University changes course; professors may testify in lawsuit

FILE - In this Oct. 15, 2014, file photo, University of Florida President-elect W. Kent Fuchs speaks during a press conference at Emerson Alumni Hall in Gainesville, Fla. Reversing its previous position, the University of Florida said Friday, Nov. 5, 2021, that it would allow professors to testify as experts in a lawsuit challenging a new state law that critics say restricts voting rights. In a letter to the campus, President Fuchs said he is asking the office responsible for approving professors’ outside work to reverse the recent decision rejecting the professors' request to serve as expert witnesses in litigation involving the state of Florida. 

(Doug Finger/The Gainesville Sun via AP, File)


ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Reversing its previous position, the University of Florida said Friday that it will allow three professors to testify as experts in a lawsuit challenging a new state election law that critics say restricts voting rights.

Last month, the university prohibited Dan Smith, Michael McDonald and Sharon Austin from testifying in the lawsuit brought by civic groups, saying that such testimony would put the school in conflict with the administration of Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, which pushed the election law. More than half of the university’s trustees are appointed by the governor.

In a letter to the campus, university president Kent Fuchs said he is asking the office responsible for approving professors’ outside work to greenlight their request to serve as expert witnesses in the litigation. Fuchs said the outside work would have to be on the professors’ own time and not use university resources.

Attorneys representing the professors said they were still planning to move forward with a lawsuit against the university.

“Despite reversing the immediate decision prohibiting the Professors from testifying, the University has made no commitment to abandon its policy preventing academics from serving as expert witnesses when the University thinks that their speech may be adverse to the State and whatever political agenda politicians want to promote,” David O’Neil and Paul Donnelly said in a statement. “It is time for this matter to be rightfully adjudicated, not by press release, but in a court of law.”

The university’s announcement came after the union for faculty members urged donors to withhold contributions and scholars and artists to turn down invitations to campus until university administrators affirmed the free speech rights of school employees.

Not allowing them to testify would be “an attack on all of us,” said Paul Ortiz, a history professor who is president of the union chapter at the university.

Hours later, after hearing about the reversal, Ortiz called the announcement, “a really positive step forward,” and said the union chapter’s executive committee will meet to decide how to proceed.

“I’m delighted to see this,” Ortiz said. “We want some kind of guarantee that this isn’t going to be on a case-by-case basis — if another faculty member says, ‘I want to engage in this type of activity,’ that we aren’t going to end up back in the same place.”

The union also had asked the university to issue an apology, affirm its support for voting rights and declare that the school’s mission is for the public good.

Fuchs and Provost Joe Glover said in a letter to the campus community earlier this week that the school will immediately appoint a task force “to review the university’s conflict of interest policy and examine it for consistency and fidelity.” On Friday, Fuchs said a preliminary recommendation will be ready by the end of the month.

Also this week, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges told news outlets the organization planned to investigate the university’s previous decision to prohibit the professors from testifying.

The University of Florida’s president answers to its board of trustees, which has six members appointed by the governor and five appointed by the state university system’s board of governors. The board of governors, in turn, has 17 members, 14 of whom are appointed by the Florida governor and confirmed by the state Senate. These offices have been in Republican hands for many years.

In a statement this week, DeSantis’ office denied being behind the decision to block the faculty members’ testimony, and on Friday his press secretary, Christina Pushaw, tweeted that any such suggestion was “absurd.”

Florida Democratic elected officials, many of whom attended the University of Florida, were critical of the university’s initial rejection of the professors’ requests, tying it to other controversial recent decisions by the school, such as the quick hiring of DeSantis’ pick to be Florida’s surgeon general. Dr. Joseph Ladapo recently came under fire for refusing to don a mask at a meeting with a lawmaker who was being treated for cancer.

“The rapid reversal of this ill-advised policy will restore the pride and integrity of the Gator Nation of which I am so incredibly proud,” Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in a statement. “Go Gators!”

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Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP

Researchers uncover protein that governs ants' changing social roles

New research identifies a key protein that governs how ants switch social roles, allowing them to switch between being workers or filling a queen-like role. 

Photo by cp17/Pixabay

Nov. 4 (UPI) -- A single molecule controls the unusual social phenomenon in a certain species of ants that sees members of their colonies switch from worker to queen-like status, a study published Thursday by the journal Cell found.

The protein Kr-h1, or Krüppel homolog 1, responds to socially regulated hormones to orchestrate this complex social transition, called gamergate, in the Harpegnathos saltator species of ants, the researchers said.

It's unusual for members of ant colonies to make this "social" transition, they said.

"Animal brains are plastic -- that is, they can change their structure and function in response to the environment," study co-author Roberto Bonasio said in a press release.

"This process, which also takes place in human brains -- think about the changes in behavior during adolescence -- is crucial to survival," said Bonasio, an associate professor of cell and development biology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia.

