Turkey's Baykar launches new jet-powered drone, aiming for air-to-air combat
ERDOGAN'S SON IN LAW IS CEO

Thu, December 15, 2022 
By Omer Berberoglu

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkish defence firm Baykar said its first jet-powered unmanned aerial combat vehicle (UCAV) completed its maiden flight on Wednesday, as the company continues to gain popularity globally, most recently by helping Ukraine's army fight Russian forces.

Baykar released a video showing the Kizilelma (Golden Apple) UCAV taking off and then returning to an airbase which it said was in the northwestern Corlu province, 85 kilometers west of Istanbul.

Flightradar data also showed an unknown aircraft with a BYK07 call sign detected over Corlu Airport on Wednesday.

The company's earlier Bayraktar TB2 drone has featured prominently in global conflicts, pushing Baykar into the global spotlight and transforming it into a major manufacturer and exporter.

International demand for Baykar's propeller-driven drones soared after their impact in Syria, Ukraine, and Libya, where their laser-guided armor-piercing bombs helped repel an offensive by UAE-supported forces two years ago.

Selcuk Bayraktar, Baykar's chief technology officer, said in the video that Kizilelma had successfully completed its maiden flight.

The UCAV will increase the top speed and carrying capacity of the existing drones in Turkey, which have also played a prominent role in conflicts in Libya and northern Iraq.

Turkey's new drone powered by a jet-engine shows similar exterior features to fifth generation fighter jets. Baykar says in addition to conventional drone missions, Kizilelma will be able to conduct air-to-air engagements.

Malaysia and Indonesia had expressed interest in buying armed drones from Turkey, while 20 of them have been delivered to the United Arab Emirates.

Baykar is planning to complete the construction of its manufacturing plant in Ukraine, the only one outside of Turkey, in two years.

After it got removed from the F-35 fighter jet program, Turkey converted its vertical take-off aircraft carrier, which is still under construction into a drone carrier. The carrier will serve as a base for Kizilema and other drones in use by the Turkish military.

(Editing by Ali Kucukgocmen and Tomasz Janowski)

Homelessness and mental illness: Is forced treatment the answer?

Mike Bebernes
·Senior Editor
Wed, December 14, 2022 

the360@yahoonews.com
"The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates


What’s happening

New York City Mayor Eric Adams late last month announced a new push to remove people with mental illness from the city’s streets, an effort he said would include hospitalizing some homeless people against their will.

Under the new city policy, law enforcement will have the power to detain any person who “appears to be mentally ill” and is deemed to pose a threat to themselves or others into custody and force them to undergo psychiatric evaluation at a local hospital.

Like many major cities in the United States, New York has dealt with a persistently high rate of homelessness in recent decades. Although the image of a person with schizophrenia talking to themselves on a street corner might sum up homelessness in the eyes of many members of the public, the relationship between homelessness and mental health is complex. Research shows that most homeless people do not have a severe mental illness, but the mentally ill are often the focus of debates around the issue because they are more visible and often raise concerns about public safety. There is also a lot of debate among experts about how many become homeless because they have psychiatric disorders versus how much the trauma of living on the streets causes or exacerbates mental illness.

California also has recently placed a new emphasis on mental illness as part of its homelessness response. A new law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in September will create a series of statewide “CARE courts” that will allow a judge to evaluate whether someone must undergo mental health treatment — including involuntarily.

Why there’s debate

The new policies in California and New York have added fuel to a long-standing debate around severe mental illness, in particular the question of how far a person’s right to make their own choices should go when their ability to make sound decisions may be compromised.

Defenders of involuntary treatment argue that many people with psychiatric disorders will simply never seek help on their own and that leaving them on the streets means ultimately condemning them to more suffering and even death. “It is not acceptable for us to see someone who clearly needs help and walk past them,” Adams said in a statement outlining New York’s policy. Supporters also argue forced psychiatric treatment will prevent the mentally ill from ending up in jails and overwhelmed emergency rooms — places that aren’t equipped to help them and can often cause harm.

Many mental health experts say that involuntary treatment simply doesn’t work and the impact of being detained, even by well-meaning professionals, can cause lasting trauma. There’s also deep concern among advocates about the role of law enforcement in carrying out the new policies. They argue that police officers not only lack expertise needed to evaluate someone’s psychiatric state, but there’s also a major risk of dangerous — or even deadly — escalation whenever they interact with people experiencing a mental health crisis.

