West Virginia lawmakers pass bill allowing religious exemptions for school vaccine requirements

West Virginia was of five states without religious exemptions.

ByMary Kekatos

February 26, 2024,

ABC News Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Jen Ashton explains how vaccines work.

The West Virginia House of Delegates passed a bill Monday that will eliminate school vaccine requirements for those who claim religious exemptions, but only for some schools.

Last week, the House began considering the bill, known as HB 5105, which proposed eliminating vaccine requirements for public virtual schools that do not take part in extracurricular activities or sports in public school settings. The bill was then expanded to propose "eliminating the vaccine requirements for students of public virtual schools, private schools, or parochial schools unless the student participates in sanctioned athletic events, and creating a religious exemption from vaccine requirements," and then further amended to specifically allow vaccine exemptions "any child whose parents or guardians present a letter stating that a child cannot be vaccinated for religious reasons."

It's unclear if the religious exemption will apply to students attending in-person public schools.

The bill will now head to the Senate for debate and, if it passes in that chamber, to the desk of Gov. Jim Justice for signing into law.

Prior to this bill, West Virginia had no non-medical vaccine exemptions from school vaccine requirements, either for religious or philosophical beliefs, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Currently, children in West Virginia are required to receive at least one dose of vaccine for chickenpox, hepatitis B, measles, mumps, diphtheria, polio, rubella, tetanus, and whooping cough before entering school for the first time in grades K-12. The COVID-19 vaccine is not required to attend school in West Virginia.

If child's parents or guardian cannot afford or cannot access vaccines, county health departments will provide vaccines for the child, according to West Virginia law.

A pharmacist prepares to administer COVID-19 vaccine booster shots 

during an event hosted by the C...Show more
Scott Olson/Getty Images, FILE

To receive a medical exemption from vaccination, a physician must have treated or examined the child, and an exemption request from the physician must be submitted to the state Immunization Officer of the Bureau for Public Health.

A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said fewer than 0.1% of kindergarten-age students in West Virginia were exempted from vaccines, including measles, mumps and rubella (MMR); diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (DTaP); poliovirus (polio); and varicella (chickenpox) for the 2022-23 school year, the lowest exemption rate in the nation.

West Virginia's strict vaccination laws have also helped improve attendance rates for students and staff, according to the state's Department of Education.

MORE: West Virginia Gov. Justice, a vaccine advocate, feels 'extremely unwell' amid COVID-19 battle

Delegate Chris Pritt, a sponsor of the bill and a Republican representing Kanawha County, which includes the state capital of Charleston, said the bill allows medical freedom for West Virginians.

"I spoke in favor of a bill to allow more parents to choose whether to vaccinate. [West Virginia] is at the bottom with medical freedom," he wrote in a post on X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter. "Mountaineers will never be free until families are able to make decisions on whether to vaccinate!"

Over the weekend, health officer Dr. Steven Eshenaur of the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department wrote an opinion in which he criticized the bill.

West Virginia State Capitol building in Charleston, W. Va.

STOCK PHOTO/Getty Images

"Our forefathers and their families experienced the ravages of measles, mumps, tetanus, polio, and meningitis," he wrote. "Modern medicine has worked diligently to protect our communities through the development and testing of vaccines that have been proven to be safe and effective."

"Now, legislators want to turn the clock back nearly 100 years and remove some of the safeguards in our vaccination policies," Eshenaur continued. "If you are anti-vaccination, you are pro-disease. It's as simple as that."

GUEST ESSAY
Can’t help bot wonder — is this the end of the Google Search monopoly?

(Image: Leonardo.ai, prompted by author)

By Steven Boykey Sidley
Follow
26 Feb 2024 

Here are the advantages of AI chatbot output versus that of a good old ranked search.

A change in my behaviour has crept up on me, pretty much unnoticed. I realised recently that I almost never use Google Search anymore, despite doing a substantial amount of exploring on the internet every day as part of my job. What happened?


Google Search, the company’s original product (well before Gmail and Google Drive and Google Maps and their other products), has been not only one of the most successful products in history, but has also contributed in a major way to the internet, taking it from a moderately useful tool into public ubiquity.


There must be more to blockchains than just Bitcoin.
There is. And it's coming to a future near you soon.

