ReportWire

Tag: brand safety-nsf health issues

  • Kirstie Alley died of colon cancer. Here’s how to lower your risk | CNN

    Kirstie Alley died of colon cancer. Here’s how to lower your risk | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Colon cancer has claimed another life. Emmy Award and Golden Globe winner Kirstie Alley, best known for her roles in the television sitcoms “Cheers” and “Veronica’s Closet,” died Monday at age 71 after battling cancer that was “recently discovered,” according to a family statement.

    A representative for Alley confirmed to CNN via email on Tuesday that she had been diagnosed with colon cancer prior to her death.

    Colorectal cancer, which includes colon and rectal cancers, is the second most common cause of death from cancer in 2022, outranked only by lung and bronchus cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results Program.

    Regular checkups are the best way to keep colon cancer at bay, according to the US Preventive Services Task Force. The task force lowered the age to begin screening for colon and rectal cancer to 45 last year after a worrisome spike in cases of colorectal cancer in people younger than 50.

    The new recommendations apply to everyone ages 45 to 75, including people with no symptoms, no prior diagnosis, no family history of colon or rectal disease, and no personal history of polyps, which are all key risk factors. Polyps are bumps or tiny mushroom-like stalks that grow inside the colon or rectum.

    If these growths are not found and removed, they can turn cancerous.

    Adults ages 76 to 85 years can also be screened, depending on their overall health, prior screening history and personal preferences, the task force said.

    Colorectal cancer screening can occur in several ways, including simple mail-in tests that look for blood or cancer cells in a sample of stool collected by the patient. However, all stool tests can have false-positive test results, which would likely require a more invasive test to rule out cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.

    Stool tests: While a stool test is the least invasive option, it does have to be done at least once a year, the society said. No anti-inflammatory pain relievers can be taken for seven days prior to a stool test, while red meats such as beef, lamb or liver and any citrus or vitamin C supplements should be avoided for at least three days.

    If the test finds something of concern, “you will still need a colonoscopy to see if you have cancer,” according to ACS. However, hidden bleeding in the stool does not automatically signal cancer, as ulcers, hemorrhoids and other conditions can also cause rectal bleeding.

    DNA stool test: A DNA stool test is another option, the society said. Because colorectal cancer cells can have DNA mutations, the test can screen for those genetic abnormalities. This test only needs to be done once every three years, but an entire stool sample must be collected and mailed.

    Patients may have insurance coverage issues because the test is fairly new, ACS said. Again, if anything suspicious is found, a colonoscopy will still be required.

    For all of the following tests, the colon must be clean and free of stool matter, which requires at-home bowel prep. Ways to empty the bowels include pills, drinking a laxative solution or the use of an enema the night before the procedure.

    This process has become much easier over the years with the advent of new kits that don’t require as much liquid laxative, so talk to your doctor about your options, ACS suggested.

    Colonoscopy: One of the most widely used tests, this procedure allows a doctor access to the entire length of the colon and rectum with a colonoscope, a “flexible, lighted tube about the thickness of a finger with a small video camera on the end,” ACS said.

    Typically, the patient is under light sedation during the whole procedure, waking up with no knowledge of the process. Watching on video in real time as the scope moves through the intestine, the doctor can stop and insert small instruments into the scope to take a sample or even remove any suspicious polyps.

    Virtual colonscopy: This test uses computer programs that take X-rays and a computed tomography (CT) scan to make three-dimensional pictures of the inside of the colon and rectum.

    The test does not require sedation. However, it does require the same bowel prep as a regular colonoscopy. After the patient drinks a contrast dye, a small, flexible tube will be inserted into the rectum, followed by pumped air expand the rectum and colon for better pictures.

    As with all CT scans, this procedure exposes the patient to a small amount of radiation and can cause cramping until the air exits the body, the society said. If a suspicious mass is detected, a colonoscopy will still be needed to remove the mass.

    Flexible sigmoidoscopy: This test inserts the same flexible camera tube into the lower part of the colon. However, because the tube is only 2 feet (60 centimeters) long, this test only allows the doctor to examine the entire rectum and less than half of the colon — any polpys in the upper colon will be missed. This test is not often used in the United States, the society said.

    Many people avoid a colonoscopy, partly due to the preparation, so as a way of encouraging people to get screened, former “Today” host Katie Couric broadcast her entire procedure in 2000 — from prep the night before to a mildly sedated Couric watching the procedure as it unfolded.

    “I have a pretty little colon,” Couric said with a sleepy chuckle as she watched the video projection from the scope inside her colon. “You didn’t put the scope in yet, did you?” asked Couric, whose husband, Jay Monahan, had died from colon cancer at age 42 in 1998.

    “Yes! We’re doing the examination. We’re almost done,” said her physician, the late Dr. Kenneth Forde, who taught for nearly 40 years at Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York City.

    More recently, actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney videotaped parts of their colonoscopies to raise public awareness after Reynolds lost a bet.

    “Rob and I both, we turned 45 this year,” Reynolds said in the video. “And you know, part of being this age is getting a colonoscopy. It’s a simple step that could literally — and I mean, literally — save your life.”

    Doctors found both actors had polyps that were removed during the screening.

    “It’s not every day that you can raise awareness about something that will most definitely save lives. That’s enough motivation for me to let you in on a camera being shoved up my a–,” Reynolds said.

    READ MORE: Get inspired by a weekly roundup on living well, made simple. Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Better newsletter for information and tools designed to improve your well-being.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • As China moves away from zero-Covid, health experts warn of dark days ahead | CNN

    As China moves away from zero-Covid, health experts warn of dark days ahead | CNN

    [ad_1]

    Editor’s Note: Editor’s Note: A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.


    Hong Kong
    CNN
     — 

    China’s zero-Covid policy, which stalled the world’s second-largest economy and sparked a wave of unprecedented protests, is now being dismantled as Beijing on Wednesday released sweeping revisions to its draconian measures that ultimately failed to bring the virus to heel.

    The new guidelines keep some restrictions in place but largely scrap the health code system that required people to show negative Covid-19 tests for daily activities and roll back mass testing. They also allow some Covid-19 cases and close contacts to skip centralized quarantine.

    They come after a number of cities in recent days started to lift some of the harsh controls that dictated – and heavily restricted – daily life for nearly three years in China.

    But while the changes mark a significant shift – and bring relief for many in the public who’ve grown increasingly frustrated with the high costs and demands of zero-Covid – another reality is also clear: China is underprepared for the surge in cases it could now see.

    Experts say though much is still unknown about how the next weeks and months will progress, China has fallen short on preparations like bolstering the elderly vaccination rate, upping surge and intensive care capacity in hospitals, and stockpiling antiviral medications.

    While the Omicron variant is milder than previous strains and China’s overall vaccination rate is high, even a small number of severe cases among vulnerable and under-vaccinated groups like the elderly could overwhelm hospitals if infections spike across the country of 1.4 billion, experts say.

    “This is a looming crisis – the timing is really bad … China now has to relax much of its measures during the winter (overlapping with flu season), so that was not as planned,” said Xi Chen, an associate professor at the Yale School of Public Health in the United States, pointing to what was likely an acceleration in China’s transition, triggered by public discontent.

    The guidelines released Wednesday open up a new chapter in the country’s epidemic control, three years after the first cases of Covid-19 were detected in central China’s Wuhan and following protests against the zero-Covid policy across the country starting late last month.

    Where China once controlled cases by requiring testing and clear health codes for entry into a number of public places and for domestic travel, those codes will no longer be checked except for in a handful of locations like medical institutions and schools. Mass testing will now be rolled back for everyone except for those in high-risk areas and high-risk positions. People who test positive for Covid-19 but have mild or asymptomatic cases and meet certain conditions can quarantine at home, instead of being forced to go to centralized quarantine centers, as can close contacts.

    Locations classified by authorities as “high risk” can still be locked down, but these lockdowns must now be more limited and precise, according to the new guidelines, which were circulated by China’s state media.

    The changes mark a swift about-face, following mounting public discontent, economic costs and record case numbers in recent weeks. They come after a top official last week first signaled the country could move away from the zero-Covid policy it had long poured significant resources into – though another official on Wednesday said the measures were a “proactive optimization,” not “reactive” when asked in a press briefing.

    “China has pursued this policy for so long, they’re now between a rock and a hard place,” said William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center in the US. “They don’t have good options in either direction anymore. They had really hoped that this epidemic globally would run its course, and they could survive without impact. And that hasn’t happened.”

    As restrictions are relaxed, and the virus spreads across the country, China is “going to have to go through a period of pain in terms of illness, serious illness, deaths and stress on the health care system” as was seen elsewhere in the world earlier in the pandemic, he added.

    Since the global vaccination campaign and the emergence of the Omicron variant, health experts have questioned China’s adherence to zero-Covid and pointed out the unsustainability of the strategy, which tried to use mass testing and surveillance, lockdowns and quarantines to stop a highly contagious virus.

    But as some restrictions are lifted, in what appears to be a haphazard transition following years of focus on meticulously controlling the virus, experts say change may be coming before China has made the preparations its health officials have admitted are needed.

    “An uncontrolled epidemic (one which only peaks when the virus starts running out of people to infect) … will pose serious challenges to the health care system, not only in terms of managing the small fraction of Covid cases that are severe, but also in the ‘collateral damage’ to people with other health conditions who have delayed care as a consequence,” said Ben Cowling, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Hong Kong.

    But even with easing restrictions, Cowling said, it was “difficult to predict” how quickly infections will spread though China, because there are still some measures in place and some people will change their behavior – such as staying at home more often.

    “And I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that stricter measures are reintroduced to combat rising cases,” he said.

    Experts agree that allowing the virus to spread nationally would be a significant shift for a country that up until this point has officially reported 5,235 Covid-19 deaths since early 2020 – a comparatively low figure globally that has been a point of pride in China, where state media until recently trumpeted the dangers of the virus to the public.

