Charges dropped against woman jailed in Tennessee voter fraud case


A prosecutor dropped all charges against Pamela Moses, a Tennessee woman with previous felony convictions who had been sentenced to six years in jail for erroneously attempting to restore her right to vote. File photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo



April 23 (UPI) -- A prosecutor dropped all charges against Pamela Moses, a Tennessee woman with previous felony convictions who was sentenced to six years in jail for erroneously attempting to restore her right to vote.

Her conviction was thrown out in February, shortly after The Guardian uncovered an email between two high level officials in the state's department of corrections suggesting that Moses had made an error in good faith and hadn't intentionally tricked her probation officer into reinstating her voting ability.

Moses had been scheduled to appear again in court on Monday to find out if prosecutors would pursue a retrial. Instead, Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich announced on Friday she was dropping the charges against her.

"In the interest of judicial economy, we are dismissing her illegal registration case and her violation of probation," Weirich said in a press release.

Moses was on probation linked to a 2015 conviction for tampering with evidence. In 2019, she decided she wanted to participate in the upcoming election.

A judge told Moses that she was still on probation in September 2019. But when she double-checked with her probation officer, the officer told her she was actually done with her felony probation and gave Moses a certificate restoring her right to vote.

Moses submitted the paperwork to her local elections office. The next day, the Department of Correction sent a letter to the local elections commission stating that the probation officer had made a mistake and that Moses was not actually eligible to vote.

She was convicted of consenting to a false entry on official election documents. At a January hearing, Judge W. Mark Ward of the Shelby County Criminal Court told Moses that she'd "tricked the probation department" into giving her the document. Moses maintained she'd been following the instructions of her probation officer and the elections office.

"The case should not have been prosecuted right from the beginning because there was no trickery," Bede Anyanwu, Moses' lawyer, told The New York Times on Saturday.

The 2019 conviction and sentencing of Moses, who is Black, caused outrage among civil rights activists. Many claimed that her case highlighted disparities in how people of color are treated by the judicial system, as well as how Byzantine voting rights laws leave people with felony convictions unsure of their rights.

In 2020, the NAACP filed a lawsuit against Tennessee. The organization is challenging the state's "unequal, inaccessible, opaque, and error-ridden implementation of the statutes granting restoration of voting rights to citizens who lost the right to vote because of a felony conviction," the lawsuit states.

Moses remains permanently ineligible to vote under Tennessee law due to her 2015 conviction, regardless of her probation status.

U.S. seniors, Black patients receive alarming levels of inappropriate antibiotics

By HealthDay News

A new study found that 64% of antibiotic prescriptions for Black patients, 58% of those for Hispanic patients, 74% of those for people aged 65 and older, and 58% of those for males were inappropriate. 

File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

The majority of antibiotic prescriptions for U.S. seniors and Black and Hispanic Americans are inappropriate, a new report reveals.

For the study, researchers analyzed federal government data on more than 7 billion outpatient visits to doctors' offices, hospital clinics and emergency departments nationwide between 2009 and 2016.

Nearly 8 million visits (11%) led to antibiotic prescriptions, the researchers reported Thursday at a meeting of the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology & Infectious Diseases in Lisbon, Portugal. Research presented at meetings should be considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.

"Our results suggest that Black and Hispanic patients may not be properly treated and are receiving antibiotic prescriptions even when not indicated," said study leader Dr. Eric Young, of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.

"We know that physicians typically send patients home with antibiotics if they suspect their symptoms may lead to an infection," Young explained in a meeting news release. "This practice becomes more common when patients are unlikely to return for a follow-up visit (i.e., no established care within a clinic or hospital system), which more frequently happens in minority populations."

Antibiotic prescribing rates were highest in Black and Hispanic patients (122 and 139 prescriptions per 1,000 visits, respectively), the study found. They were also high in patients under age 18 and females (114 and 170 prescriptions per 1,000 visits, respectively).

In all, 64% of antibiotic prescriptions for Black patients, 58% of those for Hispanic patients, 74% of those for people aged 65 and older, and 58% of those for males were inappropriate, the researchers reported.

