1442: Slime Mold

I am frightened by the impact on society and politics if Elon Musk acquires Twitter. He seems to believe that on social media anything goes. For democracy to survive, we need more content moderation, not less.

Nearly 60 percent of kale samples sold in the U.S. were contaminated with residues of a pesticide the Environmental Protection Agency considers a possible human carcinogen, according to EWG's analysis of 2017 Department of Agriculture test data.

The pesticide is DCPA, often marketed as Dacthal, which the EPA classified as a possible carcinogen in 1995. In 2005, its major manufacturer voluntarily terminated its registration for use on several U.S. crops, including artichokes, beans and cucumbers, after studies found that its breakdown products were highly persistent in the environment and could contaminate drinking water sources.

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I am waiting for something I have ordered to be delivered and I have just been informed by the Company supplying the item that the factory they use in China has told them that they will be shut until June.

That is what the factory has been told to expect by the Chinese Government.

Supply issues not going anywhere soon then.

Thanks for everything.

Nigel

Federal Air Regulations changed a few years ago and the changes don’t set the stage for the end of month problems anymore. While there used to be the limit of 100 hrs per calendar month, it is now 100 hrs in a rolling 672 hrs (28 days).

-Steve BNAdstra

New York City in the late 1970s was plagued by severe economic and political troubles unlike any the city's inhabitants had experienced before. Faced with economic stagnation, industrial decline, and the looming threat of bankruptcy, the City of New York responded by laying off city workers and cutting municipal services such as sanitation and after-school programs. The city's already high unemployment rates got higher, and many middle class families — more than 820,000 people — fled to the suburbs in a movement known as white flight, desperate for jobs. Others, angry at the cut in social services and feeling neglected by their government, turned to violence; crime rates rapidly increased as drugs, vandalism and theft became the norm. When the power unexpectedly failed on the night of July 13th, 1977, the darkness and confusion provided an opportunity for even more acts of aggression, such as looting, to take place throughout the city. Explore images of New York in the 1970s, including the years leading up to the blackout, the effects of the fiscal crisis, and the chaos that ensued when the lights went out.

On the night of Wednesday, July 13th, 1977, the power went out in all of New York City and parts of Westchester County, leaving eight million people in the dark. The power failure was attributed to lightning that struck several critical transmission lines in northern Westchester County during a severe thunderstorm.

In the 1976 there was a controversy in the world of tennis involving Renée Richards an m-to-f formerly known as Richard Raskind, a former accomplished baseball, football, tennis, and (ding ding ding) swimmer. Richards went on to compete at the age of 43 in the Women's US Open. This became a major story and even went on to become a court case after local TV anchor Richard (or Dick) Carlson.... yup Carlson.... the father of a certain Carlson who is not a fan of Lia Thomas... broke the story.

The "monumental" court case ruled in her favor and the rest is LGBTQIAA2SPK+ history.

Thought I would share this.

Stay funky,

The Mandate of Heaven (Chinese: 天命; pinyin: Tiānmìng; Wade–Giles: T'ien-ming; lit. 'Heaven's will') is a Chinese political philosophy that was used in ancient and imperial China to legitimize the rule of the King or Emperor of China. According to this doctrine, heaven (天, Tian) – which embodies the natural order and will of the universe – bestows the mandate on a just ruler of China, the "Son of Heaven". If a ruler was overthrown, this was interpreted as an indication that the ruler was unworthy, and had lost the mandate. It was also a common belief that natural disasters such as famine and flood were divine retributions bearing signs of Heaven's displeasure with the ruler, so there would often be revolts following major disasters as the people saw these calamities as signs that the Mandate of Heaven had been withdrawn.[1]

A brief flow chart depicting the flow of auctoritas in the transfer of the Mandate of Heaven at the transition of dynastic cycles.[citation needed]

The Mandate of Heaven does not require a legitimate ruler to be of noble birth, depending instead on how well that person can rule. Chinese dynasties such as the Han and Ming were founded by men of common origins, but they were seen as having succeeded because they had gained the Mandate of Heaven. The concept is in some ways similar to the European concept of the divine right of kings; however, unlike the European concept, it does not confer an unconditional right to rule. Retaining the mandate is contingent on the just and able performance of the rulers and their heirs.

Intrinsic to the concept of the Mandate of Heaven was the right of rebellion against an unjust ruler. The Mandate of Heaven was often invoked by philosophers and scholars in China as a way to curtail the abuse of power by the ruler, in a system that had few other checks. Chinese historians interpreted a successful revolt as evidence that Heaven had withdrawn its mandate from the ruler. Throughout Chinese history, times of poverty and natural disasters were often taken as signs that heaven considered the incumbent ruler unjust and thus in need of replacement.

Dear AC,

We are BACK into lockdown. And will probably be trapped for 4-5 days, then have limited travel - no cars/no taxis, until 3 May.

The Area of the district of Shanghai is 6300 square KM (about 2500 square miles). By comparison, this is about half the size of Los Angeles county; four times larger than Mexico City; five times larger than Rome).

The population of Shanghai district is about 28,000,000 (LA county is 10,000,000; Mexico City proper is about 9,000,000, Rome less than 3,000,000)

The government - through the "Center of Western Ecological Security of Lanzhou University" - has made the following pronouncements and predictions.

(a) Since March, there have been about 205,000 cases, with only 7,400 confirmed, the rest are asymptomatic.

(b) The peak has crested, and will drop off to NO new cases, over the next three weeks.

(c) By 3 May 2022, the cumulative cases will be around 306,000 (with more than 96% being asymptomatic)

(d) Hence from March 1 to May 3, about 1.1% of all residents will have registered a positive PCR.

(d) The total number of confirmed cases (meaning those showing symptoms of a cold) will be less than 11,000, or 0.04% of the total population.

(e) There have been ZERO Covid deaths.

-------------------------

On Monday, during the six-hour "open time", I was able to buy 16 apples; 50 eggs; 10 kg of rice, and 5 large cucumbers.

Picked up some other essentials (8 packs of "wet wipes" haha).

The water guy delivered three, 18-litre bottles of water. (We usually run through 15-16 litres per day - so that will last up to four days).

Today, Wednesday, one local market just told me that she is allowed to make deliveries - but her stock is down.

We still have enough vegetables and meat, and dried fruit, potatoes, pasta, and milk to last 10 days to two weeks - if we needed, but we should be allowed to have food deliveries (from private shops) tomorrow, and maybe I can go out by Saturday.

The biggest problem is that the supply chain has been damaged. On Monday, I saw one local "7-11 type" store, FamilyMart, their shelves were empty, except for INSTANT meals (think Deluxe Hotpockets).

Remember, a huge proportion of Chinese millennials - especially in Shanghai - cannot cook. Hot pot is a regular thing. And the professional class are accustomed to getting meals delivered daily.

Right now, all the local fast food (steamed buns; Chinese pizza; noodle shops) have been shuttered. Those guys make their money via delivery!

Max Igan (Bitchute) shared some videos of other parts of Shanghai - crowded areas with high rises ... people are desperate and there have been some suicides. I am far removed from that population. This is more family living area, no mega high-rise buildings. So the mood is tranquil and hopeful. Obviously for a significant number of Shanghai people, days are bleak.

--------------------------

Dear AC,

As I noted, in my community (complex), we were supplied with some food - quality meat, and milk etc.

Well, colleagues living in other parts of SH have a completely different story. Their food was held in quarantine for two days for "extra disinfectant" procedures. So after two days, they were given beef and chicken which was completely rotten.

As well, they were given eggs - all cracked and broken.

They are struggling. My family and I are pretty well off.

ITM, wanted to give you a little info on what we're doing to "comBat" the bird flu here in Iowa. First let's go back to 2015. This year was pretty big for the bird flu and the slaughtering of chickens and turkeys. I work for the XXXXXXXX in the state of Iowa. We have a regional Haz-Mat team and provide coverage for 12 counties. Our team was tasked with controlling entry, ensuring proper decon and monitoring these sites. I would say these are a stretch for Haz-Mat because we generally deal with chemicals, CBRNE, etc, but ok. Fast forward to now. The state purchased 2 Kifco Avi Foamguard trailers and gave one to my department and the other to the largest department on the east side of the state. These trailers work for turkeys only. We pull up to one of these buildings, typically 50x500 ft and begin to fill it with foam about 4 ft deep to suffocate the turkeys. Why is this a Fire Department Haz-Mat function? We've been asking. The problem is this: the foam is a concentrate mixed with water at a 3% ratio. Make great foam but just like the bubble in your dish soap, it turns back into water. Those 10's of thousands of gallons of water we just put into these buildings has to run out somewhere. It goes... outside all over the ground where other birds or animals can come down to get a nice drink of this infected water. We asked why we can't just shut down the ventilation and cook the birds to death, we were told, inhumane, PETA, yada yada. So there you go. Please, do not use any specifics from this because there are only about 35 of us involved, again like the last thing I shared, it wouldn't be too hard to narrow down the source. And please keep me anonymous.

You saw that CDC extended the mask mandate another 2 weeks based on no science of any sort. I suspect that is based on the debate in the Congress over the National No Fly List, whereby it would be embarrassing to be debating a permanent ban on flying for not doing something no longer considered dangerous.

More importantly, you may have noticed that not only is there a pilot shortage that is growing, but there is also oddly a flight attendant shortage. All the airlines are having flight attendant staffing problems and are offering triple pay and such to not call in sick, etc. I have been talking to flight attendants in the last few weeks and I think you will find the reasons for this interesting. 1) Flight attendants get paid crap. They always have and probably always will because people like to travel and the job requires very limited training unlike a pilot. I know one of the Delta Regional carriers used to recruit hostesses from Olive Garden. 2) Because they get paid crap if they miss a trip the loss of income isn't that big of a deal, but in the past if you called off a trip you could easily get fired. Now with staffing in such a desperate situation you won't get fired, so it is much easier to refuse a trip. 3) Now we get to the part you will find most interesting. Why are flight attendants calling in sick? Certainly the rise in passenger aggressiveness is a big factor, but another that has developed only in 2022 is a divide among flight attendants between the "woke maskers" and the rest. Many flight attendants have gotten to the point where they refuse to yell at passengers for not masking any more, or go through the motions but don't really care. This is caused by thinking it either doesn't do anything or not wanting to incite incidents with passengers. The number of FAs in this camp has grown quickly with airline leadership sending letters to Congress saying masks are pointless in an attempt to get the mask rules dropped. The airlines also can't discipline flight attendants for not forcing masks on passengers after having publicly come out against masks on planes.

On the other side are the "woke maskers" which continue to demand every passenger wear a mask out of fear, or desire for control over passengers, or whatever reason. This creates a lot of conflict among the onboard staff as mixing the two groups makes for friction if one FA is demanding masks and the other doesn't care. As a result many FAs have created a black list of sorts, people they won't work with because they are on the other side on this issue. When they see the crew assignments of who they will be working a multi-day trip with they call in sick to avoid the assignment. This is exacerbating cancellations, and there is really no risk of getting fired, and the airlines are so short of staff the FAs can pick up trips off the uncovered flying list choosing who they will be working with (because so many people are calling in sick the uncovered flying list is long) and get their hours back anyway if they wish. All of that churn and chaos creates delays and cancellations.

Link to Article

Archived Version

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 15:16

Image Supporters of President Emmanuel Macron celebrating in Paris on Sunday after the projections were announced. Credit... James Hill for The New York Times PARIS '-- President Emmanuel Macron will face Marine Le Pen, the French far-right leader, in the runoff of France's presidential elections, according to projections with 95 percent of the vote counted.

Mr. Macron led with about 27 percent of the vote to Ms. Le Pen's 24 percent, after she benefitted from a late surge that reflected widespread disaffection over rising prices, security and immigration.

With war raging in Ukraine and Western unity likely to be tested as the fighting continues, Ms. Le Pen's strong performance demonstrated the enduring appeal of nationalist and xenophobic currents in Europe. Extreme parties of the right and left took some 51 percent of the vote, a clear sign of the extent of French anger and frustration.

An anti-NATO and more pro-Russia France in the event of an ultimate Le Pen victory would cause deep concern in allied capitals, and could fracture the united trans-Atlantic response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

But Mr. Macron, after a lackluster campaign, will go into the second round as the slight favorite, having fared a little better than the latest opinion polls suggested. Some had shown him leading Ms. Le Pen by just two points.

The principled French rejection of Ms. Le Pen's brand of anti-immigrant nationalism has frayed as illiberal politics have spread in both Europe and the United States. She has successfully softened her packaging, if not her fierce conviction that French people must be privileged over foreigners and that the curtain must be drawn on France as a ''land of immigration.''

Ms. Le Pen's ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia are close, although she has scrambled in recent weeks to play them down. This month, she was quick to congratulate Viktor Orban, Hungary's nationalist and anti-immigrant leader, on his fourth victory in parliamentary elections.

''I will restore France to order in five years,'' Ms. Le Pen declared to cheering supporters, appealing to all French people to join her in what she called ''a choice of civilization'' in which the ''legitimate preponderance of French language and culture'' would be guaranteed and full ''sovereignty reestablished in all domains.''

The choice confronting French people on April 24 was between ''division, injustice and disorder'' on the one hand, and the ''rallying of French people around social justice and protection,'' she said.

Mr. Macron told flag-waving supporters: ''I want a France in a strong Europe that maintains its alliances with the big democracies in order to defend itself, not a France that, outside Europe, would have as its only allies the populist and xenophobic International. That is not us.''

He added: ''Don't deceive ourselves, nothing is decided, and the debate we will have in the next 15 days is decisive for our country and for Europe.''

'-- Roger Cohen

Image A shop in Paris late last year. Political polls ahead of Sunday's vote showed that an abrupt decline in purchasing power was the top issue for French voters. Credit... Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times PARIS '-- As President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen head into their second contentious presidential runoff in five years, the election will be decided to a large extent by perceptions of the economy.

A surge in the cost of living has become a major theme of the campaign as Russia's war on Ukraine sends food and energy prices soaring to record levels, pushing inflation in Europe to 7.4 percent, the highest in four decades.

Political polls ahead of Sunday's vote showed that the abrupt decline in purchasing power was by far the top issue for French voters, ahead of security and immigration and the first taste of what European leaders fear if they stake out tougher sanctions on Russia that could hurt their economies even more.

After being criticized for focusing more on Ukraine than on the living conditions of average French people, Mr. Macron has zeroed in on purchasing power, pledging that his first act as president, if re-elected, would be to help vulnerable French households improve their standard of living.

''I speak to people who feel daily insecurity, to those who feel it is difficult to live with dignity despite working hard,'' he told a crowd of jubilant supporters Sunday after making it into the second round with a comfortable margin ahead of Ms. LePen, the far-right leader. ''I want to convince you in the coming days that our project is more solid than that of the extreme right,'' he said.

Before the war in Ukraine, France's economy had been enjoying a robust recovery from coronavirus lockdowns, in part after Mr. Macron authorized around 300 billion euros in spending designed to keep businesses and workers afloat. The economy is growing at a 7 percent pace following a pandemic-induced recession, and unemployment is at a 10-year low of 7.4 percent.

But the dynamics of the recovery have been uneven, and a wealth divide that sparked the Yellow Vest movement in 2018, which brought working class people struggling with low earning power and high taxes into the streets, has grown starker as inflation has surged. Gas prices have topped 2 euros per liter in some parts of France, the equivalent of around $8 a gallon. Food and commodity prices, meanwhile, have jumped to the highest level in decades.

While Mr. Macron sought to prevail on President Putin to reach a cease-fire, Ms. LePen tapped into the worries of average households during her campaign by relentlessly spotlighting the rising cost of living in towns and rural areas where working-class French people have voiced frustration with inequality and precariousness.

Heading into the final round, Ms. LePen's economic platform pivots around promises for increased subsidies for vulnerable households, and features plans for a 10 percent increase in France's monthly minimum wage of 1,603 euros. She is also pledging to slash sales taxes to 5.5 percent from 20 percent on fuel, oil, gas and electricity and has said she would balance France's budget by slashing billions in social spending on ''foreigners.''

Workers under the age of 30 would be exempt from income tax, while the current French retirement age of 62 would be maintained. Speaking Sunday before a boisterous crowd, she also vowed to create jobs and re-industrialize the country by encouraging companies to return to France.

Mr. Macron, for his part, has authorized billions of euros in subsidies in recent months to offset rising costs for households, while continuing to pursue policies that he says are needed to keep the French economy competitive. He has pledged to maintain price caps on gas and power prices put in place since winter, and to index pension payments for inflation starting this summer.

His economic platform also targets ''full employment,'' in part by pressing ahead with a series of pro-business reforms, including increasing the retirement age, cutting taxes and easing labor market rules further following a major overhaul five years ago designed to make it easier for employers to hire and fire.

'-- Liz Alderman

Image Voting on Sunday at City Hall in Versailles, France. Credit... Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times VERSAILLES, France '-- The French, it is said, vote with their hearts in the first round and with their heads in the second.

But voters in diverse cities near Paris appeared to use both when casting their ballots on Sunday, further evidence that France's two-round voting system encourages unusually strategic thinking.

Twelve candidates were on the ballot. But with polls showing that the second round will most likely be a rematch between President Emmanuel Macron and the far-right leader, Marine Le Pen, voters were already thinking of the showdown set for April 24.

In Versailles, a center of the conservative Roman Catholic vote, the center-right candidate, Val(C)rie P(C)cresse, was the local favorite. But she was in the single digits in most polls.

After voting at City Hall, a couple who gave only their first names '-- Karl, 50, and Sophie, 51 '-- said they had voted for ‰ric Zemmour, the far-right TV pundit who ran an anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim campaign.

''I'm in favor of selective immigration, instead of the current situation where we have immigrants who are seeking to take advantage of the French system,'' said Karl, who works in real estate. He added that he had voted for Mr. Macron in 2017, but that he had been disappointed by the president's policies toward immigration and his failure to overhaul the pension system.

This time, he and Sophie, a legal consultant, said they would support Ms. Le Pen in the runoff because they believed that she had gained credibility.

For Gr(C)goire Pique, 30, an engineer concerned about the environment, his choice had been Yannick Jadot, the Green candidate. But with Mr. Jadot languishing in the polls, Mr. Pique endorsed the longtime leftist leader, Jean-Luc M(C)lenchon, ranked third in most polls.

In the second round, Mr. Pique said, he planned to reluctantly vote for Mr. Macron to block Ms. Le Pen.

''I don't like this principle,'' he said, ''but I'll do it.''

About 10 miles from Versailles, in Trappes, a working-class city with a large Muslim population, similar calculations were taking place.

Image A voter casting his ballot on Sunday in Trappes, France. Credit... Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times Georget Savonni, 64, a retired transportation worker, said he voted with his heart for Ms. P(C)cresse, even though he knew that she had little chance of making it into the second round. Two Sundays from now, he said, he planned to vote reluctantly for Mr. Macron, also to stop Ms. Le Pen.

''I agree with most of Macron's economic programs, and I feel he handled the pandemic very well,'' Mr. Savonni said. ''But I feel he doesn't respect people and that he's arrogant.''

Bilel Ayed, 22, a university student, wanted to support a minor left-leaning candidate, but endorsed Mr. M(C)lenchon, the leading candidate on the left. In the second round, he said, even though he believed that Ms. Le Pen, as president, would be far more terrible for France than Mr. Macron, he was unable to forgive the president for what he said was a crackdown on personal freedoms, like the violent suppression of the anti-government Yellow Vest movement.

''I'm not voting in the second round,'' he said. ''I'm staying home.''

'-- Norimitsu Onishi

Image President Emmanuel Macron on stage in Paris after the first round results were announced Sunday. Credit... Benoit Tessier/Reuters PARIS '-- Appearing before a packed conference hall in Paris, President Emmanuel Macron thanked his supporters but warned against complacency ahead of a second round of voting in France's elections.

''Nothing is settled yet, and the debate that we are going to have over the next 15 days is decisive for our country and for Europe,'' Mr. Macron told the cheering crowd.

Amid growing concerns in France over inflation and purchasing power, he urged his supporters to ''spare no effort'' in convincing the French that ''the only credible project against a high cost of living is ours'' and vowed to convince those who stayed home or voted for ''extremes'' on Sunday that ''our project brings stronger answers than that of the far-right.''

Waiting for the president to arrive earlier Sunday evening, the atmosphere was one of relief about Mr. Macron's accession with a comfortable margin to the second round of the elections.

Holding a French flag, Themis Astier, a first-time voter, said she worried about the number of votes that Marine Le Pen received but still firmly believed that Mr. Macron's political agenda was the solution against the far right.

''I share his values and what he put in place,'' said Ms. Astier, 18, a business major in Paris, whose parents are also supporters of Mr. Macron. ''He promised to bring the French together and that has been complicated.''

''The 'anyone-but-Macron' mentality encourages the rise of extremes,'' she added. ''Le Pen's discourse is frightening.''

Helene Ananga, 38, from Cameroon, is not a French citizen but she is proud that 58 family members, including her two children, were all voting for Mr. Macron.

Dressed in a T-shirt that read ''All With Macron,'' Ms. Ananga stood, holding on to a crutch, at the front of the room so she could get a close look at the president.

''I am handicapped and Macron did so much for us. He makes me feel safe,'' she said. ''He is the only one who can beat Marine.''

Ladifetou Ndachingam, 42, also from Cameroon, was waving three flags: a French one, a European one and a ''Nous tous'' one, Mr. Macron's slogan. She is a volunteer with Mr. Macron's campaign team in the 12th district of Paris: ''Mr. Macron loves everyone, he's big-hearted,'' she said. She warned that if Marine Le Pen were to win, ''I can pack and go back to Cameroon.''

Lisa Boveda, 22, a business school student who was voting for the first time in a presidential election, said, ''I am relieved and so happy about the result.''

''We proved that France doesn't vote for extremes,'' she added. ''The far right didn't rise because of Emmanuel Macron. Covid and so many crises happened and he handled them very well. He did very well with the economy and unemployment. It's unfair to say his policies helped the rise of the far right.''

'-- Aida Alami and Ad¨le Cordonnier

Image Inside Marine Le Pen's headquarters awaiting results on Sunday. Credit... Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times PARIS '-- When Marine Le Pen's face appeared on a large screen at her headquarters in Paris, supporters burst into applause, shouting, ''Marine president!''

For the hundreds of supporters who had flocked to a chalet-like building in eastern Paris in hopes of celebrating Ms. Le Pen's qualification for the second round of the French presidential election, early projections from French news cables about the first-round vote Sunday were both a relief and a milestone.

Ms. Le Pen, the candidate of the far right, will face Emmanuel Macron, the French president, in a runoff vote that is essentially a rematch of the 2017 presidential election. On Sunday, early projections showed her finishing in second place behind Mr. Macron.

Speaking 30 minutes after the release of the projections, Ms. Le Pen described her confrontation with Mr. Macron as ''a fundamental choice between two opposing visions of life.'' She pitted what she said was her focus on social justice and economic output against the ''division, injustice and disorder'' imposed by Mr. Macron.

The crowd listening to Ms. Le Pen was ecstatic. Shouts of ''We did it!'' and ''We're going to win!'' interrupted her speech, while dozens of supporters waved French flags.

In the back of the room, supporters sipped glasses of champagne and sampled meat terrines laid out on white tablecloths, while waiters moved about the room carrying trays full of appetizers.

''It will be a tough fight in the second round, but she has a good chance of winning,'' said Martine Cl(C)ment-Launay, a Le Pen supporter.

Ms. Cl(C)ment-Launay said Ms. Le Pen had improved since the last presidential election, when she floundered against Mr. Macron in a second-round debate, appearing tense and inconsistent in her answers. ''Marine has grown up,'' she said. ''She is able to answer with a smile, with arguments, with figures.''

The number of votes Ms. Le Pen received stems in part from her success in sanitizing her public image. Over the past months, she has opened up about her personal life and softened her populist economic agenda to gain sympathy and credibility among more mainstream voters.

But it was her decision to stick to the rising cost of living that also likely attracted voters in the last weeks of the campaign, as fuel and other prices spiked with the war in Ukraine.

Ms. Le Pen's desire to conceal her radical proposals on immigration and security in order to attract more mainstream voters was evident in her speech on Sunday. In it, she barely spoke about immigration. Instead, she spoke of ''purchasing power'' and ''social, territorial, institutional, cultural, medical and digital fracture.''

Ms. Le Pen already received the backing of Eric Zemmour, another far-right candidate, who called on his supporters to vote for her in the second round. Recent polls have shown her trailing Mr. Macron by only a few percentage points in a runoff.

''She will benefit from a big transfer of votes,'' said Fr(C)d(C)ric Sarmiento, a Le Pen activist, pointing to supporters of Mr. Zemmour, but also some on the left who, according to polls, will support Ms. Le Pen in the second round, either because of her ideas or to prevent Mr. Macron from being re-elected.

'-- Constant M(C)heut

Image President Emmanuel Macron visted a school in Melun, about an hour's drive from Paris, last year. On Election Day, many residents described feeling disenchanted with the campaign and candidates. Credit... Pool photo by Thibault Camus MELUN, France '-- Returning from a quick grocery trip, his black hoodie pulled over his head, Balla Gueye said he was not in an Election Day mood.

''Sure, I'll go vote this afternoon,'' Mr. Gueye, 31, said, as he pulled off his headphones. ''But I'll go reluctantly. It's an election that divides more than it unites.''

Mr. Gueye lives in Melun, a city of 40,000 about an hour's drive from Paris. Melun has long been at the crossroads of changes in French life: Remnants of medieval ramparts still run through the city, which became an important industrial center in the late 19th century. But on Sunday, many of its residents no longer seemed enthusiastic about shaping the county's future.

''We don't have many expectations,'' said Floriane Vayssieres, 68, as she was walking her German shepherd through the city center's cobble streets.

Ms. Vayssieres said she was just coming back from a polling station where she had cast a ballot for Jean Lassalle, an eccentric candidate from a farming background known for his passionate defense of rural towns. ''He's the only one who talks about ordinary people,'' she said.

Other passers-by in Melun struck a disenchanted tone when asked about the election campaign, describing it as ''voiceless'' or ''useless.''

Yolande, a retired nurse who declined to give her last name ''because this election climate is too divisive,'' said she had gone to vote ''out of civic duty.''

A baguette tucked under her arm, she described herself as ''a political junkie.'' But, this year, she said, ''I thought it was a sad campaign,'' adding that she ''didn't hear any prospects for improvement in the candidates' speeches.''

Another retiree, Monique Gandy, 84, said the campaign ''had not been that striking.'' She struggled to remember any specific theme that emerged in the election race.

This year's election campaign has been largely muted by the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine, leaving little space for other themes to emerge in the public debate. The first months of the campaign were marked by polarized rhetoric on immigration and security '-- a characteristic that many residents in Melun deplored.

''It seemed like they were all fixated on immigration,'' Ms. Gandy said, pointing to campaign posters that were displayed near the polling station she had just left.

Mr. Gueye '-- who said he would probably vote for Jean-Luc M(C)lenchon, a far-left candidate '-- said that in previous elections, ''There was at least a thorough debate between the candidates.''

''This time,'' he said, ''it was simply missing.''

'-- Constant M(C)heut

Image Polling booths on Sunday in Trappes, France. Voter turnout for the election is the lowest France has seen in decades. Credit... Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times With hours to go before the polls close on Sunday, turnout at 5 p.m. in the first round of France's presidential election was at 65 percent '-- its lowest in decades.

That figure was about five points lower than in 2017, when nearly 70 percent of voters had cast their ballot by that same time. Over 48 million people are on French voting rolls, and they have until 7 p.m., or 8 p.m. in France's largest cities, to vote. In France, there are no mail-in ballots and no early voting, although some voting stations in overseas territories and consulates abroad open on Saturday to account for time differences.

Figures from France's Interior Ministry showed that Paris was one of the areas where turnout had fallen the most since 2017 '-- a bad omen for President Emmanuel Macron, whose voter base skews urban and who came out ahead in the French capital five years ago.

Turnout nationwide was also lower than in any presidential election since 2002. That year, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the founder of France's main far-right party '-- now led by his daughter, Marine Le Pen '-- squeezed into the runoff against President Jacques Chirac thanks to record-high abstention, shocking the nation.

But there were signs that some voting stations could buck that trend. On Twitter, some voters in Paris shared pictures and videos of interminable lines, although it was unclear how widespread they were. Others complained that the official website used to find one's voting station was suffering outages because of a swamp of requests.

At a kindergarten in the 14th arrondissement of Paris on Sunday, a long line of voters slowly shuffled into a small gymnasium where the ballot boxes were set up. When one voter expressed surprise at the size of the crowd, a poll worker wearily replied: ''It's been like this since 8 a.m.''

The 12 candidates in the race, who are barred from campaigning on election weekend, beamed for cameras as they cast their ballots but said little. Several voted in the French capital, while Mr. Macron and Ms. Le Pen both voted in northern France.

Mr. Macron cast his ballot in Le Touquet, a seaside resort where he and his wife have a residence, while Ms. Le Pen voted in the town of H(C)nin-Beaumont, one of her party's strongholds, in a district where she was elected to France's Parliament in 2017.

'-- Aurelien Breeden

Image Figures released by the French Interior Ministry showed that midday turnout was slightly lower than in the previous presidential election, with about 25 percent of voters casting a ballot. Credit... Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times MELUN, France '-- On Sunday, candidates and experts alike were looking at one key figure that may determine the path of France's presidential election: voter turnout.

Figures released at noon by the French Interior Ministry showed that by then turnout was slightly lower than in the most recent presidential election, with about 25 percent of voters having cast a ballot, compared with 28 percent at the same point in 2017. Although that is the lowest rate since 2002, the comparison with the previous election also suggested that voters have not massively shunned the voting booth, as many experts feared.

In Melun, a medium-sized city south of Paris, some voters seemed to lack enthusiasm, and others said they had been disillusioned by politicians they no longer trust.

''I'm still hesitating between putting in a blank ballot and voting for Val(C)rie P(C)cresse,'' said Sylvie Zocly, 41, who was just a few feet away from a polling station, referring to the center-right candidate. ''It's quite messy in my head,'' she said.

Like other residents of Montaigu, an underprivileged neighborhood in northern Melun, where grim high-rises dominate and the population is largely made up of North African immigrants, Ms. Zocly said she was disappointed with the tone of the campaign. She said she believed the debate had been muted by President Emmanuel Macron's refusal to engage with the other candidates and overwhelmed by security and immigration issues.

Karim Hachemi, who had just cast a dispassionate glance at campaign posters on display near the polling station, said he would not vote this year. ''I don't identify with the candidates,'' he said. ''They don't appeal to me '-- they lie a lot.''

Mr. Hachemi, a 29-year-old computer engineer, said many around him had the same feeling and would not participate in Sunday's vote. ''I'll watch Netflix instead and play computer games.''

Marine Le Pen, a far-right candidate, and Jean-Luc M(C)lenchon, a far-left candidate, are the candidates most likely to suffer if voters don't turn out, as their support bases '-- made up of young and working-class voters '-- are often the ones likeliest to stay home on Election Day.

A recent study by the polling firm Ipsos estimated that around 30 percent of voters could sit out this year, an eight-point increase from the previous presidential election. But the ministry's midday turnout numbers '-- showing only a three-point drop in participation from 2017 '-- suggest that the overall picture may not be so bleak.

Among poll workers in Montaigu, where only about 20 percent of voters have turned out in recent local elections, the mood was even rather optimistic.

Alain Dejouy, a mustachioed assessor who was standing next to a ballot box where dozens of blue voting envelopes where lying, said that about 15 percent of the neighborhood's voters had already cast a ballot by midday, compared with 10 percent in the previous presidential election.

''We've done really well!'' Mr. Dejouy grinned.

'-- Constant M(C)heut

Image Destroyed buildings this month in the small town of Borodianka, near Ukraine's capital, Kyiv. Credit... Ivor Prickett for The New York Times With the pandemic disrupting the organization of rallies and the war in Ukraine shifting people's attention to atrocities unfolding on the European continent, most of the French presidential candidates have struggled to drive the public debate in this year's election.

Instead, most of the campaign's talking points have stemmed from events unrelated to the election or were reactions to issues introduced by the entry into the race of the polarizing newcomer ‰ric Zemmour.

The campaign started with a bang in the fall when Mr. Zemmour, a hard-right TV pundit, announced his presidential bid. In the early months of the race, his meteoric rise in the polls ensured that the campaign would be fought almost exclusively on issues important to the right.

For weeks, other candidates were forced to react to Mr. Zemmour's hard-line views on immigration, Islam and identity. Leaders of the mainstream center-right Republican Party even picked up on the phrase ''great replacement,'' a racist conspiracy theory popularized by Mr. Zemmour that white Christian populations are being replaced by nonwhite immigrants.

But it is the effect of the war in Ukraine on the prices of energy and consumer goods that has most fueled voters' concerns '-- and candidates' promises.

Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader, and Jean-Luc M(C)lenchon, the top far-left candidate, pushed hard on this concern, promising to impose price controls on basic necessities and slash taxes on energy. Meanwhile, President Emmanuel Macron promised to raise minimum pensions and give a tax-free bonus to employees this summer.

The candidates' views on pension changes '-- a perennial issue in France '-- also fueled the public debate in the last weeks of the campaign.

But many other topics of discussion during the campaign emerged from outside the candidates' circles. For instance, a reporter's investigation on patient abuse in nursing homes forced a debate on elder care, and the publication of a scathing Senate report on the government's use of consulting firms put Mr. Macron on the defensive.

Even more surprising, despite the growing concern in France for environmental causes, climate issues have barely been discussed. So much so that talks about the environment at some point focused on a Netflix movie that went viral in France: ''Don't Look Up,'' a satire of political and media indifference to the climate crisis.

'-- Constant M(C)heut

Profile

Image President Emmanuel Macron speaking to supporters at a campaign rally this month in Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris. He has learned the hard way that reforming France is notoriously difficult. Credit... Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times PARIS '-- Five years ago, Emmanuel Macron, a bold upstart with a Bonapartist streak, upended French politics to become president at 39, promising to put an end to the sterile divisions of left and right, fast-forward France into the technological age, and forge a more united and powerful Europe.