It's Mine is an entertaining and accessible look at how Bitcoin made its mark, how it all works and how it challenges our long-held beliefs, from renowned expert and frequent Daily Maverick contributor Steven Boykey Sidley.Buy Now

The story of its genesis is now internet lore.

During the late Nineties, two young Stanford students, Serge Brin and Larry Page, frustrated at the creaky torpidity of current search engines, came up with a better idea. Instead of crawling around the global web for an answer to a user question, they decided to download the entire web every night onto a bunch of hard drives and then index everything so that it could be searched blazingly fast, unlike the prevailing technique of visiting and parsing the content of every website server on the planet.

It was not a problem to do this; the web was still small and manageable. When it got larger, they simply added more storage and more CPUs. Which is why they now own massive data centres on every continent, which continually update and index their store of information on an ongoing basis.

Their second innovation was to rank their search results according to how many other people had accessed the same website. Rather like a popularity rating, with the more popular websites placed at the top of the page. It was called the PageRank algorithm and, while it has been fine-tuned many times over the past few decades, it spawned an entirely new industry dedicated to rank-bumping. The difference between being on the first page or the second page (or beyond) has meant life or death to many commercial enterprises.

How successful is Google Search? It owns 90% of the market. It generated $175-billion for Google in 2023, which was 57% of its total revenue and 73% of its advertising revenue.

There have been some competitors along the way, like DuckDuckGo, which keeps your searches private and does not resell your data, and which has a small market share. There is Microsoft’s Bing, a perennial also-ran in the mighty Microsoft stable, and then there were a couple of so-called Google-killer startups like Neeva, which died quickly and quietly.

So why am I not using Google Search anymore?

Because of AI. When I need information I use ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude, Groq, Jasper or Pi. There are more, speciality AI search engines which I will get to one day, such as BloombergGPT for financial data.

So, what is the advantage of AI chatbot output versus that of a good old ranked search?

Possibly the most important advantage is that chatbots are trained on a dramatically larger corpus of information than is available to traditional search engines.

The first is the language of query. In traditional search engines we have learnt to query using keywords, usually no more than a few in a short sentence. In the chatbots we can simply frame our query in our vernacular (originally the chatbots were English-speaking, but they are a fast growing Tower of Babel – speaking French, Arabic, Chinese, Spanish and others).

This makes a startling difference to user experience. The chatbot queries can be massively detailed (up to one million words in the latest version of Gemini), which means that searches can be either very general or insanely focused or anywhere in between. The user is not presented with a ranked list of websites to choose from but receives a much purer response – text, images and audio of any user-defined length, untarnished by ranking tricks and untainted by advertising. These responses can then be refined further by additional queries and rephrasings, just as in real life.

The second advantage is speed. Anyone who has tried Groq (not to be confused with Elon Musk’s Grok) will have witnessed the astonishing appearance of the answer almost before their fingers have left the keyboard.

The third and possibly most important advantage is that chatbots are trained on a dramatically larger corpus of information than is available to traditional search engines. It is estimated that by 2027 or thereabouts, the chatbot training data will come close to having consumed all of recorded human information (yes, I know, copyright issues might intrude a tad here; the jury is quite literally still out on this matter). In any event, this means much richer responses to questions than the traditional search engines can offer because only websites and some other public repositories are accessible to them.


It is not unreasonable to conclude that Google’s 26-year-old search monopoly will be under threat.

There are a couple of well-publicised downsides too. The occasional and gleefully reported “hallucinations”, the inability to reference the source of the information and the fact that information is not necessarily current (due to the time lag between training and public accessibility). But all of these issues are in the process of being addressed – the incentives for solving them are immeasurable. For instance, Perplexity claims to have solved both the source-referencing problem and the presentation-of-real-time-information problem by mixing chatbot technology with older search techniques.

Read more in Daily Maverick: Stop Googling and Bing it, already

The sharp-eyed reader will know that Gemini is being integrated into Google Search, so Google’s competitive moat may well be protected. But the Microsoft-owned Bing has integrated the much better known ChatGPT, and so the search field is already being reshaped. Add to this the other new Chatbot aspirants I mentioned and it is not unreasonable to conclude that Google’s 26-year-old search monopoly will be under threat.

