$COTU$
Sonia Sotomayor Points Out How Quickly the Conservative Justices Will Drop Their Stated Principles When It Suits Them

Shirin Ali and Braden Goyette
Fri, June 14, 2024 



This is Totally Normal Quote of the Day, a feature highlighting a statement from the news that exemplifies just how extremely normal everything has become.

“When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.” —Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent from the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Garland v. Cargill

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is calling bullshit on her conservative colleagues’ rationale for throwing out a 2018 ban on bump stocks, the device used to modify the gun used in the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting—the deadliest in modern U.S. history. The Trump administration reclassified guns with bump stocks as machine guns, thereby banning the device’s use under a 1934 law that heavily restricts access to machine guns.

In Sotomayor’s dissent in Garland v. Cargill, which Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan joined, she called out how her conservative colleagues had basically bent over backwards to redefine the legal definition of a “machine gun.” She noted that these linguistic gymnastics are particularly galling given how much conservative jurists claim to prize textualism—a theory that stresses adhering closely to the plain text of the law and to the ordinary meaning of words.

To drive the point home, Sotomayor came with receipts: She quoted past opinions where each one of the conservative justices in the majority had stressed the importance of textualism—and, specifically, a focus on the ordinary meaning of statutes.

“Every Member of the majority has previously emphasized that the best way to respect congressional intent is to adhere to the ordinary understanding of the terms Congress uses,” wrote Sotomayor, who then cited passages from past opinions where John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett all stressed the importance of textualism. “Today, the majority forgets that principle and substitutes its own view of what constitutes a ‘machine gun’ for Congress’s.”

Congress banned machine guns almost a century ago through the National Firearms Act and, as Sotomayor pointed out, has since updated it to expand the definition of a machine gun to include “any weapon which shoots, or is designed to shoot, automatically … more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.” The federal definition also encompasses “any part designed or intended” to enable automatic fire, which bump stocks plainly are.

Sotomayor cited several dictionary definitions to support her reading of the law and drew attention to the way the majority went out of its way to impose a new, bizarre understanding of the words Congress used. “The majority looks to the internal mechanism that initiates fire, rather than the human act of the shooter’s initial pull, to hold that a ‘single function of the trigger’ means a reset of the trigger mechanism,” Sotomayor wrote. “Its interpretation requires six diagrams and an animation to decipher the meaning of the statutory text.” (Yes, they even included a GIF to back up their argument.)

In this way, the conservative justices’ use of textualism mirrors their use of originalism: Both are supposedly strict philosophies for interpreting law that give them cover to do whatever they want when it suits them. Originalism—the theory that the Constitution must be interpreted through the lens of its original meaning at the time of ratification—has also been misused to put America on a path away from common-sense gun reform, as Jill Filipovic explained in a essay for Slate: “Since 2008, the court has radically departed from centuries of case law on gun regulations and the Second Amendment, making it astoundingly difficult for lawmakers to implement even the most basic and commonsense of gun laws.”

But Sotomayor stressed that the meaning of words does matter. “When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck,” wrote Sotomayor. “A bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle fires ‘automatically more than one shot, without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.’ Because I, like Congress, call that a machinegun, I respectfully dissent.”

Sotomayor Warns Supreme Court's Bump Stock Ruling Will Have 'Deadly Consequences'

Sara Boboltz
Fri, June 14, 2024

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that the high court’s decision to lift a federal agency’s ban on bump stocks that was put into place after the 2017 Las Vegas massacre would have “deadly consequences.”

The Las Vegas shooter used bump stocks, simple devices that attach to a semiautomatic rifle and create an effect similar to that of a machine gun, to kill 60 people and injure more than 850 others. Then-President Donald Trump instructed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to implement a ban in response to the tragedy.

But in a 6-3 ruling issued Friday, the Supreme Court said that Congress needed to act to ban bump stocks, and that the ATF had exceeded its authority. The case, Garland v. Cargill, focused on the power of regulatory agencies rather than the Second Amendment.

Congress banned machine guns back in 1934 in response to well-publicized incidents of gang violence that involved weapons like Tommy guns and M16s.

“Congress’s definition of ‘machine gun’ encompasses bump stocks just as naturally as M16s,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.

“Today’s decision to reject that ordinary understanding will have deadly consequences,” she said. “The majority’s artificially narrow definition hamstrings the Government’s efforts to keep machine guns from gunmen like the Las Vegas shooter.”

Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined in the dissent.

President Joe Biden recalled how the Las Vegas shooter was able to use bump stocks to fire “more than 1000 bullets in just ten minutes, killing 60, wounding hundreds, and traumatizing countless Americans.”

“Americans should not have to live in fear of this mass devastation,” Biden said, urging Congress to act.

The majority, led in their opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, argued that a bump stock does not technically transform a semiautomatic rifle into a machine gun “by a single function of the trigger,” which is the phrasing Congress used in the 1934 National Firearms Act.

A bump stock allows the shooter to, in one squeezing motion, spray bullets at rates approaching machine gun fire — rates that far exceed what even an experienced shooter can accomplish by pulling the trigger really fast.

“This is not a hard case. All of the textual evidence points to the same interpretation,” Sotomayor wrote.

She compared what happened when a person fired an M16 to what happened when a person fired an AR-15 with a bump stock attached.

“Both shooters pull the trigger only once to fire multiple shots. The only difference is that for an M16, the shooter’s backward pressure makes the rifle fire continuously because of an internal mechanism: The curved lever of the trigger does not move. In a bump-stock-equipped AR–15, the mechanism for continuous fire is external: The shooter’s forward pressure moves the curved lever back and forth against his stationary trigger finger,” she said.

She suggested the majority was actually overcomplicating the issue, writing: “Its interpretation requires six diagrams and an animation to decipher the meaning of the statutory text.”

Sotomayor explained further:


A shooter can fire a bump-stock-equipped semiautomatic rifle in two ways. First, he can choose to fire single shots via distinct pulls of the trigger without exerting any additional pressure. Second, he can fire continuously via maintaining constant forward pressure on the barrel or front grip. The majority holds that the forward pressure cannot constitute a “single function of the trigger” because a shooter can also fire single shots by pulling the trigger. That logic, however, would also exclude a Tommy Gun and an M16, the paradigmatic examples of regulated machine guns in 1934 and today. Both weapons can fire either automatically or semiautomatically.

She put it in even simpler language at another point: “When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.”

What to know about bump stocks and the Supreme Court ruling striking down a ban on the gun accessory

Associated Press
Fri, June 14, 2024 








WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down a ban on bump stocks, the gun accessory used in the deadliest shooting in modern American history — a Las Vegas massacre that killed 60 people and injured hundreds more.

The court's conservative majority said Friday that then-President Donald Trump's administration overstepped its authority with the 2019 ban on the firearm attachment, which allows semiautomatic weapons to fire like machine guns.

Here's what to know about the case:

What are bump stocks?

Bump stocks are accessories that replace a rifle's stock, the part that gets pressed against the shooter's shoulder. When a person fires a semiautomatic weapon fitted with a bump stock, it uses the gun's recoil energy to rapidly and repeatedly bump the trigger against the shooter's finger.

That allows the weapon to fire dozens of bullets in a matter of seconds.

Bump stocks were invented in the early 2000s after the expiration of a 1994 ban targeting assault weapons. The federal government approved the sale of bump stocks in 2010 after the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives concluded that guns equipped with the devices should not be considered illegal machine guns under federal law.