Others argue that involuntary treatment can be effective in some cases, but only if the system that people are forced into is properly set up to provide adequate care. They make the case that coerced treatment will fail without dramatic increases in funding for proven methods of support for the severely mentally ill — particularly reliable housing.
What’s next

Civil liberties groups have filed legal challenges in an effort to block New York’s forced treatment approach from being carried out. Though the policy has been in effect since the end of November, a lawyer for Adams’s administration said no one has been detained under the new directive yet. California’s first CARE courts are slated to begin operating late next year.

Perspectives

The first step to recovery sometimes involves coercion

“Freedom is for the self-governing, and the untreated severely mentally ill are incapable of governing themselves. The proper response of a free, decent, and prosperous city is to offer them the treatment they need and cannot provide for themselves. The institutions that care for them can restore to them and to the city a sense of dignity.” — Editorial, National Review

Forced treatment doesn’t give people what they actually need to recover

“People need four things to be in recovery: permanent supportive housing, community, purpose, and health care. There is no pathway to recovery when people are routinely losing their documents and medication in sweeps, when tenants struggle to hold on to their homes, and when obstacles to accessing community-based voluntary treatment remain.” — Cecelia Luis, The Nation

Even the severely mentally ill have basic human rights

“Under international human rights standards, treatment should be based on the will and preferences of the person concerned. Housing or disability status does not rob a person of their legal capacity or right to personal autonomy.” — Olivia Ensign and John Raphling, Los Angeles Times

Forced treatment will stop the mentally ill from ending up in jail

“Radicals want the public to believe that there is no middle ground between imprisoning troubled homeless people and allowing them to wreak havoc. That’s not true. Mandating treatment for people who need it can make a real difference.” — Joe Lonsdale and Judge Glock, Wall Street Journal

Personal freedom means nothing when you’re suffering on the streets

“Claiming autonomy and personal choice as reasons to keep severely mentally ill people who lack competence on our streets makes no sense. Allowing the sick to ‘rot with their rights on’ may appeal to single-minded civil libertarians, but it is deeply disrespectful to the dignity and kindness that mentally ill people deserve.” — Arthur Caplan, New York University bioethics professor, to New York Times

What matters is the quality of the care system people are placed in, not how they got there

“I suppose the devil’s in the details in all this stuff. If you provide a place where people can’t leave, where they receive significant treatment and a continuum of care that lasts, then I’d say, yeah, this is what needs to happen. If you’re just saying, ‘We’re going to take you out of the street, put you in a place where you can’t leave, but you’re just going to sit there,’ I’m not sure how that’s going to help anybody in the long run, either the city or the person.” — Sam Quinones, author, The Least of Us: True Tales of America and Hope in the Time of Fentanyl and Meth, to New York

Law enforcement should have no role in mental health response

“People who are disoriented or having atypical thoughts, they’re not in a position oftentimes to comply collaboratively with a police officer. And given the fact that police officers are carrying weapons, you have sort of a recipe for bad outcomes.” — Ryan McBain, policy researcher, to CNN

Only voluntary treatment has been proven to work

“Let's be clear: Expanding involuntary approaches will not address this crisis. We know how to voluntarily engage people with serious mental illness, especially approaches that feature pivotal roles for peer staff. We must recognize their right to receive the best care available without the use of coercion, which infringes on their rights.” — Harvey Rosenthal, New York Daily News

Society must be willing to accept that some people simply lack the capacity to make their own choices

“The voices of those who believe that … severely mentally ill people should be able to refuse the treatment that they don’t know they need have always been louder than those of the family members watching their loved ones die from lack of care. The many opponents of what they see as ‘forced treatment’ seem to think that running into traffic to escape imaginary torturers is just another lifestyle choice.” — Melinda Henneberger, Sacramento Bee

Other methods would be better, but the reality is they’re not always available

“Each side will have to acknowledge some hard truths — namely, that their opponents make some reasonable points. … When delivered in a heavy-handed way, court-ordered treatment is not only ineffective but can also drive people decisively away from essential services. Anti-coercion advocates, on the other hand, are right that most homeless people are clamoring for voluntary resources and housing.” — Neil Gong and Alex V. Barnard, Washington Post

A “housing first” approach would be more effective and eliminate the need for coercion

“We just need to bring the person right to housing. You don’t need involuntary commitment to housing. In fact, if you offered housing, people would go voluntarily, willingly, happily.” — Sam Tsemberis, clinical community psychologist, to Slate

Photo illustration: Jack Forbes/Yahoo News; photos: Getty Images

Petrobras Sinks as Brazil Moves to Ease Law Shielding Firm





Vinícius Andrade and Mariana Durao
Wed, December 14, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- Oil producer Petroleo Brasileiro SA plunged on Wednesday after Brazilian lawmakers approved changes to a law that offers some protection against political interference at state-controlled companies.