The son of two medical doctors from northern France, a product of the country's elite schools, a glib speaker forever refining ideas, Mr. Macron never lacked for boldness. At a time when revived nationalism had produced Brexit and the Trump presidency, he bet on a strong commitment to the European Union '-- and swept aside his opponents with an incisive panache.

Europe, and its liberal democratic model, proved to be the fixed point of an otherwise adjustable credo. Mr. Macron began with a strong pro-business push, simplifying the labyrinthine labor code, eliminating a wealth tax, courting foreign investment and vigorously promoting a start-up culture.

A former investment banker in a country with a healthy distrust of capitalism, he inevitably became known as ''the president of the rich.'' Reforming France is notoriously difficult, as many presidents have found.

Confronted by enormous protests against planned pension overhauls and by the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Macron ended up with a ''whatever it costs'' policy to support workers through the crisis, declaring at one point that ''we have nationalized salaries.'' Debt ballooned. But the virus was beaten back; growth shot up to 7 percent this year.

In the end, Macronism, as it's known here, remains a mystery, an elastic and disruptive political doctrine depending less on content than the charisma of its loquacious creator. The Parliament and political parties often feel marginal.

Mr. Macron's back-and-forth on many issues '-- skeptical of nuclear power before he was for it, strongly free-market before discovering ''solidarity'' '-- has earned him the sobriquet of the ''on the other hand'' president.

Yet he is also a radical thinker, a contrarian who will speak his mind, as in 2019 when he said NATO had gone through a ''brain death.'' The comment reflected his belief that the end of the Cold War should have produced a new strategic architecture in Europe, ideally integrating Russia in some way. He believes passionately that Europe must develop ''strategic autonomy'' if it is not to be sidelined in the 21st century.

Russia's war in Ukraine has prodded Europe toward the unity Mr. Macron seeks, even as it has raised the question of whether the president had been na¯ve in his persistent outreach to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

How, and in the name of what, and against whom, could Russia be ''integrated'' into European security?

Accused at the beginning of his presidency of aloofness, so much so that he was compared with ''Jupiter,'' the king of the gods, Mr. Macron learned painfully to listen, especially to those who struggle to get to the end of the month, only to revert to a strange detachment during the current campaign that allowed his longtime rival, the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, to turn an election that seemed won for Mr. Macron into a close-run thing.

'-- Roger Cohen

Profile

Image Marine Le Pen with supporters of her political party at the end of a campaign rally this month in Stiring-Wendel, in northeastern France. Credit... Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times It would be difficult to question the longstanding anti-immigrant, ethnonationalist credentials of Marine Le Pen, the veteran politician whose family has defined far-right politics in France for the past two generations.

Ms. Le Pen's established status on the far right allowed her to wage a low-key campaign focusing on the economy and the rising cost of living, and while she appeared to flounder in the early months of the presidential race, the strategy paid off after the war in Ukraine began and led to an increase in the price of fuel and other goods.

According to polls, she was nipping at the heels of President Emmanuel Macron, her opponent in the 2017 runoff, by only a couple of percentage points, in what would be a significant rise over her performance five years ago.

Voters said that Ms. Le Pen understood the difficulties of everyday French people more than any other candidate, the polls showed, especially in comparison with Mr. Macron. His image as an arrogant, out-of-touch president of the rich was reinforced by recent revelations surrounding his government's widespread use of McKinsey and other highly paid, politically unaccountable consultants.

In an interview last year with The New York Times, Ms. Le Pen said she felt that the French did not know her because of her intense reserve, even though she grew up in the public eye and was preparing for her third run for the presidency.

In an ultimately successful makeover strategy that tried to blunt her image as a far-right ideologue, she began opening up to the news media, talking first about her love of cats and then about traumas suffered growing up with a family name long identified with xenophobia, racism, antisemitism and populism.

She changed her party's name from the National Front to the National Rally, in an ''undemonizing'' strategy meant to distance it from its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, her father.

And she tweaked her party's positions to try to widen her support beyond the working class, dropping her plan to exit the eurozone, an idea that troubled many middle-class conservatives.

But the core of her anti-immigrant program was little changed, consisting of giving her supporters tax cuts and more services that would be financed by taking them away from immigrants. While she said she made a distinction between Islam and Islamism, she said she would make it illegal for Muslims to wear head scarves in public.

Ms. Le Pen's campaign also benefited from an overall shift that pushed France further to the right. More unexpectedly, her image softened further thanks to the candidacy of ‰ric Zemmour, a television pundit who adopted extreme positions that were to the right of Ms. Le Pen's.

'-- Norimitsu Onishi

Profile

Image Jean-Luc M(C)lenchon projected onstage as a hologram on April 5 in Le Havre, France. Mr. Melenchon used holograms to address multiple cities from Lille, in northern France. Credit... Sameer Al-Doumy/Agence France-Presse '-- Getty Images A skilled orator and veteran politician, Jean-Luc M(C)lenchon, the leading left-wing candidate, has surged recently in voter surveys, giving him hope that he can beat poll predictions of a rematch of the last presidential election, when Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen faced off in the second round.

Mr. M(C)lenchon is now comfortably in third place, with about 16 percent of the vote, far more than his right-wing competitors ‰ric Zemmour and Val(C)rie P(C)cresse. But he is still lagging Ms. Le Pen by some 5 percentage points, making his qualification for a runoff unlikely.

Mr. M(C)lenchon is a former Trotskyist and longtime member of the Socialist Party who left it in 2008 after accusing it of veering to the center. He is a perennial but divisive figure in French politics, with a reputation for irascibility. This is his third run for the presidency, after having missed the second round by only 2 percentage points in the last election.

French voters' recent focus on rising prices and economic insecurity '-- both aftershocks of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine '-- has largely benefited Mr. M(C)lenchon, whose unabashedly left-wing economic policies, including a promise to impose price controls on some basic necessities, are resonating more than ever.

Mr. M(C)lenchon's platform also includes lowering the legal retirement age to 60 from 62, introducing a monthly minimum wage of about $1,500, and making enormous investments in green energy.

To reach the second round, Mr. M(C)lenchon has appealed in recent days to all left-wing voters to support him, in what he says is the only ''efficient vote.'' Other political forces on the left are in disarray, including the once mighty Socialist Party and the Greens, whose candidates have failed to resonate among potential voters.

But leaders of these parties have resisted rallying to Mr. M(C)lenchon's campaign, castigating him for pro-Russia comments before the invasion of Ukraine and saying his fiery nature made him unfit to govern.

'-- Constant M(C)heut

Profile

Image The far-right presidential candidate ‰ric Zemmour, who has described himself as the savior of a country facing a civilizational threat, during a campaign rally last month in Paris. Credit... Bertrand Guay/Agence France-Presse '-- Getty Images ‰ric Zemmour, a far-right TV pundit and a leader of the culture wars that have entrenched France on the political right, dominated the early months of the presidential race by setting the debate around immigration, Islam and national identity. Polls even briefly gave him a shot at making it into the runoff in France's two-round elections.

But Mr. Zemmour began declining in the polls after the war in Ukraine began and the effort to impose sanctions on Russia shifted voters' attention to the rising cost of living. He failed to reposition himself, especially against his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen, and at under 10 percent in most polls, he is unlikely to make it past the first round on Sunday.

A longtime political journalist, Mr. Zemmour, 63, wrote best sellers in the past decade denouncing the supposed decline of a nation whose Christian roots were being undermined by Muslim immigrants and their descendants. But it was his starring role as a commentator on CNews, a Fox-like news network on which he began appearing in 2019, that made him enough of a household name to launch his candidacy for president last fall.

Mr. Zemmour, who has been convicted of inciting racial hatred, describes himself as the savior of France facing a civilizational threat. He has pledged to stop immigration, even rejecting refugees from the war in Ukraine, and also proposed expelling immigrants as part of ''remigration.''

Mr. Zemmour, who is Jewish and whose parents came from Algeria, pushed to rehabilitate France's collaborationist government and its leader, Marshal Philippe P(C)tain. He won support among traditional conservatives, especially those drawn by Mr. Zemmour's strong defense of Roman Catholicism.

Despite his flagging campaign, Mr. Zemmour's influence on French politics could prove enduring. He widened the contours of what is politically acceptable to say in French politics '-- frontally attacking Islam and bringing into the mainstream previously taboo terms and concepts like the ''great replacement,'' a conspiracy theory according to which white French people are being intentionally replaced by Muslim Africans.

In the end, Mr. Zemmour's main effect on the presidential campaign may have been unintentional. His positions were so extreme that he helped Ms. Le Pen appear moderate by comparison and allowed her to carry out an image makeover that, according to polls, has made her a stronger candidate against President Emmanuel Macron.

'-- Norimitsu Onishi

Image President Emmanuel Macron, right, meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Moscow, in February, before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Credit... Sputnik/via Agence France-Presse '-- Getty Images PARIS '-- Nobody can accuse President Emmanuel Macron of stinting on efforts to avert, defuse or stop Russia's war in Ukraine. He has clocked at least 17 phone conversations with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in the past four months, one personal meeting in Moscow and so many hours of discussion with his own aides that he has had scant time for the small matter of a presidential election in less than two weeks.

In the same period, he has spoken more than two dozen times to President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, and met with him in Kyiv and Brussels. On Feb. 25, he spoke twice in a single day to the Ukrainian leader, something he also did with Mr. Putin on Feb 11. All with a view, Mr. Macron said, ''to securing a cease-fire and then the total withdrawal of troops.''

If diplomacy is measured by perseverance, Mr. Macron is a supreme diplomat. If it is measured by effective realism, the verdict appears less favorable. Up to now, on the face of it, he has achieved very little through his numerous calls and meetings. The war is into its second month with an untold number of dead. Millions of Ukrainian refugees have fled westward.

Mr. Zelensky, to judge by a recent interview in The Economist, has been underwhelmed. Asked about Mr. Macron's statement at a recent NATO meeting that delivering tanks to Ukraine represented a red line not to be crossed, Mr. Zelensky said France took this position because ''they are afraid of Russia. And that's it.''

In relations with Russia, it is less fear that seems to inhabit Mr. Macron than a kind of romantic fascination with the country and its culture, as well as an intellectual conviction that Europe will not be stable until Russia is integrated into some new security architecture that reflects the Cold War's end.

'-- Roger Cohen

Image The crowd at a speech by Marine Le Pen in Stiring-Wendel, northeastern France, on April 1. Credit... Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times Even before a single ballot was counted, a clear winner had already emerged from the race.

The French right.

Despite a late surge by Jean-Luc M(C)lenchon, the leading left-wing candidate, virtually the entire French campaign had been fought on the right and the far right, whose candidates dominated the polls and whose themes and talking points '-- issues of national identity, immigration and Islam '-- had dominated the political debate. The far right had even become the champion of pocketbook issues, traditionally the left's turf.

President Emmanuel Macron himself pivoted to the right so consistently to confront the challenge that there is even discussion now of whether he should be regarded as a center-right president, though he emerged from a government run by the now-moribund Socialists in 2017.

''The great movement to the right '-- that's done, it's over,'' said Gal Brustier, a political analyst and former adviser to left-wing politicians. ''It won't set off in the other direction for 20 years.''

Marine Le Pen, the leading candidate on the right, and her party for decades softened the ground for the shift. But the right's recent political ascendancy follows many years in which conservatives have successfully waged a cultural battle '-- greatly inspired by the American right and often adopting its codes and strategies to attract a more youthful audience.

The French right in recent months has done more than just wield the idea of ''wokisme'' to effectively stifle the left and blunt what it sees as the threat of a ''woke culture'' from American campuses. It has also busily established a cultural presence after years with few, if any, media outlets in the mainstream.

Today the French right has burst through social barriers and is represented by its own version of a Fox-style television news channel, CNews, an expanding network of think tanks, and multiple social media platforms with a substantial and increasingly younger following.

'-- Norimitsu Onishi and Constant M(C)heut

Image Jean-Luc M(C)lenchon casting his ballot on Sunday in Marseille. Credit... Denis Balibouse/Reuters PARIS '-- Anand Shah stepped into a voting booth near the Marche d'Aligre, one of Paris's oldest outdoor food markets, and paused before finally slipping a ballot for Jean-Luc M(C)lenchon, the main left-wing candidate running for the French presidency, into a pale blue election envelope.

Mr. Shah said he hadn't wanted to vote for Mr. M(C)lenchon. His first choice was Philippe Poutou, a far-left politician, whose ideas to save the environment and take care of France's working classes held strong appeal.

But above all, Mr. Shah didn't want to see a rightist politician as president of France. For him and others buzzing around the market on Sunday, a vote for Mr. M(C)lenchon was a strategic move not only to keep Marine Le Pen at bay but also to oust President Emmanuel Macron, who has shifted to the right on issues like immigration and security during his presidency.

''Macron duped so many people for five years,'' said Mr. Shah, 31, an information technology project manager for a French consulting firm. ''The way he advertised himself in 2017 has very little to do with what has been done,'' he added. ''He has tacked so far to the right that he's part of the right.''

While all eyes have been focused on the swift rise of Ms. Le Pen, the far-right candidate, Mr. M(C)lenchon, 70, the leader of the far-left France Unbowed party, has witnessed a comeback in recent weeks. A final victory for Mr. M(C)lenchon still seems remote, but he headed into the first round of voting on Saturday comfortably in third place with about 14 percent in the polls, far ahead of his competitors on the left and within a few points of Ms. Le Pen.

As Mr. Macron has drifted further right during his presidency to steal ground from Ms. Le Pen, a number of voters who had previously backed him are pivoting, albeit hesitantly, to Mr. M(C)lenchon, a divisive personality who has softened some of his more radical edges while sharpening his left-wing platform to put issues of inequality and the cost of living at its center.

Mr. M(C)lenchon ''has a platform that focuses on people and their concerns about purchasing power,'' said Djamel Aminou, 39, an engineer, citing pledges to increase the minimum wage and lower the retirement age to 60 from 62.

''I don't want Le Pen as president, and I don't want Macron to be re-elected,'' he said. ''On the streets, Macron is seen as out of touch and he's very unpopular. Macron and Le Pen are almost the same. We need change in France.''

'-- Liz Alderman

Image Candidates' posters in Stiring-Wendel, in northeastern France. Credit... Andrea Mantovani for The New York Times France's presidents '-- who have formidable powers at their disposal and set much of the country's agenda '-- are elected directly by the people to five-year terms in a two-round voting system. This year, the first round is being held on Sunday, and the second round on April 24.

A candidate who gets an absolute majority of votes in the first round of voting is elected outright, but that has never occurred in the nearly six decades since France started choosing its presidents by a direct popular vote. Instead, a runoff is usually held between the top two candidates.

Who is running? President Emmanuel Macron is seeking a second term. He has been accused of using his status as a wartime leader and Europe's diplomat in chief to avoid debating his opponents, with some political analysts worrying that the lopsided campaign has lacked substance.

Mr. Macron had been leading the polls, but the race has opened up recently with a surge from his main challenger, Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader with an anti-European Union, anti-NATO and pro-Russia platform that would reverberate globally if she won.

Other candidates include Jean-Luc M(C)lenchon, the left-wing candidate best positioned to reach the runoff; Val(C)rie P(C)cresse, the mainstream conservative candidate; and ‰ric Zemmour, a far-right writer, pundit and television star.

Image Mr. Macron speaking in Nanterre, on the outskirts of Paris, on April 2. Credit... Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times What is at stake? France, with more than 67 million people, is the world's seventh-largest economy, the world's most visited country, one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and a nuclear power. It is a founding member of the European Union and a key driver of its policy.

While right-wing forces have largely won France's culture wars in recent years, voter surveys show that French voters are now primarily concerned with the growing cost of living. Broad disillusionment with politics has also emerged as a major source of concern, with worries that this election could see the lowest voter turnout for a presidential race in decades.

How does the French election work? On Election Day, the French news media will work with pollsters to publish projected results at 8 p.m. based on preliminary vote counts. That will give a good indication of who is expected to make it into the second round. but if the race is close, projections might not become clear until later. Official results will be available on the Interior Ministry website.

Before the second round of voting, he two runoff candidates will face off in a televised debate. In 2017, Ms. Le Pen's defeat was partly attributed to a disastrous debate performance

Correction:April 11, 2022

An earlier version of this post referred imprecisely to the French election of 1965. That was the first time that a president was elected in a direct ballot; it was not the case that a candidate was elected without a runoff. That has not happened yet.

'-- Aurelien Breeden

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Thu, 14 Apr 2022 14:50

New York City's subway in the late 1970s and 1980s looked like it came straight out of the Walter Hill cult classic, Warriors. Graffiti-laced train carts, poverty-stricken beggars and drug addicts, side by side with colorfully dressed gang members harassing the passengers who gladly give up valuable possessions in exchange for their lives were a normal sight back then.

Crime rates skyrocketed during the 1970s as the NYC subway proved to be the most dangerous transit system in the world. In September 1979, there were 250 felonies reported per week '' all going down in the dark hallways of the subway system.

Together with the drug epidemic which forced its users into the underground, it was truly a sad sight to look upon. Gangs such as Black Spades, The Satan Souls, The Devil Rebels, Imperial Survivors to name a few, kept their turf strict, partitioning the underground sections as well.

Graffiti became a notable symbol of declining service during the 1970s.

Due to the high mortality rates among gang members of the time, Luis Garden Acosta, a community leader and the founder of a grassroots environmental justice coalition El Puento, called the streets of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, ''killing fields.'' Rightfully so, for many teenagers were injured or killed due to violent turf wars which raged all over New York's poorest neighborhoods.

An officer checks a suspect at Liberty Avenue Station; subway crime was high in the area. July 30, 1974. (Photo by Vernon Shibla/New York Post Archives /(c) NYP Holdings, Inc. via Getty Images)

As a response to such violence, the police had to develop new tactics, strung between the necessity to control the rampant crime rates and the forever-shrinking budget.

Even though their presence was on a high level since the 1960s, when around 3,100 officers patrolled the subway as part of the Transit Police force, various reports from the late 1970s challenged their effectiveness.

NYC Subway, 1970s.

For one, the MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) used different radio frequencies, causing unnecessary confusion. Secondly, the Transport Police patrol patterns quickly became predictable, enabling the felons to effectively avoid them and thus be one step ahead.

New York Subway, c. 1970.

In July 1974, another surge of violence in the subway led the MTA to shut down the rearmost cars of trains at night. Over the course of a decade, the MTA would lose an estimated 300 million subway riders because of its bad reputation for being a hotbed of criminal activity.

Subway passengers aboard NYC subway, 1970s.

54 Seconds from Studio 54Lexitington Avenue line.

Two hundred potential felons were arrested in December 1977 during a police operation titled Subway Sweep. However, the arrests failed to show positive results, for in 1979, in the first two months alone, six murders were reported on the subway. Compared to nine murders committed in the whole of the previous year, this was a significant increase.

New York City Subway car. Photo by Sweet Child of mine FLickr CC By Sa 2.0

Around the same time, a vigilante group called Guardian Angels rose up in order to tackle crime in the subway system and protect its passengers. The organization specialized in unarmed combat and committing citizen arrests against muggers riding the subway.

Passengers boarding a subway car on Lexington Avenue line. New York 1973.

Quickly gaining popular support, their numbers swelled. By February 1980, around 220 members wore the colors of Guardian Angels, cooperating tightly with the police in an attempt to suppress crime within the NYC subway.

Graffiti on subway train, 1973.

However, it was the system itself that needed fixing '' malfunctions were common and many of the cars were poorly lit. Due to budget cutbacks, the trains were shortened, causing outrage among passengers. On top of that, windows were frequently smashed by hooligans.

In 1980 there was $2 million dollars worth of damage from broken windows alone, not counting the repairs concerning infrastructure.

Subway train, 1973.

In a desperate attempt to regain popularity, the MTA launched a new transit line in 1978, called Train to the Plane, which provided benefits such as a 24/7 police escort. The line was intended to transfer passengers along Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, leading them to a shuttle bus on Howard Beach that linked directly to JFK Airport.

Despite its best efforts, the MTA failed to attract enough passengers and was shut down in the 1990s, as rider rates continued to drop.

Taken near Castle Hill Avenue Bronx, NY, on the 6 Line. Photo by Alfred Gonzalez CC BY 2.5

Parallel to this, a growing graffiti subculture was on the rise in the 1970s. This would lead to the city's Mayor John Lindsay to declare the first war on graffiti in 1972. Due to lack of funding, no significant activity was taken to tackle the numerous graffiti artists in their mission to cover every inch of the subway cars with various stencils, tags or turf markings.

Taken on 6 Line train near 86th Street, NYC.

The authorities seemed to be losing control over the subway, with murders and robberies becoming a common sight. That was until they decided to use a different approach. In the early 1980s, a new doctrine was instigated.

Broadway Local subway car, 1973.

Dubbed as the ''Broken Window'' theory, the policy's aim was to focus more on the environment in which crime flourished than on the felons. It was the brainchild of two social scientists '' James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling '' who first published their theory in March 1982 in an article for The Atlantic Monthly magazine.

Subway Station, New York, 1973.

The duo suggested that if a broken window isn't fixed immediately, it encourages vandals to take further action, breaking more windows and eventually occupying the whole building. What this parable proposed was that in order to reduce serious crime within the subway system, the authorities had to battle the minor offenses, such as petty theft, graffiti, fare evasion, or in this case, an act of breaking a window.

A man sits on a seat on a subway car which has been extensively marked with graffiti, 1973.

Wilson and Kelling believed that in order to eradicate crime, one must first create an environment that discourages it. This meant that the broken window was to be repaired immediately, graffiti was to be covered with paint as soon as possible, and minor offenders should be apprehended. It also meant the introduction of strict measures, together with the use of ''stop, question, and frisk'' by the NYC Police Department, who were given higher authority.

The theory proved to be highly controversial, and the scientists behind it were accused of being advocates of a zero-tolerance approach.

Woman in a subway, New York, 1973.

Even though it took more than a decade for their theory to be effectively put to practice, in the 1990s police commissioner William Bratton and Mayor Rudy Giuliani began introducing measures suggested by Wilson and Kelling.

New York City Subway car. Photo by Sweet Child of mine FLickr CC By Sa 2.0

Accusations of zealotry conducted by the Police Department once again surged, causing the authors of the theory to make an official statement in 2014, insisting on the difference between the broken window effect and zero tolerance:

''Critics use the term ''zero tolerance'' in a pejorative sense to suggest that Broken Windows policing is a form of zealotry'--the imposition of rigid, moralistic standards of behavior on diverse populations. It is not. Broken Windows is a highly discretionary police activity that requires careful training, guidelines, and supervision, as well as an ongoing dialogue with neighborhoods and communities to ensure that it is properly conducted.''

Read another story from us: A radical feminist shot Andy Warhol claiming that ''he controlled her life''

Whether the theory is justified or not remains a subject of heated debate among social scientists. However, from the mid-1990s to this day, crime rates in the New York City subway system are at a record low. While the deteriorating trend continues, more and more subway users are reported every year, breathing new life into the old underground transport system.

Nikola Budanovic is a freelance journalist who has worked for various media outlets such as Vice, War History Online, The Vintage News, and Taste of Cinema. His main areas of interest are history, particularly military history, literature and film.

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Thu, 14 Apr 2022 14:48

Rising mortgage rates could lead to a pullback in demand by traditional buyers

April 11, 2022 8:00 am ETInvestors who buy and then rent new homes are fast becoming a favorite customer of the home builder industry.

The vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of new homes built last year were sold to individuals and families to live in. But rising mortgage rates are making those purchases much more expensive and could lead to a pullback in demand by those traditional buyers.

However,...

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Investors who buy and then rent new homes are fast becoming a favorite customer of the home builder industry.

The vast majority of the hundreds of thousands of new homes built last year were sold to individuals and families to live in. But rising mortgage rates are making those purchases much more expensive and could lead to a pullback in demand by those traditional buyers.

However, investors holding billions of dollars are eager to buy these homes in bulk, a boon to home builders who have increased construction in recent months.

More than one in every four houses purchased by a professional rental investor in the fourth quarter last year was a new-construction house, according to a report from John Burns Real Estate Consulting LLC and the National Rental Home Council, a landlord trade group.

Brand new homes were just 3% of what these investors bought during the third quarter in 2019.

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Large investors have amassed some $89 billion in capital to spend on building or buying new rental homes and have deployed only about one-quarter of it, according to real-estate research and advisory firm Zelman & Associates.

Home builders often choose to sell in bulk to investors because it allows them to turn a profit on new homes more quickly. Investors have more capital and can close on a large number of homes at once.

As of February, there were 799,000 single-family homes under construction across the U.S., up 28% from a year prior, according to government figures.

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Rising mortgage rates, meanwhile, are shallowing the pool of individuals who can afford to buy new homes. The average fixed rate for a 30-year mortgage was 4.72% as of April 7, according to Freddie Mac, up from the 2.97% rate during the same month last year. Mortgage application volume fell 41% below what it was during the same week in 2021, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

That makes selling to rental investors even more attractive to builders, especially those who typically sell to entry-level buyers, said Robert Dietz, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders, a builder trade group.

''Those potential buyers still want more space,'' he said. ''And so single-family rental is likely to continue to show some strength.''

Investors say new rentals enable people to live in single-family homes in desirable neighborhoods, where they either can't afford to buy or prefer to rent. Investors offer a reliable sale even if interest rates rise because many already have cash on hand.

''We can offer them something that feels a lot more certain,'' said Sudha Reddy, founder of investor Haven Realty Capital, which has acquired more than $1.1 billion worth of new construction rental homes from builders since late 2020.

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Builders like Rich Eneim, Jr., agree that sales to investors have strong appeal. His firm, Keystone Homes in Scottsdale, Ariz., last year decided to refocus almost entirely on rental houses. Keystone has an 800-house construction pipeline, and about half of what it builds now it will sell to investors, Mr. Eneim said. The other half he will hold on to and lease to tenants.

One of Mr. Eneim's latest developments is The Havenly Fountain Hills, a community of stucco-and-tile homes about 30 miles outside of downtown Phoenix. Houses average only about 1,100 square feet, but they rent for more than $2,500 a month. Collecting rent now and selling to an investor later allows the company to ride out any headwinds in the for-sale market, Mr. Eneim said.

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''When we do a for-sale community, we have to sell, no matter what the price is, no matter what the market is, if it's good or bad'' he said. ''For rent, we can be patient.''

Many of the new homes investors are now buying were originally conceived as rentals, but a majority are homes that builders later decide to sell to rental companies. When combined, these homes account for as much as 9% of all single-family home starts, according to estimates from the Burns firm, though that percentage has been rising in recent years.

Rental investors also bid up land prices in hot markets, home builders and analysts say. Higher land prices make it difficult to build for entry-level buyers in those areas, analysts say.

Rental builders can often pay more for land because they are backed by larger capital sources, build denser communities with more units and come in with plans to raise rents every year, said Rick Palacios, an analyst at the Burns firm. ''It's not a shocker,'' he said. ''In the Southwest, rents are going up double digits, and they have been going up double digits for a while now.''

Write to Will Parker at will.parker@wsj.com

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Thu, 14 Apr 2022 14:48

Malware designed to target industrial control systems like power grids, factories, water utilities, and oil refineries represents a rare species of digital badness. So when the United States government warns of a piece of code built to target not just one of those industries, but potentially all of them, critical infrastructure owners worldwide should take notice.

On Wednesday, the Department of Energy, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the NSA, and the FBI jointly released an advisory about a new hacker toolset potentially capable of meddling with a wide range of industrial control system equipment. More than any previous industrial control system hacking toolkit, the malware contains an array of components designed to disrupt or take control of the functioning of devices, including programmable logic controllers (PLCs) that are sold by Schneider Electric and OMRON and are designed to serve as the interface between traditional computers and the actuators and sensors in industrial environments. Another component of the malware is designed to target Open Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) servers'--the computers that communicate with those controllers.

"This is the most expansive industrial control system attack tool that anyone has ever documented," says Sergio Caltagirone, the vice president of threat intelligence at industrial-focused cybersecurity firm Dragos, which contributed research to the advisory and published its own report about the malware. Researchers at Mandiant, Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, and Schneider Electric also contributed to the advisory. ''It's like a Swiss Army knife with a huge number of pieces to it.''

Dragos says the malware has the ability to hijack target devices, disrupt or prevent operators from accessing them, permanently brick them, or even use them as a foothold to give hackers access to other parts of an industrial control system network. He notes that while the toolkit, which Dragos calls ''Pipedream,'' appears to specifically target Schneider Electric and OMRON PLCs, it does so by exploiting underlying software in those PLCs known as Codesys, which is used far more broadly across hundreds of other types of PLCs. This means that the malware could easily be adapted to work in almost any industrial environment. ''This toolset is so big that it's basically a free-for-all,'' Caltagirone says. ''There's enough in here for everyone to worry about.''

The CISA advisory refers to an unnamed ''APT actor'' that developed the malware toolkit, using the common acronym APT to mean advanced persistent threat, a term for state-sponsored hacker groups. It's far from clear where the government agencies found the malware, or which country's hackers created it'--though the timing of the advisory follows warnings from the Biden administration about the Russian government making preparatory moves to carry out disruptive cyberattacks in the midst of its invasion of Ukraine.

Dragos also declined to comment on the malware's origin. But Caltagirone says it doesn't appear to have been actually used against a victim'--or at least, it hasn't yet triggered actual physical effects on a victim's industrial control systems. ''We have high confidence it hasn't been deployed yet for disruptive or destructive effects,'' says Caltagirone.

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Thu, 14 Apr 2022 14:47

Dr. Bryan Ardis made some allegations earlier this week that the covid-19 virus, covid ''vaccines'' and at least one covid treatment all originated from snake venom molecules. He says the virus is anything but a virus, and it's being spread to people through the water supply.

In an interview released yesterday by Stew Peters at Red Voice Media called, ''Watch the Water,'' Dr. Ardis explains his findings. In the video, Ardis expresses concern that snake venom-related molecules (peptides or spike proteins) could have been added into the water supply in order to create a viral ''outbreak'' fear scenario that ultimately drove people into covid vaccines, lockdowns, mask mandates, and other forms of mass medical hysteria.

Google Manipulates Results as Searches 'Mass Formation Psychosis' Explode Due to Collapsing Covid Narrative

He also explains that the same snake venom used to sicken people was used to ''treat'' people and is in the COVID injections erroneously being called ''vaccines.''

Snake venom is routinely used to develop pharmaceuticals and medical interventions. In fact, a recent announcement from a company actually called, ''VenomTech.'' The company is talking about ''Targeted-Venom Discovery Array' (T-VDA') libraries and how they provide researchers with a straightforward solution to rapidly screen thousands of individual venom fragments, with each array specifically designed to maximize hits for a specific target.''

The CEO of VenomTech, Paul Grant, continued:

''Venomtech has been at the forefront of venom research for drug discovery for more than a decade. Through this relationship with Charles River Laboratories '' a global leader for drug discovery contract research '' we can now showcase our innovative technology, introducing the wider industry to the potential of venoms for the successful delivery of more leads, more quickly, for a broad range of targets.''

Scientific American in its 2020 article, ''Snakes Could Be the Original Source of the New Coronavirus Outbreak in China,'' cites the similarity between SARS-CoV-2 and snake genetic material, stating:

Snakes'--the Chinese krait and the Chinese cobra'--may be the original source of the newly discovered coronavirus that has triggered an outbreak of a deadly infectious respiratory illness in China this winter.

Dr. Ardis believes that cobra venom was used as the starting point for gain-of-function augmentation of SARS-CoV-2, effectively transforming the virus into a venom-like payload delivery system that poisons the body much like a snake bite.

Is this why there have been no isolates of a ''virus''? Could this guy be right? More importantly, what's next? Prepare the best you can. If you are on a city water supply, consider some kind of filtration. After watching this, we immediately remembered an interview from a while ago:

Ex-Free Mason Details What's Coming: If He's Right, Things Are Going To Get BRUTAL!

The ''pandemic'' (NOT COVID-19, the ''next one'') which he says will be done through the contamination of the water supply. ''I don't know what it is'...it's something probably they made and they're gonna put it in the water in cities first,'' he says. ''The statistics were 60-70% of the people that come in contact with it through shower or whatever, it's gonna be fatal or have long-lasting effects.'' This is what those FEMA coffins were for. -SHTFPlan

With immune systems fully degraded by the COVID-19 injections, who knows how bad could this get. We already have information about how the bird flu has jumped to humans in China.

It Starts: China Reported 19 Human Cases Of H5N6 Bird Flu

Remember, this is simply information. It's up to you to use your own discernment and make decisions for yourself. If this is true, and the water supply is contaminated, no amount of quarantining in your home or locking down or masking will help.

INFLATION IS RUNNING AT 40-YEAR HIGHS!NEGATIVE INTEREST RATES ARE TAXING SAVERS,CREATING FOOD SHORTAGESAND MAKING LIFE MISERABLE IN THE UNITED STATES!

There's Little Time Left Before the REAL DISASTER occurs!Download the Ultimate Reset Guide Now!

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Thu, 14 Apr 2022 14:47

Thomas Barwick | Digitalvision | Getty Images

A shortened workweek may become the reality for many employees in California.

Legislation is now working its way through the state legislature that would make the standard workweek 32 hours for companies with more than 500 workers. There would be no cut in pay, and those who work more would be compensated at a rate of no less than 1.5 times the employee's regular rate of pay.

"It doesn't make sense that we are still holding onto a work schedule that served the Industrial Revolution," Democratic Assembly member Cristina Garcia, one of the bill's sponsors, said in a statement.

While the shift is long overdue, the Covid-19 pandemic and "Great Resignation," also known as the "Great Reshuffle," have made it clear the time to make the change is now, she said.

Nearly 48 million Americans walked away from their jobs last year, and the trend is still going strong. Almost 4.4 million workers quit in February alone, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.

"There has been no correlation between working more hours and better productivity," Garcia said.

