Hawaii: Don’t burn Christmas trees at sacred Oahu sandbar
December 28, 2021

 In this Aug. 15, 2015, file photo, people stand on the sandbar in Hawaii's Kaneohe Bay. Hawaii's Department of Land and Natural Resources is warning people that they face arrest if found burning Christmas trees at an oceanic sandbar. The sandbar found between the open Pacific Ocean and Kaneohe Bay on Oahu's windward side is a popular gathering place for local boaters and tourists. A tradition of piling up Christmas trees for bonfires on the sandbar is harming the environment, officials said in a statement Tuesday, Dec. 28, 2021. (AP Photo/Caleb Jones, File)


HONOLULU (AP) — Hawaii’s public lands agency is warning people that they face arrest if found burning Christmas trees at an oceanic sandbar.

The sandbar that rests between the open Pacific Ocean and Kaneohe Bay on Oahu’s windward side is a popular gathering place for local boaters and tourists.

A tradition of piling up Christmas trees for bonfires on the sandbar is harming the environment, Department of Land and Natural Resources officials said in a statement Tuesday.

“People haul their trees to (the site) by boat, and burning them is detrimental to the sandbar and the surrounding marine ecosystem,” Hawaii’s environmental law enforcement chief, Jason Redulla, said in the statement.

But it can be hard to track down those responsible, he said.

The state receives tips about tree burnings every year and dispatches crews to He‘eia Kea Small Boat Harbor, the point of departure for boats heading to the sandbar, Redulla said.

“Unfortunately, we can’t always identify the individuals involved in these illegal and disrespectful activities,” he said.

The slim stretch of reef and sand near a military installation is entirely surrounded by deeper ocean water. It offers views of Oahu’s small offshore islands and a mountain range that rises from the coastline.

Leialoha “Rocky” Kaluhiwa, president of the Ko`olaupoko Hawaiian Civic Club, said the site is sacred to many Native Hawaiians, who call the sandbar Ahu O Laka.

“The iwi (remains) of Chief Laka of Maui were brought by his sons and buried there centuries ago,” Kaluhiwa said in the statement. “Once iwi is buried in an area, it is consecrated and considered ‘kapu,’ or sacred to Native Hawaiians.”

Kaluhiwa said Chief Laka is an ancestor to some Native families who live near Kaneohe Bay.

Burning trash in public or in backyards is illegal in Hawaii.

“We strongly discourage anyone from taking their `opala (discarded items like Christmas trees) to light bonfires on Ahu o Laka,” Kaluhiwa said.

The state released video of people burning trees at the sandbar after last Christmas.

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This story has been corrected to show officials made the announcement Tuesday, not Monday.

US affirms new interpretation for high-level nuclear waste
By KEITH RIDLER

December 29, 2021

FILE - In this May 11, 2015, file photo, nuclear waste is stored in underground containers at the Idaho National Laboratory near Idaho Falls, Idaho. The Biden administration has affirmed a Trump administration interpretation of high-level radioactive waste that is based on the waste's radioactivity rather than how it was produced. The U.S. Department of Energy announcement last week means some radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production stored for decades in Idaho, Washington and South Carolina could be reclassified and moved for permanent storage elsewhere.

 (AP Photo/Keith Ridler, File)

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The Biden administration has affirmed a Trump administration interpretation of high-level radioactive waste that is based on the waste’s radioactivity rather than how it was produced.

The U.S. Department of Energy announcement last week means some radioactive waste from nuclear weapons production stored in Idaho, Washington and South Carolina could be reclassified and moved for permanent storage elsewhere.

“After extensive policy and legal assessment, DOE affirmed that the interpretation is consistent with the law, guided by the best available science and data, and that the views of members of the public and the scientific community were considered in its adoption,” the agency said in a statement to The Associated Press on Wednesday.

The Biden administration’s affirmation of the new interpretation came after various groups offered letters of support and opposition to the agency after Biden became president, leading to the notice in the Federal Register making clear where the administration stood. Biden has reversed Trump policy in other areas.

The policy has to do with nuclear waste generated from the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel to build nuclear bombs. Such waste previously has been characterized as high level. The new interpretation applies to waste that includes such things as sludge, slurry, liquid, debris and contaminated equipment.

The agency said making disposal decisions based on radioactivity characteristics rather than how it became radioactive could allow the Energy Department to focus on other high-priority cleanup projects, reduce how long radioactive waste is stored at Energy Department facilities, and increase safety for workers, communities and the environment.

The department noted that the approach is supported by the Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, formed during the Obama administration.

The department identified three sites where waste is being stored that will be affected by the new interpretation.

In Idaho, it’s stored at an 890-square-mile (2,300-square-kilometer) Energy Department site in the southeastern part of the state that includes the Idaho National Laboratory. In Washington, the waste is stored at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a decommissioned nuclear site in the south-central part of the state that produced plutonium for nuclear bombs. In South Carolina, it’s stored at the 310-square-mile (800-square-kilometer) Savannah River Site, home of the Savannah River National Laboratory.

