVID-19

Stephanie Soucheray, MA

June 14, 2023

Drazen Zigic / iStock

Two new studies illustrate the mental toll COVID-19 took on healthcare workers (HCWs), with the first documenting high rates of burnout among HCWs and the second describing harassment on social media platforms suffered by physicians and scientists during the pandemic.

40% likely to quit within 5 years

The first study, published in the Journal of Interprofessional Education & Practice, included surveys and interviews of HCWs in Massachusetts who were asked about their experiences with burnout during the pandemic. Forty percent of those interviewed said the pandemic, and subsequent burnout, meant it was likely they would leave their jobs within 5 years.

Fifty-two HCWs completed interviews from April 22 to September 7, 2021, and 209 HCWs completed an online survey from February 17 to March 23, 2022. Thirty-seven percent and 34% of respondents, respectively, were physicians. Participants were also predominantly white (56% of interviewees and 73% of survey respondents, respectively) and female (79% and 81%).

In addition to demonstrating a desire to leave their professions, 55% of respondents said they had worse mental health than before the pandemic. And 59% said they experienced symptoms of burnout at least weekly.

Several key themes emerged from participant interviews: Many HCWs said they felt unprepared to deal with a novel virus and cited changing guidelines and a lack of knowledge pertaining to transmission, fatality rates, and outcomes in the early months of the pandemic as a huge source of stress. After the initial weeks of the pandemic, many experienced feeling burned out from both overwork in their healthcare jobs and from social isolation.

Four out of five participants felt unsupported by healthcare leadership.

By 2022, the emergency phase of the pandemic had passed, but HCWs still reported high levels of burnout due to a lack of adequate financial compensation for jobs performed.

"Four out of five participants felt unsupported by healthcare leadership," the authors wrote. To prevent attrition in the healthcare field, the authors suggest healthcare systems focus on career sustainability.

"Increased compensation will allow healthcare workers to sustain their quality of life in the setting of inflation and a rising cost of living," the authors said. "Flexible schedules also allow healthcare professionals to care for their patients and their families—a need that is becoming more critical, as women hold 76% of all healthcare jobs."

Two thirds of docs describe online harassment

As many as 66% of physicians and scientists experienced online, social media harassment during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to survey results published today in JAMA Network Open.

The study included 359 respondents who answered questions about harassment and their experiences using Twitter. A third of respondents (120) were aged 35 to 44 years, 57% were women, 39% were men, and 4% identified as transgender. All participants completed surveys from July 18 to August 21, 2022.

Among those who said they experienced online harassment, 210 (88%) reported harassment due to health-related advocacy, including providing information about COVID-19 and vaccines in general. Sixty-seven percent of women also said they experienced gender-based harassment, compared to just 12% of men.

"Social media plays a role in disseminating medical and scientific knowledge to the public; however, high levels of reported harassment may lead more physicians and scientists to limit the way they use social media, thus leaving propagation of misinformation unchecked by those most qualified to combat it," the authors concluded.

Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action could extend beyond college admissions

Republicans are strategically working to dismantle not only affirmative action but also diversity, equity and inclusion.

April Ryan | Jun 14, 2023

Any day now, the conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court will issue its decision on affirmative action and whether race should be a factor in the college admissions process.

Two cases are before the high court: Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University and Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. University of North Carolina. The Harvard case argues that the university’s admissions process discriminated against Asian-American students. The case from Chapel Hill, argues that Asian and white students were the subject of discriminatory admissions practices at the school.

WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 31: Proponents for affirmative action in higher education rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court before oral arguments in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina on October 31, 2022 in Washington, DC.

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

The cases are both backed by a wealthy white man named Edward Blum. He is the same person behind the 2016 Supreme Court case of Fisher v. University of Austin, Texas. In that case, the court ruled that race-based admissions was lawful. However, the collective, unscientific belief among Black thought leaders is that affirmative action in college admissions will be overturned by the current Supreme Court.

