Only 19% of Australians agree religious schools should be able to ban LGBT+ teachers

The Conversation
February 09, 2022

Catholic priest (AFP)

This week, the religious discrimination bill is finally being debated on the floor of federal parliament.

The bill has prompted disagreements within political parties, within religions and across a wide variety of other stakeholders.

But what do voters actually think?

A new survey, soon to be published in the Journal of Sociology, shows a majority of Australians do not think religious organizations that provide government-funded public services should be allowed to discriminate against LGBTQ+ people.

The religious discrimination bill

The religious discrimination bill does two key things. First, it protects religious and non-religious people from being discriminated against on the basis of their faith or lack of it.

 This aim is widely supported.


The religious discrimination bill was introduced to parliament in November 2021.
Mick Tsikas/AAP

Second, it allows religious people and religious organizations to discriminate against other people where the conduct is backed by genuinely-held religious beliefs.

As part of this, the proposed bill would permit discrimination in government-funded services such as religiously-affiliated education, aged care, health care and welfare services. This has been hotly debated.

These parts of the bill give religious people new rights to discriminate and reduce protections already available to LGBTQ+ people, people with disability, single mothers, and unmarried couples.
Our research

Colleagues and I recently conducted a study of Australians’ views about the role of religion in government and public life. We included questions in the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes that ran from February to June 2021 with 1,162 respondents.

First, we asked people a general question about whether they agree or disagree that, “the federal government should advocate Christian values”. About one third agreed (37%), one third disagreed (30%), and one third were unsure (32%).

Unsurprisingly, Christians were more likely to agree (57% of both Anglican and Catholic respondents), and those with no religion were less likely to agree (20%). Coalition voters were more likely to agree (62%) than those identifying with Labor (29%) and those with no party affiliation (31%).
Discrimination against LGBTQ+ people


We also asked how Australians regarded discrimination against LGBTQ+ people by or within faith-based service provision.

We asked whether people agreed or disagreed with the statement: “conservative Catholic, Anglican, Jewish, and Muslim schools should be allowed to refuse to employ a teacher because they are LGBT+”.


The vast majority (73%) of those surveyed disagreed, 19% agreed, and 8% were unsure. Only 17% of women agreed compared to 22% of men.

Most respondents also did not see discrimination against LGBTQ+ teachers as a “Christian value”.

Only 20% of Catholics agreed, 25% of Anglicans, and 35% of other Christians. Among Australians who attend religious services at least monthly, less than half (41%) support discrimination against LGBTQ+ teachers within conservative religious schools, and only 25% support discrimination against an LGBTQ+ homeless person by a religiously-affiliated welfare organization.

Only one quarter (26%) of those who identify with the Coalition support discrimination against LGBTQ+ teachers, even though 62% want the government to advocate Christian values. This suggests that many see discrimination as inconsistent with Christian values.

A similar pattern appears among those who identify with Labor. While 29% want the government to advocate Christian values only 14% support discrimination. Only 19% of those with no party affiliation support discrimination.

Our analysis suggests support for discrimination is more influenced by whether a person has religious beliefs which justify discrimination rather than their political affiliation.
Taxpayer funds are involved

Religious organisations receive billions of dollars of public money. They also employ tens of thousands of people to provide services to the general population. For example, approximately one third of schools in Australia are faith-based schools and Anglicare Sydney alone received more than A$240 million in government subsidies in both 2020 and 2021.


Key elements of the religious discrimination bill are strongly opposed by LGBTQ+ rights advocates.
Darren England/AAP

Other research demonstrates permitting discrimination causes serious harm. For example, a 2006 Jesuit Social Services study found discrimination in Catholic schools toward same-sex attracted young people resulted in “increased rates of homelessness, risk-taking behavior, depression, suicide and episodes of self-harm compared to young heterosexuals.”

Our research suggests the majority of Australians strongly reject the sections of the religious discrimination bill that would allow discrimination by government -funded bodies in the name of religion. This is true for Coalition voters and religious Australians.

As MPs debate this complicated and controversial bill – which has many, diverse stakeholders – they should also be considering the views of the broader Australian community.

Douglas Ezzy, Professor of Sociology, University of Tasmania

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

DC insider: The Fed is about to shaft American workers -- for no good reason

Robert Reich

February 07, 2022

Los Angeles restaurant workers (AFP)

The January jobs report from the Labor Department is heightening fears that a so-called “tight” labor market is fueling inflation, and therefore the Fed must put on the brakes by raising interest rates.

This line of reasoning is totally wrong.

Among the biggest job gains in January were workers who are normally temporary and paid low wages (leisure and hospitality, retail, transport and warehousing). This January employers cut fewer of these low-wage temp workers than in most years, because of rising customer demand and the difficulties of hiring during Omicron. Due to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s “seasonal adjustment,” cutting fewer workers than usual for this time of year appears as “adding lots of jobs.”

Fed policymakers are poised to raise interest rates at their March meeting and then continue raising them, in order to slow the economy. They fear that a labor shortage is pushing up wages, which in turn are pushing up prices — and that this wage-price spiral could get out of control.

It’s a huge mistake. Higher interest rates will harm millions of workers who will be involuntarily drafted into the inflation fight by losing jobs or long-overdue pay raises. There’s no “labor shortage” pushing up wages. There’s a shortage of good jobs paying adequate wages to support working families. Raising interest rates will worsen this shortage.

The reality is that Biden has done a great job — but the pundits can't admit it

There’s no “wage-price spiral,” either (even though Fed chief Jerome Powell has expressed concern about wage hikes pushing up prices). To the contrary, workers’ real wages have dropped because of inflation. Even though overall wages have climbed, they’ve failed to keep up with price increases – making most workers worse off in terms of the purchasing power of their dollars.

