Does US have evidence of aliens visiting us on Earth?

What did the recent US Congress hearings on ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ reveal?

Steven Tingay, The Conversation

Deputy Director of US Naval Intelligence Scott Bray points to a video of a 'flyby' as he testifies during the first open congressional hearing on 'UFOs'. | Joey Roulette/ Reuters

The United States Congress recently held a hearing into government information pertaining to “unidentified aerial phenomena” .

The last investigation of this kind happened more than 50 years ago, as part of a US Air Force investigation called Project Blue Book, which examined reported sightings of unidentified flying objects (note the change in name).

The current hearings are the result of a stipulation attached to a 2020 Covid-19 relief bill, which required US Intelligence agencies to produce a report on unidentified aerial phenomena within 180 days. That report appeared in June last year.

But why would governments be interested in unidentified aerial phenomena? One exciting line of thought is unidentified aerial phenomena are alien spacecraft visiting Earth. It is a concept that gets a lot of attention, by playing on decades of sci-fi movies, views about what goes on in Area 51, and purported sightings by the public.

A much more prosaic line of thought is governments are interested in unexplained aerial phenomena – especially those within their own sovereign airspace – because they may represent technologies developed by an adversary.

Indeed, most discussion at the recent hearing revolved around potential threats from unidentified aerial phenomena, on the basis they were such human-made technologies.Footage of three unidentified aerial phenomena from US Navy pilots.

None of the public testimony went any way towards supporting a conclusion that alien spacecraft have crashed on, or visited, Earth. The hearings did include closed classified sessions that presumably dealt with more sensitive security information.

There is no doubt unexplained phenomena have been observed, such as in footage obtained by navy pilots (above) showing fast moving airborne objects. But the leap to aliens requires far more substantial and direct evidence – incredible evidence – that can be widely scrutinised using the tools of science.

After all, the existence of life elsewhere in the universe is a fascinating question of science and society. So the search for extra-terrestrial life is a legitimate pursuit, subject to the same burden of evidence that applies to all science.

Drop in ocean

On and off over the past decade, I have used radio telescopes to perform wide ranging experiments to search for technosignatures – signs of technological civilisations on planets elsewhere in our galaxy (the Milky Way). But after decades of many teams of experts using powerful telescopes, we still have not covered much territory.

If the Milky Way is considered equivalent to the Earth’s oceans, the sum total of our decades of searching is like taking a random swimming pool worth of water out of the ocean to search for a shark.

On top of that, we are not even sure sharks exist and, if they do, what they would look like or how they would behave. While I believe life will almost certainly exist among the trillions of planets in the universe – the sheer scale of the universe is a problem.

Making contact

The vast volume of the universe makes it very difficult to achieve interstellar travel, receive signals, or communicate with any potential far-off lifeforms (at least according to the laws of physics as we know them).

Speeds are limited to the speed of light, which is around 3,00,000 km per second. It is pretty fast. But even at that speed it would take a signal roughly four years to travel between Earth and the nearest star in our galaxy, which is four light years away.

But Einstein’s theory of special relativity tells us that, in practice, the speed of a physical object such as a spacecraft will be slower than the speed of light.

Also, thanks to the inverse square law of radiation, signals get weaker in proportion to the square of the distance they have travelled. Over interstellar distances, that is a killer.

So for planets hundreds or thousands of light years away, travel times are likely in the many thousands of years. And any signals originating from civilisations on those planets are incredibly weak and difficult to detect.

Cover ups?

Could it be aliens have crashed on Earth and the US government is just covering it up, as Republican Congressman Tim Burchett claimed in his reaction to the hearing?

For airlines belonging to the International Air Transport Association, the chance of plane crash is about one in a million. That begs the question: do we think an alien spacecraft that can travel for thousands of years, across interstellar distances, is more robust and better designed than our planes?

Let us say it is a hundred times better. Which means the chance of a crash is one in a hundred million. So to end up with alien wreckage stashed away at Area 51, we would need one hundred million visits from alien spacecraft. That would be 2,739 visits from aliens per day, every day, for the past 100 years.

So, where are they? The near-Earth environment should be constantly buzzing with aliens.

With radars constantly scanning space, billions of mobile phone cameras, and hundreds of thousands of amateur astronomers photographing the sky (as well as professional astronomers with powerful telescopes), there should be a lot of really good evidence in the hands of the general public and scientists – not just governments.

It is much more likely the unidentified aerial phenomena presented in evidence are home-grown, or due to natural phenomena we do not yet understand.

In science, Occam’s Razor is still a great starting point – the best explanation is the simplest explanation consistent with the known facts. Until there is much more – and much, much better evidence – let us conclude aliens have not visited yet.

I cannot lie though, I am hoping I will see a time when that evidence exists. Until then, I will keep searching the skies to do my bit.

Steven Tingay is the John Curtin Distinguished Professor (Radio Astronomy) at Curtin University.

This article first appeared on The Conversation.

Renters In America Are Running Out Of Options

VICE NEWS

The need for affordable housing continues to grow in urban centers. The traditional form of affordable housing for suburban and rural areas, mobile homes, have become overrun with speculation, pricing people out through a new type of landlord - private equity.

RENTIER CAPITALISM

COMPLETE COCK UP

French interior minister accused of lying over Champions League chaos

Wed, June 1, 2022, 


French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin came under pressure on Wednesday over the chaos that marred the Champions League final at the weekend between Liverpool and Real Madrid which he has blamed on ticket scams.