Republicans are strategically working to dismantle not only affirmative action but also diversity, equity and inclusion. Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders banned critical race theory in schools as well as the use of the term Latinx. In Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis banned AP African American studies, cut funding for diversity, equity and inclusion programs for state colleges, as well as challenging the rights of other groups like the LGBTQ+ community in its fight with the Disney corporation.

And on Capitol Hill, the Republican-led House of Representatives is overseeing the elimination of the civil rights panel and a House finance diversity panel. The House Judiciary Committee also has lost its civil rights subcommittee. This is happening as corporate America is ending a large number of DEI programs in the private sector.

Also Read:
Some words of advice for incoming college freshmen

Legal scholars and analysts have questioned that if the Supreme Court does remove race as a factor in the admissions process, what will be the far-reaching impact on Black students applying for admission to predominantly white institutions?

Bakari Sellers, a former member of the South Carolina Statehouse and TV political analyst, told theGrio there is a “slippery slope” as we wonder “what happens next?”

The court’s ruling could potentially place a bullseye on the landmark 1954 decision of Brown v. Board of Education, which led to the integration of U.S. public schools. There could also be an impact in civil rights laws in the broader context as well. Sellers says this idea centers around how the decision reads.

“I can tell you that I don’t think it is far-fetched to say certain constitutionalists and certain legal scholars do want to overturn Brown v. the Board of Education,” Sellers said.

WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 31: Proponents for affirmative action in higher education rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on October 31, 2022 in Washington, DC.

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

He is skeptical that Brown v. Board will be overturned in his lifetime. However, the outspoken lawyer also said, “We’re starting to see how the fact that Democrats haven’t taken the judiciary seriously for decades, and it is impacting the future of this great country – particularly the diversity or the lack thereof.”

DEI expert Y-Vonne Hutchinson, CEO and founder of ReadySet, an organization that helps companies attract and retain diverse talent, firmly stated it “is going to be incredibly hard when people don’t have access to the educational opportunities precluded on the basis of race.”

Hutchinson said this potential overturning of affirmative action would have a direct impact on Black and brown students in admissions and scholarships. And when it comes to the current anti-woke rhetoric coming from the Republican Party, she affirms, “I see this as part of a rollback on civil rights and our access to opportunity. She added, “I think the impact of this kind of decision will be deeply felt.”

Sellers agrees and says he expects that the court will rule against affirmative action. “Much like you had Justice [Samuel] Alito dedicate his entire career to gutting and eliminating Roe v. Wade. You will have a similar situation with Clarence Thomas and affirmative action.”

He believes that intentional efforts by Justice Thomas will mean that “African-Americans will have a great deal of trouble having the same opportunities for higher education.”

Oct 7, 2022; Washington, DC, USA; Members of the Supreme Court pose for a group photo at the Supreme Court. Seated from left: Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice of the United States John G. Roberts, Jr., Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. and Associate Justice Elena Kagan. Standing behind from left: Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett, Associate Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, Associate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Mandatory Credit: Jack Gruber-USA TODAY

A decision to change how affirmative action is administered is a double-edged sword. “HBCUs may benefit; I think individuals who want to go to PWIs [will have] a lot more trouble getting in, and you’ll see some PWIs lose the diversity if they have today,” said Sellers.

Susan Rice, Biden’s former domestic policy adviser, gave some insight into the Biden administration’s thinking on this matter as she was departing her post last month. Rice told theGrio exclusively, “Obviously, we are watching what might happen in the Supreme Court carefully. I don’t want to presume outcomes.” When challenged about the expected overturn, she acknowledged, “we are focused on all potential outcomes.”

In his first few months as president, Biden issued an executive order on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in the federal workforce.

Also Read:
A DEI expert’s advice on spotting a safe workplace

He also ordered his cabinet to implement efforts to lead by example. One of those examples is at the Department of State, where outgoing Chief DEI Officer Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley worked with unions to create a new employee handbook that makes the idea of DEI more of a permanent feature no matter the administration.

There is an understanding at the State Department, which is majority white and male, that women and minorities must have more chances at unbiased opportunities at the agency.

