Rare wetland plant found in Arizona now listed as endangered



A rare plant that depends on wetlands for survival is now on the federal endangered species list, a designation that environmentalists say will boost efforts to protect the last free-flowing river in the desert Southwest.



JUNE 10,2022

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published the decision Friday in the federal register to list the Arizona eryngo as endangered and set aside nearly 13 acres (5 hectares) in southern Arizona as critical habitat.

The decision comes years after environmentalists petitioned and then sued to gain protection for the plant with cream-colored spherical flower heads. Only two populations are known in Arizona — near Tucson and in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.

The eryngo grows in ciénegas, a type of wetland fed by natural springs that come from the deep aquifer and nourish the San Pedro River. The plant's habitat and the flow of the San Pedro River have been threatened by over-pumping of groundwater in the region, climate change and drought.

“This gives us a new ability to protect it,” Robin Silver of the Center for Biological Diversity said of the river. “Protecting plants protects the aquifer itself.”


The plant also is found in the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora. It historically grew in southwestern New Mexico at Las Playas Springs but hasn't been documented there since 1851, the Fish and Wildlife Service said.

The critical habitat in Arizona lies in Pima and Cochise Counties and doesn't include another location where efforts have failed to reintroduce the eryngo. The agency said development still can occur in the areas, but anything that relies on federal funding or federal permits has to be analyzed to ensure it doesn't impact the eryngo's habitat.

“Partnerships will be central to addressing the threats to the Arizona eryngo and putting it on the path to recovery,” Amy Lueders, the Southwest regional director for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a statement.

The agency didn't immediately respond to an email Friday afternoon from The Associated Press.

The Arizona eryngo is part of the carrot family and can grow more than 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall. It relies on pollinators, such as butterflies and hummingbirds, to reproduce. Conservation efforts are underway to establish more populations of the eryngo.

Felicia Fonseca, The Associated Press

Washington Post fires reporter in center of online battle
Friday

NEW YORK (AP) — The Washington Post has fired Felicia Sonmez, who triggered a vigorous online debate this week over social media policy and public treatment of colleagues after she criticized a fellow reporter for retweeting an offensive joke.

The Post said Friday it would not comment on personnel issues. But a copy of a termination letter sent Thursday, accusing her of “insubordination, maligning your coworkers online and violating the Post's standards on workplace collegiality and inclusivity” was published on the Mediaite website and quoted in other news accounts.

The outspoken political writer, whose second stint at the Post began in 2018, declined comment Friday.

The incident began when Sonmez tweeted a screen shot of an offensive joke that a colleague, Dave Weigel, had sent out on Twitter, adding the comment: “Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed.” The Post suspended Weigel for a month for his retweet, according to published reports.

That prompted another reporter, Jose Del Real, to criticize Sonmez online. While saying Weigel had been wrong, Del Real called for compassion. “Rallying the Internet to attack him for a mistake he made doesn't actually solve anything,” he wrote.

That led to a contentious back-and-forth, with Sonmez accusing Del Real of attacking her.

As an online debate widened and drew in more people, Post executive editor Sally Buzbee sent out two memos calling on staff members to show respect for each other. The second, on Tuesday, was more stern: Buzbee wrote that “we do not tolerate colleagues attacking colleagues either face to face or online.”


As it consumed more attention, a handful of Post employees tweeted their support of the newspaper as a good place to work. Sonmez noted that those people were among the newspaper's best-paid stars, and suggested there has been a longstanding double standard in how social media policy is applied to them.

She also retweeted a screen shot that said Del Real had blocked her on Twitter, adding the comment, “So I hear the Washington Post is a collegial workplace.”

While it was consuming attention, another Post reporter, Lisa Rein, tweeted to Sonmez: “please stop.”

Sonmez, who worked at the Post in the early 2010s, left and rejoined, sued the Post and its top editors last year, charging discrimination in barring her from covering stories related to sexual assault after she had previously gone public as an assault victim herself.

In the termination letter, signed by Human Resources Officer Wayne Connell, the Post said that in questioning the motives of colleagues, Sonmez was undermining the Post's reputation for journalistic integrity and fairness.

“The same is true of your baseless derision directed to our policies and practices, and our commitment to a safe and supportive work environment,” he wrote.

Sonmez's union, the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, said it is committed to ensuring that workers are only disciplined with just cause, but that it did not comment on individual personnel issues.

