RIP

Johnny Nash, Singer Of "I Can See Clearly Now," Has Died

Nash's son said his father, 80, died of natural causes at home in Houston.

Posted on October 6, 2020

Michael Putland / Getty Images
American singer and songwriter Johnny Nash poses in a park in London, 1972.


Johnny Nash, the singer-songwriter who was best known for his hit “I Can See Clearly Now,” died Tuesday, his son told the Associated Press. He was 80.

Born in Houston, Nash made his debut in 1957 with the single "A Teenager Sings the Blues." But it wasn't until his early thirties that he reached widespread fame with his ubiquitous “I Can See Clearly Now,” which topped the charts in 1972, where it remained for four weeks.


Holly Robinson Peete@hollyrpeete
Rest In Peace, Johnny Nash. 🎼 🙏🏽💔01:37 AM - 07 Oct 2020
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I Can See Clearly Now by Johnny Nash - Songfacts

www.songfacts.com › facts › johnny-nash › i-can-see-clearly-now

This is not a song about suicide, as has been hypothesized. · This was the first reggae song to hit #1 on the Hot 100, where it stayed for four weeks late in 1972.

Nash was also known for hits like “You Got Soul" and “Hold Me Tight,” and is credited with helping launch the career of Bob Marley.

He was also an actor, having appeared in Take a Giant Step in 1959, and Key Witness in 1960.

His representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In his statement to the AP, Nash's son, Johnny Nash Jr., said his father died of natural causes at home in Houston.

Jason Wells is the deputy news director for BuzzFeed News and is based in Los Angeles.

Johnny Nash, Who Sang 'I Can See Clearly Now', Dies at 80 ...

www.nytimes.com › Arts › Music

2 days ago — Johnny Nash, a singer whose “I Can See Clearly Now” reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 1972, helping to bring reggae music to a ...

Johnny Nash, 'I Can See Clearly Now' singer, dies at 80 - CNN

www.cnn.com › 2020/10/06 › entertainment › johnny-nash-death

2 days ago — (CNN) Johnny Nash, best known for his 1972 hit "I Can See Clearly Now," died Tuesday morning, his son, John Nash, told CNN. He was 80 ...

Forever No. 1: Johnny Nash's 'I Can See Clearly Now' | Billboard

www.billboard.com › articles › business › chart-beat › johnny-nash-i-can-se...

1 day ago — Johnny Nash, Singer & Writer of 'I Can See Clearly Now,' Dies at 80. Johnny Nash, who died this Tuesday (Oct. 6) ...

'I Can See Clearly Now' singer Johnny Nash dies at 80 | CTV ...

www.ctvnews.ca › entertainment › i-can-see-clearly-now-singer-johnny-nash...

'I Can See Clearly Now' singer Johnny Nash dies at 80. Sarah Moon. CNN Digital. Contact. Published Wednesday, October 7, 2020 6:57AM EDT. Johnny Nash ...

'I Can See Clearly Now' Singer Johnny Nash Has Died : NPR

www.npr.org › 2020/10/07 › i-can-see-clearly-now-singer-johnny-nash-has-...

2 days ago — Johnny Nash, a singer who scored a No. 1 hit with "I Can See Clearly Now" in 1972, has died. He was 80 years old. His son, Johnny Nash Jr., ...

A Senator Wrote An Impassioned Letter To Her Colleagues About Her IVF Treatment And Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee

The letter is in response to reports that Judge Amy Coney Barrett publicly supported an organization that believes in vitro fertilization should be criminalized.

Posted on October 2, 2020

Alex Wong / Getty Images
Sen. Tammy Duckworth arrives at the Capitol with her newborn baby daughter Maile Pearl Bowlsbey for a vote on the Senate floor, April 19, 2018.

Following reports that Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, supported an anti-abortion group that opposes in vitro fertilization, Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois wrote an impassioned letter to her colleagues Friday, citing her own experience with IVF and the conception of her 2-year-old daughter, Maile.

“I write to each of you today, and especially to my Republican colleagues who cooed and cuddled Maile when she first visited the Capitol, in the hope that you will fully consider the very real impact your vote on this unprecedented nomination could have on those Americans hoping to start families of their own,” Duckworth wrote.

“I urge you to fully consider the message a vote in favor of a Supreme Court nominee who appears to believe that my daughters shouldn’t even exist sends not only to me as a mother and as your colleague, but to parents-to-be around this country struggling with infertility and whose dreams may only be achieved through IVF or other technologies.”