Wage-price spirals used to be a problem. Remember when John F. Kennedy “jawboned” steel executives and the United Steel Workers to keep a lid on wages and prices? But such spirals are no longer a problem. That’s because the typical worker today has little or no bargaining power.

Only 6 percent of private-sector workers are now unionized. A half-century ago, more than a third were. Today, corporations can increase output by outsourcing just about anything anywhere because capital is global. A half-century ago, corporations needing more output had to bargain with their own workers to get it.

These changes have shifted power from labor to capital — increasing the share of the economic pie going to profits and shrinking the share going to wages. This power shift ended wage-price spirals.

Slowing the economy won’t remedy either of the two real causes of today’s inflation – continuing worldwide bottlenecks in the supply of goods, and the ease with which big corporations (with record profits) are passing these costs to customers in higher prices.

Supply bottlenecks are all around us. (Just take a look at all the ships with billions of dollars of cargo idling outside the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, through which 40 percent of all U.S. seaborne imports flow.)

Big corporations have no incentive to absorb the rising costs of such supplies — even with profit margins at their highest level in 70 years. They have enough market power to pass these costs on to consumers, sometimes using inflation to justify even bigger price hikes. “A little bit of inflation is always good in our business,” the CEO of Kroger said last June. “What we are very good at is pricing,” the CEO of Colgate-Palmolive added in October.

In fact, the Fed’s plan to slow the economy is the opposite of what’s needed now or in the foreseeable future. COVID is still with us. Even in its wake, we’ll be dealing with its damaging consequences for years — everything from long-term COVID, to school children months or years behind.

The January jobs report shows that the U.S. economy is still 2.9 million jobs below what it had in February 2020. Given the growth of the US population, it’s 4.5 million short of what it would have by now had there been no pandemic.

Consumers are almost tapped out. Not only are real (inflation-adjusted) incomes down, but pandemic assistance has ended. Extra jobless benefits are gone. Child tax credits have expired. Rent moratoriums are over. Small wonder consumer spending fell 0.6 percent in December, the first decrease since last February.

Many people are understandably gloomy about the future. The University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey plummeted in January to its lowest level since late 2011, back when the economy was trying to recover from the global financial crisis. The Conference Board’s index of confidence also dropped in January.

Given all this, the last thing average working people need is for the Fed to raise interest rates and slow the economy further. The problem most people face isn’t inflation. It’s a lack of good jobs.

Robert B. Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, and writes at robertreich.substack.com. Reich served as Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, for which Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the twentieth century. He has written fifteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock", "The Work of Nations," and"Beyond Outrage," and, his most recent, "The Common Good," which is available in bookstores now. He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine, chairman of Common Cause, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and co-creator of the award-winning documentary, "Inequality For All." He's co-creator of the Netflix original documentary "Saving Capitalism," which is streaming now.

DARK MATTER

THE ENIGMA

Black diamond, largest ever cut, sells for £3.2 million

Agence France-Presse
February 09, 2022

The Enigma, a 555.55 carat black diamond, which went on show Monday in the Gulf emirate of Dubai 

Giuseppe CACACE AFP

"The Enigma", the world's largest known cut diamond at 555 carats, went under the hammer in London on Wednesday for £3.16 million ($4.3 million, 3.8 million euros) having recently gone on display for the first time.

The rare black, or carbanado, diamond is believed to have been created when a meteorite or an asteroid hit Earth more than 2.6 billion years ago.

The 555.55 carat, 55-faced diamond reached £3.16 million, excluding the buyer's premium, at an online sale held by London's renowned Sotheby's auction house.

Carbonados are usually found close to the Earth's surface, suggesting extraterrestrial origins.

"It is thought that this specific type of black diamond was created either from meteoric impacts producing natural chemical vapor deposition or an extraterrestrial origin -- from supernovae explosions that formed diamond-bearing asteroids which ultimately collided with the Earth," said the auction house.

One of the most difficult substances to cut, the diamond had never previously been shown by its unnamed owner of the past 20 years.

Experts took three years turning the rough diamond into a 55-face jewel and it recently went on show in Dubai, Los Angeles and London.

Its shape was inspired by the Middle East palm-shaped symbol of power and protection, the Hamsa, which is also associated with the number five.

"The Enigma's price did not quite reach intergalactic levels. But what cannot be denied is that the Enigma is a diamond with unparalleled bragging rights," said Tobias Kormind, managing director of Europe's largest online jeweler, the Mayfair.

"The size, shape and source of the Enigma diamond make it groundbreaking and amazing," he added. "Most diamonds are cut into one of 10 popular shapes but the Enigma's form resembles a hand."

The Enigma is not a gem quality diamond, and carbonados are not normally used in jewellery or sold at auction, but have grown in popularity recently.

They are normally used in industrial drilling due to their extraordinary hardness.

Sotheby's called the diamond a "cosmic wonder" ahead of the sale, which also accepted crypto-currency bids.

Last year in Hong Kong, the Key 10138 diamond sold for 12.3 million dollars, which was paid in crypto-currency.

 

A 555.55-carat black diamond believed to come from space is going on sale

Isabelle Jani-Friend, CNN .

A 555.55-carat black diamond that is truly from out of this world has been unveiled by auction house Sotheby's Dubai.

The rare gem, which Sotheby's has dubbed "The Enigma," is believed to have come from outer space -- either created from a meteoric impact or from a "diamond-bearing" asteroid that collided with Earth.

A natural faceted black diamond of this size is an "extremely rare occurrence," according to Sotheby's, which expects it to sell for as much as £5 million ($6.8 million) when it goes under the hammer in February in London, after being exhibited in Dubai and Los Angeles.