Inappropriate prescriptions were most often written for conditions not caused by a bacterial infection, such as non-bacterial skin conditions, viral respiratory tract infections and bronchitis, the study found.

The findings raise questions about the effectiveness of efforts to reduce inappropriate antibiotic prescribing and underscore the need to redouble efforts to cut down on that in primary care, the study authors said.

"In older adults, inappropriate prescribing in primary care is associated with a wide range of adverse outcomes, including emergency hospital attendances and admissions, adverse drug events and poorer quality of life," Young said. "Our results underscore that strategies to reduce inappropriate prescribing must be tailored for outpatient settings."

Overuse of antibiotics has led to resistant bacteria that are becoming more difficult, and sometimes impossible, to treat.

Antibiotic use is far higher in the United States than in many other countries, despite efforts to reduce inappropriate prescribing. Outpatient prescribing accounts for up to 90% of antibiotic use in the United States, and nearly 202 million courses of antibiotics were dispensed to outpatients in 2020, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

More information

There's more on antibiotics at the American Academy of Family Physicians.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

WAGE THEFT
Texas BBQ chain failed to pay $867K in shared tips to workers

A small barbecue restaurant chain in Texas failed to pay $867,572 in tips and overtime pay to more than 900 workers. Photo courtesy Roanoke Hard Eight/Facebook

April 23 (UPI) -- A small barbecue restaurant chain in Texas failed to pay $867,572 in tips and overtime pay to more than 900 workers, the U.S. Labor Department said.

Roanoke Hard Eight, which has five locations near the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, failed to pay their tipped employees all of their tips, the Labor Department said in a statement.

Restaurant executives, however, said that the situation stemmed from a misunderstanding over the Wages and the Fair Labor Standards Act that went into effect in 2019. The law prevents employers or managers from keeping tips received by workers.

Officials said hourly managers had received some of the tips earned by servers and were not paid the correct time-and-a-half rate for all hours worked above the 40-hour workweek.

"Roanoke Hard Eight violated the law by including managers in their tip pool. By doing so, the employer denied tipped workers some of their tips and managers proper overtime wages," said Jesus A. Valdez, the Labor Department's wage and hour district director in Dallas.

"As businesses struggle to find people to do the work needed to keep operating, employers would be wise to avoid violations or risk finding it even more difficult to retain and recruit workers who can choose to seek jobs where they will receive all of their rightful wages."

Matt Perry, the chief operating officer of Roanoke Hard Eight, said in a video message that the restaurant was "shocked and taken aback" by news reports of the recovered back wages and said the situation was a misunderstanding over federal labor laws.

Perry said that the restaurant had been audited by the Labor Department which had found that the restaurant's policies were not in compliance with federal law.

"We immediately took steps. We worked with our caseworker and also Director Valdez to make sure that our tip program was in compliance with the Department of Labor," Perry said.

"After that, we paid back all the employees of the tip-share that they were entitled to. We also took it a step further and also gave raises to our management team to compensate for the tip-share lost and as of August 2021 we are fully complaint."

Perry said the restaurant made sure with Valdez that it was still compliant with federal law after the Labor Department had released its statement.

"This was put to rest for us more than eight months ago and so, again, we were just shocked today but we wanted to take time out to tell our loyal customers and our employees and our staff at all our locations that we love you guys," Perry said.

"You guys are the heartbeat of what we do every day and we are very appreciative of the support and love that everybody has shown us over the last couple of days."

CAPITALI$M IN SPACE

Experts issue call to regulate space debris as levels of junk mount


An illustration depicts orbital debris, or space trash, above the Earth. The situation requires a regulatory regime, researchers say. File Photo courtesy of European Space Agency


April 23 (UPI) -- Proliferating levels of debris are posing a threat to the space environment and should be regulated as more satellites are being launched into space, researchers say.

Edinburgh University researchers said in a study published Friday in the journal Nature Astronomy the debris is troublesome, potentially affecting "professional astronomy, public stargazing and the cultural importance of the sky" to indigenous populations.