The letter, which was obtained by BuzzFeed News, is in reaction to a report from the Guardian revealing that in 2006, when Barrett was a law professor at Notre Dame, she publicly signed an advertisement in support of an anti-abortion organization that believes life begins at fertilization and that the IVF process amounts to abortion and should be criminalized.

The group — then called the St. Joseph County Right to Life but now named Right to Life Michiana — took out a two-page advertisement in the South Bend Tribune, a local paper for the Michiana region of Indiana. The ad reads, “We, the following citizens of Michiana, oppose abortion on demand and defend the right to life from fertilization to natural death. Please continue to pray to end abortion.”

Barrett signed this letter along with her husband Jesse, and hundreds of other supporters of the group, the Guardian reported. While the advertisement itself did not explicitly address IVF, the group is openly opposed to the procedure.


“We support the criminalization of the doctors who perform abortions. At this point we are not supportive of criminalizing the women,” Jackie Appleman, the group’s executive director, said in an interview with the Guardian. “We would be supportive of criminalizing the discarding of frozen embryos or selective reduction through the IVF process.”

Barrett has repeatedly indicated that she does not support abortion, both in the personal views she expressed while a law professor at Notre Dame, and in her rulings on the issue. When asked if Barrett signing on to the ad was reflective of her views and if she believes IVF should be criminalized, White House spokesperson Judd Deere provided BuzzFeed News with a quote from Barrett herself, from the day of her nomination:

“A judge must apply the law as written. Judges are not policymakers, and they must be resolute in setting aside any policy views they might hold,” Barrett said.

In 2018, Duckworth made history by becoming the first senator to give birth while in office, and she spurred on a change in Senate rules to allow senators to bring their children onto the Senate floor for a vote, which she, adorably, did. She has two daughters and has been very open about her conception through IVF.

“While my two beautiful little girls are unique, my story of struggling with fertility is not,” Duckworth wrote to colleagues Friday. “Assisted reproductive technology (ART), including IVF treatment, has enabled thousands of Americans to safely start families in red and blue states alike.”

“I fear that, if confirmed to the nation’s highest court, Judge Barrett would be unable to resist the temptation of overturning decades of judicial precedent in an effort to force every American family to adhere to her individual moral code,” Duckworth continued. “I fear that if a case involving ART were to be brought before the bench, families like mine would not be able to trust that her opinions would be based on facts, laws, and the Constitution rather than swayed by her personal beliefs.”

The opposition to, and especially the criminalization of, IVF is a controversial opinion, even by anti-abortion standards. When Alabama passed a near-total ban on abortion in 2019 (which has since been blocked in court), the legislators inserted an exception for IVF. Barrett’s views on abortion have quickly become a flashpoint for Democrats since her nomination was announced.

The second page of the ad Barrett signed explicitly addressed Roe, though the signatures were only on the first page. “It’s time to put an end to the barbaric legacy of Roe v. Wade and restore laws that protect the lives of unborn children,” the ad read.

Deere pointed BuzzFeed News toward several other quotes and rulings from Barrett in which she reiterated that a judge should rely on the law, not their personal beliefs, including one from a 1998 law review article about whether Catholic judges like herself should recuse themselves from cases involving the death penalty, which the Catholic church is opposed to.

In that article, Barrett wrote, “It is never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge’s personal convictions, whether they derive from faith or anywhere else, on the law,” Deere pointed out.

However, in the article’s conclusion, she also wrote, “Judges cannot — nor should they try to — align our legal system with the Church's moral teaching whenever the two diverge. They should, however, conform their own behavior to the Church's standard. Perhaps their good example will have some effect."

Read Duckworth's letter:
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Paul McLeod · Sept. 22, 2020

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Paul McLeod · Sept. 19, 2020

Ema O'Connor is a political reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.

QUACK QUACK

Trump's Doctor Said The President Now Has Antibodies, Leaving Out The Fact That He Was Just Given A High Dose Of Antibodies

"Why would you test for antibodies when you’ve given someone such a high dose of antibodies?" one expert told BuzzFeed News.


Posted on October 7, 2020

Evan Vucci / AP
Sean Conley, physician to President Donald Trump, talks with reporters at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Monday.

President Donald Trump's physician, Sean Conley, issued the latest notice about his COVID-19 patient's progress on Wednesday with a positive update: The president's lab results from Monday indicated that he had "detectable levels" of antibodies in his blood.