Black diamonds, also known as Carbonado diamonds, can be dated to between 2.6 to 3.8 billion years ago and have trace amounts of nitrogen and hydrogen -- elements found in interstellar space. They also contain osbornite, a mineral present in meteorites.

Nikita Binani, a jewelry specialist at Sotheby's in London, called the diamond "a true natural phenomenon."

"Its sale represents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to acquire one of the rarest, billion-year-old cosmic wonders known to humankind," she said in press release Monday.

The shape of the diamond is inspired by the Middle Eastern palm symbol of the Hamsa, a sign of protection, which means five in Arabic. The theme of five runs throughout the stone, according to the auctioneer. In addition to its 555.55 carats, it also contains exactly 55 facets, or faces.

Black diamonds that are faceted have sold in the past at prices surpassing £10,000 ($13,600) per carat, Sotheby's told CNN.

The diamond will be open for bidding online from February 3 to 9, and the auction house said it will accept cryptocurrency as payment.

The move follows the sale of a 101-carrat diamond, dubbed "The Key 10138," which became the most expensive jewel ever purchased with cryptoccurency when it sold last year, according to Sotheby's.

The pear-shaped gemstone sold for the equivalent of $12.3 million, after the auctioneer announced it was accepting offers in bitcoin and ethereum, in addition to traditional forms of payment. Sotheby's would not disclose which of the two cryptocurrencies had been used to make the purchase.

A number of auction houses have begun welcoming cryptocurrencies for big-ticket items, which have included paintings and NFTs -- the blockchain-backed tokens increasingly used to transfer ownership of digital artworks and collectibles. Sotheby's CEO Charles Stewart told CNN's Julia Chatterley last April that he believed NFTs and crypto were opening up the art market.


© Sotheby'sThe black diamond is thought to come from interstellar space.

#CRYPTID #CRYPTOZOOLOGY #CRISPRCRITTER
We’ve decoded the numbat genome – and it could bring the thylacine’s resurrection a step close

The Conversation
February 09, 2022

The Tasmanian tiger roamed in Australia and on the island of New Guinea before dying out about 85 years ago Handout The National Film and Sound Archive of Australia/AFP

It used to be the stuff of science fiction: bringing a long-dead species back from extinction by painstakingly piecing together its full DNA sequence, or genome.

It’s not quite as straightforward as Jurassic Park would have us believe, but in the age of DNA editing, the idea of cloning an extinct species is no longer purely the realm of fantasy.

Today, our team at the DNA Zoo has hopefully taken a step towards creating a blueprint to clone one of Australia’s most loved, and most missed, extinct species: the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger.

We’ve done it not by studying the thylacine itself, but by completing a chromosome-length 3D genome map of one of its closest living relative: the numbat.


The striped, termite-eating numbat is Western Australia’s faunal emblem, and now lives only in small pockets of that state, although it once roamed throughout southern Australia. Crucially, numbats and thylacines shared a common ancestor that lived some time between 35 million and 41 million years ago – relatively recent in evolutionary terms.



Evolutionary tree showing the kinship between numbats and thylacines.
DNA Zoo/UWA, Author provided


Both these enigmatic creatures have stripes, but that’s not where the similarity ends – as much as 95% of their DNA may be identical.

Decoding the full numbat genome therefore raises the tantalising prospect of being able to piece together the thylacine’s genetic sequence, which in turn would offer the tantalising prospect of reintroducing one of Australia’s most iconic lost species.

No doubt this will be more challenging than the famous bid to resurrect the woolly mammoth using DNA from the Asian elephant. But the release of the numbat genome makes the thylacine’s resurrection a more realistic prospect than ever before.

The numbat is the latest marsupial genome sequence from this family compiled by our team at the DNA Zoo, following on from the Tasmanian devil, quoll and dunnart. We acquired samples of more than 500 mammals from around the world, and aim to make all their genomes available for conservation and open-access research.

We are also working on a detailed genomic analysis of most Australian carnivorous marsupials, and will ultimately produce a full peer-reviewed publication in a journal. But today, by sharing the sequence publicly at this stage of our research, we can offer a valuable resource to other scientists and conservationists studying numbats and other marsupials. Given the conservation threats they face, time is ticking fast.
Genes from thylacines

The first draft of the Tasmanian tiger genome was pieced together in 2018, using the century-old museum samples. But this version is very fragmentary – several key gaps still need to be filled to piece this puzzle together into a comprehensive genome sequence. Unfortunately, the old museum samples didn’t provide enough high-quality DNA to resolve these issues.

So how do you reconstruct something without some seemingly essential ingredients? This is where the genome of the thylacine’s closest living cousin – the numbat – can help. Our new high-resolution numbat genome map can help us fill in the missing bits of the thylacine genome.

There will still be significant hurdles between having a complete thylacine genome and cloning a thylacine for real. But what takes this scenario from science fiction to potential reality is CRISPR gene-editing technology – a set of enzymes that allow scientists to target very particular snippets of DNA.

CRISPR has been referred to as a kind of “molecular scissors” that allow the precise selection and insertion of DNA from specimens, making “de-extincting” the thylacine or other species a realistic prospect by allowing geneticists to selectively “repair” the missing bits of its genome.

How CRISPR gene editing works.

With the help of this and other “synthetic biology” tools, geneticists could conceivably piece together a set of chromosomes that could then be inserted into an egg cell with its existing nucleus removed, allowing the new DNA to act as the egg’s genetic blueprint. This is the technique being pursued by a US research group aiming to clone the mammoth by using the DNA of its closest living relative, the Asian elephant, to fill in the missing bits of mammoth DNA 

Science fiction or science future?

Around the world, rapid advancements in embryology and genetics are opening up the possibility of resurrecting extinct species — or at least creating something that’s close enough to the original that it will develop and grow properly.
In 1996, British scientists successfully cloned a sheep, called Dolly. Then, in 2017, Chinese researchers used the same technique to create two genetically identical long-tailed macaques.