    Modeling from researchers at Shanghai’s Fudan University published in the journal Nature Medicine in May projected that more than 1.5 million Chinese could die within six months if Covid-19 restrictions were lifted and there was no access to antiviral drugs, which have been approved in China.

    However, death rates could fall to around the levels of seasonal flu, if almost all elderly people were vaccinated and antiviral medications were broadly used, the authors said.

    Last month, China released a list of measures to bolster health systems against Covid-19, which included directives to increase vaccination in the elderly, stockpile antiviral treatments and medical equipment, and expand critical care capacity – efforts that experts say take time and are best accomplished prior to an outbreak.

    “(Is China prepared?) If you look at surge capacity three years on and the stockpiling of effective antivirals – no. If you talk about the triage procedures – they are not strictly enforced – and if you talk about the vaccination rate for the elderly, especially those aged 80 and older, it is also overall no,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.

    Chinese authorities, he added, would likely be closely assessing outcomes like the death rate to decide policy steps going forward.

    Citizens wearing masks board a subway train on Monday in Henan province's Zhengzhou, where negative Covid-19 test results are no longer required for riding public transport.

    The US has at least 25 critical care beds per 100,000 people, according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development – by contrast, China has fewer than four for the same number, health authorities there said last month.

    The system also provides limited primary care, which could drive even moderately sick people to hospitals as opposed to calling a family doctor – putting more strain on hospitals, according to Yale’s Chen.

    Meanwhile, weak medical infrastructure in rural areas could foster crises there, especially as testing is reduced and younger people living in cities return to rural hometowns to visit elderly family members over the Lunar New Year next month, he said.

    While China’s overall vaccination rate is high, its elderly are also less protected than in some other parts of the world, where the oldest and most vulnerable to dying from Covid-19 were prioritized for vaccination. Some countries have already rolled out fourth or fifth doses for at-risk groups.

    By China’s accounting, more than 86% of China’s population over 60 are fully vaccinated, according to China’s National Health Commission, and booster rates are lower, with more than 45 million of the fully vaccinated elderly yet to receive an additional shot. Around 25 million elderly who have not received any shot, according to a comparison of official population figures and November 28 vaccination data.

    For the most at-risk over 80 age group, around two-thirds were fully vaccinated by China’s standards, but only 40% had received booster shots as of November 11, according to state media.

    But while China refers to third doses for its widely used inactivated vaccines as booster shots, a World Health Organization vaccine advisory group last year recommended that elderly people taking those vaccines receive three doses in their initial course to ensure sufficient protection.

    The inactivated vaccines used in China have been found to elicit lower levels of antibody response as compared to others used overseas, and many countries using the doses have paired them with more protective mRNA vaccines, which China has not approved for use.

    Cowling said evidence from Hong Kong’s outbreak, however, showed China’s inactivated vaccines worked well to prevent severe disease, but it was critical that the elderly receive three doses in the initial course, as recommended by the World Health Organization. They should then use a fourth dose on top of that to keep immunity high, he added.

    Top health officials on November 28 announced a new plan to bolster elderly vaccination rates, but such measures will take time, as will other preparations for a surge.

    Minimizing the worst outcomes in a transition out of zero-Covid depends on that preparation, according to Cowling. From that perspective, he said, “it doesn’t look like it would be a good time to relax the policies.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Congress faces time crunch on government funding and sweeping defense policy bill | CNN Politics

    Congress faces time crunch on government funding and sweeping defense policy bill | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are scrambling to try to fund the government and pass a sweeping defense policy bill before a new Congress is sworn in, but there are signs that both sides have struggled to reach agreement over these key outstanding issues.

    Government funding expires at the end of next week on December 16 – and it appears all but certain that lawmakers will have to pass a short-term extension as they try to reach a broader full-year funding agreement.

    Separately, the House has been expected to take up the National Defense Authorization bill for fiscal year 2023 this week, but it’s not yet clear when a vote will take place amid questions over whether certain controversial policy provisions will be included in the legislation – like eliminating a Covid-19 vaccine mandate for the military. Once the House has passed the bill, it would next have be taken up by the Senate.

    Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell warned on Tuesday that rather than passing a full-year funding bill, lawmakers may have to pass a short-term stop-gap measure to kick the can into early next year. This would set up a huge funding fight and create fears of a government shutdown early in the new Congress, when Republicans will take control of the House and would have to cut a deal with Democrats who run the Senate.

    On government funding legislation, McConnell said: “We don’t have agreement to do virtually anything, which can only leave us with the option of a short-term CR into early next year,” referring to a short-term bill known as a continuing resolution.

    He added: “We don’t even have an overall agreement on how much we’re going to spend, and we’re running out of time.”

    Despite the threat of a stop-gap, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer reiterated on Tuesday that senators are “working very hard” to reach a deal to fully fund the government before the upcoming deadline, but acknowledged that “there’s a lot of negotiating left to do.”

    Senate Republican Whip John Thune signaled Tuesday that he doesn’t have a “high level of confidence” both parties will be able to reach a deal on an omnibus government funding bill, as time is running short to pass that massive bill.

    “I don’t have a high level of confidence because I’m looking at the calendar,” the South Dakota Republican said. “It’ll be a very heavy lift, but who knows? I guess I would say is, you know, bring your Yuletide carols and all that stuff here because we may be singing to each other.”

    McConnell complained Tuesday that Democrats were preventing quick passage of the National Defense Authorization Act by trying to add unrelated items at the last minute that Republicans oppose.

    “Senate Democrats are still obstructing efforts to close out the NDAA by trying to jam in unrelated items with no relationship whatsoever to defense. We’re talking about a grab bag of miscellaneous pet priorities,” McConnell said in remarks on the Senate floor.

    “My colleagues across the aisle need to cut their unrelated hostage taking and put a bipartisan NDAA on the floor,” he added.

    Lawmakers released text of an agreement for the NDAA Tuesday night.

    The summary, released by the Senate Armed Services Committee, said it “requires the Secretary of Defense to rescind the mandate that members of the Armed Forces be vaccinated against COVID-19.”

    CNN reported earlier this week that the mandate was likely to be rescinded as part of the defense policy bill.

    In a tweeted statement Tuesday night, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy said that “the end of President Biden’s military COVID vaccine mandate is a victory for our military and for common sense.”

    House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat, said earlier Tuesday that the House was considering eliminating the Covid-19 vaccine mandate for military members in order to gather enough Republican votes to pass the annual defense authorization. Republicans have said they will not support the NDAA with the vaccine mandate in place.

    Hoyer said at his weekly pen and pad with reporters that Democrats were not “willing” to give up the mandate, but that a compromise is required to get the NDAA across the finish line.

    “We’re not willing to give it up. This is not a question of will; it’s a question of how can we get something done? We have a very close vote in the Senate, very close vote in the House. And you just don’t get everything you want,” he said.

    Thune said of the defense policy bill, “I think the ransom the Democrats wanted for stripping the vaccine mandate is a whole bunch of things to include the permitting reform, but also some other things that are just going to be non-starters on our side, and I don’t think we’re going to get in the business of, you know, allowing them to hold us hostage.”

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Ashton Kutcher and twin Michael talk health, guilt and rift between them | CNN

    Ashton Kutcher and twin Michael talk health, guilt and rift between them | CNN

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    In a rare interview, twin brothers Ashton and Michael Kutcher talked about both their bond and their rift.

    The pair appeared on the new Paramount+ series “The Checkup with Dr. David Agus.”

    Agus, who is Ashton Kutcher’s doctor, first spoke with the actor about his battle with the autoimmune condition vasculitis.

    Later he sat down with the brothers to talk about Michael Kutcher having cerebral palsy and also the moment he almost died as a youngster after contracting viral myocarditis that caused his heart to become enlarged and fail.

    The brothers both got emotional about Michael’s heart stopping while Ashton was visiting him in the intensive care unit.

    “I go in the room and I’m like ‘Whoa,’” Ashton Kutcher said, fighting back tears. “I’m like…’Everything is not ok.’ And he flatlines in the room and I know that noise cause now I’ve been visiting occasionally.”

    He said he considered jumping off a balcony to help his brother since his heart would be a match. Michael Kutcher did receive a donor heart in 24 hours.

    He later had to have open heart surgery after a blood clot was discovered. Meanwhile, Ashton Kutcher’s career as a model and actor started taking off and he said he felt guilt.

    The “That 70s Show” star said he wondered, “How do I get to be this lucky?”

    “For my brother…to be born with cerebral palsy, then have a heart transplant, then have this random blood clot, these things that you’re just like, ‘Who has to go through that?,’” he said.

    Michael Kutcher eventually called him out, he said.

    “He looked at me and he said, ‘Every time you feel sorry for me, you make me less,’” Ashton Kutcher said. “He said ‘This is the only life I’ve ever known, so stop feeling sorry for the only thing I have.’ And that then created an entire shift back to where I think we are today, which is straight up equals again.”

    Michael Kutcher told Agus the brothers drifted apart because of jealousy on his part after his brother became “a household name.”

    “There was a moment when I viewed him as receiving more attention than I was,” Michael Kutcher said. “That kind of drove me down to a place where I was jealous.”

    The brothers talked it through, Michael Kutcher said, adding, “And once I took all of the fame and everything out of it, I was able to just, you know, come back to him.”

    They also had an issue after the actor shared publicly that his brother had cerebral palsy, something Michael Kutcher had not shared. Ashton Kutcher said during the interview that he was not aware that his brother had been keeping it a secret.

    Michael Kutcher is now an advocate for the disabled.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • What is Strep A, the common bacterium that has killed 6 children in the UK? | CNN

    What is Strep A, the common bacterium that has killed 6 children in the UK? | CNN

    [ad_1]


    London
    CNN
     — 

    Health officials in the United Kingdom are advising parents and schools to watch for Strep A infections following the recent deaths of six children.

    With Covid-19 restrictions such as masking and social distancing no longer required in the UK, infections such as Strep A are spreading more easily, with cases increasing over the past month.

