50% jump in active-shooter incidents from 2020 to 2021: FBI

When a disgruntled employee opened fire in the parking lot of a FedEx distribution facility in Indianapolis, Indiana, in April 2021, the shooter did so because he wanted to commit "suicidal murder," an FBI report released Monday concludes.

That incident, according to the FBI, was one of deadliest mass killings that year.

As a whole, active-shooter incidents in the United States increased by more than 50% from 2020 to 2021, according to the report.

Over the past five years, active shooter incidents have steadily increased, the FBI said, with the most recent in Buffalo, New York, on May 14 when a gunman killed 10 Black people at a local supermarket.

That shooting is being investigated as a hate crime.


In this April 22, 2022, file photo, the Federal Bureau of Investigation seal is shown at the J. Edgar Hoover building in Washington, D.C.

The new report, titled "Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2021," says there were 61 mass shooting incidents in the U.S. in 2021, representing a nearly 100% in active shooter incidents from 2017, which saw 31.

MORE: Missed signals in 4 mass shootings: What went wrong?

The FBI defines an active shooter as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. Implicit in this definition is the shooter's use of a firearm.

The shootings occurred in 30 states, which saw 103 die and 140 wounded, according to the FBI, which says 12 of the shootings met the "mass killing" definition.

The FBI defines a mass killing as a three or more killings in a single incident.

John Cohen, the former acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, told ABC News that the United States is seeing a trend with active shooters.

"The U.S. is in the midst of a multiyear trend where we are experiencing an increase in mass shooters who are seeking to advance their ideological beliefs or based on a perceived personal grievance," Cohen now an ABC News contributor said. "A growing subset of our population believes that violence is an acceptable way to express one's ideological beliefs or seek redress for a perceived personal grievance."


Members of the Buffalo Police department work at the scene of a shooting at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., May 17, 2022.

Nearly all of the shooters were male, and half the accused shooters were arrested by law enforcement. The FBI says 55% of the shootings took place in the afternoon and evening hours.

More than half of the shootings took place in areas of commerce.

"The locations range from grocery stores to manufacturing sites," the FBI said.

The youngest shooter was 12 and the oldest was 67.

"For 2021, the FBI observed an emerging trend involving roving active shooters; specifically, shooters who shoot in multiple locations, either in one day or in various locations over several days," the FBI concluded.

Activist moved from Cairo prison to desert facility after nearly 48 days of hunger strike

Amarachi Amadike - Saturday

National Post

Alaa Abdel-Fattah, a British-Egyptian pro-democracy activist, was transferred from Cairo’s Tora Prison Complex, a maximum-security prison where he was allegedly tortured and denied basic rights, to a new correctional facility.

In this file photo taken on May 23, 2015, Egyptian activist and blogger Alaa Abdel Fattah looks on from behind the defendant's cage during his trial in Cairo for insulting the judiciary. 

KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images

His new prison, Wadi El-Natrun, is located in a desert valley 150 kilometers north of Cairo. The 40-year-old former computer programmer arrived on Wednesday morning and was allowed a visit from family members the following day.

“We’re really glad that Alaa Abdel Fattah has been removed from the ‘guardianship’ of officers who bore him a personal hatred,” said his aunt, Ahdaf Soueif, on facebook. “We’re relieved that he is in a place which has some medical facilities.”

Mona Seif, Abdel-Fattah’s sister, revealed on Facebook that for the first time in years her brother is allowed to sleep on a mattress.

Prior to his transfer, Abdel-Fattah had been on a hunger strike for almost 48 days in protest of his treatment in prison. His family said that he was denied exercise time, visitation privileges, medical care and even books.

Egyptian activist Abdel Fattah sentenced to five years in prison

Prominent Egyptian activist arrested as crackdown continues

Numerous complaints were filed regarding his mistreatment which, according to Abdel-Fattah and his family, included being beaten and humiliated by guards. Officials denied any wrongdoings or of witnessing his hunger strike.

“Unbelievable!” said Seif on Facebook following contradictory reports from officials on Egyptian state media. “According to a [high-level] ‘security official’ on Egyptian TV, Alaa is not on hunger strike, he is eating three meals a day, he walks around and he isn’t even at a maximum-security prison!”

She went on, in a sarcastic post that tagged the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to inquire as to why the British consulate has been prevented for months from bearing witness to Cairo’s “exemplary” prisons.

Although Abdel-Fattah has since been moved, his sister said on Facebook that they don’t know if this will be an improvement.

“The problem with the prison where Alaa was is not just that it is a maximum-security prison, it is that the ministry of interior and state security and Egyptian authorities were actively depriving him of every facility and every right that should be easily provided in the prison.”

His transfer comes after a petition was signed by hundreds of Egyptian women and filed with the National Council for Human Rights. The Associated Press reports that as a result of the petition, Abdel-Fattah would be moved to a prison where human rights standards are met.

Abdel-Fattah, who gained British citizenship through his U.K.-born mother, has been imprisoned since 2014 for his part in an unauthorized protest in which he allegedly assaulted a police officer. He enjoyed a few months of freedom before being taken back into custody in a crackdown against anti-government protests.

Following the Arab Spring, a 2011 pro-democracy uprisings that spanned the Middle East and effectively toppled long-time Egypt President Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian government, now led by President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, implemented a law that has since banned all street protests. As a result, many top activists involved in the uprising are now in prison.

Seif said that her brother — one of Egypt’s most famous imprisoned dissidents and a symbol of the country’s 2011 revolt — will continue with his hunger strike until “an independent judge” reviews his complaints about inhumane conditions he has suffered while incarcerated.

Ancient 'Dragon of Death' flying reptile discovered in Argentina


By REUTERS - 
© (photo credit: PIXABAY)


Argentine scientists discovered a new species of a huge flying reptile dubbed "The Dragon of Death" that lived 86 million years ago alongside dinosaurs, in a find shedding fresh insight on a predator whose body was as long as a school bus

The new specimen of ancient flying reptile, or pterosaur, measured around 30 feet (9 meters) long and researchers say it predated birds as among the first creatures on Earth to use wings to hunt its prey from prehistoric skies.

The team of paleontologists discovered the fossils of the newly coined Thanatosdrakon amaru in the Andes mountains in Argentina's western Mendoza province. They found that the rocks preserving the reptile's remains dated back 86 million years to the Cretaceous period.

The estimated date means these fearsome flying reptiles lived at least some 20 million years before an asteroid impact on what is now Mexico's Yucatan peninsula wiped out about three-quarters of life on the planet about 66 millions years ago.