The department, in the statement to the AP, said it “is committed to utilizing science-driven solutions to continue to achieve success in tackling the environmental legacy of decades of nuclear weapons production and government-sponsored nuclear energy research.”

The agency also last week made public a draft environmental assessment based on the new interpretation to move some contaminated equipment from the Savannah River Site to a commercial low-level radioactive waste disposal facility located outside South Carolina. Potential storage sites are located in Andrews County, Texas, and in Clive, Utah.

Previously, the agency through a public process and using the new interpretation, approved moving up to 10000 gallons (37,854 liters) of wastewater from the Savannah River Site, with some going to Texas.

A similar public process would be used concerning additional waste at the Savannah River Site or in the other two states.

The nation has no permanent storage for high-level radioactive waste. Reclassifying some of the high-level waste under the new interpretation means it can legally be sent to commercial facilities for storing waste deemed less radioactive.

Edwin Lyman, director of Nuclear Power Safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit, said his group agreed that radioactive waste should be classified using technical analysis rather than a legal definition.

But he also said “any decision made under this new interpretation has to be backed up by solid analysis and a strong commitment to public health and safety and environmental protection.”

He also said he was concerned that the new interpretation could hinder development of permanent storage for high-level radioactive waste, which mostly sits above ground at sites where it was produced.

“It shouldn’t be used as an excuse not to move forward with a repository,” Lyman said. “That’s the danger.”

The Energy Department was shipping high-level waste to Idaho until a series of lawsuits between the state and the federal government in the 1990s led to a settlement agreement. The agreement is seen as preventing the state from becoming a high-level nuclear waste repository.

The Idaho site sits above a giant aquifer that supplies water to cities and farms in the region.

New Mexico tribes concerned about plan to power nuclear lab
By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN

December 29, 2021

FILE - This undated file photo shows the Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M. New Mexico Indigenous leaders are concerned about a proposed multimillion-dollar transmission line that would cross what they consider sacred lands. The transmission line planned by the U.S. government would bring more electricity to Los Alamos National Laboratory as it looks to power ongoing operations and future missions at the northern New Mexico complex that include manufacturing key components for the nation's nuclear arsenal. (The Albuquerque Journal via AP, File)


ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico Indigenous leaders are concerned about a proposed multimillion-dollar transmission line that would cross what they consider sacred lands.

The transmission line planned by the U.S. government would bring more electricity to Los Alamos National Laboratory as it looks to power ongoing operations and future missions at the northern New Mexico complex that include manufacturing key components for the nation’s nuclear arsenal.

The proposed transmission line would stretch more than 12 miles (19 kilometers), crossing national forest land in an area known as the Caja del Rio and spanning the Rio Grande at White Rock Canyon. New structural towers would need to be built on both sides of the canyon.

The All Pueblo Council of Governors — which represents 20 pueblos in New Mexico and Texas — recently adopted a resolution to support the preservation of the Caja del Rio. The organization says the area has a dense concentration of petroglyphs, ancestral homes, ceremonial kivas, roads, irrigation structures and other cultural resources

The tribes say longstanding mismanagement by the federal government has resulted in desecration to sacred sites on the Caja del Rio.

The U.S. Energy Department’s National Nuclear Security Administration announced in April that it would be working with federal land managers to assess the project’s potential environmental effects. But pueblo leaders claim there has not been adequate tribal consultation on the proposed project.

All Pueblo Council of Governors Chairman Wilfred Herrera submitted a letter to the Santa Fe National Forest on Dec. 17, requesting that forest officials comply with consultation requirements.

Herrera, a former governor of Laguna Pueblo, said preservation of the Caja Del Rio’s sacred landscape is a collective priority for the council as it works to protect ancestral homelands around the region. He said Caja del Rio is home to pueblo ancestors and spirits.

“We encourage the federal government to understand that to fully engage with the pueblos, we need your commitment and cooperation, especially during this time of year marked by transition and rest. APCG stands ready to support decision-making that protects pueblo cultural resources in perpetuity,” he said in a statement issued last week.

Federal officials have said they will try to avoid known biological, recreational, cultural and historical resources, such as El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro National Historic Trail. Another goal would be minimizing visibility of the transmission line from residential areas.

The project — which could cost up to $300 million — calls for new overhead poles with an average span of 800 feet (244 meters), access roads for construction and maintenance and staging areas where materials can be stored.

Part of the line would be built along an existing utility corridor, but a new path would have to be cut through forest land to reach an electrical substation.

Environmentalists, residents and others already have voiced concerns about potential effects, saying the area encompasses wide Indigenous landscapes and is a scenic gateway to northern New Mexico.

The area has seen an increase in outdoor recreational use and it serves as a migration corridor for wildlife.