Through the growing field of synthetic biology and precise genome-editing technologies such as CRISPR, Harvard geneticist George Church has launched Colossal, a biotech company that has initially set on creating an elephant-mammoth hybrid, with the first calves expected in six years.
Helping numbats first

Of course, the numbat is one of Australia’s most loved native marsupials in its own right.

Like the Tasmanian Tiger, it too was on the verge of extinction during the late 20th century, but extensive conservation efforts as well as government and community intervention are helping its numbers gradually bounce back.

Still, with fewer than 1,000 numbats left in the wild and the species still officially listed as endangered, our genetic blueprint hopefully paves the way for better numbat conservation information for our scientists on the front line. Many of these scientists are fighting the very genetic diseases threatening to exterminate numbats.

There is a still a long road ahead before the thylacine could be cloned. But if it works, the end goal of any de-extinction effort surely is to reintroduce animals to the wild.

If that were to happen, the thylacine already has one advantage over many de-extinction candidates: appropriate habitat. With reserves covering about half of Tasmania today, there would be ample places for thylacines to live, still teaming with the prey animals they used to eat.

There is no question it could be put back into the Tasmanian bush. There is also good reason to do so: the thylacine was Tasmania’s key carnivore. Putting it back atop the food chain could help restabilise ecosystems that are under threat.

If and when that dream becomes reality, thylacines would owe a debt of gratitude to their little cousin, the humble numbat.

Parwinder Kaur, Associate Professor | Director, DNA Zoo Australia, The University of Western Australia

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

CDC proposes softer guidance on opioid prescriptions

By MIKE STOBBE

This June 17, 2019, file photo shows 5-mg pills of Oxycodone. The nation's top public health agency on Thursday proposed changing — and in some instances, dulling — guidelines for U.S. doctors prescribing oxycodone and other opioid painkillers.

(AP Photo/Keith Srakocic, File)


NEW YORK (AP) — The nation’s top public health agency on Thursday proposed changing — and in some instances, softening — guidelines for U.S. doctors prescribing oxycodone and other opioid painkillers.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s previous guidance, issued six years ago, helped slow the kind of prescribing that ignited the worst overdose epidemic in U.S. history. But it also caused some doctors to become too quick to cut off patients taking prescription painkillers and too strict in keeping the drugs from patients who might benefit, CDC officials said.

“We began to hear how the guidelines were being misused and misapplied” said the CDC’s Christopher Jones, a co-author of the draft guidance.

The proposed changes, contained in a 229-page draft update in the Federal Register, would roll back some suggested limits on the drugs. Their publication opens a 60-day public comment period. The CDC will consider comments before finalizing the updated guidance.

The general intent is to foster individualized patient care, Jones said. It also offers more options for treating the kind of short-term, acute pain that follows surgeries or injuries.

One expert expressed initial wariness about a proposed revision.

The 2016 guidance succeeded in helping to reduce inappropriate and dangerous prescribing, said Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman of Georgetown University Medical Center. Its critics have included pain patients, but also painkiller manufacturers and groups they fund, she said.

“There was nothing wrong with the original guidelines,” said Fugh-Berman, a paid expert witness for plaintiffs in cases targeting pharmaceutical marketing practices.

Dr. Bobby Mukkamala, a head and neck surgeon in Flint, Michigan, welcomed the update.

Mukkamala said the guidelines have been a barrier to patient care, with some pharmacists pointing to the CDC’s suggested limits and refusing to fill prescriptions as doctors wrote them.

“That’s disastrous for patients in pain,” said Mukkamala, chairman of the American Medical Association board of trustees.

Opioids can be an important tool in treating severe pain from cancer, surgery and serious injuries. But they also can be addictive — even when used under doctors’ orders.

Beginning in the 1990s, some drugmakers, insurers and pain specialists called for wider use of the drugs for more common ailments like backaches and arthritis. The push was tied into the marketing of drugs like OxyContin, which were billed as less addictive than other opioids.

When U.S. overdose deaths began skyrocketing, prescription painkillers were identified as a big reason. Governments tried to restrict the prescriptions, but the overdose epidemic worsened as people hooked on pills switched to heroin and then to fentanyl. Those kinds of illegal injected drugs are now associated with the majority of U.S. overdose deaths.

The CDC’s 2016 prescribing guidelines said opioids should not be the first treatment for chronic pain. Doctors were urged to first try other medications or nondrug options, limit opioid prescriptions for short-term pain to three days, and to prescribe the lowest effective dose possible.

The guidelines are voluntary, but they were widely adopted and added momentum to a dramatic decline in opioid painkiller prescriptions.

They also came under attack from pain patients and drug manufacturers, who argued some people in severe pain were being denied needed relief.

In 2019, CDC officials signaled that they were concerned about those reports. They examined newer research, resulting in the new proposal, Jones said. Drugmakers had no input into the writing of the draft revision, he said.

Changes include:

—The CDC would no longer suggest trying to limit opioid treatment for acute pain to three days.

—The agency would drop the specific recommendation that doctors avoid increasing dosage to a level equivalent to 90 milligrams of morphine per day.

—The CDC would say doctors should consider having patients undergo urine tests to see if they are using other controlled and illicit drugs, but no longer would call on having such testing done annually.

—For patients receiving higher doses of opioids, the CDC would urge doctors to not abruptly halt treatment unless there are indications of a life-threatening danger. The agency would offer suggestions about how to taper patients off the drugs.