'Dragon of Death'

Project leader Leonardo Ortiz said in an interview over the weekend that the fossil's never-before-seen characteristics required a new genus and species name, with the latter combining ancient Greek words for death (thanatos) and dragon (drakon).


Scottish fossil of flying reptile leaves scientists 'gobsmacked' (credit: REUTERS)

"It seemed appropriate to name it that way," said Ortiz. "It's the dragon of death."

The reptile would likely have been a frightening sight. Researchers, who published their study last April in the scientific journal Cretaceous Research, said the fossil's huge bones classify the new species as the largest pterosaur yet discovered in South America and one of the largest found anywhere.

"We don't have a current record of any close relative that even has a body modification similar to these beasts," said Ortiz.

Expert: Monkeypox likely spread by sex at 2 raves in Europe

MARIA CHENG

May 23, 2022

LONDON (AP) — A leading adviser to the World Health Organization described the unprecedented outbreak of the rare disease monkeypox in developed countries as “a random event” that might be explained by risky sexual behavior at two recent mass events in Europe.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Dr. David Heymann, who formerly headed WHO’s emergencies department, said the leading theory to explain the spread of the disease was sexual transmission among gay and bisexual men at two raves held in Spain and Belgium. Monkeypox has not previously triggered widespread outbreaks beyond Africa, where it is endemic in animals.

“We know monkeypox can spread when there is close contact with the lesions of someone who is infected, and it looks like sexual contact has now amplified that transmission,” said Heymann.

That marks a significant departure from the disease’s typical pattern of spread in central and western Africa, where people are mainly infected by animals like wild rodents and primates and outbreaks have not spilled across borders.

A German government report to lawmakers, obtained by the AP, said it expected to see further cases and that the risk of catching monkeypox "mainly appears to lie with sexual contacts among men.”

The four confirmed cases in Germany have been linked to exposure at “party events including on Gran Canaria and in Berlin, where sexual activity took place,” it said.

To date, WHO has recorded more than 90 cases of monkeypox in a dozen countries including Britain, Spain, Israel, France, Switzerland, the U.S. and Australia. On Monday, Denmark announced its first case, Portugal revised its total upwards to 37 and Italy reported one further infection.

Madrid’s senior health official said on Monday that the Spanish capital has recorded 30 confirmed cases so far. Enrique Ruiz Escudero said authorities are investigating possible links between a recent Gay Pride event in the Canary Islands, which drew some 80,000 people, and cases at a Madrid sauna.

Heymann chaired an urgent meeting of WHO’s advisory group on infectious disease threats on Friday to assess the ongoing epidemic and said there was no evidence to suggest that monkeypox might have mutated into a more infectious form.

Monkeypox typically causes fever, chills, rash, and lesions on the face or genitals. It can be spread through close contact with an infected person or their clothing or bedsheets, but sexual transmission has not yet been documented. Most people recover from the disease within several weeks without requiring hospitalization. Vaccines against smallpox, a related disease, are also effective in preventing monkeypox and some antiviral drugs are being developed.

In recent years, the disease has been fatal in up to 6% of infections, but no deaths have been reported among the current cases. WHO said confirmed cases have so far been the less severe West African group of monkeypox viruses and appeared to be linked to a virus that was first detected in exported cases from Nigeria to Britain, Israel and Singapore in 2018-2019.

Monkeypox Outbreak Linked to Gay Sauna and Festival

While not considered a sexually transmitted disease, monkeypox is spread through close contact.

BY ALEX COOPER
MAY 23 2022 

Spanish health authorities believe that a string of new monkeypox cases is linked to a gay sauna near Madrid and a Pride event in the Canary Islands that drew tens of thousands of people.

Spain announced 23 new cases Friday. Madrid regional health chief Enrique Ruiz Escudero told journalists that health officials have been tracing the cases from an outbreak at the now-closed sauna, Reuters reports.

"The Public Health Department will carry out an even more detailed analysis... to control contagion, cut the chains of transmission and try to mitigate the transmission of this virus as much as possible," Escudero said.

He told the Associated Press that another link may be a Pride event in the Canary Islands that saw around 80,000 people in attendance, the news wire reported Monday.

Elsewhere in Europe, an outbreak of monkeypox in Belgium has been connected to visitors at the Darklands fetish festival in early May, PinkNews reports.

At least three cases have been linked to the festival, according to the organizers.

“There’s reason to assume that the virus has been brought in by visitors from abroad to the festival after recent cases in other countries,” they said in a statement.

While many of the recent cases of monkeypox are among men who have sex with men, Dr. Agam Rao, a medical officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology, told NBC News that monkeypox isn’t considered a sexually transmitted disease.

“It’s probably premature and potentially even harmful to assume that there are only cases within that community,” she said. “There's going to need to be studies related to trying to isolate virus from seminal fluid or vaginal fluid. There’s really quite a lot of work that would need to be done before we would say that it can be transmitted sexually.”

However, the former head of the World Health Organization told the AP, “We know monkeypox can spread when there is close contact with the lesions of someone who is infected, and it looks like sexual contact has now amplified that transmission.”

The illness is endemic in animals in central and western Africa, according to the news wire.

Last Wednesday, Massachusetts confirmed the first confirmed case of monkeypox in the U.S. this year.

“The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) today confirmed a single case of monkeypox virus infection in an adult male with recent travel to Canada,” the department said in a statement.

In a statement last week, Dr. Hans Kluge, the WHO regional director for Europe, said that the new cases that have emerged in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere, have been “atypical.”

“Firstly, because in this instance all but one of the recent cases have no relevant travel history to areas where monkeypox is endemic, in West Africa or Central Africa. Secondly, because most of the initial cases found are being detected through sexual health services and are among men who have sex with men. And thirdly, because of the geographically dispersed nature of the cases across Europe and beyond, this suggests that transmission may have been ongoing for some time,” he said.

Kluge added that the WHO is troubled over the summer season’s festivals and parties.

“I am concerned that transmission could accelerate, as the cases currently being detected are among those engaging in sexual activity, and the symptoms are unfamiliar to many,” Kluge said.

Monkeypox is a zoonotic orthopoxvirus that appears similar to smallpox, although significantly less deadly. Most outbreaks in Europe and elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere are related to the exotic pet trade and international travel.

Initial symptoms of the monkeypox virus include fever, headache, myalgia, fatigue, and swelling of the lymph nodes. After one to two days, lesions may develop in the mouth and later the face and extremities like the palms and soles. The rash may further spread, and the number of lesions can range from just a few to thousands.