One Post columnist, Karen Attiah, tweeted on Friday that Sonmez had “always been incredibly kind and supportive” of her, and had reached out when Attiah had been the target of online abuse.

David Bauder, The Associated Press

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-ethics-origin-and-development

COMING SOON; MASKING AND FLU SHOTS

Australia’s flu season is off to a wild start.    Is it a ‘precursor’ for Canada?

Aaron D'Andrea - Friday, June 10,2022

Influenza activity in Canada is declining following an unusual late-spring surge in the respiratory virus that has seen little spread during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Around this time of year, influenza cases in Canada usually are in steady decline following the fall and winter seasons, but a resurgence in early April when numerous COVID-19 measures lifted created an anomaly in that trend.

Read more:

As COVID-19 begins to diminish, more Canadians are getting sick with the flu

Flu cases have been low since the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, but with the pandemic easing in certain parts of the world, other respiratory viruses are beginning to reemerge and Canadians should be prepared, especially considering what’s happening in Australia.

“Their numbers of (flu) cases are higher than the five-year average for that sort of time of year. … So they're seeing quite a few cases of influenza-like illness and confirmed influenza,” said Dr. Susy Hota, an infectious diseases specialist with the University Health Network in Toronto.

“It's a precursor to what we could face.”

Read more:

Coronavirus prevention crushed Australia’s flu season. Can Canada expect the same?

Australia’s flu season, which typically runs from May to October, has long been looked at by Canadian health experts in preparation for flu season here, which usually begins anywhere between late October and early January.

In Australia, influenza cases have been on the rise since early March, and have exploded in recent weeks.

Between May 9 and May 22, there were 26,193 laboratory-confirmed influenza cases in Australia, which is more than three times higher than the previous reporting period between April 25 and May 8, the government said in its latest report. The country has logged 38,743 cases so far this year.

Video: AHS data shows recent spike in Alberta flu numbers

In Queensland, the regional government has made flu shots free with cases doubling every week in the area.

“We would expect cases to peak in August during a normal flu season, however statewide flu notifications have been doubling each week and continue to rise sharply with 4,230 new cases in the past week,” said Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath in a May 31 news release.

“The current data trend indicates we may surpass the peaks experienced in 2017 and 2019 flu seasons, but also that we may reach these numbers much earlier in this season.”

Read more:

Hardly any Canadians caught the flu last year. What can we expect this fall?

When Canada’s flu cases began to spike in the spring, COVID-19 measures designed to protect the community from the novel virus started to lift across the country as disease levels began to decline.

Those measures helped protect against other respiratory infections like influenza, which has been nearly non-existent in Canada since the onset of the pandemic, experts said.

So far this reporting season, which Ottawa indicates as starting on Aug. 29, Canada has logged 12,693 influenza cases as of May 28, it said in its June 3 report. On average, the country sees 46,539 cases recorded by this time of year.

When Global News reported on the spread of influenza at the beginning of May, Canada had logged 1,842 cases of influenza to date.

Read more:

Flu cases hit record lows during pandemic: researcher

Ottawa recorded 69 influenza detections in the 2020-21 flu season. Normally, around 52,000 cases are detected each year.

Aside from the easement of COVID-19 restrictions, part of the reason Canadians saw an increase in influenza cases was due to an uptick in testing, said Dr. Gerald Evans, an infectious disease specialist at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.

A total of 16,031 tests for influenza were performed in Canada between May 22 and May 28, the government said in its June 3 report, which was above the weekly pre-pandemic average of 3,197 tests.

Doctors warn flu season could return with a vengeance

Australia is doing more influenza testing this season as well with COVID-19 circulating alongside other respiratory illnesses, Evans said.

“By the time spring rolls around, typically in any other given year, the number of influenza tests we do is actually a lot smaller than what we were doing before the influenza season hit and during the early period (of the season),” he told Global News.

“What was happening this year is we were still doing a lot of COVID testing but … a lot of that involved testing for influenza, so the result of which we were doing a lot more tests this spring, which allowed us to see these influenza cases as they appeared.”

Read more:

COVID-19 will be with us for ‘foreseeable future’ PHAC says, warning of future waves

With an expected COVID-19 resurgence in the fall, it’s important for Canadians to stay up-to-date with their vaccinations as well as practise protections like masking and good hygiene designed to stop the spread of the coronavirus, Hota and Evans said.

“This summer we’ll probably get through without it being too much of a problem with influenza and hopefully COVID, unless something really shifts in terms of different variants, but both of these things are still active and we have to be aware about what could happen when we hit the cooler seasons,” Hota said.

