Astronauts Welcome SpaceX’s Crew Dragon to Space Station (Ripley and Earth, Too!) | Space
cool
DOJ Finds Letter It Said Didn’t Exist Ordering Scrutiny of Uranium One, Hillary Clinton
The existence of a letter documenting Sessions’ directive that the DOJ revisit probes of Trump’s top political foe is a surprise because a department lawyer said in court last year that senior officials insisted it didn’t exist.
…The letter, which American Oversight provided to The Daily Beast, is consistent with what the DOJ’s chief of legislative affairs has told Congress: that Huber is scrutinizing the sale of a Canadian uranium mining company with interests in the United States to Rosatom, a Russian state-owned company.
DOJ Finds Letter It Said Didn’t Exist Ordering Scrutiny of Uranium One, Hillary Clinton
hmmm
The Supreme Court Is Quietly Changing the Status of Religion in American Life
Conservatives now cite the free-exercise clause to allow religious people to exempt themselves from obligations that are binding on all other citizens. This currently comes up most often in the context of people who want to discriminate against gay people as an expression of their religious beliefs.
The Supreme Court Is Quietly Changing the Status of Religion in American Life | The New Yorker
hmmm
Repurposing Existing Drugs for New Indications
Many academic researchers are turning their attention to existing drugs as a potential goldmine of therapies that are cheaper and faster to move into the clinic, and they’re getting more methodical in their approach. Stephen Wong, a biomedical engineer at the Houston Methodist Research Institute in Texas, switched his focus from novel drug discovery to repurposing nine years ago when he realized the breadth and depth of clinical trials and basic science information available online. That has “really changed everything for drug development,” he says. Wong’s lab culls and archives publicly available omics research databases, journal articles and conference abstracts, human clinical trial data, patents, and Houston Methodist’s database of longitudinal patient records, as well as privately generated omics data from preclinical disease models. The researchers then mine the information to identify molecules and combinations of molecules that match disease targets and pathways using artificial intelligence algorithms. “We call our technology the DrugX engine,” says Wong. “It’s like Google but for drug discovery.”
…While academic labs continue to churn out new leads, they often encounter difficulties garnering industry interest to support trials for a new use of a generic drug. After Eric Verdin, president and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging in Novato, California, and his colleagues identified two possible clinical uses for an aspirin derivative in mice,5,6 for example, the team was unable to find a partner to move the compounds into clinical trials. “I’m becoming disenchanted with drug repurposing,” Verdin says. “It’s impossible to get funding from venture capitalists or even from our institution’s intellectual property office.” Verdin said he was advised to modify the molecules to make them unique, such that they would be patentable and generate revenue. “But [if the generic version works], this is completely the opposite of what one should do with this type of discovery,” he says.
…Due to this lack of monetary incentive, “generic drugs found to work for a new disease are in a state of purgatory,” says Wegner. Indeed, no generic drug has ever been approved for a new indication by a manufacturer without modification of the drug’s delivery or its dose, which would provide renewed patent protection.
Repurposing Existing Drugs for New Indications | The Scientist Magazine®
hmmmm
Ukrainian hackers used quizzes to access private Facebook data, Facebook says
The alleged hackers improperly used a Facebook feature that helped them take control of users’ internet browsers and gave them access to private information about Facebook users and their private friends’ lists, Facebook alleged in a lawsuit filed in Northern California on Friday.
…Once users connected their Facebook and other social media accounts they were asked to install what Facebook described as “malicious browser extensions” that essentially allowed the alleged hackers to pose as the affected users online.
Ukrainian hackers used quizzes to access private Facebook data, Facebook says – CNN
hmmmm
Federal officials lost – yes, lost – 1,475 migrant children
Federal officials lost – yes, lost – 1,475 migrant children
Jeezus Krrreyest……………
People should be jail. …And I’m not referring to the assylum seekers and their children!
Here’s Why Democrats Want to Classify Reproductive Rights as Human Rights
Congressional Democrats introduced legislation on Thursday that would classify reproductive rights as human rights and require the U.S. State Department to include access to reproductive health care in its annual human rights report, a practice that ended when President Trump took office.
…the State Department’s annual human rights report has critical government uses. “It’s important for immigration judges and for immigration lawyers trying to determine whether asylum claims are founded.”
The report’s use by immigration judges is critical for Stephanie Schmid, U.S. foreign policy council at the Center for Reproductive Rights, who used an example from Central America to demonstrate the harm of excluding reproductive rights from the report. “Any woman that would be coming to the U.S. border right now … fleeing some condition like in El Salvador where you can be jailed for having a miscarriage, and trying to make a refugee or asylum claim at the border, wouldn’t be safe,” she told Rewire.News. “Potentially an immigration judge [could say] ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, the 2017 human rights reports don’t say anything about women being jailed in El Salvador for miscarriages.’ They don’t say anything about the high rate of sexual and gender based violence by gangs and in other situations. So what we do is invalidate and erase the experience and stories of women all over the world.”