Monkeypox is spreading through sexual contact, but it’s not a sexually transmitted infection, WHO says. Here’s what that means

Andrew Marquardt
Mon, May 23, 2022

Melina Mara/The Washington Post — Getty Images

Monkeypox, a potentially lethal disease responsible for an alarming rise in cases in North America and Europe over the past three weeks, is primarily spreading through sex between men, according to the World Health Organization.

The disease is spread through close contact with infected people, animals, or materials that are contaminated with the virus. It enters the body through broken skin, the respiratory tract or through the eyes, nose or mouth, according to the CDC.

The virus is not considered a sexually transmitted infection, or spread through semen and vaginal fluids, WHO officials noted. Anyone in close contact with a person who has the virus is considered at high risk of infection, however.

“Many diseases can be spread through sexual contact. You could get a cough or a cold through sexual contact, but it doesn’t mean that it’s a sexually transmitted disease,” Andy Seale, an adviser to the WHO about HIV, hepatitis and other sexually transmitted infections, told CNBC.


In response to the rising number of monkeypox cases worldwide, Bavarian Nordic, a Danish vaccine manufacturer, is ramping up production of its smallpox vaccine to help governments fight the growing outbreak, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

As of May 21, 92 confirmed cases and 28 suspected cases of monkeypox have been reported to the WHO from 12 countries, including the U.S., Australia, Germany, and Spain.

In the U.S., Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials told Fortune last week that health officials are monitoring six people for suspected cases of monkeypox, all of whom sat next to a person on a May 3-4 flight from Nigeria to London who eventually developed the virus.

Monkeypox is a rare disease related to smallpox and cowpox that causes fever, muscle aches, and lesions. The incubation period, or time between exposure and the onset of symptoms, is usually a week or two but can range from five to 21 days, according to the CDC.

In Africa, where the disease is typically found, monkeypox has proven deadly in as many as 10% of infected persons, the CDC notes. The illness typically lasts anywhere between two and four weeks.

While there is no vaccine that specifically targets monkeypox, smallpox vaccines including the one offered by Bavarian Nordic, can protect against monkeypox infections by at least 85%, according to the CDC.

Known as Jynneos in the U.S., the Bavarian Nordic smallpox vaccine is one of two vaccines currently licensed in the U.S. to prevent smallpox, according to the CDC. It is the only vaccine that the U.S. specifically licenses to prevent monkeypox, however.

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, Bavarian Nordic CEO Paul Chaplin said the company has received calls from “dozens of countries” in recent weeks asking about Jynneos, which is known as Imvanex in Europe and Imvamune in Canada.

Supply of the vaccine is currently limited, but the company will be increasing its manufacturing in the weeks and months ahead, Chaplin told the Wall Street Journal.

“We feel confident based on discussions that we’ll be able to meet the demand in a relatively short period of time,” Chaplin said.

Speaking to reporters on Sunday, President Biden said the public should be concerned about the rising number of cases in the U.S. and abroad.

“They haven’t told me the level of exposure yet, but it is something that everybody should be concerned about,” Biden told reporters. “It is a concern in that if it were to spread, it would be consequential.”

On Monday, Biden backtracked those comments, saying the country has “vaccines to take care of it.”

"I just don't think it rises to the level of the kind of concern that existed with COVID-19,” Biden said.

According to Chaplin, the U.S. and Canada are the only two countries that have meaningful stockpiles of the Bavarian Nordic vaccines. The CDC says the U.S. has access to enough doses of smallpox vaccine to vaccinate every person in the United States if an outbreak were to occur.

Global food crisis looms as fertilizer supplies dwindle

Joel K. Bourne, Jr. -
National Geographic
© Photograph by Peter Essick, Nat Geo Image Collection


Think the global fertilizer shortage is someone else’s problem? Take a look in the mirror. If you are reading this in North America, Europe, Latin America, or Asia, chances are that the bundle of amino acids staring back at you is alive today because of chemical fertilizers.

In fact, according to noted Canadian energy researcher Vaclav Smil, two-fifths of humanity –more than three billion people—are alive because of nitrogen fertilizer, the main ingredient in the Green Revolution that supercharged the agricultural sector in the 1960s. The chemical fertilizer trifecta that tripled global grain production—nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K)—enabled the greatest human population growth the planet has ever seen. Now, it is in short supply, and farmers, fertilizer companies, and governments around the globe are scrambling to avert a seemingly inevitable tumble in crop yields.

“I’m not sure it’s possible any more to avoid a food crisis,” says World Farmers’ Organization President Theo de Jager. “The question is how wide and deep it will be. Most importantly, farmers need peace. And peace needs farmers.”

Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was a body blow to an industry that has been hammered by various events for more than a year. Russia typically exports nearly 20 percent of the world’s nitrogen fertilizers and, combined with its sanctioned neighbor Belarus, 40 percent of the world’s exported potassium, according to analysts at Rabobank. Most of that is now off limits to the world’s farmers, thanks to Western sanctions and Russia’s recent fertilizer export restrictions.

“If you speak to a farmer in North America or Oceania, the main talk is fertilizers, specifically the price and availability of fertilizers,” de Jager told a virtual conference on the subject recently. “Prices are more or less 78 percent higher than average in 2021, and this is cracking up the production side of agriculture. In many regions farmers simply can’t afford to bring fertilizers to the farm, or even if they could, the fertilizers are not available to them. And it’s not just fertilizers, but agrichemicals and fuel as well. This is a global crisis and it requires a global response.”

Most of the response thus far has been pretty ad hoc, with every farm and government for itself. But last week, the U.S. and global development banks announced a major “action plan” on global food security totaling more than $30 billion in aid, in hopes of staving off a repeat of the food riots that toppled governments during the last food price crises in 2008 and 2012.
U.S. farmers are feeling the burn

Rodney Rulon is better off than many farmers this year. A progressive farmer in Arcadia, Indiana, he has been using no-till techniques, cover crops, and chicken litter on his family’s 7,200 acres of corn and soybean fields since 1992. Combined with extensive soil testing each year, he’s cut his chemical fertilizer use 20 to 30 percent, he says—but it’s still his largest input.

“We’re making big cuts to what we’re spending on fertilizer this year,” Rulon says. “It’s $1,200 a ton for P and K. It was $450 last year. Nitrogen was $500-550 a ton last year. Now it’s well over $1,000. You just took our biggest expense and doubled it.” He can’t even get the 3,000 tons of chicken litter he normally uses in place of chemical phosphorus and potassium. He had a gentleman’s agreement with his supplier to purchase his usual amount for $60 a ton, but it sold out to a higher bidder.