According to court documents, more than 520,000 bump stocks were in circulation by the time the government reversed course and imposed a ban that took effect in 2019.

Why were bump stocks banned?

More than 22,000 people were attending a country music festival in Las Vegas on Oct. 1, 2017, when a man opened fire on the crowd from the window of his high-rise hotel room. He fired more than 1,000 rounds in the crowd in 11 minutes, leaving 60 people dead and injuring hundreds more.

Authorities found an arsenal of 23 assault-style rifles in the shooter's hotel room, including 14 weapons fitted with bump stocks.

In the aftermath of the shooting, the ATF reconsidered whether bump stocks could be sold and owned legally. With support from Trump, a Republican, the agency in 2018 ordered a ban on the devices, arguing they turned rifles into illegal machine guns.

Bump stock owners were given until March 2019 to surrender or destroy them.

What did the justices say?

The 6-3 majority opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas said the ATF did not have the authority to issue the regulation banning bump stocks. The justices said a bump stock is not an illegal machine gun because it doesn’t make the weapon fire more than one shot with a single pull of the trigger.

Justice Samuel Alito, who joined the majority, wrote in a separate opinion that the Las Vegas shooting strengthened the case for changing the law to outlaw bump stocks like machine guns. But that has to happen through action by Congress, not through regulation, he wrote.

The court's three liberal justices opposed the ruling. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her dissent that there's no common sense difference between a machine gun and a semiautomatic firearm with a bump stock.

“When I see a bird that walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck,” she wrote.

Do any states have their own bans?

At least 15 states and the District of Columbia have their own bans on bump stocks, though some could be affected by the high court’s ruling.

Most state laws, however, remain in place because the decision covered the ATF rule, not the constitutionality of state-level bans, according David Pucino, legal director of the gun control think tank Giffords.

Who challenged the ban?

A group called the New Civil Liberties Alliance sued to challenge the bump stock ban on behalf of Michael Cargill, a Texas gun shop owner. Cargill bought two bump stocks in 2018 and then surrendered them once the federal ban took effect, according to court documents.

The case didn't directly address the Second Amendment rights of gun owners. Instead, Cargill's attorneys argued that the ATF overstepped its authority by banning bump stocks. Mark Chenoweth, president of the New Civil Liberties Alliance, said his group wouldn't have sued if Congress had banned them by law.

How did the case end up before the Supreme Court?

The Supreme Court took up the case after lower federal courts delivered conflicting rulings on whether the ATF could ban bump stocks.

The ban survived challenges before the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Denver-based 10th Circuit, and the federal circuit court in Washington.

But the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in New Orleans struck down the bump stock ban when it ruled in the Texas case last year. The court's majority in the 13-3 decision found that “a plain reading of the statutory language" showed that weapons fitted with bump stocks could not be regulated as machine guns.

SPECIESISM

No charges in killing of gray wolf in southern Michigan. 

Experts stumped about how a gray wolf arrived in southern Michigan for the first time in more than 100 years.

CAN'T TRACK IT CAUSE IT'S DEAD

ED WHITE
Updated Thu, June 13, 2024 

In this photo released by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, a mounted gray wolf is seen in Calhoun County, Mich., in April 2024. State wildlife experts have been trying to determine how the wolf ended up in southern Michigan before it was killed in January 2024, 300 miles (482 kilometers) from its typical habitat. (Michigan DNR via AP)

Wildlife experts have hit a dead end in their quest to determine how a gray wolf arrived in southern Michigan for the first time in more than 100 years.

The wolf was killed in January by a hunter who told investigators that he had mistaken it for a coyote. It was a shock: While gray wolves are common in Michigan's Upper Peninsula — the latest estimate is more than 700 — the state's southern Lower Peninsula doesn't offer the proper habitat.

“We just don't know how it got there,” Brian Roell, wolf expert at the state Department of Natural Resources, said.

Separately, authorities who received a report about the DNR's investigation said Thursday that no charges would filed against the hunter or guide.

"The conduct here appears to be based on a reasonable and honest belief they were legally shooting a coyote,” Calhoun County prosecutor David Gilbert told The Associated Press.

The 84-pound wolf was killed roughly 300 miles (482 kilometers) south of the Upper Peninsula. The DNR said it learned through social media about someone shooting a “world record coyote.” But this was no coyote.

Gray wolves are protected under the Endangered Species Act and can be killed only if they are a direct threat to human life, the DNR said.

Roell said he'd welcome tips if the public knows anything about the wolf's presence in southern Michigan.

“It could have been natural. It could have been aided by humans,” he said of the wolf's travels.

Ice forms on the Great Lakes, making it possible for certain animals to cross the Straits of Mackinac between the peninsulas, but recent winter ice conditions haven't been firm, Roell said.

There also would be barriers to a wolf moving from elsewhere in the Upper Midwest to southern Michigan, he added.

A possible clue: a mark on a foot showed the wolf had been recently trapped.

“It just makes it more curious,” Roell said.

By the time the agency got involved, the coat had been preserved and stuffed by a taxidermist. The DNR seized the mount — and the hunter won't get it back.

Because the gray wolf is an endangered species, “the hunter is not be permitted to possess it,” spokesperson Ed Golder said.

____

Anyone with information can call the DNR at (800) 292-7800.

____

Pacific Indigenous leaders have a new plan to protect whales. Treat them as people

Jared Formanek, CNN
Fri, June 14, 2024 

For Māori conservationist Mere Takoko, “losing one whale is like losing an ancestor.” The animals “taught our people about navigation across the Pacific, particularly across the Milky Way… And this is information that was given to our ancestors.”

The environmental activist from the small town of Rangitukia, on New Zealand’s east coast, is spearheading a movement of Indigenous groups in the Pacific pushing to protect the magnificent marine mammals, inking a groundbreaking treaty to make them legal persons with inherent rights.

The document is part of a multi-pronged effort to safeguard whales, which also includes quantifying their monetary value as carbon-depleting “bioengineers of our oceans”, and deploying the latest tech to track boats that harm them.


While the declaration is non-binding and would still need government recognition to become law, conservationists hope personhood will lead to enhanced protection for these creatures, with many species endangered.

“Our mokopuna (grandchildren) deserve an ocean brimming with life, where the melodies of whales echo across the vast expanses,” Māori King Tūheitia Pōtatau said at the signing of the treaty in the Cook Islands. Along with the Māori of New Zealand and groups from the Cook Islands, Indigenous leaders from Tahiti, Tonga, Hawaii, and Easter Island signed the He Whakaputanga Moana treaty.

Mere Takoko (right) signs the He Whakaputanga Moana declaration in Rarotonga, Cook Islands. - Josh Baker/Conservation International

According to the document – whose name means Declaration of the Ocean – granting personhood to whales ensures them freedom of movement without enduring “mental suffering caused by human activities,” and the entitlement to inhabit a healthy environment “free from pollution, unsustainable fishing practices, ship strikes and climate change.”

March’s signing came at a time when six out of the 13 great whale species are classified as endangered or vulnerable, with an estimated 300,000 whales and dolphins falling victim to fisheries bycatch each year, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). Some whale species, such as the North Atlantic right whale, have dwindled to fewer than 360 individuals.

“We are seeing unprecedented rates of decline in our whales,” said Takoko, who serves as vice president of Conservation International Aotearoa and the leader of the Hinemoana Halo Ocean Initiative, which aims to recover populations of “sacred species.” Aotearoa is the Māori name for New Zealand.