French far-right leader Marine Le Pen accused him of lying and said he should resign after he defended the French police and blamed ticket counterfeiting, disorganised supporters and unruly behaviour by English fans for the crushes.

"The facts are extremely serious and the lie by the minister is extremely serious," Le Pen told France 2 television.

"In any other democracy, faced with such a fiasco, with chaos that occured in front of 400 million people watching on television, which offered a dreadful image of France, then he should consider himself that he should resign," she added.

Darmanin gave a televised press conference on Monday, two days after the final which was delayed because thousands of Liverpool supporters were unable to enter the stadium, many of them suffering teargas, pepper spray and crushes on the way in.

The 39-year-old blamed "massive, industrial-scale and organised fraud in fake tickets" and said that 30,000 to 40,000 Liverpool fans had turned up at the stadium either without tickets or with counterfeited tickets.

He also claimed that at some check-points outside the Stade de France as many as 70 percent of tickets were found to be fraudulent by staff.

- 'Wholly disrespectful' -

But sources within UEFA and the French football federation told AFP on Tuesday that only 2,800 fake tickets were detected at the final, suggesting the problem was more about managing flows of ticketless fans around the stadium.

Darmanin is a pugnacious rightwinger from northern France who was recently extended in his role as interior minister by President Emmanuel Macron following presidential elections in April.

Liverpool have asked for an apology from French authorities for the treatment of their fans, while the chairman of the club has condemned separate comments from French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera.

Oudea-Castera initially blamed Liverpool for failing to properly organise its supporters who travelled to Paris.

Liverpool chairman Tom Werner called the statement "irresponsible, unprofessional, and wholly disrespectful" in a letter leaked to the local Liverpool Echo newspaper on Tuesday.

Darmanin and Oudea-Castera are expected later to appear before a Senate commission where they will face questions about security at the game which tarnished France's image ahead of the rugby World Cup next year and the Paris Olympics in 2024.

"What we expect is clarity and, I almost want to say, honesty," the head of the Senate commission, François-Noel Buffet, told Franceinfo radio.

On the number of counterfeited tickets, "we need to know what the truth is. The two ministers need to say on what they are basing their statements on," added Buffet, who is from the opposition Republicans party.

"If this fraud was massive and genuinely true and real, there's an issue, but if it's not the truth, then there's another subject which is about trust in public statements and the real understanding of the ministers in charge of this area," he added.

el-adp/pi

Dozens protest in Turkey against attempt to close anti-femicide group

Several hundred women protested outside an Istanbul court on Wednesday ahead of a hearing to close a well-known anti-femicide campaign group.

© Adem Altan, AFP

Waving banners with slogans such as "You will never walk alone!" and "We will stop women's murders," the protesters gathered outside Istanbul's main court to demonstrate against a case to shut down We Will Stop Femicide Platform, one of Turkey's leading feminist organisations.

An Istanbul prosecutor had filed a lawsuit in April, accusing the group of "activity against law and morals".

We Will Stop Femicide Platform campaigns against the murder and abuse of women in the mostly Muslim but officially secular state.

Group representative, Nursen Inal, slammed the trial as politically motivated.

"There's an organised, massive women's groups on the streets, and we believe this court case is an attack against women's struggle for their rights," she told AFP outside the court.

The association was a vocal critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's decision last year to pull Turkey out of the Istanbul Convention, which requires countries to set up laws aimed at preventing and prosecuting violence against women.

Social conservatives in Turkey claim the convention promotes homosexuality and threatens traditional family values.

We Will Stop Femicide has organised large rallies in support of the convention.

The platform says 160 women were killed in Turkey this year, many of the murders committed by family members, and this number stood at 423 last year.

"We are under pressure from the government because we publicise name by name each and every woman's murder," Inal said.

"This contradicts the government's thesis which says women's murder is in the decline."

(AFP)

An ocean first: Underwater drone tracks CO2 in Alaska gulf

By MARK THIESSEN


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This May 4, 2022, photo shows oceanographers Andrew McDonnell, left, and Claudine Hauri, middle, along with engineer Joran Kemme after an underwater glider was pulled aboard the University of Alaska Fairbanks research vessel Nanuq from the Gulf of Alaska. The glider was fitted with special sensors to study ocean acidification. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)


SEWARD, Alaska (AP) — In the cold, choppy waters of Alaska’s Resurrection Bay, all eyes were on the gray water, looking for one thing only.

It wasn’t a spout from humpback whales that power through this scenic fjord, or a sea otter lazing on its back, munching a king crab.

Instead, everyone aboard the Nanuq, a University of Alaska Fairbanks research vessel, was looking where a 5-foot (1.52-meter) long, bright pink underwater sea glider surfaced.

The glider — believed to be the first configured with a large sensor to measure carbon dioxide levels in the ocean — had just completed its first overnight mission.

Designed to dive 3,281 feet (1,000 meters) and roam remote parts of the ocean, the autonomous vehicle was deployed in the Gulf of Alaska this spring to provide a deeper understanding of the ocean’s chemistry in the era of climate change. The research could be a major step forward in ocean greenhouse gas monitoring, because until now, measuring CO2 concentrations — a quantifier of ocean acidification — was mostly done from ships, buoys and moorings tethered to the ocean floor.

“Ocean acidification is a process by which humans are emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through their activities of burning fossil fuels and changing land use,” said Andrew McDonnell, an oceanographer with the College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks



Oceans have done humans a huge favor by taking in some of the C02. Otherwise, there would be much more in the atmosphere, trapping the sun’s heat and warming the Earth.