    Also known as Group A Streptococcus (GAS), Strep A can cause a range of symptoms varying from minor to severe but is not fatal for most people who become infected.

    Strep A is a bacterium found in the throat and on the skin. It usually causes fever and throat infections, and many people carry it without any symptoms. However, they can still spread it to others through coughs, sneezes and close contact.

    Symptoms of infection include pain when swallowing, fever, skin rashes and swollen tonsils and glands, with infection common in crowded settings such as schools and daycare centers, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says on its website.

    “(Infection) tends to be fairly harmless,” Beate Kampmann, professor of Paediatric Infection & Immunity, and director of the Vaccine Centre at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said in a statement on Friday.

    “(But) in very rare circumstances when the bacterium produces a toxin it can gain access to the bloodstream and cause really serious illness” such as sepsis, heart inflammation and toxic shock with organ failure, she said.

    She advised parents to seek medical advice immediately if a child looks “very ill” with symptoms such as fever, vomiting, muscle aches or a rash.

    To confirm a Strep A infection, clinicians usually either use a rapid antigen detection test (RADT) or a throat culture, according to the CDC. A culture is when a sample such as mucus or skin is taken from a person and tested to see if it contains a bacterial infection, like Strep A. Due to the varying sensitivities of RADTs, a throat culture is the preferred diagnostic test.

    Similarly in the UK, infections are typically diagnosed with a culture taken from the infected site – for example, the throat, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA).

    Invasive Group A Streptococcus (iGAS) is the term used when the bacteria invade the body, overcoming its natural defenses to enter areas such as the blood, and is more dangerous, the UKHSA explains on its website.

    While there is no vaccine to prevent Strep A or iGAS infections, antibiotics are usually effective at treating them.

    “We are seeing a higher number of cases of Group A strep this year than usual,” Colin Brown, deputy director at UKHSA, said in a statement on Friday.

    The increase in iGAS this year has particularly been observed in children under 10, the UKHSA added. Five children have died in England. One death has been reported in Wales, according to Public Health Wales.

    Data from UKHSA shows that there were 2.3 cases per 100,000 children aged 1 to 4 between mid-September and mid-November, compared with the average of 0.5 in the pre-pandemic seasons (2017 to 2019).

    For children aged 5 to 9, there were 1.1 cases per 100,000, compared with the pre-pandemic average of 0.3.

    The last period of high infections was between 2017 to 2018, with four children under 10 dying in the equivalent period, the statement added.

    The UKHSA said it doesn’t believe a new strain is circulating, with the increase in infections likely a result of “circulating bacteria and social mixing.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Antony Blinken says Biden administration supports zero-Covid protesters in China | CNN Politics

    Antony Blinken says Biden administration supports zero-Covid protesters in China | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that the Biden administration supports the zero-COVID protesters in China, explaining that he will address the topic when he visits the country early next year.

    “Of course, we do,” Blinken told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” when asked about the US support for the protesters demonstrating against the Chinese government’s stringent Covid-19 restrictions. “We support the right for people everywhere, whether it’s in China, whether it’s Iran, whether it’s any place else, to protest peacefully, to make known their views, to vent their frustrations.”

    Blinken said he would bring up the protests with Chinese officials in person next month.

    “We will say what we always say and what President (Joe) Biden has said to (Chinese leader) Xi Jinping, which is that human rights and basic civil liberties go to the heart of who we are as Americans. And no American government, no American president is going to be silent on that,” Blinken said.

    The demonstrations in China were triggered by a deadly fire on November 24 in Urumqi, the capital of the far western region of Xinjiang. The blaze killed at least 10 people and injured nine in an apartment building – leading to public fury after videos of the incident appeared to show lockdown measures had delayed firefighters from reaching the victims.

    The city had been under lockdown for more than 100 days, with residents unable to leave the region and many forced to stay home.

    As the protest numbers have swelled, many are also demanding greater political freedoms – and some have even called for Xi’s removal.

    Protests on such a large scale are highly unusual in China. While demonstrations over local grievances occur periodically, the protests are the most widespread since the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement of 1989.

    The Chinese government has cracked down swiftly, deploying police at key protest sites, calling protesters to warn them and tightening online censorship.

    Blinken said Sunday that the US would take the same approach when the rights of protesters are repressed anywhere else: “We speak out against it, we stand up against it, and we take action against it.”

    Demonstrations have rocked Iran for several months, sparking a deadly clampdown from authorities. The nationwide uprising was first ignited by the death of Mahsa (also known as Zhina) Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman who died in mid-September after being detained by the country’s morality police. Since then, protesters across Iran have coalesced around a range of grievances with the Iranian government.

    Iranian Attorney General Mohammad Jafar Montazeri said Thursday that Iran’s parliament and judiciary are reviewing the country’s mandatory hijab law, according to pro-reform outlet Entekhab.

    Montazeri was also quoted as saying that Iran’s feared morality police had been “abolished,” but Iranian state media strongly pushed back on those comments, saying the interior ministry oversees the force, not the judiciary.

    In an interview with CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday, Blinken wouldn’t say if the US believes that a move to abolish the morality police would end the protests in the country.

    “That’s up to the Iranian people. This is about that. It’s not about us. And what we’ve seen since the killing of Mahsa Amini has been the extraordinary courage of Iranian young people, especially women, who’ve been leading these protests, standing up for the right to be able to say what they want to say, wear what they want to wear,” Blinken said.

    In his interview with Tapper, Blinken pointed to US sanctions on those responsible for the crackdown on protesters in Iran, but he did not mention any cost that has been imposed on China for its crackdown on protests.

    Blinken said that “fundamentally” the protests in China and Iran were not about the US.

    “This is about people in both countries trying to express their views, trying to have their aspirations met, and the response that the governments are taking to that,” he said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • A hard look at New York’s controversial new approach to the homeless | CNN Politics

    A hard look at New York’s controversial new approach to the homeless | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]

    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    New York City Mayor Eric Adams gave the city’s first responders, including its police force, a controversial new task this week – to enforce a state law that allows them to involuntarily commit people experiencing a mental health crisis.

    From CNN’s report by Mark Morales:

    Adams said it was a myth that first responders can only involuntarily commit those who displayed an “overt act” that they may be suicidal, violent or a danger to others. Instead, he said the law allowed first responders to involuntarily commit those who cannot meet their own “basic human needs” – a lower bar.

    The police department is still formulating a plan and Adams, a former cop, said officers will get additional training and real-time support from mental health professionals.

    The move follows a raft of violence in New York City and also increasingly visible homeless encampments in New York and cities around the country.

    Adams framed the policy as a way to help people who need it.

    “It is not acceptable for us to see someone who clearly needs help and walk past,” he said.

    Advocates for the homeless oppose this. “The city really needs to approach this more from a health and housing lens, rather than focusing on involuntary removals and policing,” Jacquelyn Simone from the Coalition for the Homeless told CNN’s Brynn Gingras for her report that aired this week on “AC360°.”

    Mental health professionals are questioning it. “We are defaulting to an extreme that takes away basic human rights,” Matt Kudish, CEO of the New York chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said in a statement after Adams’ announcement.

    Kudish said New York should do more to help people before they need intervention: “The City has the power to provide onsite treatment, as well as treatment in homeless shelters or supported housing, but has chosen not to.”

    Police are worried it puts them in a precarious position. “As soon as they want to resist, now where does the liability form – on the uniformed officer,” retired NYPD detective Andrew Bershad told Gingras.

    I talked to Ryan McBain, a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation who studies how government policies can reach vulnerable populations, including those experiencing both mental illness and housing insecurity.

    McBain argued Adams’ move is “well-intentioned but misguided,” first of all because police interactions with people experiencing serious mental health issues is “fuel for escalation.”

    “It’s something like 1 in 4 people who are shot by a police officer are people with significant mental health issues,” McBain said. When I looked to confirm that 25% figure, I found this in a 2015 Washington Post investigation.

    “If you stop and think about it, it makes sense, right? People who are disoriented or having atypical thoughts, they’re not in a position oftentimes to comply collaboratively with a police officer,” he said. “And given the fact that police officers are carrying weapons, you have sort of a recipe for bad outcomes.”

    There’s evidence, he said, that actually deploying trained mental health professionals alongside police officers would be more effective. In New York, first responders will get additional training and have access to a hotline with mental health professionals.

    Another issue is more systemic and has to do with how the US deals with chronic and serious mental illness, from a system of large institutional asylums that were shuttered in the ’60s and ‘70s to a flawed system focused on private insurance and community-based mental health centers.

    Currently, there aren’t enough beds for psychiatric patients.

    “We don’t need giant asylums where the conditions are inappropriate, but we do need larger facilities with more beds that can provide the type of care that the patients really need when they have more serious mental health issues,” McBain said.

    More permanent supportive housing is required for people who experience both mental health issues and homelessness. But that kind of solution – the public providing housing alternatives for people who cannot provide for themselves – can be expensive and politically difficult.

    RELATED: How one Minnesota county has been rapidly housing the homeless since the pandemic

    It’s a sentiment echoed by Dennis Culhane, a professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania, who appeared on “AC360°” on Thursday. “That is the fundamental problem here,” Culhane said. “You cannot actively and effectively treat people without having them in a place where they can take care of themselves.”

    McBain said that in the US health system, which is geared around insurance paying for services, mental health is not treated on par with physical health.

    “In the best of all possible worlds, you’d have a continuum of care for addressing people’s mental health needs,” he said.

    “And that continuum would begin with high-quality outpatient services that private insurers pay for at parity with physical health conditions. … I think until you see the system try to address these issues in a holistic way, these issues are going to continue to persist,” he said, arguing, “Mayor Adams is proposing putting a Band-Aid on something for which you really need sutures.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Anita Hill says Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade is indicator of what could happen to individuals’ civil rights | CNN Politics

    Anita Hill says Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade is indicator of what could happen to individuals’ civil rights | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Americans should not just consider how the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade impacts women’s rights, but also how it affects individuals’ civil rights, Anita Hill said in an interview with CNN’s Chris Wallace.