But even as the State Department works to strengthen its equity and inclusion efforts, hired and promotions, they say, is based on one’s work and record. “Everyone wants to know that they work in some place that is fair and that is just,” Abercrombie-Winstanley told theGrio. “That will recognize people for their talent and what they bring to the table.”

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Southern Baptists refuse to allow California megachurch - led by famous pastor Rick Warren - back into its denomination after it was kicked out for allowing female pastors

Saddleback Church had launched an appeal over the decision in February to oust churches for having women in charge

But this was overwhelmingly rejected at the Southern Baptist church annual meeting on Tuesday by 9,437 votes to 1,212

A similar appeal by a smaller church, Fern Creek Baptist of Louisville, Kentucky, which is led by a woman pastor, was also rejected

By KAMAL SULTAN FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 14 June 2023

The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) has refused to allow a California megachurch, founded by famous pastor Rick Warren, back into its denomination after it was kicked out for allowing female pastors.

Saddleback Church, which represents the denomination's second-largest congregation, had launched an appeal over the decision in February to oust churches for having women in charge.

But this was overwhelmingly rejected at the Southern Baptist church annual meeting in New Orleans on Tuesday by 9,437 votes to 1,212.

A similar appeal by a smaller church, Fern Creek Baptist of Louisville, Kentucky, which is led by a woman pastor, was also rejected.

The results were announced in front of the packed convention hall on Wednesday morning and met with silence after SBC President Bart Barber urged people to show restraint.

The Southern Baptist Convention refused to allow California megachurch, founded by famous pastor Rick Warren, back in denomination after it was kicked out for allowing female pastors

Saddleback Church had launched an appeal over the decision in February to oust churches for having women in charge

But this was overwhelmingly rejected at the Southern Baptist church annual meeting in New Orleans on Tuesday by 9,437 votes to 1,212

Saddleback's large congregation had been widely touted as a success story amid larger Southern Baptist membership declines.

Warren, the retired founding pastor and author of the best-selling phenomenon The Purpose Driven Life, called for the church to be reinstated and told the convention 'women on pastoral staff have not sinned'.

He urged Baptists to agree to disagree 'in order to share a common mission,' following the announcement of the results.

'Messengers voted for conformity and uniformity rather than unity. The only way you will have unity is to love diversity,' he said.

'We made this effort knowing we were not going to win.'

President Barber had previously asked those in attendance to show self-control no matter the result.

'I know sometimes there are churches where people wind up in biblical divorce,' he said.

'But we don't throw divorce parties at church. And whatever these results are, I'm asking you, behave like Christians.'

Church representatives also voted 9,700 to 806 to deny an appeal by smaller congregation Fern Creek Baptist Church, which has had a woman pastor for three decades but came under heightened scrutiny this year.

Warren and the Rev. Linda Barnes Popham, pastor of Fern Creek, made their final appeals to Southern Baptists here on Tuesday during the denomination's annual meeting.

Warren has been a lifelong Southern Baptist and has pushed the boundaries for several years now, according to Scott Thumma, a sociology of religion professor and director of the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

But he said the church being removed from the denomination was something he might have never expected.

Warren, the retired founding pastor and best-selling author, called for the church to be reinstated and told the convention 'women on pastoral staff have not sinned'

Church representatives also voted 9,700 to 806 to deny an appeal by smaller congregation Fern Creek Baptist Church, which has been led by Rev. Linda Barnes Popham for three decades

Southern Baptist Convention President Bart Barber urged people to show restraint ahead of the results

'It's pretty clear that Warren did not think the SBC was going to reinstate Saddleback,' Thumma said.

'But, he's had a platform to say what being Baptist means, what the Scripture says about women in ministry, that Southern Baptists are under a big tent and what is means to exclude any congregation. This is all probably more symbolic.'

Following the vote results, Warren criticized the direction of the SBC that contributed to Saddleback's ejection.

'There are people who want to take the SBC back to the 1950s when white men ruled supreme and when the woman's place was in the home. There are others who want to take it back 500 years to the time of the Reformation,' he said.

'I say we need to take the church back to the first century. The church at its birth was the church at its best.'