High fertilizer prices have caused a run on manure in many parts of the country as farmers scramble for alternatives and seek ways to cut their fertilizer bills. That might not be a bad thing, says Antonio Mallarino, a soil scientist and plant nutrient expert at Iowa State University, who has been trying for decades to get farmers to stop overfertilizing.

“On 50 to 60 percent of fields in Iowa you could not apply P (phosphorus) and K (potassium) for 10 years and they’d be okay,” Mallarino says.

Though corn prices broke $8 per bushel in February, close to the all-time high set in 2012, many farmers are switching to soybeans, which require fewer nutrients and so less fertilizer. The USDA’s planting survey, released on March 31, showed farmers intend to plant a record 91 million acres of soybeans this year, 4 percent more than last year, while corn acres fell to 89.5 million acres—the lowest in five years.

“If this situation continues it may be good for the environment,” Mallarino says. “We may not have all this excess nitrogen and phosphorus going into the rivers and lakes.”

Bert Frost has heard more than a few grumbles from farmers about fertilizer prices. He’s the senior vice president for sales, supply chain, and market development for CF Industries, one of the largest producers of nitrogen fertilizers in the world. The smooth interplay of supply and demand that has kept nitrogen prices in a narrow range for the last 10 years is no longer working, he says—because both supply and demand have been hit by external shocks.

“What we have today is a confluence of all the factors not working in concert with each other,” Frost says.

A rebound in industrial activity that uses the raw ingredients in fertilizer coming out of the pandemic, combined with low global inventories of food grains, have pushed demand through the roof. Suppliers, on the other hand, have been knocked back by one extreme weather event after another. Winter Storm Uri in February 2021 literally froze production at fertilizer plants from Iowa to Texas, knocking several offline for a month or more. Six months later, Hurricane Ida tore through Louisiana’s chemical alley, damaging several fertilizer producers, including CFI’s Donaldsonville complex. With its six ammonia and four urea plants (urea is a fertilizer chemically derived from nitrogen), it’s the largest such facility in the world. The company was forced to cancel its contracts for a while.

“And I’ve got more,” Frost says. “Then China and Russia impose export restrictions on fertilizer. China exports 10 percent of the urea supply in the world. Their exports went to zero. Then Russia invades Ukraine and all hell breaks loose.”

The market was reeling, in other words, even before the war, the sanctions, and the Russian blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.

“All the factors I laid out for you earlier, we haven’t had those before,” Frost says.“So the logistics are screwed up. I don’t think this resolves itself.”
Latin America: running on empty?

North American farmers will eventually get the fertilizer they need this season, says Frost, even if they have to pay dearly for it. But it’s the agricultural powerhouses in Latin America that are the most vulnerable to fertilizer disruptions, particularly Brazil, which imports about 85 percent of its fertilizer, a quarter of it typically from Russia.

If farmers there cut back on fertilizers and their yields fall, it could have a significant impact on global food supplies. Brazil is among the world’s top three exporters of soybeans, corn, and sugar, as well as beef, chicken, and pork, according to a recent USDA report.

The major planting season in the Southern Hemisphere begins in September, and the Brazilian government is scrambling to find new fertilizer sources. Earlier this year it even struck a barter deal with Iran—working around U.S. sanctions on that country—in which Iran would send 400,000 tons of urea to Brazil in exchange for corn and soybeans. So critical are Russia’s fertilizers to Brazil and the world food supply, the Biden administration carved out a loophole for them in its suite of Russian sanctions in late March. Although financial sanctions are still hindering deliveries, analysts hope the move will ease the pressure on global food prices.

“It’s impossible to make forecasts on this situation,” says Micaela Bové, farming solutions director for Yara Latinamérica, based in Buenos Aires. “I never imagined COVID would still be here, and yet it is. I never imagined this invasion would become a war, and yet it has. But farmers are the heroes in this. They were hit by everything that you can imagine, and they always produce food.”

Bové says her division of Yara, the Norwegian fertilizer behemoth, is not seeing shortages in her region, which runs from the smallholder farms of Mexico to the vast estancias of Argentina, excluding Brazil. But the high prices are causing many to use less. So she and her team are promoting tools and apps to help farmers use their product more efficiently. “Fertilizer decisions depend on the crop,” she says, “And a maize farmer in Mexico has different needs than a citrus farmer or banana farmer elsewhere.”
Africa: From little to none

African farmers on average use the least fertilizer per acre in the world and have some of the lowest yields, particularly for corn and other grains that provide the bulk of the continent’s calories. As a result, despite having 60 percent of the world’s arable land, almost half the countries in Africa depends on imported wheat from Russia and Ukraine, with 14 African countries getting more than half their wheat from the two warring nations. Rising food prices now threaten to push millions of African families into poverty and malnutrition.

And the distant war is not their only challenge, says Agnes Kalibala, the president of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), a Nairobi-based non-profit that has worked with African governments and foreign aid agencies to increase the use of fertilizers and improved seeds to boost yields across the continent. “The most important part to me, even before fertilizers, is how much farmers are suffering from a climate change perspective,” says Kalibata, the former minister of agriculture for Rwanda. “In countries where it didn’t rain last year, there was generally a depression in interest in fertilizers. So the question now is will that interest pick up as the rains are coming to some of those areas.”

But even if countries can get fertilizer, farmers often can’t afford it, she says. Governments that typically subsidize fertilizer are struggling with massive post-COVID debt that in some nations is more than 50 percent of their gross domestic product. Kalibata’s group is working with the African Union, the African Development Bank, and the G7 nations to help with emergency funding, but also encouraging farmers to look at alternatives.

“In Africa our productivity is very low and we have high nitrate depletion in our soils,” Kalibata says. “It’s very difficult to grow maize or rice without nutrients. But there are other opportunities like fava beans, which are grown in Ethiopia and Sudan, that can fix 100 percent of their nitrogen needs. That is a fantastic opportunity.”

Nitrogen fixation is a natural symbiotic process that distinguishes legumes from cereal grains, which are in the grass family. Rhizobia bacteria living on the plants’ roots convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia that the plants can use, while the plants provide sugars to the bacteria. Beans are great nitrogen fixers: Soybeans supply up to 70 or 80 percent of their own needs. Common beans, a staple bean grown all over Africa, can fix up to 30 percent.

“So you still use nutrients, but you use less,” Kalibata says.