A descendant of the Ngāti Porou, Te Whānau a Apanui and Rongowhakaata tribal Nations, the expert in climate change and Indigenous tribal development has previously acted as a senior advisor to the New Zealand government.

In the coming months, she plans to engage with various countries throughout the Pacific to discuss whale personhood legislation. She said she hopes for further progress at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa in October, which will be attended by Britain’s King Charles III.

Takoko and her team are confident the initiative will succeed, and there is precedent. In 2017, the Māori gained legal personhood for New Zealand’s Whanganui River, after a decades-long fight.

Since then, there has been an increase in efforts to improve the river’s condition. In 2023, authorities broke ground on a multimillion-dollar port project aimed at reviving the river’s health and restoring activity in its harbor, CNN affiliate RNZ reported. Additionally, a 17-member strategy group composed of Indigenous leaders, mayors, conservation groups and others was established to promote the health and well-being of the river and secure government investment.

In responses to CNN, New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Cook Islands’ Office of the Prime Minister both noted that the He Whakaputanga Moana has been developed by indigenous groups, separately from their respective governments.

“New Zealand has domestic legislation in place that provides for the full protection of whales. Internationally, New Zealand remains a strong advocate within the International Whaling Commission for the protection of whales and the moratorium on commercial whaling,” said the Wellington ministry.

The Cook Islands office said it had “yet to receive a formal submission” from indigenous leaders on the declaration’s implementation.

For the campaign to achieve personhood for whales, Takoko has assembled an international group of experts.

Māori King Tūheitia Pōtatau and Tou Travel Ariki, Cook Islands President of the House of Ariki, at the signing of the He Whakaputanga Moana declaration in Rarotonga, Cook Islands. - Josh Baker/Conservation International

Michelle Bender, the effort’s Seattle-based legal counsel with Ocean Vision Legal, says assigning whales personhood doesn’t exactly mean they have the same rights as humans. She clarifies that personhood provides entities with certain rights and responsibilities under the law.

“It’s about recognizing that these living beings have intrinsic value and are worthy of protection, regardless of what people might find beneficial and how we might use that element of the ecosystem,” Bender told CNN.

“With personhood, human interests do not automatically trump the interests of whales… their needs are to be given serious consideration in the decisions and disputes affecting their health.”
Whale-safe ocean

Before human activities and whaling, scientists say the oceans were filled with 4 million to 5 million whales. Now they estimate the oceans have just a little over 1 million remaining.

Whale populations were decimated by commercial whaling in previous centuries and while that has now mostly stopped, Japan is a Pacific nation that continues to carry out controversial “scientific” hunts despite widespread international opposition.

Nonetheless around 20,000 great whales are killed every year by ship strikes alone, experts say. Additionally, whales are increasingly threatened by fishing net entanglements and climate change.

Global ocean heat has hit a new record high every single day for the last year, causing severe consequences for marine life.

Carlos Duarte, a world-leading marine ecologist and professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology who works closely with Takoko’s team, says more whales have been dying recently due to starvation. “Because the very warm state of the ocean has been unusual, it has actually reduced ocean productivity and the whales are not able to meet their food requirements,” he told CNN.

Aside from recognizing whales’ intrinsic worth, some experts are pushing for a dollar value to be placed on the animals, with humans held responsible for any damage to the ecological commodity.

They include Ralph Chami, the initiative’s chief economist, based in Washington, DC. Chami says such a valuation would recognize animals’ contributions to the Earth and the services they provide to benefit the economy.

A Humpback whale jumps in the surface of the Pacific Ocean at the Uramba Bahia Malaga National Natural Park in Colombia, on August 12, 2018. - Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images

“Most people are used to valuing dead nature,” Chami told CNN. “Every time I ask people at dinners, what’s the value of a salmon? They say 50 bucks, that’s my plate. They don’t think of the value of a salmon that is frolicking freely in the ocean.”

In an article published with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Chami estimates that the value of a living whale surpasses $2 million, based on the carbon it sequesters over its lifespan.

Scientists and marine experts note the crucial role of whales in the ocean’s carbon cycle, acting as fertilizer pumps by consuming nutrients from the deep sea and releasing them at the surface through defecation. This nourishes phytoplankton, which generates about half of the world’s oxygen and absorbs substantial amounts of CO2, equivalent to the capacity of four Amazon rainforests.

“People don’t realize that the Pacific Ocean is the world’s largest carbon sink,” Takoko said. “Through this initiative, our aim is to restore vital blue habitats. And the whales are a big component part of ensuring that those blue habitats can thrive because of all the services they provide as bioengineers of our oceans.”

According to Duarte, assigning whales a monetary value lays the groundwork for a system of penalties for anyone responsible for harming these animals. And with legislation recognizing whales as legal persons worth $2 million, the Hinemoana Halo team claims shipping companies and insurance firms could eventually be financially liable for whales they harm.

To hold companies accountable, Takoko and her team hope technology can be integrated into ships to prevent whale strikes and entanglements.

“Right now, we have near nothing as a solution,” Emily Charry Tissier, founder and CEO of Canadian marine mammal monitoring startup Whale Seeker, told CNN. “But the tools exist today to be able to avoid the majority of these mortality situations,” she added.

Charry Tissier and her team are paving the way by using artificial intelligence to monitor and protect marine life. She says shipping companies can deploy technology such as drones and infrared cameras to detect whales and avoid ship strikes.
The long road ahead

Ahead lies a lengthy journey for the Hinemoana Halo Ocean Initiative to ratify personhood recognition for whales.

In addition to garnering support from nations and the broader international community, the personhood initiative faces the challenge of integrating technology into existing ships. Nonetheless, the team remains optimistic that once insurers realize the potential financial liabilities, installing such technology will become imperative.

“Ships equipped with this technology could benefit from reduced insurance premiums. Their stocks are going to do better, and consumers would favor them due to their ‘whale-free shipping’ label,” Chami told CNN.

Despite the daunting task of implementing this technology across the world’s oceans, significant stretches of shipping lanes, where ship strikes and entanglements frequently occur, could be safeguarded once a few major nations enact personhood legislation, according to Duarte.

Consider the Cook Islands, for instance: Despite having a collective population of fewer than 20,000 people, its marine territory spans more than 2 million square kilometers (772,000 square miles). Enactment of personhood legislation by Pacific states alone would cover a substantial portion of the world’s oceans, Duarte told CNN.

The team’s optimism is further buoyed by the global community’s aspirations to protect marine life in international waters. Nearly 200 countries agreed to a legally binding “high seas treaty” at the United Nations in the previous year, pledging to safeguard 30% of Earth’s land and oceans by 2030, CNN previously reported.

“It typically takes about two decades from the introduction of these policies to witnessing their impacts and benefits. And that really points to what we need to do to achieve a healthy ocean,” Duarte told CNN.

The remarkable recovery of the humpback whale serves as a testament to the potential for oceanic restoration. Decimated by whaling between the late 1700s and the mid-1900s, the humpback has rebounded from an estimated 200 individuals to more than 60,000 today, according to Duarte. This came after a global ban on commercial whaling was instituted by the International Whaling Commission in 1986.

“If we can recover humpback whales, then we should be able to recover almost any component of the ocean,” Duarte said.

And Takoko echoed his optimism: “The fire, so to speak, has been ignited by the traditional leaders of Polynesia, and I believe with the community behind us, we will succeed in this plan.”