The lower house passed Tuesday night, by 314-66 votes, a bill that greatly facilitates the appointment of politicians to key jobs in state firms. The proposal establishes that participants of political campaigns need to undergo a quarantine of only one month before being named to an executive position or to the board of directors of such companies — down from the current three-year period.

The change, introduced in the last minute to another bill being debated by lawmakers, needs the backing of senators before it can be signed into law. Senate President Rodrigo Pacheco said party leaders are debating whether to put it to a vote still on Wednesday. The mood in congress suggests a swift approval of the proposal, despite its controversy.

“It’s an unspeakable setback,” Petrobras’s board member Francisco Petros told Bloomberg News about the proposed amendments. The move would represent “an endless source of conflicts of interest between political parties and state-owned businesses.”

Caught by Surprise

Petrobras was the worst-performing name on Brazil’s 92-member benchmark Ibovespa equity index on Wednesday, with preferred shares sinking more than 9% at 2:40 p.m. in Sao Paulo. Other state-owned companies also fell: Banco do Brasil was down 5%.

“The speed at which the change took place did catch us by surprise,” Banco BTG Pactual SA analysts Pedro Soares and Thiago Duarte wrote in a note. “This is indisputably negative for Petrobras (and other Brazilian state-owned enterprises) and eliminates one of the main mechanisms of defense from political influence at the company.”

Petrobras has been under heavy pressure since Lula was elected, with investors spooked by prospects of a new management and an expected shift toward investments in lower-return assets such as refineries. On Tuesday, Bradesco BBI ditched its buy-equivalent rating for the stock, saying the news flow surrounding the company is “deteriorating day by day”.

While outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro said in August that his economic team had the green light to plan a potential sale of Petrobras, Lula said on Tuesday that privatizations will come to an end in his government.

Petrobras, while considered one of the most technically adept national oil companies, also has a history of government interference and corruption. A massive pay-to-play scandal known as Carwash that broke in 2014 centered on Petrobras.

Fernando Haddad, who was appointed Lula’s economic czar last week, said on Wednesday that Brazilian state-run companies need strong compliance rules.

--With assistance from Simone Iglesias, Peter Millard and Martha Beck.

My life as a 'fifth wife' in Niger: The woman who fought her enslaver in court and won

Caroline Mwangi and Muktar Sadu Alize - BBC 100 Women
Wed, December 14, 2022 

Hadizatou Mani was sold to a local chief in Nigeria under the wahaya pratice

Hadizatou Mani-Karoau was sold off to a local chief, aged just 12, to become a wahaya or "fifth wife".

"It was a terrible life. I had no rights; not to rest, not to food, not even to my own life," she tells BBC 100 Women from her home in southern Niger.

Wahaya is a prevalent form of slavery in her region, where wealthy men buy young women for sex and domestic work for as little as $200 (£170) and make them fifth wives to circumvent Islamic law, which allows for a maximum of four wives.

Ms Mani was sold in 1996 and spent 11 years as a slave.

But her ordeal didn't end there. After being freed in 2005 and marrying a man of her choice, her former enslaver sued her for bigamy and Ms Mani was sentenced and jailed while pregnant.

Eventually, more than a decade later, her conviction was overturned. Hers was a landmark case in Niger, where slavery has persisted despite continued efforts to outlaw it.

Now Ms Mani lives her own life in Zongo Kagagi, a town in Niger's southern Tahoua region, and campaigns for other women to understand their rights and escape slavery.

She is one of the women featured on the BBC 100 Women list, which each year names 100 inspiring and influential women around the world. This year the list is honouring the progress that has been made since its inception 10 years ago.

Ms Mani's case was instrumental in getting legislation changed in her home country.

Yet despite court rulings, and Ms Mani's campaigns, more than 130,000 people are still enslaved people in Niger today, according to Global Slavery Index figures.