    Asked by Wallace if the decision by Justice Clarence Thomas to vote in the 5-4 majority in favor of overturning the landmark ruling makes it harder for her to reconcile his time on the high court, Hill said the decision was about a “shrinking of rights.”

    Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment in testimony during his 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Thomas has denied the allegations.

    She told Wallace that the conservative Thomas is not the only one on the bench who wants to assess access to contraception and protections for gender identity, adding that “the votes are there to move us in that direction.”

    “I believe that’s why we should – how we should be looking at Dobbs, not just as an indicator of what is going to happen on reproductive rights, but also what will happen to us as a country in terms of how much we value the civil rights of individuals and especially marginalized people,” she said on “Who’s Talking to Chris Wallace,” which is set to air on CNN on Sunday night.

    Since June – when the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, holding that there is no longer a federal constitutional right to an abortion – several states have moved to enshrine abortion protections in their constitutions. And after Thomas’ concurring opinion on the decision where he called for rulings on contraception, same-sex marriage and other rights to be revisited, President Joe Biden signed an executive order aiming to safeguard access to abortion care and contraceptives.

    The Senate on Tuesday passed legislation to protect same-sex and interracial marriage, called the Respect for Marriage Act, in a landmark bipartisan vote amid concern the Supreme Court might overturn its 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision that legalized same-sex marriage. The House would need to approve the legislation before sending it to President Joe Biden’s desk to be signed into law.

    Hill also told Wallace she was “shocked” to get a call from Thomas’ wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, who she said in 2010 left a voicemail message requesting an apology from the law professor.

    “I had really no idea what to make of it. But I knew this, I knew that I did not want to entertain that kind of call either on the voicemail or face to face, that it was not something that clearly, I was not going to apologize for 1991,” Hill said. “And I didn’t in fact believe that the call was a sincere attempt to reconcile anything, and that I was going to do what I needed to do to stop it from happening.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Forget smartwatches, consumers are snapping up these quirky alternatives | CNN Business

    Forget smartwatches, consumers are snapping up these quirky alternatives | CNN Business

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    In 2015, the same year Apple introduced its smartwatch, a Kickstarter campaign launched for a very different kind of wearable device: a wellness-tracking ring called the Oura.

    Seven years later, the Apple Watch is the most popular wearable device while other similar products from Google and Samsung also dominate the wearables market. But something notable is underway: products like Oura, which look and sometimes function markedly different from more mainstream wearables, are gaining renewed traction.

    The Oura ring ($399) experienced a spike in sales during the pandemic, and has seen continued momentum this holiday season, CEO Tom Hale told CNN Business. It provides sleep tracking data without needing to wear a smartwatch to bed and can detect subtle changes in body temperature. It also has no screen. Earlier this year, the company announced it had received a $2.55 billion valuation and has since rolled out partnerships with Gucci, Strava and other brands.

    The ring is among a small but increasingly buzzy group of alternative wearable devices that people are gravitating toward right now, including a fitness band tracker with no screen and headphones that don’t need to be put in the ear. Some of the demand stems from shifts during the pandemic, as consumer interest in health monitoring surged. People turned to activity trackers, smartwatches and other devices to keep tabs on their steps, vital statistics and more. Many were also willing to experiment with different form factors, as long as they provided accurate data and were still comfortable – a trend that continues today.

    “The funny thing is that most of these devices have been around for a while but have slowly built a name for themselves in recent quarters,” said Ramon Llamas, a research director at IDC Research. “But it takes time for word of mouth to spread.”

    The devices may also tap into a desire to get the benefits of wearable trackers without necessarily having a screen or device on their body at all times.

    Take the WHOOP band, a health tracker without a screen that first came out in 2015. It has a very specific focus on workout recovery, resting time, training and coaching. Founder and CEO Will Ahmed told CNN Business this year’s Cyber Monday was its largest sales day ever.

    “It wasn’t that long ago that people only wore a health monitor if something was wrong. Now, we’re seeing people take a much more proactive approach to their health,” he said. “This trend has continued even as the pandemic subsides.”

    Like Oura, the WHOOP is a subscription-based device and targeting a more niche audience. It’s pricy, too: $480, including a two-year subscription plan.

    The WHOOP band

    “The challenge is that most of these devices are vying for single-digit market share behind the market leaders, [such as Apple and Samsung],” Llamas said. “That’s why it is key to have a well-differentiated segment that you can serve almost exclusively. Companies like WHOOP have been successful because they focus on athlete rest and recovery so well, and those are key factors for many athletes today.”

    Ahmed said the product is evolving to support this growing interest in health by adding new features related to pregnancy, stress and deeper biometric monitoring. In August, WHOOP announced it raised $200 million in a funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, giving the company a valuation of $3.6 billion.

    Health tracking devices continue to take on new shapes and sizes, too, including some that don’t require being worn at all. In September, Amazon showed off a non-wearable sleep tracking monitor, Halo Rise, which sits on a nightstand and tracks breathing patterns while the user is asleep. Meanwhile, some companies like Withings let users slip sensors under the mattress to collect sleep data.

    There’s also a shift in demand for what is arguably one of the original wearables: headphones.

    Bone conduction headphones, which like the Oura have been around for years, are also “having a moment,” according to Steve Konig, head of the research department at the Consumer Electronics Association. Rather than sitting inside or on top of the ear canal, bone conduction headphones rest in front of the ear, leaving it uncovered. They transmit audio along the user’s bones and jaw to the ears instead of directly into the ear canal. The headphones also feature a soft band that runs behind the upper portion of the neck to secure it in place and minimize sound distortions.

    Bone conduction headphones by Shokz.

    At the same time, the exposed ear allows users to pick up on sounds and the environment around them, crucial for safety when doing activities such as riding a bike or jogging. Unlike earbuds, there’s also less concern about it popping out of your ears.

    Shokz ($125) pioneered bone conduction headphones, but the market has since expanded with other brands offering similar designs. Open earbuds – such as ones designed by Sony and Bose – feature a similar design that leaves the ear canals completely open so that the user can hear the outer noise. But some audiophiles say the sound quality on bone conduction headphones and open earbuds is less than stellar.

    “In the past 10 years, audio innovation in general has soared because of the introduction of new features, such as noise cancellation technology, built-in wireless capabilities and more,” Konig said. “Now, people own multiple pairs of personal listening products for different locations and use cases; some leave them at the office, others prefer bigger, beefier ones on airplanes. They also make a great holiday gift because, in the grand scheme of gift giving, they’re fairly reasonable to buy.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Huge trade partner and ‘systemic rival.’ Europe has a China problem | CNN Business

    Huge trade partner and ‘systemic rival.’ Europe has a China problem | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    London
    CNN Business
     — 

    Europe is becoming increasingly reliant on China for trade, and many of its top companies are eager to invest in the world’s second biggest economy despite the disruption caused by Covid lockdowns.

    But a souring relationship with an increasingly unpredictable Beijing, regret about the price Europe has paid for getting too close to Russia, and rising geopolitical tension has some EU officials considering whether the bloc should start to reduce its exposure.

    It’s a calculation EU Council President Charles Michel is weighing up Thursday as he visits Chinese leader Xi Jinping for talks aimed at shoring up diplomatic ties.

    A lot has happened since the last time an EU president — appointed by the leaders of the 27 EU member states — met with Xi in person four years ago.

    The Covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and tit-for-tat sanctions between China and EU lawmakers have strained relations since. The United States, which imposed controls on exports of semiconductors to China in October, is reportedly exerting pressure on Europe to adopt a similarly hard line.

    Michel’s spokesperson, Barend Leyts, said in a statement last week that Michel’s visit provides a “timely opportunity” for Europe and China to engage on matters of “common interest.” He did not specify which subjects would be discussed.

    But some within Europe are growing wary of close relations with China. The bloc has been badly burned this year by its historic reliance on Russia as its main energy supplier, and diversification has shot up the political agenda.

    Those concerns bubbled up last month when German Chancellor Olaf Scholz flew to Beijing with a delegation of top business leaders to meet Xi, a move intended to shore up Germany’s second biggest export market after the US.

    The bloc is in a similar bind.

    “Any problems you have from a political and strategic level [between the EU and China], they tend to spill over to the economic level,” Ricardo Borges de Castro, associate director at the European Policy Centre, told CNN Business.

    Both sides have a lot invested in their partnership. The total value of the goods trade between China and Europe hit €696 billion ($732 billion) last year, up by nearly a quarter from 2019.

    China was the third largest destination for EU goods exports, accounting for 10% of the total, according to Eurostat data. China is Europe’s biggest source of imports, accounting for 22% in 2021.

    “The European market’s importance as a destination for Chinese exports is around double that of the Chinese market for Europeans,” Jörg Wuttke, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China (ECCC) wrote in a September report.

    Overall, the relationship is simply “too big to fail,” according to Borges de Castro. Europe is not seeking to decouple from the lucrative Chinese market, he added.

    “I don’t see [the EU’s strategy] as a decoupling strategy. I think the EU strategy, for the moment, is a diversification strategy… the lesson [from Russia] is that you cannot have a single provider,” he said.

    Machinery, vehicles, chemicals, and other manufactured goods account for the vast bulk of goods traded between the two powers, according to Eurostat.

    “European companies have done extremely well here and the overall long term outlook is very positive,” ECCC Secretary General Adam Dunnett told CNN Business, adding that he expects European company revenues to keep growing in China over the next decade.

    There are areas where Europe is dependent on Beijing, namely for the supply of rare earth metals required to make hybrid and electric vehicles, and wind turbines. Europe’s solar panels are also mostly manufactured in China.

    But those dependencies shouldn’t be exaggerated, Dunnett said.

    “When you look at some of the broader things that China exports to the EU such as furniture and consumer goods, a lot of those things you can get elsewhere,” he said.

    Even so, the United States may exert more pressure on Europe to pull away from China, Borges de Castro noted. In early October, Washington banned Chinese firms from buying its advanced chips and chip-making equipment without a license.