Washington state's Makah Tribe clears major hurdle toward resuming traditional whale hunts

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2024/06/washington-states-makah-tribe-clears.html

SPACE

Scientists Found Carbon in an Ancient Place Where It Was Never Supposed to Be

Darren Orf
Thu, June 13, 2024

Life May Have Kicked Off Earlier Than We Thought

Aitor Diago - Getty Images


Scientists estimate that the universe garnered enough carbon to form planets some one billion years after the Big Bang.

But that timeline might be a bit more complicated—a new study analyzing a primordial galaxy named GS-z12, which formed 350 million years after the Big Bang, contained clouds of carbon.

This could indicate that early stars released less energy than expected when going supernova, and instead released their outer carbon shells rather than consuming the element in a black hole.

The nonmetallic chemical element carbon is the essential building block of all life (at least on Earth). Because the element can combine with so many other elements—including itself, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and more—carbon is seen as required for complex life to take shape.

During the early (millions of) years after the Big Bang, no carbon existed, because the early universe contained only light elements like hydrogen and helium (as well as trace amounts of lithium). Scientists estimate that the heavy element-engines, which were the very first stars, likely churned out enough carbon to form planets around one billion years after the Big Bang.

However, scientists from the University of Cambridge are altering that timeline significantly after analyzing data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). In that data lurked an ancient galaxy named GS-z12—one of the most distant ever observed at some 13 billion light-years away—in which the experts discovered traces of clouds of carbon. Accepted for publication by the Astronomy & Astrophysics and posted to the preprint server arXiv, the study could prove that carbon was present in the universe as early as 350 million years after the Big Bang.

“Earlier research suggested that carbon started to form in large quantities relatively late – about one billion years after the Big Bang,” Roberto Maiolino, a co-author of the study, said in a press statement. “But we’ve found that carbon formed much earlier – it might even be the oldest metal of all.”

JWST’s Near Infrared Spectrograph, or NIRSpec, allows the groundbreaking space telescope to analyze light from this galaxy in a spectrum of colors. This is particularly important because GS-z12 is both incredibly faint and 100,000 times less massive than our own Milky Way. Luckily, while JWST spends hundreds of hours gathering light from this distant corner of the universe, it also uses its microshutter array to glimpse other objects at the same time.

Because elements leave behind different chemical fingerprints in this infrared spectrum, scientists can analyze the data and determine what exactly makes up this early galaxy. The scientists clearly found traces of carbon, as well as oxygen and neon. This discovery could make scientists rethink the role of early stars in the universe.

“We were surprised to see carbon so early in the universe, since it was thought that the earliest stars produced much more oxygen than carbon,” Maiolino said in a press statement. “We had thought that carbon was enriched much later, through entirely different processes, but the fact that it appears so early tells us that the very first stars may have operated very differently.”

One explanation, according to the researchers, is that early stars released less energy when going supernova than initially believed. This might’ve allowed carbon—likely contained in the stars’ outer shells—to quickly seed the universe, rather than being consumed by a collapsing black hole.

This means life might’ve gotten quite the headstart on the timeline we have long believed to be true. And while that life might look much different than our own, we can likely bet on one thing—it was probably made of carbon.

Boeing Starliner not ready to come back to Earth – leaving astronauts on International Space Station

Andrew Griffin
Fri, June 14, 2024

Boeing Starliner not ready to come back to Earth – leaving astronauts on International Space Station


Boeing’s troubled Starliner spacecraft will stay at the International Space Station for longer than expected, just the latest in a series of problems for the capsule.

It means that the astronauts who were carried to the space station in a mission earlier this month will have to stay for longer than expected, coming back on 22 June. They may end up staying for longer.

Nasa said that the delayed return will allow Nasa and Boeing to spend more time planning for the astronauts’ return and their journey back down to Earth.

Nasa astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were launched aboard Starliner June 5 and arrived at the ISS the next day, following a 24-hour flight in which the spacecraft encountered four helium leaks and five failures of its 28 manoeuvring thrusters.

“The extra time allows the team to finalise departure planning and operations while the spacecraft remains cleared for crew emergency return scenarios within the flight rules,” Nasa and Boeing said in a statement.

They are targeting a departure no earlier than June 22, leaving open an opportunity for further extensions of time at the ISS. Starliner, while designed for future six-month missions, can stay docked to the ISS for a maximum of 45 days during its current mission.

The return to Earth is expected to last about six hours and target a location in the desert of Utah, New Mexico or other backup locations, depending on local weather conditions.

Starliner‘s first flight with astronauts is a crucial last test in a much-delayed and over-budget program before Nasa can certify the spacecraft for routine astronaut missions and add a second US crew vehicle to its fleet, alongside SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.

The spacecraft during its time docked to the ISS has encountered more problems. A fifth leak of helium - used to pressurize Starliner‘s propulsion system thrusters - popped up, and separately an oxidizer valve has been stuck, Nasa has said.

Those in-flight problems follow years of other challenges Boeing has faced with Starliner, including a 2019 uncrewed test failure where dozens of software glitches, design problems and management issues nixed its ability to dock to the ISS. A 2022 repeat uncrewed test succeeded to dock.

If all goes as planned with Starliner‘s return of two astronauts back to Earth, Boeing still faces other challenges before making the spacecraft operational and bringing it to market for other non-Nasa customers.

Boeing's Starliner astronaut taxi spotted at ISS (satellite photo)

Mike Wall
Fri, June 14, 2024

Boeing's Starliner capsule is seen docked to the International Space Station in this zoomed-in view of an image captured by Maxar Technologies' WorldView-3 satellite on June 7, 2024. | Credit: Maxar Technologies


An Earth-observing satellite has given us a unique view of Boeing's new Starliner astronaut taxi in space.

Starliner arrived at the International Space Station (ISS) on June 6, delivering NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to the orbiting lab on a shakeout cruise known as Crew Flight Test (CFT).

A day later, Maxar Technologies' WorldView-3 satellite snapped a striking photo of the ISS and its new arrival, which is prominently featured near the center of the frame.

a white space capsule is seen docked to the international space station in this satellite photo

WorldView-3, which launched in August 2014, usually observes Earth from its vantage point 385 miles (620 kilometers) above our planet. But the new photo shows that the spacecraft can study objects in orbit as well.

"This type of imagery collection, known as non-Earth imaging (NEI), is a breakthrough capability that enables Maxar to support critical space domain awareness missions for government and commercial customers," Maxar wrote in an X post on Wednesday (June 12) that featured the ISS-Starliner photo.

Non-Earth imaging could become a higher and higher priority for the U.S. government and other entities with a large stake in the final frontier over the coming years.

The number of satellites going to orbit has jumped dramatically recently and will likely continue to grow, largely due to the rise of megaconstellations such as SpaceX's Starlink broadband network, which currently consists of more than 6,000 active spacecraft. Keeping tabs on this ever-growing orbital population will likely become increasingly important, and increasingly challenging, for satellite operators.

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— Meet the crew launching on Boeing's 1st Starliner astronaut flight

— 2 astronaut taxis: Why NASA wants both Boeing's Starliner and SpaceX's Dragon

CFT is the first-ever crewed mission for Starliner, which is scheduled to come back to Earth no earlier than June 18. If all goes well on the mission, the capsule will be certified to fly long-duration astronaut missions to and from the ISS for NASA.

SpaceX already does this with its Crew Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket. Elon Musk's company is in the middle of its eighth operational astronaut flight to the ISS, known as Crew-8.