The Los Alamos Study Group, a watchdog group that has been critical of Los Alamos lab’s expansion plans, has said the lack of an overall analysis of the cumulative effects that plutonium core production and more weapons work could have on the surrounding communities is another concern.

Parents selling children shows desperation of Afghanistan

KIDNEY TRADE IS BIG TOO

By ELENA BECATORO

1 of 17
Qandi Gul holds her brother outside their home housing those displaced by war and drought near Herat, Afghanistan. Dec. 16, 2021. Gul’s father sold her into marriage without telling his wife, taking a down-payment so he could feed his family of five children. Without that money, he told her, they would all starve. He had to sacrifice one to save the rest. (AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)

SHEDAI CAMP, Afghanistan (AP) — In a sprawling settlement of mud brick huts in western Afghanistan housing people displaced by drought and war, a woman is fighting to save her daughter.

Aziz Gul’s husband sold their 10-year-old into marriage without telling his wife, taking a down-payment so he could feed his family of five children. Otherwise, he told her, they would all starve. He had to sacrifice one to save the rest.

Many of Afghanistan’s growing number of destitute people are making such desperate decisions as their nation spirals into a vortex of poverty.

Afghanistan’s aid-dependent economy was already teetering when the Taliban seized power in mid-August amid a chaotic withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops. The international community froze Afghanistan’s assets abroad and halted funding, unwilling to work with a Taliban government given its reputation for brutality during its previous rule 20 years ago.

The consequences have been devastating for a country battered by war, drought and the coronavirus pandemic. State employees haven’t been paid in months. Malnutrition stalks the most vulnerable, and aid groups say more than half the population faces acute food shortages.

“Day by day, the situation is deteriorating in this country, and especially children are suffering,” said Asuntha Charles, national director of the World Vision aid organization in Afghanistan, which runs a health clinic for displaced people near the western city of Herat. “Today I have been heartbroken to see that the families are willing to sell their children to feed other family members.”

Arranging marriages for very young girls is common in the region. The groom’s family pays money to seal the deal, and the child usually stays with her parents until she is at least around 15. Yet with many unable to afford even basic food, some say they’d allow prospective grooms to take very young girls or are even trying to sell their sons.

Gul, unusually in this deeply patriarchal, male-dominated society, is resisting. Married off herself at 15, she says she would kill herself if her daughter, Qandi Gul, is taken away.

When her husband told her he had sold Qandi, “my heart stopped beating. I wished I could have died at that time, but maybe God didn’t want me to die,” Gul said, with Qandi by her side peering shyly from beneath her sky-blue headscarf. “Each time I remember that night ... I die and come back to life.”

Her husband told her he sold one to save the others, saying they all would have died otherwise.

“Dying was much better than what you have done,” she said she told him.

Gul rallied her brother and village elders and with their help secured a “divorce” for Qandi, on condition she repays the 100,000 afghanis (about $1,000) her husband received. It’s money she doesn’t have.

Her husband fled, possibly fearing Gul might denounce him to authorities. The Taliban government recently banned forced marriages.

Gul says she isn’t sure how long she can fend off the family of the prospective groom, a man of around 21.

“I am just so desperate. If I can’t provide money to pay these people and can’t keep my daughter by my side, I have said that I will kill myself,” she said. “But then I think about the other children. What will happen to them? Who will feed them?” Her eldest is 12, her youngest - her sixth - just two months.

In another part of the camp, father-of-four Hamid Abdullah was also selling his young daughters into arranged marriages, desperate for money to treat his chronically ill wife, pregnant with their fifth child.

   HERAT MUD CITY THE WHITE BUILDINGS  ARE MEDICAL UNIT TRUCKS

He can’t repay money he borrowed to fund his wife’s treatments, he said. So three years ago, he received a down-payment for his eldest daughter Hoshran, now 7, in an arranged marriage to a now 18-year-old.

The family who bought Hoshran are waiting until she is older before settling the full amount and taking her. But Abdullah needs money now, so he is trying to arrange a marriage for his second daughter, 6-year-old Nazia, for about 20,000-30,000 afghanis ($200-$300).

“We don’t have food to eat,” and he can’t pay his wife’s doctor, he said.

His wife, Bibi Jan, said they had no other option but it was a difficult decision. “When we made the decision, it was like someone had taken a body part from me.”

In neighboring Badghis province, another displaced family is considering selling their son, 8-year-old Salahuddin.

His mother, Guldasta, said that after days with nothing to eat, she told her husband to take Salahuddin to the bazaar and sell him to bring food for the others.

“I don’t want to sell my son, but I have to,” the 35-year-old said. “No mother can do this to her child, but when you have no other choice, you have to make a decision against your will.”

Salahuddin blinked and looked on silently, his lip quivering slightly.

His father, Shakir, blind in one eye and with kidney problems, said the children had been crying for days from hunger. Twice he decided to take Salahuddin to the bazaar, and twice he faltered. “But now I think I have no other choice.”