Hadizatou Mani now lives with her family in southern Niger

The extra wife

"Fifth wives" are enslaved by wealthy men in the region, and are also given away as gifts under an associated practice known as sadaka. Both wahaya and sadaka are considered forms of sex trafficking.

These fifth wives are, in essence, concubines enslaved to their master, the master's legal four wives - whom he would have married in accordance with Islamic law - and their children.

They are subjected to mental, physical and sexual abuse, are frequently denied food and other basic necessities, and forced to work doing house chores, tending to livestock and cultivating crops.

This was Hadizatou Mani-Karoau's life after she was bought in Niger and taken across the border to Nigeria.

She says the influential chief "got a good bargain" for buying her and seven other women and girls at once. The transaction was made without her or her parents' consent.

A vicious cycle of abuse saw her run away back to Niger on more than one occasion, but each time she would be captured and brought back to Nigeria to face even harsher punishment.

"He would say that he could do with me as he pleased because he bought me just like he bought his goats," she says.

She was raped and forced to bear her enslaver's children.

Ms Mani (carrying her child) appeared at a court in Niamey in 2008

The wahaya practice dates back several centuries and is deeply entrenched in society.

French colonisers banned it in the early 20th Century, but frequently just ignored it rather than prosecuting the perpetrators.

In 1960, under Niger's new constitution, slavery was once again outlawed on paper - but allowed to continue in practice.

The country eventually took a significant step in 2003 by formally defining wahaya and criminalising it under the penal code.

Following this ruling, Ms Mani was granted her certificate of freedom and in 2005 she walked out with her two children and two fellow wahayou, to live again as a free person.

But when she went on to marry her current husband, a year later, her former enslaver took her to court and sued her for bigamy, maintaining that she was still married to him.
The 'triangle of shame'

Ms Mani was found guilty of bigamy and sentenced to six months in prison - a ruling that would be overturned only in 2019.

However, she also went on to file a case against the government of Niger at the Court of Justice of the Economic Community of West African States (Ecowas), that led to a landmark judgment.

Judges ruled that Niger had broken its own anti-slavery laws by not convicting the man who enslaved her, and failed to uphold its legal responsibility to protect her.

She was awarded $20,000 (£17,000 or 10,000,000 CFA francs) in 2009, which the government of Niger paid.

Ms Mani was aided by Niger's anti-slavery organisation Timidria and British NGO Anti-Slavery International in her fight for justice.

Timidria Association president Ali Bouzou says slavery is still rife in the regions of Konni, Madaoua-Bouza and Illela, an area they have branded "the triangle of shame".

"There are entire villages in 'the triangle of shame' where more than half the population is made of wahayou," he says.

In 2009, Ms Mani's work was recognised with a Women of Courage Award - here, with then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and First Lady Michelle Obama

Some prosecutions are taking place in Niger, under the anti-slavery legislation.

Between 2003 and early 2022, there have been 114 slavery complaints, Mr Bouzou says, out of which there were 54 prosecutions and six convictions (four of these were suspended).

But this legal battle is far from won. Those found guilty of slavery-related offences are supposed to receive jail sentences of between 10 and 30 years, but recent convictions have been much shorter, at under 10 years.

Experts are calling for broader measures to tackle the issue. Mr Bouzou's organisation recommends that traditional chiefs - who are often behind the practices - should be stripped of their powers. It is also calling for efforts to challenge the widespread misconception that wahaya is in line with Islamic law.

Meanwhile slavery remains a global problem.

Prof Danwood Chirwa, Dean of Law at the University of Cape Town and chairperson of the United Nations Trust Fund on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, says slavery has been on the rise in recent years and made worse by the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

He quotes a 2022 report by the International Labour Organization, the International Organization for Migration and Walk Free that shows that there are 50 million people living in enslavement globally, with seven million of those being from Africa.

"The war against slavery has become difficult because African countries do not legislate against it in all its forms in their individual territories, despite fulfilling their international obligations," says Prof Chirwa.

Today, Hadizatou Mani is a happily married mother of seven children between the ages of one and 21.

She has helped many women, including her own sister, escape slavery and live free and productive lives.

"I especially teach these women about their freedoms as safeguarded by the law," she says.

"I do not regret a single thing that happened to me... It wasn't in vain, my plight highlighted the issue of wahaya to the world."

