Argentine scientists discover fungus that can decontaminate cigarette butts

Online News EditorAugust 19, 2022

 

By Augusto Morel

Buenos Aires, Aug 19 (EFE).- Scientists in Buenos Aires have discovered a fungus that can decontaminate cigarette butts — one of the most common waste found on Argentina’s beaches.

Although small and often gone unnoticed, one cigarette butt can contaminate up to 40 liters of water, making it a severe pollutant of the ocean.

“It all started through an NGO that cleans beaches and who didn’t know what to do with all that toxic material, so they contacted us to find a solution,” biologist at the Experimental Mycology laboratory of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), Pilar Núñez, tells Efe.

The most polluting elements in a cigarette are tar and nicotine, which remain active in the butt even after combustion. The only way to decontaminate it is through bioremediation — a process that uses living organisms to eliminate toxins from a material.

Scientists at UBA have found a fungi species that can be used in the bioremediation of cigarette butts. White-rot fungi grow on tree trunks in the jungle of the Misiones region on the Argentinean coast and digest moist wood, causing it to rot.

“We isolated the fungi and brought them back to the lab to begin treatment. They can degrade and feed on wood or paper, and when they come into contact with cigarette butts they eat the cellulose acetate of the filter, cleaning the toxic environment to defend themselves and survive,” Núñez explains.

The project will soon be tested on a pilot plant that could bring the environmental recycling technology to the industrial level.

“If I manage to generate a system that removes toxic waste from the environment, you have a free hand to reuse it,” the biologist says.

While the scientists have succeeded in finding the solution to decontaminate cigarette butts, they hope to be able to expand the project for other toxic materials.

“This research can open a lot of doors,” Raúl Itria, researcher at the National Institute of Industrial Technology (INTI), says.

White-rot fungi can also absorb heavy metals and metalloids such as chromium and arsenic, which are harmful to the environment and human health, he explains.

But the scientists are facing challenges and struggling to find funding to expand the project.

“Science in Argentina is difficult, we have a very high level and good universities, but we have been struggling for many years because of the situation we are living in,” Dr. Laura Levin, head of the Experimental Mycology laboratory at UBA, tells Efe referring to the economic crisis Argentina is currently facing.

Funds for the research projects are accessed through annual competitions. The maximum amounts for next year reach up to $4,400 dollars, which barely covers the necessary expenses of the trials.

“Fortunately, there are young, eager people who with a bigger budget, could achieve much more,” Dr. Levin says. EFE

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China’s booming pet economy sparks rise in funeral services

Online News EditorAugust 12, 2022

 

Beijing, Aug 12 (EFE).- China’s booming pet economy has sparked a rise in funeral services for animals, with pets also expected to be honored as part of Friday’s Ghost Festival celebrations.

The festival is observed on the 15th night of the seventh month according to the Chinese lunar calendar when, according to popular culture, the spirits of ancestors awaken to roam the world of mortals.

Families mark the event by burning incense and fake money for ancestors to enjoy in the afterlife and hosting plentiful banquets to honor the dead.

And it is not just humans being honored. With some 70 million pet owners, funeral rituals and commemorative events for pets have increased in recent years.

BOOMING SECTOR

By late 2020, China’s pet market had reached $44 billion and is expected to swell to $64 billion by 2023, according to a report by IResearch Consulting Group.

Within the pet economy, there are around 1,400 companies offering services and products which include cremation and funeral services for the three million animals that die each year in China.

“We receive between 800 and 1,000 reservations every year,” Wang Yinghao, co-founder of Beijing-based company Rainbow Planet, tells Efe.

Rainbow Planet’s funeral services cost between $89 and $890, depending on the weight and breed of the animal.

Customers typically book them “a day after their pet dies,” Wang adds.

A MEMBER OF THE FAMILY

Pet funeral services originated in Japan and first emerged in China in 2005, Liu Hongyan, a researcher with the Institute of Law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was quoted as saying by local media.

The most common method of disposing of animal remains is cremation, which not only prevents the spread of bacteria but also provides owners with a dignified way to say goodbye.

“These services are very comfortable. Our dogs, who love us unconditionally, deserve a dignified way to undertake their last trip and the ceremony serves as a consolation for the family, who will have no regrets,” Zhu Xiaopo, a user of dog funeral services, said on social media.

But not everyone agrees. “Bury it and that’s it, what need is there for everything to become a consumer item?” another person commented.

One of the issues the young and rapidly expanding sector faces is the absence of a regulatory authority and a lack of training for workers in the industry, something Liu says could be solved by getting the pet industry to help inform government guidelines and regulations for the sector.

“In view of the rapid development of the pet funeral industry in China, the regulatory authorities should accept consumer demands and respect that development while regulating unreasonable business practices in a timely manner,” Liu said, according to the state-backed China Daily newspaper.EFE

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Police file terrorism charges against Pakistan’s former leader Imran Khan

Khan’s political party published online videos showing supporters surrounding his home to potentially stop police from reaching it.

Former Prime Minister Imran Khan has held mass rallies seeking to return to office.Arif Ali / AFP - Getty Images


Aug. 22, 2022, / Source: Associated Press
By Mushtaq Yusufzai and Associated Press

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Police have filed terrorism charges against former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, authorities said Monday, escalating political tensions in the country as the ousted premier holds mass rallies seeking to return to office.

The terrorism charges come over a speech Khan gave in Islamabad on Saturday in which he vowed to sue police officers and a female judge and alleged that a close aide had been tortured after his arrest.

Khan himself appeared to still be free and had not immediately addressed the police charge sheet being lodged against him. Khan’s political party — Tehreek-e-Insaf, now in the opposition — published online videos showing supporters surrounding his home to potentially stop police from reaching it.

A senior party leader, Shaukat Yousafzai, told NBC News that hundreds of policemen had gathered outside Khan's residence in Islamabad but not yet arrested him. He said thousands of party workers had arrived in the capital and many others were on the way to defend their leader.