As always, climate is still the wild card. Without rain, fertilizer has little if any effect.

“If we can get rainfall in some of these areas, these countries should be able to find alternatives,” says Kalibata. “If they don’t, we’ll have multiple crises on our hands.”
Better off organic

About the only farmers who are not complaining about fertilizers this season are the rising number of organic growers. Their mantra has long been to feed the soil, not the plant, and to eschew chemical fertilizers and pesticides for legume cover crops, diversified crop rotations, and promoting beneficial insects and microbes in their fields. Some cover crops, like hairy vetch, can produce up to 300 pounds of nitrogen per acre, according to Jeff Moyer, executive director of the Rodale Institute in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.

Rodale, with help from the Pennsylvania State University, has been conducting side-by-side comparisons of conventional and organic cropping systems since 1981—the longest-running such field trial in North America. After a five-year transition period, they found organic yields were not only competitive with conventional yields, they yielded up to 40 percent higher during drought. Most importantly, they earned farmers three to six times more profit, while releasing no toxic chemicals into rivers and streams.

“Fertilizer is just the tip of the spear of the problems farmers are facing,” Moyer says. “Look at Kansas and Nebraska. Both states are on fire this year and this is supposed to be their wet season. With weather patterns changing and energy costs going up and not coming down, we need to revolutionize our production models to minimize these impacts.”

Converting to organic takes time, however, and that’s something many of the world’s farmers are running out of as well.

Ancient Chinese woman faced brutal 'yue' punishment, had foot cut off, skeleton reveals

Tom Metcalfe 
 Live Science

Nearly 3,000 years ago, the foot of a Chinese woman was cut off in an amputation — probably not for a medical condition, but as punishment for committing a criminal act, a new study of her bones suggests. It's one of the few times archaeologists have discovered evidence of yue, an ancient Chinese punishment.

Various clues hint that the woman's foot was cut off as yue: her bones show no signs of any disease that could have made such an amputation necessary; and it seems the injury was roughly made, rather than with the precision of a medical amputation.

The researchers considered other possibilities for how the woman might have lost her foot, such as from an accident, a war injury or a surgical procedure, study lead author Li Nan, an archaeologist at Peking University in China, told Live Science. But "after careful observation and media discussions, our research team ruled out other possibilities and agreed that punitive amputation is the best interpretation," she told Live Science in an email.

The yue punishment was common in ancient China for over 1,000 years, until it was abolished in the second century B.C., according to a 2019 study in the Tsinghua China Law Review. At the time the woman was living, up to 500 different offenses could result in having a foot amputated, including rebelling, cheating, stealing and even climbing over certain gates, Li said.

Related: Ancient Chinese tombs hold remains of warriors possibly buried alive

But nothing about the woman's skeleton suggests what she was punished for: "We have no clue what kind of crime she committed," she said.

Five punishments

According to historians, yue was one of the "five punishments for slaves" enforced since the second millennium B.C. by emperors of the Xia dynasty, the first dynasty of ancient China.

There is extensive historical evidence of the practice, and a Chinese official in the first millennium B.C. complained of the need to find special shoes for amputees.

Minor crimes were punished with beatings, but offenders who committed severe crimes could be sentenced to one of the five punishments: mo, where the face or forehead was tattooed in indelible ink; yi, in which the offender's nose was cut off; yue, the amputation of the feet (some of the worst offenders had both feet cut off); and gōng, a brutally complete castration.

The fifth was da pi, a death sentence that could be carried out by beheading, if you were lucky — alternatives included being boiled alive and being torn limb from limb by horses, according to a 1975 study in the Georgia Journal of International & Comparative Law.

Chinese tradition records that the five punishments were in force until they were abolished in the second century B.C. by the Han dynasty's Emperor Wen, who replaced them with a system of fines, floggings, hard labor and exile; the worst criminals were simply executed.

Li said the woman's skeleton was found in a tomb at the Zhouyuan site in China's northwestern Shaanxi province in 1999. The tomb dates from between 2,800 and 3,000 years ago, when Zhouyuan was the region's largest and most important city.

The skeleton's missing foot was largely overlooked initially, but a new examination of the remains reveals more about the woman's life, Li said.

An anatomical analysis revealed that the woman was between 30 and 35 years old when she died, and that — apart from her missing foot — she was in good health. She seems to have suffered no disease after the amputation, which suggests that she was cared for; and the growth of the remaining leg bones indicate the woman lived for about another five years before she died.

Only a few shells were found in her tomb, which might indicate that she lived in poverty, and she was probably buried by members of her family, Li said.

Related: 6 sacrificial pits filled with artifacts reveal rituals of ancient Chinese kingdom

Old bones

The woman's bones didn't show signs of any diseases that might have made a foot amputation necessary, such as diabetes, leprosy or cancer; and there was no evidence of frostbite or burns.

In addition, there seem to be few good explanations of how it could have happened by accident. "If she was attacked or fell from a high place, it didn't make sense that she only lost her right foot without other injuries," Li said.

A critical clue was that the amputation seems to have been the result of an inexpert or perhaps remorseless action — something that can be seen in the bones that remain, including what's left of the tibia, or shinbone.

"The cutting surface of her right tibia was not smooth and marked malunion [a badly-healed fracture] was observed," Li said. "A surgical amputation could do much better at that time."

The Zhouyuan amputation is the earliest evidence of yue yet found. But researchers have reported seeing mutilated skeletons with similar injuries in ancient graves, and it’s possible that older examples will be identified, Li said: "The point is not finding, but identifying."

The study was published earlier this month in the journal Acta Anthropologica Sinica.

Originally published on Live Science.

A Rothschild is writing the book about Jewish space lasers conspiracy theory


By ASAF SHALEV/JTA -
The Jerusalem Post
© (photo credit: COURTESY MIKE ROTHSCHILD)


To a conspiracy theorist, last week seemed to offer evidence that the Rothschild family is plotting to undermine Elon Musk.

It started when the Tesla tycoon bashed the Democratic Party and said in a tweet that he would switch to voting Republican. A user named David Rothschild responded, mocking Musk and portraying him as an entitled whiner because Musk comes from a rich white family that benefitted from apartheid in South Africa.

Then, Rothschild himself became the target of ridicule as other users, predictably, pounced on his last name to assert that the scion of the Jewish banking family had no standing to criticize someone over issues of social privilege. “A Rothschild complaining about other people’s privileges. The joke tells itself,” one user wrote.