“But the problem is now that the ocean is changing its chemistry because of this uptake,” said Claudine Hauri, an oceanographer with the International Arctic Research Center at the university.

The enormous amount of data collected is being used to study ocean acidification that can harm and kill certain marine life.

Rising acidity of the oceans is affecting some marine organisms that build shells. This process could kill or make an organism more susceptible to predators.

Over several weeks this spring, Hauri and McDonnell, who are married, worked with engineers from Cyprus Subsea Consulting and Services, which provided the underwater glider, and 4H-Jena, a German company that provided the sensor inserted into the drone.



Most days, researchers took the glider farther and farther into Resurrection Bay from the coastal community of Seward to conduct tests.

After its first nighttime mission, a crew member spotted it bobbing in the water, and the Nanuq — the Inupiat word for polar bear — backed up to let people pull the 130-pound (59-kilogram) glider onto the ship. Then the sensor was removed from the drone and rushed into the ship’s cabin to upload its data.

Think of the foot-tall (0.30-meter) sensor with a diameter of 6 inches (15.24 centimeters) as a laboratory in a tube, with pumps, valves and membranes moving to separate the gas from seawater. It analyzes CO2 and it logs and stores the data inside a temperature-controlled system. Many of these sensor components use battery power.

Since it’s the industry standard, the sensor is the same as found on any ship or lab working with CO2 measurements.

Hauri said using this was “a huge step to be able to accommodate such a big and power hungry sensor, so that’s special about this project.”

“I think she is one of the first persons to actually utilize (gliders) to measure CO2 directly, so that’s very, very exciting,” said Richard Feely, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s senior scientist at the agency’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory in Seattle. He said Hauri was a graduate student in 2007 when she accompanied him on the first acidification cruise he ever led.

The challenge, Feely said, is to make the measurements on a glider with the same degree of accuracy and precision as tests on board ships.

“We need to get confidence in our measurements and confidence in our models if we are going to make important scientific statements about how the oceans are changing over time and how it’s going to impact our important economic systems that are dependent on the food from the sea,” he said, noting that acidification impacts are already seen in the Pacific Northwest on oysters, Dungeness crabs and other species.

Researchers in Canada had previously attached a smaller, prototype CO2 sensor to an underwater drone in the Labrador Sea but found it did not yet meet the targets for ocean acidification observations.

“The tests showed that the glider sensor worked in a remote-harsh environment but needed more development,” Nicolai von Oppeln-Bronikowski, the Glider Program Manager with the Ocean Frontier Institute at Memorial University of Newfoundland, said in an email.

The two teams are “just using two different types of sensors to solve the same issue, and it’s always good to have two different options,” Hauri said.

There is no GPS unit inside the underwater autonomous drone. Instead, after being programmed, it heads out on its own to cruise the ocean according to the navigation directions — knowing how far to go down in the water column, when to sample, and when to surface and send a locator signal so it can be retrieved.    

As the drone tests were underway, the U.S. research vessel Sikuliaq, owned by the National Science Foundation and operated by the university, conducted its own two-week mission in the gulf to take carbon and pH samples as part of ongoing work each spring, summer and fall.

Those methods are limited to collecting samples from a fixed point while the glider will be able to roam all over the ocean and provide researchers with a wealth of data on the ocean’s chemical makeup.

The vision is to one day have a fleet of robotic gliders operating in oceans across the globe, providing a real-time glimpse of current conditions and a way to better predict the future.

“We can ... understand much more about what’s going on in the ocean than we have been before,” McDonnell said.

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More Associated Press climate change stories can be found here.

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Follow Mark Thiessen on Twitter: @mthiessen

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

COVID-19, shootings: Is mass death now tolerated in America?

YES! 

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — As the nation marked 1 million deaths from COVID-19 last week, the milestone was bookended by mass shootings that killed people simply living their lives: grocery shopping, going to church, or attending the fourth grade. The number, once unthinkable, is now an irreversible reality in the United States — just like the persistent reality of gun violence that kills tens of thousands of people every year.

Americans have always tolerated high rates of death and suffering — among certain segments of society. But the sheer numbers of deaths from preventable causes, and the apparent acceptance that no policy change is on the horizon, raises the question: Has mass death become accepted in America?

“I think the evidence is unmistakable and quite clear. We will tolerate an enormous amount of carnage, suffering and death in the U.S., because we have over the past two years. We have over our history,” says Gregg Gonsalves, an epidemiologist and professor at Yale who, before that, was a leading member of the AIDS advocacy group ACT UP. He made his comments in an interview last week, before the latest massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, where 21 people were killed on Tuesday, including 19 children.

“If I thought the AIDS epidemic was bad, the American response to COVID-19 has sort of ... it’s a form of the American grotesque, right?” Gonsalves says. “Really — a million people are dead? And you’re going to talk to me about your need to get back to normal, when for the most part most of us have been living pretty reasonable lives for the past six months?”

Certain communities have always borne the brunt of higher death rates in the United States. There are profound racial and class inequalities in the United States, and our tolerance of death is partly based on who is at risk, said Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota who studies mortality.

“Some people’s deaths matter a lot more than others,” she lamented in an interview last week. “And I think that’s what we’re seeing in this really brutal way with this coincidence of timing.”

In the shooting in Buffalo, New York, on May 14, the alleged shooter was a racist bent on killing as many Black people as he could, according to authorities. The family of 86-year-old Ruth Whitfield, one of 10 people killed there in an attack on a grocery store that served the African American community, channeled the grief and frustration of millions as they demanded action, including passage of a hate crime bill and accountability for those who spread hateful rhetoric.