“He is a law abiding citizen of the country and doesn’t want to violate the law but if the government wanted to arrest him under same charges of sedition, then it should also take action against all other politicians accused of sedition charges,” Yousafzai said.

Tehreek-e-Insaf warned that it will hold nationwide rallies if Khan is arrested.
by TaboolaSponsored Stories

Supporters of Imran Khan's party gathered outside his residence in Islamabad on Monday. Anjum Naveed / AP

Under Pakistan’s legal system, police file what is known as a first information report about charges against an accused person to a magistrate judge, who allows the investigation to move forward. Typically, police then arrest and question the accused.

The report against Khan includes testimony from Magistrate Judge Ali Javed, who described being at the Islamabad rally on Saturday and hearing Khan criticize the inspector-general of Pakistan’s police and another judge. Khan went on to reportedly say: “You also get ready for it, we will also take action against you. All of you must be ashamed.”

Khan could face several years in prison from the new charges, which accuse him of threatening police officers and the judge. However, he’s not been detained on other lesser charges levied against him in his recent campaigning against the government.

The Pakistani judiciary also has a history of politicization and taking sides in power struggles between the military, the civilian government and opposition politicians, according to the Washington-based advocacy group Freedom House.

Khan came to power in 2018, promising to break the pattern of family rule in Pakistan. His opponents contend he was elected with help from the powerful military, which has ruled the country for half of its 75-year history.

In seeking Khan’s ouster earlier this year, the opposition had accused him of economic mismanagement as inflation soars and the Pakistani rupee plummets in value. The parliament’s no-confidence vote in April that ousted Khan capped months of political turmoil and a constitutional crisis that required the Supreme Court to step in. Meanwhile, it appeared the military similarly had cooled to Khan.

Khan alleged without providing evidence that the Pakistani military took part in a U.S. plot to oust him after he denied the U.S. bases in Pakistan.

Washington, the Pakistani military and the government of Khan’s successor, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, have all denied that. Meanwhile, Khan has been carrying out a series of mass rallies trying to pressure Sharif’s government.

In his latest speech Sunday night at a rally in the city of Rawalpindi outside of Islamabad, Khan said so-called “neutrals” were behind the recent crackdown against his party. He has in the past used the phrase “neutrals” for the military.

On Sunday, the internet-access advocacy group NetBlocks said internet services in the country blocked access to YouTube after Khan broadcast a live speech on the platform despite a ban issued by the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority.
Mushtaq Yusufzai

 

Pakistan court grants pre-arrest bail to former PM Imran Khan

Online News EditorAugust 22, 2022

Islamabad, Aug 22 (EFE).- Pakistan’s High Court of Islamabad granted Monday a three-day pre-arrest bail to former Prime Minister Imran Khan in a case involving terrorism charges, his lawyer said.

“The Islamabad High Court has awarded a three-day protective bail to Imran Khan. We said in the court that he is ready to surrender himself before the law,” Khan’s lawyer Faisal Chaudhry told EFE.

“During these three days he will appear at the Anti-terrorism Court and face the charges against him,” he added.

The government registered a case against Khan on Sunday under the Anti-Terrorism Act, following a speech – telecast live on TV – in which he threatened to register a case against police officials for “torturing” party leader Shahbaz Gill in custody.

Khan had also threatened Judge Zeba Chaudhry for approving the police’s request for a second physical remand despite allegedly knowing that Gill was subjected to “torture” during the first remand.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) has issued a notification banning the live telecast of Khan’s speeches.

PEMRA said the former prime minister has been continuously “leveling baseless allegations and spreading hate speech through his provocative statements against state institutions and officers which is prejudicial to the maintenance of law and order.”

Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), has said it will challenge the ban in court.

Addressing a huge public rally in Rawalpindi on Sunday, Khan leveled a series of allegations against the “neutrals,” referring to the military establishment.

Khan claimed police officials told him that they received orders from the “top,” or the military, to inflict torture on Gill.

The former prime minister also warned the army saying “do whatever you want to do, I will gather my whole nation.”

PTI supporters converged at Khan’s residence in Bani Gala neighborhood in Islamabad on Sunday night, to confront the police in case they came to arrest him.

Moreover, PTI leaders have warned that arresting Khan would be like crossing a “red line,” and would lead to the entire country coming to a standstill.

Khan has accused the United States of orchestrating his ouster from power through a vote of no-confidence in April, for his Russia visit during the start of its invasion of Ukraine. Washington and the Pakistan opposition have denied the charge.

Lately, he has urged the powerful military establishment in Pakistan to play a role in paving way for fresh elections in the country, as he claims the current government does not enjoy the people’s support. EFE

Pakistan bans live broadcast of former PM Imran Khan’s speeches

Online News EditorAugust 21, 2022

 

Islamabad, Aug 21 (EFE).- Pakistan’s media regulator introduced a ban on live broadcasts of Imran Khan’s speeches on Sunday sparking outcry among the former prime minister’s supporters.

The move came hours after Khan criticized the government during a rally in Islamabad.

​​In his speech, which was broadcast live, Khan warned he would bring lawsuits against high-ranking police officers and magistrate Zeba Chaudhry over the detention of his assistant Shahbaz Gill.

Gill was detained on sedition charges on August 10 and was allegedly tortured while in police custody.

Khan’s political party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), said the veto by Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) was a sign of fascism.

“Imported Fascists are trying to ban Imran Khan’s speeches on TV,” the PTI tweeted before urging supporters to subscribe to their YouTube channel.

“They have lost the battle completely and are now using fascism” Khan’s party warned.

The regulator said in a notice sent to channels Saturday that Khan, in his speeches, was “continuously alleging state institutions by leveling baseless allegations and spreading hate speech through his provocative statements against state institutions and officers,” Pakistani media reported on Sunday.

A spokesperson for former Prime Minister Fawad Chaudhry said that the ban had been imposed out of fear of Khan’s popular interventions.