As if on cue, another Rothschild soon chimed in to defend the Musk mocker. “David M. Rothschild is an NYC-based economist,” tweeted a user named Mike Rothschild. “He is not related to the banking family. People might be thinking of David M. de Rothschild, an adventurer and environmentalist, 5x great-grandson of Mayer Amschel. Not all Jews are related.”

That the last names are purely coincidental is exactly the kind of lie a Rothschild would try to peddle — that is, if you’re a conspiracy theorist.


Trump supporters display QAnon posters at a 2018 rally in Florida. Recently, Latinos in the state have been inundated with anti-Semitic messages, many relating to the false QAnon conspiracy theory. 

(credit: THOMAS O'NEILL/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES)

In reality, neither user has anything to do with the famous family. David is an economist. Mike, meanwhile, is a professional buster of conspiracy theories.

Last year, Mike released a book called The Storm is Upon Us an account of the QAnon movement. The irony of his last name is not lost on him, of course. Rothschild’s next book, which is still early in the writing process, will focus on the illustrious banking family that has been the target of antisemites for 200 years. The title is Jewish Space Lasers.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency caught up with Mike Rothschild for an interview about his book and what it’s like to do his work with such a last name.

 
JTA: So, for the record, how many banks do you own, and which parts of the global economy do you personally control?

Rothschild: [Laughs] I don’t talk about that. Those are the things you’re not supposed to know about.

It’s so funny because so much of the paranoia and the conspiracy theories about the Rothschilds stems from stuff that doesn’t exist or that people misunderstand. For example, central banks don’t have owners, they’re the monetary arm of a country. There are lots of private banks, but that’s not what they’re talking about. It’s just wild the stuff people have talked themselves into believing.

What is the craziest conspiracy theory you’ve encountered about yourself?

Oh, god, there are tons of them. That typical stuff like that I am part of this family that has $500 trillion and owns everything. I’ve also had people who think that I helped start QAnon so that I can make money off it.

There are people who think I work for Russian intelligence or that I work for Mike Flynn and my whole job is to get people involved in Q and spread disinformation about who started it so that people don’t find out who really started it.

People just make things up about you and there’s nothing you can really do about it. You can’t engage with it because then you’re validating what these people think and you’re giving them attention that they don’t deserve. And you can’t prove it’s not true. They just can’t prove it is true. And unfortunately, the way proof works is kind of misunderstood by a lot of people. I don’t have to prove this stuff isn’t true. They have to prove it is. They just don’t do it.

How did you get into researching and reporting on conspiracy theories and fringe movements?

I’ve always been interested in conspiracy theories as stories. When I was in college, I spent a lot of time listening to Coast to Coast AM, the Art Bell radio show where he would talk about UFOs, crop circles, the face on Mars — all this stuff that people that I knew didn’t talk about. These were not topics for discussion in regular society. This was the domain of crazy people.

And I thought, well, I am not a crazy person. I just enjoy these stories. I enjoy sort of picking apart why people believe this stuff. And after a while, I started to write for the blog of a critical thinking podcast that I’m a big fan of called Skeptoid. And I did that for a year, or a year and a half, just writing once a week, and I really enjoyed it. And I found that I was good at it. That started to lead to jobs in journalism.

This wasn’t something that people were writing about even up until Trump. This was the domain of weirdos. Legitimate journalists didn’t talk about conspiracy theories or hoaxes. You didn’t give it oxygen. You ignored it because then it would go away. Well, now we know that ignoring these things does not make them go away. It just makes them worse because there’s no one confronting it. There’s no one calling it out.

So what drew my attention to doing it as a profession was realizing that this stuff is everywhere and people are not talking about it in the way that they should be.

A lot of people have conspiratorial beliefs and they lead normal lives. So when does belief in conspiracy theories cross the line and become a problem? People have all kinds of weird beliefs — why does it matter?

For most people, conspiratorial beliefs are just a fun thing to talk about with your friends, things that you kick around. Everybody believes something unevidenced and weird that other people don’t really want to hear about. It could be as simple as arguing with your friends that a soccer game was fixed or that Melania Trump got replaced by another Melania Trump. It doesn’t take over your life. It doesn’t drive you to cut yourself off from the world or commit an act of violence. For the vast majority of people, it’s fine. I tell people, “You don’t need to try to get somebody out of beliefs like that. They’re not hurting anyone.”

It’s just that some people do hurt people — some people do take it too far, and then you do have acts of violence. You do have people cutting themselves off from their families, people harming themselves by not getting vaccinated or not taking COVID precautions, and at the very worst of it, you have something like Jan. 6, which is the very, very edge of conspiratorial violence, and most people are not going to do that. And even most people who were there didn’t commit an act of violence. That’s when I think you do need to start stepping in and paying attention to it.

The title of your next book, “Jewish Space Lasers,” refers to a conspiracy theory about the Rothschilds causing the California 2018 wildfires using satellites. It became well known because it surfaced when Marjorie Taylor Greene had promoted the theory a few years before becoming a congresswoman. So how did your book come about?

I wanted to write about the Rothschilds for a long time, and I had written about it before. I’ve written about the Rothschild family, the Facebook memes and some of these really bizarre ideas like that Hitler was secretly the son of a Rothschild baron who impregnated a maid in Austria. Then the Marjorie Taylor Greene thing that happened. She put that Facebook post in 2018 during the wildfires. And I remember I wrote quite a bit about the directed energy weapon conspiracy theory because a lot of people were talking about it.

The head of Pacific, Gas & Electric was on the board of a Rothschild company — the Rothschild companies, by the way, don’t even have involvement from the Rothschilds. A lot of it’s just a name at this point. It’s just really wild the way this name is like a magnet for cranks and it has been for the last 200 years. The book is about trying to figure out why it became this wealthy Jewish family and not another wealthy Jewish family. Or why not the Rockefellers, the Morgans, the Waltons? There are other American dynasties and the Rothschilds are not even an American dynasty. They didn’t even do particularly well in America. They really kind of failed while trying to break into New York finance in the 1800s. Why is it such a magnet for this kind of crank stuff?
Are you talking to the family?

I tried to when I started working on the book. I reached out to a bunch of different members of the family, and they don’t discuss this. They don’t talk about it. They don’t write about it. There’s nothing even in their archives about it. I talked to someone at the Rothschild family archives in London. She told me that they don’t want to put themselves in the position of proving a negative. If they come out and say, “Well, we don’t have $500 trillion. We didn’t fund both sides of every war,” they can’t prove that they didn’t. Again, the people who make these accusations have to prove that they did. But that’s not how this stuff works in popular culture. So rather than having to prove it’s not true, they just don’t discuss it.