In February, the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee voted to oust the two congregations, along with three others that chose not to appeal, for having women pastors.

All Baptist churches are independent, so the convention can't tell them what to do, but it can decide which churches are 'not in friendly cooperation,' the official wording for an expulsion states.

The SBC's official statement of faith says the office of pastor is reserved for qualified men, but this is believed to be the first time the convention has expelled any churches over it.

Following the results, Warren criticized the direction of the SBC that contributed to Saddleback's ejection

The SBC's executive committee, which has 30 employees and 86 appointed members - approved the vote but formally recommended 'messengers' vote against it

Its executive committee, which has 30 employees and 86 appointed members - approved the vote but formally recommended 'messengers' vote against it.

Pastor Mike Law, a proponent of the ban, said the ruling would provide the SBC with the 'clarity' that they are in 'desperate need of.'

Joshua Abbotoy, a pastor whose congregation left the denomination, said some Southern Baptists have strong, unfavorable views of women leading.

His conservative organization New Founding published an analysis last year that estimated there were more than 1,800 female pastors in SBC churches.

Opponents of the ban say they believe it could set a dangerous precedent for the denomination and others like it.

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U.S. House Republicans spar with HHS secretary over transgender youth, child labor

Posted Jun 14, 2023,
Ariana Figueroa
States Newsroom

U.S.epartment of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on Tuesday defended access to health care for transgender people, as well as his agency’s actions in connection with unaccompanied migrant children.

Republicans at a U.S. House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing grilled Becerra about gender-affirming care for transgender minors, including puberty blockers. They also pressed him about an investigation from the New York Times that reported HHS lost contact with 85,000 unaccompanied migrant children and hundreds of those children were found working dangerous jobs in violation of child labor laws.

Becerra appeared before the panel to advocate for President Joe Biden’s HHS budget request for fiscal 2024 proposing $144 billion in discretionary funding and $1.7 trillion in mandatory funding for health care, child care, mental health services, Medicare expansion and more.

“Our country faces numerous health care challenges — and HHS is at the center of addressing many of these issues,” Becerra said in his opening statement.

But the chair of the panel, Rep. Virginia Foxx, said she was not pleased with the budget request.

“Each dollar matters when wallets are stretched thin, so the enormous HHS budget requires a critical eye,” the North Carolina Republican said in her opening statement. “Budgets calling for more money and reckless spending are crushing everyday Americans.”

Democrats raised concerns about maternal mortality, lack of access to reproductive care for pregnant patients, the rise in child labor violations for unaccompanied migrant children and health care access for transgender people.

“The nation is witnessing the harsh restrictions and criminalization of women’s access to abortions, jeopardizing the health of women and families across the country,” ranking member Rep. Bobby Scott, a Virginia Democrat, said in his opening statement. “We are all bearing witness to the baseless villainization of the necessary care that supports transgender individuals.”

The GOP-controlled House recently passed legislation to ban transgender girls from competing in the sports that align with their gender identity.

Gender-affirming health care

Several states with Republican-controlled state legislatures have moved to ban transgender children from accessing gender-affirming care, and Republicans at the hearing zeroed in on the topic.

Republican Rep. Mary Miller of Illinois asked Becerra if puberty blockers were dangerous and what risks come with using them.

“No drug would be on the market if it was not safe,” he said.

Miller asked Becerra what “your own FDA says about the risk,” referring to the Food and Drug Administration.

Puberty blockers were first approved by the FDA in 1993 to temporarily pause puberty in children who were going through it too early. Transgender adolescents can choose to start hormone therapy, in which they receive either estrogen or testosterone treatments, whichever one that aligns with their gender identity.

Republican Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana took issue with a report HHS published in March about gender-affirming care, in which the agency recommended cutting federal funding for hospitals that deny access to health care for transgender people.

“Does this mean that HHS is seriously threatening to withhold hospital grants from states like my own if they refuse to go along with surgeries … or puberty blockers for kids?” he asked.

Becerra said that the agency is going to “protect the rights of any American to get the health care they’re entitled to, and if someone tries to stop them from that, that’s a violation of the law.”