“You expect us to keep doing this over and over and over again — over again, forgive and forget,” her son, former Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield, Jr., told reporters. “While people we elect and trust in offices around this country do their best not to protect us, not to consider us equal.”

In the handful of days after the shooting in Buffalo, a man 1,700 miles away in Texas legally purchased one AR-style rifle, then another, along with 375 rounds of ammunition, according to state senators briefed by law enforcement. He then carried out the attack on Robb Elementary. Just 10 days had passed.

The sense that politicians have done little even as the violence repeats itself is shared by many Americans. It’s a dynamic that’s encapsulated by the “thoughts and prayers” offered to victims of gun violence by politicians unwilling to make meaningful commitments to ensure there really is no more “never again,” according to Martha Lincoln, an anthropology professor at San Francisco State University who studies the cultural politics of public health.

“I don’t think that most Americans feel good about it. I think most Americans would like to see real action from their leaders in the culture about these pervasive issues,” said Lincoln, who spoke before the attack on the school in Texas, and who adds that there is a similar “political vacuum” around COVID-19.

The high numbers of deaths from COVID-19, guns and other causes are difficult to fathom and can start to feel like background noise, disconnected from the individuals whose lives were lost and the families whose lives were forever altered.

American society has even come to accept the deaths of children from preventable causes.

In a recent guest column published in The Advocate newspaper, pediatrician Dr. Mark W. Kline pointed out that more than 1,500 children have died from COVID-19, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, despite the “myth” that it is harmless for children. Kline wrote that there was a time in pediatrics when “children were not supposed to die.”

“There was no acceptable pediatric body count,” he wrote. “At least, not before the first pandemic of the social media age, COVID-19, changed everything.”

There are many parallels between the U.S. response to COVID-19 and its response to the gun violence epidemic, according to Sonali Rajan, a professor at Columbia University who researches school violence.

“We have long normalized mass death in this country. Gun violence has persisted as a public health crisis for decades,” she said last week, noting that an estimated 100,000 people are shot every year and some 40,000 will die.

Gun violence is such a part of life in America now that we organize our lives around its inevitability. Children do lockdown drills at school. And in about half the states, Rajan said, teachers are allowed to carry firearms.

When she looks at the current response to COVID-19, she sees similar dynamics. Americans, she said, “deserve to be able to commute to work without getting sick, or work somewhere without getting sick, or send their kids to school without them getting sick.”

“What will happen down the line if more and more people get sick and are disabled?” she asked. “What happens? Do we just kind of live like this for the foreseeable future?”

It’s important, she said, to ask what policies are being put forth by elected officials who have the power to “attend to the health and the well-being of their constituents.”

“It’s remarkable how that responsibility has been sort of abdicated, is how I would describe it,” Rajan said.

The level of concern about deaths often depends on context, says Rajiv Sethi, an economics professor at Barnard College who has written about both gun violence and COVID-19. He points to a rare but dramatic event such as an airplane crash or an accident at a nuclear power plant, which do seem to matter to people.

By contrast, something like traffic deaths gets less attention. The government last week said that nearly 43,000 people had died on the nation’s roads last year, the highest level in 16 years. The federal government unveiled a national strategy earlier this year to combat the problem.

Even when talking about gun violence, mass shootings get a lot of attention but represent a small number of the gun deaths that happen in the United States every year, Sethi said in an interview last week. For example, there are more suicides from guns in America than there are homicides, an estimated 24,000 gun suicides compared with 19,000 homicides. But even though there are policy proposals that could help within the bounds of the Second Amendment, he says, the debate on guns is politically entrenched.

“The result is that nothing is done,” Sethi said. “The result is paralysis.”

Dr. Megan Ranney of Brown University’s School of Public Health calls it a frustrating “learned helplessness.”

“There’s been almost a sustained narrative created by some that tells people that these things are inevitable,” said Ranney, an ER doctor who did gun violence research before COVID-19 hit, speaking before Tuesday’s Texas school shooting ended 21 lives. “It divides us when people think that there’s nothing they can do.”

She wonders if people really understand the sheer numbers of people dying from guns, from COVID-19 and from opioids. The CDC said this month that more than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses in 2021, setting a record.

Ranney also points to false narratives spread by bad actors, such as denying that the deaths were preventable, or suggesting those who die deserved it. There is an emphasis in the United States on individual responsibility for one’s health, Ranney said — and a tension between the individual and the community.

“It’s not that we put less value on an individual life, but rather we’re coming up against the limits of that approach,” she said. “Because the truth is, is that any individual’s life, any individual’s death or disability, actually affects the larger community.”

Similar debates happened in the last century about child labor laws, worker protections and reproductive rights, Ranney said.

An understanding of history is important, said Wrigley-Field, who teaches the history of ACT UP in one of her classes. During the AIDS crisis in the 1980s, the White House press secretary made anti-gay jokes when asked about AIDS, and everyone in the room laughed. Activists were able to mobilize a mass movement that forced people to change the way they thought and forced politicians to change the way they operated, she said.

“I don’t think that those things are off the table now. It’s just that it’s not really clear if they’re going to emerge,” Wrigley-Field said. “I don’t think giving up is a permanent state of affairs. But I do think that’s where we’re at, right at this moment.”