In an ant colony, workers find food and fight off invaders, while the queen's main task is to lay eggs, and it is rare to see changes in these roles, according to the researchers.

By studying ants, Bonasio and his colleagues wanted to understand how turning certain genes "on" or "off" affects brain function and behavior.

To do so, the team developed a method for isolating neurons from the ants and keeping them alive in plastic dishes in the lab, they said.

This enabled them to explore how the cells responded to changes in their environment, including hormone levels, the researchers said.

Through these efforts, the researchers identified two hormones, juvenile hormone and ecdysone, that produced distinct patterns of gene activation in the brains of workers and queens.

These hormones are present at different levels in the bodies of workers and those who transition to queen-like status, and both influence genes by activating Kr-h1, according to the researchers.

"This protein regulates different genes in workers and gamergates and prevents the ants from performing 'socially inappropriate' behaviors," study co-author Shelley Berger said.

"That is to say, Kr-h1 is required to maintain the boundaries between social castes and to ensure that workers continue to work while gamergates continue to act like queens," said Berger, a professor of cell and development biology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine.

The findings reveal important roles for socially regulated hormones and gene regulation in the ability of animal brains to switch from one genetic mode and social caste to another, the researchers said.

"The key message is that, at least in ants, multiple behavioral patterns are simultaneously specified in the genome and that gene regulation can have a great impact on which behavior that organism carries out," Berger said.

"In other words, the parts of both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are already written into the genome; everyone can play either role, depending on which gene switches are turned on or off," she said.

The implications may go much farther than understanding behavioral plasticity in ants and other insects, given that similar proteins may have comparable functions in humans, according to the researchers.

Identifying similar proteins in human brains may enable scientists to discover ways to restore plasticity -- the ability to grow and change -- to brains that have lost it, including aging brains.

In future studies, the researchers said they plan to explore the role of Kr-h1 in other organisms, including humans, and learn how, if at all, the environment impacts brain plasticity and behavior.

"We had not anticipated that the same protein could silence different genes in the brains of different castes and, as a consequence, suppress worker behavior in gamergates and gamergate behavior in workers," Bonasio said.

"We thought that these jobs would be assigned to two or more different factors, each of them only present in one or the other brain," he said.

Letting babies eat eggs could help avoid allergy later, study says

By HealthDay News

Introducing babies eating eggs earlier in life may help prevent them from developing an allergy, a new study says. File Photo by ComZeal/Shutterstock

Feeding eggs to infants could reduce their risk of egg allergy later on, new research suggests.

For the study, researchers at the University at Buffalo in New York, analyzed U.S. government data from more than 2,200 parents who were surveyed about their children's eating habits and food allergies from birth to 6 years of age.

"We found that children who hadn't had egg introduced by 12 months were more likely to have egg allergy at 6 years," said lead author Dr. Giulia Martone, who is scheduled to present the findings Sunday at a meeting of the American College of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, in New Orleans.

Research presented at meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

Among the more than 2,200 parents surveyed, 0.6% reported an egg allergy in their children at 1 year of age, the study found.

Of the more than 1,400 parents who reported food allergy data on their children until age 6, 0.8% reported an egg allergy at that age.

Children with egg allergy at ages 1 and 6 ate fewer eggs at 5, 6, 7 and 10 months of age than those without egg allergy, the researchers reported.

"Egg allergy is the second most common food allergy throughout the world," senior author Dr. Xiaozhong Wen said in an ACAAI news release.

"Current evidence suggests that early introduction of egg during infancy, followed by consistent and frequent feedings, seems protective against development of egg allergy. We are still investigating optimal timing of infant egg introduction and frequency of feeding," Wen said.

The allergy-prevention strategy is a familiar one.

Since 2017, allergists and pediatricians have said that parents should introduce peanut product to children around the time they begin eating solid foods to reduce the risk of peanut allergy.

More information

Food Allergy Research and Education has more on egg allergy.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

U.S. bans imports from Malaysia company over signals of forced labor

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said that the ban is based on reasonable evidence of forced labor at Smart Glove facilities in Malaysia. File Photo by Yuri Gripas/UPI | License Photo

Nov. 5 (UPI) -- The United States has barred all imports of products made by a Malaysian glove company, officials said because of the company's culture of forced labor in the Southeast Asian nation.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Thursday that it's issued a Withhold Release Order for Smart Glove, a Malaysia-based conglomerate that produces gloves for the medical and food industries and owns a number of subsidiary companies.

The agency said the ban is based on reasonable evidence of forced labor at Smart Glove facilities.

"In the past two years, CBP has set an international standard for ensuring that goods made with forced labor do not enter the U.S. commerce," CBP Acting Commissioner Troy Miller said in a statement.

"Manufacturers, like Smart Glove, who fail to abide by our laws will face consequences as we root out this inhumane practice from the U.S. supply chain."