Buying boys is believed to be less common than girls, and when it does take place, it appears to be cases families without sons buying infants. In her despair, Guldasta thought perhaps such a family might want an 8-year-old.

The desperation of millions is clear as more and more people face hunger, with some 3.2 million children under 5 years old facing acute malnutrition, according to the U.N.

Charles, World Vision’s national director for Afghanistan, said humanitarian aid funds are desperately needed.

“I’m happy to see the pledges are made,” she said. But the pledges “shouldn’t stay as promises, they have to be seen as reality on the ground.”

A nurse shows Chinar's scar, who had a kidney removal surgery, at a settlement near Herat, Afghanistan, Dec. 16, 2021. Chinar said her husband is sick and she had to sell her kidney to feed their four children. Afghanistan’s destitute are increasingly turning to such desperate decisions as the country spirals downwards into a vortex of poverty. 

(AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov)
____

Abdul Qahar Afghan in Shedai Camp, Afghanistan, and Rahim Faiez in Islamabad contributed to this report.

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Hundreds of Afghans denied humanitarian entry into US

By PHILIP MARCELO and AMY TAXIN

Haseena Niazi, a 24-year-old from Afghanistan, poses outside her home, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021, north of Boston. Niazi received a letter from the federal government denying her fiancé's humanitarian parole application earlier in the month. Her fiance, who she asked not to be named over concerns about his safety, had received threats from Taliban members for working on women's health issues at a hospital north of Kabul. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

BOSTON (AP) — Haseena Niazi had pinned her hopes of getting her fiancé out of Afghanistan on a rarely used immigration provision.

The 24-year-old Massachusetts resident was almost certain his application for humanitarian parole would get approved by the U.S. government, considering the evidence he provided on the threats from the Taliban he received while working on women’s health issues at a hospital near Kabul.

But this month, the request was summarily denied, leaving the couple reeling after months of anxiety.

“He had everything they wanted,” said Niazi, a green card holder originally from Afghanistan. “It doesn’t make any sense why they’d reject it. It’s like a bad dream. I still can’t believe it.”

Federal immigration officials have issued denial letters to hundreds of Afghans seeking temporary entry into the country for humanitarian reasons in recent weeks, to the dismay of Afghans and their supporters. By doing so, immigrant advocates say, the Biden administration has failed to honor its promise to help Afghans who were left behind after the U.S. military withdrew from the country in August and the Taliban took control.

“It was a huge disappointment,” said Caitlin Rowe, a Texas attorney who said she recently received five denials, including one for an Afghan police officer who helped train U.S. troops and was beaten by the Taliban. “These are vulnerable people who genuinely thought there was hope, and I don’t think there was.”

Since the U.S. withdrawal, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has received more than 35,000 applications for humanitarian parole, of which it has denied about 470 and conditionally approved more than 140, Victoria Palmer, an agency spokesperson, said this week.

The little-known program, which doesn’t provide a path to lawful permanent residence in the country, typically receives fewer than 2,000 requests annually from all nationalities, of which USCIS approves an average of about 500, she said.

Palmer also stressed humanitarian parole is generally reserved for extreme emergencies and not intended to replace the refugee admissions process, “which is the typical pathway for individuals outside of the United States who have fled their country of origin and are seeking protection.”

Haseena Niazi, a 24-year-old from Afghanistan, holds a parole denial notice she received from the Department of Homeland Security, while posing outside her home, Friday, Dec. 17, 2021, north of Boston. Niazi received the letter from the federal government denying her fiancé's humanitarian parole application earlier in the month. Her fiance, who she asked not to be named over concerns about his safety, had received threats from Taliban members for working on women's health issues at a hospital north of Kabul. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

The U.S. government, meanwhile, continues to help vulnerable Afghans, evacuating more than 900 American citizens and residents and another 2,200 Afghans since the military withdrawal. The state department said it expects to help resettle as many as 95,000 people from Afghanistan this fiscal year, a process that includes rigorous background checks and vaccinations.

Many of them, however, had been whisked out of Afghanistan before the U.S. left. Now, USCIS is tasked with this new wave of humanitarian parole applications and has ramped up staffing to consider them.

The agency said in a statement that requests are reviewed on an individual basis, with consideration given to immediate relatives of Americans and Afghans airlifted out.

And while USCIS stressed that parole shouldn’t replace refugee processing, immigrant advocates argue that isn’t a viable option for Afghans stuck in their country due to a disability or hiding from the Taliban. Even those able to get out of Afghanistan, they say, may be forced to wait years in refugee camps, which isn’t something many can afford to do.

Mohammad, who asked that his last name not be used out of fear for his family’s safety, said his elder brother, who used to work for international organizations, is among them. He has been in hiding since the Taliban came looking for him following the U.S. withdrawal, Mohammad said.