BBC 100 Women names 100 inspiring and influential women around the world every year.

ZIONIST MURDER

Israeli commander backs forces in death of Palestinian girl

Wed, December 14, 2022 

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli commander on Wednesday expressed support for forces that shot and killed a teenage Palestinian girl in the occupied West Bank earlier this week.

A preliminary investigation by the Israeli military concluded that Jana Zakarna was hit unintentionally by Israeli fire during a military operation in the West Bank town of Jenin on Monday. Her family has disputed the findings.

Amir Cohen, commander of the paramilitary border police, told a ceremony Wednesday that his forces were operating in the “fog of war” and forced to make split-second decisions while under fire.

“Our fighters acted with morality, values, courage, determination and saved human lives,” he said. “For that, I salute them.”

Zakarna was killed on the roof of her home during an Israeli raid in Jenin. The raid was conducted by a border police unit under the army's command.

In its preliminary investigation, the army said the girl was hit unintentionally by fire aimed at nearby gunmen. Her family said there were no militants in the area and said she was killed in “cold blood.”

About 150 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli-Palestinian fighting in the West Bank and east Jerusalem this year, making it the deadliest year since 2006.

The Israeli army says most of the Palestinians killed have been militants. But stone-throwing youths protesting Israeli army incursions and others not involved in confrontations have also been killed in the fighting.

Much of the violence has been in Jenin, which is known as a stronghold of militants.

The army stepped up its activities there after a series of deadly attacks inside Israel last spring, some of which were carried out by militants from Jenin.

At least 31 people have died in Palestinian attacks in Israel and the occupied West Bank this year, according to Israeli figures.

Mexican Paid Vacation Doubles to Twelve Days After Bill Passed



Max de Haldevang
Wed, December 14, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- Mexico’s senate voted Wednesday to double workers’ minimum paid vacation to 12 days, in a bill that now heads to President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador for signature.

The legislation, which had already passed the lower house, won 116 votes in favor, with none against, the senate wrote on Twitter. The bill only applies to formal workers.

“We need to work to live, but it’s not rational nor healthy to live to work,” senator Patricia Mercado, one of the bill’s sponsors, tweeted.

Workers will also be given two more days of vacation after each year of employment until they reach 20 in total. After the sixth year, they will get two more days for every five years of service. The current law gives employees six days’ vacation, increasing by two every year until they hit 12 days and two more every five years thereafter.

Ghana Alleges Burkina Faso Paid Russian Mercenaries With Mine

Anthony Osae-Brown
Thu, December 15, 2022 

(Bloomberg) -- Ghana’s president alleged the government of neighboring Burkina Faso has given Russian mercenaries a mine as payment to help fight an insurgency in their country.

Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo, who is in Washington for the US-Africa Leaders Summit, raised the claims at a meeting Wednesday with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to a statement from the department.

Akufo-Addo said the mine is near Ghana’s northern border with Burkina Faso, which used the operation to pay for work done by Wagner Group. The entity is a mercenary outfit run by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He added that Ghana’s criticism of Russia over its invasion of Ukraine made his country particularly concerned about the Wagner Group’s presence.

“To have them operating on our northern border is particularly distressing for us in Ghana,” he said.

Moscow has denied any links to the group.

Burkina Faso was not invited to the Washington summit and a call and email to the country’s US embassy weren’t returned. A government spokesman based in country’s capital, Ouagadougou, didn’t respond to a text message and call seeking comment Thursday either.

In nearby Mali, a 1,000-strong mercenary unit — according to US estimates — has been operating since 2021, helping protect the military junta that has been in power there since 2020. Mali’s government has denied the presence of Wagner forces.

Akufo-Addo called on the US to work with the Economic Community of West African States to protect nations in the region from armed groups that threatened democracy.

“It’s important that we bring that matter to your notice and see to what extent we can engage you as a reliable partner in the pushback of those forces,” he said.

Biden on Wednesday was scheduled to meet with the leaders of six African nations facing elections in 2023 — the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Liberia, Nigeria, Madagascar, and Sierra Leone — to ensure that balloting is free and fair.

--With assistance from Simon Gongo and Katarina Hoije.

As Strikes Expand, Britain Faces a New 'Winter of Discontent'


British railway workers walked off the job on Tuesday, kicking off what is expected to be a month of strikes by public service workers. (AP)

Mark Landler
Thu, December 15, 2022 

LONDON — With a triple-whammy of frigid weather, an early snowfall and crippling strikes across multiple industries, Britain appears headed into what the London tabloids, perhaps inevitably, are labeling another winter of discontent.