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

IN ALBERTA AND AMERIKA

Most vulnerable still in jeopardy as COVID precautions ease

By LAURAN NEERGAARD

1 of 4

Ray Hoffman, right, who is immune-compromised, is given a shot of the two-shot dose of AstraZeneca's Evusheld — the first set of antibodies grown in a lab to prevent COVID-19, Thursday, Jan. 20, 2022, by Jose Lazaro, center, a medical assistant at a University of Washington Medicine clinic in Seattle as Cynde Wiederhold, left, a nurse, looks on. The two-shot dose is supposed to give patients like Hoffman, who can't make his own virus-fighters due to taking strong immune-suppressing drugs after liver and kidney transplants, some protection against COVID-19 for six months.

(AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Two years into the pandemic Jackie Hansen still left home only for doctor visits, her immune system so wrecked by cancer and lupus that COVID-19 vaccinations couldn’t take hold.

Then Hansen got a reprieve — scarce doses of the first drug that promises six months of protection for people with no other way to fend off the virus.

“This is a shot of life,” Hansen said after getting injections of Evusheld at a University of Pittsburgh Medical Center clinic. She can’t wait to “hug my grandkids without fear.”

Up to 7 million immune-compromised Americans have been left behind in the nation’s wobbly efforts to get back to normal. A weak immune system simply can’t rev up to fight the virus after vaccination like a healthy one does. Not only do these fragile patients remain at high risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19, they can harbor lengthy infections that can help spark still more variants.

With more of the country now abandoning masks and other precautions as the omicron wave ebbs, how to keep this forgotten group protected is taking on new urgency.

This is “quickly transitioning into an epidemic of the vulnerable,” said Dr. Jacob Lemieux, an infectious disease specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital. While healthy vaccinated people may return to pre-pandemic activities with little worry about severe consequences, “the immunocompromised -- despite vaccination, despite taking all precautions -- cannot, and remain at risk.”

“We’re going to have to navigate this as a society and it’s going to be a really difficult societal conversation,” he added.

Indeed, amid all the talk about omicron being less severe for many people, the most contagious variant so far laid bare how the immune-compromised need more defenses.

“The pandemic has not spared them yet,” said Dr. Ghady Haidar, an infectious disease specialist at UPMC, where people hospitalized with serious COVID-19 over the past month have been a mix of the immune-compromised and the unvaccinated.

Hansen, a retired nurse, has had to have tough conversations about why she can’t be around anyone who’s not vaccinated.

“Other people’s behaviors really affect and jeopardize the lives of people like myself,” said Hansen, who nearly died from the flu shortly before the pandemic began.

“We’re all tired of wearing a mask, everybody just wants to put it behind us,” Hansen said. But while for most people ”’it’s an annoyance to put a mask on to go to the grocery store,” she’s had to fight to get her cancer care scheduled during COVID-19 surges.

There aren’t many options for the immune-compromised as community-wide COVID-19 precautions wane. Health authorities are pushing a fourth vaccine dose for these vulnerable patients, since some get at least a little protection from repeat vaccinations. The immune-compromised are supposed to get three up-front doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines followed by a booster, one more shot than the U.S. recommends for everyone else.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also is considering if the immune-compromised need their booster a little sooner -- three months after their last shot rather than five months.

But many patients are anxiously awaiting AstraZeneca’s Evusheld, the first set of antibodies grown in a lab to prevent COVID-19 -- rather than treat it -- in people who can’t make their own virus-fighters. Evusheld contains two types of antibodies, given in two shots at the same appointment, that are expected to last for six months.

The problem: There’s not nearly enough to go around. A federal database shows nearly 500,000 of the 1.2 million doses the government has purchased have been distributed, and an AstraZeneca spokesperson says the rest should arrive before April.

Without enough for everyone deemed immune-compromised, many hospitals used a lottery system to dispense doses to their highest-risk patients -- and no one knows what will happen later in the year when those people need another dose.

A study found Evusheld cut by 77% the chances of a COVID-19 infection, although that was before omicron appeared.

While that’s not perfect protection, one organ transplant recipient credits his Evusheld dose with preventing him from becoming seriously ill.

Just getting to the Evusheld appointment at a University of Washington clinic in Seattle, over an hour from his home, made Ray Hoffman nervous. He takes strong immune-suppressing drugs after recent liver and kidney transplants and never ventures out without his mask — but wound up with a masked but coughing cab driver. The next day Hoffman developed cold-like symptoms that turned out to be mild COVID-19, and his worried doctors told him the protective antibody injections likely made the difference.

“I’m just really happy that, fortunately for me, it was just a couple of days of feeling pretty bad and then that was the worst of it,” he said.

As long as Evusheld helps weakened patients avoid a severe infection, “that is definitely a win,” said UPMC’s Haidar. “I’m cautiously optimistic.”

Hansen, the suburban Pittsburgh patient, knows she can’t completely let down her guard but says Evusheld has eased her crippling fear.

“Maybe I can go out for lunch, maybe my husband and I can go do something instead of just sitting here in the house,” she said. “This drug needs to be made more available. It’s a great victory for me but until everybody else that’s compromised gets it, it’s hard for me to celebrate.”

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AP journalist Manuel Valdes in Seattle contributed to this report.

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

HINDUISTS NOT HINDUISM
Hindu nationalism pushed in voting test for Modi’s politics

By KRUTIKA PATHI

1 of 15

A RUTHLESS MISOGYNISTIC RACIST CASTEIST HINDUIST
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath prays at a temple in the morning before going to file his nomination papers for the state assembly elections in Gorakhpur, India, Feb. 5, 2022. The polls are a referendum on the saffron-robed Adityanath, a poster figure for the Hindu right-wing, who some analysts believe is vying to be the next prime minister. Over 150 million people are expected to vote in the state across seven phases starting Thursday before results are declared in March. 

(AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)


AYODHYA, India (AP) — Under grey skies, construction cranes towered over laborers building a mega three-story temple demanded by millions of Hindus for over 100 years. The shrine is dedicated to their most revered god, Ram, and is being built on a plot of land where a 16th-century mosque stood, before a Hindu mob tore it down in 1992.

It’s one of several frenetic constructions — massive roads, hotels and a swanky new railway station — underway in Ayodhya, a dusty, holy city in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party is seeking reelection by touting Hindu-first politics coupled with economic prosperity.

This was the first sign of progress Manish Yadav, a 25-year-old student, had seen in this once-sleepy city.

Modi’s BJP has won emphatically twice on the national stage. But the state polls in Uttar Pradesh – India’s most populous with over 230 million people – are crucial, a barometer of the party’s popularity ahead of general elections in 2024. Over 150 million people will vote in the state across seven phases starting Thursday before results are declared in March. Four other states will also vote in February and March — the BJP is fighting to retain power in all but one.

“We need Ayodhya to be a success. We need companies to come and invest, we need factories, technical colleges, institutes and jobs here so people don’t leave,” said Yadav. He said he voted for the BJP in 2019 because it promised to build the temple, and “now we need more.”

Uttar Pradesh is currently governed by the BJP’s Yogi Adityanath, a polarizing Hindu monk turned politician. Yadav said the government has failed to provide him – and millions like him – jobs. Still, he will vote for them again.

The BJP’s answer appears to be infrastructure, including mammoth expressways and airports to boost connectivity and tourism. But analysts are doubtful whether huge public spending on such projects is enough to kickstart growth in Uttar Pradesh, a largely poor and agrarian state where joblessness is rising.

Under Adityanath, youth unemployment has increased fivefold, according to economist Santosh Mehrotra, who analyzed national labor data.

The BJP, however, has made grand promises. It says it will attract investment, provide free electricity for farmers and generate jobs for 20 million people, but has provided few details.

It is also wooing voters with welfare measures, doubling free rations for the poor and a tough stance on crime.

But the party’s core Hindu nationalist agenda is unmissable. In December, Modi took a dip in the Ganges River before thousands after he inaugurated a $45 million corridor that connects two iconic religious sites in the state. Such events, analysts say, have turned temple inaugurations into political spectacles that drive focus away from pressing issues.

“There is a limit to how much employment and development you can create around a temple,” Mehrohtra said.

The big-ticket projects, which deftly mix religion and infrastructure, are aimed at pleasing the BJP’s Hindu base amid reports of discontent among key voters. The party won in the state last time by consolidating Hindu votes across castes. But multiple defections to the opposition Samajwadi Party, whose secular appeal has swayed voters from a wide range of castes as well as the Muslim community, have raised uncertainties.

Farmers, an influential voting bloc, are still furious at Modi for pushing agriculture laws that triggered a year-long protest before he bowed to the pressure and revoked them in November. The BJP is also facing allegations of COVID-19 mismanagement in the state after a calamitous surge in infections last year saw numerous corpses floating in the Ganges.

The polls are a referendum on the saffron-robed Adityanath, a poster figure for the Hindu right-wing, who some analysts believe is vying to be the next prime minister. In 2017, he was appointed the chief minister — the top state official — after the BJP won.

“It is an electoral test on his brand as a leader because he incarnates a more radical form of Hindu nationalism and is overly more communal than others in the BJP,” said Gilles Verniers, a political science professor at Ashoka University.

The head of an influential Hindu temple, Adityanath’s rise has been marked by an increase in violence against Muslims, with numerous reports of lynching and other attacks. Recently, Adityanath declared the forthcoming election as a “80% versus 20%” contest, which roughly match Uttar Pradesh’s Hindu and Muslim demographics. He later clarified the figures in an interview with local media as a majority that want development and safety over a minority that opposed it.

“The BJP has built houses and toilets for the poor without differentiating between their caste and religion. No one can claim the benefits of government schemes have reached only Hindus and not Muslims,” said Vijay Bahadur Pathak, the BJP state vice president.

But the meaning wasn’t lost on Mohammed Noor, an auto-rickshaw driver in Lucknow, the state capital. “Until the Yogi government came, nobody pointed out a Hindu from a Muslim here. But ever since the BJP has risen, they’ve created a feeling of divide, of difference – this has only grown,” he said.

“The Muslim community have just given up – we have no hope, we have stopped reacting,” said Shabbar Siddique, an 18-year-old in Lucknow.

Even the construction of the temple in Ayodhya has been met with resignation from the city’s Muslims.

“What can we say? Since the judgement has come from the highest court, we’ll have to abide by it,” said Syed Zia Haider Rizvi, a watch store owner. “As a businessman, I should gain.”

The Supreme Court in 2019 ruled in favor of the temple, ending one of India’s most protracted land disputes, and ordered alternative land to be given for a mosque. Many Hindus, who believe Ram was born at the site, rejoiced at the verdict, while a key Muslim body deplored it.

The mosque’s destruction in 1992 set off riots in which 2,000 people across India were killed, mostly Muslims. There’s a a feeling among many Muslims in Uttar Pradesh of rising fear and uncertainty, although Hindu and Muslim residents in Ayodhya itself say there have been no religious tensions since the mosque unrest.

The BJP spun the court verdict, which came after the 2019 national elections, as their success. Observers said the fervor behind the ruling likely boosted Modi’s electoral sweep.

But now analysts believe the party has squeezed all it can from the temple.

“They certainly take the cake for keeping Hindu passions alive in the name of the temple for decades and decades,” said Lucknow-based political analyst Sharat Pradhan. “But electorally, I think it has outlived its potential.”

BJP leaders are already invoking another holy city in Uttar Pradesh. In December, Adityanath first mentioned Mathura, believed to be the birthplace of Krishna, a major Hindu deity. A recent court case filed by Hindu priests over a 17th-century mosque there could rekindle tensions.