Democratic Rep. Mark Takano of California said Republicans on the committee were trying to cause a “moral panic.”

“This line of questioning I think is meant to inflame Americans sensibilities about transgender people and stigmatize them,” he said.

Takano asked Becerra how often transgender youth receive gender-affirming surgeries.

Becerra said that any surgeries that transgender minors receive are very rare and that they are performed on adolescents, not young kids. It’s a decision that is made on the individual level between a patient and medical provider, he added.

“What we know at HHS is that many of the transgender youth that are having very difficult, traumatic times find that getting gender-affirming care has been helpful in stabilizing their lives,” Becerra said.

Child labor

Both Democrats and Republicans asked Becerra about the New York Times investigation into child labor.

Becerra pushed back on those criticisms, arguing that the agency did not “lose” contact with any children because those children were not in HHS jurisdiction.

“Once we place those children (with a sponsor), we lose jurisdiction over those kids,” he said. “So we can’t lose people we don’t have jurisdiction over.”

Becerra mostly placed the blame on companies that the Department of Labor has investigated and cited for exploiting migrant children.

“I don’t believe that these children are receiving the oversight protections when an employer or company is violating their labor rights,” he said.

Republican Rep. Tim Walberg of Michigan told Becerra that he found the lack of coordination between HHS, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Department of Labor alarming.

“It appears as though many of these children were placed with human traffickers and were forced to work in dangerous jobs,” Walberg said.

He asked Becerra if the Labor Department had informed his agency in 2021 and 2022 that those unaccompanied children were being exploited.

Becerra said that HHS does not have jurisdiction over the unaccompanied children that the agency releases to sponsors, but that HHS is coordinating with the Labor Department to notice any patterns that companies are violating child labor laws.

House Democrats last week lobbied Foxx to hold a hearing on the uptick in child labor violations overall, but she argued that Tuesday’s hearing would provide the committee with an opportunity to address the issue.

“We do feel like there was a betrayal of trust for our most vulnerable kids in this country,” Republican Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer of Oregon said to Becerra about the reports of migrant children working in dangerous work conditions.

Reproductive health care

Following the first-year mark since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to abortion access, Democrats raised concerns about access to reproductive care, especially for pregnant patients who live in states that have banned abortion.

Democratic Rep. Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon told Becerra she was concerned about reports of pregnant patients who need to travel to other states to access care because of abortion bans. She also cited reports about medical staff waiting until their patients get dangerously ill before being able to provide treatment.

She asked Becerra if the agency expects to see maternal mortality rates increase or decrease in states that pass bans and restrictions on access to abortion.

“Pregnant women in states with abortion bans are nearly three times more likely to die during the process of bringing a child into their family,” Becerra said.

He added that the Biden administration is aiming to reduce maternal mortality rates with a budget request of $1.9 billion for the Health Resources and Services Administration Maternal and Child Health programs. HHS is asking for $276 million to be directed “toward reducing maternal mortality and morbidity and $185 million to the Healthy Start program to reduce racial disparities in maternal and infant health outcomes.”

The current maternal mortality rate in the U.S. is 17.4 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There are also racial disparities in maternal mortality rates: Black mothers are 2.5 times more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth causes than white mothers.

Democratic Rep. Jahana Hayes of Connecticut said she was concerned about the Black mortality rate, pointing to the recent death of American track and field champion Tori Bowie due to complications of childbirth. Bowie was 32.

She asked Becerra how the president’s budget would address the high mortality rates of Black mothers.

He said the agency is planning to continue expanding access to the doula program “so we can make sure that women are receiving care, not just at the point of delivery, but before that, so they’re preparing for that delivery and having good health outcomes.” Doulas are trained professionals who provide support to new mothers before and after birth.

“So we’re going to continue to work with community health centers, with those programs that reach out to do community health service work, to try to make sure we’re getting to people early,” Becerra said. “Someone who’s an athlete at a young age of 32 should not be dying in her home alone because she’s pregnant.”

This report was first published by the Arizona Mirror.