However, the California Chamber of Commerce opposes the bill, calling it a "job killer" because it will end up imposing more costs on businesses.

"Labor costs are often one of the highest costs a business faces," Ashley Hoffman, public policy advocate at the California Chamber Commerce wrote in a letter to Assembly member Evan Low, another Democratic sponsor of the bill.

"Such a large increase in labor costs will reduce businesses' ability to hire or create new positions and will therefore limit job growth in California."

Four-day workweekProponents of the four-day workweek say the same work can get done in the shorter timeframe. More companies are now testing it out as a way address employee well-being.

Earlier this month, dozens of companies across the U.S. and Canada began a six-month pilot of a four-day workweek, which is being led by 4 Day Week Global.

The idea is that employees work 80% of the time for 100% of the pay and maintain 100% productivity. It comes down to working more efficiently, including cutting back on unnecessary meetings.

"More and more companies are recognizing that the new frontier for competition is quality of life, and that reduced-hour, productivity-focused working is the vehicle to give them that competitive edge," said Joe O'Connor, CEO of 4 Day Week Global.

More from Invest in You:Want a four-day-workweek job? Here's how to land oneCompanies are betting these perks will help them in the 'Great Reshuffle'Deepak Chopra: Here's how to land the right job

Among those participating in the North American trial is crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. Its CEO, Aziz Hasan, told CNBC in July it is a way for the company to become more powerful as a group.

"It's really about '-- if our time and attention is focused as best as it can be in those four days '-- can we have a more potent impact on the things that we care about from a professional standpoint, so that it opens up so much more range for us personally?" he said.

For those who shortened the workweek during the pandemic, there are no plans to turn back.

"There are so many parts of the workweek that are just a waste of time," said Banks Benitez, CEO of Denver-based Uncharted, which switched to a four-day workweek in 2020.

"It has been a great forcing function for us to think differently."

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Disclosure: NBCUniversal and Comcast Ventures are investors in Acorns.

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Thu, 14 Apr 2022 14:12

People walk by the world headquarters for the Cable News Network (CNN) on March 15, 2022 in Atlanta, Georgia.

Anna Moneymaker | Getty Images

Fewer than 10,000 people are using CNN+ on a daily basis two weeks into its existence, according to people familiar with the matter.

The people spoke with CNBC on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss nonpublic data.

CNN+ launched on March 29. The subscription news streaming service, which charges $5.99 a month or $59.99 annually, only became available on Roku on Monday and still isn't on Android TV. Still, the paltry audience casts doubt on the future of the application following the recently completed combination of Discovery and WarnerMedia into Warner Bros. Discovery.

To put that daily user number in perspective, CNN's cable network suffered a sharp decline in viewership last year but still rang up an average of 773,000 total viewers a day.

"We continue to be happy with the launch and its progress after only two weeks," a CNN spokesperson said.

CNN sought to make a huge splash with CNN+, luring big-name talent from rival news networks, such as Kasie Hunt from NBC News and Chris Wallace from Fox News. But there is broad skepticism whether there's enough demand to sustain a stand-alone news streaming service, with entertainment-first options dominating the landscape. Disney+, for instance, posted more than 10 million subscribers on its first day.

CNN hasn't released an exact number of CNN+ subscribers. Disney's ESPN+, which offers sports news programming in addition to live event broadcasts, recently reported 21.3 million subscribers. NBCUniversal's Peacock, which features news programming, reported 24.5 million monthly active accounts in the U.S., more than 9 million of which were paid members. (ESPN+ charges $6.99 a month and Peacock offers premium tiers starting at $4.99 a month.)

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav hasn't commented publicly on CNN+'s long-term future. He told CNBC in February he'd need to see how the application performed before deciding on any next moves.

"I haven't gotten a business review on what CNN+ is going to be and how it's going to be offered," Zaslav said at the time.

It's possible, if not likely, that CNN+ programming will be offered as part of a larger bundled offering of HBO Max and Discovery+, according to people familiar with the matter. Both of those services have millions of subscribers.

Ex-WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar decided to push ahead with CNN+'s launch two weeks before merging the company with Discovery. Kilar left the company last week. He was upbeat about subscriber numbers in an interview with CNBC, but didn't cite any figures.

"It's ahead of my expectations in terms of where the subscribers are, the engagement, the receptiveness that we're getting in terms of people's response to the journalists of CNN+," Kilar told CNBC's Julia Boorstin. "I couldn't be more proud of that team."

Axios reported earlier Tuesday that new leadership at Warner Bros. Discovery plans to cut hundreds of millions of investment dollars for the service given concern over its future. Incoming CNN chief Chris Licht will join Warner Bros. Discovery on May 1 and will make decisions on how best to proceed, two of the people said.

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.

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Thu, 14 Apr 2022 14:09

If pet owners are having a hard time finding their furry friends' favorite foods, it's not in their head, experts and pet store owners say: The pet food industry has not been spared from supply chain challenges affecting access to consumer goods across the U.S.

Pet store employees in Chicago said supply chain problems with pet food products during the COVID-19 pandemic have tended to be cyclical: A product might disappear for several months and then return, only for another product to disappear. Sometimes the issue is caused by problems with ingredients; other times it's a shortage of packaging, staffing problems in factories or problems with transportation and shipping.

Rebecca Morgan, owner of the pet store A Paw Place in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, said she'd been having problems with stocking pet food more frequently now than earlier in the pandemic.

Morgan echoed other pet store employees who said they frequently have issues stocking particular items, but weren't having problems keeping food on the shelves in general. ''It's happening more frequently,'' Morgan said, ''but I don't think it's happening with such a frequency that the whole industry is disrupted.''

''A lot of the time it'll be one specific protein, because a lot of our food is protein-based,'' said Shiloh Lane, assistant manager at the Bark by the Park pet store in Lakeview East. ''So sometimes it'll be duck, and we can't get duck in, or any duck products in, for a really long time, or every now and then it'll be salmon, and we can't get salmon in for a really long time.''

Lane said Bark by the Park works with smaller brands rather than large pet food makers, and that those brands tend to be transparent when they're facing issues with production.

A dog enjoys a walk along the lakefront at Museum Campus in front of a foggy Chicago skyline on April 3, 2022. (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

With inflation at its highest since the early 1980s, pet food hasn't been spared from the higher prices consumers are seeing across the board. Pet store owners said they needed to raise their prices to keep up with higher wholesale costs. Morgan and Lane both said they'd experienced distributors not just raising prices but also cutting quantities. One brand that used to sell pet food in 5- and 15-pound bags cut their product to 4 and 12 pounds while keeping the price the same, Lane said.

''Every single node in the supply chain has been disrupted over the last two years,'' said Dana Brooks, president and CEO of the Pet Food Institute, a pet food lobbying group. Brooks said she sees national supply chain issues continuing through this year and potentially into 2023.

Beyond supply issues, Brooks said, demand for pet food has jumped during the pandemic due to the increase in pet adoptions. Online pet food retailer Chewy announced 24% growth in net sales for fiscal year 2021 compared with 2020, which in turn followed 47% growth in 2020 over the prior year. Meanwhile, Petco reported 18% growth in net sales in 2021 following 11% growth in 2020. Nestle, which owns Nestle Purina Petcare, the maker of cat food brand Fancy Feast, said in its 2021 annual report that pet food was a driver of its market share gains across the world.

Brooks isn't concerned about the overall volume of pet food supply in the U.S. but acknowledged there may be fewer options on shelves than there once were.

For some individuals, a shortage of just one brand or product can be plenty disruptive.

Morgan said she has two customers whose cats only eat a particular kind of food that has been out of stock for about two months.

''My one customer knew that his food was having a problem and he bought up my entire stock, and then we weren't able to reorder it after that,'' Morgan said.

Faythe Lewis, a merchandise manager at a Petco location in the South Loop, said the store has fielded calls from people around the city trying to find their cat's favored food.

A cat gazes out a window on Division Street during the annual Fiesta Boricua in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood on Sept. 4, 2021. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

Cats in particular can be picky eaters, said Kirsten Plomin, president of the Chicago Veterinary Medical Association. A cat that only ate dry food as a kitten may have a hard time switching to canned food and vice versa, she said.

Plomin said the prescription foods eaten by animals with specific medical needs have also been faced with supply chain challenges. In some cases, vets have needed to work with pet owners to shift their pet's diet to another product.

Plomin recommends owners of pets with special dietary needs order their pet's food much earlier than they otherwise would and to buy in bulk. They should reach out to their vet if they're having trouble finding their animal's food.

''There's always something,'' Plomin said. ''It just may warrant you having a conversation with your veterinarian and then us pulling up multiple different suppliers to find which one is available where.''

At different times during the pandemic, Barbara Burdick, owner of Cuddle Bunny in Lakeview East, dealt with shortages both of the pellets used to feed baby rabbits and the hay that adult rabbits eat. Cuddle Bunny offers boarding service for bunnies, and people can also pay to visit with the organization's live-in rabbits.

For the first year or so of their life, baby rabbits eat food that is higher in protein than the food for adult rabbits, Burdick said. For about two months last fall, a shortage of the pellets for baby rabbits meant Burdick had to swap their food for adult feed.

''You don't want to switch up what they're eating because their digestive systems are very sensitive and that can give them intestinal issues,'' Burdick said. ''But we had to do what we had to do, because they still had to eat.''

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Thu, 14 Apr 2022 13:53

New, higher blend of ethanol fuel could harm fuel systems, void warrantiesEPA says E15 is safe for most 2001 and newer carsWisconsin Congressman Sensenbrenner agrees with AAA findings.The AAA says the Environmental Protection Agency and gasoline retailers should halt the sale of E15, a new ethanol blend that could damage millions of vehicles and void car warranties.

AAA, which issued its warning Friday, says just 12 million of more than 240 million cars, trucks and SUVs now in use have manufacturers' approval for E15. Flex-fuel vehicles, 2012 and newer General Motors vehicles, 2013 Fords and 2001 and later model Porsches are the exceptions, according to AAA, the nation's largest motorist group, with 53.5 million members.

"It is clear that millions of Americans are unfamiliar with E15, which means there is a strong possibility that many may improperly fill up using this gasoline and damage their vehicle," AAA President and CEO Robert Darbelnet tells USA TODAY. "Bringing E15 to the market without adequate safeguards does not responsibly meet the needs of consumers."

BMW, Chrysler, Nissan, Toyota and VW have said their warranties will not cover fuel-related claims caused by E15. Ford, Honda, Kia, Mercedes-Benz and Volvo have said E15 use will void warranties, says Darbelnet, citing potential corrosive damage to fuel lines, gaskets and other engine components.

Gasoline blended with 10% ethanol has become standard at most of the nation's 160,000 gas stations, spurred by federal laws and standards designed to use more renewable energy sources and lessen the nation's dependence on foreign oil. Pushed by ethanol producers, the EPA approved the use of E15 -- a 15% ethanol-gasoline blend -- in June over objections from automakers and the oil industry. It's been available at a handful of outlets in Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska since July.

EPA stickers affixed to gas station pumps say E15 is safe for use in virtually all vehicles 2001 and newer. (USA TODAY made repeated requests for EPA comment.)

But AAA -- in an unusual warning for a travel organization -- says the sale and use of E15 should be stopped until there is more-extensive testing, better pump labels to safeguard consumers and more consumer education about potential hazards.

Bob Dinneen, CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, says E15 is safe for virtually all post-2001 vehicles, based on extensive government-sponsored testing. "We think the (EPA) warning label should be sufficient to notify consumers,'' Dinneen says. "There are no corrosive issues with E15. If there's an issue with E15 (damaging vehicles) we're going to know about it, and the EPA is going to know about it."

But the American Petroleum Institute says a three-year study conducted by automakers and the oil industry found that E15 is a consumer safety issue for a majority of drivers with pre-2012 vehicles. "Our testing of a range of ethanol levels at 15% to 20% has identified issues about engine durability,'' API group director and engineer Bob Greco says.

Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner has proposed legislation requiring the EPA to authorize an unbiased study of E15, agrees with the AAA. "(The) findings affirm what we have already heard'--E15 causes premature engine damage and voids warranties, even on new models," the Wisconsin Republican says. "Concerns about E15 are not diminishing, they are increasing. That is telling. When an organization like AAA, a nationally trusted source for motorists, calls out the EPA, you would think the (Obama) Administration would listen."

The National Association of Convenience Stores says it's also worried about the effect of E15 on station pumps and fuel lines. "The EPA says its OK to sell it, but for most retailers, there is too much uncertainty related to consumer demand and liability protection, especially if it's later determined E15 is a defective product or there are problems,'' spokesman Jeff Lenard says.

Scott Zaremba, who has been selling E15 blends at several of his eight Zarco 66 stations in Kansas since July, says no customers have complained. He's also fueling his 2001 Chevy pickup with E15 blend.

"The same complaints came when 10% blend came in -- the world was coming to an end,'' says Zaremba, 47. "E15 burns well and has great performance, and four people tell me it gives them better gas mileage. I don't see any major issues with it -- yet."

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Thu, 14 Apr 2022 13:03

Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk attends the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai, China August 29, 2019.

Aly Song | Reuters

Elon Musk offered to buy Twitter for $54.20 a share, saying the social media company needs to be transformed privately, a little over a week after first revealing a 9.2% stake in the company. Musk's offer values Twitter at about $43 billion.

"I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy," Musk wrote in a letter sent to Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor and disclosed in a securities filing.

According to Musk, the social media company needs to go private because it can "neither thrive nor serve" free speech in its current state.

"As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced," he wrote. "My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder."

Twitter shares jumped more than 6% in premarket trading after closing at $45.85 a share on Wednesday. Musk tapped Morgan Stanley as a financial advisor, according to the filing.

"The Twitter Board of Directors will carefully review the proposal to determine the course of action that it believes is in the best interest of the Company and all Twitter stockholders," the company said in a statement Thursday in response to the offer. But the news comes just days after Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal warned investors of "distractions ahead."

Musk first disclosed his stake in the social media giant on April 4. He later landed a seat on the company's board of directors before reversing those plans.

The Tesla CEO has previously criticized the social media giant publicly, polling people on Twitter last month about whether the company abides by free speech principles. He also said he was considering building a new social media platform.

Shares of Twitter have seesawed in recent weeks amid the news from Musk, but are up 6% this year and 18.5% since the start of the month.

Tesla's stock dipped 1% on the news.

Here is the letter Musk sent as disclosed in a securities filing:

I invested in Twitter as I believe in its potential to be the platform for free speech around the globe, and I believe free speech is a societal imperative for a functioning democracy.

However, since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form. Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.

As a result, I am offering to buy 100% of Twitter for $54.20 per share in cash, a 54% premium over the day before I began investing in Twitter and a 38% premium over the day before my investment was publicly announced. My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder.

Twitter has extraordinary potential. I will unlock it.

Elon Musk

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Thu, 14 Apr 2022 12:37

Nuclear power plant in Germany (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

Getty ImagesWar in Ukraine is causing an energy reset. Western governments are rethinking dependence on Russian oil and gas, and it is a big opportunity for investors.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced last week that Britain will begin developing small scale, modular nuclear power plants. The new energy path is a big win for uranium assets.

It's time for investors to consider buying Cameco Corp. (CME).

The emergence of nuclear as a clean energy source seemed unlikely. Nuclear power has been derided for four decades. The number of plants globally peaked in 1996 when 17.5% of all electric power was generated in those facilities. Since then public has opinion soured and the political will to keep plants open waned.

The downfall of nuclear energy was caused by a combination of events

Environmental movements gained global traction in the 1970s and nuclear energy was the perfect bogeyman. Radiation poisoning was invisible and lethal. This was exploited in 1979 by The China Syndrome, a big budget Hollywood film that mirrored a partial meltdown earlier that year at Three Mile Island, a Pennsylvania nuclear facility. Although epidemiological studies later showed no increase in cancers in the area, fears of living near nuclear facilities grew exponentially.

A complete meltdown in 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor led to the depopulation of 68,000 people across 1,000 square miles in northern Ukraine. And 154,400 Japanese were evacuated in 2011 when a nuclear plant in Fukushima was damaged following an earthquake and tsunami.

Nuclear power plants all over the world began to close. Today these facilities generate only 10.3% of the world's electricity. The oddity is nuclear power is clean, green, sustainable and statistically much safer than most other forms of power generation, according to research compiled by Our World in Data.

Nuclear facilities are essentially extremely large tea kettles. The power-generation process begins when a uranium atom is split in half to create fission. This releases a tremendous amount of energy. Rods of the fissionable material are cooled in water, creating steam that spins a turbine and creates electricity.

Most coal or natural gas power plants generate electricity the same way. The difference is uranium is a far more efficient source of energy. A single set of rods the size of a fireplace log holds enough energy to power 100 homes for a year. Uranium is also cleaner. Using it to create electricity does not release carbon into the atmosphere. This is especially as the world races toward zero emissions.

Britain used to be a hub of nuclear power innovation. The United Kingdom had 15 nuclear facilities operating in 1997, generating 27% of the country's electricity. By 2024 only two plants will remain. With the help of Rolls Royce, Prime Minister Johnson wants to reverse the trend. The goal is to build smaller power generation facilities based on Rolls' nuclear-powered submarine engines.

The BBC notes that it might be the perfect solution for an economy shying away from carbon emissions, and the perils of dependence on Russia oil and gas.

Cameco Corp. is uniquely positioned to take advantage of both the current geopolitical crisis and the inevitable transition back to nuclear power. The Canadian uranium producer holds the world's largest deposits, and executives are strategically removing supply from the market in an effort to maximize the value of those assets.

ccj11

Markman CapitalDuring a conference call in February Tim Gitzel, chief executive officer told analysts that since 2016 Cameco has removed 190 million pounds of uranium from the spot market.

Gitzel notes that the Netherlands, Czechia, Poland, Estonia, Slovenia and Serbia are now studying their nuclear options. Also, the European Union has labelled nuclear power as a climate-friendly investment, giving ESG funds a green light to begin investing in the sector.

Uranium prices have risen to $63.50 per pound in 2022, up 46.1%. Cameco is licensed to produce 53 million pounds annually. The current market capitalization is only $12.1 billion.

Longer-term investors should buy Cameco into any further weakness.

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Thu, 14 Apr 2022 11:54

WASHINGTON (AP) '-- The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it is extending the nationwide mask requirement for airplanes and public transit for 15 days as it monitors an uptick in COVID-19 cases.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was extending the order, which was set to expire on April 18, until May 3 to allow more time to study the BA.2 omicron subvariant that is now responsible for the vast majority of cases in the U.S.

''In order to assess the potential impact the rise of cases has on severe disease, including hospitalizations and deaths, and health care system capacity, the CDC order will remain in place at this time,'' the agency said in a statement.

When the Transportation Security Administration, which enforces the rule for planes, buses, trains and transit hubs, extended the requirement last month, it said the CDC had been hoping to roll out a more flexible masking strategy that would have replaced the nationwide requirement.

The mask mandate is the most visible vestige of government restrictions to control the pandemic, and possibly the most controversial. A surge of abusive and sometimes violent incidents on airplanes has been attributed mostly to disputes over mask-wearing.

Separately, the Biden administration also extended for 90 days a public health emergency that has been in effect since early 2020. That allows temporary continuation of a range of public health measures that do have broad support, from more generous Medicaid coverage to flexibility around telehealth.

The mask requirement for travelers was the target of months of lobbying from the airlines, who sought to kill it. The carriers argued that effective air filters on modern planes make transmission of the virus during a flight highly unlikely. Republicans in Congress also fought to kill the mandate.

Critics have seized on the fact that states have rolled back rules requiring masks in restaurants, stores and other indoor settings, and yet COVID-19 cases have fallen sharply since the omicron variant peaked in mid-January.

''It is very difficult to understand why masks are still required on airplanes, but not needed in crowded bars and restaurants; in packed sports arenas; in schools full of children; or at large indoor political gatherings,'' Nicholas Calio, the CEO of industry trade group Airlines for America, said Wednesday in a letter to the heads of the CDC and the Health and Human Services Department. ''Simply put, an extension of the mask mandate does not make sense.''

There has been a slight increase in cases in recent weeks, with daily confirmed cases nationwide rising from about 25,000 per day to more than 30,000. More than 85% of those cases are the highly contagious BA.2 strain. Those figures could be an undercount since many people now test positive on at-home tests that are not reported to public health agencies.

Severe illnesses and deaths tend to lag infections by several weeks. The CDC is awaiting indications of whether the increase in cases correlates to a rise in adverse outcomes before announcing a less restrictive mask policy for travel.

A poll in mid-March by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that Americans are evenly divided over keeping the mask rule for transportation.

The poll found that 51% wanted the mandate to expire and 48% said it should remain in place '' in effect, a tie, given the poll's margin of error. Democrats overwhelmingly supported the rule, and Republicans were even more united in opposing it. Vaccinated people and those with chronic health conditions favored keeping the rule, but by smaller margins.

Airlines imposed their own mask mandates in 2020, when the Trump administration declined to take action. Unions representing flight attendants, which once backed mask rules, now decline to take a position because their members are divided over the issue.

It is unclear whether eliminating the rule would make people more or less likely to travel on planes or subways.

Ed Bastian, the CEO of Delta Air Lines, said that some people might start flying if they don't have to wear a mask, and others might stop flying if other passengers are unmasked. He called both groups ''fringe,'' and he predicted that many people will continue to wear masks even if the rule is dropped.

As for the broader public health emergency just extended by the Department of Health and Human Services, the administration has promised to give states 60 days' notice before ending it.

Winding down the emergency declaration could force an estimated 15 million Medicaid recipients to find new sources of coverage, require congressional action to preserve broad telehealth access for Medicare enrollees, and scramble special COVID-19 rules and payment policies for hospitals, doctors and insurers. There are also questions about how emergency use approvals for COVID-19 treatments will be handled.

___

David Koenig reported from Dallas. AP Health Writer Mike Stobbe in New York and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar in Washington contributed to this report.

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Thu, 14 Apr 2022 11:45

W hen was the last time you saw a scientific paper? A physical one, I mean. An older academic in my previous university department used to keep all his scientific journals in recycled cornflakes boxes. On entering his office, you'd be greeted by a wall of Kellogg's roosters, occupying shelf upon shelf, on packets containing various issues of Journal of Experimental Psychology, Psychophysiology, Journal of Neuropsychology, and the like. It was an odd sight, but there was method to it: if you didn't keep your journals organised, how could you be expected to find the particular paper you were looking for?

The time for cornflakes boxes has passed: now we have the internet. Having been printed on paper since the very first scientific journal was inaugurated in 1665, the overwhelming majority of research is now submitted, reviewed and read online. During the pandemic, it was often devoured on social media, an essential part of the unfolding story of Covid-19. Hard copies of journals are increasingly viewed as curiosities '' or not viewed at all.

But although the internet has transformed the way we read it, the overall system for how we publish science remains largely unchanged. We still have scientific papers; we still send them off to peer reviewers; we still have editors who give the ultimate thumbs up or down as to whether a paper is published in their journal.

This system comes with big problems. Chief among them is the issue of publication bias: reviewers and editors are more likely to give a scientific paper a good write-up and publish it in their journal if it reports positive or exciting results. So scientists go to great lengths to hype up their studies, lean on their analyses so they produce ''better'' results, and sometimes even commit fraud in order to impress those all-important gatekeepers. This drastically distorts our view of what really went on.

There are some possible fixes that change the way journals work. Maybe the decision to publish could be made based only on the methodology of a study, rather than on its results (this is already happening to a modest extent in a few journals). Maybe scientists could just publish all their research by default, and journals would curate, rather than decide, which results get out into the world. But maybe we could go a step further, and get rid of scientific papers altogether.

Scientists are obsessed with papers '' specifically, with having more papers published under their name, extending the crucial ''publications'' section of their CV. So it might sound outrageous to suggest we could do without them. But that obsession is the problem. Paradoxically, the sacred status of a published, peer-reviewed paper makes it harder to get the contents of those papers right.

Consider the messy reality of scientific research. Studies almost always throw up weird, unexpected numbers that complicate any simple interpretation. But a traditional paper '' word count and all '' pretty well forces you to dumb things down. If what you're working towards is a big, milestone goal of a published paper, the temptation is ever-present to file away a few of the jagged edges of your results, to help ''tell a better story''. Many scientists admit, in surveys, to doing just that '' making their results into unambiguous, attractive-looking papers, but distorting the science along the way.

Some fields of science are already using online notebooks instead of journals '' living documents instead of living fossilsAnd consider corrections. We know that scientific papers regularly contain errors. One algorithm that ran through thousands of psychology papers found that, at worst, more than 50% had one specific statistical error, and more than 15% had an error serious enough to overturn the results. With papers, correcting this kind of mistake is a slog: you have to write in to the journal, get the attention of the busy editor, and get them to issue a new, short paper that formally details the correction. Many scientists who request corrections find themselves stonewalled or otherwise ignored by journals. Imagine the number of errors that litter the scientific literature that haven't been corrected because to do so is just too much hassle.

Finally, consider data. Back in the day, sharing the raw data that formed the basis of a paper with that paper's readers was more or less impossible. Now it can be done in a few clicks, by uploading the data to an open repository. And yet, we act as if we live in the world of yesteryear: papers still hardly ever have the data attached, preventing reviewers and readers from seeing the full picture.

The solution to all these problems is the same as the answer to ''How do I organise my journals if I don't use cornflakes boxes?'' Use the internet. We can change papers into mini-websites (sometimes called ''notebooks'') that openly report the results of a given study. Not only does this give everyone a view of the full process from data to analysis to write-up '' the dataset would be appended to the website along with all the statistical code used to analyse it, and anyone could reproduce the full analysis and check they get the same numbers '' but any corrections could be made swiftly and efficiently, with the date and time of all updates publicly logged.

This would be a major improvement on the status quo, where the analysis and writing of papers goes on entirely in private, with scientists then choosing on a whim whether to make their results public. Sure, throwing sunlight on the whole process might reveal ambiguities or hard-to-explain contradictions in the results '' but that's how science really is. There are also other potential benefits of this hi-tech way of publishing science: for example, if you were running a long-term study on the climate or on child development, it would be a breeze to add in new data as it appears.

Sign up to our Inside Saturday newsletter for an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the magazine's biggest features, as well as a curated list of our weekly highlights.

There are barriers to big changes like this. Some are to do with skills: it's easy to write a Word document with your results and send it in to a journal, as we do now; it's harder to make a notebook website that weaves together the data, code and interpretation. More importantly, how would peer review operate in this scenario? It's been suggested that scientists could hire ''red teams'' '' people whose job is to pick holes in your findings '' to dig into their notebook sites and test them to destruction. But who would pay, and exactly how the system would work, is up for debate.

We've made astonishing progress in so many areas of science, and yet we're still stuck with the old, flawed model of publishing research. Indeed, even the name ''paper'' harkens back to a bygone age. Some fields of science are already moving in the direction I've described here, using online notebooks instead of journals '' living documents instead of living fossils. It's time for the rest of science to follow suit.

Further readingWhy Trust Science? by Naomi Oreskes

The Seven Deadly Sins of Psychology: A Manifesto for Reforming the Culture of Scientific Practice by Chris Chambers

Rigor Mortis: How Sloppy Science Creates Worthless Cures, Crushes Hope, and Wastes Billions by Richard Harris

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Wed, 13 Apr 2022 21:32

TrendingJoe Biden's nominee for the Supreme Court, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, is all over the news after her confirmation hearing kicked off on Monday, March 21, 2022.

The citizens of America are curious to know all about Ketanji after the POTUS lavished praise on her while announcing his pick.

One of the factors that has come across as intriguing about the judge is her unique name. 'Ketanji' has a beautiful meaning and even an interesting origin.

TRENDING: How much are Machine Gun Kelly's 2022 tour tickets?Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty ImagesMeaning and origin of the nameSome reports suggest that the name Ketanji is of Indian origin.

It is a unisex moniker used in the Hindu religion. The name has several meanings, such as ''home'', ''pure gold'' and ''dwelling.''

But, there is more to the judge's name as it was chosen by her aunt.

As per Politico, Ketanji's aunt, who was based in West Africa with the Peace Corps at the time of her birth, sent her parents a list of ''African girls' name options'' and the judge's parents picked the beautiful name that she goes by today.

She was named ''Ketanji Onyika,'' which means ''Lovely One.''

Her parents named her Ketanji Onyika ''to express both pride in their heritage and hope for future.''

ALSO READ: Who is Lashun Pace as Atlanta star dies aged 60?Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesWho is Ketanji Brown Jackson?Ketanji was born in Washington to two public-school teachers. Her family moved to Miami when she was still a child.

She graduated from Harvard College in 1992 and Harvard Law School in 1996.

Ketanji is married to surgeon Patrick Jackson with whom she shares two daughters.

She has served as a federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2021.

She was nominated to be an associated justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in February 2022 following Stephen Breyer's retirement.

Fight or Flight | Official Trailer | discovery+BridTV

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Fight or Flight | Official Trailer | discovery+

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Judge introduces her family During the opening moments of the first day of her Supreme Court nomination hearing, Ketanji introduced the world to her family.

''And speaking of unconditional love, I would like to introduce my husband of 25 years, Dr Patrick Jackson,'' she said before revealing that they met in college three decades ago.

She also introduced her daughters Talia and Leila. ''I am so looking forward to seeing what each of you chooses to do with your amazing lives in this incredible country. I love you so much,'' Ketanji said.

In other news, WATCH: Leni Kiko rally attendees sing Ariana Grande's Break Free

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Wed, 13 Apr 2022 21:29

From Walt Disney Animation Studios comes a comedy-adventure set in the modern mammal metropolis of Zootopia. Determined to prove herself, Officer Judy Hopps, the first bunny on Zootopia's police force, jumps at the chance to crack her first case '' even if it means partnering with scam-artist fox Nick Wilde to solve the mystery. Bring home this hilarious adventure full of action, heart and tons of bonus extras that take you deeper into the world of Zootopia. It's big fun for all shapes and species!