“If you're using measures to prevent COVID-19, they’re probably going to be effective against influenza,” Evans said.

"If people can use those methods, even if they're not mandated, that's really going to help us keep those influenza numbers down.”

Another Manitoba First Nation finds anomalies near former residential school

Dave Baxter Local Journalism Initiative reporter - Thursday, June 9,2022

A Manitoba First Nation says they have discovered anomalies they believe could be unmarked graves of children who attended a residential school, and the news comes just days after another community said they planned to investigate almost 200 anomalies that have been discovered in that community.


© Provided by Winnipeg SunPine Creek First Nation (PCFN) Chief Derek Nepinak and PCFN council have confirmed that six anomalies in the ground have been discovered near the site of the former Pine Creek Residential School.

The Minegoziibe Nation, also commonly referred to as the Pine Creek First Nation (PCFN), announced on Wednesday a ground-penetrating radar search conducted by AltoMaxx which began in early May has now revealed six anomalies in the ground in PCFN.

The First Nation community, which sits approximately 110 kilometres north of the city of Dauphin, was formerly the home of the Pine Creek Residential School, which operated for close to 80 years between 1890 and 1969, and was torn down in 1972.

Discoveries of what is believed to be unmarked graves near former residential schools last year in both B.C. and Saskatchewan prompted many First Nations communities in Canada including PCFN to conduct ground searches, and PCFN said their searches have now uncovered the anomalies.

Sagkeeng First Nation finds 190 radar anomalies at residential school site

They now plan to continue investigating to see if they can figure out for sure what has happened beneath the ground and if there may be unmarked graves in the community, of children who attended the Pine Creek Residential School.

“Leadership has requested that AltoMaxx return for a more comprehensive search of the area in the hopes of confirming the data in more detail,” they said.

Additional searches in the community are now expected to get underway later this month, according to PCFN.

The announcement of the anomalies in PCFN comes just days after Sagkeeng First Nation Chief Derrick Henderson confirmed that 190 anomalies in the ground in Sagkeeng were recently discovered by searchers, also with Altomaxx, near the sight of the former Fort Alexander Residential School.

Henderson said on Tuesday that Sagkeeng officials are now looking into what their next steps will be to confirm the reasons for those anomalies.

The Winnipeg Sun reached out to PCFN Chief Derek Nepinak on Thursday for further comment, but did not hear back before Thursday’s press deadline.

— Dave Baxter is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the Winnipeg Sun. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

Targeted wastewater surveillance has a history of social and ethical concerns


Carolyn Prouse, Assistant Professor of Human Geography, Queen's University, Ontario, 

Mohammed Rafi Arefin, Assistant Professor, Geography, University of British Columbia,

Christopher Reimer, PhD Candidate, Geography, University of British Columbia -

The Conversation

 Thursday, June 9,2022

Wastewater surveillance involves testing sewage to obtain data about a population’s health. While the technique is decades old, it has gained recent international prominence for its ability to predict pandemic surges, detect new SARS-CoV-2 variants and provide useful data when traditional testing methods reach capacity. With its success, the field is expanding.

Wastewater surveillance increasingly plays a vital role, as governments around the world are abandoning communal and state-based modes of care, such as masking and clinical PCR testing. The United States recently established a National Wastewater Surveillance System, while the G7 health ministers pledged support for surveillance systems.

As applications of wastewater surveillance have grown, so have academic and public discussions about the ethics of using wastewater for surveillance.

Read more: Wastewater monitoring took off during the COVID-19 pandemic – and here's how it could help head off future outbreaks

Targeted surveillance

Ethical, social and political concerns over wastewater surveillance are not new.

But with the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, and the rapid adoption of wastewater-based epidemiology, these concerns take on renewed urgency, particularly as sewage is surveilled at increasingly smaller scales.

Wastewater surveillance is often celebrated for its unbiased, anonymous and non-intrusive nature. In the majority of today’s programs, surveillance is conducted at wastewater treatment plants or in sewersheds, where samples are aggregated to a point that many scientists, officials and research oversight committees argue pose minimal ethical risks or threats to privacy.

But in the past decade, wastewater surveillance has been increasingly deployed at smaller scales. This is referred to as targeted surveillance, or near-source tracking, and has occurred in a variety of settings.