Is this a good thing? Indeed. The crumbling of monopolies is a happy noise. However, I will remember Google Search fondly. After all, it made that hallowed hall of fame wherein products become verbs, right?

Just Google it.

 DM

Steven Boykey Sidley is a professor of practice at JBS, University of Johannesburg. His new book It’s Mine: How the Crypto Industry is Redefining Ownership is published by Maverick451 in South Africa and Legend Times Group in the UK/EU, available

 Cuba thanks the government of Kenya for its cooperation

Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs

As a result of the procedures carried out by comrade Esteban Lazo,  Speaker of the National People’s Power Assembly and President of the Council of State of Cuba, in his condition as High Level Special Envoy of the President of the Republic during his visit to the Republic of Kenya, particularly during his meeting with President William Ruto, sensitive information has been obtained which would contribute to advance in the still limited clarification of the news published about the alleged death of Cuban doctors Assel Herrera Correa and Landy Rodríguez Hernández in Somalia, where they remained kidnapped. 

Comrade Lazo confirmed the spirit of cooperation shown by the government of Kenya and appreciated its understanding of this sensitive and painful matter.

The information obtained is being currently processed by the authorities in charge of following up on such a thorough and important investigation. Meanwhile, procedures are being followed with several governments and international actors in search for cooperation and further clarification.  

Havana,  February 26, 2024

Global perspectives on the Alabama ruling, IVF and when cells become a person

By Jennifer Chesak

BBC Features correspondent

Getty Images

Alabama Supreme Court ruling raises questions about the definition of 'embryo' and whether fertilisation dictates 'personhood'. Here, medical consensus from around the world.

In a recent court case over embryos accidentally destroyed at a fertility clinic, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled under state law that all embryos are "children". However, the global medical and scientific consensus on when reproductive cells become human life says otherwise.

In 2023, three couples filed a wrongful death suit against the Mobile Infirmary Medical Center in Alabama, where their remaining embryos from in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment were stored and accidentally destroyed, according to the ruling on 16 February. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that embryos, including those kept outside of the uterus, are "children" under the state's Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.

The Alabama ruling reverses a lower court's dismissal of the case and allows the wrongful death suit to proceed. The case has raised questions about the definition of "personhood" or "child", which could have future legal ramifications for IVF doctors and their patients. The medical and scientific consensus, however, says embryos are cells capable of creating life rather than consisting of actual life.

"Anyone with eyes (maybe aided by a microscope)...can recognize that a fertilised egg in a freezer in a clinic is not the same as a baby," says Sean Tipton, the spokesperson for the American Society of Reproductive Medicine. "The Alabama Supreme Court may wish that they were the same, but clearly they are not."

What experts say in the United States

Other organisations and agencies in the US have also weighed in. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a statement about the ruling, saying: "The outcome of this case will certainly affect access to fertility treatment across the country as more and more state legislatures advance policies that are based on an ideological and unscientific definition of personhood."

The American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama also issued a statement: "The Alabama Supreme Court has grossly overstepped its role by classifying frozen embryos, single-celled fertilised eggs, as children. Justices have crossed a critical boundary to assign personhood to something created in a lab that exists outside of a human body."
Differing definitions of 'embryo' from around the world

The determination of when personhood begins and what should be defined as an embryo has been morphing in the US and around the globe as new technologies have emerged.

A perspective article published in 2023 in the journal Cell discusses the ethics of embryonic research. In it, the authors from Austria, Spain, the US, the UK and the Netherlands propose a legal definition. They define an embryo as "a group of human cells supported by elements fulfilling extraembryonic and uterine functions that, combined, have the potential to form a foetus".

The researchers propose this definition because of new technologies in which embryos can be formed without fertilisation – beings that may never have been an embryo. Shortly after Dolly the sheep, the first cloned mammal, was born in July 1996, countries began changing their definitions.

Although definitions of what an embryo is differ slightly, the Alabama Supreme Court's ruling that a frozen embryo is a child is unprecedented.

The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and other countries root their new definitions in "potentiality". Instead of defining an embryo as human life these definitions consider a zygote, which is a single cell and the start of an embryo, "to be capable of generating a human being", rather than being human in its current state.

However, Spain has a slightly different take, defining an embryo as "a phase of embryonic development", but that phase begins inside the uterus.