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news, politics & government, business, family/life, health, nation/world, breaking, Az Mirror,

How long will it take to repair Philadelphia's I-95? A look at bridge collapses in US history

While the time frame for I-95 repairs remains uncertain, a look at similar roadway failures in the past might offer a clue

By Jessie Nguyen • Published June 15,2023

Commuters in Philadelphia and commercial truckers alike are bracing for what could be months of traffic disruptions due to the destruction of a section of Interstate 95, a critical artery for regional transportation.

An elevated section of I-95 collapsed Sunday after a tanker truck carrying 8,500 gallons of gasoline flipped over on an off-ramp and caught fire, igniting a blaze that caused the northbound lanes to collapse and severely damaging the southbound lanes.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro issued a disaster declaration on Monday to expedite repairs. Meanwhile, alternative routes have made commutes much longer for hundreds of thousands of drivers and will likely raise shipping costs as truckers are forced to take lengthy detours. The affected portion of the highway, which is a vital north-south artery on the East Coast and runs from Maine to Florida, typically carries 160,000 vehicles per day, of which 8% are commercial trucks.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the incident will undoubtedly result in higher prices of goods after he visited the collapse site on Tuesday.

“Part of what goes into the cost of everything that we pay for in the store is the cost of shipping, and if a route is disrupted or if it’s longer, or if trucks have to wait, that finds its way into the cost of goods,” Buttigieg said.

On Wednesday, Shapiro announced the state's rebuilding plan and said crews will work 24 hours a day until they can reopen the interstate. But the governor repeatedly declined to estimate how long that would take.

As economic and traffic impacts frustrate the densely populated area, and uncertainty remains about the repair timeline, similar roadway incidents in the past might offer a clue on when to expect I-95 to reopen.

A fire that started underneath Interstate 85 in Atlanta burned so hot that it caused a 92-foot elevated section of the highway to collapse on March 30, 2017, NBC News reports. The fire was reported during the evening rush, stalling thousands of drivers as state troopers worked on a way to get vehicles off the roadway. There were no reported injuries.

Then-Gov. Nathan Deal declared a state of emergency for Atlanta and Fulton County the same night, freeing up federal funds to be used for repairs.

Officials said the freeway is one of the most heavily traveled in the area, carrying over 250,000 vehicles daily through the Atlanta metropolitan area.

Repair efforts took six weeks and totaled $15 million, with officials offering a multimillion-dollar incentive to the project contractor to finish ahead of schedule, The Associated Press reported. The bridge reopened on May 12, 2017.

I-5 Skagit River Bridge collapse in Mount Vernon, Washington

Stephen Brashear/Getty Images

MT. VERNON, WASHINGTON - MAY 23: A boat cruises past the scene of a bridge collapse on Interstate 5 on May 23, 2013 near Mt. Vernon, Washington. 1-5 connects Seattle, Washington to Vancouver, B.C., Canada. No deaths have been reported, and three people were taken to hospitals with injuries. (Stephen Brashear/Getty Images)

A section of an Interstate-5 highway bridge in Mount Vernon, Washington, collapsed on May 23, 2013, sending cars and people into the Skagit River below. An oversized truck was reported to have caused the collapse, which left three people injured.

I-5 is the main freeway along the West Coast, providing a connection between Seattle and British Columbia, Canada. The Skagit Bridge carries around 71,000 vehicles per day.

A temporary bridge reopened less than a month later and a permanent replacement was finished in mid-September with a cost of nearly $18 million, according to the AP.

I-35W Mississippi River bridge collapse in Minneapolis, Minnesota

MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

An aerial view shows the collapsed I-35W bridge 04 August 2007 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Five people have been confirmed dead and 8 others missing following the 01 August bridge collapse during rush hour. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)

More than 15 years ago, the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed over the Mississippi River during rush hour traffic on Aug. 1, 2007. Thirteen people were killed and 145 more injured. The National Transportation Safety Board determined a design flaw as the cause of the collapse, citing "inadequate load capacity" as a probable explanation.

