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Hungary purchases $1 billion U.S.-made defense missile system

USING THIS LOGIC THE USA WOULD HAVE SOLD HITLER WEAPONS


U.S. Ambassador to Hungary Devid Cornstein, L, and Hungarian Defense Minister Tibor Benko, R, signed a declaration of intent on Wednesday in Budapest for purchase by Hungary of about $1 billion in U.S.-made, air-to-air defense missiles. Photo by EPA-EFE/MTI

Aug. 12 (UPI) -- Hungary agreed to buy missile systems valued at $1 billion from the United States, the U.S. Embassy in Budapest announced Wednesday.

U.S. Ambassador David Cornstein and Hungarian Defense Minister Tibor Benko signed declarations of intent on Wednesday. The Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles [AMRAAM], produced by Raytheon, are in use by many NATO countries.

"This purchase will provide a proven, best-in-the-world, air defense capability that will contribute to the security of Hungary and NATO," the embassy said in a statement.

At the signing ceremony, Benko said the missile system will be used as a deterrent, as well as an increase in security, with the aim of ensuring the safety of Hungarians. Cornstein added that the deal, through the U.S. State Department's Foreign Military Sales Agency, will be the biggest procurement in the history of Hungary-U.S. defense cooperation.

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The AMRAAM system is a beyond-visual-range, air-to-air missile, with over 14,000 missiles produced for the U.S. Army and Navy, as well as 33 international customers.

The purchase comes as Hungary works, and spends, to modernize its military, currently comprised largely of outmoded Soviet-era equipment.

A NATO member since 1997, Hungary announced the purchase of land force equipment from Germany in July, a reported $2 billion acquisition of tanks, howitzers and other battlefield support equipment.

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"We commend the Hungarian government's strong commitment to continue modernizing Hungary's military through the acquisition of the world's most advanced mid-range air defense system, which will enhance Hungary's ability to provide collective and self-defense," the U.S. Embassy statement said. "We look forward to working with our NATO ally Hungary on this project and continuing to enhance our long-term strategic partnership."

Navajo Nation president seeks clemency for death row inmate

Aug. 12 (UPI) -- Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez has appealed to President Donald Trump to grant clemency to a death row prisoner scheduled to be executed later this month.

Lezmond Mitchell, 37, is set to die by lethal injection Aug. 26 at the U.S. Penitentiary, Terre Haute, Ind. He was sentenced to death for the 2001 murder of two Navajo people -- a woman and her granddaughter -- on reservation land.

Nez met with a U.S. pardon attorney Tuesday to advocate for a commutation for Mitchell. The Navajo Nation is against the death penalty and argues the U.S. government shouldn't be able to execute Mitchell.

"The Navajo Nation is respectfully requesting a commutation of the death sentence and the imposition of a life sentence for Mr. Mitchell," Nez and Navajo Vice President Myron Lizer said in a letter to Trump on July 31.

"This request honors our religious and traditional beliefs, the Navajo Nation's long-standing position on the death penalty for Native Americans, and our respect for the decision of the victim's family ... We need to address this issue to move forward in our trust of our federal partners and to continue to work on the importance of protecting our people."

Under the Federal Death Penalty Act, the U.S. government can't seek the death penalty for murder committed on tribal land unless said tribe allows it. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Arizona originally didn't seek the death penalty for Mitchell, but received pressure from then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to do so.

Defense attorneys Jonathan Aminoff and Celeste Bacchi said that since the Navajo Nation was against the death penalty in Mitchell's case, the federal government used a "loophole" to charge him with a lesser crime -- carjacking resulting in death. This allowed the government to seek the death penalty without tribal approval.

The defense team also accused the U.S. government of misconduct for allegedly jailing and questioning Mitchell for 25 days without providing him a lawyer and preventing Navajos from serving on his jury.

Mitchell and co-defendant Johnny Orsinger were convicted in 2003 for the deaths of Alyce Slim, 63, and her granddaughter Tiffany Lee, 9.

The two men stabbed Slim dozens of times before stealing her vehicle and driving it to another location where they stabbed and beat the girl to death and dismembered their bodies to prevent identification. Mitchell and Orsinger used the vehicle to commit a robbery and when they were caught by police, Mitchell led them to the buried bodies.

Orsinger, who was a juvenile at the time, was sentenced to life in prison.

Attorney General William Barr resumed federal executions this month after a 17-year hiatus. The Bureau of Prisons executed three men -- Daniel Lewis Lee, Wesley Ira Purkey and Dustin Lee Honken -- within a span of a week. The men sued over the government's decision to use a single-drug lethal injection protocol, saying it violated the law which requires federal executions to use the same method as the individual states where the murders were committed.