Rated: PG Release Date: March 4, 2016

Directed By Written By Produced By Cast Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, J.K. Simmons, Nate Torrence, Shakira, Octavia Spencer, Raymond S. Persi, Maurice LaMarche, Jenny Slate, Bonnie Hunt, Alan Tudyk

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Wed, 13 Apr 2022 21:15

American pedophilia advocacy organization

The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) is a pedophilia and pederasty advocacy organization in the United States. It works to abolish age-of-consent laws criminalizing adult sexual involvement with minors[2][3] and campaigns for the release of men who have been jailed for sexual contacts with minors that did not involve what it considers coercion.[2][4] The group no longer holds regular national meetings, and as of the late 1990s'--to avoid local police infiltration'--the organization discouraged the formation of local chapters.[4][5] Around 1995, an undercover detective discovered there were 1,100 people on the organization's rolls.[4] NAMBLA was the largest group in IPCE, an international pro-pedophile activist organization.[6] Since then, the organization has dwindled to only a handful of people, with many members joining online pedophile networks, according to Xavier Von Erck, director of operations at the anti-pedophile organization Perverted-Justice.[7] As of 2005, a newspaper report stated that NAMBLA was based in New York and San Francisco.[4]

History Events such as Anita Bryant's 1977 "Save Our Children" campaign and a police raid of a Toronto-area newspaper, The Body Politic, for publishing "Men Loving Boys Loving Men" set the stage for the founding of NAMBLA.[5]

In December 1977, police raided a house in the Boston suburb Revere. Twenty-four men were arrested and indicted on over 100 felony counts of the statutory rape of boys aged eight to fifteen.[8] Suffolk County district attorney Garrett H. Byrne found the men had used drugs and video games to lure the boys into a house, where they photographed them as they engaged in sexual activity. The men were members of a "sex ring"; Byrne said the arrest was "the tip of the iceberg".[9][10][5] Commenting on this issue, Boston magazine described NAMBLA as "the most despised group of men in America", which was "founded mostly by eccentric, boy-loving leftists".[5] The "Boston-Boise Committee", a gay rights organization, was formed in response to these events (which they termed the "Boston witch-hunt"), allegedly in order to promote solidarity amongst gay men, saying in an official leaflet that: "The closet is weak. There is strength in unity and openness."[11] NAMBLA's founding was inspired by this organization.[11] It was co-founded by historian David Thorstad.[12]

In 1982, a NAMBLA member was falsely linked to the disappearance of Etan Patz. Although the accusation was groundless, the negative publicity was disastrous to the organization.[13] NAMBLA published a book A Witchhunt Foiled: The FBI vs. NAMBLA, which documented these events.[14] In testimony before the United States Senate, NAMBLA was exonerated from criminal activities; it said, "It is the pedophile with no organized affiliations who is the real threat to children".[15]

Mike Echols, the author of I Know My First Name Is Steven, infiltrated NAMBLA and recorded his observations in his book, which was published in 1991. Echols published the names, addresses and telephone numbers of eighty suspected NAMBLA members on his website, which led to death threats being made to people who were not members of the organization.[5]

Onell R. Soto, a San Diego Union-Tribune writer, wrote in February 2005, "Law enforcement officials and mental health professionals say that while NAMBLA's membership numbers are small, the group has a dangerous ripple effect through the Internet by sanctioning the behavior of those who would abuse children".[4]

ILGA controversy In 1993, the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) achieved United Nations consultative status. NAMBLA's membership in ILGA drew heavy criticism and caused the suspension of ILGA. Many gay organizations called for the ILGA to dissolve ties with NAMBLA. Republican Senator Jesse Helms proposed a bill to withhold US$119 million in UN contributions until U.S. President Bill Clinton could certify that no UN agency grants any official status to organizations that condoned pedophilia.[16] The bill was unanimously approved by Congress and signed into law by Clinton in April 1994.[17]

In 1994, ILGA expelled NAMBLA'-- the first U.S.-based organization to be a member[12]'--as well as Vereniging Martijn and Project Truth,[17] because they were judged to be "groups whose predominant aim is to support or promote pedophilia".[citation needed ] Although ILGA removed NAMBLA, the UN reversed its decision to grant ILGA special consultative status. Repeated attempts by ILGA to regain special status with the UN succeeded in 2006.[18]

Partially in response to the NAMBLA situation,[17] Gregory King of the Human Rights Campaign later said, "NAMBLA is not a gay organization ... they are not part of our community and we thoroughly reject their efforts to insinuate that pedophilia is an issue related to gay and lesbian civil rights".[19] NAMBLA said, "man/boy love is by definition homosexual", that "the Western homosexual tradition from Socrates to Wilde to Gide ... [and] many non Western homo sexualities from New Guinea and Persia to the Zulu and the Japanese" were formed by pederasty, that "man/boy lovers are part of the gay movement and central to gay history and culture", and that "homosexuals denying that it is 'not gay' to be attracted to adolescent boys are just as ludicrous as heterosexuals saying it's 'not heterosexual' to be attracted to adolescent girls".[19]

Curley v. NAMBLA In 2000, a Boston couple, Robert and Barbara Curley, sued NAMBLA for the wrongful death of their son. According to the suit, defendants Charles Jaynes and Salvatore Sicari, who were convicted of murdering the Curleys' son Jeffrey, "stalked ... tortured, murdered and mutilated [his] body on or about October 1, 1997. Upon information and belief immediately prior to said acts, Charles Jaynes accessed NAMBLA's website at the Boston Public Library."[20] The lawsuit said, "NAMBLA serves as a conduit for an underground network of pedophiles in the United States who use their NAMBLA association and contacts therein and the Internet to obtain and promote pedophile activity".[20] Jaynes wrote in his diary, "This was a turning point in discovery of myself ... NAMBLA's Bulletin helped me to become aware of my own sexuality and acceptance of it ... ".[21]

Citing cases in which NAMBLA members were convicted of sexual offenses against children, Larry Frisoli, the attorney representing the Curleys, said the organization is a "training ground" for adults who wish to seduce children, in which men exchange strategies to find and groom child sex partners. Frisoli also said NAMBLA has sold on its website "The Rape and Escape Manual", which gave details about the avoidance of capture and prosecution.[22] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) stepped in to defend NAMBLA as a free speech matter;[23] it won a dismissal because NAMBLA is organized as an unincorporated association rather than a corporation. John Reinstein, director of the ACLU Massachusetts, said although NAMBLA "may extol conduct which is currently illegal", there was nothing on its website that "advocated or incited the commission of any illegal acts, including murder or rape".[24]

A NAMBLA founder said the case would "break our backs, even if we win, which we will".[5] Media reports from 2006 said that for practical purposes the group no longer exists and that it consists only of a website maintained by a few enthusiasts.[5] The Curleys continued the suit as a wrongful death action against individual NAMBLA members, some of whom were active in the group's leadership. Targets of the wrongful death suits included NAMBLA co-founder David Thorstad. The lawsuit was dropped in April 2008 after a judge ruled that a key witness was not competent to testify.[25]

Support Allen Ginsberg, poet and father of the Beat Generation, was an affiliated member of NAMBLA. Claiming to have joined the organization "in defense of free speech",[26] Ginsberg said: "Attacks on NAMBLA stink of politics, witchhunting for profit, humorlessness, vanity, anger and ignorance ... I'm a member of NAMBLA because I love boys too'--everybody does, who has a little humanity".[27] He appeared in Chicken Hawk: Men Who Love Boys, produced and directed by Adi Sideman, a documentary in which members of NAMBLA gave interviews and presented defenses of the organization.[28]

Pat Califia argued that politics played an important role in the gay community's rejection of NAMBLA.[29] Califia has since withdrawn much of his earlier support for the association while still maintaining that discussing an issue does not constitute criminal activity.[30]

Camille Paglia, feminist academic and social critic, signed a manifesto supporting the group in 1993.[31][32] In 1994, Paglia supported lowering the legal age of consent to fourteen. She noted in a 1995 interview with pro-pedophile activist Bill Andriette "I fail to see what is wrong with erotic fondling with any age."[34] In a 1997 Salon column, Paglia expressed the view that male pedophilia correlates with the heights of a civilization, stating "I have repeatedly protested the lynch-mob hysteria that dogs the issue of man-boy love. In Sexual Personae, I argued that male pedophilia is intricately intertwined with the cardinal moments of Western civilization."[32] Paglia noted in several interviews, as well as Sexual Personae, that she supports the legalization of certain forms of child pornography.[35][36] She later had a change of heart on the matter. In an interview for Radio New Zealand's Saturday Morning show, conducted on April 28, 2018 by Kim Hill, Paglia was asked, "Are you a libertarian on the issue of pedophilia?", to which she replied, "In terms of the present day, I think it's absolutely impossible to think we could reproduce the Athenian code of pedophilia, of boy-love, that was central to culture at that time. ... We must protect children, and I feel that very very strongly. The age of consent for sexual interactions between a boy and an older man is obviously disputed, at what point that should be. I used to think that fourteen (the way it is in some places in the world) was adequate. I no longer think that. I think young people need greater protection than that. ... This is one of those areas that we must confine to the realm of imagination and the history of the arts."[37]

Feigned support In an 2017 protest at Columbia University against Mike Cernovich, an unidentified individual raised a pro-pedophilia banner showing logos from NAMBLA and some leftist organizations (all denying knowledge of any such cooperation). Fact-checking organizations consider this a false flag operation as alt-right personalities were quick to repost the photo without caveat and because NAMBLA has largely ceased operation by 2016.[38] A similar 4chan hoax in 2018 connects NAMBLA with TED, following a controversial TEDx (unvetted by the TED organization) presentation referring to pedophilia as an "unchangeable sexual orientation".[39]

Opposition The first documented opposition to NAMBLA from LGBT organizations occurred at the conference that organized the first gay march on Washington in 1979.[40][better source needed ] In 1980, a group called the Lesbian Caucus distributed a flyer urging women to split from the annual New York City Gay Pride March, because according to the group, the organizing committee had been dominated by NAMBLA and its supporters.[40][better source needed ] The next year, after some lesbians threatened to picket, the Cornell University group Gay People at Cornell (Gay PAC) rescinded its invitation to NAMBLA co-founder David Thorstad to be the keynote speaker at the annual May Gay Festival.[40][better source needed ] In the following years, gay rights groups tried to block NAMBLA's participation in gay pride parades, prompting leading gay rights figure Harry Hay to wear a sign proclaiming "NAMBLA walks with me" as he participated in a 1986 gay pride march in Los Angeles.[41]

By the mid-1980s, NAMBLA was virtually alone in its positions and found itself politically isolated.[42][better source needed ] Support for "groups perceived as being on the fringe of the gay community," such as NAMBLA, vanished in the process.[42][better source needed ]

In 1994, Stonewall 25, a New York LGBT rights group, voted to ban NAMBLA from its international march on the United Nations in June of that year.[43] The same year, NAMBLA was again banned from the march commemorating Stonewall. Instead, members of NAMBLA and the Gay Liberation Front formed their own competing march called "The Spirit of Stonewall".[44] The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) adopted a document called "Position Statement Regarding NAMBLA", which said GLAAD "deplores the North American Man Boy Love Association's (NAMBLA) goals, which include advocacy for sex between adult men and boys and the removal of legal protections for children. These goals constitute a form of child abuse and are repugnant to GLAAD."[45] Also in 1994, the Board of Directors of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) adopted a resolution on NAMBLA that said, "NGLTF condemns all abuse of minors, both sexual and any other kind, perpetrated by adults. Accordingly, NGLTF condemns the organizational goals of NAMBLA and any other such organization."[45]

In April 2013, the hacktivist group Anonymous prevented NAMBLA's website from being accessed as part of an operation dubbed "Operation Alice Day".[46][47] The timing of the attack coincided with Alice Day, a Pedophilia Pride Day celebrated by a small group of pedophiles and their supporters on April 25.[48][49][50]

In 2000 in New York a teacher was fired for association with NAMBLA. There were no complaints about his conduct in class or court charges.[51][52]

Associated individuals Bill Andriette, journalist. He joined NAMBLA at the age of 15 and edited the NAMBLA Bulletin for six years.[53]Allen Ginsberg was a defender of NAMBLA and a member.[1][54]David Thorstad, founding member.[55]Harry Hay, prominent LGBT rights activist. Hay supported NAMBLA's inclusion in gay pride parades[44] and publicly addressed their meetings in support of the organization.[56]Alan J. Horowitz, MD, convicted sex offender, ordained Orthodox rabbi, and psychiatrist. He specialized in working with adolescents, graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, and earned a Ph.D. and medical degree from Duke University. Infamous for being the subject of a worldwide manhunt, Horowitz was known as "NAMBLA Rabbi".[57][58]See also References ^ a b Haggerty, George (2000). Gay histories and cultures: an encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. pp. 627''628. ISBN 978-0-8153-1880-4. Archived from the original on 2016-04-13 . Retrieved 2010-09-17 . ^ a b Holmes, Ronald M.; Stephen T. Holmes (2002). Current perspectives on sex crimes. SAGE. p. 165. ISBN 0-7619-2416-7. ^ M DeYoung (March 1989). "The World According to NAMBLA: Accounting for Deviance". Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare. 16: 111''126. ^ a b c d e Soto, Onell R. (2005). 'FBI targets pedophilia advocates: Little-known group promotes 'benevolent' sex Archived 2005-03-25 at the Wayback Machine', San Diego Union-Tribune, 18 February. ^ a b c d e f g Denizet-Lewis, Benoit (May 2001). "Boy Crazy". Boston. Archived from the original on 2012-03-08 . Retrieved 2009-10-07 . ^ Whitfield, Charles L.; Silberg, Joyanna L.; Fink, Paul Jay (2001). Misinformation Concerning Child Sexual Abuse and Adult Survivors. Haworth Maltreatment & Trauma Press. p. 129. ISBN 9780789019004. ^ Pearl, Mike (March 25, 2016). "Whatever Happened to NAMBLA, America's Paedophilia Advocates?". VICE US. Archived from the original on March 29, 2016 . Retrieved March 30, 2016 . ^ "The Boston/Boise Affair, 1977-78. (Essay). - Free Online Library". www.thefreelibrary.com. Archived from the original on 2019-04-27 . Retrieved 2019-06-25 . ^ Mitzel, John (1980). The Boston sex scandal. Glad Day Books. ISBN 0-915480-15-8. ^ Aloisi, James (2012). "The Bonin story : the persecution of a Chief Justice and the lesson for today". Archived from the original on 2019-04-27 . Retrieved 2019-04-27 . ^ a b "Gay Community Fights Back (1978)". We Raise Our Voices. Northeastern University. Archived from the original on 2012-03-08 . Retrieved 2010-08-26 . ^ a b Gay histories and cultures: an encyclopedia Archived 2016-04-13 at the Wayback Machine By George E. Haggerty p. 628 ^ Jenkins, Philip (2004). Moral Panic: Changing Concepts of the Child Molester in Modern America. Yale University Press. p. 158. ISBN 978-0-300-10963-4 . Retrieved 2010-09-02 . ^ Kennedy, Hubert (1986-05-13). "A Witch-hunt foiled: The FBI vs. NAMBLA". The Advocate (446): 54. book review ^ Gay histories and cultures: an encyclopedia by George E. Haggerty, p. 627 ^ Abrams, Jim (January 26, 1994). "Senate demands U.N. end ties with NAMBLA". Associated Press. Archived from the original on November 23, 2015 . Retrieved September 19, 2015 . ^ a b c Michelle A. Gibson; Jonathan Alexander; Deborah T. Meem (14 February 2013). Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies: An Introduction to LGBT Studies. SAGE Publications. p. 141. ISBN 978-1-4833-1572-0. Archived from the original on 3 May 2016 . Retrieved 11 September 2015 . ^ "Economic and Social Council Approves Consultative Status for Three Non-Governmental Organizations Focusing on Gay, Lesbian Rights, Economic and Social Council ECOSOC/6242, December 11, 2006". Un.org. Archived from the original on July 5, 2009 . Retrieved October 7, 2009 . ^ a b Gamson, Joshua (1 January 1997). "Messages of Exclusion: Gender, Movements, and Symbolic Boundaries". Gender and Society. 11 (2): 178''199. doi:10.1177/089124397011002003. JSTOR 190542. S2CID 144695531. ^ a b "Curley v. NAMBLA". Thecpac.com. Archived from the original on June 6, 2002 . Retrieved September 19, 2015 . ^ From CNN & Time Correspondent Kathy Slobogin (January 5, 2001). "Parents of murdered child sue child-sex advocates - January 8, 2001". Edition.cnn.com. Archived from the original on August 12, 2009 . Retrieved October 7, 2009 . ^ Murdock, Deroy (February 27, 2004). "No Boy Scouts: The ACLU defends NAMBLA". National Review Online. Archived from the original on February 29, 2004 . Retrieved August 5, 2015 . ^ "ACLU Statement on Defending the Free Speech of Unpopular Organizations". American Civil Liberties Union. August 31, 2000. Archived from the original on July 26, 2015 . Retrieved August 5, 2015 . ^ Reinstein, John. "ACLU Agrees to Represent NAMBLA in Freedom of Speech Case." ACLU of Massachusetts Press Release, 9 June 2003. ^ Saltzman, Jonathan. Curley family drops case against NAMBLA Archived 2008-11-18 at the Wayback Machine, The Boston Globe, April 23, 2008 ^ O'Donnell, Ian; Milner, Claire (2012). Child Pornography: Crime, Computers and Society. Routledge. pp. 12''13. ISBN 9781135846350. Archived from the original on 2016-05-13 . Retrieved 2019-11-29 . ^ Thrift, Matt (22 January 2020). "Pedophiles on display". My TJ Now. ^ Holden, Stephen (1994-07-08). "FILM REVIEW; Men Who Love Boys Explain Themselves". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 2010-06-26 . Retrieved 2010-09-01 . ^ Califa, Pat (1994). "The Aftermath of the Great Kiddy-Porn Panic of '77," The Culture of Radical Sex Archived 2015-10-02 at the Wayback Machine. Pittsburgh, Pa.: Cleis Press. ^ "Radical Transformation, Writer Patrick Califia-Rice has long explored the fringes. Now the former lesbian S/M activist is exploring life as a man, San Francisco Chronicle, Rona Marech, October 27, 2000". Sfgate.com. October 27, 2000. Archived from the original on July 4, 2009 . Retrieved October 7, 2009 . ^ Paglia, Camille (March 1, 2014). "The Drinking Age Is Past Its Prime". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on March 6, 2014. ^ a b "Camille Paglia's online advice for the culturally disgruntled". Salon. San Francisco: Salon Media Group Inc. April 15, 1997. Archived from the original on May 10, 2000 . Retrieved September 7, 2019 . ^ Paglia, Camille (August 1995). "Has the gay movement turned down the wrong path?". The Guide. Montreal, Canada: Bill Andriette. Archived from the original on July 11, 2011 . Retrieved September 7, 2019 . ^ "The Bete Noire of Feminism: CAMILLE PAGLIA". Time. New York City: Time. January 13, 1992 . Retrieved September 7, 2019 . ^ Paglia, Camille (September 19, 1991). "Crisis In The American Universities". Sweet Briar College. Sweet Briar, Virginia: Gift of Speech (Sweet Briar College) . Retrieved September 7, 2019 . ^ Paglia, Camille (April 22, 2018). "Camille Paglia '-- Free Women, Free Men". RNZ (Radio New Zealand). Wellington (NZ). pp. 44:29 (starting time of quoted passage) . Retrieved August 22, 2020 . ^ Weill, Kelly (Oct 31, 2017). "Far-Right Trolls Are Falsely Saying LGBT Activists Want Pedophilia Accepted". BuzzFeed News. ^ "Did Facebook Allow a Pro-Pedophilia Ad to Run?". Snopes.com. ^ a b c Thorstad, David (February 1990), "Man/Boy Love and the American Gay Movement", Journal of Homosexuality, Routledge, 20 (1 & 2): 251''274, doi:10.1300/J082v20n01_15, ISSN 0091-8369, PMID 2086634, archived from the original on 2016-06-12 , retrieved 2016-08-17 ^ Hogan, Steve and Lee Hudson (1998). Completely Queer: The Gay and Lesbian Encyclopedia. New York, Henry Holt and Company. ISBN 0-8050-3629-6. ^ a b Johnson, Matthew D. (2015). NAMBLA Archived 2015-09-24 at the Wayback Machine on glbtq.com. Archived from the original Archived 2005-10-27 at the Wayback Machine (2004) ^ Mills, Kim I. (February 14, 1994). "Gays tell abusers they're unwelcome". Bangor Daily News. Archived from the original on October 8, 2015 . Retrieved September 19, 2015 . ^ a b Bronski, Michael (2002-11-07). "The real Harry Hay". The Phoenix. Archived from the original on 2009-05-30 . Retrieved 2018-07-25 . ^ a b Wooledge, Scott (December 11, 2011). "Who dropped the ball discussing the Pennsylvania State scandal?". Daily Kos. Archived from the original on October 3, 2015 . Retrieved September 19, 2015 . ^ "Anonymous Operation Alice Day". Youtube. anon2world. 22 April 2013. Archived from the original on 8 March 2017. ^ "Operation Alice Day : Child abusers will not celebrate this year". anoninsiders.net. Archived from the original on 2015-10-02 . Retrieved 2015-08-03 . ^ Feinberg, Ashley. "Anonymous Just Took Down NAMBLA's Homepage to Protest Pedophilia Pride Day". Archived from the original on 2015-07-09 . Retrieved 2015-08-03 . ^ Fleishman, Cooper (2013-04-24). "Anonymous is targeting every pedophile hub on the Web". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on 2015-07-07 . Retrieved 2015-08-03 . ^ "Alice Day". Snopes.com. 2015-04-20 . Retrieved 2015-08-03 . ^ Hentoff, Nat (1993-10-30). "A PEDOPHILE AS TEACHER". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286 . Retrieved 2020-09-02 . ^ Hendrie, Caroline (2004-03-03). "Court Rebuffs Teacher Who Advocated 'Man-Boy' Sex - Education Week". Education Week . Retrieved 2020-09-02 . ^ Lowenthal, Michael (1996-10-24). "The Boy-lover Next Door". The Boston Phoenix. The Phoenix Media/Communications Group. Archived from the original on 2011-05-05 . Retrieved 2010-10-05 . ^ "Howl of protest: Facing public pressure, Hermosa Beach Mural Project to remove poet Allen Ginsberg from work honoring counterculture". Easy Reader News. 2019-09-25 . Retrieved 2020-09-13 . ^ Kennedy, Hubert (1991). "Sexual Hysteria'--Then and Now". OurStories. Gay and Lesbian Historical Society of Northern California. pp. 17''18. A former president of New York's Gay Activists Alliance and a founding member of the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), Thorstad is uniquely qualified to write on this topic. ^ Weir, John (23 August 1994). "Mad about the boys". The Advocate. The Advocate : The National Gay & Lesbian Newsmagazine. Here Publishing. p. 37. ISSN 0001-8996. ^ "The Orthodox rabbi and the Man/Boy Love Assoc". Jewish Journal. 2007-06-01 . Retrieved 2020-09-02 . ^ "Ruling keeps Schenectady sex offender confined | The Daily Gazette". dailygazette.com . Retrieved 2020-09-02 . Further reading Art Cohen, "The Boston-Boise Affair", Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, Vol. 10, No. 2. March''April, 2003.John Mitzel, The Boston Sex Scandal, Boston, Glad Day Books, 1981.Stuart Timmons, The Trouble with Harry Hay: Founder of the Modern Gay Movement, Alyson Pubns, 1990.External links Wikimedia Commons has media related to NAMBLA .Declassified NAMBLA files from the FBI, archived at the Internet Archive

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Wed, 13 Apr 2022 20:51

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SALISBURY, N.C. '-- He slipped out of bed before sunrise and started driving, spurred by the conspiracy theory he would soon help make famous. As he sped the 350 miles from his hometown in North Carolina to the nation's capital, Edgar Maddison Welch tilted his cellphone camera toward himself and pressed record.

''I can't let you grow up in a world that's so corrupt by evil,'' he told the two young daughters he had left sleeping back in Salisbury, ''without at least standing up for you and for other children just like you.''

So on he drove, to the supposed center of that corruption: Comet Ping Pong, a popular pizzeria in Northwest Washington where, according to the false conspiracy theory known as Pizzagate, powerful Democrats were abusing children. And Welch, a struggling 28-year-old warehouse worker, intended to rescue them.

Four years later, thousands of people would follow Welch's fevered path to Washington, drawn from across the country by an ever more toxic stew of disinformation and extremism, including Pizzagate's successor: QAnon.

This time, instead of a pizzeria, they would target the U.S. Capitol.

The Jan. 6 siege would lead to five deaths, more than 200 arrests and the second impeachment of Donald Trump. Its brazenness would shake faith in American democracy.

Above all, it would reveal how conspiracy theories had spread under a president who often promoted them, growing from Welch's trip to Washington shortly after the 2016 election to the hundreds who stormed the Capitol to keep Trump in office, some proudly wearing T-shirts with the QAnon motto: ''Where we go one, we go all.''

Pizzagate was an early warning of how misinformation can lead to violence, said Joan Donovan, a scholar of media manipulation, social movements and extremism.

''The big difference between 2016 and Pizzagate and QAnon [now] isn't the themes '... it's the scale,'' said Donovan, research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. ''Four years later it has reached so many more people.''

The big difference between 2016 and Pizzagate and QAnon [now] isn't the themes '... it's the scale.'' '-- Joan Donovan, research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School

Welch was alone on Dec. 4, 2016, when he parked in front of Comet Ping Pong, where children were playing table tennis while their parents enjoyed a slow Sunday afternoon of pizza and beer.

Then he walked into the restaurant with a loaded assault rifle.

The conspiracy evolvesThe email arrived on Nov. 21, 2019, as Comet's owner, James Alefantis, was preparing for a busy weekend.

''This notice is to inform you that EDGAR WELCH has been approved for placement in a Community Corrections Center (CCC), otherwise known as a halfway house, and will transfer from this institution on March 3, 2020,'' said the message from a federal prison in Ohio. ''The inmate is scheduled to release on May 28, 2020.''

It had been almost three years since Welch had entered Alefantis's restaurant and transformed a fake online conspiracy theory into something frighteningly real. The death threats hadn't stopped since, and one Pizzagate believer had even set a fire inside Comet.

Now Alefantis realized Welch would be getting out in a few months.

What, he wondered, should he tell his still traumatized employees?

Their ordeal began a few days before Trump's election, when Alefantis's Instagram account was suddenly deluged with comments calling him a pedophile.

WikiLeaks had released the hacked emails of Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, a few weeks earlier. In an eight-year-old email, Alefantis had asked Podesta about a fundraiser at Comet. In others, Podesta talked about getting ''cheese pizza.'' On internet message boards, anonymous users falsely claimed that ''cheese pizza'' was code for ''child pornography,'' and that Comet was the site of a vast Democratic child sex ring.

Promoted by far-right media personalities such as Alex Jones and amplified by automated social media accounts, or bots, Pizzagate went viral.

In Welch, it found a receptive host.

His life had been shaped by the death of a child. When Welch was 8, his 16-year-old brother was killed after losing control of his car and crashing.

The accident devastated his family but underscored their urge to protect the vulnerable. His parents ran a no-kill dog rescue, took in foster kids and sent money to needy children abroad. After the accident, his mother, a nurse, became a volunteer firefighter.

In 2010, Welch '-- who goes by his middle name, Maddison '-- went to Haiti with a church group to help orphans after the earthquake.

''The last week his calls were pleas to let him bring three or four of the children home and let them live with us,'' his father, Harry, wrote in a letter to the court.

Welch had always been a bit ''manic,'' said Toni Koontz, a high school friend.

After moving to Wilmington to attend community college, Welch struggled with addiction and emerged from rehab even more devout, Koontz told The Washington Post in 2016.

By the fall of 2016, the once adventurous Welch was back in the hometown he derisively called ''Smallsbury.'' His marriage had fallen apart. He tried being a firefighter like his mother but gave up, the local fire chief said.

Welch was driving to work at a Food Lion warehouse one night in October when he hit a 13-year-old boy, who had to be airlifted to a hospital with broken bones and a head injury. Welch, who had some emergency medical training, tried to help the teen until paramedics arrived.

Welch wasn't charged in the incident, but he was badly shaken.

It was a little over a month later when Welch texted his girlfriend to say he had seen something disturbing on the internet, according to court records of their conversations.

''Looking up on pizza gate and it makes me [expletive]sick,'' he wrote on Dec. 1, 2016.

''Stop it!'' she replied.

Instead, Welch dived deeper, spending hours watching Pizzagate videos and visiting Comet Ping Pong's website, according to records later presented in court.

Welch sent one friend a Pizzagate video made by Alex Jones's Infowars. He tried to recruit another friend who was an Afghanistan war veteran.

''Raiding a pedo ring, possibly sacraficing [sic] the lives of a few for the lives of many,'' Welch described the mission. ''Standing up against a corrupt system that kidnaps, tortures and rapes babies and children in our own backyard.''

But when the veteran suggested doing reconnaissance on Comet instead of going in ''guns blazing,'' Welch decided to go it alone, court records show.

Two days later, Welch entered Comet Ping Pong with an AR-15 in his hands and a Colt revolver on his hip.

As he walked slowly through the restaurant, startled servers guided customers away from their plates and toward the exits.

Welch wandered the pizzeria, searching for a dungeon that didn't exist. When he found a door he couldn't open, he fired at the lock. But beyond it was just a computer closet. He eventually set down his guns, put his hands on his head and walked outside, where dozens of police officers were waiting for him.

''I came to D.C. with the intent of helping people I believed were in dire need of assistance,'' Welch wrote later in a letter to the judge in his case. ''It was never my intention to harm or frighten innocent lives, but I realize now just how foolish and reckless my decision was.''

I came to D.C. with the intent of helping people I believed were in dire need of assistance '... I realize now just how foolish and reckless my decision was.'''-- Edgar Maddison Welch

The entire incident lasted a matter of minutes. But it would haunt Alefantis and his employees for years.

At a court hearing on June 22, 2017, in which Welch would be sentenced to four years in prison, a Comet employee broke down as he described his struggles with insomnia and depression.

''After this, I just wanted to sink into the ground,'' he said, choking up. ''I wasn't able to leave my house. I couldn't sleep. I had violent nightmares with all types of outcomes of the situation replaying over and over and over again for weeks.''

Alefantis spoke of the ''lasting damage'' Welch had inflicted, yet was optimistic.

''I do hope that one day, in a more truthful world, every single one of us will remember that day as an aberration, a symbol of a time of sickness when some parts of our world went mad, when news was fake and lies were seen as real and our social fabric had frayed,'' he told the court. ''I am hopeful that those who provoke fear, that traffic in lies and perpetuate conspiracy will awake to the tangible harms that result from their actions. I am hopeful that one day reason will prevail before a shot rings out again in a place of warmth and love and community gathering.''

But online, reason was not prevailing.

Some Pizzagate followers quickly turned on Welch, claiming he was a ''crisis actor'' involved in a ''false flag'' operation, or hoax, to hide the truth. Others declared their support for him on a Facebook page called ''Edgar Welch Saves The Children.''

''They just found another senator In a hotel room with a under age boy!'' one man wrote. ''It's just sick how one guy goes to help and the country puts him in prison!''

A woman asked how she could write Welch in prison. Another posted cartoon hearts.

But as Welch was leading Bible study groups in prison, the conspiracy theory that had put him there was rapidly mutating into something else.

On Oct. 28, 2017, someone calling himself ''Q'' and claiming to be a high-ranking intelligence officer began posting on 4chan. The messages expanded on Pizzagate by claiming satanic pedophiles controlled not only Comet but the world, drinking children's blood to stay young. Q promised that Trump and other government insiders would bring them to justice.

QAnon quickly migrated to Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, where it found millions of new adherents.

By the time Welch was released from prison on March 3, QAnon had become inescapable. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who had endorsed QAnon beliefs, was on her way to winning a seat in Congress.

Days after arriving at the halfway house in North Carolina, Welch posed for a photo with one of the friends he had tried to recruit for his ill-fated mission.

Squinting as if he hadn't seen the sunlight in a long time, he threw an arm around his friend, looked into the camera and smiled.

Coming back to societyAlmost unnoticed, Maddison Welch quietly slipped back into his old life. On March 27, the girlfriend who had once said she was leaving him over his Pizzagate obsession now announced on Facebook she had married him. And in September, she posted a photo of them embracing on the beach, their hands on her pregnant belly.

''It's been a whirlwind of a year for him,'' said Dane Granberry, a close friend who exchanged letters with Welch when he was in prison. ''But he came home his happy self.''

She saw Welch in December at a Christmas party, where the man whose arrest had cost him custody of his girls gushed with excitement over having a boy. His wife and Granberry compared their pregnant bellies.

It seemed so normal '-- except for all the questions Granberry couldn't ask.

Did he still believe in Pizzagate?

Did he follow Q?

And now, what does he think of the attack on the Capitol?

''Everybody wants to know,'' she said. ''But when we're around friends, nobody brings it up.''

Welch and his wife didn't respond to repeated requests for an interview, and several friends said they couldn't speak without his permission. His father, Harry Welch, who lives in a house at the end of a long wooded lane with a sign that reads ''Grandkids spoiled here,'' shook his head when asked if his son could speak.

''He needs to get off papers first,'' he said, referring to probation. Then he shut the door.

More than eight months after returning home, Welch remains largely out of sight in Salisbury. His former pastor said he hadn't seen Welch since his arrest. Local media haven't mentioned his release.

Few people in this town of 33,000 between Charlotte and High Point say they remember Pizzagate.

''For us here, it was just a blip on the radar,'' said Mayor Karen Alexander, who boasts that Salisbury '-- which she calls Paris of the Piedmont '-- has its own symphony. ''It was an anomaly. And it was a tragedy in terms of the young man. I don't know what his mental state was.''

Part of the reason Pizzagate didn't grip Salisbury like it did Washington was because of what happened to A'yanna Allen.

On the same morning Welch drove to D.C. on a mission to save children, the 7-year-old girl was slain just seven miles from Welch's home.

What was real wasn't the children Welch thought were being tortured inside Comet Ping Pong; it was the bubbly girl who was sleeping in her grandma's bed when someone drove by and sprayed bullets.

It was her small body, struck more than a dozen times.

It was her mother, crying in the funeral home as she braided her daughter's hair one last time, while trying not to look at what a bullet had done to A'yanna's beautiful face.

''I just remember her lying on the table,'' Shequita Woodberry said. ''She was shot so many places.''

A'yanna's death preoccupied the town for weeks. Police partnered with the sheriff's department to work the case, but no one was ever charged. The reason was no grand conspiracy, Woodberry said. Witnesses refused to talk.

Almost evenly divided between White residents and people of color, Salisbury has grappled with the same racial and political divisions roiling so many places across the country.

Its Confederate monument, known as ''Fame,'' became a source of contention in 2017, after the deadly ''Unite the Right'' march in Charlottesville, Va. The statue of an angel carrying a wounded Southern soldier to heaven had stood downtown since 1908.

Alvena ''Al'' Heggins, who had just become Salisbury's first female African American mayor, said she was careful not to weigh in on what to do with the Confederate monument. She had already provoked outrage by proposing a resolution apologizing for the 1906 lynching of three Black men.

''I took a lot of flak as mayor,'' said Heggins, who was still accused of leading a campaign to remove the Confederate monument. ''A lot of that was not because of my position but because I am Black.''

I took a lot of flak as mayor. A lot of that was not because of my position but because I am Black.'' '-- Alvena ''Al'' Heggins, Salisbury's first female African American mayor

And then, on May 25, 2020 '-- three days before Welch's release from his halfway house '-- a White police officer in Minneapolis killed George Floyd.

In Salisbury, rumors began flying online that protesters would target Fame.

''We had people saying that if we see any n'--'-- by the statue, kill them on sight,'' recalled Gemale Black, president of the Salisbury-Rowan NAACP. ''It was to the point where we had a police watch night and day, making sure nobody was around the statue.''

Black was at a protest in front of the monument on May 31 when a White counterprotester named Jeffrey Alan Long pulled out a gun and fired two shots in the air, close to Black's face. Long was charged with felony inciting a riot, but was allowed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor and given a suspended sentence of 30 days.

City council members, including Heggins, voted unanimously to remove the monument and struck a deal with the United Daughters of the Confederacy to put Fame in a city-owned cemetery where there were scores of Confederate graves.

The council received a flood of hate mail. A pickup truck began driving around town with Confederate flags and a sign saying ''PUT AL HEGGINS IN THE CEMETERY.''

The presidential election only intensified the divisions. While Salisbury residents supported Joe Biden, Rowan County went heavily for Trump. The area's congressman, Republican Ted Budd, refused to accept Trump's defeat.

Don Vick was dismayed to see fellow Republicans reject the election results.

''I lead the party from the standpoint of 'let's get on with our lives,' '' said the 72-year-old Rowan County Republican Party chairman. ''The people have spoken, whether I like it or not.''

He said he was ''appalled'' by the Capitol siege, but equally shocked to realize afterward that QAnon was spreading in Rowan County.

''Having spoken to [many] women in the county, they are into it,'' said his wife, Nancy. ''They are religious about it.''

Welch's actions seemed like the work of someone ''a bit unbalanced,'' Don Vick said, so the couple hadn't taken it very seriously. But now the country itself seemed to be coming unhinged.

His term is up in March, Vick added. He won't be running again.

Full circleOn the night before Biden's inauguration, Erika Mendoza was delivering a check to customers on Comet Ping Pong's patio when she saw a dozen angry people approach.

It had been two weeks since the Capitol siege and the city was still full of soldiers and concertina wire and fear of what would happen next.

The 29-year-old ran back inside and texted Alefantis.

''Hi so we have pizza gaters protesters,'' she wrote.

When Alefantis arrived a few minutes later, he saw a small crowd waving signs saying ''Hell is Horrible'' and ''Repent or Perish.''

The Trump presidency was ending how it had begun: with people targeting Comet Ping Pong.