The situation can also damage "the sustainability of commercial, civic and military activity in space," according to the report.

The research stems from a brief submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals last year supporting the positions of several organizations against a Federal Communications Commission order granting license amendments for SpaceX Starlink satellites.

Each satellite has a roughly 50% chance of a collision each year from untracked debris, and that risk rises dramatically with any increase in debris, researchers contended.

"We have laid out the argument for the urgent need for orbital space to be considered part of the human environment," requiring "environmental protection through existing and new policies, rules and regulations at national and international levels," the researchers wrote.

They urged decisionmakers and policymakers "to consider the environmental impacts of all aspects of satellite constellations, including launch, operation and de-orbit, and to work with all stakeholders to co-create a shared, ethical, sustainable approach to space."

Scientists have already spotted more than 30,000 items of space debris in Earth's orbit through surveillance networks, according to a European Space Agency report released Thursday -- and that amount has been rising.

In the last two years alone, there has been an enormous increase in the number of commercial satellites launched to near-Earth space, with the vast majority of them being small satellites.

"Many of these constellations are launched to provide communication services around the globe," the ESA said. "They have great benefits, but will pose a challenge to long-term sustainability."

The low-Earth orbit has become congested with increased traffic and "the long-lasting nature of space debris in low-Earth Orbit is causing a significant number of close encounters, known as 'conjunctions,' between active satellites and other objects," the agency said.

On a positive note,researchers noted some progress has been made with space debris mitigation measures during the last decade, including rockets burned up via controlled reentries after launch and others placed in orbits that naturally decay within 25 years.

But researchers made it clear that more needs to be done based on future projections.

"The extrapolation of the current changing use of orbits and launch traffic, combined with continued fragmentations and limited post mission disposal success rate could lead to a cascade of collision events over the next centuries," they warned.

Researchers said the most effective way to avoid more collisions is to follow guidelines developed by the Inter-Agency Debris Committee calling for the disposal of spacecraft safely at the end of the mission.

They also said that another necessary step is actively cleaning up the existing debris.

The Clearspace-1 mission planned to launch in 2026 will be the first mission to remove a piece of space debris from orbit -- a defunct rocket part that came from a 2013 launch.

While more satellites reaching the end of their missions are being disposed of responsibly, the researchers said there is still more work to be done.

"An increasing percentage of disposal attempts are successful, but too many are left drifting in important orbits with no attempt made to remove them," they said. "A successful removal rate of at least 90% for all types of space object is required to limit the growth rate of space debris, before we can start cleaning it up."

International Space Station takes evasive action to avoid debris

2022/4/23 
© Deutsche Presse-Agentur GmbH

A general view of the International Space Station (ISS) orbiting Earth. ISS will be forced to undertake an unplanned evasive manoeuvre on Saturday to avoid colliding with space debris. NASA/dpa

The International Space Station (ISS) was forced to undertake an unplanned evasive manoeuvre on Saturday to avoid colliding with space debris.

The engines of the spaceship Progress MS-18 were turned on for 10 minutes, accelerating the ISS and lifting it 1.8 kilometres, according to Russian space agency Roscosmos. The Progress MS-18, which is used to resupply the ISS, is currently docked at the station.

The ISS is now flying at a height of 414 kilometres above the Earth after successfully completing the manoeuvre, Roscosmos said on Telegram. The maximum height the space station is permitted to orbit the Earth is just over 438 kilometres.

Debris is a growing problem for space travel. The ISS regularly needs to dodge objects flying as a collision could destroy it.

In November the ISS crew had to seek shelter in two space ships that were docked at the station after the Russian military destroyed a disused satellite. Fragments threatened to collide with the ISS, but in the end no harm was done.

PAKISTAN

Editorial

Imran Khan’s rallies

DAWN
Published April 23, 2022 -

AFTER three massive rallies in Peshawar, Karachi and Lahore, Imran Khan has proven that he still commands significant respect. The sudden revival of his political fortunes was quite unexpected, and it goes to show how shrewdly he has played the political hand he was dealt.