NON SCIENTIST CHEERLEADER

NASA administrator says 'at least a trillion' other planets like Earth could exist in universe

Bret Baier

FOX NEWS
Thu, June 13, 2024

NASA has plans to return astronauts to the lunar surface in the near future. Next year, four astronauts will orbit the moon.

"We don't need to go back to the moon just for the moon. We're going back to learn new things. In order for us to go to Mars and beyond," said Administrator Bill Nelson.

The Perseverance Rover is exploring the Jezero Crater on Mars, which was once a lake on the red planet. Scientists believe life may have existed there in the distant past.

LUNAR MINING RAISES KEY LEGAL QUESTIONS AS NEW SPACE RACE HEATS UP

"It's getting samples and it's drilling with this drill, creating these core samples about the size of a cigar and sealing them up in these titanium tubes," Nelson explained. "We're trying to figure out right now how we're going to go back and get them and bring them back to Earth, so that we got an idea of whether or not there was life there."

NASA is now working with several companies to develop a plan for the return mission, which could happen in the 2030s. The agency is also working with Firebird Diagnostics in the search for life on Mars.

"NASA's mission is to go out, among other things, and discover whether or not we are alone," said Firebird Diagnostics Founder Steven Benner.

His company sells so-called alien DNA. It uses synthetic properties and has helped NASA understand what possible forms of alternative DNA might exist.

US-CHINA SPACE RACE FOR MOON MINING HEATS UP

"It's a big question as to how molecular biology could be done if it was, done by an organism that does not share a common ancestor, a common origin, with you and me," Benner said.

The DNA has also helped detect diseases like Covid-19, cancer and HIV here on Earth. Human DNA has four nucleotides or building blocks. Benner’s synthetic material has up to eight. They allow for more sensitive testing and eliminate false positives.

"It allows you to get that needle in the haystack without having to worry about all the background information," Benner said.

Nelson says searching for life on other planets helps us understand better who we are in the universe.

DIA OFFICIALS WARN CHINA, RUSSIA DEVELOPING 'COUNTER-SPACE CAPABILITIES'

"If you ask me directly, do I think that there are aliens here on Earth? I don't think so. I don't absolutely know. And I don't think the U.S. government is hiding anything from anybody. But if you ask me, ‘do I think there's life out there in the cosmos?,’" Nelson said. "I ask our NASA scientists that question, ‘how many possibilities in the vastness of this universe are there, that there's another planet like Earth that would be habitable for life as something like we know it?’ They said at least a trillion."

Nelson says while the odds that life may exist in space, whatever it may be, likely exists so far away that it won’t be discovered for a long time. However, NASA is still preparing for the possibility.

"Even if you could travel at the speed of light to a far off distant world, the close ones are a thousand light years away," Nelson said. "That doesn't mean that we cannot have some kind of understanding of what's out there."

Nelson has asked NASA scientists to use artificial intelligence in the software of spacecrafts.

"In a spacecraft like Voyager, that is out in interstellar space, that is beyond our solar system, if it came upon another spacecraft, it could real time learn to communicate with that other spacecraft," Nelson said. "That’s what we do at NASA. They make the impossible possible. It's a bunch of wizards around here."


NASA administrator describes future projects, partnerships in space

Bret Baier, Amy Munneke

FOX NEWS
Thu, June 13, 2024 

Bill Nelson says he never imagined he would become administrator of the nation’s space agency, NASA.

"I had no idea," Nelson said. "As a matter of fact, I grew up in the shadow of the cape, never thinking I would ever have a chance to fly in space."

Nelson served in both the House and Senate as a Democrat representing Florida. In 1986, Nelson trained and flew with the crew of the space shuttle Columbia and became the second sitting member of Congress to travel to space, after Sen. Jake Garn, R-Utah.

CRAZY-STRONG ROBOTIC DOGS GEAR UP FOR MOON MISSION

"I flew in the space shuttle. We had 135 flights, two that were catastrophic. The first one, Challenger, was 10 days after our flight landed back on Earth," Nelson said. "It's an unforgiving environment. And there you are, white-knuckle time when that baby's going up and when it's coming back."

The space shuttle completed its final mission in 2011. Since then, NASA has begun working with an increasing number of private companies to travel and conduct research in space. He says the partnerships have helped unite Americans.

"Just think how the space history here brought us together. Think when the Soviets beat us, and we were scared because they had the high ground. They had Sputnik, and then they got Yuri Gagarin up first for one orbit," Nelson said. "But [a few] months later, John Glenn climbed into that Mercury capsule. He shimmied into it, and it's sitting on top of an Atlas rocket. There was a 20% chance that that thing was going to blow up. And when Glenn was successful for three orbits, that changed everything."

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson speaks during a media briefing at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 14, 2023.

Nelson said space is part of the American spirit and making the impossible possible.

"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard," President John F. Kennedy said during a speech at Rice University in 1962.

Kennedy’s speech has helped inspire decades of research at NASA. When the agency was created in 1958, Congress put into law that any technology created for space must also be practical for earth.

"Since 1958, we've been spinning off these technologies to the public in the forms of new products and services that make our lives better," said NASA Technology Transfer Program Executive Daniel Lockney. "[The technologies] enhance the U.S. economy, save lives and in other instances are just really cool things that we get as a result of the nation's investment in this aerospace research."

Lockney has worked to transfer NASA inventions or intellectual property to the public sector.

"We get credit for things that we didn't do, which is a wonderful problem to have," Lockney said. "Something we did do that we don't get credit for is, we invented the camera that's in your cellphone."

In the 1980s, spacecraft imaging helped launch the digital camera industry using charged devices to create pictures in space. By the next decade, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California worked to create image sensors that used less power and were easier to mass-produce. The result was a small digital computer chip.

"We didn't know what to do with it," Lockney said. "Then, Nokia approached us, and they had this wacky idea of putting a camera in a telephone."

A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spacecraft launches from pad 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on June 5, 2024, in Cape Canaveral, Florida. NASA administrator Bill Nelson says public-private partnerships in space are helping unite Americans.

The lightweight, high-resolution camera microchip didn’t require a lot of power and was perfect for spaceflight and handheld personal devices.

"Now, we all have the blessing of taking with our camera a photograph, and it's an absolutely beautiful photograph," Nelson said.

Bobby Braun, director for planetary science at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), discusses Mars sample return flight systems on Oct. 14, 2021, at the JPL in Pasadena, California.

New technology is being developed on Earth to advance space flight, but an increasing amount of research and innovation is being done in space. Nelson says astronauts are experimenting at the International Space Station 24/7. Private companies also have been sending astronauts into space for experimenting.

"The additional astronauts coming up are bringing their own [research], many of them sponsored by pharmaceutical companies to do their own. Whenever they want to send it up for much longer, we have our astronauts up there full time," he said.

How China's Chang'e 6 minirover snapped its epic photo on the moon's far side
Andrew Jones
Fri, June 14, 2024 


An image of China's Chang'e 6 lander on the moon's far side, snapped by the mission's minirover. | Credit: CNSA


China has revealed details about a miniature rover tucked away on the country's pioneering Chang'e 6 lunar far side sample-return mission.

Chang'e 6 launched on May 3 on a Long March 5 rocket. While being a repurposed backup to the successful 2020 Chang'e 5 mission, it was revealed after launch that the new spacecraft also packed a surprise rover.

The Chang'e 6 lander touched down in Apollo crater with the South Pole-Aitken basin on June 1. The rover was deployed around two days later, after sampling operations on the moon had been completed.