PEMRA added that only pre-recorded Khan speeches would be aired from now on.

Gill, a close associate of Khan, faces sedition charges over comments he made on a television channel.

The politician was admitted to a state hospital in Islamabad this week after his health deteriorated while in police detention in neighboring Rawalpindi.

According to the PTI leader, Gill was subjected to physical torture, including “sexual abuse” while in police custody.

The move against Khan comes after a report was filed Saturday at an Islamabad police station over his speech inciting people to rebel against state institutions, according to police sources.

A police station official told Efe, on condition of anonymity, that “senior officers” would decide whether to file a case against Khan based on the report.

Khan was ousted from power in a vote of no confidence in April,a move orchestrated by incumbent Shehbaz Sharif. EFE

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Dr. Oz should be worried – voters punish ‘carpetbaggers,’ and new research shows why

Charles R. Hunt, Boise State University
2022/8/20 
THE CONVERSATION 
© The Moderate Voice


A Fetterman campaign billboard on the New Jersey/Pennsylvania border.
Fetterman campaign/Twitter

Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate race between Democrat John Fetterman and Republican Mehmet Oz has garnered a lot of media attention recently, thanks to the Fetterman campaign’s relentless trolling of his opponent, mainly for being a resident of neighboring New Jersey rather than the state he’s running to represent.

Fetterman has run ad after ad using Oz’s own words to highlight his deep Jersey roots. His campaign started a petition to nominate Oz for the New Jersey Hall of Fame. Fetterman even enlisted very-Jersey celebrities like Snooki of “Jersey Shore” to draw attention to his charge that Oz is a carpetbagger in the Pennsylvania race: a candidate with no authentic connection to an area, who moved there for the sole purpose of political ambition.

Fetterman’s attacks against Oz may be entertaining, but they aren’t unprecedented. Such characterizations can be helpful in elections.

Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, won a tight race in Montana in 2018 in part by dubbing his out-of-town opponent “Maryland Matt.” Democrat Joe Manchin has held on for so long to a Senate seat in a deep red state by “play[ing] up his West Virginia roots.” Meanwhile, Maine Democrat (and native Rhode Islander) Sara Gideon got caught – and derided for – sporting a Patagonia fleece in a state that famously is home to L.L. Bean. She lost to Maine native Susan Collins in the 2020 Senate race even as Joe Biden carried the state by nine points.

Given how heavily defined modern congressional elections are by partisanship and by the increasing focus on national rather than local issues, is this kind of messaging actually effective as a campaign strategy?

Do voters really still punish carpetbaggers and reward candidates with deep ties to their districts?


Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat, talks with state basketball champions at the Crow Fair in Crow Agency, Montana, on Aug. 19, 2018.
Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call

Some politics is local

New research from my upcoming book, “Home Field Advantage,” shows that the answer is an emphatic “yes.”

In the book, I created a “Local Roots Index” for each modern member of the U.S. House of Representatives to measure how deeply rooted they are in the geography of the districts they represent. The index pulled from decades of geographic data about members’ pre-Congress lives, including whether they were born in their home district, went to school there or owned a local business.

High index scores meant members had most or all of these life experiences within the boundaries of their district; low scores meant they had little to no local life experience in their district.

I found that members of Congress with higher Local Roots Index scores perform far better in their elections than their more “carpetbagging” colleagues without local roots in their districts. Deeply rooted members are twice as likely to run unopposed in their primary elections, and they significantly outperform their party’s presidential nominees in their districts. They win more elections by bigger margins and don’t need to spend as much money to notch their victories.

Why do voters care about roots?

Why do voters respond positively to deeply rooted candidates and negatively to their carpetbagging counterparts?

One explanation is that deep roots offer candidates a number of practical campaign benefits. A deeply rooted candidate tends to have more intimate knowledge of the district, including its electorate, its economy and industries, its unique culture and its political climate. Deeply rooted candidates also enjoy naturally higher name recognition in the community, more extensive social and political networks and greater access to local donors and vendors for their campaigns.

Other work has theorized that local roots help candidates tap into a shared identity with their voters that is less tangible but meaningful. Scholars like Kal Munis have shown that when voters have strong psychological attachments to a particular place, it has major impacts on voting behavior. And in a recent survey I conducted with David Fontana, we found that voters consistently rated homegrown U.S. Senate candidates as more relatable and trustworthy, and cast votes for them at higher rates.

Just as you’d trust a true born-and-raised local to give you advice about where to eat in town over someone who just moved there, so too do voters trust deeply rooted candidates to represent them in Washington.
‘Intimate sympathy’ with the voters


Founding father James Madison believed that political representatives should have an ‘intimate sympathy’ with the people.
DeAgostini/Getty Images

Political science tells us that voters care about candidates’ roots, and we know a bit about why. But should they? Deep ties to a place may create a sense of connection and familiarity that voters appreciate, but at what cost?

On the one hand, it’s natural to wonder whether the flood of media and campaign attention to Oz’s residency status is distracting from a discussion of more pressing issues like the economy, climate change and the state of American democracy. There’s also a reasonable concern that a healthy attachment to one’s home place could cross the line into outright nativism and unfair vilification of “outsiders” and immigrants.

On the other hand, the framers of the Constitution devised – for better or worse – a geographically focused system of elections and representation. Party is important, but places are different from each other even if they have similar partisan makeups – think San Francisco and New York City – and have different needs. This means having members of Congress who have lived in and understand the place they are elected to represent.

As a result, shared local ties could also serve as a line of defense against steadily declining levels of trust in government and politicians. Perhaps locally rooted representation can help imbue a sense of what James Madison and Alexander Hamilton called an “intimate sympathy” with the people – and reinvigorate faith in public officials and institutions.