"The president this morning says, 'I feel great!'" Conley's statement said.

But doctors and scientists have since pointed out that the president having detectable antibodies could be meaningless, since he was administered a very high dose of an experimental antibody treatment on Friday.

"It’s meaningless, and it’s deceptive to present it like it isn't," Eric Topol, a cardiologist and clinical trial expert at the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told BuzzFeed News. "Why would you test for antibodies when you’ve given someone such a high dose of antibodies? That wouldn’t have been a good test to do. I don’t know how much it cost them, but they should get their money back."

"My response after I read that is I am sure he does have detectable antibodies — because he was just given a massive infusion of antibodies by his own doctor. So I would be shocked if he didn’t," said Megan Ranney, associate professor of emergency medicine and public health at Brown University.

On Friday, Conley reported that Trump received 8 grams of a two-antibody cocktail made by the biotechnology company Regeneron. The cocktail, which remains an experimental treatment, is comprised of a type of antibody called immunoglobulin G (or IgG) typically produced in the later course of an infection. The president was also given two other drugs, the antiviral drug remdesivir on Friday, and the steroid dexamethasone on Saturday, according to doctors.

The Regeneron synthetic antibodies are "the same IgG antibodies that patients make on their own," Topol said. "They’ve basically been cloned. But these are the powerful ones — not the junk or ornamental ones. These are the most potent neutralizing antibodies."

Patients typically start producing IgG antibodies from 7 to 10 days after infection, while studies have suggested that in rarer cases, people can develop IgG antibodies as early as 2 to 4 days after symptoms first appear.


It is possible that the White House administered a type of antibody test that could distinguish between the antibodies produced by Trump's immune system and the ones administered via Regeneron's experimental antibody cocktail, said Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at Columbia University. The White House did not disclose what type of test it used.

But on Wednesday afternoon, Regeneron released a statement saying that the antibodies detected were most likely from their treatment: "Most of the standard assays for IgG would not distinguish between endogenous (self-made) antibodies and the ones delivered by our therapy. However, given the volume of IgG antibodies delivered in our therapy, and the timing of these tests, it is likely that the second test is detecting REGN-COV2 antibodies."

"There's a good chance they are" from the antibody cocktail, said Rasmussen. "My main takeaway is suspicion. The president's physician has been releasing information selectively, and has stated that he tries to put a positive spin on it." She added, "They have not released other information relevant to his condition, including the results of his chest scans or his viral loads or any other lab results."

Conley's statement added that Trump's "physical exam and vital signs, including oxygen saturation and respiratory rate, all remain stable and in normal range. He's now been fever-free for more than 4 days, symptom-free for over 24 hours, and has not needed nor received any supplemental oxygen since initial hospitalization," the physician said.

But both doctors that BuzzFeed News spoke with warned that the president's immune response will be important to monitor as he approaches 7 to 10 days after he developed the infection, a dangerous period when a small subset of COVID-19 patients suddenly get very sick after their immune systems go into overdrive, causing organ failure and possible death.

"The fact that he remains fever-free and feels great are just as likely to be effects of the dexamethasone as they are to be signs that his illness is improving," Ranney said. "But the fact that someone has done well up until this point does not necessarily imply that they will continue to do well. We know that this seven-to-10-day period is when we see the immune system go wild, severe lung problems, strokes, and clotting problems — all of these really well-established serious clinical effects of COVID."

Both doctors said that the latest statement from Trump's physician indicated a continuing lack of transparency that was troubling.

"It’s the rose-colored glasses view of how the patient is doing each day. We don’t get the truth," said Topol. "In his press conferences, there was deception and obfuscation and evasiveness — this one is just fallacy."

UPDATE
October 7, 2020, at 2:32 p.m.
This story has been updated to include comments from virologist Angela Rasmussen.

UPDATE
October 7, 2020, at 2:46 p.m.
This story has been updated to include a statement from Regeneron.


MORE ON THIS
Trump's Doctor Dodged Questions About The President's Coronavirus Diagnosis

Kadia Goba · Oct. 3, 2020

Trump Returned To The White House And Took His Mask Off While Infected With COVID-19 

Stephanie M. Lee · Oct. 5, 2020

Doctors Are Warning That Trump Could Experience The Worst COVID Symptoms In The Next Week 

Peter Aldhous · Oct. 5, 2020


Azeen Ghorayshi is a science editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in New York.


SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2020/10/trump-symptom-free-has-covid-19.html

MORE TRUMP QUACKERY

HIS SO CALLED DOCTOR IS A BONE CRUNCHER,

A CHIROPRACTOR BY ANY OTHER NAME 

It Took Facebook More Than A Year — And A Whistleblower — To Remove A Troll Farm Connected To Azerbaijan's Ruling Party

Former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang said it took the company a year to pursue an investigation 

Posted on October 8, 2020, 

Philippe Huguen / Getty Images
Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev

Weeks after firing an internal whistleblower who called for Facebook to crack down on a massive network of fake activity connected to Azerbaijan's ruling party, Facebook has removed more than 1,000 accounts and close to 8,000 pages.

Facebook linked the operation to the Youth Union of the governing New Azerbaijani Party. It said the accounts and pages were used to post comments that attacked opposition figures and independent media, and boost the country’s ruling party. This disclosure confirms what Sophie Zhang, a former Facebook data scientist, wrote in an explosive internal memo obtained by BuzzFeed News that said the company was ignoring manipulation of its platforms by political parties and heads of government.

On the day of her departure, she called the fake behavior in Azerbaijan her “greatest unfinished business.”

On the day of her departure, she called the fake behavior in Azerbaijan her “greatest unfinished business,” and criticized Facebook for taking a year to investigate her findings. Last month, Facebook fired Zhang, and she posted the 6,600-word memo on an internal message board shortly before she left.

Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of security policy, said on a press call Thursday that “Facebook identified this network after an internal investigation,” but did not cite Zhang by name.

BuzzFeed News was not able to ask a question on the call, but sent a follow-up email asking why it took the company a year to begin looking into the activity in Azerbaijan identified by Zhang. A spokesperson declined to comment on the record.

Guy Rosen, Facebook's VP of integrity, previously dismissed Zhang's work as only being about "fake likes."

"Like any team in the industry or government, we prioritize stopping the most urgent and harmful threats globally. Fake likes is not one of them," he said on Twitter.



Guy Rosen@guyro
@RMac18 With all due respect, what she's described is fake likes - which we routinely remove using automated detection. Like any team in the industry or government, we prioritize stopping the most urgent and harmful threats globally. Fake likes is not one of them.09:03 PM - 14 Sep 2020
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Gleicher said the close to 8,000 pages used in the operation were set up to look like personal profiles and were used to leave comments.

“This network appeared to engage individuals in Azerbaijan to manage pages with the sole purpose of leaving supportive and critical commentary on pages of international and local media, public figures including opposition, and the ruling party of Azerbaijan, to create a perception of widespread criticism of some views and widespread support of others,” he said.

In her memo, Zhang said the country’s ruling party “utilized thousands of inauthentic assets... to harass the opposition en masse.”

The militaries of Azerbaijan and neighboring Armenia are currently fighting over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a dispute in which a reported 300 people have been killed.

In a separate announcement, Facebook said it removed 200 Facebook accounts, 55 pages, and 76 Instagram accounts that were part of an operation run by Rally Forge, a US marketing firm, on behalf of Turning Point USA and Inclusive Conservation Group. Turning Point USA is a prominent pro-Trump student group.

The accounts masqueraded as right-wing and, at times, left-wing Americans to comment on news articles and posts on the platform, according to Facebook.

Gleicher said that along with using fake accounts, the operation used accounts “whose names were slight variations of the names of the people behind them and whose sole activity on our platform was associated with this deceptive campaign.” He referred to these as “thinly veiled personas.

The operation spent close to $1 million on ads, according to Facebook. The takedown came after the Washington Post revealed the fake activity benefitting Turning Point USA. Facebook said it has banned Rally Forge from its platform.

MORE ON THIS
“I Have Blood On My Hands”: A Whistleblower Says Facebook Ignored Global Political Manipulation Craig Silverman · Sept. 14, 2020

“Facebook Is Hurting People At Scale”: Mark Zuckerberg’s Employees Reckon With The Social Network They’ve Built  Ryan Mac · July 23, 2020

Craig Silverman is a media editor for BuzzFeed News and is based in Toronto.

Ryan Mac is a senior tech reporter for BuzzFeed News and is based in San Francisco.

 #KAMALAWON

1

Dena Grayson, MD, PhD

@DrDenaGrayson

Post-debate poll shows that

@KamalaHarris

WON by a whopping **39 points** among women and 2 points among men..