Alefantis had spent the past four years trying to understand Welch and the conspiracy theorists who have continued to bombard him with online threats.

''Pizza pedo,'' said one recent message.

''Hey sir Rothschild,'' said another. ''Judgment is coming.''

''You're sick. Go kill yourself,'' urged a third.

''James! Ready to die?'' asked a man in France.

Alefantis had hoped Pizzagate would be the end of the conspiracy theories, but it had been only the beginning. The sickness had spread to members of Congress. The fraying social fabric had snapped completely.

He still believed that the country would get through the madness. But he was no longer surprised when people came to Comet, screaming hate and searching for something, as Welch had, that did not exist.

''It's not just a pizza place,'' a male protester shouted into a megaphone on Jan. 19. ''It's a pedophilia place as well.''

And so Alefantis did what he had done four years earlier, when the same group first showed up. He pumped music from Comet's outdoor speakers to drown them out, and customers began to dance.

As Lady Gaga's ''Perfect Illusion'' boomed, Alefantis greeted the picketers with a tray of Champagne. A protester stepped forward, grabbed a couple and poured it onto the sidewalk.

Then he tipped over the tray, and all the Champagne came tumbling down in a riot of broken glass.

The Washington Post's Julie Tate contributed to this report.

This story was originally published at washingtonpost.com.

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Debunked conspiracy theory about alleged child-sex ring

"Pizzagate" redirects here. For the pizza-throwing incident at a 2004 association football game between Manchester United and Arsenal, see

Battle of the Buffet § "Pizzagate".

"Pizzagate" is a debunked conspiracy theory that went viral during the 2016 United States presidential election cycle.[1][2][3] It has been extensively discredited by a wide range of organizations, including the Washington, D.C. police.[2][3][4]

In March 2016, the personal email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chair, was hacked in a spear-phishing attack. WikiLeaks published his emails in November 2016. Proponents of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory falsely claimed the emails contained coded messages that connected several high-ranking Democratic Party officials and U.S. restaurants with an alleged human trafficking and child sex ring. One of the establishments allegedly involved was the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C.[5][6]

Members of the alt-right, conservative journalists, and others who had urged Clinton's prosecution over the emails spread the conspiracy theory on social media outlets such as 4chan, 8chan, and Twitter.[7] In response, a man from North Carolina traveled to Comet Ping Pong to investigate the conspiracy and fired a rifle inside the restaurant to break the lock on a door to a storage room during his search.[8] The restaurant owner and staff also received death threats from conspiracy theorists.[9]

Pizzagate is generally considered a predecessor to the QAnon conspiracy theory. Pizzagate resurged in 2020, mainly due to QAnon. While initially it was spread by only the far-right, it has since been spread by teens on TikTok "who don't otherwise fit a right-wing conspiracy theorist mold": the biggest Pizzagate spreaders on TikTok appear to otherwise be mostly interested in topics of viral dance moves and Black Lives Matter.[10] The conspiracy theory has developed and become less partisan and political in nature, with less emphasis on Clinton and more on the alleged worldwide elite of child sex-traffickers.[11]

Origins Genesis David Goldberg Twitter @DavidGoldbergNY Rumors stirring in the NYPD that Huma's emails point to a pedophila ring and @HillaryClinton is at the center. #GoHillary #PodestaEmails23

October 30, 2016[12]

On October 30, 2016, a Twitter account posting white supremacist material which said it was run by a Jewish New York lawyer falsely claimed that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had discovered a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party while searching through Anthony Weiner's emails.[13][2] Throughout October and November 2016, WikiLeaks had published John Podesta's emails. Proponents of the conspiracy theory read the emails and alleged they contained code words for pedophilia and human trafficking.[1][14] Proponents also claimed that Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., was a meeting ground for Satanic ritual abuse.[15]

Deriving its name from the Watergate scandal, the story was later posted on fake news websites, starting with Your News Wire, which cited a 4chan post from earlier that year. The Your News Wire article was subsequently spread by pro-Trump websites, including SubjectPolitics.com, which added the claim that the NYPD had raided Hillary Clinton's property.[13] The Conservative Daily Post ran a headline claiming the Federal Bureau of Investigation had confirmed the conspiracy theory.[16]

According to the BBC, the allegations spread to "the mainstream internet" several days before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, after a Reddit user posted a Pizzagate "evidence" document.[7] The original Reddit post, removed some time between November 4 and 21, alleged the involvement of Comet Ping Pong:

Everyone associated with the business is making semi-overt, semi-tongue-in-cheek, and semi-sarcastic inferences towards sex with minors. The artists that work for and with the business also generate nothing but cultish imagery of disembodiment, blood, beheadings, sex, and of course pizza.[3]

The story was picked up by other fake news websites like InfoWars, Planet Free Will,[9] and The Vigilant Citizen,[17][18] and was promoted by alt-right activists such as Mike Cernovich, Brittany Pettibone, and Jack Posobiec.[19] Other promoters included: David Seaman, former writer for TheStreet.com,[20] CBS46 anchor Ben Swann,[21] basketball player Andrew Bogut,[22] and Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson.[23] On December 30, as Bogut recovered from a knee injury, members of /r/The Donald community on Reddit promoted a false theory that his injury was connected to his support for Pizzagate.[24][25] Jonathan Albright, an assistant professor of media analytics at Elon University, said that a disproportionate number of tweets about Pizzagate came from the Czech Republic, Cyprus, and Vietnam, and that some of the most frequent retweeters were bots.[19]

Members of the Reddit community /r/The_Donald created the /r/pizzagate subreddit to further develop the conspiracy theory.[9] The sub was banned on November 23, 2016, for violating Reddit's anti-doxing policy after users posted personal details of people connected to the alleged conspiracy. Reddit released a statement afterwards, saying, "We don't want witchhunts on our site".[7][26] After the ban on Reddit, the discussion was moved to the v/pizzagate sub on Voat, a website similar to Reddit.[27]

Some of Pizzagate's proponents, including David Seaman and Michael G. Flynn (Michael Flynn's son), evolved the conspiracy into a broader government conspiracy called "Pedogate". According to this theory, a "satanic cabal of elites" of the New World Order operates international child sex trafficking rings.[28]

By June 2020, the conspiracy theory found renewed popularity on TikTok, where videos tagged #Pizzagate were reaching over 80 million views (see relevant section).

Turkish press reports In Turkey, the allegations were reported by pro-government newspapers (i.e., those supportive of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan), such as Sabah, A Haber, Yeni Şafak, Akşam and Star.[29] The story appeared on Turkey's Ekşi S¶zl¼k website and on the viral news network HaberSelf, where anyone can post content. These forums reposted images and allegations directly from the since-deleted subreddit, which were reprinted in full in the state-controlled press.[29] Efe Sozeri, a columnist for The Daily Dot, suggested Turkish government sources were pushing this story to distract attention from a child abuse scandal there in March 2016.[29]

Harassment of restaurant owners and employees The pizzeria,

Comet Ping Pong, was threatened by hundreds of people who believed in the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

[30]As Pizzagate spread, Comet Ping Pong received hundreds of threats from the theory's believers.[30] The restaurant's owner, James Alefantis, told The New York Times: "From this insane, fabricated conspiracy theory, we've come under constant assault. I've done nothing for days but try to clean this up and protect my staff and friends from being terrorized."[9]

Some adherents identified the Instagram account of Alefantis and pointed to some of the photos posted there as evidence of the conspiracy. Many of the images shown were friends and family who had liked Comet Ping Pong's page on Facebook. In some cases, imagery was taken from unrelated websites and purported to be Alefantis' own.[3] The restaurant's owners and staff were harassed and threatened on social media websites, and the owner received death threats.[9] The restaurant's Yelp page was locked by the site's operators citing reviews that were "motivated more by the news coverage itself than the reviewer's personal consumer experience".[3]

Several bands who had performed at the pizzeria also faced harassment. For example, Amanda Kleinman of Heavy Breathing deleted her Twitter account after receiving negative comments connecting her and her band to the conspiracy theory.[9] Another band, Sex Stains, had closed the comments of their YouTube videos and addressed the controversy in the description of their videos.[31] The artist Arrington de Dionyso, who once had painted a mural at the pizzeria that had been painted over several years before the controversy, described the campaign of harassment against him in detail,[32] and said of the attacks in general, "I think it's a very deliberate assault, which will eventually be a coordinated assault on all forms of free expression." The affair has drawn comparisons with the Gamergate controversy.[33][34]

Politics and Prose was among some of the D.C. businesses that were also harassed due to the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

[35]Pizzagate-related harassment of businesses extended beyond Comet Ping Pong to include other nearby D.C. businesses such as Besta Pizza, three doors down from Comet; Little Red Fox cafe; bookstore Politics and Prose; and French bistro, Terasol.[35][36] These businesses received a high volume of threatening and menacing telephone calls, including death threats, and also experienced online harassment.[36] The co-owners of Little Red Fox and Terasol filed police reports.[36]

Brooklyn restaurant Roberta's was also pulled into the hoax, receiving harassing phone calls, including a call from an unidentified person telling an employee that she was "going to bleed and be tortured".[27][37] The restaurant became involved after a since-removed YouTube video used images from their social media accounts to imply they were part of the hoax sex ring. Others then spread the accusations on social media, claiming the "Clinton family loves Roberta's".[38]

East Side Pies, in Austin, Texas, saw one of its delivery trucks vandalized with an epithet, and was the target of online harassment related to their supposed involvement in Pizzagate, alleged connections to the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Illuminati.[39][40]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation investigated Pizzagate-related threats in March 2017 as part of a probe into possible Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.[41]

Criminal responses Criminal allegations filed against Edgar Welch (

full text)

On December 4, 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch, a 28-year-old man from Salisbury, North Carolina, arrived at Comet Ping Pong and fired three shots from an AR-15 style rifle that struck the restaurant's walls, a desk, and a door.[42][43][44] Welch later told police that he had planned to "self-investigate" the conspiracy theory.[45] Welch saw himself as the potential hero of the story'--a rescuer of children.[46] He surrendered after officers surrounded the restaurant and was arrested without incident;[47] no one was injured.[48] Welch was sentenced to four years in prison.[49]

Welch told police he had read online that the Comet restaurant was harboring child sex slaves and that he wanted to see for himself if they were there.[8] In an interview with The New York Times, Welch later said that he regretted how he had handled the situation but did not dismiss the conspiracy theory, and rejected the description of it as "fake news".[50][51][52] Some conspiracy theorists speculated the shooting was a staged attempt to discredit their investigations.[53]

On December 13, 2016, Welch was charged with one count of "interstate transportation of a firearm with intent to commit an offense" (a federal crime).[54] According to court documents, Welch attempted to recruit friends three days before the attack by urging them to watch a YouTube video about the conspiracy.[55] He was subsequently charged with two additional offenses, with the grand jury returning an indictment charging him with assault with a dangerous weapon and possession of a firearm during the commission of a crime.[56][57]

On March 24, 2017, following a plea agreement with prosecutors, Welch pleaded guilty to the federal charge of interstate transport of firearms and the local District of Columbia charge of assault with a dangerous weapon. Welch also agreed to pay $5,744.33 for damages to the restaurant. U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson sentenced Welch to four years in prison on June 22, 2017; at the sentencing hearing, Welch apologized for his conduct and said he had been "foolish and reckless".[44][58][59] On March 3, 2020, Welch was transferred to a Community Corrections Center (CCC) and was released on May 28.[60]

On January 12, 2017, Yusif Lee Jones, a 52-year-old man from Shreveport, Louisiana, pleaded guilty in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana to making a threatening phone call to Besta Pizza, another pizzeria on the same block as Comet Ping Pong, three days after Welch's attack. He said he threatened Besta to "save the kids", and "finish what the other guy didn't".[61][62]

On January 25, 2019, Comet Ping Pong suffered an arson attack when a fire was started in one of its backrooms. Employees quickly extinguished the blaze and nobody was injured.[63] The perpetrator escaped, but was arrested a few days later while climbing a fence at the Washington Monument and tied to the arson via security footage. He had posted a video referencing QAnon prior to the arson.[64]

Debunking The conspiracy theory has been widely discredited and debunked. It has been judged to be false after detailed investigation by the fact-checking website Snopes.com and The New York Times.[48][65][66] Numerous news organizations have debunked it as a conspiracy theory, including: the New York Observer,[67] The Washington Post,[68] The Independent in London,[69] The Huffington Post,[70] The Washington Times,[71] the Los Angeles Times,[72] Fox News,[73] CNN,[74] and the Miami Herald.[4] The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia characterized the matter as "fictitious".[4]

Much of the purported evidence cited by the conspiracy theory's proponents had been taken from entirely different sources and made to appear as if it supported the conspiracy.[3] Images of children of family and friends of the pizzeria's staff were taken from social media sites such as Instagram and claimed to be photos of victims.[65] The Charlotte Observer noted the diverse group of sources that had debunked the conspiracy theory and pointed out that this included the Fox News Channel in addition to The New York Times.[42]

On December 10, 2016, The New York Times published an article that analyzed the theory's claims.[1] They emphasized that:

Theorists linked the conspiracy to Comet Ping Pong through similarities between company logos and symbols related to Satanism and pedophilia. However, The Times noted similarities were also found in the logos of a number of unrelated companies, such as AOL, Time Warner, and MSN.[1]Theorists claimed an underground network beneath Comet Ping Pong; the restaurant has no basement, however, and the picture used to support this claim was taken in another facility.[1]Theorists claimed to have a picture of restaurant owner Alefantis wearing a T-shirt endorsing pedophilia. However, the image was of another person, and the shirt, which read "J' ''¤ L'Enfant," (French for "I ''¤ The Child") was actually a reference to the L'Enfant Cafe-Bar in D.C., whose owner was pictured in the image, and which itself is named after Pierre Charles L'Enfant, the designer of much of the layout of Washington, D.C.[1]Theorists claimed John and Tony Podesta kidnapped Madeleine McCann using police sketches that were, in fact, two sketches of the same suspect taken from the descriptions of two eyewitnesses.[1]No alleged victims have come forward and no physical evidence has been found.[75]

Responses Community messages in front of Comet Ping Pong following the shooting

Conspiracist protesting Comet Ping Pong

In an interview with NPR on November 27, 2016, Comet Ping Pong owner James Alefantis referred to the conspiracy theory as "an insanely complicated, made-up, fictional lie-based story" and a "coordinated political attack".[76] Syndicated columnist Daniel Ruth wrote that the conspiracy theorists' assertions were "dangerous and damaging false allegations" and that they were "repeatedly debunked, disproved and dismissed".[77]

Despite the conspiracy theory being debunked, it continued to spread on social media, with over one million messages using hashtag #Pizzagate on Twitter in November 2016.[42] Stefanie MacWilliams, who wrote an article promoting the conspiracy on Planet Free Will, was subsequently reported by the Toronto Star as saying, "I really have no regrets and it's honestly really grown our audience". Pizzagate, she said, is "two worlds clashing. People don't trust the mainstream media anymore, but it's true that people shouldn't take the alternative media as truth, either".[78]

On December 8, 2016, Hillary Clinton responded to the conspiracy theory, speaking about the dangers of fake news websites. She said, "The epidemic of malicious fake news and fake propaganda that flooded social media over the past year, it's now clear that so-called fake news can have real-world consequences".[79]

Public opinion A poll conducted by Public Policy Polling on December 6''7, 2016, asked 1,224 U.S. registered voters if they thought Hillary Clinton was "connected to a child sex ring being run out of a pizzeria in Washington DC". Nine percent of respondents said they believed she was connected, 72% said they did not, and 19% were not sure.[80][81][82]

A poll of voters conducted on December 17''20 by The Economist/YouGov asked voters if they believed that "Leaked e-mails from the Clinton campaign talked about pedophilia and human trafficking - 'Pizzagate'." The results showed that 17% of Clinton voters responded "true" while 82% responded "not true"; and 46% of Trump voters responded "true" while 53% responded "not true".[83][84][85]

Academic Roger Lancaster likened the impact of Pizzagate to the Satanic panic of the 1980s : at the time, hundreds of daycare workers were falsely accused of abusing children.[86]

Alex Jones and InfoWars After the Comet Ping Pong shooting, Alex Jones of InfoWars backed off from the idea that the D.C. pizzeria was the center of the conspiracy.[53] On December 4, InfoWars uploaded a YouTube video that linked Pizzagate to the November 13 death of a sex-worker-rights activist. The video falsely claimed that she had been investigating a link between the Clinton Foundation and human trafficking in Haiti. It speculated she had been murdered in connection with her investigation. According to the activist's former employer, family and friends, her death was in fact a suicide and she was not investigating the Clinton Foundation.[87] By December 14, Infowars had removed two of its three Pizzagate-related videos.[88]

In February 2017, Alefantis' lawyers sent Jones a letter demanding an apology and retraction. Under Texas law, Jones was given a month to comply or be subject to a libel suit.[89] In March 2017, Alex Jones apologized to Alefantis for promulgating the conspiracy theory, saying: "To my knowledge today, neither Mr. Alefantis, nor his restaurant Comet Ping Pong, were involved in any human trafficking as was part of the theories about Pizzagate that were being written about in many media outlets and which we commented upon."[90]

Michael Flynn and Michael Flynn Jr. In the days leading up to the 2016 election, Michael Flynn, then a top surrogate for Trump and later Trump's National Security Advisor, posted multiple tweets on Twitter containing conspiratorial material regarding Hillary Clinton. They alleged that Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta, drank the blood and bodily fluids of other humans in Satanic rituals, which Politico says "soon morphed into the '#pizzagate' conspiracy theory involving Comet Ping Pong".[91] On November 2, 2016, Flynn tweeted a link to a story with unfounded accusations and wrote, "U decide '' NYPD Blows Whistle on New Hillary Emails: Money Laundering, Sex Crimes w Children, etc ... MUST READ!" The tweet was shared by over 9,000 people, but was deleted from Flynn's account sometime during December 12''13, 2016.[88]

After the shooting incident at Comet Ping Pong, Michael Flynn Jr., Michael T. Flynn's son and also a member of Trump's transition team, tweeted: "Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many 'coincidences' tied to it."[92][93][94] On December 6, 2016, Flynn Jr. was forced out of Trump's transition team.[95] Spokesman Jason Miller did not identify the reason for his dismissal, however, The New York Times reported that other officials had confirmed it was related to the tweet.[96]

Merger with QAnon and global spread Further information:

QAnonPizzagate became a pillar of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, which emerged in 2017 and incorporated its beliefs.[97][98] QAnon, which has been a likened in the media to "Pizzagate on steroids",[97] and a "big-budget sequel" to Pizzagate,[98] linked the child trafficking ring to a nefarious worldwide conspiracy. It also developed Pizzagate's claims by adding the concepts that the sexual abuses are part of Satanic rituals and that the abusers murder the children to "harvest" the adrenochrome from their blood, which they then use as a drug[99][100][101][102] or as an elixir to remain youthful.[103]

In 2020, as the broader QAnon movement became an international phenomenon, Pizzagate also gained new traction and became less U.S.-centric in nature, with videos and posts on the topic in Italy, Brazil, Turkey and other countries worldwide each gaining millions of views.[11] This new iteration is less partisan; the majority of the (mostly teenage) promoters of the #PizzaGate hashtag on TikTok were not right-wing, and support the Black Lives Matter movement.[10] It focuses on an alleged global elite of child sex-traffickers, ranging from politicians to powerful businesspeople and celebrities such as Bill Gates, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey and Chrissy Teigen.[11] Justin Bieber's 2020 song "Yummy" was alleged to be about the conspiracy theory, and rekindled support for the theory during the year. The conspiracy theory gained traction when Venezuelan YouTuber, Dross Rotzank, made a video about Bieber's music video and its alleged references to Pizzagate. Rotzank's video gained 3 million views in two days and led "Pizzagate" to become a trending topic on the Spanish-language Twitter.[104] Adherents of the theory also believe that Bieber gave a coded signal admitting as such in a later Instagram Live video, where he touched his hat after being asked to do so in the chat if he was a victim of Pizzagate (however, there is no indication that Bieber saw this comment).[11][105]

In April 2020, a documentary promoting Pizzagate, Out of Shadows,[106] was made by a former Hollywood stuntman and released on YouTube. TikTok users began promoting both Out of Shadows and the alleged Bieber association until the #PizzaGate hashtag was banned by the company.[10][11] The New York Times said in June 2020 that posts on the platform with the #PizzaGate hashtag were "viewed more than 82 million times in recent months", and Google searches for the term also increased in that time. They also reported that "In the first week of June, comments, likes and shares of PizzaGate also spiked to more than 800,000 on Facebook and nearly 600,000 on Instagram, according to data from CrowdTangle ... That compares with 512,000 interactions on Facebook and 93,000 on Instagram during the first week of December 2016. From the start of 2017 through January of 2020, the average number of weekly PizzaGate mentions, likes and shares on Facebook and Instagram was under 20,000".[11]

The Pizzagate Massacre is a 2021 satire film inspired by the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.[107][108]

In August 2020, Facebook temporarily suspended use of the "#savethechildren" hashtag, when used to promote elements of the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and QAnon.[109] The same month, the movie Duncan was released, inspired by Edgar Maddison Welch's shooting of Comet Ping Pong.[110][111]

Frazzled.rip A related conspiracy theory known as "Frazzled.rip" (also spelled "Frazzledrip") emerged in 2018, claiming that an "extreme snuff film" was recovered from Anthony Weiner ' s stolen laptop and was circulating on the dark web, and showed Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin raping and murdering a young girl, drinking her adrenochrome-rich blood in a Satanic ritual, and "tak[ing] turns wearing the little girl's face like a mask".[112]

Purported frames from the video circulated to back these claims: according to Snopes, some of these images came from a YouTube video originally posted on April Fools' Day 2018, and a photo which was said to show Huma Abedin wearing a mask had been taken from the website of a Washington D.C. Indian restaurant and portrayed the owner of that establishment.[112] Hundreds of videos on YouTube promoted these false statements,[113] and the claims were still circulating internationally[114] within QAnon groups two years later in 2020.[115][116][117][118]

See also References ^ a b c d e f g Huang, Gregor Aisch, Jon; Kang, Cecilia (December 10, 2016). "Dissecting the #PizzaGate Conspiracy Theories". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 10, 2016 . Retrieved December 10, 2016 . ^ a b c Gillin, Joshua (December 6, 2016). "How Pizzagate went from fake news to a real problem". PolitiFact. Archived from the original on December 6, 2016 . Retrieved December 6, 2016 . ^ a b c d e f LaCapria, Kim (November 21, 2016). "A detailed conspiracy theory known as "Pizzagate" holds that a pedophile ring is operating out of a Clinton-linked pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong". Snopes. Archived from the original on December 25, 2021. ^ a b c Alam, Hannah (December 5, 2016). "Conspiracy peddlers continue pushing debunked 'pizzagate' tale". Miami Herald. Archived from the original on December 7, 2016 . Retrieved December 7, 2016 . One might think that police calling the motive a 'fictitious conspiracy theory' would put an end to the claim that inspired a gunman from North Carolina to attack a family pizzeria in Washington over the weekend ^ Shalby, Colleen (May 24, 2017). "How Seth Rich's death became an Internet conspiracy theory". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on May 29, 2017. Despite police statements and Rich's family concluding that his death was the result of an attempted robbery, the rumor spread within the same circles that churned out the bogus 'PizzaGate' story ^ Farhi, Paul (May 17, 2017). "A conspiratorial tale of murder, with Fox News at the center". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on May 18, 2017 . Retrieved May 18, 2017 . The Rich story has taken on elements of the Comet Ping Pong conspiracy, a false and preposterous tale involving Hillary Clinton and her supposed operation of a child-abuse ring at a District pizza restaurant. ^ a b c Wendling, Mike (December 2, 2016). "The saga of 'Pizzagate': The fake story that shows how conspiracy theories spread". BBC News. Archived from the original on December 2, 2016 . Retrieved December 2, 2016 . ^ a b Kang, Cecilia; Goldman, Adam (December 5, 2016). "In Washington Pizzeria Attack, Fake News Brought Real Guns". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 27, 2017. ^ a b c d e f Kang, Cecilia (November 21, 2016). "Fake News Onslaught Targets Pizzeria as Nest of Child-Trafficking". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 8, 2016. ^ a b c Sommer, Will (June 22, 2020). "TikTok Teens Are Obsessed With Pizzagate". The Daily Beast . Retrieved July 19, 2020 . ^ a b c d e f Kang, Cecilia; Frenkel, Sheera (June 27, 2020). " 'PizzaGate' Conspiracy Theory Thrives Anew in the TikTok Era". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 27, 2020. ^ David Goldberg [@DavidGoldbergNY] (October 30, 2016). "Rumors stirring in the NYPD that Huma's emails point to a pedophila ring and @HillaryClinton is at the center. #GoHillary #PodestaEmails23" (Tweet). Archived from the original on October 31, 2016 . Retrieved October 14, 2018 '' via Twitter. ^ a b Silverman, Craig (November 4, 2016). "How A Completely False Claim About Hillary Clinton Went From A Conspiracy Message Board To Big Right Wing Blogs". BuzzFeed. Archived from the original on December 5, 2016 . Retrieved November 29, 2016 . ^ Samuelson, Kate (December 5, 2016). "What to Know About Pizzagate, the Fake News Story With Real Consequences". Time. Archived from the original on December 7, 2016 . Retrieved December 8, 2016 . ^ Hayes, Laura (November 15, 2016). "The Consequences of 'Pizza Gate' are Real at Comet Ping Pong". Washington City Paper. Archived from the original on November 29, 2016 . Retrieved December 8, 2016 . ^ Emery, C. Eugene Jr. (November 4, 2016). "Evidence ridiculously thin for sensational claim of huge underground Clinton sex network". PolitiFact. Archived from the original on December 1, 2016 . Retrieved November 29, 2016 . ^ Alexander, Cedric (December 7, 2016). "Fake news is domestic terrorism". CNN. Archived from the original on December 9, 2016 . Retrieved December 10, 2016 . ^ Peck, Jamie (November 28, 2016). "What the hell is #Pizzagate?". Death and Taxes. Archived from the original on December 3, 2016 . Retrieved December 3, 2016 . ^ a b Fisher, Marc; Cox, John Woodrow; Hermann, Peter (December 6, 2016). "Pizzagate: From rumor, to hashtag, to gunfire in D.C." The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 20, 2016 . Retrieved December 23, 2016 . ^ Zuylen-Wood, Simon Van (January 2, 2017). "This Is What It's Like to Read Fake News For Two Weeks". Politico Magazine. Archived from the original on January 6, 2017 . Retrieved January 6, 2017 . ^ Wemple, Erik (January 18, 2017). "CBS affiliate's 'big question': Why no law enforcement investigation of 'Pizzagate' allegations?". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on January 19, 2017 . Retrieved January 19, 2017 . ^ Mandell, Nina (December 7, 2016). "Andrew Bogut pushed the Pizzagate conspiracy". USA Today. Archived from the original on August 21, 2017 . Retrieved January 6, 2017 . ^ Byrne, Brian Patrick (August 28, 2017). "Minecraft Creator Alleges Global Conspiracy Involving Pizzagate, a 'Manufactured Race War,' a Missing Tabloid Toddler, and Holistic Medicine". The Daily Beast . Retrieved August 30, 2017 . ^ Mustard, Extra (December 30, 2016). "No, Andrew Bogut's injury is not a conspiracy". Sports Illustrated. Archived from the original on January 2, 2017 . Retrieved December 31, 2016 . ^ Knoblauch, Max (December 30, 2016). "Conspiracy theorists think an injured NBA player is another victim of Pizzagate". Mashable. Archived from the original on December 30, 2016 . Retrieved December 31, 2016 . ^ Ohlheiser, Abby (November 24, 2016). "Fearing yet another witch hunt, Reddit bans 'Pizzagate' ". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 30, 2016 . Retrieved November 25, 2016 . ^ a b Rosenberg, Eli (December 7, 2016). "Roberta's, Popular Brooklyn Restaurant, Is Pulled Into 'Pizzagate' Hoax". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 7, 2016 . Retrieved December 8, 2016 . ^ Wade, Peter (March 25, 2017). "Pizzagate Will Never Die: Here's Why the Conspiracy Theory Has New Life". Esquire. Archived from the original on March 25, 2017 . Retrieved March 26, 2017 . ^ a b c Sozeri, Efe Karem (November 23, 2016). "How the alt-right's PizzaGate conspiracy hid real scandal in Turkey". The Daily Dot. Archived from the original on December 2, 2016 . 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Archived from the original on December 29, 2016 . Retrieved December 29, 2016 . ^ a b Gauthier, Brendan (December 7, 2016). "Pizzagate harassment spreads beyond Comet Ping Pong to nearby D.C. restaurants". Salon. Archived from the original on December 7, 2016 . Retrieved December 8, 2016 . ^ a b c Kludt, Tom (December 5, 2016). " 'Pizzagate': Comet Ping Pong not the only D.C. business enduring a nightmare". CNNMoney. Archived from the original on December 8, 2016 . Retrieved December 8, 2016 . ^ Rayman, Graham (December 7, 2016). "Brooklyn pizza joint Roberta's hit with threatening calls in response to faux report of Hillary Clinton child abuse ring". New York Daily News. Archived from the original on December 8, 2016 . Retrieved December 9, 2016 . ^ Gajanan, Mahita (December 7, 2016). "Now Pizzagate Conspiracy Theorists Are Targeting a Pizzeria in New York City". Time. Archived from the original on December 8, 2016 . 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Though debunked by sources as diverse as The New York Times, Fox News Channel and the web hoax investigator Snopes.com, more than a million messages have traversed Twitter since November about #Pizzagate. ^ Eordogh, Fruzsina (December 7, 2016). "With Pizzagate, Is Cybersteria The New Normal?". Forbes. Archived from the original on December 9, 2016 . Retrieved December 8, 2016 . ^ a b Hsu, Spencer (March 24, 2017). "Comet Pizza gunman pleads guilty to federal and local charges". The Washington Post. Washington. Archived from the original on March 24, 2017. ^ "Arrest Made in an Assault with a Dangerous Weapon (Gun): 5000 Block of Connecticut Avenue, Northwest". mpdc (Press release). December 5, 2016. Archived from the original on December 19, 2016 . Retrieved January 27, 2020 . ^ Debies-Carl, Jeffrey (November 2017). "Pizzagate and Beyond: Using Social Research to Understand Conspiracy Legends". Skeptical Inquirer . Retrieved January 26, 2018 . ^ "The Latest: Pizzagate Shooting Suspect Ordered Held by Judge". ABC News. December 5, 2016. Archived from the original on December 6, 2016 . Retrieved December 7, 2016 . ^ a b Svrluga, Susan; Siddiqui, Faiz (December 4, 2016). "N.C. man told police he went to D.C. pizzeria with assault rifle to 'self-investigate' election-related conspiracy theory". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 28, 2016 . Retrieved December 29, 2016 . ^ Contrera, Jessica (December 16, 2021). "A QAnon con: How the viral Wayfair sex trafficking lie hurt real kids". The Washington Post. ^ Goldman, Adam (December 7, 2016). "The Comet Ping Pong Gunman Answers Our Reporter's Questions". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 13, 2016 . Retrieved December 14, 2016 . ^ Abrams, Abigail (December 8, 2016). "Pizzagate Gunman: 'I Regret How I Handled' Comet Ping Pong Shooting". Time. Archived from the original on December 8, 2016 . Retrieved December 8, 2016 . ^ "Pizzagate gunman refuses to dismiss online conspiracy theory claims about child sex ring". Fox News. December 8, 2016. Archived from the original on December 8, 2016 . Retrieved December 8, 2016 . ^ a b Menegus, Bryan (December 5, 2016). "Pizzagaters Aren't Giving This Shit Up". Gizmodo. Archived from the original on December 28, 2016 . Retrieved December 28, 2016 . ^ Slotkin, Jason (December 13, 2016). " 'Pizzagate' Suspect Faces Federal Charge". NPR. Archived from the original on December 14, 2016 . Retrieved December 13, 2016 . ^ Simpson, Ian (December 13, 2016). "Accused 'fake-news' pizza gunman planned raid for days: affidavit". Reuters. Archived from the original on December 14, 2016 . Retrieved December 14, 2016 . ^ Hsu, Spencer S. (December 15, 2016). "Grand jury returns indictment against Edgar Welch in Comet Ping Pong incursion". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 20, 2016. ^ Bellware, Kim (December 13, 2016). "Feds Escalate Charges Against Edgar Welch, Alleged 'Pizzagate' Shooter". The Huffington Post. Archived from the original on December 15, 2016 . Retrieved December 17, 2016 . ^ " 'Pizzagate' Gunman Sentenced To 4 Years In Prison". NPR.org. Archived from the original on June 22, 2017 . Retrieved June 22, 2017 . ^ Hsu, Spencer S. (June 22, 2017). " 'Pizzagate' gunman sentenced to four years in prison, as prosecutors urged judge to deter vigilante justice". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on June 22, 2017. ^ E. Miller, Michael (February 16, 2021). "The Pizzagate gunman is out of prison. Conspiracy theories are out of control". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on February 17, 2021 . Retrieved February 20, 2021 . ^ "Feds: Louisiana Man Caught Making New 'PizzaGate' Threat". The Daily Beast. January 13, 2017. Archived from the original on January 16, 2017. ^ Louisiana Man Pleads Guilty to Federal Charge For Threatening Pizza Shop in Northwest Washington Archived February 2, 2017, at the Wayback Machine (press release), U.S. Department of Justice (January 13, 2017). ^ Hermann, Peter (January 26, 2019). "Fire at Comet Ping Pong was intentionally set, fire and police officials say". The Washington Post . Retrieved April 15, 2021 . ^ Weill, Kelly (2022). Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: Algonquin Books. p. 159. ISBN 978-1-64375-068-2. OCLC 1262666844. ^ a b LaCapria, Kim (November 21, 2016). "FALSE: Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria Home to Child Abuse Ring Led by Hillary Clinton". Snopes.com . Retrieved December 2, 2016 . ^ Carlson, Margaret (November 23, 2016). "A Fake Conspiracy for Our Fevered Age". Bloomberg View. Archived from the original on November 29, 2016 . Retrieved November 29, 2016 . ^ Young, Cathy (December 9, 2016). " 'Pizzagate' Recalls the Debunked Child Sex Rings of the '80s and '90s". New York Observer. Archived from the original on December 23, 2016 . Retrieved December 23, 2016 . a nutty conspiracy theory about a child sex ring run from a Washington, D.C., pizzeria ^ Ohlheiser, Abby (November 24, 2016). "Fearing yet another witch hunt, Reddit bans 'Pizzagate' ". The Washington Post The Intersect blog. Archived from the original on December 30, 2016 . Retrieved December 23, 2016 . ^ Dearden, Lizzie (December 10, 2016). "Donald Trump's transition team dismisses CIA findings Russia attempted to influence US election in his favour". The Independent. Archived from the original on December 20, 2016 . Retrieved December 23, 2016 . Michael Flynn Jr, the son of the President-elect's pick for national security adviser, was among those supporting the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory that led to a man opening fire in a Washington restaurant. ^ Miller, Hayley (December 16, 2016). "Yet Another Donald Trump Pick Has A Habit Of Spreading Dangerous Conspiracy Theories". The Huffington Post. Archived from the original on December 23, 2016. Flynn tweeted a fake news story in November on the #Pizzagate hoax, an absurd claim tying Clinton to a made-up underground child molestation ring based out of a Washington, D.C. pizza place named Comet Ping Pong. ^ Blake, Andrew (December 9, 2016). "Infowars' Alex Jones appeals to Trump for aid over fears of 'fake news' crackdown". The Washington Times. Archived from the original on December 9, 2016 . Retrieved December 10, 2016 . ^ Agrawal, Nina (December 20, 2016). "Where fake news came from '-- and why some readers believe it". Los Angeles Times. Archived from the original on December 22, 2016 . Retrieved December 23, 2016 . A false story alleged that Hillary Clinton and her campaign chairman, John Podesta, were involved in a child sex ring based out of Comet Ping Pong ^ "Man with rifle arrested at DC restaurant targeted by fake news conspiracy theories". Fox News. December 5, 2016. Archived from the original on December 7, 2016 . Retrieved December 9, 2016 . A North Carolina man armed with an assault rifle was arrested Sunday inside a popular Washington D.C. restaurant that became a center of conspiracy theories driven by fake news stories that went viral before the presidential election. ^ Stelter, Brian (December 6, 2016). "Fake news, real violence: 'Pizzagate' and the consequences of an Internet echo chamber". CNNMoney . Retrieved November 5, 2018 . ^ Barakat, Matthew; Gresko, Jessica (December 6, 2016). " 'Pizzagate': How a WikiLeaks-fuelled conspiracy theory led to gunfire at a D.C. restaurant". CBC News. Archived from the original on December 13, 2016 . Retrieved December 13, 2016 . ^ Wertheimer, Linda (November 27, 2016). "Fake News Surge Pins D.C. Pizzeria As Home To Child-Trafficking". NPR. Archived from the original on December 7, 2016 . Retrieved December 8, 2016 . ^ Ruth, Daniel (December 6, 2016). "The lunacy of fake news". The Seattle Times. Archived from the original on December 7, 2016 . Retrieved December 7, 2016 . The dangerous and damaging fake allegations against a businessman and his employees simply trying to make a living have been repeatedly debunked, disproved and dismissed. ^ "Belleville woman helped cook up Pizzagate". Toronto Star. December 7, 2016. Archived from the original on December 9, 2016 . Retrieved December 12, 2016 . ^ Taylor, Jessica (December 8, 2016). " 'Lives Are At Risk,' Hillary Clinton Warns Over Fake News, 'Pizzagate' ". NPR. Archived from the original on December 9, 2016 . Retrieved December 9, 2016 . ^ Kafka, Peter (December 9, 2016). "An astonishing number of people believe Pizzagate, the Facebook-fueled Clinton sex ring conspiracy story, could be true". Recode. Archived from the original on December 10, 2016 . Retrieved December 9, 2016 . ^ Guarnieri, Grace (December 9, 2016). "A lot of Donald Trump's supporters believe fake news and trust him more than real news: poll". Salon. Archived from the original on February 2, 2017 . Retrieved January 27, 2017 . ^ "Trump Remains Unpopular; Voters Prefer Obama on SCOTUS Pick" (PDF) . Public Policy Polling. December 9, 2016. Archived (PDF) from the original on December 20, 2016 . Retrieved December 16, 2016 . ^ Frankovic, Kathy (December 27, 2016). "Belief in conspiracies largely depends on political identity". YouGov. Archived from the original on December 29, 2016 . Retrieved December 28, 2016 . ^ Savranksy, Rebecca (December 27, 2016). "Poll: Political identity largely affects belief in conspiracies". The Hill. Archived from the original on December 31, 2016 . 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The "#spiritcooking" rumor soon morphed into the "#pizzagate" conspiracy theory involving Comet Ping Pong, which alleges that virtually the entire D.C. establishment ... is involved with or covering up a satanic plot to traffic in, sexually abuse and murder children. ^ Bender, Bryan; Hanna, Andrew (December 5, 2016). "Flynn under fire for fake news". Politico. Archived from the original on December 6, 2016 . Retrieved December 5, 2016 . ^ Smith, Allan (December 5, 2016). "Michael Flynn's son spars with Jake Tapper over fake 'pizzagate' story that led armed man to go to restaurant". Business Insider. Archived from the original on December 6, 2016 . Retrieved December 5, 2016 . ^ Rosenberg, Matthew (December 5, 2016). "Trump Adviser Has Pushed Clinton Conspiracy Theories". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 5, 2016 . Retrieved December 6, 2016 . ^ Faulders, Katherine (December 6, 2016). "Mike Flynn Jr. Forced Out of Trump Transition Amid Fake News Controversy". 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"What's behind the rise of QAnon in the UK?". BBC News . Retrieved January 27, 2021 . ^ Hitt, Tarpley (August 14, 2020). "How QAnon Became Obsessed With 'Adrenochrome,' an Imaginary Drug Hollywood Is 'Harvesting' from Kids". The Daily Beast . Retrieved January 27, 2021 . ^ Joyner, Chris (September 6, 2020). "Cultlike conspiracy theory QAnon takes root in Georgia". Chattanooga Times Free Press . Retrieved January 27, 2021 . ^ Fennessy, Steve; Mahadevan, Pria (September 24, 2020). "Georgia Today: Into The Dark Heart Of QAnon". GPB . Retrieved January 27, 2021 . ^ Thalen, Mikael (January 26, 2021). "QAnon congresswoman endorsed 'Frazzledrip,' debunked theory of Hillary Clinton eating a baby". The Daily Dot . Retrieved January 27, 2021 . External links Media related to Pizzagate at Wikimedia Commons