These include college dormitories, long-term care facilities and workplaces across North America; law enforcement-targeted areas in China and Australia; correctional facilities throughout the U.S., including Oklahoma, Kentucky and Ohio; and migrant worker housing facilities in Singapore.

As human geographers studying sanitation, environmental surveillance and biological data, we are concerned that discussions surrounding wastewater surveillance ethics have paid little attention to the geography and history of near-source wastewater surveillance.

Surveillance history

In 2015, researchers outlined concerns about targeted wastewater surveillance in prisons, schools, workplaces and hospitals. Targeted surveillance of opioids in prisons’ sewage, according to the researchers, could hypothetically justify overly harsh measures such as banning visitations.

While today’s number of targeted applications are historically unprecedented, concerns related to their applications are not new. Preliminary findings from our historical research on wastewater surveillance show that early influential near-source studies caused researcher anxieties or revealed ethical oversights.

Related video: Wastewater surveillance to track COVID

In 1946, in a British resort town in North Devon, a scientist sought to locate the source of a typhoid outbreak. Tracking the source was urgent as it threatened not only the town’s health, but also its tourism-based economy.

Using sewage testing, the source of the outbreak was traced to the wife of a popular beachside ice-cream vendor. The published study referred to the town as “X,” fearing that findings would negatively impact tourism. Due to privacy concerns, the study warned that: “Except in the presence of an outbreak, it is probably unwise to pursue infection right back to the individual carrier.”

In 1962, a Yale scientist used similar near-source methods to study the efficacy of polio vaccination campaigns in Connecticut. Sewage from incarcerated youth held at a delinquent girls’ prison was one of five sites strategically selected for testing before and after vaccine administration. This study intimately linked the development of near-source tracking with experimentation on marginalized populations.

Later, in 1967, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison ran another vaccine efficacy sewage study to target a graduate student housing complex. They wrote that “by appropriate sampling one might be able to monitor a housing project, an apartment building, or perhaps even a single household.”

By 1973, the method was applied to migrant labour settings. The South African government set up a cholera surveillance system for the country’s gold mining industry. This system relied on the monitoring of sewage at barracks, followed by targeted, invasive rectal swabs. Wastewater surveillance therefore ensured that South African mining companies could continue to access cheap foreign labour.

These early cases demonstrate that the threats near-source tracking poses to individual and group privacy, as well as research ethics, date back decades. Wastewater surveillance is not apolitical or neutral. It has been developed, expanded and normalized in ways that have the potential to increase class, racial and gendered inequality.


© (Shutterstock)Historical case studies show that near-source testing of wastewater can target marginalized and vulnerable populations.

Ethics of wastewater surveillance

Those involved with wastewater surveillance are aware of these issues.

Experts in the field are especially concerned about the kinds of human-identifying genetic data that are found in wastewater. They are also concerned about what could be done with archived samples as analysis techniques rapidly advance.

Efforts underway to develop guidelines to address these concerns. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides guidelines for targeted wastewater surveillance. The WHO’s interim guidance argues that guidelines are needed, especially “when sampling relatively small and well-defined buildings or confined areas such as prisons, refugee camps or schools.”

Researchers at the Canadian Water Network argue that, when it comes to near-source wastewater surveillance, existing WHO public health guidelines must be considered and adapted to address a distinct set of bioethical concerns. These include the minimization or disclosure of risk, clear justification for the use of identifiable data, and commitments to not share data with agencies outside public health.

As private sector companies increasingly offer wastewater testing, the need for guidance and regulation becomes more urgent. The recent private sector involvement in wastewater surveillance may create or exacerbate ethical, legal and political issues.
Considered applications

We are not arguing against the use of wastewater surveillance. However, given the potential of harm from near-source tracking at sites with existing inequalities, it is crucial to consider the challenges, histories and long-standing concerns that arise from this method.

We should be having public conversations about what information is collected through wastewater surveillance, how and where it is gathered, who it identifies and who has control over its use and, potentially, its sale.

It is also imperative to question what other modes of care this kind of technology could displace, including state-funded testing, precautionary infection prevention and masking.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:
Testing sewage can give school districts, campuses and businesses a heads-up on the spread of COVID-19
COVID-19 clues in a community’s sewage: 4 questions answered about watching wastewater for coronavirus

Mohammed Rafi Arefin receives funding from the Urban Studies Foundation, the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.

Carolyn Prouse receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada and the Urban Studies Foundation.