I-35W was reported to be one of the busiest bridges in the state, carrying over 140,000 vehicles daily, officials said. And federal inspection records show it had been classified as structurally deficient, meaning that it was aging and in need of repair.

A temporary bridge was put in place after 27 days. The permanent bridge was opened on September 2008 after an 18-month accelerated construction period. Construction cost for the new replacement bridge, the I-35W Saint Anthony Falls Bridge, totaled $234 million, the Minnesota Department of Transportation said.

I-10 Twin Span Bridge collapse in New Orleans, Louisiana

When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, it tore apart a five-mile concrete section of the Interstate-10 bridge, which connects New Orleans to points east. There were no reported injuries.

Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development said the bridge was a vital link for transportation in the region, carrying 55,000 vehicles in daily traffic, and accepted a $30.9 million bid to repair the bridge. The eastbound bridge was opened to traffic less than two months later on Oct. 14 and the westbound bridge was opened on Jan. 6, 2006.

Even though the temporary fix deemed the bridge functional, it was determined to be "too vulnerable" to storm surges in the future, DOTD said. Construction of the new Twin Span Bridge took five years and cost $803 million. The new bridge was opened in September 2011.

PennDOT officials plan to reveal their reconstruction plan for the portion of I-95 that collapsed following a truck crash and fire on Sunday. NBC10’s Deanna Durante shows us how past highway collapses in other parts of the country are providing clues regarding how long it will take to completely repair I-95.

Kurdish militant group PKK ends ceasefire with Turkey

Protesters raise yellow flags and portraits showing the face of Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) -- jailed in Turkey since 1999 -- during a demonstration calling for his release, in the Kurdish-majority city of Qamishli in northeastern Syria on February 15, 2023. (AFP)

AFP, Istanbul
Published: 14 June ,2023

Kurdish militants from the outlawed PKK group said they are ending a unilateral ceasefire they declared after Turkey was hit by a major earthquake earlier this year.

The announcement, carried by pro-Kurdish media on Tuesday, threatens to see a return of violence that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since the PKK launched its fight for an autonomous state in Turkey’s southeast in 1984.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was re-elected for another five years last month, has intensified operations against the militant group and its offshoots in both Iraq and Syria.

A Kurdish militant umbrella organization that also includes the PKK said it was responding to Turkey’s renewed operations.

“The need for active struggle has become inevitable,” the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) said in a statement quoted by the pro-Kurdish Firat news agency.

“We declare that we have called off the unilateral ceasefire as of today,” it said.

The February earthquake, which has claimed more than 50,000 lives, hit a region near where some of the heaviest fighting between Turkish government forces and the PKK took place.

As Deepfake Fraud Permeates China, Authorities Target Political Challenges Posed by AI

June 14, 2023 2:31 PM

Adam Xu

FILE - An AFP journalist watches a video manipulated with artificial intelligence to potentially deceive viewers, or "deepfake," at his desk in Washington, D.C., Jan. 25, 2019.

Washington —

Chinese authorities are cracking down on political and fraud cases driven by deepfakes, created with face- and voice-changing software that tricks targets into believing they are video chatting with a loved one or another trusted person.

How good are the deepfakes? Good enough to trick an executive at a Fuzhou tech company in Fujian province who almost lost $600,000 to a person he thought was a friend claiming to need a quick cash infusion.

The entire transaction took less than 10 minutes from the first contact via the phone app WeChat to police stopping the online bank transfer when the target called the authorities after learning his real friend had never requested the loan, according to Sina Technology.

Despite the public's outcry about such AI-driven fraud, some experts say Beijing appears more concerned about the political challenges that deepfakes may pose, as shown by newly implemented regulations on "deep synthesis" management that outlaw activities that "endanger national security and interests and damage the national image."

The rapid development of artificial intelligence technology has propelled cutting-edge technology to mass entertainment applications in just a few years.

In a 2017 demonstration of the risks, a video created by University of Washington researchers showed then-U.S. President Barack Obama saying things he hadn't.

FILE - This image made from video of a fake video featuring former President Barack Obama shows elements of facial mapping used in new technology that lets anyone make videos of real people appearing to say things they've never said.