If his execution proceeds, Mitchell will be the fourth federal execution this year and the first Native American to be executed in modern U.S. history, his lawyers said.

82% of early online COVID-19 posts were rumors, conspiracy theories

Roughly 82% of coronvirus-related information online was rumors or misinformation, though some of it may proved to be true, researchers say. Photo by niekverlaan/Pixabay

Aug. 10 (UPI) -- Nearly 82% of COVID-19 information posted on news sites, global health organizations and social media platforms between late December and early April were rumors or conspiracy theories, a study published Monday by the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene found.

Misinformation and efforts to stigmatize victims of the new coronavirus, which the researchers described as an "infodemic," have collectively been linked with hundreds of deaths globally, the analysis said.

"The public should rely [on] information that has been provided by the ministry of health of their countries and international health agencies," study co-author M. Saiful Islam told UPI.

In addition, "social media users should not share an information without verifying the source," said Islam, a sociologist with the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research in Bangladesh.

The World Health Organization coined the term "infodemics" to refer to what it calls "an overabundance of information -- some accurate and some not -- that makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources."

For the study, researchers reviewed COVID-19 information published or posted on fact-checking websites; social media, including Facebook and Twitter; and websites for television networks and newspapers. They also reviewed the sites for the WHO and U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Researchers then categorized information as rumors, stigma or conspiracy theories. They defined rumors "as unverified information" that could be deemed "true, fabricated or entirely false after verification."

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They described conspiracy theories as "explanatory beliefs about an individual or group of people working in secret to achieve malicious goals."

Stigma is a "socially constructed process through which a person ... can experience discrimination and devaluation," they said.

From late December 2019 through early April, the researchers identified 2,311 reports related to COVID-19, published in 25 languages, from 87 countries.

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Of 2,276 reports for which the researchers obtained text ratings, 82 percent -- or 1,856 -- "were false."

Of these, 2,049, or 89%, of the reports were classified as rumors -- that might have been confirmed later to be true -- while 182, or 7.8%, were conspiracy theories, and 82, or 3.5%, were efforts to stigmatize victims of the virus, researchers said.

One such rumor -- that consuming methanol, or highly concentrated alcohol, could disinfect the body and kill the new coronavirus -- spread quickly via social media. It since has been linked with more than 800 deaths and nearly 6,000 hospitalizations across several countries, researchers said.

Similarly, in March, reports in India suggested that people there were afraid to be tested for COVID-19 over concerns that they will be ostracized by their local communities, the researchers said.

This reluctance likely stems at least in part from efforts to stigmatize -- or, in some cases, blame -- victims of the virus for its spread, they said.

Efforts to stigmatize healthcare workers treating patients with COVID-19 and people of "Asian ethnicity" as threats to community health have been linked with dozens of violent attacks worldwide, according to the researchers.

Generally, COVID-19 misinformation follows a similar pattern to that seen in other outbreaks, including HIV and Ebola, suggesting that "during public health crises, people often concentrate more on rumor and hoaxes than on science," the researchers observed.

They called on world governments and international agencies to monitor and debunk false claims and "engage with social media companies to spread correct information."

"Governments should run media surveillance to identify misinformation in real-time and correct that information with scientific evidence," Islam said.

"Since social media is the platform through which misinformation spreads so quickly, policymakers should also use this platform to spread correct information."

Bias more likely in medical journals that accept reprint fees
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HealthDay News

There is a longstanding fear in the scientific community that pharmaceutical companies could sway the research published in medical journals by paying them for advertising, but a new study reveals that advertising might not be the problem.

"All the available literature suggests that ad revenue should be the real concern, but that's not what we found," said study author S. Scott Graham. He is an assistant professor of rhetoric at the University of Texas at Austin.

Instead, Graham and his fellow investigators observed that journals that accept reprint fees -- let companies pay them to republish their articles -- were almost three times more likely to contain articles written by authors who receive funding from the pharmaceutical industry.

Many prior studies have established that researchers who have financial conflicts of interest are more prone to writing papers that are favorable to pharmaceutical products, so a journal that publishes the work of authors with conflicts is likely to include more biased research.

Graham's team reviewed well-over 100,000 articles published in 159 medical journals to come to this conclusion.