Mathura, like Ayodhya, will also get a temple – work for it was already “in progress,” Adityanath was quoted as saying by local media.

“Now that they have won Ayodhya, they will need another battle - which site are they going to fix their eyes on next?” said Verniers, the political science professor. “The moment they inaugurate the Ram temple, they will have to find something else.”

___

Associated Press journalists Rishi Lekhi and Rajesh Kumar Singh in Ayodhya and Biswajeet Banerjee Lucknow, India, contributed to this report.

SEE http://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2006/10/hinduism-is-fascism.html

Adrift after enslavement, Yazidi teen says she can’t go home
By SAMYA KULLAB

1 of 3

Roza Barakat poses for a portrait in a safe house in Hassakeh, Syria, Sunday, Feb. 6, 2022. Barakat was 11 years old when she was taken by IS militants, along with thousands of others, when the extremists overran her hometown of Sinjar in northwestern Iraq. Eight years later, she is living in the shadows, afraid to go home and fearing her community won't accept her. (AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad)


BARZAN, Syria (AP) — Roza Barakat’s tormentors have been defeated, but the horrors she endured still hold her captive.

She was 11 years old when she was captured and enslaved by the Islamic State group, along with thousands of other Yazidi women and girls taken when the militants overran northern Iraq in their brutal 2014 campaign.

Torn from her family in the town of Sinjar, the enclave of the ancient religious Yazidi minority, she was taken to Syria, sold multiple times and repeatedly raped. She bore a child, a boy she has since lost. Now, at 18, she speaks little of her native Kurdish dialect, Kurmanji.

With the defeat of IS in 2019, Barakat slipped into the shadows, opting to hide in the turmoil that followed the worst of the battles. As IS fighters were arrested, their wives and children were packed into detention camps. Barakat was free, but she couldn’t go home.

“I don’t know how I’ll face my community,” she told The Associated Press, speaking in Arabic, as she nervously played with the ends of her long dark braid, the red polish on her dainty fingers fading.

For years, her IS captors told her she would never be accepted if she returned. “I believed them,” she said.

Barakat’s tale, corroborated by Yazidi and Syrian Kurdish officials, is a window into the complicated realities faced by many Yazidi women who came of age under the brutal rule of IS. Traumatized and lost, many struggle to come to terms with the past, while the Yazidi community is at odds over how to accept them.

“What do you expect from a child who was raped at 12, gave birth at 13?” said Faruk Tuzu, co-chair of Yazidi House, an umbrella of Yazidi organizations in northeastern Syria. “After so much shock and abuse they don’t believe in anything anymore, they don’t belong anywhere.”

The AP does not typically identify people who say they are victims of sexual assault unless they grant permission.

Barakat spoke to the AP from a safe house run by Tuzu’s group just a few days after the leader of the Islamic State group, believed to have played a key role in the enslavement of Yazidi women, was killed in a U.S. raid in northwestern Syria.

She shrugged off the news, saying it doesn’t make a difference.

IS first sold Barakat to an Iraqi from Tal Afar, a man older than her father. She shudders as she recounts how he “made me call his wife ‘mother.’” After a few months she was sold to another man.

Eventually, her IS captors gave her a choice: Convert to Islam and marry an IS fighter, or be sold again. She converted, she says, to avoid being sold. She married a Lebanese they chose for her, a man who ferried food and equipment for IS fighters.

“He was better than most,” she said. At 13, she gave birth to a son, Hoodh. At the peak of the militants’ self-proclaimed “caliphate,” they lived in the city of Raqqa, the IS capital.

Once, she begged her husband to find out what happened to her older sisters who had been taken just like her. She had lost hope that her parents were still alive.

Some weeks later, he told her he found one of her sisters, holding up a photo of a woman in Raqqa’s slave market where Yazidi girls were sold.

“How different she looks,” Barakat remembers thinking.

By early 2019 as IS rule was crumbling, Barakat fled with her husband first to the eastern Syrian city of Deir el-Zour, and then to the town of Baghouz, which became IS’s last stand. As U.S.-backed Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces surrounded Baghouz, a safe passage was offered to women and children.

At this point, Barakat could have stepped forward and identified herself as a Yazidi and sought safety. But instead, she clutched Hoodh in her arms and walked out of the town with other IS wives.

Today, over 2,800 Yazidi women and children are still missing, said Tuzu. Some have cut ties and are building new lives outside the community, believing that if they return, they’d be killed. Others fear being separated from their children, fathered by IS members.

Iraq’s Yazidi community has forced women returning to Sinjar to give up their children as a condition to return. Many were told their children would be adopted by Syrian Kurdish families but dozens have ended up in an orphanage in northeastern Syria.

The fate of the children has been at the center of an ongoing debate within the Yazidi community. In 2019, the Yazidi Spiritual Council, the highest authority among Yazidis, called on members to accept all Yazidi survivors of IS atrocities. Days later, the council clarified the decision excluded children born of IS rape.

“This is our mistake, and we recognize that — we didn’t allow the children to stay with their mothers,” said Tuzu.

He confirmed that some Yazidi women are still at al-Hol camp, which holds tens of thousands of women and children, mostly wives, widows and children of IS members.

Many of the missing Yazidis scattered across Syria and Turkey, others live clandestine lives in the Syrian city of Aleppo and in Deir El-Zour. Tuzu expects the majority may have gone to the rebel province of Idlib, where al-Qaida is dominant but where IS also maintains a presence.

After walking out of Baghouz with other IS women in March 2019, Barakat slipped away to a nearby village rather than end up in a camp. With the help of IS sympathizers, she took a smuggling route and ended up in Idlib, in northwesten Syria, in a home for IS widows. Her husband was killed in Baghouz.