Postal workers and railway employees have walked out, holding up Christmas packages and disrupting the travel plans of millions two weeks before the holiday. On Thursday, they will be joined by as many as 100,000 nurses in a one-day work stoppage that could slow treatment in hospitals and clinics across England.

Driving-test examiners at motor-vehicle departments are going on strike, as well as baggage handlers, bus drivers, road crews and energy-company employees. The newspapers have taken to publishing color-coded calendars to help readers keep track of which services will be interrupted on what date.

The proliferating labor unrest has drawn comparisons to the original winter of discontent, in 1978 and 1979, when public and private-sector strikes paralyzed the country. That cemented a sense that the Labour prime minister, James Callaghan, had lost control, and ultimately toppled his government.

Much has changed since then, of course, not least the power of trade unions in Britain, much diminished since the 1970s. But the political danger to the Conservative government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is still acute. Critics have seized on the chance to blame him for a country that seems broken.

“History is a really big warning sign for Sunak and company,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent. “It was the industrial chaos of the late ’70s that paved the way for a decade of Thatcher. This is compounding a sense in the country that nobody is really in control.”

Sunak said in an interview with The Daily Mail published early Thursday that he planned to introduce anti-strike legislation next year. “I would really hope that union leaders can see that it’s not right to cause such misery and disruption to so many people, particularly at Christmas time,” he told the outlet.

The prime minister was already grappling with a surfeit of other problems: double-digit inflation, rising interest rates and a recession. On Wednesday, he surpassed the number of days that his ill-fated predecessor, Liz Truss, survived in office — a period marked by less drama than Truss’ tenure but scarcely fewer challenges.

The deepening labor unrest dominated Sunak’s last appearance of the year at prime minister’s questions in Parliament. He and his chief antagonist, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer, recycled lines that could have been used by Callaghan and his rival, Margaret Thatcher. But this time, their roles were reversed.

“After 12 years of Tory failure, winter has arrived for our public services, and we’ve got a prime minister who has curled up in a ball and gone into hibernation,” Starmer said in a blistering attack on Sunak for what he called the government’s failure to make deals with the major public-sector unions.

Sunak countered that the government had made good-faith wage offers to workers in several sectors, and accused the Labour Party of “protecting their paymasters” in the unions. The prime minister claimed, somewhat implausibly, that the strikes were “Labour’s nightmare before Christmas.”

The government’s hope is that public sentiment will turn against the unions, and that when it does, the Labour Party will pay a political price, much as it did in 1979. Pro-Tory tabloids like Rupert Murdoch’s Sun are pushing the idea that support for the strikes is fraying, not only with the public, but also in the rank-and-file of the unions.

“You’ve lost it Lynch,” the Sun said on its front page Wednesday, referring to Mick Lynch, the general secretary of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, which for months has been staging strikes that have periodically shut down large parts of the British train system.

Lynch, who had generally been praised for his adroit public profile during the strikes, showed uncharacteristic strain Tuesday. He lashed out at a BBC host, Mishal Husain, when she pressed Lynch on how much money union members were losing on each day they refused to go to work. The BBC, Lynch said, was “parroting” the reporting of the Sun and other right-wing tabloids.

Polls, however, suggest that people continue to support striking workers, who have faced years of low wage growth as well as the strains of the pandemic. In a tracking poll by the market research firm YouGov, 59% of those surveyed said that railway and Underground workers should be allowed to strike, while 30% opposed it. For nurses, the margin was 52% in favor, 38% opposed.

The Royal College of Nurses, which represents the nurses, is demanding a 19% increase in wages. The government has refused to negotiate, claiming that an increase of that magnitude would worsen the backlog in treatment at hospitals by siphoning funds away from other parts of the National Health Service.

The unions, analysts said, were being helped by the perception that they are no longer as militant or powerful as they were in the 1970s. Wages throughout the economy have also stagnated for several years, which has made people more sympathetic for worker demands for substantial raises.

“There is, historically, an unusual level of support for the unions,” said Steven Fielding, an emeritus professor of political history at the University of Nottingham. “And there are some groups, like the nurses, who are seen as secular saints. This is the first time they have ever gone on strike.”