The investigators built a machine-learning system to sift through every article to find and track disclosures stating that an author had a conflict. They then identified which journals accepted advertising revenue, fulfilled reprint contracts or were owned by a large multinational publishing firm, and analyzed whether any of these factors were associated with publishing more work from authors with industry conflicts.

Perhaps surprisingly, the researchers found that whether or not a journal accepted money for advertising did not affect the likelihood that industry-supported authors wrote their articles. They also found no association for journals owned by big publishing companies.
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But journals that accept reprint contracts had a higher number of conflicts per article than journals that take money for advertising, Graham's team reported.

The results were published online recently in the journal PLOS ONE.

"If we're going to make sure that medical journals are publishing the best science available, we need to focus on the commercial relationships that actually have an effect," Graham said in a university news release. "The issue with reprints also suggests that academics may need to take open access publishing even more seriously."

More information

There's more about conflicts of interest in medical research at the American Medical Association.

Copyright 2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Three-quarters of adults with COVID-19 have heart damage after recovery

THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN WITH THE FLU OR A COLD
Even fairly young, healthy adults can experience heart damage from COVID-19, which can be fatal in older people, research suggests. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

July 27 (UPI) -- Seventy-eight percent of people diagnosed with COVID-19 showed evidence of heart damage caused by the disease weeks after they have recovered, according to a study published Monday by JAMA Cardiology.

Of 100 participants in the study, 78 had evidence of heart damage on magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, according to the researchers.


None of the 100 patients included in the analysis had experienced heart symptoms related to the new coronavirus and "were mostly healthy ... prior to their illness," the researchers said.

"The patients and ourselves were both surprised by the intensity and prevalence of these findings, and that they were still very pronounced even though the original illness had been by then already a few weeks away," study co-author Dr. Valentina Puntmann told UPI.

"We found evidence of ongoing inflammation within the heart muscle, as well as of the heart's lining in a considerable majority of patients," said Puntmann, a consultant physician, cardiologist and clinical pharmacologist at University Hospital Frankfurt in Germany.

The researchers said the MRI findings were consistent with two potentially serious heart conditions: myocarditis and pericarditis, according to the researchers.

Myocarditis is inflammation of the heart muscle, and it can reduce the heart's ability to pump, potentially causing irregular heartbeats, Puntmann said

Pericarditis causes inflammation of the protective tissues surrounding the heart and can cause pain, she said.

The 100 study participants, 45 to 53 years old, had recovered from COVID-19. Participants' underwent MRI evaluation two to three months after being diagnosed with the virus, researchers said.

Sixty percent of the participants had evidence of ongoing heart inflammation on their MRIs that was independent of preexisting conditions or the course of their COVID-19 infection, according to the researchers.

Two-thirds of the participants recovered from COVID-19 at home, and 18% never had symptoms of the virus, the researchers said. Roughly half had mild to moderate symptoms of the coronavirus, they said.

"While we do not yet have the direct evidence for [long-term] consequences yet, such as the development of heart failure, which can be directly attributed to COVID-19, it is quite possible that in a few years this burden will be enormous based on what we know from other viral conditions," Puntmann said.

Although the participants in Puntmann's study recovered from the virus, a separate analysis, also published Monday by JAMA Cardiology found evidence of infection in the hearts of 16 of 39 -- or 41% -- patients who died from the disease.

The findings were made after autopsies of the patients, who were between 78 and 89 years old.

"[COVID-19] can infect the heart and, in severe cases, the virus seems to replicate within it," study co-author Dirk Westermann, a cardiologist at University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, also in Germany, told UPI.

"We need long-term follow-up studies of COVID-19 survivors to see whether [the virus] impacts cardiac function over the long-term," he said.

Narcissists are blind to their own mistakes, study says
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_and_Narcissus_(Waterhouse_painting)

Narcissists believe they are better and more deserving than others, researchers say, which contributes to not acknowledging mistakes. 

Narcissists don't learn from their mistakes because they don't acknowledge them, a new study shows.

When faced with a poor outcome due to their decisions, most people ask, "What should I have done differently to avoid this outcome?"

But a narcissist says, "No one could have seen this coming," according to Oregon State University (OSU)-Cascades researchers.

Narcissists also believe they are better and more deserving than others, study author Satoris Howes, a researcher at the OSU College of Business, said in a university news release.

In the study, the investigators conducted a series of experiments with different groups of people, including students, employees and managers with significant experience in hiring.

The study authors said that when narcissists predicted an outcome correctly, they felt it was more foreseeable than non-narcissists did, but when they predicted incorrectly, narcissists felt the outcome was less foreseeable versus non-narcissists.