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Michelle R. Smith is an Associated Press reporter, based in Providence. Follow her on Twitter at twitter.com/mrsmithap

BACKGROUNDER
FDA chief struggles to explain slow response on baby formula

By MATTHEW PERRONE

May 25, 2022

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Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf testifies via video during a House Commerce Oversight and Investigations subcommittee hybrid hearing on the nationwide baby formula shortage on Wednesday, May 25, 2022, in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The head of the Food and Drug Administration faced bipartisan fury from House lawmakers Wednesday over months of delays investigating problems at the nation’s largest baby formula plant that prompted an ongoing shortage.

FDA Commissioner Robert Califf laid out a series of setbacks in congressional testimony that slowed his agency’s response, including a COVID-19 outbreak at the plant and a whistleblower complaint that didn’t reach FDA leadership because it was apparently lost in the mail.

Califf testified before a House subcommittee investigating the shortage, which has snowballed into a national political controversy and forced the U.S. military to begin airlifting supplies from Europe.

The shortage largely stems from Abbott’s Michigan plant, which the FDA shut down in February due to contamination issues. Under fire from Congress, parents and the media, Califf gave the first detailed account Wednesday of why his agency took months to inspect and shutter the plant despite learning of potential problems as early as September.

The FDA’s response was: “Too slow and there were decisions that were suboptimal along the way,” Califf told lawmakers.

The FDA and President Joe Biden face mounting political pressure to explain why they didn’t intervene sooner to head off the supply crisis.

“Why did it take an onslaught of national media attention for the Biden administration to act with a sense of urgency required to address an infant formula shortage?” asked Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Virginia, the committee’s ranking Republican.

Califf said the agency had been trying to monitor formula supplies since 2020 when COVID-related disruptions first emerged, but regulators have limited visibility into company supply chains.

The House panel also heard from three formula manufacturers, including a top Abbott Nutrition executive who apologized to parents for the shortage.

“We let you down,” said Abbott vice president Christopher Calamari. “We are deeply sorry.”

Calamari repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether any employees were disciplined or fired over the problems at the plant, which included standing water, a leaky roof and damaged equipment.

FDA staff began honing in on Abbott’s plant last fall while tracking several bacterial infections in infants who had consumed formula from the facility. The four cases occurred between September and January, causing hospitalizations and two deaths.

The FDA planned to begin inspecting the Sturgis, Michigan, plant on Dec. 30, according to Califf’s testimony. But Abbott warned that about a dozen plant employees had tested positive for COVID-19 and requested a delay. As a result, the FDA didn’t begin its inspection until Jan. 31.

After detecting positive samples of a rare-but-dangerous bacteria in multiple parts of the plant, the FDA closed the facility and Abbott announced a massive recall of its formula on Feb. 17.

“We knew that ceasing plant operations would create supply problems but we had no choice given the insanitary conditions,” said Califf, calling the problems “shocking” and “unacceptable.”

Abbott and the FDA have reached an agreement to reopen the plant next week, under which the company must regularly undergo outside safety audits.

Califf also struggled to explain delays in following up on a whistleblower complaint alleging numerous safety violations at Abbott’s plant, including employees falsifying records and failing to test formula before shipment.

Several FDA staffers reviewed the complaint in late October when it was sent to a regional FDA office, but an interview didn’t take place until two months later, in part due to the whistleblower’s scheduling conflicts.

Senior FDA officials eventually received the complaint via email, but not until February due to “an isolated failure in FDA’s mailroom, likely due to COVID-19 staffing issues,” according to the FDA testimony. A mailed copy addressed to then-acting commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock has still not been located.

Political outrage over the shortage has landed squarely on the FDA and Califf, who was confirmed to the FDA role for a second time in February. The problems have escalated into a political firestorm for the White House, which has invoked the Defense Production Act and emergency import measures.

The FDA contacted the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Feb. 11. about a potential shortage, just days before Abbott’s recall, according to FDA’s timeline.

Califf said the FDA requested new authorities, funding and staff to track supply chain data that could have helped get ahead of the problem, but noted Congress has not provided them.

Several lawmakers raised longstanding concerns that the FDA’s food program — which oversees most U.S. foods except meat, poultry and eggs — is underfunded and needs restructuring.

The program has a convoluted leadership structure in which there is a director of FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and a separate deputy commissioner for “food policy and response.” The deputy commissioner has more of a safety focus, but has no direct authority over food center staff nor field staff who inspect company plants.

Both officials testified Wednesday, along with Califf.

When Rep. Nanette Diaz-Barragan, D-Calif., asked who is in charge of food safety, Califf and food center director Susan Mayne gave extended answers, describing different roles and responsibilities.

“I don’t think there’s one person that is responsible,” Diaz-Barragan responded. “I just think it goes to show there needs to be restructuring and it needs to be more clear who’s ultimately responsible.”

Later Wednesday afternoon, Abbott’s Calamari told lawmakers his company plans to build extra capacity and redundancies into its supply chain to avoid future disruptions. He reiterated the company’s point that the FDA has not drawn a direct link between the illnesses reported in infants and bacteria samples collected from its plant.

After the company restarts production next month it will be able to produce more formula than before the recall, he noted.

“We’re going to learn from this. We’re going to get better as a result of this,” Calamari said.

Executives from Reckitt and Gerber also testified on their efforts to boost production.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

HINDUTVA IS NOT HINDUISM

Dispute over mosque becomes religious flashpoint in India

By SHEIKH SAALIQ and KRUTIKA PATHI

An Aerial view shows Gyanvapi mosque, left, and Kashiviswanath temple on the banks of the river Ganges in Varanasi, India, Dec. 12, 2021. A group of Hindus petitioned a local court seeking access to pray inside the mosque compound, saying they believe the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, one of Hinduism’s holiest cities, was built on top of the ruins of a medieval-era temple and that the complex still houses Hindu idols and motifs, a claim that has been contested by the mosque authorities. 

(AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

NEW DELHI (AP) — For nearly three centuries, Muslims and Hindus in India’s northern Varanasi city have prayed to their gods in a mosque and a temple that are separated by one wall. Many see it as an example of religious coexistence in a country where bouts of deadly communal violence are common.

That coexistence is now under threat due to a controversial court case.

A local court earlier this month began hearing a petition filed by a group of Hindus that seeks access to pray inside the Gyanvapi mosque compound, arguing it was built on top of the ruins of a medieval-era temple that was razed by a Mughal emperor. The petitioners say the complex still houses Hindu idols and motifs, a claim that has been contested by the mosque’s authorities.

The legal battle is the latest instance of a growing phenomenon in which Hindu groups petition courts demanding land they claim belongs to Hindus. Critics say such cases spark fears over the status of religious places for India’s Muslims, a minority community that has come under attack in recent years by Hindu nationalists who seek to turn officially secular India into an avowedly Hindu nation.

“The idea to bombard the courts with so many petitions is to keep the Muslims in check and the communal pot simmering,” said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a political analyst and commentator. “It is a way to tell Muslims that their public display of faith in India is no more accepted and that the alleged humiliation heaped on them by Muslim rulers of the medieval past should be redressed now.”

The court case involving the 17th century Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi, one of Hinduism’s holiest cities, in many ways embodies India’s contemporary religious strife. The widely accepted consensus among historians is that it was built on top of a temple dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva after it was demolished by the Mughal ruler Aurangzeb.

The two communities have in the past stuck to their claims but also made sure the dispute didn’t worsen. That changed last week when a local court in Varanasi ordered the mosque to be surveyed after five Hindu women filed a petition seeking permission to offer prayers there.

A video survey found a stone shaft alleged to be a symbol of Shiva inside a reservoir in the mosque used by Muslim devotees for ablution before offering prayers, according to Hari Shankar Jain, a lawyer representing the Hindu women.

“The land on which the mosque is built belongs to Hindus and should be returned to us,” Jain said.

Mosque representatives have refuted the claims. Rais Ahmad Ansari, a lawyer for the mosque’s committee, said the alleged stone shaft found in the reservoir was the base of a fountain.

The discovery of the alleged Hindu symbol led the local court in Varanasi to seal the premises, banning large Muslim gatherings inside. India’s Supreme Court later overturned that judgment and allowed Muslims to pray in the mosque. But it also ordered local authorities to seal off and protect the area where the stone shaft was found, dispossessing Muslims of a portion of the mosque they had used until this month.

The dispute over the mosque and survey has now been taken up by a higher court in Varanasi, with hearings set to continue Thursday.

Lawyers representing the Muslim side have questioned the legal basis for the survey, arguing that it was against the law and a precedent most recently upheld by the Supreme Court in 2019.

India’s Hindu nationalists have long claimed that thousands of medieval-era mosques are built on the sites of prominent temples that were demolished by Mughal rulers. Many historians have said the numbers are exaggerated, arguing that a few dozen temples were indeed razed but largely for political reasons and not religious.

In the late 1980s, Hindu nationalist groups started campaigns to reclaim these mosques. One such campaign culminated in 1992 with the destruction of the 16th century Babri mosque in the northern town of Ayodhya by Hindu mobs.

Hindus believe the site of the mosque was the exact birthplace of their god Ram. Its demolition sparked massive communal violence across India that left more than 2,000 people dead — mostly Muslims — and catapulted Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party to national prominence.

A grand Hindu temple is now being constructed on the site after India’s Supreme Court handed over the disputed land to Hindus in a controversial 2019 judgement. However, the court assured Muslims that the order would not be used as a precedent or pave the way for more such contentious cases.

The court in its judgment cited the 1991 Places of Worship Act, which forbids the conversion of a place of worship and stipulates that its religious character should be maintained as “it existed” on August 15, 1947, the day India won its independence from British colonialists.

Lawyers representing the Muslim side say the Gyanvapi mosque court case goes against that very judicial commitment.

“The act was seen as sacrosanct, that it was there to not reopen old controversies. But allowing a survey is doing exactly that — you are scraping at old wounds. This is what it was meant to prohibit,” said Nizam Pasha, a lawyer representing the mosque’s committee.

The Gyanvapi mosque case also fits into a narrative of Modi’s party, which has long campaigned to reclaim what it calls India’s lost Hindu past. Many party leaders have openly suggested they would take such legal battles head on.

Critics say the party does so by providing support to Hindu nationalist groups that often contest such cases in court. Modi’s party has denied this, saying it cannot stop people from going to the courts.

Pasha, the lawyer, said the filing of such court cases was a “very carefully thought out pattern” meant to bolster Hindu nationalists.

He said the cases are brought by ordinary Hindu citizens as plaintiffs who say they are devotees of a deity asking for the right to pray at disputed sites. Once the matter goes to court, the Hindu plaintiffs then push for searches of the sites and present evidence that is used to build a media narrative and galvanize the public, he said.

“It is very difficult to convince a public then, already influenced by the media, that this is not true, that this is a fountain,” Pasha said of the Gyanvapi mosque case.

Meanwhile, Hindu nationalists have begun eyeing more such mosques.