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Wed, 13 Apr 2022 19:56

US Supreme Court justice-designate (born 1970)

Ketanji Brown Jackson (born Ketanji Onyika Brown; kÉ- TAHN -jee; September 14, 1970)[1] is an American attorney and jurist who has served as a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit since 2021.[2] She is an associate justice-designate of the Supreme Court of the United States. Jackson received Senate confirmation on April 7, 2022, with all members of the Democratic caucus and three Republicans voting in favor of the nomination and 47 Republicans voting against.[3][4]

Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in Miami, Florida, Jackson attended Harvard University for college and law school, where she served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. She began her legal career with three clerkships, including one with U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Stephen Breyer. Prior to her elevation to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, she served as a district judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia from 2013 to 2021. Jackson was also vice chair of the United States Sentencing Commission from 2010 to 2014.[5] Since 2016, she has been a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers.

On February 25, 2022, President Joe Biden nominated Jackson to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, filling the vacancy that is to be created by Breyer's retirement.[6] Upon being sworn in, Jackson will be the first black woman to sit on the Supreme Court.[7]

Early life and education Jackson was born Ketanji Onyika Brown on September 14, 1970, in Washington, D.C.[8][9] Her parents were both graduates of historically black colleges and universities.[10][8][11] Her father, Johnny Brown, was a lawyer who ultimately became the chief attorney for the Miami-Dade County School Board, and is a graduate of the University of Miami School of Law; her mother, Ellery, served as school principal at New World School of the Arts.[12][13] While she was in college, Jackson's uncle Thomas Brown Jr. was sentenced to life in prison for a nonviolent cocaine conviction. Years later, Jackson persuaded a law firm to take his case pro bono, and President Barack Obama eventually commuted his sentence.[14] Another uncle, Calvin Ross, served as Miami's police chief.[12]

Jackson grew up in the Miami, Florida area, and graduated from Miami Palmetto Senior High School in 1988.[9] In her senior year, she won the national oratory title at the National Catholic Forensic League championships in New Orleans.[15] She is quoted in her high school yearbook saying that she "[wanted] to go into law and eventually have a judicial appointment."[16]

Jackson studied government at Harvard University, having applied despite her high school guidance counselor's advice to set her sights lower.[17] During college, she performed improv comedy and took classes in drama,[18] and led protests against a student who displayed a Confederate flag from his dorm window.[19] Jackson graduated from Harvard in 1992 with an A.B. magna cum laude, having written a senior thesis entitled "The Hand of Oppression: Plea Bargaining Processes and the Coercion of Criminal Defendants".

Jackson worked as a staff reporter and researcher for Time magazine from 1992 to 1993, then attended Harvard Law School, where she was a supervising editor of the Harvard Law Review. She graduated in 1996 with a Juris Doctor cum laude.[9][20]

Career After law school, Jackson served as a law clerk to judge Patti B. Saris of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts from 1996 to 1997, then to judge Bruce M. Selya of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit from 1997 to 1998. She spent a year in private practice at the Washington, D.C. law firm Miller Cassidy Larroca & Lewin (now part of Baker Botts), then clerked for justice Stephen Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1999 to 2000.[9][21]

Jackson worked in private legal practice from 2000 to 2003, first at the Boston-based law firm Goodwin Procter from 2000 to 2002, then with Kenneth Feinberg at the law firm now called Feinberg & Rozen LLP from 2002 to 2003.[22] From 2003 to 2005, she was an assistant special counsel to the United States Sentencing Commission.[23] From 2005 to 2007, Jackson was an assistant federal public defender in Washington, D.C., where she handled cases before U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.[24] A Washington Post review of cases Jackson handled during her time as a public defender showed that "she won uncommon victories against the government that shortened or erased lengthy prison terms".[25] From 2007 to 2010, Jackson was an appellate specialist at Morrison & Foerster.[22][21]

U.S. Sentencing Commission On July 23, 2009, Barack Obama nominated Jackson to become vice chair of the United States Sentencing Commission.[26] The U.S. Senate confirmed Jackson by unanimous consent on February 11, 2010. She succeeded Michael E. Horowitz, who had served from 2003 until 2009. Jackson served on the Sentencing Commission until 2014.[27][21] During her time on the Commission, it retroactively amended the Sentencing Guidelines to reduce the guideline range for crack cocaine offenses,[2] and enacted the "drugs minus two" amendment, which implemented a two offense-level reduction for drug crimes.[28]

District Court Jackson on the bench of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

On September 20, 2012, Obama nominated Jackson to serve as a judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia to the seat vacated by retiring Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr.[29] Jackson was introduced at her December 2012 confirmation hearing by Republican Paul Ryan, a relative through marriage, who said "Our politics may differ, but my praise for Ketanji's intellect, for her character, for her integrity, it is unequivocal."[12] On February 14, 2013, her nomination was reported to the full Senate by voice vote of the Senate Judiciary Committee.[30] She was confirmed by the full Senate by voice vote on March 22, 2013. She received her commission on March 26, 2013[21] and was sworn in by Justice Breyer in May 2013.[31]

During her time on the District Court, Jackson wrote multiple decisions adverse to the positions of the Trump administration. In her opinion ordering Trump's former White House counsel Donald McGahn to comply with a legislative subpoena, she wrote "presidents are not kings".[32] Jackson handled a number of challenges to executive agency actions that raised questions of administrative law. She also issued rulings in several cases that gained particular political attention.[33]

Bloomberg Law reported in spring 2021 that conservative activists were pointing to certain decisions by Jackson that had been reversed on appeal as a "potential blemish on her record".[34] In 2019, Jackson ruled that provisions in three Trump executive orders conflicted with federal employee rights to collective bargaining. Her decision was reversed unanimously by the D.C. Circuit. Another 2019 decision, involving a challenge to a Department of Homeland Security decision to expand the agency's definition of which noncitizens could be deported, was also reversed by the D.C. Circuit. Nan Aron, president of the liberal Alliance for Justice, defended Jackson's record, saying Jackson "has written nearly 600 opinions and been reversed less than twelve times".[34]

Selected rulings In American Meat Institute v. U.S. Department of Agriculture (2013), Jackson rejected the meat packing industry's request for a preliminary injunction to block a U.S. Department of Agriculture rule requiring them to identify animals' country of origin. Jackson found that the rule likely did not violate the First Amendment.[35][36]

In Depomed v. Department of Health and Human Services (2014), Jackson ruled that the Food and Drug Administration had violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it failed to grant pharmaceutical company Depomed market exclusivity for its orphan drug, Gralise. Jackson concluded that the Orphan Drug Act required the FDA to grant Gralise exclusivity.[37]

In Pierce v. District of Columbia (2015), Jackson ruled that the D.C. Department of Corrections violated the rights of a deaf inmate under the Americans with Disabilities Act because jail officials failed to provide the inmate with reasonable accommodations, or to assess his need for reasonable accommodations, during his detention in 2012. Jackson held that "the District's willful blindness regarding" Pierce's need for accommodation and its half-hearted attempt to provide Pierce with a random assortment of auxiliary aids'--and only after he specifically requested them'--fell far short of what the law requires."[38]

In April and June 2018, Jackson presided over two cases challenging the Department of Health and Human Services' decision to terminate grants for teen pregnancy prevention programs two years early.[39] Jackson ruled that the decision to terminate the grants early, without any explanation for doing so, was arbitrary and capricious.[40]

In American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO v. Trump (2018), Jackson invalidated provisions of three executive orders that would have limited the time federal employee labor union officials could spend with union members, the issues that unions could bargain over in negotiations, and the rights of disciplined workers to appeal disciplinary actions. Jackson concluded that the executive orders violated the right of federal employees to collectively bargain, as guaranteed by the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute.[41] The D.C. Circuit vacated this ruling on jurisdictional grounds in 2019.[42][43]

In 2018, Jackson dismissed 40 wrongful death and product liability lawsuits stemming from the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which had been combined into a single multidistrict litigation. Jackson held that under the doctrine of forum non conveniens, the suits should be brought in Malaysia, not the United States. The D.C. Circuit affirmed this ruling in 2020.[44][45][46][47]

In 2019, in Center for Biological Diversity v. McAleenan, Jackson held that Congress had, through the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, stripped federal courts of jurisdiction to hear non-constitutional challenges to the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security's decision to waive certain environmental requirements to facilitate construction of a border wall on the United States and Mexico border.[48]

In 2019, Jackson issued a preliminary injunction in Make The Road New York v. McAleenan, blocking a Trump administration rule that would have expanded expedited removal ("fast-track" deportations) without immigration court hearings for undocumented immigrants.[49] Jackson found that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) because its decision was arbitrary and capricious and the agency did not seek public comment before issuing the rule.[50] In a 2''1 ruling in 2020, the D.C. Circuit reversed the entry of the preliminary injunction, ruling that the IIRIRA (by committing the matter to the executive branch's "sole and unreviewable discretion") precluded APA review of the decision.[51]

In 2019, Jackson issued a ruling in Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives v. McGahn in which the House Committee on the Judiciary sued Don McGahn, former White House Counsel for the Trump administration, to compel him to comply with the subpoena to appear at a hearing on its impeachment inquiry on issues of alleged obstruction of justice by the administration. McGahn declined to comply with the subpoena after U.S. President Donald Trump, relying on a legal theory of executive testimonial immunity, ordered McGahn not to testify. In a lengthy opinion, Jackson ruled in favor of the House Committee and held that senior-level presidential aides "who have been subpoenaed for testimony by an authorized committee of Congress must appear for testimony in response to that subpoena" even if the President orders them not to do so.[52] Jackson rejected the administration's assertion of executive testimonial immunity by holding that "with respect to senior-level presidential aides, absolute immunity from compelled congressional process simply does not exist."[53] According to Jackson, that conclusion was "inescapable precisely because compulsory appearance by dint of a subpoena is a legal construct, not a political one, and per the Constitution, no one is above the law."[53][54][55] Jackson's use of the phrase "presidents are not kings" gained popular attention in subsequent media reporting on the ruling.[56][57][58][59] In noting that Jackson took four months to resolve the case, including writing a 120-page opinion, The Washington Post wrote: "That slow pace contributed to helping Mr. Trump run out the clock on the congressional oversight effort before the 2020 election."[12] The ruling was appealed by the U.S. Department of Justice,[60] and the D.C. Circuit affirmed part of Jackson's decision nine months later in August 2020.[61] While the case remained pending, on June 4, 2021, McGahn testified behind closed doors under an agreement reached with the Biden administration.[62]

Court of Appeals On March 30, 2021, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Jackson to serve as a United States circuit judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.[63] On April 19, 2021, her nomination was sent to the Senate. President Biden nominated Jackson to the seat vacated by Judge Merrick Garland, who stepped down to become attorney general.[64]

On April 28, 2021, a hearing on her nomination was held before the Senate Judiciary Committee.[65] During her confirmation hearing, Jackson was questioned about several of her rulings against the Trump administration.[66] On May 20, 2021, Jackson's nomination was reported out of committee by a 13''9 vote.[67] On June 10, 2021, cloture was invoked on her nomination by a vote of 52''46.[68] On June 14, 2021, the United States Senate confirmed Jackson in a 53''44 vote.[69] Republican senators Susan Collins, Lindsey Graham and Lisa Murkowski joined all 50 Democrats in voting to confirm her nomination. She received her judicial commission on June 17, 2021.[70]

Jackson's first decision as a court of appeals judge invalidated a 2020 rule by the Federal Labor Relations Authority that had restricted the bargaining power of federal-sector labor unions.[71]

Legal philosophy In January 2022, The New York Times reported that Jackson had "not yet written a body of appeals court opinions expressing a legal philosophy" because she had joined the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in the summer of 2021. However, The Times said, Jackson's earlier rulings "comported with those of a liberal-leaning judge", including her opinions blocking various Trump administration actions.[12] Additionally, a review of over 500 of her judicial opinions indicated that she would likely be as liberal as Justice Stephen Breyer, the justice she is nominated to replace.[72]

According to Sahil Kapur, writing for NBC News, "Jackson fits well with the Democratic Party and the progressive movement's agenda" due to her relative youth, background as a public defender, and history of labor-friendly rulings.[73]

Politico reported that "Jackson is popular with liberal legal activists looking to replace Breyer with a justice willing to engage in ideological combat with the court's conservatives."[74]

Nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court President Joe Biden with Jackson prior to her being announced as the nominee, February 25, 2022

In early 2016, the Obama administration officials vetted Jackson as a potential nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the vacancy left by the death of Antonin Scalia.[75][76][77] Jackson was one of five candidates interviewed as a potential nominee for the vacancy.[78]

In early 2022, news outlets speculated that Biden would nominate Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the seat vacated by Stephen Breyer.[79][80][81][82] Biden pledged during the 2020 United States presidential election campaign to appoint a black woman to the court, should a vacancy occur.[79] Jackson's appointment to the D.C. Circuit, considered to be the second most influential federal court in the United States, behind only the Supreme Court, was viewed as preparation for a potential promotion to the Supreme Court.[83]

Jackson's potential nomination to the Supreme Court was supported by civil rights and liberal advocacy organizations.[14] The Washington Post wrote that Jackson's experience as a public defender "has endeared her to the more liberal base of the Democratic Party".[84] While her supporters have touted her history as a public defender as an asset, during her 2021 confirmation hearing, Republicans tried to cast her public defender work as a liability.[25]

On February 25, 2022, Biden announced that Jackson was his nominee for associate justice of the Supreme Court.[6] Her nomination was sent to the Senate on February 28.[85] Her confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee opened on March 21.[86] After the Judiciary Committee deadlocked in an 11''11 vote, her nomination was advanced on April 4 by a 53''47 procedural vote in the Senate.[87][88][89] She was subsequently confirmed by the same margin on April 7, 2022.[90] She received her commission on April 8, 2022.[91] She will be sworn in and become an associate justice in late June or early July, when Breyer's retirement goes into effect.[92]

Affiliations Jackson at the Judge James B. Parsons Legacy Dinner on February 24, 2020

Jackson is a member of the Judicial Conference Committee on Defender Services as well as Harvard University's Board of Overseers and the Council of the American Law Institute.[93] She also currently serves on the board of Georgetown Day School[94] and the U.S. Supreme Court Fellows Commission.[95]

From 2010 to 2011, she served on the advisory board of Montrose Christian School which was a Baptist school.[96] Jackson has served as a judge in several mock trials with the Shakespeare Theatre Company[97][98][99] and for the Historical Society of the District of Columbia's Mock Court Program.[100] Jackson presided over a mock trial, hosted by Drexel University's Thomas R. Kline School of Law in 2018, "to determine if Vice President Aaron Burr was guilty of murdering" Alexander Hamilton.[101]

In 2017, Jackson presented at the University of Georgia School of Law's 35th Edith House Lecture.[102] In 2018, Jackson participated as a panelist at the National Constitution Center's town hall on the legacy of Alexander Hamilton.[103] In 2020, Jackson gave the Martin Luther King Jr. Day lecture at the University of Michigan Law School[104] and was honored at the University of Chicago Law School's third annual Judge James B. Parsons Legacy Dinner, which was hosted by the school's Black Law Students Association.[105]

Personal life In 1996, Brown married surgeon Patrick Graves Jackson, a Boston Brahmin who is a descendant of Continental Congress delegate Jonathan Jackson, and is related to U.S. Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.[106][107][108] Through her marriage, Jackson is related to former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.[109] The couple has two daughters, Leila and Talia.[110][111] Jackson is a non-denominational Protestant.[112]

Published works Recent Case (1995). "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) '' Scope of Liability after Reves v. Ernst & Young". Harvard Law Review. 108 (6): 1405''1410. doi:10.2307/1341863. JSTOR 1341863. [9] [a]Note (1996). "Prevention versus Punishment: Toward a Principled Distinction in the Restraint of Released Sex Offenders". Harvard Law Review. 109 (7): 1711''1728. doi:10.2307/1342027. JSTOR 1342027. S2CID 247656074. [9][a]See also Joe Biden judicial appointment controversiesJoe Biden Supreme Court candidatesList of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States (Seat 2)List of African-American juristsNotes ^ a b The Harvard Law Review publishes its student contributions as "notes" without stating the author's name as part of a policy reflecting "the fact that many members of the Review besides the author make a contribution to each published piece." About the Harvard Law Review, accessed 9 April 2022. References ^ Voruganti, Harsh (March 30, 2021). "Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson '' Nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit". The Vetting Room. Archived from the original on May 13, 2021 . Retrieved May 13, 2021 . ^ a b Marimow, Ann E.; Viser, Matt (March 29, 2021). "Biden's first slate of judicial nominees aims to quickly boost diversity in federal courts". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on March 30, 2021 . Retrieved April 21, 2021 . ^ Jalonick, Mary Clare; Mark Sherman (April 7, 2022). "Jackson confirmed as first Black female high court justice". AP News . Retrieved April 7, 2022 . ^ Hurley, Lawrence; Chung, Andrew; Cowan, Richard (April 7, 2022). "Senate confirms Jackson as first Black woman on U.S. Supreme Court". Reuters . Retrieved April 7, 2022 . ^ "Ketanji Brown Jackson to Serve as Vice Chair". ussc.gov (Press release). United States Sentencing Commission. February 16, 2010. Archived from the original on January 12, 2022 . Retrieved February 28, 2022 . ^ a b "President Biden Nominates Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to Serve as Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court" (Press release). White House Office. February 25, 2022. Archived from the original on February 28, 2022 . Retrieved February 26, 2022 . ^ Tapper, Jake; Ariane de Vogue, Jeff Zeleny, Betsy Klein, Maegan Vazquez (February 25, 2022). "Biden nominates Ketanji Brown Jackson to be first Black woman to sit on Supreme Court". CNN. Archived from the original on February 28, 2022 . Retrieved February 28, 2022 . {{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) ^ a b Marimow, Ann E. (April 30, 2021). "Biden's court pick Ketanji Brown Jackson has navigated a path few Black women have". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on April 30, 2021 . Retrieved April 30, 2021 . ^ a b c d e f "Questionnaire for judicial nominees" (PDF) . United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. 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American lawyer and mayoral candidate

Maya D. Wiley (born January 2, 1964) is an American lawyer, professor, and civil rights activist. Wiley served as counsel to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. She chaired the Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB) from 2016 to 2017.[1][2] She was an MSNBC legal analyst from August 2018 to January 2021.[3] Wiley ran in the 2021 New York City Democratic mayoral primary, in which she placed third.

Wiley is the senior vice president for social justice at The New School and a professor at the Milano School of Policy, Management, and Environment. In March 2022, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights announced Wiley's appointment as its president and CEO, and of its sister group, The Leadership Conference Education Fund, effective May 2.[4][5]

Early life and education [ edit ] Wiley was born on January 2, 1964, in Syracuse, New York, and raised in Washington, D.C.[6] Her father was civil rights leader and academic George Wiley. Her mother, Wretha Frances (Whittle) Wiley, was white, and inspired her to focus on progressive issues.[7][8] On August 8, 1973, Wiley's 42-year-old father fell overboard while sailing with Wiley and her older brother on his 23'foot boat on Chesapeake Bay, Maryland.[9][10] On August 12, 1973, his body was found floating in the bay off the shore of Chesapeake Beach, Maryland, after a three-day search.[11][12]

Wiley earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from Dartmouth College in 1986[13] and a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School.[14]

Career [ edit ] Wiley served in the Civil Division of the U.S. Attorney Office for the Southern District of New York.[15]

In 2013, Wiley was mentioned as a potential president of the NAACP, but the post went instead to Cornell William Brooks.[16] Before being appointed counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2014, she worked for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Open Society Institute.[17]

Wiley spent two and a half years as counsel to de Blasio, during which time she became known for coining the term "agents of the city" in an attempt to prevent public disclosure of de Blasio's communications with lobbyists.[18] She also founded and served as president of the Center for Social Inclusion, a national policy strategy organization dedicated to dismantling structural racism.[19][17][20][21]

Wiley has taught at The New School and appeared on MSNBC as a political and legal analyst.[22]

2021 New York City mayoral campaign [ edit ] Wiley ran in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City in 2021.[22] In June 2021, Wiley was endorsed by U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,[23][24] and former presidential candidates Julian Castro[25] and Elizabeth Warren.[26] She was also endorsed by The Strokes, whose song "Starting Again" was included in a campaign advertisement.[27] The band also played a fundraising concert at Irving Plaza on June 12, 2021.[28] Wiley placed third in the Democratic primary, behind Eric Adams and Kathryn Garcia.[29]

Personal life [ edit ] Wiley is married to Harlan Mandel, CEO of the Media Development Investment Fund.[18] They live in Brooklyn with their two daughters.[7]

References [ edit ] ^ Mueller, Benjamin (August 31, 2017). "Chairwoman Steps Down at New York City Police Oversight Agency". The New York Times. ^ "Mayor Bill de Blasio Announces Two New Appointments To CCRB". The official website of the City of New York. September 26, 2017 . Retrieved April 27, 2017 . ^ MSNBC Public Relations [@MSNBCPR] (August 27, 2018). "We are excited to announce @TheNewSchool professor of Urban Policy and Management @mayawiley as our newest @NBCNews and @MSNBC Legal Analyst. Tune in to @TheBeatWithAri at 6pm ET on @MSNBC for her first appearance in her new role. t.co/lKcwvgUkWm" (Tweet). Archived from the original on May 9, 2019 . Retrieved June 9, 2021 '' via Twitter. ^ Oshin, Olafimihan (March 8, 2022). "Former NYC Mayoral candidate Maya Wiley to head Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights". TheHill . Retrieved March 9, 2022 . ^ "Maya Wiley, former de Blasio aide, hired to helm Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286 . Retrieved March 9, 2022 . ^ "Transcript: Maya Wiley: Racial Justice". MSNBC.com . Retrieved June 5, 2021 . ^ a b "Maya Wiley's push for civil rights". Politico. July 21, 2014. ^ "Wretha Wiley Obituary - Abilene, Texas | Legacy.com". February 12, 2013. ^ "George A. Wiley Papers, 1949-1975 (Archival Resources in Wisconsin)". digicoll.library.wisc.edu. ^ "DR. GEORGE WILEY FEARED DROWNED (Published 1973)". The New York Times. August 10, 1973. ^ "Body of Dr. George Wiley Recovered and Identified (Published 1973)". The New York Times. August 12, 1973. ^ "DR. GEORGE WILEY FEARED DROWNED (Published 1973)". The New York Times. August 10, 1973. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved October 8, 2020 . ^ Furlong, Lisa (June 2016). "Maya Wiley '86: An NYC aide on facing urban challenges". Dartmouth Alumni Magazine . Retrieved June 22, 2021 . ^ "NBC News legal analyst Maya Wiley to deliver keynote address for Clemson's MLK Commemorative Service". Newsstand | Clemson University News and Stories, South Carolina. January 15, 2019 . Retrieved October 8, 2020 . ^ "Maya Wiley Joins CPD Board of Directors". The Center for Popular Democracy. March 21, 2017 . Retrieved July 30, 2020 . ^ "Who's going to be the next president of the NAACP?". The Washington Post. September 20, 2013. ^ a b "27 Black Women Activists Everyone Should Know". For Harriet. February 27, 2014. ^ a b Coltin, Jeff (September 2, 2020). "Five things to know about Maya Wiley". City & State NY . Retrieved May 20, 2021 . {{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link) ^ "Maya Wiley". City of New York. ^ "De Blasio Picks More Liberal Activists Than Managers for City Posts". The New York Times. February 28, 2014. ^ "The Women of New York's City Hall". The New York Times. May 9, 2014. ^ a b Fitzsimmons, Emma G. (October 8, 2020). "Maya Wiley Enters Mayor's Race: 'I Am Not a Conventional Candidate' ". The New York Times . Retrieved October 9, 2020 . ^ Glueck, Katie (June 5, 2021). "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Endorses Maya Wiley for N.Y.C. Mayor". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331 . Retrieved June 5, 2021 . ^ "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorses Maya Wiley for New York mayor". the Guardian. June 5, 2021 . Retrieved June 5, 2021 . ^ "Maya Wiley gets nod from former presidential hopeful Julian Castro". ^ Wiley, Maya [@mayawiley] (June 7, 2021). "Big structural change is exactly what New York City needs right now. @ewarren, thank you for your confidence in me. Let's dream big and fight hard for the City welove. t.co/P2qbEekgUL" (Tweet). Archived from the original on June 8, 2021 . Retrieved June 9, 2021 '' via Twitter. ^ Blistein, Jon (June 21, 2021). "The Strokes Tease New Song 'Starting Again' in Campaign Ad for NYC Mayoral Candidate Maya Wiley". Rolling Stone . Retrieved July 9, 2021 . ^ Kreps, Daniel (June 13, 2021). "See the Strokes Play Fundraiser Gig for NYC Mayoral Candidate Maya Wiley". Rolling Stone . Retrieved July 9, 2021 . ^ Honan, Katie (July 7, 2021). "New York City Mayoral Race: Eric Adams Wins Democratic Primary". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660 . Retrieved July 7, 2021 . External links [ edit ] Campaign websiteCenter for Social InclusionAppearances on C-SPAN

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Wed, 13 Apr 2022 18:48

Sabriya I. Williams is poised and driven with 20 years of experience working to close the disparities gap amongst people of color. Sabriya brings a wealth of knowledge, professionalism, and integrity to every project she takes on. She is a wife, mother, sister, daughter and proud resident of our nation's capital. Sabriya grew up in a family where social activism was modeled by her mother and she has continued in that vein.

Sabriya worked for many years as an outreach manager and events coordinator for the Office of Minority Health, DHHS and various non-profit organizations. In these roles she has co-managed and developed national campaigns, developed and implemented an exhibit's program that doubled in national visibility under her direction. She was the event coordinator for the Black 44 Professional Development Retreat, which included a Fireside chat with Joy Reid and Valerie Jarrett.

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Wed, 13 Apr 2022 18:44

Earlier this month, an Old Dominion University (ODU) professor of sociology and criminal justice, Allyn Walker, brought global attention to a newer term, ''Minor-Attracted Persons'' or ''MAPs'' for short, within a greater argument that pedophiles shouldn't be ostracized for their urges. Although ODU seemingly initially defended the comments, they eventually placed Walker on administrative leave. Walker, a transgender male, goes by they/them pronouns.

In the controversial interview with the Prostasia Foundation, an activist group seeking to destigmatize pedophilia, Walker discussed her book, ''A Long Dark Shadow: Minor Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity,'' and claimed that the stigma associated with attraction to minors was harmful '-- not just to the pedophile, but potentially to children.

''[T]he stigma that we have against MAPs throughout society can not only affect well-being, but it can actually lead to harm against children,'' said Walker.

Walker also claimed that pedophiles' attraction to children wasn't immoral, arguing that actions alone could be moral or immoral.

''I've definitely heard the idea that you brought up though that the use of the term minor attracted person suggests that it's okay to be attracted to children. But using a term that communicates who someone is attracted to doesn't indicate anything about the morality of that attraction. From my perspective, there is no morality or immorality attached to attraction to anyone because no one can control who they're attracted to at all. In other words, it's not who we're attracted to that's either okay or not, okay. It's our behaviors and responding to that attraction that are either okay or not okay.'' (emphasis added)

Prior to being placed on administrative leave from ODU, Walker released a statement through the university condemning the sexual abuse of a child.