The small, autonomous vehicle drove away from its parent craft and snapped an iconic image of the lander, topped with an ascent vehicle which would later blast the collected samples into lunar orbit. The image shows solar arrays, landing legs, a deployed sampling arm and a basalt Chinese flag.

The rover is highly capable and has significantly enhanced autonomous intelligence, stated its developer, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), according to the state-run media outlet Xinhua.

The rover autonomously detached from the lander, drove to a suitable position and selected an ideal angle for the photograph before capturing the image, according to the report.

The small vehicle represents "a significant stride forward in the development of autonomous intelligence in China's deep space exploration endeavors, promising a positive influence on future lunar exploration," according to CASC.

At approximately 11 pounds (5 kilograms), the rover is much smaller and lighter than China's first two moon rovers: Yutu and Yutu 2, part of the 2013 near side Chang'e 3 and 2019 far side Chang'e 4 missions, respectively. Each Yutu weighed around 310 pounds (140 kg). Yutu 2 is still active inside the moon's Von Kármán crater.

RELATED STORIES:

— China launches Chang'e 6 sample-return mission to moon's far side (video)

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— Why is the far side of the moon so weird? Scientists may have solved a lunar mystery

While China has not provided details, the Chang'e 6 lander and rover likely ceased operations when the ascent vehicle lifted off from atop the lander, blasting it with high-velocity exhaust. In any case, the lander and rover were not designed to survive the deep cold of lunar night that has since fallen over Apollo crater.

Chang'e 6 has been supported by Queqiao 2. The relay satellite bounced signals between ground teams and the spacecraft on the far side of the moon, which never faces Earth.

Chang'e 6 is expected to deliver around 4.4 pounds (2 kilograms) of precious lunar far side samples to Earth around June 25.

NASA's Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, is doing science again after problem

ADITHI RAMAKRISHNAN
Fri, June 14, 2024 

FILE - This illustration provided by NASA depicts Voyager 1. The most distant spacecraft from Earth stopped sending back understandable data in November 2023. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California announced this week that Voyager 1's four scientific instruments are back in business after a technical snafu in November. (NASA via AP, File)


DALLAS (AP) — NASA's Voyager 1, the most distant spacecraft from Earth, is sending science data again.

Voyager 1's four instruments are back in business after a computer problem in November, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said this week. The team first received meaningful information again from Voyager 1 in April, and recently commanded it to start studying its environment again.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is drifting through interstellar space, or the space between star systems. Before reaching this region, the spacecraft discovered a thin ring around Jupiter and several of Saturn’s moons. Its instruments are designed to collect information about plasma waves, magnetic fields and particles.

Voyager 1 is over 15 billion miles (24.14 kilometers) from Earth. Its twin Voyager 2 — also in interstellar space — is more than 12 billion miles (19.31 kilometers) miles away.

—-

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Trump’s MAGA allies forced to face protesters - including a bear - heckling lawmakers for their ‘failed coup’

Alex Woodward
Thu, 13 June 2024 

Donald Trump’s closest congressional allies were forced to walk through protesters while they marched to meet with the former president during his first visit to the Capitol since a mob of his supporters stormed the halls of Congress on January 6.

Republican Reps. Lauren Boebert, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan passed through protesters blasting them for their “failed coup” to reverse Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.

Others shouted out “bootlicker” and “don’t drink the Kool-Aid.”

Another protester in a bear costume held up a sign reading “bigger tax breaks, bigger profit.”

Lawmakers met with Trump on Thursday at the Capitol Hill Club, where a pipe bomb was discovered on January 6, 2021, when Trump’s supporters broke through police barricades and Capitol windows and doors to stop Congress from certifying 2020 election results.

Federal law enforcement is still searching for a suspect.

Lauren Boebert walks past a ‘failed coup’ sign on her way to a meeting with House Republicans and Donald Trump at the Capitol Hill Club on June 13. (Getty Images)

The former president – who is criminally charged in Washington, DC, and in Georgia for his failed efforts to overturn those results, and for his failure to stop the mob – returned to the nation’s capital for the first time on Thursday since a jury convicted him in New York for his conspiracy to influence the outcome of the 2016 race.

Marjorie Taylor Greene walks past a protester in a bear costume before a meeting with Donald Trump at the Capitol Hill Club on June 13. (AP)

He is expected to meet with GOP leadership in the House and Senate, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who hasn’t been in the same room with Trump since 2020.


GIVES THE FASCIST FIST SALUTE

Matt Gaetz heads to a meeting with House Republcians and Donald Trump at the Capitol Hill Club on June 13. (Getty Images)

In his meeting with House Republicans, Trump reportedly brought up Taylor Swift, praised Dwight D. Eisenhower as “the king of deportations,” and dumped on Milwaukee – where Republicans are expected to formally elect him as the GOP’s nominee to face Joe Biden in November – as a “horrible city.”

“President Trump talked about the specific strategies he was going to use to ensure that Trump voters show up in November and that they go all the way down the ticket,” Gaetz told reporters outside the Capitol Hill Club. “He was there to really let Republicans know that he was there to elect big majorities in the House and the Senate, and that he thought that would be essential to getting his agenda accomplished.”

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Executives of telehealth company accused of fraud that gave easy access to addictive Adderall drug

JAIMIE DING
Thu, June 13, 2024 

FILE - Adderall XR capsules are displayed on Friday, Feb. 24, 2023. The founder and CEO of a California telemedicine company, as well as its clinical president, have been arrested for allegedly distributing Adderall online and conspiring to commit health care fraud through reimbursements for the medication, officials said Thursday, June 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File)


LOS ANGELES (AP) — Top executives of a California-based online mental health company were arrested on allegations of improperly prescribing addictive stimulants like Adderall during the coronavirus pandemic and exacerbating the shortage of the drugs for those who medically need them, officials said Thursday.

Ruthia He, the founder and CEO of Done Global Inc., and clinical president David Brody were arrested Thursday in Los Angeles and San Rafael, California, respectively, for allegedly conspiring to provide easy access to Adderall and other stimulant drugs, which are largely used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or ADHD, in exchange for a monthly subscription fee, the U.S. Justice Department announced.

Done Global allegedly helped prescribe more than 40 million pills of Adderall and other stimulants, and earned over $100 million in revenue, prosecutors said. He and Brody could not be reached for comment, and it was unclear if they have hired attorneys. Done Global did not immediately respond to an email asking for comment.


He and Brody are accused of instructing providers on Done Global to prescribe stimulant drugs even if the patient did not qualify, disincentivizing follow-up appointments by only paying based on the number of patients who received prescriptions, and requiring intake appointments to be under 30 minutes, the Justice Department said.

“As alleged, these defendants exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to develop and carry out a $100 million scheme to defraud taxpayers and provide easy access to Adderall and other stimulants for no legitimate medical purpose,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.

On Thursday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned of “potential disrupted access to care” for people who rely on the platform or other telehealth platforms like it to receive medication that could affect 30,000 to 50,000 patients nationwide. There is an ongoing shortage of several prescription drugs used to treat ADHD, including Adderall. The CDC urged people to avoid using medication acquired from anyone other than a licensed clinician and pharmacy.

Last February, the Drug Enforcement Administration said it planned to reinstate longstanding federal requirements for an in-person doctor's visit to receive a prescription for addictive drugs such as OxyContin or Adderall amid growing concerns that some startup telehealth companies were improperly prescribing them.