It’s not the first book that touches on the topic of the Rothschilds. So what new ground do you hope to break?

I’m trying to run down this specific aspect of the family’s legacy, or why these conspiracy theories have stuck for so long. There are quite a number of books on the Rothschilds. There were a lot of books written about them in the ’60s and ’70s, but they’re very dishy; they’re all quite a bit about wealth and opulence.

Then there was Niall Ferguson’s two-volume book “The House of Rothschild,” which I’m using quite a bit, but that’s very focused on banking. And the minutiae of loans. Also, it ends in 1999, which of courses leaves out the internet.

So there’s never really been a book about why this particular family is such a magnet for conspiracy theories. And, and why they’re always kind of the family that you turn to when you need a pop culture reference about the Jews and bringing about wealthy Jews.

Nowadays it’s not just the Rothschilds. We have another Jew that antisemites like to talk about: George Soros. Which one is the bigger kind of target of antisemitic conspiracy theories at this point?

It’s probably Soros just because he’s more visible. Soros does interviews and he has his name on a lot of things. His Open Society Foundations makes a lot of very public gifts to philanthropic organizations. The Rothschilds are much quieter. But a lot of the tropes are recycled, so you get tropes about the Rothschilds that are just reused for Soros.

 
Did you see the news that Israel has developed a new military system to shoot down missiles using laser beams? It sounds a lot like a Jewish space laser.

Oh is that true? [Laughs] I’ll have to add that to the book, life imitating conspiracy theory, as happens very often.

OUCH!
LILLEY: Poilievre shills conspiracy theories to sell memberships
Brian Lilley 
Toronto Sun

Candidate Pierre Poilievre makes a point at the Conservative Party of Canada English leadership debate in Edmonton Wednesday, May 11, 2022.

Stephen Harper wouldn’t be considered good enough for a cabinet position in a government led by Pierre Poilievre.

In his latest pitch for votes from the fringe, the Conservative leadership candidate said that he won’t accept ministers attending the annual summit of the World Economic Forum.

Of course, Poilievre’s campaign co-chair, John Baird should be fired since he attended and spoke for Canada at the WEF in 2014.

The World Economic Forum, founded 51 years ago by German academic Klaus Schwab, has held an annual summit drawing government and business leaders from around the world. Lately, though, it has become the focus of legitimate concerns over the influence it wields and the subject of several conspiracy theories.

Schwab’s call to have a “ Great Reset ” in the economy as part of the recovery from COVID-19 has been the focus for those who see the WEF as an organization with too much power. There are regular claims that the WEF controls governments, including Justin Trudeau’s cabinet, and fixes elections.

None of this is true, but it’s shared widely online, and it’s the people who buy into these conspiracy theories that Poilievre is trying to attract in his bid to win the leadership of the Conservative Party. He posted a video clip of one of his recent speeches where he said a Poilievre government wouldn’t allow participation at the annual summit.

“And that is why I have made it clear that my ministers in my government will be banned from participating in the World Economic Forum,” Poilievre said to great applause from the crowd.

“If you want to go to Davos, to that conference, make it a one-way ticket. But you can’t be part of our government and working for a policy agenda that is against the interests of our people.”


This video, and Poilievre’s new “policy” on the World Economic Forum, is nothing but garbage aimed at sucking in people who believe half-truths or outright lies.

When Stephen Harper or his ministers went to Davos, they weren’t working for a policy agenda that was against the people of Canada, they were selling Canada.

This is a conference attracting top business leaders, the kind of people who make investment decisions on where to locate plants and offices. Being there helps bring in new companies, new investment and new jobs to Canada.

“Canada’s rock-solid economic fundamentals make our country a top destination for global investors. At the WEF, we showed this to the world once again,” then-foreign affairs minister John Baird said after representing Canada at the WEF in 2014.

Was Baird working against the interests of Canada when he went?

The people Poilievre is pitching to with this message truly believe this shadowy organization has actual power in Canada and those who have attended have been indoctrinated by Schwab. I don’t think Stephen Harper was when he spoke to the forum about the need to control government debt, rein in spending and make decisions for future economic growth and prosperity.

In his 2012 address , Harper took his vision for where western democratic countries should be heading directly to those business and government leaders. Harper spoke of the investment climate his government was creating, the need to be able to export our energy to Asia and beyond, the need to reform social programs so that they were on a solid footing instead of following Europe’s path to fiscal instability.

Under a Poilievre government, Canada wouldn’t be selling itself on one of the most important stages in the world.

Poilievre is a smart man; he knows that what he’s saying on this file is nothing but gibberish. He doesn’t need to flirt with and encourage the acceptance of conspiracy theories to win the leadership, but that’s what he’s doing.

The Conservatives need a serious leader to challenge Trudeau and the Liberals. If Poilievre wants to be leader, he should smarten up and leave this garbage for the internet trolls.

Conservative Party member resigns membership over racist email

Richard Raycraft - 

A Conservative Party member who sent a racist email to the Patrick Brown leadership campaign has resigned his membership, ending the party's investigation into the matter.


© Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press

A man is silhouetted walking past a Conservative Party logo before the opening of the Party's national convention in Halifax on Thursday, Aug. 23, 2018. The party has ended an investigation into a racist email because the sender resigned their party membership.

The former party member expressed support for Nazism and Adolf Hitler and made racist remarks about several ethnic groups in the email sent last week to the Brown campaign, after the campaign denounced the racist "white replacement" conspiracy theory in an email.

The party launched the investigation in response to a complaint the Brown campaign filed. It informed leadership campaigns Sunday night about the resignation, according to public affairs strategist Chisholm Pothier, who is working for the Brown campaign.

Michelle Rempel Garner, a Conservative MP and co-chair of Brown's campaign who first brought the email to public attention, welcomed the news on Twitter.

"Glad to see that person resign their membership as a result of the investigation. If there's one thing we all should agree on, it's that there's no home for racism in @CPC_HQ," she tweeted.

The email writer stated in the email that they support Pierre Poilievre, Brown's rival for the Conservative leadership.

Poilievre said in a statement after the email was made public that the member should lose their party membership, and that racism has no place in his campaign or the party.

Buffalo mass shooting exposes ‘blind spots’ over white terrorism: expert

Amanda Connolly - Yesterday 
Global News
© AP Photo/Joshua Bessex


The Buffalo supermarket mass shooting by an apparent white supremacist lays bare what one expert is calling the "blind spots" in how authorities treat white and far-right terrorism.