Charles R. Hunt, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Boise State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

THIRD WORLD U$A

Polio was almost eradicated. This year it staged a comeback

A pop-up polio vaccination site set up by county health department in Pomona, New York, July 22. Public health officials had a simple message on Monday for parents concerned by the discovery of poliovirus in New York City... (Victor J. Blue / The New York Times)More

By Apoorva Mandavilli
The New York Times
Aug. 19, 2022 

At the beginning of this year, there was a thrum of excitement among global health experts: Eradication of polio, a centuries-old foe that has paralyzed legions of children around the globe, seemed tantalizingly close.

Pakistan, one of only two countries where wild poliovirus still circulates, had not recorded cases in more than a year. Afghanistan had reported only four.

But eradication is an uncompromising goal. The virus must disappear from every part of the world and stay gone, regardless of wars, political disinterest, funding gaps or conspiracy theories. New signs of the virus in a single country can derail the effort.

In polio’s case, there were several ominous setbacks.

Malawi in February announced its first case in 30 years, a 3-year-old girl who became paralyzed after infection with a virus that appeared to be from Pakistan. Pakistan itself went on to report 14 cases, eight of them in a single month last spring.

In March, Israel reported its first case since 1988. Then, in June, British authorities declared an “incident of national concern” when they discovered the virus in sewage. By the time New York City detected the virus in wastewater last week, polio eradication seemed as elusive as ever.

“It’s a poignant and stark reminder that polio-free countries are not really polio-risk free,” said Dr. Ananda Bandyopadhyay, deputy director for polio at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest supporter of polio eradication efforts.

The virus is always “a plane ride away,” he added.

Polio is a highly contagious and sometimes deadly enemy, capable of ravaging the nervous system and causing paralysis within hours. Those who recover could relapse and become seriously ill years later.

The virus multiplies in the intestine for weeks and could spread through feces or contaminated food or water — for example, when an infected child uses the toilet, neglects washing hands and then touches food.

For decades, the virus terrorized families, causing paralysis among more than 15,000 American children each year and hundreds of thousands more worldwide. Its retreat is a triumph of vaccination. After the first vaccine arrived in 1955, the number of cases dropped precipitously, and by 1979, the United States was declared polio-free.

Although the United States and Britain have high immunization rates, they also have pockets of low immunity that allow the virus to flourish. In those communities, all unvaccinated people — not just children — are at risk. If polio continues to spread in the United States for a year, the country may lose its polio-free status under World Health Organization guidelines.

Aid organizations first aspired to eradicate polio in 1988 and poured billions of dollars into the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a consortium of six partners, including the Gates Foundation, WHO, and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Despite the recent cases, the progress is unmistakable: Global cases of polio have fallen by 99% — from 350,000 cases of paralysis in 1988 to about 240 so far this year.

That success “is both a miraculous thing and a thing that’s taken way, way longer than people expected,” Bill Gates, who has taken a pointed interest in polio, said in an interview in February. “Eradications are super hard, and they rarely should be undertaken.”

Ending polio has been particularly challenging.

There are three strains of the wild poliovirus. Type 2 was declared eradicated in 2015, and Type 3 in 2019. Only Type 1 poliovirus remains at large, and only in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Immunization for polio can be done in one of two ways. The injected vaccine used in the United States and most rich countries contains killed virus, is powerfully protective against illness but doesn’t prevent the vaccinated from spreading the virus to others.

Mass vaccination campaigns rely on the oral polio vaccine, which delivers weakened virus in just a few drops on the tongue. The oral vaccine is inexpensive, easy to administer and can prevent infected people from spreading the virus to others, a method better suited to extinguishing outbreaks.

But it has one paradoxical flaw: Vaccinated children can shed the weakened virus in feces, and from there, it can sometimes find its way back into people, occasionally setting off a chain of infections in communities with low immunization rates.

If the weakened virus circulates for long enough, it can slowly mutate back into a more virulent form that can cause paralysis.

Even as wild poliovirus has been on the decline, so-called vaccine-derived polio has been on the upswing. Cases tripled between 2018 and 2019, and again between 2019 and 2020. Between January 2020 and this past April, 33 countries reported a total of nearly 1,900 cases of paralysis from vaccine-derived polio.

The samples found in London sewage, in Israel and in New York are all vaccine-derived virus. They carry the same genetic fingerprint, suggesting that the virus may have been circulating undetected for about a year somewhere in the world.

Eradicating polio would require wiping out the vaccine-derived type, not just the few remaining hot spots of wild virus. “We definitely need to stop all polio transmission, whether wild poliovirus or whether circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus,” said John Vertefeuille, who heads polio eradication at the CDC.

Vaccine-derived polio has become more prevalent because the oral vaccine in use now protects against only Types 1 and 3 of the virus. In 2016, buoyed by the seeming eradication of Type 2 virus, the WHO withdrew it from the oral vaccine. That move left the world increasingly vulnerable to outbreaks of residual Type 2 virus.

At the same time, global health organizations shifted away from maintaining nimble teams that can swiftly stamp out outbreaks to strengthening health care systems overall. Regions that struggle to contain polio tend to have other public health problems, such as poor nutrition, poor access to safe drinking water and other infectious disease outbreaks.

But the response to an outbreak of polio — or to other infectious diseases such as COVID-19 or monkeypox — requires dedicated teams and programs, said Kimberly Thompson, a health care economist whose work focuses on polio eradication.

The WHO has not delivered on that goal for decades, “but there is no accountability for performance,” Thompson said. Likewise, countries that receive funding for polio are rarely held responsible for diverting the money to other programs, she added.

As a result of the dismantling of outbreak teams, the response to vaccine-derived polio has often been sluggish and inefficient.

“The speed and the quality of the responses will have to go up in order for us to stop these outbreaks,” Vertefeuille said.

Palestinians Call For Defending Al-Aqsa On Arson Anniversary

On Aug 22, 2022

Palestinian resistance groups on Sunday called for defending the flashpoint Al-Aqsa Mosque in occupied East Jerusalem against Israeli violations.