“In many cases, Done Global prescribed ADHD medications when they were not medically necessary,” DEA official Anne Milgram said in a statement. “Any diversion of Adderall and other prescription stimulant pills to persons who have no medical need only exacerbates this shortage and hurts any American with a legitimate medical need for these drugs.”

Prosecutors allege He and Brody continued to distribute drugs in this manner after knowing of social media posts that Done Global patients had overdosed and died, the news release said. The two also allegedly lied to pharmacies and health insurance providers to ensure prescriptions were filled and paid for, with Medicare, Medicaid and insurance companies paying an excess of about $14 million, according to the news release.

The maximum penalty for He and Brody's charges is 20 years in prison.


California digital health company executives arrested
Amy Larson
Thu, June 13, 2024 



SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — Two California digital health company executives were arrested on Thursday for allegedly making $100 million in revenue by funneling Adderall and Ritalin to illegitimate patients.

David Brody, the clinical president of Done, was arrested in San Rafael. Brody will make his first court appearance in a San Francisco courtroom on Thursday afternoon. Ruthia He, the founder and CEO of Done Inc., was arrested in Los Angeles.

Federal investigators said the duo conspired to provide easy access to stimulants over the internet in exchange for monthly subscription fees from patients. A grand jury indictment alleges that the conspiracy’s purpose was for Done executives to unlawfully enrich themselves by prescribing over 40 million pills to patients, many whom were never medically evaluated.

Adderall and Ritalin are prescription stimulant drugs used to treat attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Done was founded in 2020 as a Northern California-based digital telemedicine health company that operated on a subscription-based model. Done advertised that it provided online diagnosis, treatment, and refills of medication for ADHD.

In 2022 the FDA issued a nationwide notice of shortages in prescription stimulants, including Adderall and Ritalin. Legitimate patients with ADHD struggled to refill their prescriptions as pharmacies were unable to maintain supplies.

DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said, “Instead of properly addressing medical needs, the defendants allegedly made millions of dollars by pushing addictive medications. Any diversion of Adderall and other prescription stimulant pills to persons who have no medical need only exacerbates this shortage and hurts any American with a legitimate medical need for these drugs.”

Parents worried about Adderall shortages as kids start school

Amphetamine-dextroamphetamine is sold generically and under a variety of brand names, including Adderall. Methylphenidate is sometimes sold under the brand name Ritalin. Pharmacists are required to exercise sound professional judgment, and to adhere to professional standards, when making a determination about the legitimacy of a controlled substance prescription.

Brody was a psychiatrist who maintained a DEA registration number and was authorized to prescribe controlled substances in California. Ruthia He owned, controlled, and operated Done.

Done’s prescribers wrote prescriptions for Done members “without an examination, sometimes based solely on a short video or audio communication and limited patient intake documents, or without any video or audio communication at all,” an indictment states.

According to the indictment, the scheme racked up thousands of members by spending millions of dollars on deceptive social media advertisements, as well as by intentionally targeting drug-seeking patients. The indictment was filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court Northern District of California.

Some Done members overdosed and died, Guy Ficco of Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation said.

“Instead of prioritizing the health of their customers, He and Brody’s telemedicine company allegedly prioritized profits — more than $100 million worth — by fraudulently prescribing medications,” Ficco said. “This led customers to addiction, abuse, and overdoses, which the company tried to conceal by making false representations to the media in order to deter oversight by government agencies.”

As more health care needs are met through telemedicine, fraud schemes that recklessly exploit digital technologies will be prosecuted, federal officials said.

He_Brody_indictmentDownload

He and Brody are charged with conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, distribution of controlled substances, conspiracy to commit health care fraud, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. If convicted, He and Brody each face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.

Copyright 2024 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Feds Arrest Telehealth Execs for Overprescribing Adderall

Joe Lancaster
Fri, June 14, 2024 

Milcho Milev | Dreamstime.com


The government has charged two medical executives for allegedly overprescribing prescription stimulants. Unfortunately, there's no sign that any government officials will ever face repercussions for making those same medications harder for people to get in the first place.

On Thursday, the Department of Justice announced that it had arrested two executives at the telehealth company Done Global on several charges, including conspiracy to commit health care fraud and obstruction of justice.

Ruthia He, Done's founder and CEO, and David Brody, the company's clinical president, are alleged to have "exploited the COVID-19 pandemic to develop and carry out a $100 million scheme to defraud taxpayers and provide easy access to Adderall and other stimulants for no legitimate medical purpose," according to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland. Adderall is the name-brand prescription stimulant most often used to treat attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), as well as other conditions, such as narcolepsy.

In March 2020, at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) announced that doctors and nurse practitioners could now issue prescriptions for controlled substances via telehealth, relaxing a provision in a 2008 law requiring at least one in-person evaluation first.

He, a former Facebook product designer, founded Done in December 2019, just weeks before COVID-19 reached America's shores. Done raised money from such investors as venture capitalist David Sacks and former NFL quarterback Joe Montana.

In its indictment, the government alleges that company officials "exploited emergency flexibilities during the public health emergency to provide easy access to Adderall and other stimulants that were not for a legitimate medical purpose in the usual course of professional practice." The company found many of its patients through ads on social media.

Prosecutors claim that under the company's policies, patient assessments were limited to 30 minutes and practitioners were expected to issue stimulant prescriptions "even if the Done member did not qualify." (In fact, Done touts the 30-minute initial appointment on its website.) The filing states that Done did not require followup appointments and even refused to reimburse providers for any appointments after an initial consultation—an action undertaken, as He allegedly wrote, to "dis-encourage follow-up."

The indictment charges that Done also created fake documents, including patient records and prior authorizations, to submit "false and fraudulent claims" to pharmacies, as well as to Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers, which "paid in excess of approximately $14 million."

Much of this should be unsurprising: In March 2022, the New York Post covered the proliferation of telehealth firms' social media ads hawking stimulants, which doctors found concerning. That same month, The Wall Street Journal reported that telehealth startups like Done "applied pressure on clinicians to prescribe stimulants, and some [employees] said the companies' initial 30-minute video evaluations often weren't sufficient to diagnose ADHD." In May 2022, Walmart and CVS both announced that they would no longer fill controlled-substance prescriptions from Done. By September 2022, news outlets were reporting that the DEA was investigating Done for potential violations of the Controlled Substances Act.

To substantiate charges of obstruction of justice, the indictment alleges that as public opinion shifted against the company, executives like He and Brody set about "corruptly altering, destroying, and concealing records and documents," including after they received a grand jury subpoena.

The government alleges that Done prescribed 40 million pills and generated $100 million in revenue since the start of the pandemic. Ironically, much of this alleged overprescribing took place as the U.S. experienced a severe Adderall shortage—for which government officials still refuse to accept any responsibility.

As Reason has documented very extensively, the Food and Drug Administration first declared an Adderall shortage in October 2022. Parents stuck at home with their children struggling to pay attention to school over Zoom, along with relaxed rules on telehealth prescriptions, caused ADHD diagnoses to skyrocket.

But the federal government sets annual production caps on controlled substances—including the amphetamines that make up the active ingredients in prescription stimulants like Adderall. And since the start of the Adderall shortage, the government has declined to raise the quotas, keeping the cap in place even as the demand for the drug has gone through the roof.

The DEA noted in its 2023 report that while it was "aware of patient reports that pharmacies are unable to fill prescriptions for their prescribed Adderall or one of its generic versions," it nonetheless "has not implemented an increase to the [quota] for amphetamine at this time." In its report for 2024, the agency "determined" that the existing quotas "are sufficient to supply legitimate medical needs, reserve stocks, and export requirements for 2024."