Two years later, Chinese smartphone apps like Zao let users swap their faces with celebrities so they could appear as if they were in a movie. Zao was removed from app stores in 2019 and Avatarify, another popular Chinese face-swapping app, was also banned in 2021, likely for violation of privacy and portrait rights, according to Chinese media.

FILE - The Chinese app Zao, which was removed from app stores in 2019, lets users swap their faces with celebrities or anyone else in a video clip.

Pavel Goldman-Kalaydin, head of artificial intelligence and machine learning at SumSub, a Berlin-based global antifraud company, explained how easy it is with a personal computer or smartphone to make a video in which a person appears to say things he or she never would.

"To create a deepfake, a fraudster uses a real person's document, taking a photo of it and turning it into a 3D persona," he said. "The problem is that the technology, it is becoming more and more democratized. Many people can use it. … They can create many deepfakes, and they try to bypass these checks that we try to enforce."

Subbarao Kambhampati, professor at the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence at Arizona State University, said in a telephone interview he was surprised by the apparent shift from voice cloning to deepfake video calling by scammers in China. He compared that to a rise in voice-cloning phone scams in the U.S.

"Audio alone, you're more easily fooled, but audio plus video, it would be little harder to fool you. But apparently they're able to do it," Kambhampati said, adding that it is harder to make a video that appears trustworthy.

"Subconsciously we look at people's faces … and realize that they're not exactly behaving the way we normally see them behave in terms of their facial expressions."

Experts say that AI fraud will become more sophisticated.

"We don't expect the problem to go away. The biggest solution … is education, let people understand the days of trusting your ears and eyes are over, and you need to keep that in the back of your mind," Kambhampati said.

The Internet Society of China issued a warning in May, calling on the public to be more vigilant as AI face-changing, voice-changing scams and slanders became common.

The Wall Street Journal reported on June 4 that local governments across China have begun to crack down on false information generated by artificial intelligence chatbots. Much of the false content designed as clickbait is similar to authentic material on topics that have already attracted public attention.

To regulate "deep synthesis" content, China's administrative measures implemented on January 10 require service providers to "conspicuously mark" AI-generated content that "may cause public confusion or misidentification" so that users can tell authentic media content from deepfakes.

China's practice of requiring technology platforms to "watermark" deepfake content has been widely discussed internationally.

Matt Sheehan, a fellow in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, noted that deepfake regulations place the onus on the companies that develop and operate these technologies.

"If enforced well, the regulations could make it harder for criminals to get their hands on these AI tools," he said in an email to VOA Mandarin. "It could throw up some hurdles to this kind of fraud."

But he also said that much depends on how Beijing implements the regulations and whether bad actors can obtain AI tools outside China.

"So, it's not a problem with the technology," said SumSub's Goldman-Kalaydin. "It is always a problem with the usage of the technology. So, you can regulate the usage, but not the technology."

James Lewis, senior vice president of the strategic technologies program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told VOA Mandarin, "Chinese law needs to be modernized for changes in technology, and I know the Chinese are thinking about that. So, the cybercrime laws you have will probably catch things like deepfakes. What will be hard to handle is the volume and the sophistication of the new products, but I know the Chinese government is very worried about fraud and looking for ways to get control of it."

Others suggest that in regulating AI, political stability is a bigger concern for the Chinese government.

"I think they have a stronger incentive to work on the political threats than they do for fraud," said Bill Drexel, an associate fellow for the Technology and National Security Program at Center for a New American Security.

In May, the hashtag #AIFraudEruptingAcrossChina was trending on China's social media platform Weibo. However, the hashtag has since been censored, according to the Wall Street Journal, suggesting authorities are discouraging discussion on AI-driven fraud.

"So even we can see from this incident, once it appeared that the Chinese public was afraid that there was too much AI-powered fraud, they censored," Drexel told VOA Mandarin.

He continued, "The fact that official state-run media initially reported these incidents and then later discussion of it was censored just goes to show that they do ultimately care about covering themselves politically more than they care about addressing fraud."

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.

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Thursday, June 15, 2023

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