Palestinians mark the 53rd anniversary of an arson attack on Al-Aqsa Mosque by extremist Australian tourist Denis Michael Rohan in 1969.

In a statement, the Hamas group called on the Arab and Muslim nations “to shoulder their historic responsibility towards protecting Al-Aqsa against plots to Judaize it.”

“Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa are the core of the conflict with the enemy and the compass for unifying our people and nation,” it said.

“There is no sovereignty or legitimacy to the occupation on any inch of Al-Aqsa Mosque,” Hamas stressed.

Islamic Jihad group, for its part, called on Palestinians to continue defending Al-Aqsa Mosque “by all means”.

“Resistance in all forms is the key to defending Jerusalem, which will remain Arab and Islamic,” the movement said in a statement.

On August 21, 1969, extremist Michael Rohan set fire to Al-Aqsa Mosque, destroying several parts of the historic mosque, including a 1,000-year-old wood-and-ivory pulpit dating back to the time of celebrated Muslim conqueror Saladin.

The blaze also destroyed the mihrab (prayer niche) of Muslim Caliph Omar bin al-Khattab, along with large sections of the mosque’s heavily-ornamented interior and gilded wooden dome.

Two days after the attack, Rohan was arrested by the Israeli authorities, who said he suffered from severe mental illness, eventually deporting him back to his native Australia.

Muslim countries responded to the incident by establishing the multilateral Organization of the Islamic Conference, which was later renamed the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

On Sept. 15, 1969, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 271, which condemned the destructive attack on the mosque and chastised the Israeli government for failing to respect UN decisions.

For Muslims, Al-Aqsa represents the world’s third holiest site. Jews, for their part, refer to the area as the “Temple Mount”, claiming it had been the site of two Jewish temples in ancient times.

 DR JAMES J ZOGBY

Dark Money, Debate And Elections

On Aug 20, 2022

When Congress passed 2002’s bipartisan McCain-Feingold bill on campaign finance reform, many hoped for a new era in US politics. It set limits on individual and political action committees’ contributions and required that all contributions in federal elections be reported to the Federal Election Commission and made available for public scrutiny. We feared that big money would ultimately find a way to subvert McCain-Feingold and again insert itself into the electoral process. After the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case found that money was a form of free speech that could not be limited in politics, the floodgates were indeed opened—with massive “independent expenditures” from both the left and right, by corporations and interest groups supporting or opposing campaigns. Groups representing banks, big pharma, women’s rights, the gun lobby and others spent millions advancing their interests. The funds they poured into campaigns—“dark money expenditures”—were considered private and not subject to FEC reporting or public disclosure.
Supporters of Israel have a long history of bundling large contributions to support or oppose candidates. Before and after McCain-Feingold scores of pro-Israel PACs would routinely bundle donations, raising millions of dollars every election cycle. Though intimidating, the funds they raised were duly reported to the FEC and were available to the public. This year is different. Fearful that Israel is losing support among Democrats, especially progressive Democrats, elements of the pro-Israel community have developed a number of “dark money” entities with the express purpose of defeating “progressive Democrats” even if they haven’t yet been outspoken critics of Israel or Israeli policies. Much of their expenditures haven’t been in support of candidates, but against those whom they oppose. And the massive advertising campaigns they’ve waged haven’t focused on Israel but instead been devoted to tearing down the reputations of those they hope to defeat.
This year, millions have been spent to smear and defeat candidates in Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Texas, Maryland, and now Michigan and Missouri. Despite the obscene amounts spent, this effort operated without much notice until recently, when a former Maryland congresswoman running to regain her seat was subjected to a $6,000,000 negative advertising blitz attempting to discredit her years of public service. As has been the case in other races, the total amount expended by these pro-Israel groups exceeded the amount raised by her campaign.
A few investigative reporters have succeeded in uncovering the sources of some funds, often a handful of billionaires—from energy companies, investment firms, and high-tech industries. Many are Republican donors who hope to advance a pro-Israel agenda by defeating progressive Democrats. This past week’s primaries featured four such contests, three in Michigan and one in Missouri. In Michigan, a Palestinian American incumbent was targeted by over $2,000,000; a Jewish American incumbent faced a barrage of negative advertising funded by over $4,300,000—though he is pro-Israel, apparently not pro-Israel enough; and an Indian American candidate was targeted by over $4,200,000. In Missouri, an African American congresswoman, who rose to national prominence during the racial justice protests in Ferguson and in 2020 unseated a long-standing pro-Israel member of Congress, was confronted with millions of dollars in negative advertising seeking to discredit her service to her district. When the results were tabulated, “dark money” was defeated in three of these contests—only succeeding in defeating the Jewish American incumbent in Michigan. That’s what “dark money” can do.
Thus far, in 2022, the pro-Israel “dark money” groups and PACs have spent over $30 million with a mixed win-loss record. But the real losers go beyond the candidates themselves—both those who’ve lost and the winners whose reputations have been tarnished. What’s at stake is the integrity of our elections and the political process being distorted by excessive amounts of “dark money.” The outcome of a democratic election shouldn’t be determined by the highest bidders, who spend unlimited amounts to destroy an opponent. Also at risk, and equally important, is the ability of candidates to freely debate a critical issue without fear of having their political careers ended by a few big money donors willing to ruin their reputations if they dare to speak out.

Baptist Girls’ School Circle of Hope Hit With Sex-Trafficking Lawsuit

Kate Briquelet
Fri, August 19, 2022 

The Kansas City Star via AP

When Maggie Drew was 15, her family’s pastor in Oklahoma falsely claimed that she was getting into sex and drugs and secretly instructed her parents to send her away to a Baptist boarding school in Missouri. Shortly after, in October 2007, her father and stepmom told her they were going on a family road trip to an exotic petting zoo.

But they dropped her off at Circle of Hope Girls’ Ranch instead.

“I was very confused whenever I first got there,” Drew told The Daily Beast of the day she arrived at the school, which shuttered in September 2020 amid a criminal investigation against its founders, Boyd and Stephanie Householder. “The fear set in pretty quickly. When they told me I was going to be staying there I was immediately terrified.”