Although definitions of what an embryo is differ slightly, the Alabama Supreme Court's ruling that a frozen embryo is a child is unprecedented.

"The Alabama ruling is based on an idiosyncratic view of the embryo that is very marginal," says Nicolas Rivron of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, and the lead author of the perspective article in Cell. He says biology defines an embryo as a group of cells that can potentially form a foetus.

"The legal definition of an embryo is different from the biological definition as it does not aim to describe the embryo scientifically, but rather to protect it," he adds. "Legal definitions should be informed by biological insight, yet they are also crafted based on considerations that vary worldwide, as they are rooted in philosophical, ethical, social or cultural beliefs."

When does personhood begin?

In a 2013 blog post published by the Public Library of Science, an open-access publisher for science and medicine, geneticist Ricki Lewis offers a timeline of embryo development and gives her own opinion for when personhood may start.

"The ability to survive outside the body of another sets a practical, technological limit on defining when a sustainable human life begins," is Lewis’s view on the topic. "Having a functional genome, tissue layers, a notochord, a beating heart…none of these matter if the organism cannot survive where humans survive."

Richard Paulson, director of University of Southern California Fertility, wrote in an editorial for F&S Reports, the journal of the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, that "the concept of 'life begins at conception' is neither scientific nor a part of any (ancient) traditional religious teaching."

"The writers of the Bible (as well as other religious texts)," he continues, "knew nothing about eggs, sperm or fertilisation. It was only after medical science revealed the basic steps in embryonic development in the mid-20th century that some religious groups seized on the idea that human life must therefore 'begin' at fertilisation."

What are current practices regarding the destruction of unused embryos in IVF?

With IVF procedures, often supernumerary – or extra – embryos exist, and patients need to make the decision as to whether to have their embryos stored, donated or destroyed.

"In IVF as in nature, only a small proportion of fertilised eggs are able to implant and grow even when we create the ideal conditions for a successful pregnancy," says Sue Ellen Carpenter, a fertility doctor at Bloom Fertility in Atlanta, Georgia. "To me, embryos occupy a unique moral space. They are potential life and, accordingly, require respect and special care."

In the case before the Alabama Supreme Court, a patient entered the cryogenic nursery in 2020, removed the embryos in question from the freezer, and accidentally dropped them on the floor when the embryos "freeze-burned" their skin, according to the ruling.

Although the Alabama clinic did not intentionally destroy the three couples' frozen embryos, IVF embryos are routinely destroyed if they don’t meet the criteria for transferring to a womb for implantation or if patients have completed childbearing and do not wish to have more children.

Getty Images

Such embryos are often destroyed without ceremony. A 2019 study collected data from 703 questionnaires from clinicians from 65 different countries on the practice of discarding unused embryos that patients do not plan to or cannot use. The study results reveal that most practitioners dispose of embryos in a dedicated "trash can".

In a 2022 article published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology, authors from various universities in the US issued commentary on concerns following the 2022 US Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health. The ruling overturned Roe v Wade, which granted the federal right to an abortion.

The researchers note that embryonic loss is a "routine part of nature." They continue: "When new abortion legislation defines personhood from the time of fertilisation, the door is opened to regulation of embryos in the IVF laboratory. Laws may be enacted that prevent embryo cryopreservation because of the potential for embryonic loss."

The concerns they include are whether patients would be forced to continue additional embryo transfers, even when they do not desire additional children, or required to pay for embryonic storage "in perpetuity".

These questions and others remain unanswered in the wake of the Alabama Supreme Court ruling. Of note, several fertility clinics in the state have already ceased providing some IVF treatments.

NIGERIA

BREAKING: Tinubu Holds Emergency Meeting With Organised Labour, NLC, TUC Leaders


February 26, 2024

SaharaReporters learnt from top sources that the meeting is currently holding at the Aso Rock Villa and would be decisive for the two-day planned protests.

President Bola Tinubu is currently meeting with the leaders of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) ahead of the planned nationwide protests against hardship.

SaharaReporters learnt from top sources that the meeting is currently holding at the Aso Rock Villa and would be decisive for the two-day planned protests.

SaharaReporters had reported on Sunday that the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) had warned the government against attacking members and protesters during its planned nationwide protest scheduled for tomorrow, February 27 and Wednesday, February 28.