In both situations, narcissists didn't feel the need to do something differently or to engage in self-analysis that might benefit them in future decisions, according to the report.

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"They're falling prey to the hindsight bias, and they're not learning from it when they make mistakes. And when they get things right, they're still not learning," Howes explained.

The study was published online recently in the Journal of Management.

Everyone tends to engage in some level of self-protective thinking, where you attribute success to your own efforts but blame your failures on outside forces, and often blame other people's failure on their own deficiencies, according to Howes.

"But narcissists do this way more because they think they're better than others," she said. "They don't take advice from other people they don't trust others' opinions. You can flat-out ask, 'What should you have done differently?' And it might be, 'Nothing, it turned out it was good.'"

Narcissists are often promoted because they show great self-confidence, take credit for the successes of others and deflect blame from themselves when something goes wrong, Howes said.

However, this can be damaging to an organization over time because of low morale among employees who work for the narcissist and because of the narcissist's continuing bad decisions, she noted.

RELATED Most narcissists admit they're self-absorbed


The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more on narcissism.

Copyright 2020 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Report: North Korea laborers still deployed overseas

TEMPORARY FOREIGN WORKERS 

North Korean guest workers remain in countries like China in violation of international sanctions, according to a copy of an interim U.N. report obtained by a Japanese newspaper. File Photo by Stephen Shaver/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 13 (UPI) -- North Korea's state-sanctioned guest workers continue to be deployed to overseas sites in violation of international sanctions, according to a Japanese press report.

Workers remain in countries like China, Syria, Vietnam and Russia, partly due to the global coronavirus pandemic, the Sankei Shimbun reported Thursday. North Korea closed its borders in late January. Other countries have restricted movement across borders.

The report of violations were mentioned in an interim report by an independent panel of experts monitoring U.N. sanctions on Monday, according to the Sankei.

North Korean guest workers hold various occupations, including in food services, medicine, and construction

U.N. member states like Russia may be retaining the services of North Korean laborers for reasons other than COVID-19. They represent a cheap and efficient workforce, experts tell the Sankei.

All U.N. member states were required to repatriate North Korean workers at the end of 2019. They were also required to submit a status report at the end of March, but less than 20% of member states, 40 countries in total, have submitted reports.

In countries like China and Syria, some workforce contracts have been renewed. A firm in Syria reportedly requested the dispatch of at least 800 North Korean workers to construction sites in October 2019, according to the Sankei.

North Korean workers, a critical source of foreign currency, were estimated to bring in hundreds of millions of dollars for the Kim Jong Un regime in 2015 before sanctions.

North Korea's economy has been severely impacted by COVID-19, according to new research from Seoul's Korea Institute for National Unification, Yonhap reported Thursday.

The report estimates North Korea exported only $27 million of goods to China, its principal trading partner, in the first half of the year, while importing $383 million of goods, in the first half of 2020.

USDA: 60% of North Koreans are food insecure

Some 60 percent of North Koreans are food-insecure according to a new assessment by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Photo by KCNA/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 13 (UPI) -- Some 60% of North Koreans are suffering food insecurity, according to a new report released by the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Economic Research Service, with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic slightly exacerbating the already dire situation.

The report, "International Food Security Assessment, 2020-30," found that 15.3 million North Koreans, or 59.8% of the population, are food-insecure in 2020.

"An estimated 59.2% of North Korea's population is food-insecure in 2020, rising slightly to 59.8% when the effects of the COVID-19 macro shock are taken into account," the report said.

The total for 2020 represents an increase of 700,000 people from last year's assessment, which found 57.3% of North Korea's population, or 14.6 million people, to be food-insecure in 2019.

North Korea ranks alongside Afghanistan and Yemen as the most food-insecure countries in Asia, according to the report, which was released this week.

The USDA assessment defines a daily intake of 2,100 calories as necessary to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle and said that North Korea is running a per capita deficit of 430 calories.

In June, a United Nations human rights expert on North Korea expressed concern over "a further deepening of food shortages and widespread food insecurity" worsened by border closures with China that began in January due to COVID-19.

"[North Korea's] trade with China in March and April declined by over 90% following the border shutdown," said Tomas Ojea Quintana, special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, in a statement.

Quintana said that "an increasing number of families eat only twice a day, or eat only corn, and there are reports that some are starving."

The human rights expert also pointed to "the detrimental impact" of international sanctions placed on North Korea over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and urged the U.N. Security Council to reconsider the sanctions.