The agency said it identified several indicators of forced labor established by the International Labor Organization. It didn't specify which indicators were noted, but the ILO lists excessive hours, debt bondage, physical and sexual violence and abusive conditions as some of its 11 signs of forced labor.

Smart Glove is the fifth Malaysian company over the past 15 months to receive such a CBP ban.

Malaysia's Smart Glove says it opposes forced labour after U.S. import ban


Fri, November 5, 2021

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 6 (Reuters) - Malaysia's Smart Glove on Saturday said it was opposed to forced labour and committed to the well-being of its workers, after the United States banned imports from the rubber glove maker for alleged forced labour practices.

On Thursday, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) issued a "Withhold Release Order" https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/us-bans-imports-fifth-malaysian-firm-15-months-over-alleged-forced-labour-2021-11-05 prohibiting imports from Smart Glove and its group of companies, citing what the CBP called reasonable evidence that indicates "Smart Glove production facilities utilise forced labour".

Smart Glove, which makes gloves used in the medical and food industries, became the fifth Malaysian firm in 15 months to be slapped with such a ban.

In an emailed statement, Smart Glove said it had contacted CBP to obtain more information about the ban and that it would look to resolve the action.

"Smart Glove stands against forced labour and is committed to all of our workers' health, safety and well-being; and we remain dedicated to their welfare," it said.

Malaysian factories - which make everything from palm oil to medical gloves and iPhone components - have come under increasing scrutiny over allegations of abuse of foreign workers, who form a significant part of the manufacturing workforce.

Smart Glove's peers have also faced similar U.S. action over alleged labour abuses.

Supermax Corp, banned last month https://www.reuters.com/world/us-bars-malaysian-glove-maker-supermax-over-alleged-labour-abuses-2021-10-21 has said it will speed up a process it had begun in 2019 to meet International Labour Organisation standards on workers' welfare.

Top Glove - the world's largest latex glove maker - was barred by the CBP last July. The ban was lifted last month https://www.reuters.com/business/malaysias-top-glove-says-cleared-resume-business-with-us-2021-09-10 after the company resolved the labour issues.

(Reporting by A. Ananthalakshmi; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)

ISRAEL LIES

Israeli dossier on rights groups contains little evidence

Shawan Jabarin, director of the al-Haq human rights group, at the organization's offices in the West Bank city of Ramallah, Saturday, Oct. 23, 2021. A confidential Israeli dossier detailing alleged links between Palestinian human rights groups and an internationally-designated terrorist organization contains little if any concrete evidence and appears to rely largely on hearsay. The Associated Press obtained the document from the online +972 Magazine, which along with the Hebrew-language Local Call was the first to report on it.(AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed, File)


JERUSALEM (AP) — A confidential Israeli dossier detailing alleged links between Palestinian human rights groups and an internationally designated terrorist organization contains little concrete evidence and failed to convince European countries to stop funding the groups.

The 74-page document appears to have been prepared by Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service and shared with European governments in May. The Associated Press obtained the document from the online +972 Magazine, which was the first to report on it, along with the Hebrew-language Local Call. Israel may have additional evidence that has not been made public.

Last month, Israel designated six Palestinian civil society organizations as terrorist groups, saying they were tied to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a secular, leftist political movement with an armed wing that has carried out deadly attacks against Israelis. Israel and Western countries consider the PFLP a terrorist organization.

But Israel has yet to take further action against the groups, which operate openly in the occupied West Bank. The Defense Ministry and the Shin Bet did not respond to requests for comment.

The six groups, some of which have close ties to rights groups in Israel and abroad, deny the allegations. They say the terror designation is aimed at muzzling critics of Israel’s half-century military occupation of territories the Palestinians want for their future state.

The designated groups are the Al-Haq human rights group, the Addameer rights group, Defense for Children International-Palestine, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees and the Union of Agricultural Work Committees.

The dossier relies almost entirely on the interrogation of Said Abedat and Amru Hamudeh, who worked as accountants for the Union of Health Committees, a separate group which was outlawed in January 2020. Both were reportedly fired in 2019 for embezzling funds, and were later detained by the Shin Bet. Their lawyers could not be reached for comment.

Neither appears to have ever worked for the six organizations outlawed last month.

In redacted excerpts from their interrogation by Israeli authorities, they allege that the six organizations are PFLP branches but do not provide any evidence beyond naming a handful of alleged PFLP members employed by the groups. They suggest that some of the employees forge receipts to siphon away donor funds, but do not provide proof or say where the money went.

Speaking about the Union of Agricultural Work Committees — one of the six — Abedat is quoted as saying, “as far as I know, this organization affiliates to the PFLP.” His “estimation” is that the same printing company that helped him forge invoices also helped the other group.