According to the NLC, any attack on their procession will lead to a total shutdown of the economy.

The NLC had announced a nationwide protest scheduled for February 27 and 28, to kick against the economic challenges facing Nigerians.

The decision came after a 14-day ultimatum issued to the Nigerian Government regarding the widespread hardship.
But the Department of State Services (DSS) and the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, (SAN) have urged the NLC to shelve its proposed nationwide protest.

Amid the increasing hardship, rising inflation and high cost of living, a human rights group, Take It Back Movement had staged a protest in Lagos State, Southwest Nigeria against the government’s indifference to the plight of Nigerians.

SaharaReporters had reported that the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Adegoke Fayoade, on Sunday, warned against any form of violent protest in Nigeria's commercial nerve centre.

But the protesters, who hit the streets of Lagos on Monday morning, were seen carrying placards with various messages at Ojuelegba Underbridge.

The protesters lamented the hardship and economic challenges in the country, saying Nigerians were getting poorer by the day.

They blamed the policies of the administration of President Bola Tinubu for the worsening situation.

 

India’s Assam state abolishes Muslim marriage law

By

 5Pillars (RMS)

 -

26th February 2024

Muslim marriage

The Indian state of Assam has abolished a Muslim marriage and divorce law in what’s being seen as the latest move targeting Muslims ahead of national elections.

The law in the northeastern state, which has a large Muslim population, dates back to 1935 and allows Muslims to practise polygamy and marriage after puberty.

But the move to repeal the 1935 Muslim Marriage and Divorce Registration Act by the Assam state cabinet on Friday is being justified “as part of efforts to combat underage marriages,” according to state government spokesperson Jayanta Malla Baruah.

Assam’s Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, of the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, said on X that the proposal to repeal the act was due to it not requiring formal registration of marriage and divorce.

He also said it allowed for “registration marriage of intended persons below 21 years for men and 18 years for females.”

Opposition parties, however, have criticised the decision.

“Just before the election, the government is trying to polarise the Hindu voters, depriving and discriminating Muslims in some fields, like repealing the registration and divorce act, saying that it is a pre-independence act of 1935,” said Abdur Rashid Mandal, a local head of the main opposition Indian National Congress party.

Aman Wadud, an Assam-based lawyer and Muslim activist, told 5Pillars that while the government claims this move will help abolish child marriages, it will create more challenges in registering marriages and infringe on religious freedom.

“The absence of Muslim registries under the 1935 act will increase unauthorised Kazis (judges). This means any adult well versed in Islamic laws will be able to perform the Nikah. More child marriages will be conducted by these unauthorised Kazis who will not be accountable to the government and will not come under the ambit of the 1935 law, derailing the Government’s resolution.”

Wadud added that this move will infringe on religious freedom as registering marriages under the Special Marriage Act requires individuals to submit to family courts, hindering their ability to make personal decisions based on their faith.

And Dr Zafarul-Islam Khan, the former chairperson of the Delhi Minorities Commission, raised concerns that the Indian state is trying to assimilate Muslims by introducing a proposed Uniform Civil Code (UCC) to target Muslim personal laws.

He said India already has close to 300 personal laws catering to different communities with specific legislation governing Hindus and Muslims still protected by the Shariat Act of 1937.

Khan added that changes to Muslim laws, such as divorce and marriage regulations, would lead to broader legislative shifts, indicating a larger strategy to implement a nationwide UCC that would primarily affect Muslims.

This strategy, he believes, is a test to measure public reaction before introducing more comprehensive laws.

“They are testing the ground, and as soon as they feel safe, they will enact a federal law for the whole country which in effect will be Muslim-specific,” Khan said, expressing his concern over this step-by-step strategy which will potentially dent India’s secular and democratic image internationally.

 Whale seen propping up her calf possibly struck by ship near Hawaii. ‘Not looking good’ 

BY DON SWEENEY 

FEBRUARY 26, 2024 

An injured humpback whale calf near Hawaii may have been hit by a passing ship, experts say. They are tracking the baby whale’s health.

 Screengrab from NOAA video posted by Maui Now An injured humpback whale calf spotted being supported on the surface by its mother may have been hit by a ship, experts reported. 