Christopher Reimer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

DISARM, DEFUND, DISBAND

Thin-skinned blue line: Police fight against defunding, showing their true colours

Kevin Walby, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Winnipeg 

Shiri Pasternak, Assistant Professor of Criminology, Toronto Metropolitan University  

The Conversation

Thursday, June 9,2022

Since the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020 and the subsequent mass mobilizations for police defunding and abolition, the defund movement has continued to organize.

Has this work had an impact in Canada? Have there been successful challenges to reducing Canadian police budgets?

The answer is complicated and depends on how you define success.
Raised awareness

Some argue the mobilization and movement-building that has transpired — people brought together in campaigns for police abolition that reimagine community safety — is a huge success in and of itself.

  Abolition has entered the public consciousness like never before.

Dozens of books have been published by academics, lawyers and activists, building on the work of Black feminists in the United States and Canada who have long argued police perpetuate rather than reduce violence in our society.

There have been some modest successes in defunding police.

In Edmonton, city council voted to cut the 2022 police budget increase by $10.9 million and reallocate the money to social services.

In Halifax, a subcommittee of the Halifax Board of Police Commissioners has tabled a detailed and carefully researched report to city council on how the local police force could be gradually detasked and defunded.

When one looks further, however, what becomes apparent is a serious and growing counter-campaign. It’s perhaps the strongest indication of the movement’s success at undermining the sanctity of police budgets until now.


© (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

A young boy shows his support for police during a rally in Utah in September 2020.

Counter-tactics

Police have fought vigorously against the defund movement through threats and false conceits of impending violence if budgets are cut. They are co-opting calls for community safety, branding themselves as protectors in need of continuing or increased resources. They position themselves as innocent heroes under attack, and discredit those who critique them.

One strategy police use is an offensive and personal tactic of removing people from positions of influence if they support police defunding.

When Winnipeg City Coun. Sherri Rollins critiqued police racism in March 2020, an informal complaint was lodged against her by the police board alleging she lacked compliance with the city’s respectful workplace policies.

Similarly, in July 2020, another Winnipeg city councillor, Vivian Santos, discussed defunding and was ousted from the police board. Police removed her on alleged security grounds when background checks turned up a friend with a criminal record.

Fear-mongering

Scare tactics are another strategy.

According to their own data, only eight to 10 per cent of calls to police involve violence. Despite acknowledging that a large proportion of the calls they receive might be better managed by other kinds of workers, police maintain that reducing officers would be “naïve” and undermine community safety.

But which community is the police keeping safe? Instead of diverting funding to organizations with expertise in gender-based violence, anti-racism measures and mental health, police are demanding and receiving record funds to triage these programs themselves.

The Waterloo Region Police recently got a $12.3-million boost to run mental-health interventions while community organizations are starved through austerity and struggle to keep their doors open.

In Hamilton, Ont., activists from the Defund the Police Hamilton Coalition supported homeless people who were harassed daily by police and eventually violently evicted from their encampments.

The coalition demanded city council reallocate resources from police towards permanent housing, prioritizing the needs of the community over criminalizing homeless people. The organization’s antidote to scare tactics is to focus on prevention and the fight to protect people over property.

Police culture as social problem

Police suggest ostensible reforms, such as unconscious bias training and body cameras, as a promise to change the “culture of policing.” As criminologists have noted, such reforms increase police funding without demonstrable change, sidestepping the reality that policing is inherently violent.

With growing attention to their record of extra-judicial killings, systemic racism and harassment in their own forces and their failure to address gender-based violence, police are on the defence.

Take, for example, the aggressive response to criticism from police unions. The police brass may have to mince their words when responding to politicians and the public, but police unions often reveal their true colours.

In June 2020, the Regina Police Association defended a tweet suggesting that its cultural unit, which works with Indigenous people, would be the first to go should the police be defunded. “Choose wisely,” it threatened.

Also in June 2020, the Edmonton police chief similarly stated that defunding would harm diversity initiatives within policing. This threat to the employment of Black and Indigenous officers positioned the police as a benevolent force in the struggle for racial justice, obfuscating the colonial foundation and systemic racism of policing.

Yet the charge in Canada to defund the police is being led by Black and Indigenous leaders and is explicitly focused on racial injustice in the criminal justice system.


© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Thousands of people protest to defund the police in support of Black Lives Matter and social injustice in Toronto in June 2020.

What decreases harm?

The lack of “success” in police defunding is a sign of how vigorously police are fighting back, not a sign of a waning movement.