    Benjamin Loh, the head of Dutch chipmaker ASM International, told the Financial Times on Wednesday that the US was “putting a lot of pressure” on the Dutch government to take a similarly tough stance.

    The pressure may already be beginning to show. Germany last month blocked the sale of one of its chip factories to a Chinese-owned tech company because of security concerns.

    Economic ties between Brussels and Beijing, though mutually beneficial, have frayed in other ways in recent years.

    Last year, Chinese direct investment into the European Union dropped to its second lowest level since 2013, only behind 2020, according to analysis by the Rhodium Group, a research firm. It has fallen almost 78% since 2016.

    “The level of Chinese investment in Europe is now at a decade low,” Agatha Kratz, director at Rhodium Group, told CNN Business, citing Beijing’s strict capital controls and greater scrutiny by EU regulators.

    EU investment into China has also become more concentrated. Between 2018 and 2021, the top 10 European investors in China, including those from the United Kingdom, made up almost 80% of the continent’s total investment in the country, Rhodium Group data shows.

    And just four German companies — automakers Volkswagen

    (VLKAF)    , BMW, and Daimler

    (DDAIF)    , and chemicals giant BASF

    (BASFY)     — made up more than one third of all European investment in those four years.

    An investment deal between Beijing and Brussels was shelved last year after EU lawmakers slapped sanctions on Chinese officials over alleged human rights abuses, prompting China to retaliate with its own penalties.

    The deal, agreed in principle in 2020 after years of talks, was designed to level the playing field for European companies operating in China, who have long complained that Beijing’s subsidies have put them at a disadvantage.

    EU diplomats said in April that a “growing number of irritants” were hurting relations, including China’s tacit acceptance of Russia’s war in Ukraine. They have described China as “a partner for cooperation and negotiation, an economic competitor and a systemic rival.”

    The most pressing issue for European businesses in China, according to Dunnett, is its stringent zero-Covid policy.

    “For the last year, it’s been the Covid carousel, [the] Covid rollercoaster,” he said. “Every time you think [it was] about to open up, something pulls us back,” he added.

    Over the weekend, thousands of protestors took to streets across China in a rare series of demonstrations against the country’s strict Covid controls. Some restrictions have since been lifted in Shanghai and other major cities.

    Beijing’s uncompromising approach is helping to further dampen foreign investment in the country, especially among smaller companies, Raffaello Pantucci, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a security research group, told CNN Business.

    “The general business environment in China is perceived as becoming harder to navigate, and while companies still feel they have to engage given its size and potential, increasingly small to medium sized companies are giving up,” he said.

    — Laura He contributed reporting.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • China’s Zhengzhou, home to world’s largest iPhone factory, ends Covid lockdown | CNN Business

    China’s Zhengzhou, home to world’s largest iPhone factory, ends Covid lockdown | CNN Business

    [ad_1]


    Hong Kong
    CNN Business
     — 

    The central Chinese city of Zhengzhou, home to the world’s largest iPhone factory, has lifted a five-day Covid lockdown, in a move that analysts have called a much-needed relief for Apple and its main supplier Foxconn.

    Zhengzhou is the site of “iPhone City,” a sprawling manufacturing campus owned by Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn that normally houses about 200,000 workers churning out products for Apple

    (AAPL)    , including the iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max. Last Friday, the city locked down its urban districts for five days as Covid-19 cases surged there.

    Foxconn’s massive facility is not part of the city’s urban districts. However, analysts say the lockdown would have been detrimental to efforts to restore lost production at the campus, the site of a violent workers’ revolt last week.

    “This is some good news in a dark storm for Cupertino,” Daniel Ives, managing director of equity research at Wedbush Securities, told CNN Business, referring to the California city where Apple is based. “There is a lot of heavy lifting ahead for Apple to ramp back up the factories.”

    Ives estimates the ongoing supply disruptions at Foxconn’s Zhengzhou campus were costing Apple roughly $1 billion a week in lost iPhone sales. The troubles started in October when workers left the campus in Zhengzhou, the capital of the central province of Henan, due to Covid-related fears. Short on staff, bonuses were offered to workers to return.

    But protests broke out last week when the newly hired staff said management had reneged on their promises. The workers, who clashed with security officers, were eventually offered cash to quit and leave.

    Analysts said Foxconn’s production woes will speed up the pace of supply chain diversification away from China to countries like India.

    Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at TF International Securities, wrote on social media that he estimated iPhone shipments could be 20% lower than expected in the current October-to-December quarter. The average capacity utilization rate of the Zhengzhou plant was only about 20% in November, he said, and was expected to improve to 30% to 40% in December.

    Total iPhone 14 Pro and 14 Pro Max shipments in the current quarter would be 15 million to 20 million units less than previously anticipated, according to Kuo. Due to the high price of the iPhone 14 Pro series, Apple’s overall iPhone revenue in the current holiday quarter could be 20% to 30% lower than investors’ expectations, he added.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Senate votes to end Covid-19 emergency, 3 years after initial declaration | CNN Politics

    Senate votes to end Covid-19 emergency, 3 years after initial declaration | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The Senate on Wednesday passed a bill that would end the national Covid-19 emergency declared by then-President Donald Trump on March 13, 2020.

    The final vote was overwhelmingly bipartisan, 68-23. The joint resolution, which cleared the House earlier this year, now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk.

    The vote comes on the heels of two other successful efforts led by Republicans in approving legislation rescinding Biden administration policies.

    A White House official said in a statement to CNN that while the President “strongly opposes” this bill, the administration is already winding down the emergency by May 11, the date previously announced for the end of the authority.

    Still, the official noted, if the Senate passed the measure and it heads to Biden’s desk, “he will sign it, and the administration will continue working with agencies to wind down the national emergency with as much notice as possible to Americans who could potentially be impacted.”

    The White House said in January that Biden “strongly opposes” the GOP resolution to end the Covid-19 emergency, according to its statement of administration policy, but did not threaten a veto.

    While the lack of an explicit veto threat left the possibility of Biden signing the measure a clear, if not likely, option, Biden’s ultimate decision to sign the bill marked another moment where House Democrats have privately voiced frustration that the lack of clarity – or outright messaging mishap – from the White House left lawmakers in a lurch.

    House Democrats largely voted against the bill when it was brought to the floor in February except for 11 Democrats who joined Republicans in support. A separate White House official noted that the Senate vote comes after several weeks when the Biden administration has had time to accelerate its wind-down efforts – and just a little over a month before they’d announced the emergency would end.

    But it also comes after the administration drew blowback from House Democrats after sending what lawmakers viewed as mixed signals over how the president planned to respond to a Republican-led resolution that would block a controversial Washington, DC, crime bill, which opponents criticized as weak on crime. The president ultimately did not veto the measure.

    The measure was able to succeed in the Senate by a simple majority through the Congressional Review Act, which allows a vote to repeal regulations from the executive branch without breaking a filibuster at a 60-vote threshold that is required for most legislation in the chamber.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Americans hold mixed views on getting back to ‘normal’ after Covid-19, new polling shows | CNN Politics

    Americans hold mixed views on getting back to ‘normal’ after Covid-19, new polling shows | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Three years after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Americans’ views of the disease’s impact have stagnated into a complex set of mixed feelings, recent polling suggests, with few believing that the pandemic has ended but most also saying that their lives had returned mostly – if not entirely – to normal.

    The US Senate passed a bill last week that would end the national Covid-19 emergency declared in March 2020. The US House approved the measure earlier this year, and the White House has said President Joe Biden will sign it despite “strongly” opposing the bill. The administration had already planned to wind down the emergency by May 11.

    In a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey about the Biden administration’s original plan to end the public health emergency by May, 59% of Americans said they expected the decision to have no impact on them or their family, with the remainder about evenly split between the 20% who thought it would have a positive effect and the 21% who thought the impact would be negative.

    Only 24% of Americans personally feel that the pandemic is over, a recent Monmouth University poll found, with 20% saying it will end eventually and 53% saying that it’ll never be over. Those numbers were very similar to Monmouth’s polling last fall, suggesting that a sense of some lingering abnormalcy may well be the new normal.

    Relatively few Americans say either that their lives have completely returned to a pre-pandemic normal or that their lives are still completely upended by it. The Monmouth poll found a 69% majority saying that their daily routine was at least mostly back to what it was pre-pandemic – but only about a third, 34%, say that things were completely the same as they were three years ago. Another 20% said things were partially back to normal, and 11% that they were still not normal at all.

    Declaring to pollsters that the pandemic is over may be something of a political statement for ordinary Americans as well. Republicans were 17 points likelier than Democrats to say that their own routines were mostly back to normal, the Monmouth poll found, and 28 points likelier to say that the pandemic had completely ended.

    The results of the Monmouth survey echo a February Gallup poll that found 33% of Americans saying that their life was completely back to pre-pandemic normal, 20% saying that they expected it would eventually return to normal and nearly half that their life would never fully return to the way it was pre-pandemic. Gallup also found that views about the pandemic’s trajectory were nearly unchanged from their polling in October, when 31% thought normalcy had completely returned.

    “The 47% who don’t foresee a return to normalcy may be getting used to a ‘new normal’ that, for some, means occasional mask use, regular COVID-19 vaccines and avoidance of some situations that may put them at greater risk of infection, particularly at times when COVID-19 infections are spiking,” Gallup’s Megan Brenan wrote.

    About half of Americans, 48%, are continuing to mask up in public on at least some occasions, the Monmouth poll found, though only about 21% said they do so most or all of the time. In KFF polling from earlier this year, 46% of Americans said they’d taken some form of precautions – including mask-wearing or avoiding large gatherings, travel or indoor dining – over the winter due to news about the triple threat of Covid-19, the flu and RSV.

    In KFF’s latest poll, just over half the American public said they’d been boosted against Covid-19, but only 23% reported receiving the latest bivalent version of the booster vaccine.