In an interview with The West Block's Mercedes Stephenson, Queen's University assistant professor Amarnath Amarasingam said researchers studying violent extremism, like him, are learning from the plethora of records the alleged shooter left behind on how he prepared for the deadly attack.

"I can guarantee you, if this was a young Muslim or a young person of colour walking around a grocery store, taking pictures and drawing out a map of what the inside of the grocery store looks like, it would have resulted in a lot more than a security guard kind of wagging his finger at him," Amarasingam said.

"I think some of our blind spots of what white terrorism looks like, what far-right terrorism looks like, it needs to be reassessed. And that's why I think the Buffalo attack is quite interesting or important for future counterterrorism."

Read more:

Canada must be ‘vigilant’ about race replacement conspiracy threat: minister

Amarasingam, who is one of the leading Canadian researchers on radicalization and violent extremism, described the records left behind by the attacker, now in police custody, as "quite unique."

They include not only a so-called manifesto outlining his professed reasons for attacking the supermarket and killing 13 people, the majority of them Black, but also roughly 700 pages worth of what Amarasingam described as a sort of "diary" of daily postings on the gaming platform Discord.

Those postings describe killing a cat, surveilling the Tops grocery store that the shooter allegedly later attacked, and his user account being flagged by Discord when he tried to upload the manifesto of the far-right extremist behind the deadly Christchurch, New Zealand, mosque shootings.

Read more:

What is white replacement theory? Police probe conspiracy’s role in Buffalo shooting

Police in the U.S. have described the supermarket attack as "racially motivated" and it is now being investigated as a federal hate crime. The Associated Press reported the alleged shooter had spent time on websites propagating the "great replacement" or "white replacement" conspiracy theory. That's the baseless conspiracy theory that governments in countries where white people have held political and demographic power are deliberately trying to displace white people by bringing in non-white immigrants.

Read more:

Buffalo mass shooting was act of domestic terrorism, attorney for victim’s family says

Long relegated to the fringe corners of the internet, the conspiracy is spreading online and gaining mainstream attention as far-right figures on cable and social media platforms spread it to their audiences.

Amarasingam said the theory's new prominence comes amid "a current of this kind of populist anxiety or demographic panic around what increased immigration means."

And Canada is not immune, he noted, adding the Quebec City mosque attack and the attack on a Muslim family in London, Ont., were influenced by similar rhetoric. One of the prominent figures in the Ottawa blockade earlier this year, Pat King, had also posted similarly-themed content.

"So this idea that kind of far-right presence doesn't exist in Canada, I think is a result of willful blindness or at least amnesia," he said.

Read more:

Canada’s spy service boosts attention to ‘ideological’ domestic extremism

Race replacement theory is part of the spectrum of far-right conspiracies raising growing concern among police and national security agencies, prompting them to focus on the threat posed by ideologically motivated violent extremism.

The term, often shortened to IMVE, refers to a broad swath of anti-immigrant, anti-government, antisemitic, and anti-women extremist ideologies with overlapping and deep roots in white supremacy.

IMVE is a major concern for Canadian national security authorities.

Global News reported in March that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service now spends as much time monitoring domestic ideological extremism as it does the threat posed by religious terrorist groups like Daesh and al-Qaeda.

A United Airlines worker picked a fight with a CFL player and it did not go well

Arun Srinivasan

YAHOO SPORTS

MAY 23,2022

A wild video has emerged of Calgary Stampeders receiver and ex-NFLer Brendan Langley brawling it out with a United Airlines employee. (Photo via Twitter/DMNTnasa)

(Warning: Article contains video with violent subject matter)

Calgary Stampeders wide receiver Brendan Langley was arrested and charged with simple assault Thursday after getting into a fight with a United Airlines employee.

The employee slapped Langley in the face, prompting Langley to look around and ensure that everyone saw that he wasn’t the instigator, before landing several punches that sent the employee over the airline counter. The employee then got up, with the right side of his face bloodied, and tried to engage Langley to fight him once again.

It's certainly a good thing for the airline worker that Langley decided not to re-engage. This was a beat down.

The airline employee was not arrested for his role in the scrap.

"He works at the airport and he assaulted me," Langley said.

The conflict reportedly started when Langley tried to transport his luggage by using a wheelchair, instead of the designated luggage carts.

Langley was a third-round pick of the Denver Broncos in 2017 but played sparingly, primarily on special teams. During his tenure with the Broncos, Langley was involved in the second of two infamous brawls between Aqib Talib and Michael Crabtree in a November 2017 game between the Broncos and then-Oakland Raiders.

The 27-year-old, who was initially drafted as a cornerback, converted to wide receiver and signed with the Stampeders in February.

Passenger’s punch knocks United Airlines worker through the counter, NJ video shows

Screengrab via @tigermelons on Twitter


Julia Marnin
Mon, May 23, 2022

In this article:

Brendan Langley
|WR|#13

A passenger’s powerful punch knocked a United Airlines worker through the ticket counter and bloodied his face at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey during a dispute, video shows.

“You want some more? He wants more,” the passenger is heard shouting after the worker gets up during the nearly minute-long clip shared to Twitter capturing the pair fighting. It is unclear what the brawl was about.

The ticketed passenger, identified as Brendan Langley, 27, of Georgia, was arrested after the May 19 incident resulted in the United Airlines customer service representative getting sent to the hospital, a Port Authority media representative confirmed to McClatchy News in a statement. Port Authority oversees transportation in New Jersey and New York.

Beforehand, a verbal argument occurred, and “during the dispute, a scuffle ensued, and the ticketed male passenger punched the United rep. in the face causing a laceration above his left eye,” the statement said.

Langley, who is a professional football player and wide receiver for the Canadian Football League’s Calgary Stampeders, was charged with simple assault, according to the Port Authority spokesperson.

The video clip begins with the fight already in motion with both men appearing to exchange slaps in the face. Then, Langley is seen repeatedly punching the worker’s face as the employee puts his fists up in apparent defense.

Ultimately, one of Langley’s punches sends the worker flying over the counter, causing his head to bleed, and he is seen hitting the ground, the video shows. After the worker gets back up, the clip ends with Langley appearing to walk away.

“United Airlines does not tolerate violence of any kind at our airports or on board our planes and we are working with local authorities in their investigation of this matter,” an airline spokesperson said in a statement provided to McClatchy News.

The employee has since been fired, the spokesperson said.

The Newark airport is roughly 13 miles west of New York City