The University of Hawaii estimated the nearly 17-foot-long calf is 34 days old, Hawaii News Now reported. The calf’s tail, or flukes, appear to be injured. 

“It’s impossible to say exactly what caused this injury,” Pacific Whale Foundation chief research scientist Jens Currie told KHON. 

But experts with the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suspect a ship struck the calf. An NOAA aerial video posted by Maui Now shows the whale’s mother supporting it on the surface. 

As of Friday, Feb. 23, the mother and calf were a few hundred yards off Maʻalaea Bay on Maui, where researchers are monitoring the situation, according to the publication. 

It’s not possible for animal rescuers to treat the whale calf, which must surface several times an hour to breathe. 

 “It’s not looking good,” Currie told KHON. “But we remain optimistic and nobody can really say for sure what caused it and what the prognosis is for that individual.” 

The Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, Pacific Whale Foundation, and state Department of Land and Natural Resources reminded boaters and mariners to reduce speeds when near whales, HawaiiNewsNow reported.

 Sightings of the injured calf can be reported to the NOAA Marine Wildlife Hotline at 1-888-256-9840.

Farmers clash with police in Brussels as EU ministers meet to tackle red tape

Farmers faced off with riot police in Brussels streets paralysed by tractors on Monday, as EU ministers huddled to try to streamline rules and red tape that are fuelling protests across the bloc.


Issued on: 26/02/2024 - 16:55

Police spray a water cannon during a farmers' demonstration in the European Quarter outside a meeting of EU agriculture ministers in Brussels on February 26, 2024. © Harry Nakos, AP

By: NEWS WIRES

An estimated 900 tractors brought the city's European quarter to a halt -- for the second time in a month -- with farmers hurling eggs, burning tyres and setting off fireworks while officers fired water cannon and tear gas to press them back.

While the day saw no serious clashes, it represented a new show of force in the Europe-wide farmers' movement, spurred by what are seen as excessive EU environmental requirements and unfairly cheap imports.

Agriculture ministers from the 27-nation bloc were in Brussels to examine proposals for simplifying the EU's much-maligned Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) -- in a new attempt to try to assuage farmers.

But for the protesters in Brussels -- who came from Spain, Portugal and Italy as well as Belgium -- none of it felt like enough.

"It's their responsibility to talk to us," said Marieke Van de Vivere, who came to protest against green regulations she says are strangling her family farm.

"When our horse poops, we have to tell them how much it poops, we have to pay for the horse that poops, we have to tell them what happens with the poop of the horse -- where it goes, what day."

"It's too crazy to explain," she said.

Read more'French agriculture can't be bartered away': Farmers unite against EU rules and globalised marke

Adoracion Blanque, of the Spanish young farmers association, had a similar message.

"There are so many demands and bureaucracy that we farmers cannot continue producing," she told AFP.

The rolling farmer protests -- which saw French President Emmanuel Macron angrily heckled over the weekend -- have unnerved EU leaders concerned they could prove a boon for the far-right at European elections in June.

Brussels has given ground with a string of concessions in recent weeks.

These include an extended suspension of rules on leaving land fallow, and safeguards to stop Ukrainian imports flooding the market under a tariff-free scheme introduced after Russia's 2022 invasion.

In the short term, the latest European Commission proposals could further lift environmental constraints by easing demands for former livestock farmers to convert their land into grassland.

The commission also envisions cutting the number of on-site farm inspections by 50 percent, and granting leeway to farmers who fail to meet CAP requirements because of extreme weather.

'Bureaucratic monster'

Beyond that, Brussels has opened the door to a possible medium-term revision of the CAP, to be negotiated with lawmakers and member states, with a view to cutting more red tape.

Right now "we need something practical, something operational," France's agriculture minister Marc Fesneau told reporters upon arrival, arguing there is room for adjustments "within the current rules."

But he said meeting some demands "would require changing the legislation."

"Whether that happens before or after the European elections does not matter -- what matters is moving forward," he said.

Germany's agriculture minister, Cem Ozdemir, acknowledged "there is a lot of anger faced with promises that have not been kept."

"The current CAP is a bureaucratic monster," he said, calling for reforms to encourage "working the land rather than paperwork."