Last week, a local court accepted a petition to hear a case on the site of another mosque in Uttar Pradesh’s Mathura city, located next to a temple, that some Hindus claim is built on the birthplace of the Hindu god Krishna. Similarly, another court in New Delhi heard arguments this week on restoring a temple that Hindu petitioners say existed under a mosque built at the UNESCO World Heritage site, the Qutub Minar. The court said it will deliver a verdict next month.

Many other cases are expected to take years to resolve, but critics say they will help Modi’s party as it prepares for elections in 2024.

“These cases help Hindu nationalists with a groundswell of support for their divisive politics. And that’s what they need,” said Mukhopadhyay, the political analyst.

Associated Press writer Biswajeet Banerjee reported from Lucknow.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HINDUISM IS FASCISM 

CONSERVATIVE CULTURE WAR MEME'S

‘Horrifying’ conspiracy theories swirl around Texas shooting

By DAVID KLEPPER and ALI SWENSON

May 26, 2022

Crime scene tape surrounds Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, Wednesday, May 25, 2022. Desperation turned to heart-wrenching sorrow for families of grade schoolers killed after an 18-year-old gunman barricaded himself in their Texas classroom and began shooting, killing at least 19 fourth-graders and their two teachers. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)


PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — By now it’s as predictable as the calls for thoughts and prayers: A mass shooting leaves many dead, and wild conspiracy theories and misinformation about the carnage soon follow.

It happened after Sandy Hook, after Parkland, after the Orlando nightclub shooting and after the deadly rampage earlier this month at a Buffalo grocery store. Within hours of Tuesday’s school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, another rash began as internet users spread baseless claims about the man named as the gunman and his possible motives.

Unfounded claims that the gunman was an immigrant living in the U.S. illegally, or transgender, quickly emerged on Twitter, Reddit and other social media platforms. They were accompanied by familiar conspiracy theories suggesting the entire shooting was somehow staged.

The claims reflect broader problems with racism and intolerance toward transgender people, and are an effort to blame the shooting on minority groups who already endure higher rates of online harassment and hate crimes, according to disinformation expert Jaime Longoria.

“It’s a tactic that serves two purposes: It avoids real conversations about the issue (of gun violence), and it gives people who don’t want to face reality a patsy, it gives them someone to blame,” said Longoria, director of research at the Disinfo Defense League, a non-profit that works to fight racist misinformation.

In the hours after the shooting, posts falsely claiming the gunman was living in the country illegally went viral, with some users adding embellishments, including that he was “on the run from Border Patrol.”

“He was an illegal alien wanted for murder from El Salvador,” read one tweet liked and retweeted hundreds of times. “This is blood on Biden’s hands and should have never happened.”

The man who authorities say carried out the shooting, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, is a U.S. citizen, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a news conference on Tuesday.

Other social media users seized on images of innocent internet users to falsely identify them as the gunman and claim he was transgender. On the online message board 4Chan, users liberally shared the photos and discussed a plan to label the gunman as transgender, without any evidence to back it up.

One post on Twitter, which has since been deleted, featured a photo of a trans woman holding a green bottle to her mouth, looking into the camera, headphones hanging from one ear.

“BREAKING NEWS: THE IDENTITY OF THE SHOOTER HAS BEEN REVEALED,” claimed the user, saying the shooter was a “FEMBOY” with a channel on YouTube.

None of that was true. The photo actually depicted a 22-year-old trans woman named Sabrina who lives in New York City. Sabrina, who requested her last name not be published due to privacy concerns, confirmed to The Associated Press that the photo was hers and also said she was not affiliated with the purported YouTube account.

Sabrina said she received harassing responses on social media, particularly messages claiming that she was the shooter. She responded to a number of posts spreading the image with the misidentification, asking for the posts to be deleted.

“This whole ordeal is just horrifying,” Sabrina told the AP.

Another photo that circulated widely showed a transgender woman with a Coca-Cola sweatshirt and a black skirt. A second photo showed the same woman wearing a black NASA shirt with a red skirt. These photos didn’t show the gunman either — they were of a Reddit user named Sam, who confirmed her identity to the AP on Wednesday. The AP is not using Sam’s last name to protect her privacy.

“It’s not me, I don’t even live in Texas,” Sam wrote in a Reddit post.

Authorities have released no information on the gunman’s sexuality or gender identification.

Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar fit both unfounded claims about Ramos in a single now-deleted tweet that also misspelled his name. “It’s a transsexual leftist illegal alien named Salvatore Ramos,” Gosar tweeted Tuesday night.

Gosar’s office did not return a message seeking comment.

In some cases, misinformation about mass shootings or other events are spread by well-intentioned social media users trying to be helpful. In other cases, it can be the work of grifters looking to start fake fundraisers or draw attention to their website or organization.

Then there are the trolls who seemingly do it for fun.

Fringe online communities, including on 4chan, often use mass shootings and other tragedies as opportunities to sow chaos, troll the public and push harmful narratives, according to Ben Decker, founder and CEO of the digital investigations consultancy Memetica.

“It is very intentional and deliberate for them in celebrating these types of incidents to also influence what the mainstream conversations actually are,” Decker said. “There’s a nihilistic desire to prove oneself in these types of communities by successfully trolling the public. So if you are able to spearhead a campaign that leads to an outcome like this, you’re gaining increased sort of in-group credibility.”

For the communities bearing the brunt of such vicious online attacks, though, the false blame stirs fears of further discrimination and violence.

Something as seemingly innocuous as a transphobic comment on social media can spark an act of violence against a transgender person, said Jaden Janak, a PhD candidate at the University of Texas and a junior fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies.