Even when describing his own work in diverting funds to the PFLP, Abedat makes no mention of militant activities. “We funded PFLP activities such as university activities, funding of the injured and sick for the PFLP, funding of families of martyrs and prisoners from the PFLP,” he is quoted as saying.

Israel says the PFLP and other armed groups use such activities to recruit and indoctrinate members, and to provide financial support to militants and their families.

The dossier also details several forged invoices, all from the Union of Health Committees. In one instance, Abedat says: “I estimate that this money went to PFLP activities.” In the others, it’s either unclear where the money went, or Abedat says it was used to cover the UHC’s debts.

Several European officials have expressed skepticism about the allegations.

In a letter to Dutch lawmakers on May 12, caretaker Foreign Minister Sigrid Kaag said new Israeli information on two Palestinian organizations that were indirectly funded by the Netherlands “offers no concrete evidence of links with the PFLP.”

Kaag acknowledged that two former employees of the UAWC who had received salaries from a Dutch-funded project were suspected in a deadly August 2019 bombing in the occupied West Bank that was blamed on the PFLP. She said the government had already suspended funding for that project pending an independent investigation.

Belgium’s development minister told a parliamentary commission in July that her government also investigated Israeli information received in May but found “no concrete material evidence for possible fraud at the partner organizations.”

The minister, Meryame Kitir, said the government had also examined annual audits of the groups carried out by international firms like Deloitte and PricewaterhouseCoopers without finding any irregularities.

“I therefore see no reason today to freeze funds, nor to have additional external investigations carried out,” she said.

Last month, Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney expressed concern about the terrorism designation, saying previous allegations against Palestinian civil society organizations supported by Ireland and the EU “have not been substantiated.”

Shin Bet officials traveled to Washington last week to brief U.S. officials on the terrorism designation. They shared a summary of their presentation with the AP that largely matched the dossier, including excerpts from the same interrogations, but may have shared other evidence that was classified. State Department spokesman Ned Price declined to comment on those discussions or say whether the United States shares Israel’s assessment of the Palestinian groups.

NGO Monitor, a pro-Israel group that researches Palestinian nongovernmental organizations, says it has identified 13 — including the six targeted with the terror designation and the previously outlawed UHC— that together have employed more than 70 individuals with PFLP ties.

Gerald Steinberg, the head of NGO Monitor, said Israel trained its attention on the purported network after the August 2019 attack, which killed a 17-year-old Israeli girl, and appears to be building its case.

“The HWC was the first one. They’re looking to see where the money comes from,” he told the AP. “We identify organizations with sometimes 10, 11, 12 individuals in senior positions, in many cases the accountants, the treasurers, the board members.”

Critics say pro-Israel groups aim to discredit Palestinian rights activists in order to shield Israel from criticism in world bodies like the International Criminal Court, which opened an investigation in March into alleged Israeli war crimes. Israel is deeply opposed to the investigation, and views the ICC and other international organizations as biased against it.

Michael Sfard, a prominent Israeli lawyer who often represents Palestinians, said the dossier “amounts to absolutely nothing” when it comes to the six organizations. He is providing legal representation to one of the six, Al-Haq, a human rights group founded in 1979 that gets only a passing mention in the dossier.

Sfard said the two detainees cannot be considered reliable witnesses, and that even if their statements are taken at face value, they don’t prove anything.

“It’s all guilt by association. Even if it is true that people who work in certain organizations are PFLP operatives, it does not follow that the organization itself is part of the PFLP,” he said.

“On all levels, this document in fact shows how weak the whole case against these six organizations is,” he added.

___

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.

Hamas ‘guardian’ law keeps Gaza woman from studying abroad

By FARES AKRAM

1 of 3

Palestinian student Afaf al-Najar, speaks during an interview at the seaside beach restaurant in Gaza City, Wednesday, Nov. 3, 2021. Al-Najar is fighting to travel out of the Palestinian enclave to Turkey, where she has won a scholarship, but her father banned her, taking advantage of a new Hamas ruling that bars women from traveling against the will of their male "guardians.".(AP Photo/Adel Hana)

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (AP) — Afaf al-Najar had found a way out of Gaza.

The 19-year-old won a scholarship to study communications in Turkey, secured all the necessary travel documents and even paid $500 to skip the long lines at the Rafah crossing with Egypt.

But when she arrived at the border on Sept. 21 she was turned back — not by Israel or Egypt, which have imposed a 14-year blockade on the Gaza Strip — but because of a male guardianship law enacted by the Islamic militant group Hamas, which rules the territory.

“I honestly broke down,” she said, describing the moment border officials removed her luggage from the bus. “My eyes started pouring, I could not even stand up. They had to bring a chair for me... I felt my dream is being robbed.”