How I Got My Own Parents Charged With Abusing Teen Girls

Over the next several years, Drew says, she survived an environment where she was sexually abused, beaten, and brainwashed—and forced to administer punishments to fellow students at the religious school.

Drew details these accusations in a new lawsuit filed this week which accuses Circle of Hope and the Householders of sex-trafficking and racketeering.

This is the first time the couple, who is awaiting trial on more than 100 charges related to the alleged sexual and physical abuse of teen girls in their care, is being sued in federal court and accused of violations of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 and the Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).

Since 2020, the Householders have faced eight other lawsuits from ex-students, including their estranged daughter Amanda, who alleges they beat her and her brother with golf clubs and whips and pummeled her for their own sexual gratification.

According to Drew’s complaint, the Householders forced her “into performing sex acts and/or allowing Boyd Householder to perform sex acts upon her by means of force, threats of force, fraud and/or coercion” when she was under 18.

Rebecca Randles, Drew’s lawyer, told The Daily Beast that she expects more former students to accuse the Householders of sex-trafficking in the coming months. Like Drew, many Circle of Hope pupils came from out of state. And the federal court system allows other alleged victims the ability to seek justice after Missouri’s statute of limitations for organizations and employees accused of facilitating child sex abuse.

“I think that’s what was happening, and I think that is the greater picture of it: sex-trafficking and slavery,” Randles said of the accusations against Circle of Hope.

Boyd, Randles added, “was bringing children to Missouri and then sexually abusing them there, but there were others that knew that he had been engaged in improper behavior with the girls.”

The lawsuit also alleges that Circle of Hope and its founders defrauded Drew and her parents of “substantial sums of money” while she lived at the facility until January 2013.

Drew claims the Householders coerced her into forced labor, cut her off from her family after her father died of suicide in 2009, and falsely told her “that they were her guardians and/or adoptive parents.” The couple then allegedly siphoned her Social Security benefits and pocketed the $25,000 her grandfather left her for college.

An attorney for the Householders, who couldn’t be reached before press time, didn’t return messages seeking comment.

The couple previously denied the abuse accusations against them and, in September 2020, told the Kansas City Star that alumni of their Humansville school were lying. “They feel like they’re victims, and they just want to take their anger out on somebody,” Stephanie told the newspaper, adding, “These girls, they have serious problems.”

Six months later, the Householders were arrested following a sex-abuse probe by Missouri’s Attorney General. Boyd is charged with multiple counts of statutory sodomy, statutory rape, and sexual contact with a student, while both he and Stephanie face charges of abuse or neglect of a child, and endangering a child in a ritual or ceremony. Their trial is scheduled for late 2023.

The Householders opened Circle of Hope in 2006, after working at an all-boys Baptist residential facility called Agapé Boarding School, which has grappled with high-profile accusations of abuse and neglect of its own across nearly two dozen lawsuits.

Drew’s lawsuit describes Circle of Hope as a “​​sister institution” to Agapé and names the boys’ school and its late founder James Clemenson as defendants, arguing that they “aided and abetted the abuses of the children” at the girls’ ranch. Pastor Jeffrey Ables, a former director of Circle of Hope, is also a defendant in Drew’s complaint for allegedly failing to report “suspicions of childhood abuse to proper authorities.” (Ables didn’t return messages.)

Ex-Students Reveal Abuse at ‘Christian Torture Compound’

John Schultz, a lawyer for Agapé, told The Daily Beast: “Maggie Drew was never at Agapé. There is no basis for Agapé to be included as a defendant in that case.”

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Drew said the abuse at Circle of Hope was almost immediate. As soon as she walked through the door, she watched girls doing dozens of pushups. She asked her “guide,” or the student tasked with overseeing her, what was going on, and the girl replied, “Well, they messed up, they’re doing pushups.”

Days later, Drew was ordered to do the exercise too after answering someone with “yeah” instead of “yes ma’am.” In her first two weeks at the school, Drew was given more than 600 pushups.

She remembered thinking, “I’m going to do what I have to do, to make sure I get out of this with the least amount of injury. Jump through whatever hoops they put my way.”

During her time at Circle of Hope, her lawsuit says, she was “subjected to physical, sexual, and mental abuse and torture,” especially from Boyd Householder.

The complaint alleges that Boyd Householder took a particular interest in her and “began grabbing her buttocks when he passed by,” and “putting his hands across her breasts and touching her when she was in the office.” The filing adds that Boyd “would kiss her and fondle her whenever they were in the office together alone.”

Drew says that when she reported this abuse to Stephanie, she was punished.

“He knew exactly what was going on, and his wife knew exactly what was going on,” Drew told The Daily Beast. “I was almost shocked that her immediate reaction was to punish me instead of lash out at her husband, who was the aggressor.”

“I did notice him taking an interest in other girls at certain points when I was there, before it started happening to me and after, and I did my best to intervene in the ones that I could, as soon as I realized what was going on,” she added.

Her lawsuit portrays the school as a place not where girls went to learn, but to do unpaid labor for the facility and the community: bucking hay, clearing trees, and caring for livestock.

It was also a place with a disturbing pattern of discipline. According to the complaint, the punishments involved beatings, restraints, withholding of food, and being placed “on the wall,” meaning students were required to stand in front of it and read the Bible, leaving only to use the restroom or go to bed, as long as they had permission.

Sometimes girls would be forced to walk with a Bible on the back of their neck, and face worse discipline should the book fall down, or “squat and walk like a duck, quacking, until the pain became excruciating,” the complaint alleges. The suit also says Boyd would cut girls’ hair off if they displeased him, and that Drew witnessed girls being force-fed until they vomited.

“The girls were denied feminine hygiene products; they were not allowed to wear undergarments inside the house; they were not allowed to wear sleep pants and could only wear skirts at any time,” the filing continues.