Here, Barakat’s story diverges from what she told officials. Initially, she told them she had left her son behind in Idlib to find work elsewhere. She told the AP that Hoodh died after an airstrike in Idlib.

When pressed to clarify, she said: “It’s hard. I don’t want to talk about it.”

With the help of a smuggler, she made her way to Deir el-Zour and eventually found work at a clothing market, saving up for a new life in Turkey.

She still dreamed of making it to Turkey when Kurdish internal security forces caught her last month, waiting in a house in the town of al-Tweinah to be taken by smugglers across the Syria-Turkey border.

She was held and interrogated for days.

“I did everything to hide that I was Yazidi,” she said. She told the investigators she was from Deir el-Zour, and was hoping to get medical treatment in Turkey, but they didn’t buy it.

One held up an old photo found on her mobile phone — a young Yazidi woman in an IS slave market — and asked her to explain.

“The words just came out: ‘That is my sister,’” Barakat said.

Once the truth was out, Barakat was taken to a safe house in the village of Barzan, in Syria’s Hassakeh province, where the Yazidi community welcomed her.

“I was in shock to hear their kind words, and to be welcomed the way I was,” she said.

She isn’t ready to go back to Sinjar just yet. Her entire family was either killed or is still unaccounted for.

What is there to go back to, she wonders. “I need time, for myself.”

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for YEZIDI 

SCHADENFREUDE

SpaceX satellites falling out of orbit after solar storm


 A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center, Fla.,Thursday, Feb. 3, 2022. The rocket is carrying a batch of Starlink satellites. Spacex's newest fleet of Starlink satellites are tumbling out of orbit because of a geomagnetic storm. In an online update Tuesday, Feb. 8, Elon Musk's company reported that up to 40 of the 49 small Internet-service satellites launched last Thursday have either re-entered the atmosphere and burned up, or are on the verge of doing so.

 (Craig Bailey/Florida Today via AP)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — SpaceX’s newest fleet of satellites is tumbling out of orbit after being struck by a solar storm.

Up to 40 of the 49 small satellites launched last week have either reentered the atmosphere and burned up, or are on the verge of doing so, the company said in an online update Tuesday night.

SpaceX said a geomagnetic storm last Friday made the atmosphere denser, which increased the drag on the Starlink satellites, effectively dooming them.

Ground controllers tried to save the compact, flat-panel satellites by putting them into a type of hibernation and flying them in a way to minimize drag. But the atmospheric pull was too great, and the satellites failed to awaken and climb to a higher, more stable orbit, according to the company.

SpaceX still has close to 2,000 Starlink satellites orbiting Earth and providing internet service to remote corners of the world. They circle the globe more than 340 miles up (550 kilometers).

The satellites hit by the solar storm were in a temporary position. SpaceX deliberately launches them into this unusually low orbit so that any duds can quickly reenter the atmosphere and pose no threat to other spacecraft.

There is no danger from these newly falling satellites, either in orbit or on the ground, according to the company.

Each satellite weighs less than 575 pounds (260 kilograms).





SpaceX described the lost satellites as a “unique situation.” Such geomagnetic storms are caused by intense solar activity like flares, which can send streams of plasma from the sun’s corona hurtling out into space and toward Earth.

Since launching the first Starlink satellites in 2019, Elon Musk envisions a constellation of thousands more satellites to increase internet service. SpaceX is trying to help restore internet service to Tonga through this network following the devastating volcanic eruption and tsunami.

London-based OneWeb has its own internet satellites up there. And Amazon plans to start launching its satellites later this year.

Astronomers are distressed that these mega constellations will ruin nighttime observations from Earth. The International Astronomical Union is forming a new center for the protection of dark skies.

___

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

ANTI ABORTION IS ANTI CONTRACEPTION

Abortions in Texas fell 60% in 1st month under new limits

 Protesters walk along Jackson St. during the North Texas March for Life, celebrating the passage and court rulings upholding the Texas law known as Senate Bill 8, on Saturday, Jan. 15, 2022, in Dallas. Abortions in Texas fell by 60% in the first month under the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S. in decades. That's according to the fist figures released by Texas health officials since the law known as Senate Bill 8 took effect in September.

 (Shafkat Anowar/The Dallas Morning News via AP)


AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Abortions in Texas fell by 60% in the first month under the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S. in decades, according to new figures that for the first time reveal a full accounting of the immediate impact.

The nearly 2,200 abortions reported by Texas providers in September came after a new law took effect that bans the procedure once cardiac activity is detected, usually around six weeks of pregnancy and without exceptions in cases of rape or incest. The figures were released this month by the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.

In August, there had been more than 5,400 abortions statewide. State health officials said more data will be released on a monthly basis.

The numbers offer a fuller picture of the sharp drop in patients that Texas doctors have described in their clinics over the past five months, during which time courts have repeatedly allowed the restrictions to stay in place. It has left some Texas patients traveling hundreds of miles to clinics in neighboring states or farther, causing a backlog of appointments in those places.

Planned Parenthood issued a statement calling the numbers “the very beginning of the devastating impact” of the law.

The Texas law conflicts with landmark U.S. Supreme Court rulings that prevent a state from banning abortion early in pregnancy, but was written in a way that has essentially outmaneuvered those precedents.

Under the law, any private citizen is entitled to collect $10,000 or more if they bring a successful lawsuit against someone who performed or helped a woman obtain an abortion after the limit — which opponents have condemned as a bounty. So far, no anti-abortion supporters have filed any suits.

With few options left, Texas abortion providers have acknowledged the law is likely to stay on the books for the foreseeable future.

It comes as the U.S. Supreme Court has signaled a willingness to weaken or reverse the landmark Roe v. Wade precedent in a ruling that is expected later this year.