Over the past two years, police chiefs, police representatives and police unions have mobilized the public resources they have to fight against the defund movement. But an Ipsos poll found 50 per cent of Canadians under the age of 38 are interested in police defunding and abolition.

Defunding the police is not radical or irrational, contrary to what police might have the public believe.

What is radical and irrational is continuing to spend 15 to 30 per cent of municipal budgets on public policing. What is radical and irrational is continuing to use criminalization and criminal law to deal with social issues and interpersonal harms when we know that a punitive, carceral approach does not decrease harm or lead to more safety in our neighbourhhoods.

Instead, citizens need to think openly about ways to address harms in our communities and neighbourhoods and to reallocate funds from bloated police budgets to housing, mental health, addiction, employment, counselling, anti-violence education and more. Then we might truly live in a healthier, safer world.

At a time when many people are struggling to make ends meet, we must not let police tantrums get in the way of real safety and a fair share of resources for community and social development. Nor can we accept the criminalization of poverty and inequality, which is the current alibi for how public police and the whole penal system stays in business.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:
Public police are a greedy institution

Defunding the police is a move towards community safety

Shiri Pasternak receives funding from Social Science and Humanities Research Council.

Kevin Walby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Humanistic Criminology: Roots from Peter Kropotkin - WMU's ...

https://scholarworks.wmich.edu › cgi › viewcontent

PDF

by LL Tifft · 1985 · Cited by 8 — Kropotkin's extensive writings on criminological ... According to Kropotkin, most analyses of ... all the paraphernalia of so-called justice; for the.

 

Facebook fails again to detect hate speech in ads

Thursday, June 9,2022

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The test couldn't have been much easier — and Facebook still failed.

Facebook and its parent company Meta flopped once again in a test of how well they could detect obviously violent hate speech in advertisements submitted to the platform by the nonprofit groups Global Witness and Foxglove.

The hateful messages focused on Ethiopia, where internal documents obtained by whistleblower Frances Haugen showed that Facebook's ineffective moderation is “literally fanning ethnic violence,” as she said in her 2021 congressional testimony. In March, Global Witness ran a similar test with hate speech in Myanmar, which Facebook also failed to detect.

The group created 12 text-based ads that used dehumanizing hate speech to call for the murder of people belonging to each of Ethiopia’s three main ethnic groups — the Amhara, the Oromo and the Tigrayans. Facebook’s systems approved the ads for publication, just as they did with the Myanmar ads. The ads were not actually published on Facebook.

This time around, though, the group informed Meta about the undetected violations. The company said the ads shouldn't have been approved and pointed to the work it has done to catch hateful content on its platforms.

A week after hearing from Meta, Global Witness submitted two more ads for approval, again with blatant hate speech. The two ads, written in Amharic, the most widely used language in Ethiopia, were approved.

Meta said the ads shouldn't have been approved.

“We’ve invested heavily in safety measures in Ethiopia, adding more staff with local expertise and building our capacity to catch hateful and inflammatory content in the most widely spoken languages, including Amharic,” the company said in an emailed statement, adding that machines and people can still make mistakes. The statement was identical to the one Global Witness received.

“We picked out the worst cases we could think of," said Rosie Sharpe, a campaigner at Global Witness. "The ones that ought to be the easiest for Facebook to detect. They weren’t coded language. They weren’t dog whistles. They were explicit statements saying that this type of person is not a human or these type of people should be starved to death.”

Meta has consistently refused to say how many content moderators it has in countries where English is not the primary language. This includes moderators in Ethiopia, Myanmar and other regions where material posted on the company's platforms has been linked to real-world violence.

In November, Meta said it removed a post by Ethiopia’s prime minister that urged citizens to rise up and “bury” rival Tigray forces who threatened the country's capital.

In the since-deleted post, Abiy said the "obligation to die for Ethiopia belongs to all of us.” He called on citizens to mobilize “by holding any weapon or capacity.”

Abiy has continued to post on the platform, though, where he has 4.1 million followers. The U.S. and others have warned Ethiopia about “dehumanizing rhetoric” after the prime minister described the Tigray forces as “cancer” and “weeds” in comments made in July 2021.

“When ads calling for genocide in Ethiopia repeatedly get through Facebook’s net — even after the issue is flagged with Facebook — there’s only one possible conclusion: there’s nobody home," said Rosa Curling, director of Foxglove, a London-based legal nonprofit that partnered with Global Witness in its investigation. “Years after the Myanmar genocide, it is clear Facebook hasn’t learned its lesson.”