On a recent visit to the family home, Taliban members took his younger brother instead and held him more than a week for ransom, he said. Now, Mohammad, a former translator for U.S. troops in Afghanistan who lives in California with a special immigration status, is seeking parole for this brother, too. He hopes a conditional approval letter can get them a spot on one of the U.S. evacuation flights still running out of the country.

“I can provide him housing. I can provide him everything,” he said. “Let them come here.”

Immigrant advocates began filing humanitarian parole applications for Afghans in August in a last-ditch effort to get them on U.S. evacuation flights out of the country before the withdrawal.

In some cases, it worked, and word spread among immigration attorneys that parole, while typically used in extreme emergencies, might be a way out, said Kyra Lilien, director of immigration legal services at Jewish Family & Community Services in California’s East Bay.

Soon, attorneys began filing thousands of parole applications for Afghans.

When the U.S. immigration agency created a website specifically to address these applications, Lilien said she thought it was a sign of hope. By November, however, the agency had posted a list of narrow criteria for Afghan applicants and held a webinar telling attorneys that parole is typically granted only if there’s evidence someone faces “imminent severe harm.”

A few weeks later, the denial letters began arriving. Lilien has received more than a dozen but no approvals.

“Once the U.S. packed up and left, anyone who was left behind has only one choice, and that is to pursue this archaic refugee channel,” she said. “It is just so angering that it took USCIS so long to be clear about that.”

Wogai Mohmand, an attorney who helps lead the Afghan-focused Project ANAR, said that the group has filed thousands of applications and that since the U.S. troop withdrawal, has seen only denials.

The despair has led some immigration attorneys to give up on filing parole applications altogether. In Massachusetts, the International Institute of New England is holding off filing new applications until it hears on those that are pending after receiving a flurry of denials.

Chiara St. Pierre, an attorney for the refugee resettlement agency, said she feels clients like Niazi are facing an “unwinnable” battle.

For Niazi’s fiancé, they had provided copies of written threats sent to the hospital where he works as a medical technician and threatening text messages he said came from Taliban members, she said. It wasn’t enough.

A redacted copy of the denial letter provided by St. Pierre lists the USCIS criteria released in November but doesn’t specify why the agency rejected the application, which had been filed in August.

For now, Niazi says her fiancé is living and working far from Kabul as they weigh their options. They could potentially wait until Niazi becomes an American citizen so she can try to bring him here on a fiancé visa, but that would take years.

“He can’t wait that long. It’s a miracle every day that he’s alive,” Niazi said. “I’m feeling like every door is closing in on him.”

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Taxin reported from Orange County, California.

Northvolt produces first lithium-ion battery in Sweden

View of the exterior of the Northvolt battery factory in Skelleftea, Sweden on October 18. The factor said it produced its first battery Wednesday. File Photo by Erland Segerstedt/EPA-EFE

Dec. 29 (UPI) -- The Swedish battery company Northvolt said Wednesday it has produced its first lithium-ion battery, in an effort to rival battery leaders like Tesla in the United States and others in Asia.

Northvolt officials said the battery was the first fully designed, developed and assembled at its "gigafactory" in Skelleftea, Sweden. The battery factory was valued in June by investors at $12 billion and employs more than 500 workers.

"Today is a great milestone for Northvolt, which the team has worked very hard to achieve," Peter Carlsson, CEO and co-founder of Northvolt said in a statement.

"Of course, this first cell is only the beginning. Over the course of the coming years, we look forward to Northvolt Ett expanding its production capacity greatly to enable the European transition to clean energy."

The factory, which measures its output in gigawatt hours rather than battery units, said it plans to have an annual output of 60-gigawatt hours. Northvolt said the output would allow it to fulfill more than $30 billion in contracts with partners like BMW, Fluence, Scania, Volkswagen, Volvo Cars and Polestar.

"To these customers in the automotive, industrial and energy storage sectors, Northvolt Ett will deliver cells of varying formats with commercial deliveries beginning in 2022," the company said.

South Korea urges Japan not to list mine linked to forced labor as World Heritage site

4 / 4The Sado mine originally operated as a gold mine in the 1600s, but it was turned into a facility to produce war-related materials, such as cooper, iron and zinc, during World War II, and was shut in 1946. Photo by Opqr, CC BY-SA 3.0/Wikimedia Commons

Dec. 28 (UPI) -- South Korea called Tuesday for Japan's retraction of a push to list a former mine linked to wartime forced labor as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, calling it "very deplorable."

Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs reportedly has been pushing to register the Sado mine on the coveted list. It is where Koreans were forced into hard labor during Tokyo's 1910-45 colonization of the Korean Peninsula.

The move came as Seoul has repeatedly taken issue with Tokyo's failure to properly fulfill its pledge to honor forced labor victims at an information center on its industrial revolution sites designated in the list in 2015.