Elsewhere in Europe, the protest movement simmered on with thousands of Spanish farmers rallying outside the agriculture ministry in Madrid, holding placards that read: "The countryside is in the abyss and the government doesn't care."

Maria Villoslada Garcia, a 43-year-old winegrower from northern Spain, told AFP: "We expect solutions, but quickly" from the EU and Spain "because we are being suffocated" and "our work costs more than what it pays."

(AFP)

Kim Petras slams anti-trans and sexist views, dubbing them ‘the plague of this planet’

Feb 26
Written by Gabriella Ferlita

The singer isn’t afraid to speak her mind and support the LGBTQ+ community and women’s rights. (Getty)

Kim Petras has spoken out against anti-trans and sexist views, calling them “the plague of this planet”.

One thing about Petras is that she’ll always speak her mind in support of the LGBTQ+ community, and that’s exactly what she did in a recent interview about her new album, Slut Pop Miami.

Speaking to the BBC about her latest EP, released on 14 February. The album discusses themes of sex-positivity and LGBTQ+ inclusivity in several of its tracks, with the singer telling the outlet that it’s something she feels “strongly about”.

“I’ve always been surrounded by incredible women,” she began. “Even at school, the people who stood up for me and understood my condition were female,” she said.

The Grammy award-winner went on to reject anti-trans and sexist policies — which have been seen in the US with drag bans and anti-trans bills, to the UK government’s alarming school guidance on teaching trans pupils, and Rishi Sunak’s apparent disregard for murdered trans teen Brianna Ghee.

“I think men’s desire to control women’s bodies has been the plague of this planet forever,” she said. “It very much goes hand in hand with being transgender. The people who wanted to forbid me to transition are the same ones who want to forbid women to have abortions or have sex and even make money from it.”

Petras went on to credit Madonna for her work in Erotica (1992) and her book Sex, which she noted was “misunderstood…as just filth”.

“But female sexuality isn’t filth, and shouldn’t be written off like that. Neither is trans-feminine sexuality or anyone’s sexuality. I think everyone should be equal.

“That’s not to say Slut Pop [Miami] is a big political statement. It’s supposed to just be fun, but the conversation it stirs up is a good thing.”

Petras has previously been vocal about the anti-trans rhetoric in poltics, telling Entertainment Weekly she is “extremely alarmed by it”.

“Trans people have always been used to outrage people, but you have to remember that we’re only one percent of the population.”

Continuing, Petras reflected on her childhood, noting that though “everyone would call [her] crazy,” as a young trans person, being trans “wasn’t so publicly demonised”.

She added: “It’s scary for all of us who just want to live a normal life.”

Jonathan Frakes Doesn't Think Star Trek Went Far Enough With The Next Generation's LGBT Episode

Paramount

BY WITNEY SEIBOLD
FEB. 25, 2024

In the "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episode "The Outcast" (March 6, 1992), the crew of the Enterprise aids a species called the J'naii in locating and rescuing a missing shuttlecraft. The J'naii are a genderless species, claiming to have evolved past specific gender identities. In their society, any expression of maleness or femaleness is considered darkly taboo, and gendered sexual contact has been criminalized. Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) spends a great deal of the episode working with a J'naii pilot named Soren (Melinda Culea) and the two bond. Soren will eventually reveal that she feels more female than genderless and that she is attracted to Riker. When Soren's gender identity reaches the other J'naii officials, she is threatened with the sci-fi equivalent of a conversion camp.

By today's politics, "The Outcast" feels clumsy in its attempts to discuss gender identity. It can, however, be commended for even attempting to tell a trans story in a mainstream sci-fi context as early as 1992.

"The Outcast" was a response to a concern that "Star Trek" didn't feature enough explicitly queer stories and that queer characters rarely appeared in the franchise. Only very occasionally would the Enterprise encounter an androgynous species (the Bynars, for instance) or allude to the fluid nature of gender (Data's child Lal is permitted to select their own gender and appearance in "The Offspring"), and there was hardly ever any explicit references to queer sex. "The Offspring" was the franchise's attempt to redress that failing and it only partially succeeded.

In the oral history book "Captains' Logs" edited by Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross, Frakes went on record saying that "The Offspring" wasn't nearly queer enough.