Barbara Ortutay, The Associated Press

THE STATE HAD TO SAVE CAPITALI$M

Freeland says Canada’s economic reputation was at risk, prompting Emergencies Act

Sean Boynton - Yesterday 
Global News


NDP MP challenges Freeland on answers given during Emergencies Act committee hearing

The risk to Canada's economic reputation was behind the federal government's invocation of the Emergencies Act to deter the "Freedom Convoy" blockades across the country, the deputy prime minister and finance minister repeatedly told MPs Tuesday.

But Chrystia Freeland — the highest-ranking minister yet to appear before the special committee investigating the government's unprecedented use of emergency powers — would not share specific data that would have been available at the time the Act was invoked, which would have shown the protests were damaging the national economy.

"It was clear to me that with each passing hour, our economic reputation with the United States as a reliable trading partner and as a reliable investment destination was being damaged," she said.

Read more:

‘Freedom Convoy’ caught police, institutions off-guard, ex-Ottawa police chief says

She pointed to comments made by Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin in early February, when protesters blocked the key Ambassador Bridge border crossing between her state and Ontario, who said the blockades made the case for more Buy American policies to end the reliance on foreign trade — including with Canada.

"This is so dangerous to Canada, colleagues," Freeland said.

"I was deeply, deeply concerned that these illegal blockades and this illegal occupation would provoke a whole new wave of protectionism and deeply erode our trading relationship with the United States. That was a real economic threat."

Such a threat could not be specifically felt in the moment, the minister said, but rather "in the years ahead."

Freeland says Ottawa convoy was ‘agonizing’ time for Canadians, government

That didn't sit well with some members of the committee, including NDP MP Matthew Green, who pressed Freeland for relevant economic data that would have influenced the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act.

Their exchange grew testy as Freeland disputed Green's assertion that reputation and "feelings" don't matter when it comes to the economy, and specifically its impact on the government's decision-making.

"I'm not talking about pontification, I'm talking about facts here," Green said at one point.

"I don't believe I'm pontificating," Freeland replied. "The economic impact was absolutely, clearly there."

"That's not good enough," Green shot back.

Read more:

Mendicino was ‘misunderstood’ when he said police asked for the Emergencies Act: official

Some of the economic data figures Freeland pointed to were released after the last trucks were removed from outside Parliament, including Ottawa city council's estimation that the blockade there cost the city at least $30 million.

Experts predicted at the time of the blockades that the economic impacts could be felt for months afterwards, without giving specific figures.

Yet data showed the blockades at the Ambassador Bridge and Coutts, Alta., border crossings had little impact on cross-border trade, with truckers simply being rerouted to other nearby ports of entry.

While she could not speak to police actions and their needs at the time, Freeland said she was speaking daily with Canadian business leaders and owners who were raising concerns about the economic impact of the blockades.

"These were not people who hyperventilate," she said. "These were people who could really see every day their businesses being eroded, and therefore the national economy."

Throughout her appearance, a few MPs from the opposition parties accused Freeland of not providing clear answers to questions, with Green at one point accusing the minister of being "almost contemptible."

Conservatives continue to hammer Liberals over the invocation of Emergencies Act

Freeland did speak to the controversial financial measures carried out under the Act, which included directing banks to freeze some protesters' accounts, as well as those of any donors to the "Freedom Convoy" movement.

She said any decisions to freeze accounts were made independently by financial institutions independent without "political direction," based on information received from law enforcement and internal data.

The government has said more than 200 bank accounts worth $7.8 million were frozen while the Act was in place. Any affected accounts were unfrozen once the Act was lifted on Feb. 23.

Freeland told the committee that RCMP never provided a list of donors to financial institutions to be targeted under the emergency measures. She later added that court orders would have taken too long to have the desired effect, which was to cut off the "Freedom Convoy" movement and deter future blockades.

Freeland repeatedly said invoking the Emergencies Act was a "last resort" for the government to crack down on the blockades and give police the necessary powers to remove protesters and their vehicles after weeks of inaction.

Read more:

Ottawa interim police chief Steve Bell didn’t ask feds to invoke Emergencies Act

"It was an agonizing time, I think, for many Canadians, and it was an agonizing time for everyone in government, because we had to balance some serious things against each other," she said.

"We did not invoke the Emergencies Act lightly. That's why it took some time."

Following Freeland's appearance, Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair told the committee it took several days for the "Freedom Convoy" movement to rise to the level of a national emergency, prompting his ministry and others to step in.