If the prosecutors' claims are true, Done Global very likely engaged in fraudulent and criminally negligent behavior in order to maximize profits at the expense of its patients—at least one of whom died, allegedly as a result of the company's lax policies.

But for ADHD patients who genuinely depend on medicines like Adderall, the government's actions produced a shortage keeping countless people from accessing a medication that allows them to function better. While Ruthia He and David Brody will be faced with the consequences of their actions, it's unlikely that any government official will ever face the same.

The post Feds Arrest Telehealth Execs for Overprescribing Adderall appeared first on Reason.com.


CEO arrested and accused of running an Adderall drug ring

Grace Eliza Goodwin
Updated Fri, June 14, 2024 

CEO arrested and accused of running an Adderall drug ring

Two telehealth execs have been accused of running an illegal drug scheme.


The DOJ says the executives raked in $100 million by doling out millions of phony prescriptions.


The department says they didn't back down even when they learned some patients had overdosed.

Two executives of a California telehealth company have been arrested and accused of running an illegal Adderall drug scheme to the tune of $100 million.

In a press release on Thursday, the Justice Department announced the arrests of Ruthia He, the founder and CEO of Done Global Inc., and David Brody, the digital-health company's clinical president, in California.

The department alleges that the two executives committed healthcare fraud by remotely distributing Adderall and other stimulants to patients for no medical purpose and then submitting false claims for reimbursement of the drugs.

Prosecutors accuse the pair of not backing down even after they learned Done members had overdosed and died.

"The individuals charged today allegedly disregarded the first rule of medical care — do no harm — in order to maximize profits, and there is no place for such fraud in our healthcare system," Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of homeland security, said in the Justice Department's press release.

Done Health and attorneys for He and Brody didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Justice Department accuses the defendants of luring drug seekers to the subscription-based healthcare service through millions of dollars of deceptive social-media advertisements.

Prosecutors say they then encouraged doctors in their network to prescribe Adderall, even when a patient didn't qualify, helping them make $100 million in revenue from prescriptions of more than 40 million pills.

He and Brody, prosecutors say, ordered that doctors keep initial patient consultations to under 30 minutes, then set up an auto-refill option to keep patients' prescriptions flowing without the need for follow-up appointments.

The defendants, prosecutors allege, also discouraged doctors from continuously caring for patients by refusing to pay them for any medical visits beyond the initial consultation. Instead, He and Brody paid them for the number of prescriptions they doled out, the department says.

He and Brody, the department alleges, kept the plan going after they were told that people had been posting social-media explainers on how to use Done to get easy access to Adderall and other addictive drugs.

In addition to the drug-conspiracy charges, He and Brody were charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice. Prosecutors allege the pair learned about a grand-jury subpoena and "deleted documents and communications," spoke through encrypted messages, and didn't provide the subpoenaed documents to the grand jury.

This is the first time that anyone has been charged with operating an illegal drug-distribution scheme through a telemedicine company, according to the department.

Both He and Brody face up to 20 years in prison.

Read the original article on Business Insider

What a Chinese port in Perú means for Washington

Jenna Moon
Fri, June 14, 2024 



Insights from The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Foreign Policy, and Bloomberg
The News

A $1.3 billion Chinese-constructed port in Perú is being watched closely by Washington as it monitors Beijing’s growing influence in South America.

The Chancay port, scheduled for launch later this year, will open a direct route between Perú and Shanghai and receive some of the world’s largest ships.
SIGNALS
Semafor Signals: Global insights on today's biggest stories.
Megaport challenges US dominance in Latin AmericaSource: The Wall Street Journal

The deepwater port will give Beijing unparalleled access to South America’s rich resources — raising concerns in Washington that it could lose its influence in the region, The Wall Street Journal reported. Beijing is so invested in the port that Chinese leader Xi Jinping is expected to attend its inauguration. That has rattled analysts who have closely watched China’s growing sway in the Global South: “It really platforms China in a major new way in South America as the gateway to global markets. It is not just a commercial issue at that point, it is a strategic issue,” Eric Farnsworth, a former high-ranking State Department diplomat, told the Journal.
Port control spat raises questions about Beijing’s involvementSources: Reuters, Foreign Policy

The agreement signed between China’s COSCO Shipping Ports and the Peruvian government has given the firm total control over its operations, due to an “administrative error” in the paperwork included by negotiators. COSCO threatened last month to pull out of the deal if it doesn’t retain full control over the port, Foreign Policy noted. The issue “raises the question of how many other governments have enthusiastically negotiated agreements with Chinese infrastructure investors without understanding all the fine print,” FP columnist Elisabeth Braw wrote.
Second port could work as ‘counterweight’Source: Bloomberg

Concerns over the port have prompted Perú to try to woo back the US. Lima is pitching a second port to US investors in hopes of offering Washington a “counterbalance” to Beijing in the country, Bloomberg reported this week. The Peruvian ambassador to the US told the outlet that “one hundred percent of Lima’s electricity is owned by China, many of the copper mining projects are owned by China,” adding, “the United States has noticed this. But it’s not enough to notice it, action is needed.”

Using China as a Foil, Peru Pitches New Port to American Investors

Antonia Mufarech
Thu, June 13, 2024 a


(Bloomberg) --

Peru is pitching a new port project to investors in the US, describing it as a potential balance to growing Chinese influence over maritime trade in the South American nation.

China’s state-owned Cosco Shipping is set to inaugurate the $1.3 billion Chancay port later this year, which is likely to upend South American trade with Asia. Now, Peruvian officials are trying to use the Chancay example to continue growing the country’s potential as a regional trade hub, with geopolitics in mind.

“It would be a port that could be a counterweight to China’s Chancay project,” Alfredo Ferrero, Peru’s ambassador to the US, told Bloomberg in an interview following a presentation to executives in New York.

The Chancay port has worried American officials, who openly criticize Chinese investments in Latin America that dwarf those of US companies. Peru expects Chinese President Xi Jinping to travel to Peru for Chancay’s inauguration at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) conference. While Chancay is drawing attention now, it is just the latest example of Chinese investments in Peru.

“One hundred percent of Lima’s electricity is owned by China, many of the copper mining projects are owned by China. China will have the largest port in South America,” Ferrero said. “Objectively, that is the situation and the United States has noticed this. But it’s not enough to notice it, action is needed.”

Ferrero is a former Peruvian trade minister who negotiated a free trade agreement with the US that is still in place. He was named ambassador to the US early this year and has set out to lure fresh investments.

The new port project he is pitching, known as Corio, is almost 700 miles south of Chancay. It is also south of Callao, where DP World and APM operate terminals. The Corio area is also close to the Matarani port, which is already a key copper export hub. Peru’s port authority recently announced a study to understand what cargo demand would look like for Corio.

Ferrero is aware that the idea of the Corio port is at a very early stage. But he says the project has potential because of its proximity to Chile, Argentina and Bolivia, which are all trying to increase lithium production due to demand for electric vehicles.

Ferrero is working to grow awareness of the Corio port project in the US to attract private investors. “The idea is that the American government calls for possible interested parties for them to make the investment,” he said.

That doesn’t mean Peru is only asking American investors to consider the Corio port project, however. But Ferrero hopes American investors will look into it. “Hopefully it’s from the US, but it can be from whichever country that’s interested.”

Bloomberg Businessweek