"It is very deplorable that [Japan] has decided to push for the World Heritage designation of the mine, another site where Koreans were forced into labor, and we call for the immediate retraction of it," Choi Young-sam, the spokesperson of Seoul's foreign ministry, said in a commentary.

"Our government will sternly respond with the international community to prevent a site where workers were forced into toil against their will from being designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site without enough explanation," he added.

Later in the day, Kyun Jong-ho, the ministry's director general in charge of cultural affairs, called in Kazuo Chujo, director of Public Information and Cultural Center at the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, to protest Tokyo's move related to the mine, according to the ministry.

The Sado mine originally operated as a gold mine in the 1600s, but it was turned into a facility to produce war-related materials, such as cooper, iron and zinc, during World War II. It was shut in 1946.

According to historical documents, at least 1,200 Koreans were forced into labor at the mine under harsh conditions during the war.

The latest move has added to historical tensions between the two neighbors. It remains unclear whether Tokyo will mention the wartime history in its recommendation of the mine for the heritage designation.

If it is selected, the Japanese government is expected to submit a letter of recommendation to UNESCO by Feb. 1, after which the U.N. body will make a decision in 2023.

In addition to calling in the Japanese diplomat, Korea's foreign ministry has communicated with UNESCO officials on several occasions and plans to form a task force with experts and related agencies to deal with the issue, a Seoul official said.

The ministry also called on Japan to fulfill an earlier pledge to inform people about the forced labor of Koreans on Hashima Island, also known as Battleship Island, which was recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2015.

Upon the 2015 designation of 23 Meiji-era sites, including the island, Tokyo promised to install an information center to provide sufficient explanations of the forced labor, but it only highlighted achievements of Japan's industrial revolution.

Food prep robot 'Alfred' joins kitchen staff at Travis Air Force Base

WHERE WERE BATMAN & ROBIN

The 60th Mission Support Group leadership watch “Alfred,” an automated food preparation robot, prepare salad at the Travis Air Force Base in California. Photo by Chustine Minoda/U.S. Air Force

Dec. 28 (UPI) -- California's Travis Air Force Base's Monarch dining facility has become the first in the Department of Defense to acquire an automated food preparation robot called "Alfred," according to officials at the base.

"Alfred," which uses hygienic robot arms to automate food preparation activities, was designed and created by Dexai Robotics, a Boston-based startup company, to reduce food waste and lower risks of viral transmissions amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Travis AFB said in a press release.

The Boston-based startup was contracted by the Defense Logistics Agency.

"As are are the first in the DOD to receive this revolutionary robotics technology, the main purpose for 'Alfred' is proof of concept," Maj. Hewko Tyler, 60th Force Support Squadron operations officer, in the release.

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"Will 'Alfred' be able to provide the reduction in food waste, improvements in sanitation and manning benefits as projected? We are excited to find out and be on the forefront of the future of food service," Tyler said.

Tech Sgt. Hurtado emphasized the benefit of freeing up an individual's time for other tasks.

"I think the military can benefit from something of this sort," Hurtado said.

"The Airmen are tasked with so many things every single day as far as getting the mission done, training, taking leave, and focusing on our families. We get pulled in so many different directions that anywhere we can free up some time is a benefit to us," Hurtado said.

Travis AFB has previously experimented with new robotic systems.

Last year, it launched the first drone-based perimeter security system on an Air Force installation.

Other bases have also experimented more recently with other new forms of robotics.

Earlier this year, semi-autonomous machines designed on four legs to resemble security dogs began guarding remote areas of Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla.

Officials said the quad-legged unmanned ground vehicles were not meant to replace military dogs, but to add another layer of protection at the base.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M 

Teva, Units Held Liable for Fueling N.Y. Opioid Crisis

Jef Feeley
Thu, December 30, 2021


(Bloomberg) -- New York jurors concluded Teva Pharmaceutical Industries and some of its units helped create a public-health crisis through their marketing and distribution of opioid painkillers across the state, in the pharma industry’s latest loss in the sprawling litigation over the highly addictive drugs.

The Israel-based firm now faces potentially billions of dollars in compensation claims from the state and two Long Island counties accusing Teva executives of flooding their areas with more than a billion opioids pills over nearly a decade and using misleading tactics to sell them.

Teva’s American depository receipts fell as much as 5.3% in New York trading, the most intraday since Nov. 3.

“Teva Pharmaceuticals strongly disagrees with today’s outcome and will prepare for a swift appeal,” Kelley Dougherty, a U.S.-based spokeswoman for Teva, said in an emailed statement. The state and local governments “presented no evidence of medically unnecessary prescriptions, suspicious or diverted orders, no evidence of oversupply by the defendants” and also failed to show “any harm to the public in the state,” she said.

Judge Jerry Garguilo will decide later how much the state and counties should get to beef up treatment and social-service budgets depleted by the U.S. opioid crisis, which has killed more than 500,000 Americans over the last two decades. A hearing on the compensation issue hasn’t yet been set.