Sunak has tried to avoid being dragged into direct conflict with the unions by arguing that the wage negotiations should be left to pay review bodies, which set wages for public-sector workers. But critics say the government has hidden behind those bodies to avoid confronting workers’ demands.

In October, Truss struck a deal with striking criminal defense lawyers, offering them a 15% increase in legal aid payments.

The Labour Party has its own sensitivities. While Starmer is publicly supportive of workers, he has discouraged senior party figures from joining picket lines. Labour holds a wide lead in polls over the Conservative Party, and Starmer is loath to put that at risk by becoming too closely associated with the strikers.

Lynch, speaking on the BBC on Wednesday, said he expected that a Labour-led government would take a “similar fiscal line as the Tories,” adding, “We would like them to be a little bolder.”

But for now, the Conservatives are in power, and Labour is portraying the government’s failure to settle the unrest as part of a broader Conservative failure to manage the economy, and by extension, the country — just as Thatcher accused Callaghan more than 40 years ago.

© 2022 The New York Times Company

DeSantis blasted for 'Orwellian' vaccine investigation

Alexander Nazaryan
·Senior White House Correspondent
Thu, December 15, 2022 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at a news conference in Miami on Dec. 1. 

(Ronen Tivony/SOPA Images via ZUMA Press Wire)

One day after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a push to investigate alleged harms caused by coronavirus vaccines, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, criticized the move as a pointless exercise that would only undermine public confidence in efforts to boost and maintain protection against the circulating pathogen.

“We have a vaccine that, unequivocally, is highly effective and safe and has saved literally millions of lives,” Fauci said Wednesday on CNN. “What’s the problem with vaccines?”

The problem is vaccines have become part of America’s polarized politics. Since the advent of COVID-19 vaccines late in the Trump administration, skepticism of the established medical science has become a kind of creed for many conservatives, as well as for some on the far left. Political disagreements about lockdowns, mask mandates and vaccine requirements have hardened into antipathy toward the vaccines themselves.


Seizing on rare adverse side effects and diminishing effectiveness — the result of new variants and low booster uptake — vaccine critics have dismissed inoculation as ineffective and potentially dangerous.

Some have also embraced outlandish conspiracy theories about vaccines as a form of government and corporate control.

Anti-vaccination activists at a rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in January. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

During a pandemic-related hearing in the House, Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland progressive, called the proposed grand jury an “Orwellian” development. “These actions are transparently designed to falsely suggest that coronavirus vaccines, and not the coronavirus itself, are dangerous,” he said Wednesday.

Widely expected to seek the Republican nomination in 2024, DeSantis played open to those concerns on Tuesday, when he announced that he would call for Florida's Supreme Court to empanel a grand jury “to investigate crimes and wrongdoing committed against Floridians related to the COVID-19 vaccine.” He is also seeking “further surveillance into sudden deaths of individuals that received the COVID-19 vaccine in Florida.”

Such deaths are rare, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whose vaccine surveillance statistics indicate that 17,868 people — or 0.0027% of vaccine recipients — died after their shots. But those reports unquestionably include thousands of deaths that happened after vaccination but had nothing to do with the vaccines themselves.

Vaccine skeptics have often used reports of supposed side effects — such as those to a vaccine database that does not require confirmation — to exaggerate supposed dangers. And such critics invariably downplay the fact that vaccines are exceptionally effective at stopping serious and critical COVID-19 illness, which has killed more than 6.6 million people globally.

A health care worker administers a COVID-19 vaccine 

at a drive-through site in Miami in December of last year. 

(Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

And with online misinformation and partisan politics exercising strong pressures on the American public, vaccine fears have been easily exploited, leading to low uptake among Republicans. As a consequence, heavily Republican areas have had higher death rates than Democratic ones.

In Florida, more than 83,000 people have died from COVID-19, and cases there have been rising recently. DeSantis, who has decried what he describes as “Faucism” (the echoes of “fascism” are difficult to miss), downplayed the seriousness of the pandemic from the start, though he has also been credited for opening schools and other businesses well before Democratic counterparts, some of whom remained in a cautious crouch well into 2021.

Earlier this year, DeSantis clashed with former President Donald Trump for supporting vaccination, refusing to say whether he received a booster shot; Trump shot back by calling DeSantis “gutless.”