    At the broader societal level, in a CNN poll last fall, more than 6 in 10 Americans said they believed the pandemic had permanently reshaped multiple aspects of the American landscape, from healthcare (66%) and education (63%) to the economy (61%) and the way most people do their jobs (69%).

    But while the public sees the pandemic’s effects as far-reaching and ongoing, they’re also not top of mind. In a Quinnipiac University survey released last week, fewer than 1% of Americans picked Covid-19 as “the most urgent issue facing the country.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Judge who suspended abortion pill failed to disclose interviews that discussed social issues | CNN Politics

    Judge who suspended abortion pill failed to disclose interviews that discussed social issues | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The federal district judge who first suspended the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the so-called abortion pill mifepristone failed to disclose during his Senate confirmation process two interviews on Christian talk radio where he discussed social issues such as contraception and gay rights.

    In undisclosed radio interviews, Matthew Kacsmaryk referred to being gay as “a lifestyle” and expressed concerns that new norms for “people who experience same-sex attraction” would lead to clashes with religious institutions, calling it the latest in a change in sexual norms that began with “no-fault divorce” and “permissive policies on contraception.”

    Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointed federal district judge, made the unreported comments in two appearances in 2014 on Chosen Generation, a radio show that offers “a biblical constitutional worldview.” At the time, Kacsmaryk was deputy general counsel at First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit religious liberty advocacy group known before 2016 as the Liberty Institute, and was brought on to the radio show to discuss “the homosexual agenda” to silence churches and religious liberty, according to the show’s host.

    Federal judicial nominees are required to submit detailed paperwork to the Senate Judiciary Committee ahead of their confirmation process, including copies of nearly everything they have ever written or said in public, in order for the committee to evaluate a nominee’s qualifications and personal opinions. Neither interview is listed in the paperwork Kacsmaryk provided to the Senate during his judicial nomination process, which first began in 2017.

    The radio interviews were not included in the 22 media works Kacsmaryk disclosed, which included three radio appearances and 19 written pieces.

    A spokesperson for Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told CNN the interviews weren’t in their archived files from Kacsmaryk’s confirmation, which included all paperwork submitted for his nomination.

    In a statement sent to CNN, Kacsmaryk said he did not locate the interview when searching for media to disclose and he did not recall the interview.

    “I used the DOJ-OLP manual to run searches for all media but did not locate this interview and did not recall this event, which involved a call-in to a local radio show,” he told CNN. “After listening to the audio file supplied by CNN, I agree that the content is equivalent to the legal analysis appearing throughout my SJQ and discussed extensively during my Senate confirmation hearing. Additionally, the transcript supplied by CNN appears to track with the audio and accurately recounts my responses during the phone call—when quoted in full.”

    The Washington Post reported last week that Kacsmaryk removed his name in 2017 from a pending law review article criticizing protections for transgender people and those seeking abortions during his judicial nomination process, a highly unusual move for a judicial nominee.

    Kacsmaryk did not respond to the Post’s request for comment, but a spokesperson for his old employer First Liberty claimed Kacsmaryk’s name had been a “placeholder” on the article and that Kacsmaryk had not provided a “substantive contribution,” despite the final version being almost identical to the one submitted under Kacsmaryk’s name according to the Post.

    Kacsmaryk later submitted supplemental material in 2019 to the committee to reflect interviews and events he participated since in 2017, but neither of the 2014 radio interviews were included.

    Democratic senators grilled Kacsmaryk on his positions on abortion and LGBTQ rights during both his nomination hearing and in written questions in 2017.

    While Kacsmaryk worked at First Liberty, one of his colleagues, general counsel Jeff Mateer, was also nominated for a federal judgeship. But Mateer came under scrutiny in 2017 for comments unearthed during his confirmation process in which he once compared the US to Nazi Germany on Chosen Generation – the same radio program Kacsmaryk appeared on and whose interviews he did not disclose.

    Mateer’s nomination was later rescinded; Kacsmaryk was later confirmed in 2019.

    The interviews were shared by Kacsmaryk’s employer, the Liberty Institute, at the time on social media. A guest from First Liberty appeared once a week, according to the show’s radio host in the broadcast and archives available online.

    In one interview from February 2014, in response to a question on the “homosexual agenda,” Kacsmaryk expressed concerns that new social norms surrounding “same-sex marriage” and “people who experience same-sex attraction” would lead to clashes with religious institutions.

    “I just want to make very clear, people who experience a same-sex attraction are not responsible individually or solely for the atmosphere of the sexual revolution,” Kacsmaryk said. “You know it. It’s a long time coming. It came after no-fault divorce. It came after we implemented very permissive policies on contraception. The sexual revolution has gone through several phases. We just happen to be at the phase now where same sex marriages is at the fore.”

    “But through that progression or regression, I think you can see five areas where there will be a clash of absolutes between the traditional Judeo-Christian understanding of marriage and the revisionist, redefined vision of marriage that you saw in last term’s Supreme Court opinions,” he said before outlining those areas as over tax exempt statuses, adoption services, federal government programs, and discrimination at universities.

    He appeared on the program to discuss the federal government’s view of same-sex marriage and opponents of it following the court ruling striking down the Defense of Marriage Act. The host suggested opponents of same-sex marriage could be viewed as “hostile” enemies of the government in line with al-Qaeda, which Kacsmaryk agreed with.

    “Yeah, and I can speak from immediate firsthand experience,” he said, citing his work formerly in the Justice Department. “That is very much in vogue now in the federal government to characterize opposition to same sex marriage and related issues as irrational prejudice at best and a potential hate crime at worse,” he continued.

    “It really has infused the entire federal service top to bottom as the administration has declared that they will join this culture war, that there’s one side that is destined to win and that you’re on the wrong side of history in the federal government if you are on an opposing side,” he added.

    Kacsmaryk also appeared on the program in July 2014 to discuss an executive order signed by then-President Barack Obama that banned federal contractors from discriminating against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity which did not exempt faith-based groups.

    Kacsmaryk linked changes in Democrats’ views on the issue of religious freedom to the “emergence of this very powerful constituency in the LGBT community,” which he said the Obama administration made campaign promises to fulfill. Kacsmaryk said religious organizations entering into contracts with the federal government would have risk under the executive order and face a “real burden” for dissenting from “the new sexual orthodoxy” on gay rights.

    The new rules, Kacsmaryk suggested, were poorly written and didn’t differentiate between gay people who lived “celibate” lives and those who made being gay “a lifestyle,” in a discussion of how religious groups would comply with the new rules.

    “If you look at the letter that was issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, they point out that the category sexual orientation is problematic because it’s not defined,” he said. “Most Abrahamic faith traditions will draw a distinction between someone who experiences the same sex attraction but is willing to live celibate and somebody who experiences the same sex attraction and makes it a lifestyle and seeks to sexualize that lifestyle. Those are two different categories that most Abrahamic faith traditions recognize.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Three GOP appointees, including 2 from Trump, will hear the next phase of major abortion pill case | CNN Politics

    Three GOP appointees, including 2 from Trump, will hear the next phase of major abortion pill case | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The New Orleans-based appeals court panel that will oversee the next stage in the blockbuster legal challenge to the availability of medication abortion drugs is made up of three Republican appointees, including one Trump nominee who has called abortion a “moral tragedy.”

    Circuit Judges James Ho and Cory Wilson, both Trump nominees, will hear the oral arguments on May 17, alongside Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, an appointee of George W. Bush.

    The lawsuit was brought by anti-abortion doctors and medical organizations who allege the US Food and Drug Administration broke the law when it approved the medication abortion drug mifepristone more than two decades ago.

    Last month, US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk agreed with their arguments and ruled that the approval of the drug should be suspended. 

    However, his ruling was put on hold by the Supreme Court on April 21 and it will remain on hold until the case goes back to the high court, regardless of how the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals rules on the merits.

    Ho, a former Texas solicitor general, is considered one of the most conservative and strident members of the 5th Circuit, having described abortion as a “moral tragedy” in a 2018 concurring opinion.

    In a 2019 concurring opinion, Ho also said that a trial judge’s ruling – which struck down a 15-week abortion ban and which was affirmed by the 5th Circuit under the then-standing Roe precedent – displayed “an alarming disrespect for the millions of Americans who believe that babies deserve legal protection during pregnancy as well as after birth, and that abortion is the immoral, tragic, and violent taking of innocent human life.”

    The 5th Circuit is considered one of the most conservative in the country has consistently ruled against the Biden Justice Department.

    Wilson earlier this year wrote a majority circuit opinion that said that a federal law that bars gun ownership by people under domestic violence was unconstitutional.

    Elrod penned an opinion last month that struck down the federal ban on bump stocks, which are attachments that essentially allow shooters to fire semiautomatic rifles continuously with one pull of the trigger.

    The medication abortion case is another hugely consequential case to go through the circuit. Mifepristone – the drug being targeted in the lawsuit – is the first pill in the two-pill regimen for terminating a pregnancy. Medication abortion makes up more than half of all abortions obtained in the United States.

    In filings last week, the Justice Department told the 5th Circuit that Kacsmaryk’s conclusions that the drug was unsafe rested “on a series of fundamental errors.”

    “While FDA justified its scientific conclusions in multiple detailed reviews, including a medical review spanning more than 100 pages and assessing dozens of studies and other scientific information, the district court swept the agency’s judgments aside by substituting its own lay understanding of purportedly contrary studies, offering demonstrably erroneous characterizations of the record,” the DOJ’s filing said. 

    The department’s opponents in the case will file a response later on Monday.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Teachers are on the front lines of a battle to change how teens use social media | CNN Business

    Teachers are on the front lines of a battle to change how teens use social media | CNN Business

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    A high school English class may not sound like the typical forum for educating kids on the risks of social media, but that hasn’t stopped Jennifer Rosenzweig.

    Each school year, the 10th graders in her class at Scarsdale High School in New York watch “The Social Dilemma,” a 2020 documentary about the harms of social media. She also teaches her students about how companies can manipulate algorithms to make platforms addictive and is part of the school’s leadership team that hosts related social media training sessions for teachers and parents.