The complaint later clarifies that Drew and “other staff members were required to monitor the girls’ use of feminine hygiene products” and that “the girls were required to show that their pads were bloody before they would be issued a new pad.”

“The girls were mentally abused, being told consistently that they were shameful, nobody loved them, and no one would ever care for them,” the filing states.

Her complaint says the Householders “normalized” her alleged abuse, “essentially brainwashing her into believing that they were the only people in the world who cared for her and that she would be unable to care for herself if she left the premises.”

Drew told The Daily Beast she’s haunted by what she experienced at the boarding school and often remembers the punishments, the work crews, and girls being screamed at and abused by the Householders and their staff. “Things like that never leave you,” she said. “I don’t think anyone deserves to deal with that.”

She is speaking out in the hopes that parents will research religious schools before sending their children to them and that authorities will crack down on facilities rife with abuse.

“There was no state oversight,” Drew said of her stay at Circle of Hope. “There was no one who could come and check up on us, and that was a really scary place to be in. Even though we reported it, nothing would happen.”

New Technology to Understand Cell Types and How Diseases Develop

YALE
08/17/2022
Departments: Biomedical Engineering

An ongoing effort to create detailed molecular atlases of individual cells in different tissues aims to better understand how diseases develop. Now, a team of researchers from Yale and Karolinska Institutet, has developed a technology that brings that goal one step closer.



How cells function in tissue depends upon their local environments. Mapping the molecular properties of cells while acquiring their exact location within a tissue is essential for a better understanding of disease. Rong Fan, professor of biomedical engineering at Yale, and Goncalo Castelo-Branco, professor of glial cell biology at Karolinska Institutet, led a team of researchers in developing a new technology to do this. It allows them to define which regions of the chromatin - the complex of DNA and proteins packed within the nucleus of a cell - are accessible genome-wide in cells at specific locations in a tissue. This chromatin accessibility is required for genes to be activated, which then provides unique insights on the molecular status of any given cell. Combining the ability to analyze chromatin accessibility with the spatial location of cells is a breakthrough that can improve our understanding of cell identity, cell state and the underlying mechanisms that determine the expression of genes - known as epigenetics - in the development of different tissues or diseases. The results are published today in Nature.

“Now we can identify the cell types to build a spatial cell atlas based in chromatin accessibility,” Fan said. “We can directly see the cell types at an epigenetic level either for a better definition of cell states or the discovery of cell types.”

Goncalo Castelo-Branco and Rong Fan

The researchers profiled both mouse and human tissues using a technique known as “spatial-ATAC-seq.” Applying this technique to brain tissue revealed the intricate development process of different brain regions. They also applied it to the human tonsil tissue, which provided insight into the organization of immune cell types.

“We’ll get an unbiased global view, and a much finer resolution view, of all possible cell states, and more importantly, ‘see’ where they are in a tissue,” Fan said. “It’s a powerful tool for building cell maps and cell atlases.”

Yanxiang Deng, a postdoctoral associate in Fan’s lab and lead author of the study, said that by using the new method, they were able to identify the epigenome of cell types in the mouse brain tissue in their native location.

“Applying spatial ATAC-Seq in diseased tissues might allow us in the near future to identify transitions between epigenetic states in specific cells in the context of the disease niche, which will give insights of the molecular mechanisms that mediating the acquisition of pathological cellular states,” added Castelo-Branco.

An ambitious global initiative has been undertaken to map out all the different cell types across all of the human organs and different tissue types. Single-cell sequencing has been critical to this effort but it is hard to map the location of cell types to the original tissue environment. This work for the first time allows for directly observing cell types in a tissue as defined by global epigenetic state.

The study’s other authors are Marek Bartosovic, Sai Ma, Di Zhang, Petra Kukanja, Yang Xiao, Graham Su, Yang Liu, Xiaoyu Qin, Gorazd B. Rosoklija, Andrew J. Dwork, J. John Mann, Mina L. Xu, Stephanie Halene, Joseph E. Craft, Kam W. Leong, and Maura Boldrini.

The System Is Causing Food Crisis, Not the War

August 18, 2022

Small farmers are the world’s primary food providers. Adele says it’s imperative for policymakers to listen to them, not the big corporates.

Weeding maize, Mongu, Western Zambia, 2012. 

(Felix Clay/Duckrabbit, WorldFish, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

By Adele
Progressive International

Worsening harvests, infertile soil and increasing food poverty are affecting the majority of small farmers across the globe, especially in the Global South. But the climate and food crises are not isolated phenomena. They are the result of a global capitalist system – and a neoliberal agenda – that has prioritised big corporate agricultural profits over people and the planet.

“Most farmers can no longer produce adequate food for their families,” says Vladimir Chilinya. “Profit-making entities control our food systems… including the production and distribution of seed.”

Chilinya is a Zambian coordinator for FIAN International, an organisation that campaigns for the democratisation of food and nutrition.

Worsening harvests, infertile soil and increasing food poverty are affecting the majority of small farmers across the globe, especially in the Global South. Wheat prices have surged by 59 percent since the start of 2022.

Bags of grain arriving in the U.A.E (Stephan Geyer, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

In May, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the number of people living in famine conditions has increased by more than 500 percent since 2016, and more than 270 million people are now living in extreme food insecurity.

While Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine [and Western sanctions on Russia] has exacerbated this crisis (Russia and Ukraine account for 30 percent of the world’s wheat exports, constituting 12 percent of traded calories), climate change and capitalism are the primary engines behind this global food emergency.

The IPCC has estimated that by 2030, global warming will have diminished the world’s average agricultural production by more than a fifth. In Zambia, the maize harvest for 2021/22 is expected to be down by a quarter, thanks to droughts and flash floods between 2019 and 2021, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.

Meanwhile, India and Pakistan experienced their highest recorded temperatures in March and April since records began 122 years ago. India has since banned wheat exports (after the government failed to buy enough wheat to cover its food security programme), which has further exacerbated the global wheat shortage and soaring global food prices.