He also tried to clarify that the government never received a recommendation from police to invoke the Emergencies Act.

Marco Mendicino, Blair's successor as public safety minister, has come under fire for telling the committee that police asked for the government to invoke the Act, despite the heads of the RCMP and Ottawa police saying otherwise.

Conservatives call on Marco Mendicino to resign

"(Police) were clearly having difficulties in affecting the lawful purpose of restoring public order in the city of Ottawa, protecting the people of Ottawa, to opening up those vital trade corridors (under existing laws)," he said. "I needed to understand why.

"One of the considerations the government has to consider before invoking the Act is to ensure that no other law of Canada can be applied to these circumstances. So I think it was absolutely essential and appropriate to consult with law enforcement."

Mendicino has used similar language to try and clarify his earlier comments, but that has not stopped Conservatives from calling for his resignation. The minister has defended his actions.

— with files from the Canadian Press

Lauren Boebert Says the Romans Killed Jesus Because He Didn't Have an AR-15

Ross A. Lincoln - TheWrap



Over the weekend, right wing Colorado Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert appeared at a conservative Christian event in Colorado Springs, where she said… a lot of very disturbing stuff. But we're here to focus not on her apparent wish that God kill Joe Biden. Instead, we're here to focus on a very weird, uh, joke Boebert told about Jesus Christ during her appearance.

Boebert apparently thinks Jesus should have used modern assault weapons to avoid being crucified by the Romans. No really.

Boebert was attempting to mock people who would like to put an end to all the child murders her preferred policies are causing, and that's when she said this:

"On Twitter, a lot of the little Twitter trolls, they like to say 'oh, Jesus didn't need an AR-15, how many AR-15s do you think Jesus would have had?' Well, he didn't have enough to keep his government from killing him."

Seth Meyers Apologizes to Lauren Boebert for Mistakenly Thinking 'AR' Stood for Assault Rifle: 'I'm Sorry…for Not Giving a F–' (Video)

Just in case you're having a hard time believing this actually happened, here's the video:

Now, we aren't theologians, and this writer isn't even a Christian. But it's pretty well known that the defining theological concept of Christianity is that Jesus, who if you're a Christian you believe is also both God and the son of God at the same time, willingly allowed himself to be tortured and then executed by crucifixion as a sacrifice to atone for the sins of humanity. Suffice to say, Jesus going full Rambo on the Romans kind of achieves a different outcome.

But honestly? Sounds like one hell of a movie, uh, no pun intended.

 

Survivor speaks out after bombshell Southern Baptist abuse report

Nikki Battiste - CBS

Delegates from the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, met Tuesday to choose new leaders and confront shocking allegations of sexual abuse.

© CBS News0614-en-survivor1.png

A recent 288-page report by independent firm Guidepost Solutions alleged that the Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee was "stonewalling" survivors of sexual abuse. After the report, Southern Baptist leaders released a secret database listing accused pastors and church staff spanning decades.

At Tuesday's meeting, Pastor Rolland Slade, outgoing chair of the Southern Baptist Convention's Executive Committee, responded to survivors: "We need to fix what we've done. We need to apologize. We need to be grateful for what the report has exposed so that we can correct it."

David Pittman, one of those survivors, told CBS News that the music minister at his Southern Baptist church in Georgia raped him repeatedly, beginning when he was 12 in the 1980

"It started with sleepovers," he said. "And you would have two or three or six boys, that's when the abuse would take place."

He said Frankie Wiley sexually abused him until he was 15.

"It would be oral, digital insertion, you name it, it occurred," he said. "I froze."

More than two decades later, Pittman reported Wiley to police, but the statute of limitations had expired so he says he then told numerous church leaders.

"I was told, unceremoniously, 'Be quiet. Go away. There's nothing we can do for you. But we would like to pray for you,'" he said.

In a 2019 email that Pittman provided to CBS News, Wiley did confess to sexually assaulting five boys, which was corroborated by the independent report.

Yet, Wiley is still employed at a church, playing the keyboard at Sunday's service at Georgia's Trinity Community Church, which recently cut ties with the Southern Baptist Convention.

When asked what he would say to parishioners at that church, Pittman said: "Wiley is a professional liar. He is a sexual predator. Your children are not safe. Please keep them as far away from him as possible."

CBS News reached out to Wiley and Trinity Community Church, but did not hear back. Wiley has never been charged with a crime.