‘Death and Destruction’

Jurors found Teva itself was 30% liable for harm created by its opioid marketing in Suffolk and Nassau counties while it was 40% liable for the problems across the whole state. Its units’ percentages of fault made up the remainder of 100%, according to the verdict form.

“A jury has found an opioid manufacturer responsible for the death and destruction they inflicted on the American people,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in an emailed statement. “Teva Pharmaceuticals USA and others misled the American people about the true dangers of opioids.”

Jayne Conroy, one of the counties’ lawyers, noted the jurors deliberated for more than a week before finding against Teva and its units. She said the panel properly found “manufacturer Teva and distributor Anda cannot break the law for profit and cause deadly harm to our communities.”

Lawyers for Teva and Anda on Thursday asked Garguilo to throw out the verdict, saying the state and counties didn’t prove the companies created a public nuisance. They also pointed to the inconsistency in the percentage of fault Teva faces in the verdicts on behalf of the counties and the state as warranting a new trial.

Second Verdict

Thursday’s jury verdict is the second in the burgeoning four-year opioid litigation. Municipalities accuse opioid makers, distributors and sellers of downplaying the painkillers’ addiction risks and sacrificing patient safety for billions in profits. They also blame them for contributing to the deaths of more than 500,000 Americans in the opioid epidemic over the last two decades.

The state-court jury found Teva and subsidiaries including Anda Inc. and Cephalon Inc. created a so-called “public nuisance” by marketing the opioid-based drugs in a misleading manner and not properly monitoring suspicious shipments of the highly addictive painkillers. The panel concluded the marketing “contributed to, or maintained a substantial and unreasonable interference with a public right that amounts to a public nuisance,” according to the verdict form.

The trial over the governments’ claims began in June with more than 30 companies as defendants. By the end, only Teva and its units, including Cephalon Inc., Actavis Pharma and Watson Laboratories Inc., were left to face the six-person jury. That’s because other opioid makers, including Johnson & Johnson and Endo International Plc, drug distributors such as McKesson Corp. and Cardinal Health Inc. drugstore chains like Rite Aid Inc. and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc., settled to get out of the trial.

The six-month trial, held in Suffolk County on Long Island, featured internal sales-conference videos produced by Cephalon that the governments alleged showed the company pushed opioid sales to beef up bonuses and put profit over consumers’ safety.

Dr. Evil

The panel saw a 2006 video based on a scene from the 1992 film “A Few Good Men,” that the Teva subsidiary used at a sales conference to promote its opioid-based drug, Fentora.

Dressed in a Marine uniform, Roy Craig, a Cephalon sales manager, portrays Jack Nicholson’s character in the movie. “I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain ourselves to people who rise and sleep under the very blanket of revenue we provide and then question the manner in which we provide it,” Craig says on the video.

Lawyers for the governments also showed jurors a dubbed parody of the 1997 “Austin Powers, International Man of Mystery” movie in which the villain, Dr. Evil, portrays a Cephalon sales executive leading a Fentora marketing meeting.

Dr. Evil -- played by actor Michael Myers -- ejects subordinate Will Ferrell into a fiery pit over his unhappiness with the new painkiller’s packaging and comes up with several aggressive marketing ideas. The video was made for a 2007 annual sales conference.

The case is In Re Opioid Litigation, Index no. 40000/2017, Supreme Court of New York, Suffolk County.

ERs can boost efforts to stamp out opioid addiction, study suggests
By HealthDay News


Based on a trial program, researchers say that hospital emergency rooms could help improve efforts to treat people with opioid addiction issues. 

Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Agriculture

A program meant to encourage the use of a drug that can help people overcome opioid addiction led to dramatic increases in its use in emergency rooms, researchers report.

Buprenorphine is a medication that stabilizes opioid withdrawal and soothes cravings. Using it can help people with opioid use disorder stay engaged with care, while reducing overdose deaths and other complications of drug use.

The program designed by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania worked both to give doctors incentives to train to treat opioid use disorder, as well as to develop and improve the connection between patients and peer recovery specialists.

Designed to increase initiation of the use of buprenorphine treatment for opioid use disorder in emergency rooms, the program was tested at three Penn Medicine hospitals and led to a sixfold increase in the treatment at these locations.

RELATED Opioid prescriptions dispensed at retail pharmacies decline, study finds

"We used a behavioral design approach to make implementation of evidence-based treatment easy, attractive, social and timely," lead study author and assistant professor of medicine Dr. Margaret Lowenstein said in a university news release.

While we concentrated initially on prescribing itself, we realized we also needed to overcome other barriers, such as identifying and engaging patients in care," Lowenstein said.

This medication can be lifesaving for patients. To help make it easier for them to get it, researchers first needed to make it easier to prescribe by helping more clinicians become authorized prescribers.