Travel in and out of Gaza, a coastal territory that is home to more than 2 million Palestinians, has been severely restricted since 2007, when Hamas seized power from rival Palestinian forces. Israel, which has fought four wars with Hamas, most recently in May, says the blockade is needed to keep the militants from rearming. Critics view it as a form of collective punishment.

Hamas has repeatedly demanded the lifting of the blockade. But in February, an Islamic court run by Hamas issued a notice saying that unaccompanied women must get permission from a male “guardian” — a husband, relative, or even a son — to travel outside the territory.

After a backlash led by human rights groups, Hamas authorities amended the ruling to drop the requirement. Instead, it said that a male relative can petition a court to prevent a woman from traveling if it would result in “absolute harm.” Women cannot prevent men from traveling.

Hamas has only taken sporadic steps over the years to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, on already conservative Gaza, and even then has usually backed down in the face of criticism. It does not share the extreme ideology of more radical factions such as the Islamic State group.

But the amended law has remained in effect.

Al-Najar’s father filed a petition, and the court prevented her from traveling so that it could consider it. She lives with her mother, who is separated from her father, and says he cut off all contact with her in May. He could not be reached for comment.

Hamas officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group that is deeply critical of the blockade, called on Hamas to lift its restrictions.

“Hamas’s authorities should lift the travel ban on Afaf al-Najar and the Supreme Judicial Council should withdraw its notice, so that women in Gaza can travel without discriminatory restrictions,” it said.

After being turned back at the border, al-Najar appealed to a number of local human rights groups, but said they appeared reluctant to assist her, fearing reprisal from Hamas. Eventually, she filed a petition against the ban.

Her father failed to show up at the first hearing, causing it to be postponed. Before it adjourned, the judge asked her why she was going abroad and suggested she could just as easily study in one of Gaza’s universities.

Al-Najar, who speaks fluent English and teaches the language, aspires to be a journalist. She says a multi-cultural country like Turkey provides opportunities that don’t exist in Gaza, which is largely cut off from the outside world.

The hearing was postponed a second time because her father’s attorney was sick. It was postponed a third time on Wednesday because his new lawyer said he needed time to study the case.

The scholarship’s validity was extended until the end of the year, but if al-Najar does not make it to Turkey by then, she will lose it.

But she’s not giving up.

“I realized no one is going to help me but myself, and I realized that I have to be strong now to fight for my rights,” she said. “Instead of crying in my room and letting myself down, I decided to fight. I chose to fight for the first time in my life.”

A rebel, a bureaucrat: The women who stayed in Afghanistan


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Rishmin Juyanda looks out of the window in Kabul, Afghanistan, Friday, Oct. 22, 2021. A rights activist, she is part of an underground network determined to fight repressive Taliban policies that limit the freedoms of women. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen)


KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Two women from different walks of life — one a rebel, the other a bureaucrat — face an unknown future in Afghanistan. One decided to work with the Taliban, the other is determined to fight them. Both vow they will never leave their homeland.

Karima Mayar Amiri, 54, heads a department in the Taliban-run Health Ministry. She is among the few women able to retain a leadership position in the new government’s bureaucracy and believes Afghans must be served no matter who is at the helm.

Many years her junior, Rishmin Juyunda, 26, could not disagree more. Afghan women will never be served with the Taliban in power, she says. The rights activist is part of an underground network determined to fight harsh Taliban policies that restrict women’s freedom.

They represent a broad spectrum of women who have remained in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan after many fled, fearing a return to the brutal repression that marked the group’s previous rule in the late 1990s. The international community has linked recognition of a Taliban government to factors such as guarantees for women’s rights.

It is not clear what rights women will be able to retain. Under the Taliban, women in most government ministries are now unable to work, teen-age girls are prohibited from going to school, the interim cabinet is comprised entirely of men. This deepens mistrust toward the Taliban.

But there are exceptions.

Amiri, a mother of six, retained her senior position as the director of the ministry’s Quality and Safety Department after the collapse of the previous U.S.-backed government. Her case is rare; most senior female bureaucrats have been barred from work across government portfolios except for health.

She is at the office by 9 a.m. to manage a team of five. Nearly every day she meets with her Taliban-appointed superiors to review action plans to combat the spread of diseases from the coronavirus to dengue fever.

“It was not a difficult decision for me to stay. I have my own department. If they request a plan, I will provide it. The Taliban leadership wants me to work for them, and I am ready,” she said. “As long as I am healthy, I will work for them, for my people, my country.”

Juyunda is entering her last semester majoring in economics at Zahra University in Tehran. She chose to stay in the capital of Kabul and study remotely after the Taliban’s August takeover. Textbooks crowd her worktable, but her focus is interrupted by a buzzing phone. In a string of WhatsApp messages, rights activists proposed slogans for the next demonstration.