    Rosenzweig argues the subject is so important that it should be discussed in all courses.

    “It’s really important to give students lots of opportunities to talk about, think about, write about how social media affects their lives,” she said. “They just happened to be born in a really complicated, overstimulating and demanding time – and we handed them these devices without knowing what effect they would have.”

    Rosenzweig is one of a growing number of educators who find themselves on the front lines of a fight to change how students use social media, both in schools and at home, after rising concerns about the impact these services can have on the mental health of teens. And recently, there has been a push for more schools to effectively follow their example and develop programs to help educate students on the dangers of social media.

    As part of US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy’s watershed report last month on the “profound risks” of social media for teens, he recommended policymakers push for “digital and media literacy curricula in schools” that help students “recognize, manage, and recover from online risks” such as harassment, abuse and “excessive social media use.”

    Other politicians have suggested the same. Last month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an education bill that prohibits students from accessing certain social media platforms on school Wi-Fi and requires instruction on the negative impacts of social media.

    These efforts come amid heightened bipartisan pressure from lawmakers for social media companies to do more to protect their youngest users. But in the absence of any new federal legislation, the burden falls on parents and schools, the latter of which faces significant challenges to address the issue.

    Schools must grapple with limited resources, students who develop online habits at a very young age and staff who may not be well versed to discuss the ins and outs of algorithmic rabbit holes and cyberbullying.

    At the Roycemore School in Evanston, Illinois, conversations around the impact of social media are happening in the classroom on a daily basis, according to Chris English, the head of school.

    Teachers openly remind students how their social media history lives on and how it can be perceived among colleges and employers, English said. Teachers also discuss how dopamine plays a role in why teens feel the need to keep checking platforms as well as general best practices.

    “We are always thinking about the social-emotional learning component … and how it applies to social media use,” said English, referring to teaching kids skills to manage their feelings and relationships.

    Chris English, head of school at The Roycemore School in Evanston, Illinois, said the school has seen success from participating in the

    As with other education efforts, however, he believes social media literacy campaigns are much easier to do when class sizes in school are lower, allowing teachers to put more significant time and energy into each student.

    The Roycemore school is one of hundreds of schools across the US leaning on programs such as The Organization for Social Media Safety to provide digital literacy assemblies to students. The organization offers practical steps to address the varying dangers they may encounter on social media, from bullying and hate to trafficking and pressured sexting, as well as how algorithms can push problematic content to young users. The program is part of the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) curriculum.

    “Many students don’t even understand most of these dangers,” said Marc Berkman, director of The Organization for Social Media Safety. “They can’t protect themselves from the dangers if they don’t know what they are.”

    Devorah Heitner, author of “Screenwise, Speaker: Raising Kids in the Digital Age,” previously told CNN that schools of all sizes should embrace digital literacy because teens need to learn how to properly function in online communities, as that is the expectation both going into college and in their professional lives.

    “Literacy should not just be ‘don’t look at pornography’ or ‘stay off bad sites’ or ‘don’t cyberbully;’ that’s so limited,” she said. “It should also be understanding how algorithms work, how teens can respond or what to do when feeling excluded, or if they’re feeling insecure. We need to help kids with all these things.”

    The Organization for Social Media Safety provides parent workshops and community guidelines for guardians to reference as issues surface. Although Berkman said he’s encouraged by more teachers talking to students about the dangers of social media, he advises them to undergo formal training on the subject because it’s “not a check the box exercise” and requires “up to date knowledge on the rich landscape of how teens are using” these platforms.

    Digital literacy is not only playing out in high schools. Gillian Feldman, principal of Brawerman Elementary School in Los Angeles, said the school works with the Organization of Social Media Safety to provide educational sessions for parents of pre-teen and younger students to help them navigate social platforms.

    “Our kids are 12 when they leave our school, but they’re already using Fortnite and Roblox and other platforms which have social media components, with the ability to chat, post and Like things on these games,” Feldman said. “The [sessions] have been eye opening for parents and help them set better parameters for kids.”

    Feldman said the school is also taking a social-emotional approach to teaching its young students about social platforms, such as how they shouldn’t rely on “someone else’s approval to fill up your own [emotional] bucket.”

    While trying to teach students to develop a better relationship with technology, some schools are also pushing for them to ditch their devices entirely — at least during school hours.

    In September, Rosenzweig and her colleagues at Scarsdale High School introduced “Off and Away for the Day,” an effort that encourages students to keep smartphones in their book bags during the day.

    During free periods, the students are allowed to listen to music, podcasts or meditation apps but phones must be out of sight during class. Students can “briefly check phones if needed” during homeroom or lunch but not scroll social media or play games.

    A poster for Scarsdale High School's

    The decision came after teachers at Scarsdale High School observed a correlation between screen time and declining reading abilities and focus among its students. The school is currently working to develop consequences and formal guidelines, she said.

    “I would never claim that everyone is supportive of this initiative, and yes, students do roll their eyes about it for sure,” Rosenzweig said. “But what I do strongly claim is that when you speak to students for more than five minutes about this topic, they appreciate that we are talking about it and really do want the help.”

    English’s school has also embraced the “Away for the Day” policy, where students put smartphones out of sight while on campus. It’s part of a bigger grassroots movement of the same name developed by the co-producers of the 2016 documentary “Screenagers,” which looks at the lives of teens growing up in the digital age.

    Students are told to keep phones out of sight during the school day at The Roycemore School.

    Sabine Polack, who spoke to CNN in 2021 about how her 14-year-old daughter was struggling with depression and had contemplated suicide stemming from pressures around social media, is now an advocate of the “Away for the Day” movement to create phone free schools.

    “It’s especially relevant now that we have the Surgeon General issuing advisories which includes calling for ‘tech free spaces’ as a tool to help mitigate the mental health crisis our children are facing,” said Polack, who is on the board of nonprofit Fairplay, which aims to protect kids from harmful marketing and excessive screentime.

    Rosenzweig said she aims to expand “Off and Away” to other schools in the Scarsdale School District and is hopeful it can be a leading force making a change in their community and beyond.

    “Schools have so much power,” Rosenzweig said. “We are with these kids five days of the week and we can make those days look like whatever we can look like.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Top Treasury sanctions official to visit southern border as it ramps up efforts to crack down on deadly fentanyl trade | CNN Politics

    Top Treasury sanctions official to visit southern border as it ramps up efforts to crack down on deadly fentanyl trade | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    Treasury’s top sanctions official Brian Nelson will travel to the southern border Tuesday as part of the department’s ongoing push to crack down on the cartels and illicit financial networks fueling the deadly fentanyl trade, Treasury officials told CNN.

    Nelson’s trip – his second in sixth months – and a spate of recent sanctions activity is the latest indicator that Treasury is ramping up efforts to tackle the illegal fentanyl trade through actions that disrupt the supply chains funneling “precursor” chemicals from China to producers in Mexico where much of the deadly drug is made.

    Nelson and Treasury officials will meet with fellow law enforcement representatives, including from the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, as well as private financial institutions and local officials.

    “What we are doing is trying to be as effective as we possibly can in combining Treasury’s tools with the efforts that other US government agencies and allied governments are deploying in this space,” said Nelson, the under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at Treasury, in an interview with CNN.

    The engagements over the 48-hour trip will provide officials an opportunity to discuss how Treasury’s tools and information can complement law enforcement and to learn about the big issues and patterns that agents are seeing on the ground. The trip is also aimed at exploring how trends and information from the extensive financial information Treasury collects can be helpful to the broader government-wide effort to quell the synthetic opioid epidemic.

    Nelson, who will also be joined by the acting director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) Himamauli Das, will visit Laredo and San Antonio in Texas on Tuesday and Wednesday.

    In Laredo, Nelson will receive briefings on border operations from CBP officials at the city’s port of entry as well as discuss cargo processing and inspections.

    “There’s a credible value in seeing that in person,” Nelson said.

    In San Antonio, Nelson and Das will host a “FinCEN Exchange,” which is a public-private information sharing forum where Treasury can share the different patterns and connections they’re seeing with financial institutions, as well as discuss further ways the federal government can partner with the private sector to better spot red flags and identify illicit financial networks.

    The department has been involved in the counter-narcotics business for decades, using its tools and financial expertise to both starve criminal organizations of critical financing through sanctions and blocking assets, as well as providing crucial financial data to other law enforcement and federal agencies.

    “We can help disrupt financial flows and target the whole supply chain, starting with the precursor chemicals all the way down to distributors bound for US markets. And it’s not just sanctions,” Nelson said, pointing also to FinCEN’s financial mapping tools as well as Treasury’s focus on cooperating with Mexico to improve their capacity to trace and combat illicit finance.

    “These tools, combined with financial mapping that our FinCEN team does, is very, very powerful insight,” he added.

    Investigators from the Treasury, especially those at FinCEN, can access and share powerful financial data with enforcement bodies like the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Department of Homeland Security and others as they work to track and disrupt the fentanyl trade and drug suppliers.

    Nelson also said that Treasury is “absolutely” looking to build on US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s latest engagements in China, which included discussing where the two nations could cooperate on curbing the flow of precursor chemicals from China. Blinken, who traveled to Beijing last month, said both sides agreed to “explore” establishing a working group on the precursor chemicals used to produce the deadly synthetic drug.

    There has been a government-wide push to curb synthetic opioids like fentanyl, which are the main driver of overdose deaths in the US. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there has been a more than seven-fold increase overall in deaths from 2015-2021, and despite a recent slowing, overdose deaths still hover near record levels and remain the third leading cause of death in adolescents aged 19 and younger.

    In April, the Biden administration announced a broad effort to target the production and distribution of fentanyl, which included criminal charges from the Department of Justice and a host of new Treasury sanctions.

    It was an announcement that built off of an executive order signed in 2021 that expanded Treasury’s authorities to target the distribution chains of fentanyl and other narcotics, which Nelson said has been critical to helping Treasury “increase the pace at which we are able to target and designate the key nodes in fentanyl distribution.”