Recent flooding following weeks of heavy downpours has also raised concerns over food supplies in North Korea, as miles of crops were reported submerged.

The U.N.'s World Food Programme said in a report last year that 10.1 million North Koreans were in need of humanitarian assistance and found that only 7% of households in the country had an acceptable diet with a frequent intake of high-protein foods and fruits.

North Korea faces chronic food shortages and suffered a devastating famine in the 1990s that some estimates claim resulted in the deaths of more than 3 million people.

The new USDA assessment projects that North Korea's food-insecure population would decline to 44.9% in 2030, due to factors such as falling grain prices and slowing population growth. The caloric gap would also diminish from 430 in 2020 to 368 to 2030, the report said.

Overall, the number of food-insecure people across the 76 low-and middle-income countries covered in the report was estimated at 844.3 million, an increase of 83.5 million, or 11%, due to COVID-19 income shock.

Lebanon declares emergency after protests, violence in wake of blasts

Debris is seen at the port of Beirut on Wednesday, more than a week after two explosions and fire heavily damaged a section of the downtown area of Beirut, Lebanon. Photo by Mustafa Jamaleddine/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 13 (UPI) -- The Lebanese Parliament declared a state of emergency Thursday, more than a week after two explosions rocked the port of Beirut and killed more than 200 people.

The emergency is a response to a large outpouring of opposition in Beirut for several days, which have demanded accountability for the Aug. 4 disaster and factored into the resignation of several top government officials, including Prime Minister Hassan Diab.

Under the emergency declaration, the Lebanese army has power to prosecute activists in military courts for "crimes related to breach of security." The law can also bar threatening gatherings, close assembly sites, establish curfews, censor media, enter homes and deport suspects.

Parliament speaker Nabih Berri said the army has not suppressed television channels or taken other steps some had feared with the emergency declaration.

Critics have said the state of emergency isn't needed and some suspect it's a ruse for the government to increase its power.

Eight members of parliament have resigned since the explosions and elections to replace them are expected within months.

Thousands arrested in Belarus amid outcry over election

Supporters attend a campaign rally for Belarusian opposition presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya in Minsk, Belarus, on July 30. Photo by Tatyana Zenkovich/EPA-EFE

Aug. 12 (UPI) -- Belarus authorities have arrested more than 6,000 demonstrators over the past three days amid substantial opposition to election results that declared President Alexander Lukashenko the winner of another term.

Lukashenko's opponents say police have used violence to quell the protests since election officials said the president won re-election in a landslide Sunday.

Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, Lukashenko's chief opponent, fled to neighboring Lithuania for her own safety, Lithuanian Foreign Affairs Minister Linas Linkevicius confirmed Tuesday.

Belarus's interior ministry said about 3,000 arrests were made after rallies on Monday night, another 2,000 on Tuesday and 1,000 early Wednesday. Officials shut down Internet service this week but it appeared to improve on Wednesday.

Tikhanovskava had taken her husband's place as the leading opposition candidate after he was put in prison before the election. She rejected the preliminary results before fleeing Belarus.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy called on President Donald Trump to withdraw his nominee for ambassador to Belarus due to the unrest.

"Right now, this would be a huge mistake," Murphy tweeted. "It would look like an endorsement of Lukashenko's crackdown. The Senate should set aside this nomination."

Poll: Most in U.S. don't think women have achieved equality


Two women wearing beauty pageant sash and head crowns applaud while they listen to speakers at the United Nations Observance of International Women's Day 2020 at U.N. headquarters in New York City on March 6. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 10 (UPI) -- Women still have a ways to go to achieve equality with men in the workplace and in politics, a new Gallup survey said Monday.

According to the survey, just 31% of U.S. adults believe women have achieved equality in the workplace and 34% in politic

About a third said women can achieve workplace equality within 20 years and 28% said the same for politics.

Almost 80% of women said they have not achieved workplace equality and the figure was 58% among men. For politics, the split was 75%/57%.

The split is similar among political groups.

"While majorities of Republicans believe women have achieved equality in the workplace and politics, Republican women are less certain of these achievements than are Republican men: 56% of Republican women contrasted with 75% of Republican men say women have achieved equality with men in the workplace," Gallup wrote.

"Sixty-three percent of Republican women versus 82% of Republican men believe women have equality with men in politics. Meanwhile, more than nine in 10 Democratic women and men alike think women have not achieved equity in both the workplace and politics."

Gallup polled more than 3,400 U.S. adults for the survey, which has a margin of error of 3 points.
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