Like many young women who grew up after the U.S. invasion in 2001, Juyunda’s dreams were dashed overnight after the Taliban seized Kabul and consolidated control of the country. Many of her friends have left, unwilling to wait and see how the dust will settle following the dramatic U.S. exit.

She stayed. “I will never leave Afghanistan. I have to stay and make a change,” she said, her lively hazel eyes framed by a scarlet headscarf.

The decision to remain came amid large-scale evacuations.

Between the Aug. 15 fall of Kabul and the final U.S. exit two weeks later, thousands of Afghans, including many women, rushed to the city’s airport in a desperate attempt to get out.

Karima Mayar Amiri poses for a photograph outside her office in Kabul, Afghanistan on Sunday, Oct. 31, 2021. She is one of the few women still able to retain a leadership position within the Taliban's bureaucracy. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen)

Amiri chose a different path.

Three days after the Taliban overran the capital, she was back in the office to help meet the growing need in the crumbling health sector. International aid that once funded hospitals and health worker wages had stopped abruptly. Hospitals across the country were being hit hard by an economic crisis brought on by international sanctions against the Taliban.

She requested that her Taliban superiors merge her department with another to improve quality control. They approved it.

When a Taliban guard attempted to inspect her bag at the ministry gate one morning, she refused and asked that a separate room be erected for female checks. They complied.

A graduate of Kabul Medical University 31 years ago, she has worked for the Health Ministry since 2004. Five health ministers have come and gone during her tenure. “Why should the Taliban be any different?” she asked.

The only change they introduced was for women to don Islamic dress. Amiri, a devout Muslim, was already in the habit of wearing a headscarf.

“Health is not political,” Amiri insists. The guidelines her office formulates are sent to thousands of public hospitals, clinics and facilities across the country. “Life goes on,” she says.

But for Juyunda, life will never be the same.

It took her weeks to recover from the shock of the takeover. Her family of 11 had greatly benefited after the U.S. invasion. She and her four sisters were able to attend school in Ghor province. Her parents held well-paid government jobs. She was on her way to becoming an economist brimming with ideas to improve her country.

From social media she came to know of a women’s protest organized outside the Pakistan Embassy in Kabul in September. Shortly after she arrived, a Taliban unit showed up and the group had to disperse. She stood there holding a sign “Education is a right” and repeated to herself, “I am strong, they are weak.”

She witnessed protesters being beaten with rifles and cables. This is war, she thought.

Numbers were exchanged, and soon a network of dozens of like-minded activists was formed.

The Taliban have said they have no issue with the right to protest, but that the activists must seek their permission to demonstrate. Subsequent sit-ins have not been able to draw large numbers. But Juyunda said to seek permission from the Taliban would be an implicit acceptance of their rule.

“We will never do that,” she said.

The lives of both women were shaped by Afghanistan’s turbulent history.

Amiri was a gynecologist in the conservative Wardak province, a Taliban stronghold as far back as the 1990s when the group was first in power.

To survive, she said, she made her world a little smaller.

“During that time, I went to the hospital, I treated patients, delivered babies and did surgeries, and then I went straight home. That was my life,” she said.

In 2021, she reverted to the same tactic. After 3:30 p.m., she leaves the office and goes straight to her Kabul home to spend the evening with her children and grandchildren.

Juyunda’s childhood was marked by the violence of the Taliban insurgency in the years after the U.S. invasion. She saw entire buildings go up in flames after rocket strikes and bombings.

At night she would sleep with a glass full of water. “I thought, if a bomb ever hit our home, I could use it to put out the flames,” she recalled, smiling at the thought of her childhood naivete.

The bombs have stopped, but Juyunda’s war for the rights of women continues.

Amiri, meanwhile, is hopeful. “Let’s see what happens,” she said.

China LGBT rights group shuts down amid hostile environment
By HUIZHONG WUyesterday


An online post about the work of the LGBT Rights Advocacy Group with a link to their social media account Queer Advocacy Online is displayed on a phone in Beijing, China, Friday, Nov. 5, 2021. The LGBT advocacy group in China that has spearheaded many of the country's legal cases pushing for greater rights, announced on social media Thursday, Nov. 5, 2021, it is halting its work for the foreseeable future. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)


TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — An influential LGBT advocacy group in China that has spearheaded many of the legal cases pushing for greater rights is halting its work amid growing restrictions on social activism.

LGBT Rights Advocacy China announced it was ceasing all activities and shutting down its social media accounts in an announcement on social media Thursday.

“We are deeply regretful to tell everyone, Queer Advocacy Online will stop all of our work indefinitely,” the group said on WeChat, using the name of its social media account. It closed its accounts on WeChat and Weibo, two widely used platforms in China.

A member confirmed that all the group’s activities have been shut down. The member, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of safety concerns, declined to say why. Group founder Peng Yanzi did not respond to a request for comment.