    Since then, Treasury has continued to issue sanctions against precursor chemical supply networks, particularly in China, as well as other corrupt activity like arms trafficking and money laundering that helps support the trade.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Juul seeks authorization on a new vape it says can verify a user’s age. Here’s how it works | CNN Business

    Juul seeks authorization on a new vape it says can verify a user’s age. Here’s how it works | CNN Business

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    E-cigarette company Juul Labs is seeking US authorization to sell a “next-generation” vape with age verification capabilities in the United States.

    To verify a user’s age, the proposed vape pairs with a phone app, requiring a customer to either upload their government ID and a real-time selfie or input personal information and allow a third-party database to verify their identity, according to a Juul spokesperson.

    A unique Pod ID chip within the Juul device can also detect counterfeit cartridges made by other companies, many of which have flooded the market with illegal fruity flavors that appeal to minors.

    The mission of the new platform is twofold, according to the company: Encourage adult smokers to switch from combustible cigarettes to e-cigarettes while restricting underage access.

    The legal age to purchase e-cigarettes in the United States is 21.

    “We look forward to engaging with FDA throughout the review process while we pursue this important harm-reduction opportunity,” Juul’s Chief Regulatory Officer Joe Murillo said in a company news release.

    If authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration, Juul Labs hasn’t yet decided on the name to market their new product in the US. In the UK and Canada, where it’s already for sale, it’s called the JUUL2.

    Advertising itself as an alternative nicotine product, Juul publicly advises that adults vape only as a replacement for combustible cigarettes.

    But Juul has a troubled history in US markets.

    “They were the spark that ignited the flame,” said Robin Koval, CEO of the nonprofit Truth Initiative, organizers of the nation’s largest campaign for youth to quit vaping. “This is not a company known to tell the truth.”

    Juul Labs has settled more than 5,000 cases brought by approximately 10,000 plaintiffs since its vaping devices initially skyrocketed in popularity in 2016, with some alleging the company deceived or failed to warn consumers about the risks of its products. The e-cigarette maker also agreed to pay $462 million to six US states and Washington, DC, in April after a lawsuit accused Juul Labs of directly promoting its products to high school students. In total, Juul Labs has agreed to pay more than $1 billion in its various legal settlements.

    Juul dominated over 70% of the US e-cigarette market at its peak in late 2018. In the same year, 27% of high school students and 7.2% of middle school students said they used tobacco for one or more days in the month, according to the 2018 National Youth Tobacco Survey.

    Juul is now a less favored brand among youth. When asked what e-cigarette brands they used in the past 30 days, youth e-cigarette users in the 2022 National Youth Tobacco Survey answered Puff Bar most frequently (29.7%), followed by Vuse (23.6%) and then Juul (22%), with the first two being disposable vaping products.

    In 2019, Juul suspended all flavors other than tobacco and menthol and suspended broadcast, digital and print publication marketing.

    Even with limited flavors, the FDA banned Juul products in the US last year after reviewing Juul’s applications seeking marketing authorization for their devices. The FDA determined that the applications lacked “sufficient evidence” within the toxicological profile of the vaporizers to prove that marketing the products would be in the interest of public health.

    The FDA has placed the ban on hold while Juul Labs appeals.

    Juul's new device is currently marketed as JUUL2 in the UK and Canada.

    Juul Labs submitted its most recent application to the FDA on July 19, as all e-cigarette manufacturers are required to do before their product can be marketed and sold legally in the United States. This first filing concerns just one flavor, Virginia Tobacco, with a nicotine concentration of 18 mg per mL.

    Although Juul’s new platform has age verification capabilities, the company does not intend to lock all their new pods before use. For example, the Virginia Tobacco pods will not come automatically locked. The spokesperson for Juul said doing so could create “friction” for the adult smokers the tobacco flavor is most likely to target.

    “If you’re an adult smoker and you go to buy a cigarette, it’s pretty easy to use the product,” a Juul spokesperson told CNN. “If you add in another barrier before product use, that creates some level of friction.”

    Using the new Pod ID feature, Juul’s new vaping device could tell a Virginia Tobacco pod apart from a menthol-flavored pod. It could then require age verification to activate only the latter, according to the spokesperson.

    Juul has researched other flavors that combine tobacco and menthol with fruity tones to potentially submit to the FDA following this filing. Juul currently sells the flavor Autumn Tobacco in the UK, which contains “tangy apple notes,” according to its website.

    Just because e-cigarette companies are required to comply with the FDA doesn’t mean all of them do. In fact, most don’t. To date, the FDA has authorized only 23 specific e-cigarette products, all of which are tobacco flavored.

    Yet more than 2.5 million US middle and high school students said they use e-cigarettes as of last year, according to the 2022 National Youth Tobacco Survey. Almost 85% consume fruity, candy or other flavored products, despite them being illegal.

    Koval of Truth Initiative said the tobacco industry “floods the market” with products such that the FDA can’t keep up.

    “It is a little bit like Whac-a-Mole for the FDA and for those of us who are trying to promote healthier behaviors for young people,” Koval said. The total number of e-cigarette brands increased by 46.2% between January 2020 and December 2022, from 184 to 269, according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

    To gain FDA authorization for its latest platform, Juul must prove to the FDA that in aiding the public health crisis of adult smoking, it is not further exacerbating the spread of youth vaping.

    “This is only the beginning of new tech being developed and refined for the US market and abroad to eliminate combustible cigarettes and combat underage use,” Juul’s Chief Product Officer Kirk Phelps said.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • North Dakota governor signs law banning nearly all abortions in the state | CNN Politics

    North Dakota governor signs law banning nearly all abortions in the state | CNN Politics

    [ad_1]


    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Republican Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota signed a near-total abortion ban bill into law Monday.

    Senate Bill 2150, which passed in the state’s legislature last week, defines abortion as “the act of using, selling, or prescribing any instrument, medicine, drug, or any other substance, device, or means with the intent to terminate the clinically diagnosable pregnancy of a woman.”

    The law is one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the US and only allows exceptions for rape or incest within the first six weeks of pregnancy.

    Exceptions are permitted in the case that the procedure is “deemed necessary based on reasonable medical judgment which was intended to prevent the death or a serious health risk to the pregnant female.”

    Efforts to treat an ectopic or molar pregnancy would also be permissible at any stage of pregnancy under the law.

    Abortion rights activists have furiously objected to similar bans, saying most women do not know they are pregnant at six weeks.

    The bill joins other GOP-led legislation aimed at restricting abortion access that has become law in a post-Roe v. Wade world. Georgia, South Carolina, Florida, Ohio and Texas have also passed six-week abortion bans, sparking legal challenges.

    North Dakota’s new law follows a legal battle over a 2007 trigger law that was blocked by a district judge last year.

    The state’s Supreme Court upheld that ruling in March.

    The trigger abortion ban was set to take effect last August and would have made it a felony to perform an abortion in the state but it did allow exceptions in cases of rape or incest.

    With the trigger ban on pause, North Dakota law had allowed abortion up until 20 weeks or more post-fertilization.

    In a statement to CNN, Burgum said SB 2150 “clarifies and refines existing state law which was triggered into effect by the Dobbs decision and reaffirms North Dakota as a pro-life state.”

    Physicians who violate the new law could be charged with a felony. In addition, an abortion can’t be performed until a woman is offered the opportunity to see an “active ultrasound” at least 24 hours before the scheduled procedure.

    Any physician who fails to comply could face a misdemeanor charge.

    Last week, Burgum signed a bill banning gender-affirming care for most minors with the possibility of a felony for health care professionals who provide it.

    [ad_2]

    Source link

  • Fertility app fined $200,000 for leaking customer’s health data | CNN Business

    Fertility app fined $200,000 for leaking customer’s health data | CNN Business

    [ad_1]



    CNN
     — 

    The company behind a popular fertility app has agreed to pay $200,000 in federal and state fines after authorities alleged that it had shared users’ personal health information for years without their consent, including to Google and to two companies based in China.

    The app, known as Premom, will also be banned from sharing personal health information for advertising purposes and must ensure that the data it shared without users’ consent is deleted from third-party systems, according to the Federal Trade Commission, along with the attorneys general of Connecticut, the District of Columbia and Oregon.

    Wednesday’s proposed settlement targeting Premom highlights how regulators have stepped up their scrutiny of fertility trackers and health information in the wake of the US Supreme Court’s decision last year striking down federal protections for abortion.

    The sharing of personal data allegedly affected Premom’s hundreds of thousands of users from at least 2018 until 2020, and violated a federal regulation known as the Health Breach Notification Rule, according to an FTC complaint against Easy Healthcare, Premom’s parent company.

    Premom didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

    As part of the alleged violation, Premom collected and shared personally identifiable health information with Google and with a third-party marketing firm in violation of Premom’s own privacy policy, which had promised to share only “non-identifiable data” with others, according to the complaint.

    In addition, Premom allegedly shared location information and device identifiers — such as WiFi network names and hardware IDs — with two China-based data analytics companies, known as Jiguang and Umeng, according to the complaint. That information, the FTC alleged, “could be used to identify Premom’s users and disclose to third parties that these users were utilizing a fertility app,” according to an FTC complaint filed against Easy Healthcare, Premom’s parent company.

    Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, a wave of anti-abortion legislation has raised the prospect that fertility apps, search engines and other technology platforms could be forced to hand over user data in potential prosecutions of abortion-seekers.

    “Now more than ever, with reproductive rights under attack across the country, it is essential that the privacy of healthcare decisions is vigorously protected,” said DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb in a statement. “My office will continue to make sure companies protect consumers’ personal information to protect against unlawful encroachment on access to effective reproductive healthcare.”

    Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s consumer protection bureau, said the agency “will not tolerate health privacy abuses.”

    “Premom broke its promises and compromised consumers’ privacy,” Levine said in a statement. “We will vigorously enforce the Health Breach Notification Rule to defend consumer’s health data from exploitation.”

    [ad_2]

    Source link