RELATED Opioid painkillers may not be needed for weeks after heart surgery

The physicians in the study needed something called an X-waiver that required training, but those restrictions were later loosened in 2021.

To prescribe the drug, physicians still need to register in advance on a government website.

The clinical team used a financial incentive system that rewarded doctors for the training, increasing their numbers from 6% to 90% in six weeks.

RELATED Black, Hispanic people in U.S. less likely than White people to receive opioids

The researchers also developed a system to identify patients through electronic health records and connect them immediately with peer recovery specialists while they were in the hospital and during early recovery.

For the study, data was collected from March 2017 until July 2020, 18 months before and after the start of the program.

It found that the rate of patients with opioid addiction who received buprenorphine in emergency departments climbed from 3% before the study to 23% by the end of the study period.


The patients sustained their use of the drug and increased it, even a year after the changes went into effect, though the study found that not all doctors prescribed it at the same rates.

Some doctors prescribed buprenorphine to 61% of their patients with opioid use disorders, while others never wrote a prescription, even if they were authorized.

"The fact that some physicians in our group were able to provide this evidence-based treatment to more than half of their patients while others had the ability to do so, but never did, showed there was much more work to be done to nudge clinicians and make offering this treatment a default process," said senior study author Dr. M. Kit Delgado, an assistant professor of emergency medicine and epidemiology.

This information led the team to conduct a focus group of 29 emergency department doctors or nurses. They learned that the automated process wasn't finding all eligible patients because the algorithm needed more specificity.

"Moving forward, we're going to test different ways to better ensure that patients we're discharging with buprenorphine prescriptions have a warm handoff and engagement with ongoing addiction treatment," Delgado said in the release.

"Starting this medication is the best first step, but there are many more on the long-term path to recovery once they leave the hospital," Delgado said.


The findings were published this month in the Annals of Emergency Medicine.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on drug overdose.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

POST MODERN STALINISM

Russia labels Pussy Riot members, satirist 'foreign agents'

Tolokonnikova, 32, is one of three members of Pussy Riot who were sentenced to two years in prison 

Sergio FLORES AFP

Issued on: 30/12/2021 -

Moscow (AFP) – Russia on Thursday declared Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, a founding member of the Pussy Riot band, and prominent satirist Viktor Shenderovich "foreign agents" as authorities press ahead with a crackdown on dissent.

The justice ministry also added to its list of "foreign agents" six other figures including journalist Taisiya Bekbulatova, art collector Marat Gelman and Veronika Nikulshina, another Pussy Riot member.

"These people systematically distribute materials to an indefinite circle of persons, while receiving foreign funds," the ministry said in a statement.

Tolokonnikova, 32, is one of three members of Pussy Riot who were sentenced to two years in prison after they sang a "Punk Prayer" denouncing the Russian Orthodox Church's close ties with President Vladimir Putin in Moscow's central Church of Christ the Saviour in February 2012.

She and a bandmate were convicted and sentenced to jail in August 2012.

Tolokonnikova said she would go to court and would not use the label.

"Lol," she said on Instagram.

"The government can label their asses if they'd like," she said in English.

Shenderovich, 63, is a prominent anti-Kremlin satirist and political observer.

Speaking on Echo of Moscow radio, he said he saw the designation as an attempt to push him out of the country.

- 'Enemies of the people' -

By law, entities identified as "foreign agents" must disclose sources of funding, undergo audits and accompany all their texts, videos and social media posts with a caption mentioning content from a "foreign agent".

The status is reminiscent of the Soviet-era term "enemy of the people" and is meant to apply to people or groups that receive funding from abroad and are involved in any kind of "political activity".

Russia first introduced the term in legislation passed in 2012, but it applied to non-governmental groups before being expanded to media organisations in 2017 and individual journalists last year.

Critics say the label is used to silence Kremlin critics and make daily life difficult for them.

The Kremlin says the measures are necessary because of increased interference from abroad with non-governmental groups and journalists exploited by outside actors to meddle in Russian affairs.

The "foreign agent" list currently has 111 names.

A number of independent media outlets including Rain TV and Meduza, a popular Russian-language website, have previously been branded "foreign agents".

The past year has seen an unprecedented crackdown on dissent in Russia, including the jailing of Putin's top critic Alexei Navalny and outlawing his political organisations.

Navalny's team pointed out that some of the new additions to the "foreign agent" list were not journalists.

"They simply are 'the enemies of the people' whose lives are being essentially ruined," the team said on Twitter.

Russia's most prominent rights group Memorial -- also branded a "foreign agent" -- was this week ordered by courts to shut down over a number of alleged transgressions including failing to use on all its publications the "foreign agent" label and justifying terrorism and extremism.

The rulings were denounced by the United Nations, the United States and the European Union.

Also on Thursday, Putin signed into law legislation that allows the state communications regulator to block any content which justifies extremism.

© 2021 AFP