LGBT Rights Advocacy China did work across the country, pushing for the rights of gay people and raising awareness about the community. It advocated for same-sex marriage and fought workplace discrimination by helping individuals sue their former employers.

While there are many other groups focused on helping LGBT individuals, LGBT Rights Advocacy is one of a handful who focused on changing law and policy.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs announced Friday that they have dealt with 3,300 illegal social organizations, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. The ministry also shut down some 200 illegal websites and individual social media accounts that were not registered with any government entity.

FILE - Gay rights activists run with a rainbow flag during the Hangzhou International Marathon in Hangzhou in eastern China's Zhejiang province on Nov. 1, 2015. A LGBT advocacy group in China that has spearheaded many of the country's legal cases pushing for greater rights, announced on social media Thursday, Nov. 5, 2021, it is halting its work for the foreseeable future. (Chinatopix Via AP, File)


It is unclear if the group was shut down as part of the government campaign. The ministry did not immediately respond to a faxed request for comment.

The group mentioned they were in trouble a few months ago, said a 30-year-old LGBT activist who knows the group’s founders and who spoke on condition of anonymity. Lawyers who helped the group with cases had also stopped their work then.

LGBT Rights Advocacy China was co-founded by Peng and another activist named AQiang in 2013, and focused their efforts on securing legal rights for LGBT individuals through strategic lawsuits.

One of their most high profile cases came early on in 2014, when Peng himself went undercover to a facility that claimed it could “treat” homosexuality with electroshock therapy. He sued the company and won.

The group often brought landmark cases to the court, challenging the law to make space for non-traditional families, and often helped start public discussions on those issues.

In April last year, they helped a lesbian sue for custody rights for her children, after her partner took them and stopped communicating with her. She had given birth to one of the two children. Under Chinese law, she could claim she was the birth mother of one child, but wanted to fight for the right to see the other as well. Her case is still lingering in court.

The group also helped a young woman sue textbook publishers for writing that homosexuality was a disorder in a high profile case that gained national prominence and was reported on by state media. She lost the case in February, after years of litigation.

“In the entire community, they gave us a lot of hope and guidance, giving everyone the confidence to go out there and do something” said a 34-year-old man, who sued his former employer in 2018 for discrimination and won with the help of the group. He declined to be named out of fear of retribution, citing the current environment.

Homosexuality is not a crime in China, and in bigger cities, there’s a vibrant social scene where LGBT individuals can socialize without much fear or discrimination. However, restrictions on advocacy groups and online censorship have grown.

In July, WeChat shut down dozens of accounts run by university students and non-profit groups on LGBT topics.

One LGBT blogger, who also declined to be named out of fear of retribution, said it’s getting increasingly difficult to run an LGBT group in current circumstances, noting that WeChat and other social media platforms are deleting related content.

Shanghai Pride canceled its annual event in 2020 and said it would no longer hold it without explanation after 11 years of operation.

Another well-known group, True Self, which often held events to teach families how to accept their LGBT children, would tell people to not mention the word “gay” in publicizing their events, said the man who had previously sued his employer for discrimination. “The space for acceptance for sexual minorities is less and less, it’s not like before.”

Pandemic restrictions also played a role in cutting down on the number of events the groups would hold, he added.

For now, groups are struggling to operate within the constraints.

“The future may bring more uncertainties, we await the day when we can lift the clouds and see the daylight,” LGBT Rights Advocacy China said in their post.

___

Associated Press news assistant Caroline Chen in Beijing contributed to this report.

Chinese journalist jailed over Covid reporting is ‘close to death’, family say

Citizen reporter Zhang Zhan, 38, was arrested and jailed after reporting on the outbreak

This file screengrab taken on 28 December, 2020 from an undated video posted shows former Chinese lawyer and citizen journalist Zhang Zhan as she broadcasts via YouTube, at an unconfirmed location in China. 

Photograph: YOUTUBE/AFP/Getty Images

Agence France-Presse
Fri 5 Nov 2021

A citizen journalist jailed for her coverage of China’s initial response to Covid in Wuhan is close to death after going on hunger strike, her family said, prompting renewed calls from rights groups for her immediate release.

Zhang Zhan, 38, a former lawyer, travelled to Wuhan in February 2020 to report on the chaos at the pandemic’s centre, questioning authorities’ handling of the outbreak in her smartphone videos.

She was detained in May 2020 and sentenced in December to four years in jail for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” – a charge routinely used to suppress dissent.

She is now severely underweight and “may not live for much longer”, her brother Zhang Ju wrote last week on a Twitter account verified by people close to the matter.

“Zhan is 177cm tall, now she has less than 40kg wt. She may not survive the coming cold winter,” Zhang Ju wrote on 30 October. “I hope the world remember how she used to be,” he added.


Zhang has been on a hunger strike and was force-fed through nasal tubes, her legal team, which did not have information on her current condition, told Agence France-Presse earlier this year.