…Clark’s bill mandates that foreign service officers must consult with reproductive health and rights organizations in local communities to gather accurate information for the human rights report.
Here’s How Democrats Want to Classify Reproductive Rights as Human Rights – Rewire.News
hmmm
Jacob Wohl spread lies about Mueller, RBG. The 2020 election is next
Wohl has claimed, without evidence, that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg is secretly dead or in a vegetative state and that pipe bombs sent to prominent Democrats and media outlets were a left-wing “false flag” operation.
He flew to Minnesota last week to “investigate” the rumor that Somali-American Rep. Ilhan Omar married her brother, a mission for which he tried to fund-raise $25,000 from his online followers. Wohl’s trip to the heartland devolved into bizarre tweets in which he suggested that Minneapolis was so overrun by Somali jihadists that he had to wear a bulletproof vest and travel with a team of “security professionals.”
…In some ways, Wohl is simply carrying on the dubious American tradition of deceit in politics, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania and author of “Cyberwar: How Russian Hackers and Trolls Helped Elect a President.” Jamieson described 19th-century political operatives who would secretly buy newspapers to dictate coverage, and the dissemination of false accounts about President Andrew Johnson being a murderer.
[Wohl] says he plans to create “enormous left-wing online properties” – such as deceptive Facebook and Twitter accounts – “and use those to steer the left-wing votes in the primaries to what we feel are weaker candidates compared with Trump.” It’s a plot similar to what Mueller has charged in indictments that the Russians crafted in an effort to boost the 2016 campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein and hobble Hillary Clinton.
…Or perhaps those stated plans themselves are a ruse to fool the mainstream media, which he calls a “band of lying goblins.”
Wohl stressed that the accuracy of the information he spreads is “not the important part.” All that matters is how far those claims travel, and how many people believe them.
…In the spread of information, he said, truth is an obsolete concept. “It’s something that can’t be thought about in a linear, binary true-false, facts-non-facts – you can’t do that anymore,” Wohl said. “It’s just not the way it works.”
…Since last year, Wohl has more than a dozen times claimed on Twitter to have overheard liberals in hipster coffee shops sharing pro-Trump secrets with one another, such as that they were actually overjoyed by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation. The tweets conjure up the image of Wohl furtively eavesdropping on surrounding patrons from behind the foam of an oat milk cappuccino.
…In describing his methods, Wohl casually explained that he makes it up: “I’ll literally hear one thing and I’ll flip it 180 degrees.”
Jacob Wohl spread lies about Mueller, RBG. The 2020 election is next
hmmmm
Maternal death is rising. This data could help moms but it’s secret.
For years, hospitals have blamed rising maternal deaths and injuries on problems beyond their control. Almost universally they’ve pointed to poverty and pre-existing medical conditions as the driving factors in making America the most dangerous place in the developed world to give birth.
…The data, medical records and lawsuits suggest a complicated mix of misdiagnoses, delayed care and a failure to follow safety measures [are contributing factors.]
…These kinds of life-threatening childbirth complications are happening at Touro more often than at most hospitals. It is one of 120 hospitals where mothers suffer severe complications at far higher rates, USA TODAY found by examining billing records from 7 million births in 13 states.
Women at these outlier hospitals were more than twice as likely to have had blood transfusions, hysterectomies, seizures, heart attacks, strokes or other indicators that their deliveries turned deadly.
…Studies have found half of mothers’ deaths and severe injuries could be prevented or reduced with better medical care.
…Of the 120 high-complication hospitals identified by USA TODAY’s analysis, at least 56 are training sites for OB/GYN residency programs, and 22 of them have accreditation histories that include warnings, probation or both.
…While many hospitals with the highest rates pointed to patients’ poverty, the USA TODAY analysis identified plenty of hospitals serving high concentrations of poor women or black women with far lower complication rates.
…Hospitals, Main said, too often respond defensively instead of using the data to evaluate their care practices.
…Childbirth safety advocates called the hospital’s response troubling, particularly because a majority of women who deliver at Touro are black. Nationally, black mothers are dying from childbirth at three to four times the rate of white mothers; they suffer severe complications twice as often.
…Looking more deeply at New Orleans shows the kinds of differences among hospitals the analysis exposed. Seven hospitals deliver all the city’s babies. Of them, Touro’s maternity patients were far more likely to face serious complications.
…No matter how USA TODAY sliced the data, moms delivering at Touro experienced worse outcomes than women in similar situations who went to other hospitals.