“These children and adults who were murdered yesterday were just living their lives,” Janak said Wednesday. “They didn’t know that yesterday was going to be their last day. And similarly, as trans people, that’s a fear that we have all the time.”

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Swenson reported from Seattle. Associated Press writers Angelo Fichera and Karena Phan contributed to this report.

More on the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas: https://apnews.com/hub/school-shootings

War surges Norway’s oil, gas profit. Now, it’s urged to help

By MARK LEWIS

May 28, 2022

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Johan Sverdrup oil field off the North Sea is shown on Oct. 9, 2018. Europe’s frantic search for alternatives to Russian natural gas has dramatically increased the demand — and price — for Norway's oil and gas. As the money pours in, Europe’s second-biggest natural gas supplier is fending off accusations that it’s profiting from the war in Ukraine. 

(Carina Johansen/NTB Scanpix via AP)

STAVANGER, Norway (AP) — Europe’s frantic search for alternatives to Russian energy has dramatically increased the demand — and price — for Norway’s oil and gas.

As the money pours in, Europe’s second-biggest natural gas supplier is fending off accusations that it’s profiting from the war in Ukraine.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, who is looking to the Scandinavian country to replace some of the gas Poland used to get from Russia, said Norway’s “gigantic” oil and gas profits are “indirectly preying on the war.” He urged Norway to use that windfall to support the hardest-hit countries, mainly Ukraine.

The comments last week touched a nerve, even as some Norwegians wonder whether they’re doing enough to combat Russia’s war by increasing economic aid to Ukraine and helping neighboring countries end their dependence on Russian energy to power industry, generate electricity and fuel vehicles.

Taxes on the windfall profits of oil and gas companies have been common in Europe to help people cope with soaring energy bills, now exacerbated by the war. Spain and Italy both approved them, while the United Kingdom’s government plans to introduce one. Morawiecki is asking Norway to go further by sending oil and profits to other nations.

Norway, one of Europe’s richest countries, committed 1.09% of its national income to overseas development — one of the highest percentages worldwide — including more than $200 million in aid to Ukraine. With oil and gas coffers bulging, some would like to see even more money earmarked to ease the effects of the war — and not skimmed from the funding for agencies that support people elsewhere.

“Norway has made dramatic cuts into most of the U.N. institutions and support for human rights projects in order to finance the cost of receiving Ukrainian refugees,” said Berit Lindeman, policy director of human rights group the Norwegian Helsinki Committee.

She helped organize a protest Wednesday outside Parliament in Oslo, criticizing government priorities and saying the Polish remarks had “some merits.”

“It looks really ugly when we know the incomes have skyrocketed this year,” Lindeman said.

Oil and gas prices were already high amid an energy crunch and have spiked because of the war. Natural gas is trading at three to four times what it was at the same time last year. International benchmark Brent crude oil burst through $100 a barrel after the invasion three months ago and has rarely dipped below since.

Norwegian energy giant Equinor, which is majority owned by the state, earned four times more in the first quarter compared with the same period last year.

The bounty led the government to revise its forecast of income from petroleum activities to 933 billion Norwegian kroner ($97 billion) this year — more than three times what it earned in 2021. The vast bulk will be funneled into Norway’s massive sovereign wealth fund — the world’s largest — to support the nation when oil runs dry. The government isn’t considering diverting it elsewhere.

Norway has “contributed substantial support to Ukraine since the first week of the war, and we are preparing to do more,” State Secretary Eivind Vad Petersson said by email.

He said the country has sent financial support, weapons and over 2 billion kroner in humanitarian aid “independently of oil and gas prices.”

European countries, meanwhile, have helped inflate Norwegian energy prices by scrambling to diversify their supply away from Russia. They have been accused of helping fund the war by continuing to pay for Russian fossil fuels.

That energy reliance “provides Russia with a tool to intimidate and to use against us, and that has been clearly demonstrated now,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, a former prime minister of Norway, told the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland.

Russia has halted natural gas to Finland, Poland and Bulgaria for refusing a demand to pay in rubles.

The 27-nation European Union is aiming to reduce reliance on Russian natural gas by two-thirds by year’s end through conservation, renewable development and alternative supplies.

The Ekofisk oil field off the North Sea, Oct. 24, 2019.

Europe is pleading with Norway, along with countries like Qatar and Algeria, for help with the shortfall. Norway delivers 20% to 25% of Europe’s natural gas, vs. Russia’s 40% before the war.

It is important for Norway to “be a stable, long-term provider of oil and gas to the European markets,” Deputy Energy Minister Amund Vik said. But companies are selling on volatile energy markets, and “with the high oil and gas prices seen since last fall, the companies have daily produced near maximum of what their fields can deliver,” he said.

Even so, Oslo has responded to European calls for more gas by providing permits to operators to produce more this year. Tax incentives mean the companies are investing in new offshore projects, with a new pipeline to Poland opening this fall.

“We are doing whatever we can to be a reliable supplier of gas and energy to Europe in difficult times. It was a tight market last fall and is even more pressing now,” said Ola Morten Aanestad, a Equinor spokesman.

The situation is a far cry from June 2020, when prices crashed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and Norway’s previous government issued tax incentives for oil companies to spur investment and protect jobs.

Combined with high energy prices, the incentives that run out at the end of the year have prompted companies in Norway to issue a slew of development plans for new oil and gas projects.

Yet those projects will not produce oil and gas until later this decade or even further in the future, when the political situation may be different and many European countries are hoping to have shifted most of their energy use to renewables.

By then, Norway is likely to face the more familiar criticism — that it is contributing to climate change.

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AP reporter Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Poland, contributed.