Zhang Ju’s posts sparked fresh calls for his sister’s release, with Amnesty International urging the Chinese government to “release her immediately so that she can end her hunger strike and receive the appropriate medical treatment she desperately needs”.

The human rights organisation said Zhang “is at risk of dying if she is not urgently released to receive medical treatment” in a statement released on Thursday.

“Zhang Zhan, who should never have been jailed in the first place, now appears to be at grave risk of dying in prison. The Chinese authorities must release her immediately so that she can end her hunger strike and receive the appropriate medical treatment she desperately needs,” Amnesty campaigner Gwen Lee added, describing her detention as a “shameful attack on human rights”.

“If Zhang Zhan dies in prison, her blood will be on the Chinese government’s hands,” Lee added.

Someone close to the citizen journalist, who declined to be named, told AFP the family had asked to meet Zhang more than three weeks ago at the Shanghai women’s prison where she is being held but had not received a response.

AFP was unable to reach Zhang Ju while Zhang’s mother declined to comment. The Shanghai prison also offered no response when approached by AFP.

Zhang now cannot walk or even raise her head without help, according to Reporters without Borders (RSF).

RSF east Asia Bureau head, Cedric Alviani, said the “international community (must) apply pressure to the Chinese regime and secure Zhang Zhan’s immediate release before it is too late.”

A pro-democracy activist holds up a signs in support of Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan who has been sentence to four years in prison and the 12 arrested people in China in Hong Kong, China, 28 December 2020. Photograph: Miguel Candela/EPA
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“She was only performing her duty as a reporter and should never have been detained, not to mention receive a four-year prison sentence.”

China has revelled in its success in keeping domestic infections down to a trickle of sporadic outbreaks. The government has put forward a narrative crediting the Communist party with returning life almost to normal even as death tolls and infections continue to explode in the rest of the world.

But those who threaten the official version by raising questions about the government’s early cover-up and handling of the Wuhan outbreak face the party’s wrath.

Zhang is among a group of four citizen journalists - including Chen Qiushi, Fang Bin and Li Zehua - detained after reporting from Wuhan.

HPV vaccine prevents cervical cancer by 62% among women finds Lancet study

By: FE Online |
November 05, 2021 

The research shows that the HPV vaccination along with cervical cancer screening reduces the infection to an extent where no one develops the cancer.



A breakthrough research, sponsored by the Cancer Research UK, has clinically established that the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, which was developed to protect women against cervical cancer is successful in reducing the risk of cancer by 62 per cent in women aged between 14 and 16 years.

The vaccine similarly was successful in minimising the risk of the disease by 34 per cent in women aged between 16 and 18 years. The research which has been published in the Lancet journal took into account all cervical cancer women patients aged between 20 and 64 years diagnosed in the United Kingdom between January 2006 and June 2019. The findings of the research are significant due to the fact that since the vaccine’s introduction in the early 2000s only few recent studies have confirmed the efficacy of the vaccine against cervical cancer.

The research shows that the HPV vaccination along with cervical cancer screening reduces the infection to an extent where no one develops the cancer. The research also showed that over a period of 11 years since 2006, the vaccine played a major role in preventing around 450 cases of cervical cancers and over 17k cases of precancerous conditions. Buoyed by the successful results of the vaccine, the Health department of the United Kingdom extended the administration of the vaccine also to boys aged about 12-13 years old in 2018.

What is Human papillomavirus (HPV)?

It is a kind of virus which has more than 100 of its types. As per the National Cancer Institute (NCI) sexual contact is the reason for the spread of more than 40 types of HPV. The HPC causes genital warts, cervical, anal, oropharyngeal, penile, vulvar and vaginal cancer. The HPV vaccine which is being administered in the United Kingdom protects against two major strains of the HPC- HPV 16 and 18.

Symptoms of Human papillomavirus (HPV)
Most infected people do not develop any symptoms after contracting the disease and remain completely unaware of their condition. In most of the infection cases, the immune system of the body clears the virus out making the disease harmless. However, the virus can sometimes take many years before it shows its severe symptoms.

HPV vaccination and cervical cancer occurence in India

The HPV vaccine is primarily administered to young boys and girls in their teenage years to ensure that they are vaccinated against the disease before they make any sexual contact. An Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention study has found that the primary hindrance to HPV vaccination is financial as the vaccines are expensive.

As per the guidelines of the Indian Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Immunization (IAPCOI) HPV vaccines are administered in the form of a two-dose regimen for girls below 14 years of age. For girls who are aged above 15, the vaccine is to be administered in a three-dose regimen.

The same study also found that India contributed about 27 per cent of total cervical cancer cases in the world. More than 77 percent cases of cervical cancer in India are caused by HPV 16 and 18. Officially, the HPV vaccine has not been recommended for boys and males in India.