''I want to be clear: child sexual abuse is morally wrong and inexcusable crime. As an assistant professor of sociology and criminal justice, the goal of my research is to prevent crime. My work is informed by my past experience and advocacy as a social worker counseling victims. I embarked on this research in hopes of gaining understanding of a group that, previously, has not been studied in order to identify ways to protect children,'' stated Walker.

According to a profile on 500 Queer Scientists, Walker's career began as a social worker counseling crime victims. After working with sexual assault victims, Walker became more interested in ''wanting to help prevent harms created by systems.'' Walker later earned a criminal justice PhD and focused on ''institutional harm,'' an emphasis on the harms created by systems such as criminal processing and mental health care.

Walker was also involved in the American Society of Criminology (ASC) Division on Queer Criminology (DQS). The DQS published a post in support of Walker's research and conclusions; they claimed that any controversy or opposition to Walker's perspective was a personal attack on Walker as a transgender person.

''Recently, DQC member Dr. Allyn Walker's work on minor-attracted persons has been targeted by people who are misrepresenting their research . It is necessary to understand the causes of sexual offenses in order to prevent them, and Dr. Walker's work aims to do just that.

It is an example of the type of work that can prevent victimization and reduce harm, specifically child sex abuse. Dr. Walker's research focuses on people who find themselves sexually attracted to children but have not committed any sexual offenses against children.

Some of these individuals were sexually victimized themselves as children, but fear asking for help given they are labeled by society as ''pedophiles''.

Much of the bias against Dr. Walker's research is rooted in their gender and is an attack against transgender people specifically and LGBTQ+ people more generally. We firmly believe a cisgender researcher would not have been targeted in this manner.

The leadership of the Division on Queer Criminology is fully supportive of Dr. Walker and the important contributions their work makes to the field of criminology.'' (emphasis added)

Along with the book, Walker released several other research papers on the topic '-- ''Minor Attraction: A Queer Criminological Issue'' (2017), and '''I'm Not like That, So Am I Gay?' The Use of Queer-Spectrum Identity Labels Among Minor-Attracted People'' (2019).

The works convey a consistent idea, the same one Walker's intellectual predecessors have steadily marched to impress upon society: pedophiles aren't necessarily dangerous or immoral. In fact, they say, society may be to blame if they do act. At the tip of this intellectual iceberg is the term used to destigmatize pedophilia: ''MAP.''

In the past 14 years, the acronym ''MAP'' has gained traction with those seeking to destigmatize pedophilia: pedophiles themselves, with the assistance of those in academia and even in the medical community. Some use the distinction ''NMAP'' or ''NOMAP,'' short for ''Non-Offending Minor-Attracted Persons,'' to signify those that don't act on their urges through contact or mediums like child porn. However, most simply use ''MAP.''

''Pedophile'' is the generally accepted term for an individual who is sexually attracted to children, derived from the mental illness ''pedophilia.'' The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) categorizes pedophilia, or pedophilic disorder, among other paraphilia or paraphilic disorders: deviant sexual interests, practices, or behaviors that may cause psychological distress in themselves or others, including those who can't give legal consent.

Then came MAP: coined by pedophiles with the support of academics and mental health professionals like psychologists purportedly seeking to understand and help them.

The predecessor to MAP came from a similar term, ''minor-attracted adults.'' One of the earliest uses of that term was in a lengthy 1998 profile piece on Christian support groups for pedophilia: ''Not an Oxymoron: Christian Pedophiles Form Online Support Groups.'' The blogger, Heather Elizabeth Peterson, ran two now-defunct websites, Philia and Greenbelt, each offering faith-based information and support resources for pedophiles. In the following years, the phrase ''minor-attracted adults'' picked up use and was abbreviated frequently as ''MAA.''

The term gained more traction after 2003 with the creation of the nonprofit B4U-ACT, co-founded by a convicted child molester, Michael Melsheimer, and a counselor, Russell Dick. B4U-ACT markets itself as a collaborative effort between mental health professionals and pedophiles to produce research, support, and communications on pedophilia.

B4U-ACT used the term ''MAA'' until 2007 when it coined ''minor-attracted persons'' and ''MAP'' because it reported that pedophiles were claiming that they experienced their pedophilic urges prior to adulthood.

It took several more years for the term to pick up more significant traction in the academic world. In 2016, a counseling student at City University of Seattle submitted a thesis on destigmatizing pedophilia titled, '''Come In and Talk for a While' '' Bringing Minor-Attracted Persons in From the Waiting Room.''

MAP isn't the only euphemism for pedophilia. Other pedophilic jargon includes ''AOA,'' or ''age of attraction.'' Some within the MAP community have coined slogans like ''Map Pride,'' ''MAP Positivity,'' ''MAP Support,'' and even ''MAP Rights.''

MAP is a widely-used term, unlike the ''clovergender'' hoax that emerged in 2017, wherein social media accounts purported that pedophiles were attempting to join the LGBTQ+ community as individuals whose attraction to minors was fine because they identified as minors on the inside.

Everywhere the term ''MAP'' is used, there's a concerted effort to understand and even destigmatize pedophilia. In 2012, Slate published an article by Jennifer Bleyer '-- who would later serve as a senior editor at Psychology Today from 2014 to 2018 '-- describing a man's admission of his long-standing attraction to boys, titled ''How Can We Stop Pedophiles?: Stop treating them like monsters.''

Bleyer proposed that society should bear some of the blame for pedophiles' crimes. She argued that destigmatizing pedophilia could prevent harm to children.

''He considers himself a 'minor-attracted person,' a term that some prefer to 'pedophile,' and what he and others like him have been quietly promoting is the idea that society needs to recognize that they exist, that they are capable of controlling their sexual desires and deserve support and respect for doing so,'' wrote the reporter, Jennifer Bleyer.

Bleyer even offered something like a follow-up on that story a year later in a Slate opinion piece. After recounting the harrowing, years-long abuse of two nine-year-old girls, Bleyer proposed an alternative to focusing on the victims of childhood sexual abuse: a focus on the perpetrators themselves.

''Nowhere ['...] is the most dark and disturbing question asked: Why do some grown men want to rape or molest little kids? Or even look at images of such acts? You might answer that it's because they're sick perverts, but 'sick pervert' is neither a medical diagnosis nor a psychiatric designation. Believing that the world is simply pocked with sick perverts who are destined to rape and molest children is, in a way, to give in to the inevitability of their crimes with our fingers crossed that they'll be caught. (Most are not.) It does nothing to prevent men like John from doing what he did, nor what happened to Nicole and Amy from happening again.''

A year after Bleyer joined Psychology Today , she advanced the ideas presented in those two Slate pieces with a feature totaling over 4,400 words in its November/December 2015 issue: ''SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIANT: THE INTENSE STIGMA SURROUNDING CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE CLOUDS AN ALREADY MISUNDERSTOOD SUBJECT AND MAY EVEN PREVENT PEOPLE FROM GETTING HELP BEFORE THEY COMMIT HARM. ONE CONVICTED OFFENDER SHARES HIS STORY.'' The feature focused mostly on the feelings and experiences of a perpetrator prior to and following his arrest, combined with psychological analyses of pedophilia that cast a sympathetic light on their mental illness.

Bleyer wasn't alone in her takes on pedophilia. Other academics proposed that society itself was to blame for the sexual abuse of children. In 2019, two psychologists published an opinion piece claiming that stigmas attached to pedophilia led to harm for both pedophiles and children. The abstract read:

''[N]egative reactions towards child sexual abuse at the individual, interpersonal, and societal levels often block pathways to the prevention of child sexual abuse. Using the case of Mark Salling, the former Glee actor who recently died by suicide following charges of child pornography possession, we argue that societal fears and frustrations about child sexual exploitation and abuse are often counter-productive and should be redirected towards prevention efforts. Accordingly, current and potential initiatives for prevention of child sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation are discussed.''

Scholarly uses of the term have increased over the past two years '-- along with the claim of society's responsibility for pedophilia. In July, a Current Psychiatry article argued that an understanding of MAPs would be crucial to offering proper treatment and thereby preventing harm to children:

''[M]any individuals with pedophilic interests never have sexual contact with a child or the penal system. This non-offending pedophile group reports a greater prevalence of psychiatric symptoms compared with the general population, but given the intense stigmatization of their preferences, they are largely psychiatrically underrecognized and underserved. This article focuses on the unique psychiatric needs of this neglected population. By understanding and addressing the treatment needs of these patients, psychiatrists and other mental health clinicians can serve a pivotal role in decreasing stigma, promoting wellness, and preventing sexual abuse.''

These arguments to destigmatize pedophilia have long been associated with efforts to lower the age of consent, thereby legalizing sexual relationships between adults and minors. Pedophile advocacy coalitions have made that clear, such as the North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) . Defunct groups before them consistently advocated for the same changes, such as the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), a British group existing from 1974 to 1984, or the Vereniging Martijn (MARTIJN), Dutch group existing from 1982 until a court ordered their disbandment in 2014.

Some of the earliest documented pedophile advocacy groups and organizations emerged in the 1970s, following the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Scholars have speculated that this timeline of events is part of ongoing efforts by cultural revolutionaries. Boise State University political science professor and Claremont Institute Senior Fellow Scott Yenor '-- author of ''The Recovery of Family Life: Exposing the Limits of Modern Ideologies,'' a historical analysis of the sexual revolution '-- claimed that children are the '' next frontier '' in an ongoing sexual revolution aimed at reforming American society:

''Conservatives often claim that the sexual revolution will meet 'natural limits.' Perhaps the principal natural limit is respect for the sexual innocence of children. Our society has long opposed thinking of children as sex objects or sexual beings, and rarely encouraged children themselves to engage in sexual play and exploration. Childhood is a time to cultivate self-control, to encourage sexual modesty, and to turn shame into sexual virtue. We enforce this limit with age of consent laws and with laws against child pornography.

But sexual revolutionaries do not respect this 'natural' limit. Indeed, sexual revolutionaries consider children to be sexual beings with sexual desires that crave fulfillment. Leaders of the sexual revolution thought Christian and bourgeois society would collapse if children were raised to a 'sex affirmative' environment without 'repression.'''

An example of activist efforts to sexualize children is evident in philosophies undergirding certain K-12 curriculum that parents and communities have begun to discover over the last two years with pandemic-onset distance learning. These philosophies, which argue that children are sexual from birth and have a right to sexual knowledge and pleasure, have a common origin: Dr. Alfred Kinsey, ''Father of the Sexual Revolution'' and founder of Indiana University's Institute for Sex Research now known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction.

According to Kinsey biographer Judith Reisman, part of Kinsey's research on child sexuality included the sexual violation of hundreds to thousands of infants and children.

Just as it was an academic who initiated efforts to normalize pedophilia, so it was an academic '-- ODU's Walker '-- who marked a new chapter in that march toward normalization earlier this month. Though not the first to introduce the term, Walker brought significant attention to it compared to those past and present who propose similar ideas within the same ideology.

That ideology contests our culture should be more understanding of pedophilia. If not, they argue, harm will befall children '-- and those who stigmatize pedophilia will be to blame.

Corinne Murdock is a reporter for The Daily Wire and AZ Free News. Have something you think the mainstream media won't cover? Send tips to corinnejournalist@gmail.com .

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author's own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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Wed, 13 Apr 2022 17:21

SummaryActions to Take Today to Protect ICS/SCADA Devices:' Enforce multifactor authentication for all remote access to ICS networks and devices whenever possible.' Change all passwords to ICS/SCADA devices and systems on a consistent schedule, especially all default passwords, to device-unique strong passwords to mitigate password brute force attacks and to give defender monitoring systems opportunities to detect common attacks.' Leverage a properly installed continuous OT monitoring solution to log and alert on malicious indicators and behaviors.

The Department of Energy (DOE), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are releasing this joint Cybersecurity Advisory (CSA) to warn that certain advanced persistent threat (APT) actors have exhibited the capability to gain full system access to multiple industrial control system (ICS)/supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) devices, including:

Schneider Electric programmable logic controllers (PLCs),OMRON Sysmac NEX PLCs, andOpen Platform Communications Unified Architecture (OPC UA) servers.The APT actors have developed custom-made tools for targeting ICS/SCADA devices. The tools enable them to scan for, compromise, and control affected devices once they have established initial access to the operational technology (OT) network. Additionally, the actors can compromise Windows-based engineering workstations, which may be present in information technology (IT) or OT environments, using an exploit that compromises an ASRock motherboard driver with known vulnerabilities. By compromising and maintaining full system access to ICS/SCADA devices, APT actors could elevate privileges, move laterally within an OT environment, and disrupt critical devices or functions.

DOE, CISA, NSA, and the FBI urge critical infrastructure organizations, especially Energy Sector organizations, to implement the detection and mitigation recommendations provided in this CSA to detect potential malicious APT activity and harden their ICS/SCADA devices.

Click here for a PDF version of this report.

Technical DetailsAPT actors have developed custom-made tools that, once they have established initial access in an OT network, enables them to scan for, compromise, and control certain ICS/SCADA devices, including the following:

Schneider Electric MODICON and MODICON Nano PLCs, including (but may not be limited to) TM251, TM241, M258, M238, LMC058, and LMC078;OMRON Sysmac NJ and NX PLCs, including (but may not be limited to) NEX NX1P2, NX-SL3300, NX-ECC203, NJ501-1300, S8VK, and R88D-1SN10F-ECT; and OPC Unified Architecture (OPC UA) servers. The APT actors' tools have a modular architecture and enable cyber actors to conduct highly automated exploits against targeted devices. The tools have a virtual console with a command interface that mirrors the interface of the targeted ICS/SCADA device. Modules interact with targeted devices, enabling operations by lower-skilled cyber actors to emulate higher-skilled actor capabilities.

The APT actors can leverage the modules to scan for targeted devices, conduct reconnaissance on device details, upload malicious configuration/code to the targeted device, back up or restore device contents, and modify device parameters.

In addition, the APT actors can use a tool that installs and exploits a known-vulnerable ASRock-signed motherboard driver, AsrDrv103.sys, exploiting CVE-2020-15368 to execute malicious code in the Windows kernel. Successful deployment of this tool can allow APT actors to move laterally within an IT or OT environment and disrupt critical devices or functions.

APT Tool for Schneider Electric Devices The APT actors' tool for Schneider Electric devices has modules that interact via normal management protocols and Modbus (TCP 502). Modules may allow cyber actors to:

Run a rapid scan that identifies all Schneider PLCs on the local network via User Datagram Protocol (UDP) multicast with a destination port of 27127 (Note: UDP 27127 is a standard discovery scan used by engineering workstations to discover PLCs and may not be indicative of malicious activity);Brute-force Schneider Electric PLC passwords using CODESYS and other available device protocols via UDP port 1740 against defaults or a dictionary word list (Note: this capability may work against other CODESYS-based devices depending on individual design and function, and this report will be updated as more information becomes available); Conduct a denial-of-service attack to prevent network communications from reaching the PLC;Sever connections, requiring users to re-authenticate to the PLC, likely to facilitate capture of credentials; Conduct a 'packet of death' attack to crash the PLC until a power cycle and configuration recovery is conducted; and Send custom Modbus commands (Note: this capability may work against Modbus other than in Schneider Electric PLCs).Refer to the appendix for tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) associated with this tool.

APT Tool for OMRON The APT actors' tool for OMRON devices has modules that can interact by:

Scanning for OMRON using (Factory Interface Network Service (FINS) protocol;Parsing the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) response from OMRON devices;Retrieving the media access control (MAC) address of the device;Polling for specific devices connected to the PLC;Backing up/restoring arbitrary files to/from the PLC; andLoading a custom malicious agent on OMRON PLCs for additional attacker-directed capability.Additionally, the OMRON modules can upload an agent that allows a cyber actor to connect and initiate commands'--such as file manipulation, packet captures, and code execution'--via HTTP and/or Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS).

Refer to the appendix for TTPs associated with this tool.

APT Tool for OPC UA The APT actors' tool for OPC UA has modules with basic functionality to identify OPC UA servers and to connect to an OPC UA server using default or previously compromised credentials. The client can read the OPC UA structure from the server and potentially write tag values available via OPC UA.

Refer to the appendix for TTPs associated with this tool.

MitigationsNote: these mitigations are provided to enable network defenders to begin efforts to protect systems and devices from new capabilities. They have not been verified against every environment and should be tested prior to implementing.

DOE, CISA, NSA, and the FBI recommend all organizations with ICS/SCADA devices implement the following proactive mitigations:

Isolate ICS/SCADA systems and networks from corporate and internet networks using strong perimeter controls, and limit any communications entering or leaving ICS/SCADA perimeters. Enforce multifactor authentication for all remote access to ICS networks and devices whenever possible.Have a cyber incident response plan, and exercise it regularly with stakeholders in IT, cybersecurity, and operations.Change all passwords to ICS/SCADA devices and systems on a consistent schedule, especially all default passwords, to device-unique strong passwords to mitigate password brute force attacks and to give defender monitoring systems opportunities to detect common attacks.Maintain known-good offline backups for faster recovery upon a disruptive attack, and conduct hashing and integrity checks on firmware and controller configuration files to ensure validity of those backups. Limit ICS/SCADA systems' network connections to only specifically allowed management and engineering workstations.Robustly protect management systems by configuring Device Guard, Credential Guard, and Hypervisor Code Integrity (HVCI). Install Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) solutions on these subnets and ensure strong anti-virus file reputation settings are configured.Implement robust log collection and retention from ICS/SCADA systems and management subnets.Leverage a continuous OT monitoring solution to alert on malicious indicators and behaviors, watching internal systems and communications for known hostile actions and lateral movement. For enhanced network visibility to potentially identify abnormal traffic, consider using CISA's open-source Industrial Control Systems Network Protocol Parsers (ICSNPP).Ensure all applications are only installed when necessary for operation. Enforce principle of least privilege. Only use admin accounts when required for tasks, such as installing software updates. Investigate symptoms of a denial of service or connection severing, which exhibit as delays in communications processing, loss of function requiring a reboot, and delayed actions to operator comments as signs of potential malicious activity.Monitor systems for loading of unusual drivers, especially for ASRock driver if no ASRock driver is normally used on the system. ResourcesFor additional information on securing OT devices, see

Layering Network Security Through Segmentation, Stop Malicious Cyber Activity Against Connected Operational Technology, andNSA and CISA Recommend Immediate Actions to Reduce Exposure Across Operational Technologies and Control Systems. DisclaimerThe information in this report is being provided ''as is'' for informational purposes only. DOE, CISA, NSA, and the FBI do not endorse any commercial product or service, including any subjects of analysis. Any reference to specific commercial products, processes, or services by service mark, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the DOE, CISA, NSA, or the FBI, and this guidance shall not be used for advertising or product endorsement purposes.

AcknowledgementsThe DOE, CISA, NSA, and the FBI would like to thank Dragos, Mandiant, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, and Schneider Electric for their contributions to this joint CSA.

Appendix: APT Cyber Tools Tactics, Techniques, and ProceduresSee tables 1 through 3 for TTPs associated with the cyber actors' tools described in this CSA mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK for ICS framework. See the ATT&CK for ICS framework for all referenced threat actor tactics and techniques.

Table 1: APT Tool for Schneider Electric ICS TTPs

Table 2: APT Tool for OMRON ICS TTPs

Table 3: APT Tool for OPC UA ICS TTPs

Contact InformationAll organizations should report incidents and anomalous activity to CISA 24/7 Operations Center at report@cisa.gov or (888) 282-0870 and/or to the FBI via your local FBI field office or the FBI's 24/7 CyWatch at (855) 292-3937 or CyWatch@fbi.gov. When available, please include the following information regarding the incident: date, time, and location of the incident; type of activity; number of people affected; type of equipment used for the activity; the name of the submitting company or organization; and a designated point of contact. For NSA client requirements or general cybersecurity inquiries, contact the Cybersecurity Requirements Center at 410-854-4200 or Cybersecurity_Requests@nsa.gov.

RevisionsThis product is provided subject to this Notification and this Privacy & Use policy.

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Wed, 13 Apr 2022 12:51

Washington Post columnist Vladimir Kara-Murza, who has been critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was arrested in Moscow on Monday.

Kara-Murza was arrested outside of his house on the same day that he appeared on CNN in an interview .

In the interview, he said , '' This regime that is in power in our country today, it's not just corrupt '... it's not just authoritarian. It is a regime of murderers,'' adding, ''and it is important to say it out loud.''

''And it is really tragic, frankly, I have no other word for this, that it took a large-scale war in the middle of Europe, which Vladimir Putin is now conducting against Ukraine, for most western leaders to finally open their eyes to the true nature of this regime,'' he added.

He also said in the interview, ''Well, I'm speaking to you from Moscow now. Look, I'm a Russian politician. I have to be in Russia, it's my home country. The biggest gift we could give '-- those of us who are in opposition to Putin's regime '-- we could give to the Kremlin would be just to give up and run. I mean, that's all they want from us.''

He also reportedly said he has ''absolutely no doubt that the Putin regime will end over this war in Ukraine.''

According to The Washington Post, the Russian human rights project OVD-Info said Kara-Murza was arrested and was being held on a 15-day ''administrative jail sentence.''

''He was reportedly accused of 'behaving inappropriately in the sight of police officers, changing his direction of movement, quickening his pace and trying to hide when asked to stop.' OVD-Info cited Kara-Murza's defense team, who said he had merely been exiting a car near his house,'' the Post reported.

Kara-Murza is a colleague of the deceased Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was assassinated in 2015. Kara-Murza was deputy leader of the People's Freedom Party, and is an author, documentary director, and was a candidate for the Russian parliament.

Vladimir Kara-Murza's wife, Evgenia, posted on Twitter, ''Twice have the Russian authorities tried to kill my husband for advocating for sanctions against thieves and murderers, and now they want to throw him in prison for calling their bloody war a WAR. I demand my husband's immediate release! ''

Twice have the Russian authorities tried to kill my husband for advocating for sanctions against thieves and murderers, and now they want to throw him in prison for calling their bloody war a WAR. I demand my husband's immediate release!

'-- Evgenia Kara-Murza (@ekaramurza) April 12, 2022

The Post's publisher, Fred Ryan, released a statement Tuesday, saying, ''Following poisonings and other grave threats, this outrageous detention is the latest move in Vladimir Putin's ongoing effort to silence Kara-Murza and hide the truth about the atrocities Putin is committing in the Russian people's name'...No one should be deceived by the Russian government's trumped-up charges and smears, and Kara-Murza should be released immediately.''

Over the past few years, Kara-Murza has written many columns that have spoken out against Russia's actions.

The Daily Wire is one of America's fastest growing conservative media companies for breaking news, investigative reporting, sports, podcasts, in-depth analysis, books, and entertainment for a reason: because we believe in what we do. We believe in our country, in the value of truth and the freedom to speak it, and in the right to challenge tyranny wherever we see it. Believe the same? Become a member now and join our mission.

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Tue, 12 Apr 2022 12:47

Developers are increasingly voicing their opinions through their open source projects in active use by thousands of software applications and organizations.

To do this, a maintainer adds broken code, protest messages, or undesired damaging functionality in the latest versions of their project without documenting it beforehand.

When an existing application fetches the latest version of the project, the newly added code gets pulled in and runs by surprise.

Most recently, the developer of the 'event-source-polyfill' npm package has peacefully protested Russia's "unreasonable invasion" of Ukraine, to Russian consumers.

While for the longest time open source software has been reliable, community-fuelled, and efficient in that it takes out the need to reinvent the wheel, the recurring cases of voluntary self-sabotage by maintainers have cast doubts on the overall reliability of the ecosystem.

Third 'protestware' of 2022On March 17th, Russia-based developer Viktor Mukhachev aka Yaffle added an interesting piece of code to his popular npm library 'event-source-polyfill'.

Polyfill packages are designed to implement existing JavaScript features on web browsers that may not support them. As such, the package in question expands Mozilla's 'EventSource' APIs to other browsers that may lack the concept.

And this would explain why the package is used by well over 135,000 GitHub repositories and downloaded over 600,000 times weekly on npm.

However, a change introduced in version 1.0.26 of 'event-source-polyfill', as seen by BleepingComputer, means applications built with the library will show anti-war messages to Russia-based users after 15 seconds of launch.

As of today, the new version continues to be up on npm and GitHub, nearly four weeks after it went live.

New versions of 'event-source-polyfill' show anti-war messages to Russian users (BleepingComputer)This marks the third major protest of 2022 by an open source developer leveraging his vastly used software to express opinions on a matter of public interest.

In fact around the same time as 'event-source-polyfill' turned into protestware, several other vastly popular packages followed suit.

The 'es5-ext' and 'styled-components' are just some examples of real npm packages with millions of weekly downloads turned protestware, as analyzed by software security company Checkmarx.

Another popular npm package 'styled-components' turned protestware (BleepingComputer)In 2016, the 28-year-old Azer Ko§ulu broke the internet by withdrawing his popular 'left-pad' library from the npm registry. The far-reaching impact compelled former npm CTO Laurie Voss to restore the removed versions of left-pad.

January's sabotage of 'colors' and 'faker' libraries in protest by their maintainer potentially broke thousands of production applications that were using the dependencies.

Whereas, the outright destructive version of 'node-ipc' released last month by its developer deleted all data on the hard drive of users it believed were Russian or Belarusian.

The case of 'event-source-polyfill', however, is more benevolent '--akin to a peaceful protest.

Rather than deleting any data or breaking applications, the application urges Russia to end its "unreasonable invasion" of Ukraine and prompts Russian civilians to seek reliable news sources.

"The people of Ukraine are universally mobilized and ready to defend their country from the enemy... 91% of Ukrainians fully support their President Volodymyr Zelensky and his response to the Russian attack," writes Yaffle within the library.

"The whole world condemned the unreasonable invasion and decided to enter unprecedented sanctions against Russia . With each new day, they will be felt more and more strongly among the civilians."

Citing concerns over Russia's control over information that gets disseminated to the civilians, the developer urged users to beware of "one-sided" news and go to reliable sources, giving BBC's Tor website as an example.

Lastly, after appealing to Russian President Putin to end this "senseless" war, the newly added code directs the user to a Change.org petition that's been signed by over 1.2 million people to date.

Self-sabotage breeds trust issuesHeroic as these self-sabotage incidents might be for many, for some they cross an ethical line and have posed a new challenge that everyone must now worry about: the trustworthiness and reliability of open source libraries.

In particular, the 'colors' sabotage led to mixed reactions'--some praising the maintainer for taking a stance against big corporations who use open source without funding it.

In contrast, the publication of destructive 'node-ipc' versions drew sharp criticism from developers, with some calling it "a huge damage" to the credibility of the whole open source community.

But, 'event-source-polyfill' may not fall in the same league:

"The popup message is information that there's a war going on, and a suggestion to download the Tor browser (to get past Putin's censorship)," posted a HackerNews user in reaction to the new 'event-source-polyfill'.

"To some, that's malware, whilst to some people in Russia, it could be valuable information, something helpful."

In the same thread, another reader states, while code changes interfering with the project's intended and expected purposes may be termed as "sabotage," the case of 'event-source-polyfill' doesn't really fit the definition:

"Sabotage, to me, explicitly means that the act was committed with the intent of derailing the project's original purpose. This act seems orthogonal to the original intent of the project, so it's underhanded but it's not really sabotage."

A debate further ensued on GitHub though, whether certain parts of the newly introduced code could break production apps in edge cases.

As a caution, some have pinned their 'event-source-polyfill' version to the earlier, safe version 1.0.25.

Alternatively, one can always clone (fork) trusted versions of an existing open source project and opt to maintain these versions themselves, as opposed to indiscriminately fetching the latest official releases.

Redefining open source Open source software largely started out as a way to promote an "open development process," simplify licensing, and better engage with the users and a community of developers who can peer-review and improve software through active participation.

Open source registries like npm, PyPI, and RubyGems are therefore set up in a manner that minimizes barriers to entry. These registries let anyone publish software packages that are ready for consumption by novices and hard-core professionals alike.

While version control platforms like GitHub are traditionally associated with software development and source code, cost-free registries like npm simplify the hosting and distribution process for developers looking to ship and use each other's finished apps that run out of the box.

But, as with any system that's open to the public, software repositories can and often face abuse from malicious actors.

Traditional security incidents on npm centered around the distribution of typosquatted packages'--such as an 'electorn' package published by a threat actor to trap developers installing Electron. Should the developer misspell 'electron' in their console, they'd end up with the attacker's malicious package.

In 2021, dependency confusion drastically gained momentum as an emerging attack vector against software supply chain attacks.

Major incidents also involved accounts of legitimate developers being hijacked by attackers who'd now publish new versions of real libraries laden with malicious code.

Both 2018's 'event-stream' and ESLint compromises, and this year's cases of 'ua-parser-js', 'coa', and 'rc' being hijacked to serve malware are examples of this problem.

But the recurring incidents of developers voluntarily withdrawing their code from the internet or sabotaging their own projects to accentuate a bigger idea have prompted software consumers to re-evaluate the open source model as it stands today, and engage in a public dialogue that is overdue.

While current protestware may be centered around the war, that doesn't mean it always will be limited to select trending issues.

Developers have discovered an avenue of creative self-expression that no longer restricts them to just delivering expected functionality'--a developer can, on a whim, decide to change their mind and their code as they please. A neglected premise of open source is that they always could.

Update Apr 12th, 02:51 AM ET: Added other examples: 'styled-components' and 'es5-ext' npm packages turned protestware. h/t Tzachi (Zack) Zorn.

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Archived Version

Mon, 11 Apr 2022 16:33

Over-65-year-olds who want to withdraw all their KiwiSaver funds at once are being hit by delays due to a system issue at Inland Revenue.

KiwiSaver members can only withdraw their money from the retirement savings scheme for certain reasons; to buy a first home, if they are facing financial hardship or once they reach the age of entitlement for New Zealand Superannuation - currently 65.

An Inland Revenue spokeswoman said that it currently had an issue affecting members who were 65 plus and wanting to make full retirement withdrawals.

"It's an issue for members where we have to revise some historic government contribution claims (GVC), or process and pay a final GVC."

KiwiSaver members can get up to $521 from the Government each year they are in KiwiSaver with the Government putting in 50c for each dollar a member contributes up to $1042.

The contribution is calculated over the year to June 30 so anyone who turns 65 part-way through the year will have their government contribution pro-rated depending on when their birthday is.

KiwiSaver members can take their money out of KiwiSaver at 65 either in a lump sum or by taking regular payments and must apply to their provider to get access to the savings.

The IRD spokeswoman said it had told providers that until its system issue was resolved it would manually process any final government contribution claims or adjustments where the provider considered the request urgent.

"The scheme provider also has the option to pay out the majority of the members' funds while this is being worked through, but this will come down to individual providers as to whether they will allow this."

The spokeswoman said the issue was affecting fewer than a thousand KiwiSaver members and a fix was being worked on as a priority.

First-home withdrawals were not being affected by the issue, she added.

An ANZ spokeswoman said the matter was impacting all KiwiSaver providers but only members who were making a full withdrawal for the first time, which was normally at 65 or later.

"Currently only around 50 ANZ KiwiSaver members are impacted."

She said the bank was advising members there could be an additional one to two days' delay in processing their withdrawal as it needed to implement some additional processes with the IRD.

"We're continuing to monitor this carefully to ensure that all requests are processed with minimal delay."

As of February 197,000 Kiwis had closed their KiwiSaver account due to retirement.

That was up from 179,500 a year earlier.

There are more than 3.2 million people in KiwiSaver.

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Archived Version

Mon, 11 Apr 2022 15:26

These images show cellular regeneration, in pink, in a preclinical model of sensorineural hearing loss. The control is on the left and the right has been treated. Credit: Hinton AS, Yang-Hood A, Schrader AD, Loose C, Ohlemiller KK, McLean WJ.

MIT spinout Frequency Therapeutics' drug candidate stimulates the growth of hair cells in the inner ear.

The biotechnology company Frequency Therapeutics is seeking to reverse hearing loss '-- not with hearing aids or implants, but with a new kind of regenerative therapy. The company uses small molecules to program progenitor cells, a descendant of stem cells in the inner ear, to create the tiny hair cells that allow us to hear.

Hair cells die off when exposed to loud noises or drugs including certain chemotherapies and antibiotics. Frequency's drug candidate is designed to be injected into the ear to regenerate these cells within the cochlea. In clinical trials, the company has already improved people's hearing as measured by tests of speech perception '-- the ability to understand speech and recognize words.

''Speech perception is the No. 1 goal for improving hearing and the No. 1 need we hear from patients,'' says Frequency co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer Chris Loose PhD '07.

In Frequency's first clinical study, the company saw statistically significant improvements in speech perception in some participants after a single injection, with some responses lasting nearly two years.

The company has dosed more than 200 patients to date and has seen clinically meaningful improvements in speech perception in three separate clinical studies. Another study failed to show improvements in hearing compared to the placebo group, but the company attributes that result to flaws in the design of the trial.

Now Frequency is recruiting for a 124-person trial from which preliminary results should be available early next year.

These two images show that one of Frequency's lead compounds, FREQ-162, drives progenitor cells to turn into oligodendrocytes. The control is on the left and the right has been treated. Credit: Frequency Therapeutics

The company's founders, including Loose, MIT Institute Professor Robert Langer, CEO David Lucchino MBA '06, Senior Vice President Will McLean PhD '14, and Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology affiliate faculty member Jeff Karp, are already gratified to have been able to help people improve their hearing through the trials. They also believe they're making important contributions toward solving a problem that impacts more than 40 million people in the U.S. and hundreds of millions more around the world.

''Hearing is such an important sense; it connects people to their community and cultivates a sense of identity,'' says Karp, who is also a professor of anesthesia at Brigham and Women's Hospital. ''I think the potential to restore hearing will have enormous impact on society.''

From the lab to patientsIn 2005, Lucchino was an MBA student in the MIT Sloan School of Management and Loose was a PhD candidate in chemical engineering at MIT. Langer introduced the two aspiring entrepreneurs, and they started working on what would become Semprus BioSciences, a medical device company that won the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship Competition and later sold at a deal valued at up to $80 million.