But the climate and food crises are not isolated phenomena. They are the result of a global capitalist system – and a neoliberal agenda – that has prioritised big corporate agricultural profits over people and the planet.

[Related: Fake Meat: Big Food’s Attempt to Further Industrialize What We Eat]

Corporatisation of Agriculture

This process really took shape during the so-called “Green Revolution” in India in the late 1960s. This movement was a collaboration between India and the U.S. (with USAID and the Ford Foundation being key actors) and was dependent on agrochemical usage and intensive plant breeding.

High-yielding hybrid crops were introduced – the main one being IR8, a semi-dwarf rice variety – alongside the use of fertilisers, pesticides and lots of groundwater (these high-yielding crops required a lot more water). Calorific food was valued over nutrition, and these foods had costly inputs.

This shift towards big agriculture and more profitable monocultures made small farmers more dependent on expensive chemical fertilisers, forcing them into ever greater levels of debt. In India, 10,677 agricultural workers were reported to have taken their own lives in 2020, many of them farmers trapped by mounting debts resulting from the high costs of these farming inputs.

Main entrance in El Batan, Mexico, of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center, a project that included research by agronomist Norman Borlaug, “father of the Green Revolution.” 

(Alfonso Carlos Cortes Arredondo, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0)

Unfair terms of trade and global lending – enforced by multilateral financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – are also to blame.

Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs), introduced by the World Bank following the debt crisis across Latin America and Africa after the 1979 oil crisis, coerced poorer countries into privatising their public sectors and reducing their welfare mechanisms.

Adhering to strict policy packages in nearly every key sector – from agriculture to education and healthcare – became compulsory in exchange for any future loans from the bank or the IMF.

SAPs meant indebted countries across the Global South had to convert from prioritising indigenous crops that the local population depended on, to producing cash crops for export. As a result, local populations and farmers became more vulnerable to food scarcity – due to the negative ecological effects and decline in food accessibility.

Zambia: Seed Privatisation

In Zambia, for example, the structural adjustment agenda included the privatisation and liberalisation of the seed system. It began with the liberalisation and deregulation of ZAMSEED in the mid-1990s, which led to a decline in support for farmer cooperatives. In addition, the priority of maize as a cash crop has led to a decline in crop variety, meaning the local population has fewer food sources available.

“Under recent policy changes, priority is given to maize production. This is one of the key drivers for monocropping, which is responsible for the reduction in varieties of available foods in Zambia,” Chiliniya from FIAN told openDemocracy.

FIAN is documenting how the corporate control of agriculture is weakening food security. Seed systems have gone from being cooperative-led (which gives farmers more agency and fair prices) to being corporate-led (which prioritises profits).

“Farmer-managed seed systems have been replaced by commercial seed systems,” Chilinya said. “Most smallholder farmers are unable to purchase seeds at the commercial price and hence they cannot grow any food.”

[Related: COP26: Bill Gates’ Magical Thinking on Agriculture]

These commercial seeds are also more vulnerable to extreme weather conditions. “Most people focus on cash crops at the expense of other crops that are more resilient to extensive weather changes. In the wake of extreme weather changes like those experienced in 2020 and 2021, the country falls into a food shortage,” added Chiliniya. According to the World Food Programme (WPF), 48 percent of the Zambian population is unable to meet minimum calorie requirements.

Maize for sale, Zambia, 2017. 

(Thatlowdownwoman, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Kenya: Food Crisis

openDemocracy also spoke with food justice activists in Kenya, which is experiencing a severe food crisis. “Land degradation is affecting food production in Kenya because of the overuse of chemical fertilisers,” said Leondia Odongo, co-founder of social justice organisation Haki Nawiri Afrika.

As in Zambia, the disastrous legacy of SAPs is to blame. In 1980, Kenya was one of the first countries to receive a structural adjustment loan from the World Bank. It was conditional on reducing essential subsidies for farmer inputs, such as fertilisers. This process instigated a shift towards farming cash crops for export, such as tea, coffee and tobacco, instead of farming key staples for the local population, such as maize, wheat and rice.

“Agricultural inputs that were previously provided to farmers free of charge went into the hands of private entities under the guise of efficiency,” Odongo explained. “This has resulted in smallholder farmers being abandoned to the mercy of transnational corporations in the seed and agrochemical industry, which dupe farmers with information about seeds and chemicals.”

A recent report by Save the Children and Oxfam found that 3.5 million people in Kenya are already suffering crisis levels of hunger – and this is likely to rise to 5 million. Meanwhile, only 2 percent of the $4.4 billion required in humanitarian aid (for Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia) has been funded.

Structural adjustment has made Kenya into a food exporter. In the country, malnutrition remains concerningly high, with 29 percent of children in rural areas and 20 percent of children in cities being stunted. Despite experiencing deficits which threaten its population’s food security, Kenya remains a vital food exporter, with major exports in tea, coffee, vegetables and cut flowers.

Keeping It Small & Local

Despite occupying less than 25 percent of the world’s farmland, small-scale farmers provide 70 percent of the world’s food. In Kenya, Haki Nawiri Afrika is resisting the corporatisation of agriculture by assisting local farmers with technical knowledge. Teaching smallholder farmers practical skills allows them to reclaim agency over their land and crops.

In Zambia, FIAN is helping small farmers return to indigenous farming practices and seeds to build resilience and improve food security. By diversifying food systems and abandoning monocultures, small farmers can continue to provide enough food for their communities, and at lower costs.

These small farmer movements are up against “Big Philanthropy,” such as the controversial Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is replicating the Green Revolution corporate-first strategy.

Still, they hope their struggle to decommodify and rebuild a sustainable relationship with the land can help realise the U.N.’s second sustainable development goal: ending hunger by 2030.

Adele is a freelance writer and content creator specialising in politics, global inequality and culture.

This article is from Progressive International.