The reaffirmation of his supporters’ faith in him should give him enough confidence to proceed headlong into his campaign for early elections. As a leader, he ought to take this opportunity to turn a fresh page and rewrite his political destiny based on lessons learnt from his first stint in power. It is unfortunate that he, instead, continues to amplify a toxic narrative that risks turning the people of Pakistan against the state, its institutions and even themselves.

From between the lines of an angry speech, which has varied little from city to city, Mr Khan has demanded from the powers that be that they give him an early election. It is the only way, he says, to set right the wrong that he believes was done to him.

The call for a march on Islamabad, to be announced at a date of his choosing, is leverage for enforcing that demand. It remains to be seen how seriously and enthusiastically it is taken up by his supporters, if indeed matters come to that. However, it does have the potential to throw another spanner in the works for the new coalition government, which suddenly finds itself with everything to lose after walking itself into a political quagmire littered with economic landmines.

Editorial: Imran’s choice

Still, Mr Khan must realise that the best-laid plans often go awry.

Dharnas and jalsas alone may not be enough to sway the umpire’s finger, as they once did in 2014. His graph may be rising today, but political fortunes are fickle and subject to the vagaries of time. It would be prudent, therefore, that he finds a new tune to pipe for the people following him.

There has always been something distinctly Orwellian about Mr Khan’s vision for a ‘Naya Pakistan’, but the heady mix of religion and hyper-nationalism he has introduced in recent speeches takes it to another level. Granted that most among our political lot simply cannot resist appealing to our basest instincts when attempting to turn our loyalties against each other, but turning political differences with rival parties into grounds for hate and revulsion of the other is not only unnecessary; it is deplorable.

Mr Khan often describes Mohammad Ali Jinnah as his “only leader”, forgetting that it was statecraft and diplomacy that made Mr Jinnah ‘Quaid-i-Azam’. If Mr Khan wishes to emulate the Quaid, he needs something substantially more wholesome than a narrative that paints anyone who has ever disagreed with him as a traitor. He ought to rise above the politics of hate and adopt a narrative of inclusion and reconciliation instead.

Published in Dawn, April 23rd, 2022

Wife of Assange urges UK to block his extradition


Julian Assange's supporters accusing Washington of trying to muzzle reporting of legitimate security concerns (AFP/JOHN THYS)


Sat, April 23, 2022

Stella Assange, wife of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, urged the British government on Saturday not to sign his extradition order to the US, saying his fate will have repercussions throughout Europe.

A UK court on Wednesday issued a formal order to extradite the WikiLeaks founder to face trial in the United States over the publication of secret files relating to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The final decision now rests with interior minister Priti Patel, although Assange could yet appeal.

"This is a political case, it has always been a political case," Stella Assange told AFP on the margins of a demonstration in support of her husband in Brussels.


"The trick that has been played by the various governments the UK Government, the Australian Government, the US government, is to say it's before the courts," she added.

"Now that the UK courts have issued the extradition order, there is no excuse. It is squarely in the political domain."

The ruling Wednesday by a magistrate in central London brings the long-running legal saga in the UK courts closer to a conclusion.

But Assange's lawyers have until May 18 to make representations to Patel and could potentially launch further appeals on other points in the case.

-- 'Democratic values at stake' --

The case has become a cause celebre for media freedom, with Julian Assange's supporters accusing Washington of trying to muzzle reporting of legitimate security concerns.

Washington wants to put him on trial in connection with the publication of 500,000 secret military files relating to the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Stella Assange said the grounds to appeal against extradition in the United Kingdom are very narrow," with the treaty "heavily tilted in favour of the United States".

The matters being raised "go to the heart of what it means to have a free and open society of having a free press", she said, and raised the possibility of taking the matter to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.

"It is the soul of European values -- of democratic values -- that is at stake," she added.

"Julian has been in Belmarsh prison now for three years. He is in an increasingly weakened state of health. He had a mini-stroke in October."