Frequency Therapeutics co-founders Will McLean, PhD recipient at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), David Lucchino MBA '06, Jeff Karp, PhD, HST affiliate faculty and Professor at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Chris Loose, PhD '07. Frequency went public on the Nasdaq on October 3, 2019. Credit: Courtesy of Frequency Therapeutics

''MIT has such a wonderful environment of people interested in new ventures that come from different backgrounds, so we're able to assemble teams of people with diverse skills quickly,'' Loose says.

Eight years after playing matchmaker for Lucchino and Loose, Langer began working with Karp to study the lining of the human gut, which regenerates itself almost every day.

With MIT postdoc Xiaolei Yin, who is now a scientific advisor to Frequency, the researchers discovered that the same molecules that control the gut's stem cells are also used by a close descendant of stem cells called progenitor cells. Like stem cells, progenitor cells can turn into more specialized cells in the body.

''Every time we make an advance, we take a step back and ask how this could be even bigger,'' Karp says. ''It's easy to be incremental, but how do we take what we learned and make a massive difference?''

Progenitor cells reside in the inner ear and generate hair cells when humans are in utero, but they become dormant before birth and never again turn into more specialized cells such as the hair cells of the cochlea. Humans are born with about 15,000 hair cells in each cochlea. Such cells die over time and never regenerate.

In 2012, the research team was able to use small molecules to turn progenitor cells into thousands of hair cells in the lab. Karp says no one had ever produced such a large number of hair cells before. He still remembers looking at the results while visiting his family, including his father, who wears a hearing aid.

''I looked at them and said, 'I think we have a breakthrough,''' Karp says. ''That's the first and only time I've used that phrase.''

The advance was enough for Langer to play matchmaker again and bring Loose and Lucchino into the fold to start Frequency Therapeutics.

The founders believe their approach '-- injecting small molecules into the inner ear to turn progenitor cells into more specialized cells '-- offers advantages over gene therapies, which may rely on extracting a patient's cells, programming them in a lab, and then delivering them to the right area.

''Tissues throughout your body contain progenitor cells, so we see a huge range of applications,'' Loose says. ''We believe this is the future of regenerative medicine.''

Advancing regenerative medicineFrequency's founders have been thrilled to watch their lab work mature into an impactful drug candidate in clinical trials.

''Some of these people [in the trials] couldn't hear for 30 years, and for the first time they said they could go into a crowded restaurant and hear what their children were saying,'' Langer says. ''It's so meaningful to them. Obviously more needs to be done, but just the fact that you can help a small group of people is really impressive to me.''

Karp believes Frequency's work will advance researchers' ability to manipulate progenitor cells and lead to new treatments down the line.

''I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 or 15 years, because of the resources being put into this space and the incredible science being done, we can get to the point where [reversing hearing loss] would be similar to Lasik surgery, where you're in and out in an hour or two and you can completely restore your vision,'' Karp says. ''I think we'll see the same thing for hearing loss.''

The company is also developing a drug for multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease in which the immune system attacks the myelin in the brain and central nervous system. Progenitor cells already turn into the myelin-producing cells in the brain, but not fast enough to keep up with losses sustained by MS patients. Most MS therapies focus on suppressing the immune system rather than generating myelin.

Early versions of that drug candidate have shown dramatic increases in myelin in mouse studies. The company expects to file an investigational new drug application for MS with the FDA next year.

''When we were conceiving of this project, we meant for it to be a platform that could be broadly applicable to multiple tissues. Now we're moving into the remyelination work, and to me it's the tip of the iceberg in terms of what can be done by taking small molecules and controlling local biology,'' Karp says.

For now, Karp is already thrilled with Frequency's progress, which hit home the last time he was in Frequency's office and met a speaker who shared her experience with hearing loss.

''You always hope your work will have an impact, but it can take a long time for that to happen,'' Karp says. ''It's been an incredible experience working with the team to bring this forward. There are already people in the trials whose hearing has been dramatically improved and their lives have been changed. That impacts interactions with family and friends. It's wonderful to be a part of.''

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Archived Version

Mon, 11 Apr 2022 13:28

Foreign tanks etc. to the Ukraine = destruction of Ukrainian transport network, Russia's lost so many men, they're taking time off to hand out medals'... inside Russia! Losses of the belligerent sides '' The Dreizin Report's ''official estimates'' The most detailed, informed estimates of human and material losses on both sides available anywhere, The stupid party (GOP) will buck it all up, guaranteedTo longtime readers on my mailing list'--if you haven't added me to your trusted contacts, you need to do it, please, right now. My emails are getting blocked as spam with way, way too many longtime readers, people I've heard from in the past. Please add me to your trusted email contacts list, right now. Thank you!

I appreciate all the nice comments and emails of support. Sadly, I no longer have time to respond to all individually.

Website is not updated every day. Please bookmark it, or write jacob@dreizinreport.com to sign up for my mailing list, so you can be alerted when I make a new post. If you email me, please immediately add my address to your trusted contacts list. I've already had ''new subscribers'' reach out to say they haven't received my emails.

Watch what they do, not what they say

We're told by ''credible sources'' that Russia has lost several thousand armored vehicles and hundreds of aircraft, blah blah.

I clicked on one ''respectable'' link, and saw'--among other things'--downed helicopters with ''Ð'КРРоссии'' (Russian air force) in massive letters, photoshopped on the tails. LOL. Russian military aircraft don't have any writing on the outside, or at least, nothing beyond little ''flammable'' warnings on the fuel tank hatch, things like that.

I've seen tens of destroyed or abandoned armored vehicles passed off as Russian, that (a) were painted in the ''digital'' camouflage scheme used by the Ukraine, or (b) are not even in the Russian arsenal (or were not, until they were captured in this war.)

I've also seen a Ukrainian news segment showing dead Ukrainian soldiers (with Ukrainian uniforms, insignia, and nametags using the Ukrainian letter ''i'') being passed off as dead Russians.

In fact, Russia's manpower situation is now so ''bad'', they are rotating forces out of the Ukraine for rest and relaxation.

There is video documentation of fresh forces moving through Orel province'--not even bordering the Ukraine, so you know it's not the redeployment from northeast Ukraine to the Donbass'--even as these paratroopers are awarded medals in Russia's Belgorod, see below:

(CAUTION: HAND-SHAKING, HUGS, AND OTHER VIOLATIONS OF SOCIAL DISTANCING. WATCH AT YOUR OWN RISK, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.)

If Ukraine TV can pass off its own dead soldiers as Russian, if they have no shame, then sure, they can find a few bodies (Territorial Defense militia? Looters? Artillery victims? Unclaimed bums from the morgue?) and dump them in a clearing in the woods, bring in the media and call it a war crime. These people have nothing but propaganda.

Not that it will change the ''party line'', but I'm told even some Capitol Hill staff have started doubting the BS.

Now the Ukraine is doing so ''well'' for equipment, that half of Europe'--and Australia, and of course, Uncle Sam'--is sending (or promising to send) them tanks, cannon, armored cars, high altitude air defense systems, etc.

Watch what they do, not what they say. The Ukraine is running out of weapons. Not the handheld ones that Uncle Sam & Company have flooded in, but the big stuff.

It's too late to do much about it.

You can't drive old donated tanks etc. hundreds of miles to the front line and expect some not to break down; it has to be by rail. The ''problem'' is, Russia now controls the skies, and they've finally just about almost started taking the gloves off, and all rail shipments to the southeastern third of the Ukraine must all pass through one of just THREE points.

And, there are only so many railroad (and road) bridges over the Dniepr'--very easy targets. Did I mention, Russia controls the skies?

Russia will destroy half the Ukrainian rail system and all Dniepr bridges before it allows the big ''donations'' to be transferred east of the Dniepr.

As I've said since the first days of the war, the more its ''friends'' keep egging it on, the more the Ukraine will get wrecked.

The way things are going, there's no money in the world to rebuild what will be left of the Ukraine. The part that doesn't go to Russia, will be a starving, weapons-drenched Afghanistan or Somalia in Europe. With a number of critically undermaintained nuclear power plants, which will be a problem likely sooner than later.

I said all of this in February. It was obvious then, it's more obvious now.

This is what they want, this is what they will get.

Woah'... Who could have seen this coming?

All this could've been avoided if the Ukraine had given up on Crimea and the Donbass. As I've written many times, the people there don't want the Ukraine. The Donbass is 90 percent for Russia.

I've already shown the below video, but for new readers, look at the faces of these civilians (one young lady, two women in their 40s or 50s, and four children) chumming it up with Donetsk infantry scouts in Mariupol. These soldiers are LIBERATORS.

The giddy young lady describes how they've been cooking their food outside and they look like crud, but now they're happy as can be.

The happy lady with the dog, tells her dog to tell the soldier ''We've been waiting for you.''

At the end, an off-camera man's voice tells the beaming kids to thank the soldiers for saving everyone.

Yeah, I know this is a shock to those of you who have been double-masking and triple-boosting.

Sometimes, you just have to turn off Hannity.

Ukraine-Russia war '' The Dreizin Report's ''official'' estimate of combatant and materiel losses of the belligerent sides since 24 February 2022, as of 10 April 2022.

Ukrainian and allied losses

Elements incurring losses:

Ukrainian Armed Forces '' all branchesthe Interior Ministry's National Guard componentUkraine Security ServiceNational PoliceBorder ServiceTerritorial Defense militiaRight Sector militiaforeign volunteersforeign trainers/advisorsCombatants

(''Wounded'' refers to those with a wound(s), injury, or illness necessitating removal from regular duty of longer than three day's duration, and is assumed to be at 2.5X of those ''killed in action or died of wounds.'')

At least 5500 killed in action or died of woundsAt least 13,750 woundedAround 2500-3000 taken prisoner (of whom possibly 10% have been released in prisoner swaps)At least 15,000 fled/deserted with no intention and/or opportunity of returning to dutyMateriel, infrastructure, etc.

65 to 75% of main battle tanks55 to 65% of all other armored vehicles (tracked and wheeled)At least 70% of tube (barreled) artilleryAt least 55% of rocket artillery40 to 50% of military-spec cargo trucks20% of Tochka-U launch vehiclesAt least 85% of fixed-wing combat aircraftAll fixed-wing military transport aircraftAt least 60% of combat and transport helicoptersAt least 70% of attack dronesAt least 85% of medium and high-altitude air defense systems and associated radar vehicles and stationsAt least 50% (by number of vessels, not tonnage) of naval and border service vessels60 to 75% of tube and rocket artillery munitions storesAt least 75% of diesel storage capacity in central and eastern UkraineAt least 25% of diesel storage capacity in western Ukraine35 to 50% of military industry destroyed or severely damagedAt least 30 bridges destroyed (by retreating Ukrainian forces)At least several rail carsLoss of mobilization potential due to:At least 220,000 (a very conservative estimate) able-bodied, draft-eligible males ages 17 to 35 who have left the country since February 24, 2022.Loss of control over most of Kherson province, southern Zaporozhia province, eastern Kharkov province, and most Donetsk and Lugansk territory previously not under rebel control'--at least 170,000 able-bodied, draft-eligible males ages 17-35. (A low estimate, but it takes into account that many men from Ukrainian-controlled Donbass areas were already in the Donetsk/Lugansk forces.)Russian and allied losses

Elements incurring losses:

Russian Federation army and fleetRossgvardiaInternal Affairs MinistryFederal Security ServiceChechen Republic Internal Affairs MinistryDonetsk People's Republic People's Militia Internal Affairs Ministry State Security Ministry special police units of the state prosecutor, customs, etc.Lugansk People's Republic Peoples' Militia, at a minimumSouth Ossetian volunteersChechen volunteersDonetsk and Lugansk volunteers performing certain functions with the Russian armyCombatants

(''Wounded'' refers to those with a wound(s), injury, or illness necessitating removal from regular duty of longer than three day's duration, and is assumed to be at 2.5X of those ''killed in action or died of wounds.'')

Likely around 4000 (plus or minus a few hundred) killed in action or died of woundsLikely around 10,000 woundedRoughly 300-400 taken prisoner (of whom at least 10% have been killed in captivity, and potentially as many as 40% released in prisoner swaps) Materiel, infrastructure, etc.

All losses in tanks, tracked and wheeled fighting vehicles, artillery, and military-spec cargo trucks have been more than compensated for by captured Ukrainian equipmentUp to 25 manned aircraft of all types (at least 4 of which, destroyed on the ground)A substantial number of surveillance drones and attack dronesOne large cargo ship (1960s construction)A small number of air defense systems, engineering vehicles, and other specialized weaponry or equipmentOne fuel depot destroyed or heavily damaged within Russia, near the Ukraine borderMinor damage to one airfield within Russia, near the borderDamage to at least one border crossing / border guard station within Russia, near the borderDamage to one munitions store or munitions-laden vehicle (unclear), near the borderA few words on U.S. politics

The Congressional GOP made a BIG mistake in forgetting its voting base and instead going all-out on the Ukraine and sanctions nonsense'--and it will pay.

We've still got hundreds of mostly harmless, ''January 6th'' trespassers who've been in prison for well over a year, denied their Constitutional right to a speedy trial. Somehow, most are too ''dangerous'' to be released pending trial. But of course, Russia is the problem.

Once the Ukraine war has become ''white noise'', even the dumbest of the dumb among conservatives'--the ''cat chasing a laser pointer'' people'--will come back to this issue, and to other issues on which the GOP chose not to make a stand.

Only about 10 of 209 Republican members of the House of Representatives have spoken up for the political prisoners.

The rest are too busy cheering for the fake Ghost of Kiev, and giving $13.6 billion to the Ukraine'... when they could barely find (I think it was around) $1.5 billion for Trump's Wall, after a year-plus of him begging, WHEN THEY HAD THE MAJORITY IN BOTH HOUSES.

The Senate is no better. It's ''understandable.'' Most Republicans at the Federal level (including the RNC's executives and staff) see those deplorables as one-off Trump voters only, not their own voters, not realizing that 90 percent of their voting base is with those people 100 percent. Instead, they're chasing down the soccer moms and rainbows.

Not to insult the GOP's many worthy volunteers/activists, but as a Trump voter who would never have defiled and dishonored himself by voting for their brand again if not for Trump, this is NOT being overlooked, and it WON'T be forgiven. And I'm not alone'--there are MILLIONS like me.

Now that I've seen Lindsay Graham waiving through so many leftist judge appointees'--hmmm, what might they have on him?'--I am convinced there's no functional difference between the two parties, without Trump in the picture.

I don't live in a swing district, but without Trump or someone like him on the ballot, I wouldn't vote (or give another cent) even if I did.

Soon, Republicans will be in a jam, because while they've got their talking points about oil prices (''Brandon killed the pipeline! Only three percent of our oil comes from Russia!''), they've got squat to say on food prices or any other prices, which people already associate'--and will do even more'--with the Russia sanctions, which the GOP lined up behind, in tandem with the Dems.

They didn't think it through.

As I've written previously, thanks to their stupidity and lack of vision, they're on track to take what should be an 80-seat pickup in November, and turn it into a mere 30, or 20, or 10, or 5 seat gain.

They're not Gingrich, they can't sell any ideas, they have no ideas, and no drive at all. It's like they don't exist.

Aside from taking the bait and cheering for Saint Zelensky when Pelosi put him on the jumbotron a few weeks ago, as far as I can tell, their ''leadership'' team hasn't really made the news for months already.

I don't remember the last time McCarthy (or McConnell) said anything original, or that mattered or made any sense. I hear more about what Steve Bannon says on his show, than I do about McCarthy. The guy is a nothing. Deer in the headlights, a spectator.

GOP ''leadership'': No matter how bad things get, how can you expect the public to turn to you, when you're irrelevant'--and in fact, when you're half the cause of their problems?

You think you can hide, and then, it will just fall into your lap?

No.

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Archived Version

Source: The Agenda with Steve Paikin

Mon, 11 Apr 2022 04:00

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Archived Version

Source: Lobsters

Mon, 11 Apr 2022 03:58

BeforeYou're at work, someone asks you open some random Jira issue. This is how it usually goes:

If you do this many times a day, it feels like running with flip-flops. Especially if you work on multiple Jira projects.

AfterThis is how I do it:

Everyone I've shown this trick has been astonished.

My dearest ex-colleagues consider it "(one of) my greatest contributions to team productivity, if not the greatest".

ConfigurationOpen Google Chrome

Go to Settings > Search engine > Manage search engines

Click ''Add''

Fill out the form like this:

Click ''Add'' to saveUsageOpen a new tab

Type in your project key

Press either SPACE or TAB

Type in your issue number

Press ENTER

Now you're running with sneakers!

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Archived Version

Thu, 14 Apr 2022 14:57

TUCSON, AZ '-- Snakes are starting to play a big role in COVID-19 research. Scientists from the University of Arizona have discovered an enzyme, similar to one found in rattlesnake venom, that could be driving COVID-19 deaths.

"We found evidence that there was an enzyme, a snake-like enzyme, in the blood of people who were in extraordinarily high levels,'' says Dr. Floyd Chilton, the senior author of the study with the University of Arizona, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

Scientists have worked on this study for the past year and a half. It was recently published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The snake-like enzyme is found in healthy people at low levels to prevent bacterial infections. In severe cases of COVID-19, it's doing the opposite.

"These high levels of this enzyme are looking at those tissues in the organs and saying, 'you look like a bacteria, let's shred your membranes. Let's put these organs out of their misery,'" says Dr. Chilton.

Dr. Chilton says what's even more remarkable is where we can go from here in the fight against the pandemic.

''Can we come up with specific therapeutics that will not care which variant is coming toward it? Can we come up with specific therapies to address this devastating disease?'' says Dr. Chilton.

Researchers explain that current clinical trials on snake bites are helping in those efforts. They can possibly repurpose some of the treatments being tested. This could one day result in a viable option, other than vaccines, to prevent death in severe patients.

"That allows us to take a precision medicine approach to the disease. We can go into clinical trials and choose the people who are at risk of this mechanism and then, specifically treat those people,'' says Dr. Chilton.

Their hope, regarding the next step, is an international multi-center clinical trial. They are working with global organizations to see how they can make that possible.

ABC15 asked a rattlesnake expert for his take on the study.

''For something that is almost as universally loathed as rattlesnakes, it seems fitting and interesting and ironic, that the venom that they have in rattlesnakes, might be the key in getting out of this situation,'' says Bryan Hughes, owner of Rattlesnake Solutions.

You can find more information on the study here.

Copyright 2021 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Andrew Kerr : NEW: Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors said she gets triggered when she hears about federal charity tr'... https://t.co/x8aYLCAFda

Wed Apr 13 11:38:13 +0000 2022

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Thu Apr 14 12:38:55 +0000 2022

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Thu, 14 Apr 2022 14:34

Brick Suit : "Disney Groomer" paged at the airport. https://t.co/q7tS94fDzW

Mon Apr 11 14:37:18 +0000 2022

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Thu, 14 Apr 2022 13:27

Waterfowl and the raptors that dine on them, like this bald eagle and snow goose, have both been killed by the new bird flu virus. Jeff Goulden/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Jeff Goulden/Getty Images Waterfowl and the raptors that dine on them, like this bald eagle and snow goose, have both been killed by the new bird flu virus.

Jeff Goulden/Getty Images A newly arrived bird flu is sweeping through wild bird populations in the United States, and that may mean trouble for poultry farmers who have been doing their best to control this flu outbreak in their flocks.

Some 24 million poultry birds like chicken and turkeys have already been lost, either because they died from the virus or were killed to prevent its spread. But unlike a similar bird flu outbreak seven years ago, this one is unlikely to just burn itself out.

That's because this particular flu virus seems capable of hanging around in populations of wild birds, which can pass the virus on to poultry farms. While chickens and turkeys with the virus quickly sicken and die, some waterfowl can remain healthy with the virus and carry it long distances.

Scientists believe that wild migratory birds brought this virus to North America a few months ago. Since then, more than 40 wild bird species in more than 30 states have tested positive. This strain of bird flu virus has turned up in everything from crows to pelicans to bald eagles.

"It's somewhat surprising how widespread it is already in North America," says Jonathan Runstadler, an influenza researcher at Tufts University. "It's clearly able to persist and transmit from year to year in parts of Asia, Europe, Africa, and I don't think we should be surprised if that's going to be the case here."

As the virus moves across the country, and potentially settles in for the long haul, it will encounter new animal species that could get infected. This pathogen will also get a chance to genetically mingle with the flu viruses that are already circulating in the U.S.

"What that means for the virus in terms of how it evolves, how it changes, we just don't really know," says Richard Webby, a flu researcher at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

There has been only one known human caseSo far, the risk to humans seems low.

But since related bird flu viruses have repeatedly jumped into people in the past, public health experts are watching for any signs of genetic changes that could make the virus able to move into humans.

"We're concerned with any avian influenza virus that's circulating in domestic poultry or wild birds," says Todd Davis, an expert on animal-to-human diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). "Because humans have no prior immunity to these viruses typically, if they were to be infected and spread the virus to other humans, then we could have another pandemic virus on our hands."

This virus doesn't have genetic features previously associated with related bird flus that have infected humans. And the only person known to have contracted this particular bird flu virus was an elderly person in the United Kingdom who lived in close quarters with ducks; while some of the ducks got sick and died, their owner never had any symptoms.

The CDC has been monitoring the health of more than 500 people in 25 states who were exposed to infected birds, says Davis. Although a few dozen people did develop flu-like symptoms, all were tested and none were positive for this virus.

Raptors could be especially hard hitWildlife experts have long known that highly pathogenic bird flus like this one were circulating in Europe and Asia. And they have worried about the possible threat these viruses might pose to American birds.

Then, in December of 2021, chickens and other fowl got sick and started dying on a farm on the island of Newfoundland, Canada. Tests showed this deadly bird flu virus had made it across the Atlantic.

"The very first moment it got to North America, it was a heads up to us," says Bryan Richards, the emerging diseases coordinator at the U.S. Geological Survey's National Wildlife Health Center.

In January, government officials announced its arrival in the U.S. after a wigeon duck in South Carolina tested positive. The last time a dangerous bird flu entered the country, Richards says, "the number of instances where we picked that particular virus up in wild birds was very, very limited."

In contrast, this latest bird flu virus is being detected in sick and dying birds all over.

"This outbreak in the wild bird population is a lot more extensive than we saw in 2014 and 2015," says David Stallknecht, an avian influenza researcher with the University of Georgia. "Just a lot more birds appear to be affected."

Waterfowl, and raptors that eat their dead bodies, are bearing the brunt of it.

In Florida, for example, more than 1,000 lesser scaup ducks have succumbed to the virus. In New Hampshire, about 50 Canada geese died in a single event. In the Great Plains states, wildlife experts have seen mass die-offs in snow geese.

"In addition, there's a host of other species, including black vultures and bald eagles and some of the other scavenging species, that were likely infected by consuming the carcasses of those waterfowl," says Richards.

It remains to be seen how much of a toll this virus will take on American bird species.

In Israel, when this virus hit an area where about 40,000 common cranes had gathered for the winter, "they lost a reported 8,000 of these birds over the course of a couple weeks," says Richards. "So when you start thinking about losing 20% of a specific population of wild birds, that's a pretty substantial impact."

Poultry farmers cull their flocksChickens and turkeys raised by the poultry industry have suffered the most deaths, and farmers are bracing themselves for even more.

The bird flu that struck in 2014 and 2015 resulted in the deaths of more than 50 million birds and cost the industry billions of dollars. Back then, the greatest number of cases occurred in the month of April.

"So I think I am kind of holding my breath this month," says Denise Heard, director of research programs for the U.S. Poultry & Egg Association.

The virus has a number of ways to get from wild birds into poultry, says Heard. Since the last outbreak, the industry has worked to educate farmers about how to protect their flocks.

"Wild migratory waterfowl are always flying over the top and when they poop, that poop gets on the ground," she says, explaining that the virus can then get tracked into bird houses on boots or inadvertently moved from farm to farm on vehicles.

Heard says there currently seems to be less spread of the virus from farm to farm than was seen during the last major outbreak. Instead, there are more isolated cases popping up, perhaps because wild birds are bringing the viruses to farms and backyard flocks.

If this virus sticks around in wild bird populations '-- which some scientists think is likely '-- poultry farmers may need to just learn to live with this problem.

"I hope that this is not the case. I hope that in the U.S. this infection will die off soon, and the virus will go away again like it did in 2014," says Ron Fouchier, a virologist at Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands. "But there's no guarantee for that, as we've seen in Europe now that this virus has remained present for several years in a row."

Since December, farmers in Europe have had to cull more than 17 million birds. "So that's very similar to the situation in the U.S.," says Fouchier. "And we are seeing massive die-offs in wild birds."

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Thu, 14 Apr 2022 12:34

Libs of Tik Tok : USPS has suspended mail service in parts of Santa Monica, CA because the mailmen kept getting assaulted and attacke'... https://t.co/zWb1XJCJo7

Mon Apr 11 20:07:39 +0000 2022

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Wed, 13 Apr 2022 20:54

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Mon, 11 Apr 2022 16:13

Luke Rudkowski : This is from a main stream sports channel in Australia https://t.co/HJHWAlEpRg

Mon Apr 11 15:41:40 +0000 2022

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Mon Apr 11 16:11:05 +0000 2022

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Mon Apr 11 16:06:54 +0000 2022

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Mon, 11 Apr 2022 15:48

San Mateo, California '-- A California startup is doing its part to cut down on greenhouse gas emissions by creating a new kind of "meat" that's made from air.

CBS News was given an exclusive sneak peak at a product that physicist Lisa Dyson says has the taste and texture of meat, but does not come from animals. It's created using a fermentation process, similar to making yogurt. But instead of using microbes that consume milk and sugar, it's made from microbes that eat oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide.

How does it work?

"You start out with cultures," Dyson, the founder and CEO of Air Protein, told CBS News. "Then you feed it elements of the air and it grows and grows and grows just like that yogurt culture. You dry that and you get to a protein rich flour."

The flour is processed to mimic chicken, seafood or beef.

"We can grow enough material to make a steak in a matter of hours," Dyson said.

The concept behind Air Protein was inspired by NASA, which explored in the 1960s and 70s a way to recycle carbon dioxide exhaled by astronauts and turn it into food. Dyson is now using the technology to help fight climate change.

"The food industry today produces more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector. What's going to happen when we have 10 billion people?" she said.

The innovation is the latest in the alternative meat market, which could reach $140 billion by the end of the decade, according to Barclays 2019 Annual Report. The industry has become more competitive as companies try to improve on taste.

Air Chicken is expected to hit store shelves sometime next year, pending approval from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

For now, we'll have to take Dyson at her word that it tastes like meat because only a small circle of people, including investors, have tried it.

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Mon, 11 Apr 2022 14:30

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Mon, 11 Apr 2022 13:58

Today we begin with a fundamental shift that's happening in American science. Over the centuries, scientific debate was usually considered invaluable in order for scientific advancements to take place. But an information war launched by public health officials during the Covid pandemic has made many ask whether that longstanding dynamic is still possible.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya: I think we're in a very, very bad state. We're going to need to have a very honest look at the problems in this pandemic, almost like a 9/11 style commission.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya says he never imagined he'd find himself at the center of a firestorm during the Covid pandemic. A professor at the Stanford School of Medicine, he's a medical doctor with a PhD in economics. The story of how he went from respected mainstream academic to the focus of an organized smear by top public health officials begins about six months after the national Covid lockdown began.

Bhattacharya and two colleagues published a policy statement named for the town where they signed it: Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

Bhattacharya (UnHerd video): It's an informed freedom as opposed to this perception that everyone faces equal risk, which is not true.

Sharyl: What is the Great Barrington Declaration, the idea behind it and what happened with that?

Bhattacharya: The Great Barrington Declaration said, "Let's devote our resources to protecting the older populations and other people with chronic conditions, the predisposed to bad outcomes if they get COVID. And for the rest of the population, let's live as close to normal lives as possible." That's it. That's the strategy. The fact is that there's a thousand-fold difference in the risk of severe disease'-- oldest people: very high risk of death. 80% of deaths are people over 65 around the world, whereas young people, especially children, are very low risk for severe disease, right? Very low death rates.

Sharyl: You had a lot of scientists sign onto that. Do you know how many?

Bhattacharya: Tens of thousands of scientists and doctors signed on. We have almost 950,000 regular people. This despite Big Tech suppression of it. The idea is not even original. It's the same pandemic plan we follow for decades in respiratory pandemic after respiratory pandemic, as recently as 2009 with the H1N1 flu pandemic. It's essentially the Great Barrington Declaration, except it wasn't called that then.

The three scientists didn't know it yet, but their public efforts would make them targets of a frantic behind-the-scenes campaign by public health officials at the highest level.

Bhattacharya: So, we wrote this document on October 4th, 2020. Released it. It went viral, beyond my expectations. Four days later, I find out from a FOIA'ed email '-- Francis Collins, the head of the NIH, wrote an email accusing me, Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University, one of the world's best epidemiologists, and Martin Kulldorff, one of the world's best epidemiologists and biostatisticians from Harvard '-- Stanford, Harvard, Oxford '-- of being ''fringe epidemiologists,'' and then asking for a ''devastating published takedown'' of our premises.

The emails were recently revealed through a Freedom of Information or FOIA request. On October 8, 2020, Dr. Francis Collins, head of the National Institutes of Health or NIH, emailed White House Covid adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads an NIH sub-agency called the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Collins calls Bhattacharya and the other Great Barrington Declaration co-authors ''three fringe epidemiologists'' whose proposal "seems to be getting a lot of attentioneven a signature from Nobel Prize winner Mike Leavitt at Stanford. There needs to be a quick and devastating published takedown of its premises. I don't see anything like that online yet - is it underway?'' Collins asks Fauci.

The public health leaders were turning to online media to personally discredit the scientists.

Fauci later emailed Collins copies of articles published by Wired and The Nation Magazine, attacking The Great Barrington Declaration and its scientists.

Bhattacharya: It was essentially an organized propaganda campaign, started by the NIH, at least as best I can tell with the FOIA documents I've seen so far, to marginalize me, to call me ''fringe,'' even though I've been a Stanford professor for 20 years in the medical school.

Sharyl: So were you ever called fringe, to your knowledge, before all of this?

Jay Bhattacharya: No. I mean, not that I'm aware of. I would've thought that if I were in Tony Fauci's position, and you have prominent outside scientists saying, "Look, the strategy you're following is deadly and leading to too many deaths, and is not saving lives, is bad," I would've engaged with those scientists to try to understand what they're talking about. Instead, I never heard from him. And I felt the brunt of the propaganda campaign, where he had friendly reporters come and try to attack me '-- friendly to him '-- come and attack me.

We asked Fauci and Collins for interviews about the Great Barrington Declaration and their emails, but they declined.

A spokesman told us Collins, who is no longer head of NIH, ''has been very vocal about his opposition of the Great Barrington Declaration stating that [it] is scientifically indefensible and irresponsible.''

Here's what Fauci said in October 2020 about the idea in The Great Barrington Declaration of protecting the most vulnerable, and keeping schools open and life relatively normal for everyone else.

Dr. Anthony Fauci: (Oct. 2020, ABC News) If you talk to anybody who has any experience in epidemiology and infectious diseases, they will tell you that that is risky, and you'll wind up with many more infections of vulnerable people, which will lead to hospitalizations and deaths. So I think that we just got to look that square in the eye and say it's nonsense.

In fact, a growing body of scientific data and evidence supports the approach outlined in The Great Barrington Declaration: lockdowns failed at short-circuiting Covid, and the toll in terms of economic losses, physical and mental health, and education have been well-documented.

Recently, Fauci insisted lockdowns saved many lives, but he was surprisingly in sync with Bhattacharya and The Great Barrington Declaration about the harms of the restrictions.

Fauci (March 27, BBC): Particularly in children who were not allowed to go to school, in the psychological and mental health aspects it has on children, in the economic stress that it puts on society in general, on individual families, obviously those are negative consequences that are unintended.

Yet the Great Barrington Declaration scientists who strongly argued the same thing in 2020 found themselves attacked, and subjected to smears and career threats by the scientific establishment they once embraced. Some have had federal grant money'-- the life-blood for academic researchers '-- jeopardized or withdrawn by Collins' and Fauci's agencies '-- who hold the purse strings when it comes to billions in federal tax dollars.

Bhattacharya: I mean, I've been funded by the NIH for most of my career. Last 20 years. It helps convince your university, for instance, that you should get tenure. A lot of scientists, looking at this, say, "Okay, well, these are fringe ideas. I'd better stay silent or else my career's threatened." And that's what's happened. They use their power to silence scientists. And that is a conflict of interest.

Bhattacharya says he's survived because he's tenured at Stanford, but that his reputation is irreparably damaged in some corners. Now, he's among a group of scientists and watchdogs pushing for major reforms.

Jay Bhattacharya: The people have been mis-served by public health. And so, the people are going to have to demand that the reforms that happen are driven by people who are not conflicted, who didn't make these mistakes. And I know that there's an impetus to try to do an evaluation, where the people doing the evaluation are those same ones who made the mistake. If that happens, it'll just cement the distrust that the public has in public health. Certainly, it'll cement my distrust.

Sharyl: What is among the most important things you've learned, maybe in the bigger picture as a scientist, about how things work when there's a message that's to be put out?

Bhattacharya: That, in fact, the kinds of scientific discussions that I took for granted for most of my career cannot survive a situation where you have government bodies controversializing perfectly reasonable positions, suppressing debate and suppressing discussion, employing propaganda techniques like Big Tech or the press to attack '-- personally attack '-- the lives of scientists who disagree. You cannot have science where the government essentially can control what it wants to have happen. There has to be freedom for science to actually work. And I didn't fully understand that before the pandemic, but now I see it.

Sharyl (On-camera): Among the reforms Bhattacharya says are needed is putting a firewall between public health officials who make policy decisions and the funding that scientists receive so the money cannot be used to suppress scientific discussion or to blackmail researchers into silence.

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