DeSantis has also regularly attacked Fauci in personal terms. “Someone needs to grab that little elf and chuck him across the Potomac,” he said earlier this year of Fauci, who has been the face of the pandemic for both the Trump and Biden administrations. (He was eventually sidelined by the former in favor of experts closer in line with DeSantis’s views.)

In late 2021, DeSantis hired Dr. Joseph Ladapo as Florida’s surgeon general. Ladapo has had no experience with infectious diseases and has routinely attacked vaccination and masking. “With these new actions, we will shed light on the forces that have obscured truthful communication about the COVID-19 vaccines,” Ladapo said after Tuesday’s event.

Florida’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, 

with Gov. Ron DeSantis looking on, in Brandon, Fla., 

in November 2021. (Chris O'Meara/AP)

The announcement by DeSantis comes days after new Twitter owner Elon Musk attacked Fauci on Twitter, calling for his prosecution. A supporter of DeSantis, Musk has argued that prior to his ownership, Twitter executives suppressed information on the coronavirus that presumably undermined public health messaging.

Last week, he invited Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya — an outspoken critic of pandemic precautions — to Twitter’s headquarters. Bhataccharya, who has advised DeSantis in the past, will be on the governor’s new public safety committee, along with Dr. Martin Kulldorff of Harvard (a co-author, with Bhatacharrya, of the pro-reopening Great Barrington Declaration) and Bret Weinstein, a quasi-celebrity on the so-called Intellectual Dark Web with no professional experience in vaccinology.

“I’m not sure what they’re trying to do down there,” Fauci said in the Wednesday CNN interview. Though he is about to retire after four decades of federal service, he is likely to face calls to testify from House Republicans, who continue to accuse him of making misleading statements on masks, vaccines and the origins of the coronavirus.

As his retirement has approached, Fauci has been increasingly vocal and defiant about the challenges revealed by the nation’s faltering coronavirus response, which has left more than a million people dead in the U.S.

In a New York Times essay, Fauci lamented the role “disinformation and political ideology” have played in sowing doubt about masks, vaccines and other measures.

Dr. Anthony Fauci on Dec. 9 during a virtual event to urge 

Americans to get vaccinated ahead of the holiday season.

(Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)

Top Israeli legal official: Planned laws undermine democracy
IT'S NOT A DEMOCRACY ITS A JEWISH STATE

TIA GOLDENBERG
Thu, December 15, 2022 

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Israel's attorney general warned on Thursday against a raft of legislation being proposed by the expected next government, saying some of the planned new laws would imperil the country's democratic principles.

Gali Baharav-Miara's comments set up what's expected to be a major clash between the next government, a far-right coalition likely to be headed by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and buoyed by ultranationalists and ultra-Orthodox parties, and the judicial system, which could see its role as a check on politicians squeezed under the new legislation.

Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption, is currently wrapping up negotiations on the coalition government and has reportedly been generous to his likely partners in exchange for changes that could make his legal woes disappear.

Netanyahu has said he is a victim of a witch hunt by the country's legal system, but has said any reforms will be carried out cautiously.

The expected coalition has proposed a series of legal changes that include a law that would weaken the Supreme Court, allowing the parliament to overturn its rulings with as little as a simple majority. Critics say the move would endanger Israel's democratic ideals and upend the country's system of checks and balances by weakening the Supreme Court and concentrating too much power in the hands of politicians.

“Without judicial oversight and independent legal advice, we will remain only with the principle of majority rule,” Baharav-Miara told a legal conference at University of Haifa in northern Israel. “Democracy in name but not in essence."

She chided other laws being passed in a marathon legislative session this week, saying they could “disrupt the system of checks and balances between the governing authorities.”

The laws, seen as essential to sealing the deal with Netanyahu's partners, would clear the way for a politician convicted on tax charges to serve as a Cabinet minister. They would would grant greater powers to two coalition members from the far right over the police and West Bank settlements.

Netanyahu’s Likud Party and its ultra-Orthodox and far-right partners captured a majority of seats in the Knesset, or parliament, in Nov. 1 elections, putting them in position to form a new government.

Netanyahu is on trial for a series of scandals involving powerful media titans and wealthy associates. He is charged with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three cases. He denies wrongdoing.

Among the other proposals by his partners is legislation that could erase fraud and breach of trust from Israel's penal code. They have suggested splitting up the attorney general into three roles, and making two of those political appointments, allowing Netanyahu to install someone who could throw out the indictment against him.