The British government "is condemning war crimes in Ukraine, but it is going to show whether it is prepared to extradite a journalist for having exposed war crimes", she said.

jug/er/pvh/jj

ECOCIDE

Explosion at Nigerian illegal oil refinery kills over 100

Author of the article:

Reuters

Tife Owolabi

Publishing date:

Apr 23, 2022  

Article content

YENAGAO — More than 100 people were killed overnight in an explosion at an illegal oil refining depot in Nigeria’s Rivers state, a local government official and an environmental group said on Saturday.

“The fire outbreak occurred at an illegal bunkering site and it affected over 100 people who were burnt beyond recognition,” the state commissioner for petroleum resources, Goodluck Opiah, said.

Unemployment and poverty in the oil-producing Niger Delta have made illegal crude refining an attractive business but with deadly consequences. Crude oil is tapped from a web of pipelines owned by major oil companies and refined into products in makeshift tanks.

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The hazardous process has led to many fatal accidents and has polluted a region already blighted by oil spills in farmland, creeks and lagoons.

The Youths and Environmental Advocacy Centre said several vehicles that were in a queue to buy illegal fuel were burnt in the explosion.

At least 25 people, including some children, were killed in an explosion and fire at another illegal refinery in Rivers state in October.

In February, local authorities said they had started a crackdown to try put a stop to the refining of stolen crude, but with little apparent success.

Government officials estimate that Nigeria, Africa’s biggest oil producer and exporter, loses an average of 200,000 barrels per day of oil – more than 10% of production – to those tapping or vandalizing pipelines.

That has forced oil companies to regularly declare force majeure on oil and gas exports. (Writing by Julia Payne and MacDonald Dzirutwe, Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky and Ros Russell)

ECOCIDE

Scuba diving boat sinks off Ecuador's Galapagos Islands


Handout picture released on march 10, 2022 by the Parque Nacional Galapagos press office showing a 'Chelonoidis chathamensis' turtle at the San Cristobal island, Galapagos islands, Ecuador on August 2, 2019 (AFP/-) (-)


Sat, April 23, 2022

A scuba diving boat sank Saturday off one of Ecuador's ecologically sensitive Galapagos Islands but damage was minor and no one was hurt, officials said.

The boat was carrying about 47 barrels of diesel fuel that left a "superficial" slick, the Environment Ministry said.

The sinking was first reported by the state-run oil company Petroecuador, which did not specify how much fuel may have spilled.

Galapagos National Park confirmed the sinking of the vessel called the Albatroz and said it was used for scuba diving excursions in waters of the islands, which are a protected natural heritage site.

Containment booms have been set up around the area of the accident in an effort to control the spill, the company said.

The four crew members on the ship are safe, it added.

The national park suspended tourism activities around the city of Puerto Ayora, where its headquarters is located.

Located in the Pacific about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) off the coast of Ecuador, and famous for their giant tortoises, the Galapagos are a protected wildlife area and home to unique species of flora and fauna.

The archipelago was made famous by British geologist and naturalist Charles Darwin's observations on evolution there.

The Galapagos marine reserve, in which industrial fishing is prohibited, is the second-largest in the world. More than 2,900 marine species have been reported within the archipelago, which is a Natural World Heritage Site.

In 2019, a barge carrying a small amount of diesel sank off another Galapagos island, San Cristobal, causing a small spill but damage was insignificant.

In 2001 and Ecuadoran flagged vessel carrying 240,000 gallons of fuel also sank off San Cristobal. That spill did cause environmental damage that harmed several marine species.

sp/yow/md

LANGUAGE OF WORK IN QUEBEC

New controversies arise over French language in Canada
AFP - 4h ago

Do French-speakers face discrimination in Canada, despite its status as an official language along with English?

A string of recent leadership appointments and statements has revived the controversy over the French language's place in Canada, prompting a response from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The latest blow: There are no longer any directors on the corporate board of Montreal-based CN, Canada's largest railway company, who speak French.

The question of whether Canadian corporate leaders should be bilingual received a lot of attention last fall, after the president of Air Canada, Michael Rousseau, said he did not have the time to learn French. He had to publicly apologize for those remarks a few days later.