Trek's fraught queer history

Paramount

"Star Trek" is often touted for its progressive attitudes and themes of multiculturalism, but when it comes to LGBTQ characters, it's often fallen short. Some apologists might argue that the franchise's future was so welcoming to queer people that their sexuality was no longer mentioned, but in never mentioning queer people, they are being explicitly erased. When it came to relationships, "Star Trek" was frustratingly heteronormative. On "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine," Jadzia Dax (Terry Farrell) was perhaps the first kinda-queer representation in the franchise. Jadzia was a humanoid woman with a long-lived sentient worm living in her stomach that gets reimplanted in a new host every 70 years or so. The symbiote — Dax — had been male and female in its life, and many queer and trans viewers appreciated the character's fluidity.

When it came to "The Outcast," it was pushed especially hard by writer and supervising producer Jeri Taylor. She was clear in her desire to write a sci-fi version of a queer rights story. In the early '90s, Taylor felt that those kinds of stories weren't common enough on network TV. She was quoted in "Captains' Logs" as saying:

"It came out of staff discussion. We had wanted to do a gay rights story and had not been able to figure out how to do it in an interesting science-fiction, 'Star Trek'-ian way. It came up with the idea of turning it on its ear and I really wanted to do it because, partly, it would be controversial and I welcome that. The idea of any drama is to touch people's feelings and engage them, whether you make them laugh, cry, angry."

But, Taylor was quick to point out, she isn't queer, and may have been underqualified to write such a story.

Not gutsy enough

Paramount

One could say that "The Offspring" doesn't hit as hard as it does because of its casting. The J'naii are supposed to be genderless, but Soren was played by a cis female actor. Ultimately, when Riker and Soren kiss, audiences are just watching a cishet man and a cishet woman kissing. The themes are queer, but there's technically no queer kiss on camera. Frakes felt that the episode would have been stronger if Soren had been played by a cis male actor (this was long before Paramount casting directors would have thought to seek nonbinary performers):

"I didn't think they were gutsy enough to take it where they should have. [...] Soren should have been more obviously male. We've gotten a lot of mail on this episode, but I'm not sure it was as good as it could have been ... if they were trying to do what they call a gay episode."

In other words: make it gay, you cowards.

"The Outcast" has been the subject of a lot of discussions, and a 2001 article in Salon recorded some fan reactions nine years after its airing. Some queer viewers noted that the strictly enforced genderlessness of J'naii society could be traced as a parallel to bigoted right-wing monsters like Rush Limbaugh. In both cases, there was a call to erase alternate sexualities from the spectrum and force people to rid themselves of queer sexual desire.

Others felt a little disappointed that "Star Trek" had to dabble with sci-fi symbolism at all. Why must gender fluidity, nonbinary people, and queer sexuality all be couched in metaphor? Why not just ... tell a queer story? It felt like an evasion.

The old guard of straight guys

Paramount

Would Frakes have kissed a male actor on camera? In "Captains' Logs," writer Brannon Braga thought so. Male-male kisses were staggeringly uncommon on TV in 1992, so it would have been considered a "daring" move for a straight actor to make. Braga agreed with Frakes, though, that "The Outcast" could have gone much further:

"The risks were what Jeri did with the gems of the episode, like talking about sexual organs on the shuttlecraft. I felt they could have gone further [and] Picard could have been less passive. Riker's a big boy and he sparks conflicts in ethics among the characters. To get someone in there [who's] a catalyst for conflicts among our characters is a rare thing."

The fact remains that "The Next Generation" was overseen by a bunch of old cishet men who didn't realize they hadn't included any queer characters on their show until viewers wrote in to point that out to them. Producer Michael Piller recalled talking to show creator Gene Roddenberry — shortly before he died in 1991 — about the possibility of including a queer character on the show, and Gene only considered depicting two men holding hands in a scene.

Producer Rick Berman felt it was a fine story about intolerance. He also admitted "The Outcast" was ultimately a half-measure:


"It did not satisfy certain [people in] the gay and lesbian community because it was not what they were asking for, which was to introduce a gay or lesbian character in a normal and acceptable way as one of the members of the crew. But I think it did deal with the issue of intolerance towards sexual orientation and it met that objective well."


"Star Trek: Discovery," meanwhile, has five queer main characters.


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