Compare the births of poor mothers at Touro with poor mothers at other area hospitals – Touro’s moms had more complications. Compare black mothers. White mothers. Mothers with private insurance. Touro’s patients fared worse.
The pattern held true with patients coming from individual ZIP codes.
…Over the years, the OB/GYN training program at Touro has drawn concern from a national accreditation group that oversees medical education. Four recent lawsuits accused trainee doctors at Touro of failing to order the right tests, being slow to recognize emerging complications and making surgical or medication mistakes.
Maternal death is rising. This data could help moms but it’s secret.
Dayum, Touro…
Venezuelans Rally in the Caracas Streets Amid Power Outage
Maduro, who’s been president for almost six years and is accused by some of stealing last year’s election, has been silent and out of public view for nearly two days. He was scheduled to speak at Saturday’s rally.
When power first went out on Thursday, Maduro alleged sabotage and blamed the U.S. for the outages, which affected nearly the entire nation.
Venezuelans Rally in the Caracas Streets Amid Power Outage | Time
hmmmm
ICE reviewing anti-Ilhan Omar social media post shared and liked by 2 agents
Derewonko has also used LinkedIn to comment on posts expressing anti-immigrant views,
ICE reviewing anti-Ilhan Omar social media post shared and liked by 2 agents | Fox News
The Mar-a-Lago Connection to the Cindy Yang Affair Raises Huge Security Risks
If the president of the United States is letting a Chinese madam sell access at Mar-a-Lago to Chinese business people while his friends are getting serviced at businesses she started, he is making himself and the country vulnerable to massive blackmail risk. It is a textbook story of how foreign actors gain leverage over senior officials.
…Yang also founded a business with her husband in 2017 called “GY US Investments” which offered itself, according to the Mother Jones account, as an “international business consulting firm that provides public relations services to assist business in America to establish and expand their brand image in the modern Chinese marketplace.”
While that sounds like typical consulting firm gobbledygook, the rest of the site makes it clear that what the company did was promise access to the President of the United States, his family and his resort Mar-a-Lago as a way of helping Chinese businesses establish themselves in the U.S. and worldwide.
…Pictures of her clients with the Trump sons Eric and Don, Jr. adorn her own website. She has, it turns out, been a big donor to Trump and to the GOP, even appearing in one picture with Don Jr. while holding a “MAGA” clutch purse.
…It also reminds us of the section of the Steele Dossier which stated that some Republicans welcomed the “distraction” of the Russian interference story because it “deflected” attention from “TRUMP’S business dealings in China and other emerging markets. Unlike in Russia, these were substantial and involved the payment of large bribes and kickbacks which, were they to become public, would be potentially very damaging to their campaign.”
hmmmm
CNN’s Jeff Zucker Unloads on Fox News ‘Journalists’ at SXSW: ‘They Chose to Work at Fox’
Zucker said it’s not like networks have a “right” to host debates.
“I think the consternation about this is a little misplaced,” he said. “They don’t have to give one to CNN, they don’t have to give one to NBC. They have no obligation to give one to Fox.” Calling Fox a “propaganda” outlet, Zucker said, “I think the question should be, is Fox state-run TV or is the White House state-run government by Fox TV?”
As for Fox News’ response singling out its more legitimate news anchors, Zucker said, “They chose to work at Fox and they don’t get to hide behind the fact that they’re excellent journalists or anchors. The fact is they work at a place that has done tremendous damage to this country.”
CNN’s Jeff Zucker Unloads on Fox News ‘Journalists’ at SXSW: ‘They Chose to Work at Fox’
hmmmm
Haaland Becomes First Native American Woman to Sit in Speaker’s Chair
Haaland presided over debate on H.R. 1, the For the People Act. The For the People Act is House Democrats’ transformative bill aimed at ending corruption in politics and ensuring fair access to the ballot box.
“When a young woman of color sees me in the Speaker’s Chair, I want them to think ‘I can do that,’ that’s part of why I’m here,” said Congresswoman Deb Haaland. “I want to help those who have not been represented before to identify with me and identify with Congress. It’s their Congress too – it belongs to all of us.”
Haaland Becomes First Native American Woman to Sit in Speaker’s Chair | KRWG
hmmmm
40+ Jewish groups worldwide oppose equating antisemitism with criticism of Israel
“From our own histories we are all too aware of the dangers of increasingly fascistic and openly racist governments and political parties,” the global letter states. “The rise in antisemitic discourse and attacks worldwide is part of that broader trend. At times like this, it is more important than ever to distinguish between the hostility to or prejudice against Jews on the one hand and legitimate critiques of Israeli policies and system of injustice on the other.”
First ever: 40+ Jewish groups worldwide oppose equating antisemitism with criticism of Israel
hmmm
Comments From The Peanut Gallery 