Under Canadian law, state-owned businesses, such as CN and Air Canada, as well as airports and federal ministries, are required to provide services in both French and English to clients.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said this week that he was frustrated by the situation with CN.

"French-speaking Canadians across the country should see themselves reflected in our major national institutions," said the bilingual prime minister, who also asked the responsible government ministers to ensure CN works quickly to rectify the situation.

The recent controversies are a reminder of the French language's precarious position in a North American ocean of English-speakers, as well as previous battles to protect its status as an official language, which has been included in the Canadian constitution since 1982.

But according to some French language proponents in Canada, where the total population of 37 million contains 8 million francophones, the government has failed to meet expectations.

- Less than 20% of Canadians are bilingual -

"There is clearly a hypocrisy on the part of Trudeau," said Stephane Beaulac, a law professor and codirector of the University of Montreal's National Observatory on Linguistic Rights.

He pointed out that while the prime minister is bothered by the CN saga, he chose last year to appoint a non-French speaker as Canada's governor general, who serves as Queen Elizabeth II's official representative in the country.

Mary Simon, originally from the Nunavik area in northern Quebec, is the first Indigenous Canadian to become governor general, but only speaks English and the Inuit language of Inuktitut.

This week, Canada's Commissioner of Official Languages also rebuked the prime minister's office for not having all video streams on their official Facebook page subtitled or dubbed in French.

According to recent opinion polls, more than 90 percent of Canadians strongly support bilingualism, which they consider to be a part of Canadian culture, but less than 20 percent are fluent in both languages.

"Everyone must be able to be served in their preferred language since few Canadians are truly bilingual," says Stephanie Chouinard, a political science professor at the Royal Military College of Canada.

But, she adds, Canadians "have been waiting for the modernization of the Official Languages Act since 2019."

Beaulac, the law professor, notes that "for a long time, to defend French meant you were flagged as pro-separatist."

"Things have changed today, so people are more daring to challenge the domination of English."

Referring to the recent CN appointments, linguistic law professor Frederic Berard explains that "people are angry, shocked, and this anger is justified."

"However, today this kind of situation is relatively rare," especially in Quebec, adds Berard, who chaired Canada's national consultations on the reform of official languages.

But the situation is much more complex for Francophones who do not live in Quebec, he adds, even if there have been advances in recent years.

tib/rle/des/md

Ex-Guantanamo Prisoner Sues Canada Over Alleged Role in His Detention

April 23, 2022 
Agence France-Presse

 Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a Guantanamo Bay prisoner who wrote a best-selling book about his experiences in the military prison, poses on Oct. 18, 2016 after he was reunited with his family in Mauritania on Oct. 17 after 14 years of detention.

MONTREAL —

A former Guantanamo detainee who spent 14 years without trial and whose story was told in the hit film The Mauritanian, is suing Canada over its alleged role in his detention.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi, 51, claims that Canadian authorities provided false information concerning the period when he was a permanent resident in Montreal in 1999, which led to his arrest and subsequent torture at the infamous U.S. prison, according to his complaint filed on Friday and reviewed by AFP.

Slahi is seeking $28 million for the damages he suffered.

In the lawsuit, Slahi says he faced "physical beatings, sleep deprivation, forced standing, incessant noise, sexual assault, mock assassination, death threats, religious humiliation, and more" while at Guantanamo.

"Slahi's detention and maltreatment were prolonged because the receipt and use of forced confessions by Canadian authorities validated the continued torture and detention," his lawyers said in the complaint.

Slahi's story was a best-selling book that was adapted for the screen.

The film, starring Tahar Rahim and Jodie Foster, accurately depicts the extreme conditions on the American base.

Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Slahi came under suspicion of involvement in an unsuccessful plot to bomb Los Angeles in 1999.

Arrested in 2001 in Mauritania, he was then successively imprisoned in Jordan and Afghanistan, before arriving at Guantanamo in 2002, in what he called in his book a world tour of torture and humiliation. He was released in 2016.