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Tag: Health

  • Small businesses brace for cautious holiday shoppers

    Small businesses brace for cautious holiday shoppers

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Small businesses are stocking the shelves early this holiday season and waiting to see how many gifts inflation-weary shoppers feel like giving.

    Holiday shopping was relatively strong during the past two years as shoppers flocked online to spend, aided by pandemic stimulus dollars. Sales in November and December have been averaging roughly 20% of annual retail sales, according to National Retail Federation, making the holiday season critical for many retailers.

    This year, small businesses are bracing for a more muted season, as some Americans spend more cautiously. AlixPartners, the global consulting firm, forecasts that holiday sales will rise between 4% to 7%, far below last year’s growth of 16%. With inflation running above 8%, retailers would see a decrease in real sales.

    To prepare, owners say they’re ordering inventory earlier to avoid the supply-chain snags that frustrated them the past two holiday seasons and to draw in early birds. They’re stepping up discounts as much as they can in the face of their own higher costs. And owners also hope more people will shop in stores and holiday markets after doing more of their shopping online during the pandemic.

    Max Rhodes, CEO of Faire, an online marketplace used by small businesses to sell their wares wholesale as well as buy goods for retail shops, said he’s seeing earlier ordering from merchants who for two years had trouble getting enough holiday inventory stocked in time for Christmas. Stores faced shortages of everything from holiday décor to gift items as COVID-19 lockdowns forced factories to shut, costs rose and fewer shipping containers and truckers were available — all causing delivery snarls.

    A study for the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals by global consulting firm Kearney found U.S. business logistics costs surged 22.4% in 2021 to $1.85 trillion.

    “There’s a bit of a hangover from that, a bit of fear,” Rhodes said. While it’s too early for sales data, the term “Christmas” was the most searched for term on the site in mid-September. That’s two weeks earlier than last year, and eight weeks earlier than 2020, Rhodes said.

    “The one thing we’re certain of is it’s not going to be predictable … We really don’t know what to expect and our retailers feel the same way,” Rhodes said .

    Mat Pond operates The Epicurean Trader in San Francisco, including four brick-and-mortar stores, an online shop and a corporate gift basket business. In past years, he started building inventory in November, but this year he’s already stocking up on items such as gourmet food, chocolate, wine and giftware. He’s seeing corporations order holiday gift baskets earlier as well.

    “Everyone’s planning ahead,” Pond said. “I think everybody’s learning from the past two years.”

    While the pandemic’s economic impact has subsided somewhat, consumers are now being tag-teamed by high inflation and rising interest rates. Overall, spending has held up, although some Americans have been forced to pull back on discretionary items. Any decline can be meaningful because consumer spending makes up 70% of economic activity.

    Hannah Nash, the owner of the online jeweler Lucy Nash, expects sales of her earrings, bracelets and other jewelry to slow after two years of strong growth. The main culprit: inflation.

    “There is less money going around to the average person and we expect their living expenses to impact how much they can spend on holiday shopping,” Nash said.

    Nash also expects more people to shop in stores during these holidays. She started her business, based in Indianapolis, during the pandemic, when online shopping boomed. The percentage of total retail sales done online jumped from 11.5% in 2019 to 17.7% in 2020, then rose again to 18.8% last year, according the Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks all kinds of payments, including those by cash and debit card.

    Nash is stepping up discounts and offering bundles to attract shoppers: Her plans include a 15% discount for new customers this year, up from 10%, starting in November. And she’ll offer bundles of products that are about 20% cheaper than buying items separately.

    Major retailers such as Amazon and Walmart are also offering holiday deals to cash-strapped Americans earlier this year. Amazon held a two-day discount event on Oct. 11-12 where the average order was $46.68, $13 less than what shoppers spent during the company’s Prime Day sales event in July, according to the data group Numerator.

    Some business owners are hoping to take advantage of any shift to shopping in holiday markets and in stores.

    Kimberly Behzadi operates Read It & Eat Box in Buffalo, N.Y., which sells themed boxes with food and a book in each box. She started the business in 2020, during the pandemic. She has an online shop but is hoping the return of holiday markets to full capacity will boost sales. She depends a lot on the holidays — 40% of her annual revenue comes between October and December.

    She’s planning on being at six markets this year, with two more applications pending.

    “Last year, holiday markets were still limited by the necessary safety protocols for Covid-19 ,” she said. “This year, gratefully, we are able to attend and sell at more holiday markets locally, so my expectation is to double my holiday revenue this year.”

    Behzadi also plans on being more promotional.

    “With inflation rates high this year I expect consumers to be looking for deals, so I have adapted my holiday strategy to include more bundles and deals,” she said. She’s offering a $60 box that’s bundled with a blind-date book worth $25 for Black Friday, for example.

    Mariana Leung-Weinstein sells alcohol infused jam and marshmallows and other farm-inspired gifts at about 25 stores via her Wicked Finch Farm brand in Pawling, N.Y. that she started in 2019. She’s focusing on stocking up in stores in case online sales slow.

    “I expect people will enjoy seeing and touching things in person this time around, which puts more of my focus in getting my products in physical stores in time for the holidays,” she said.

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  • Landmark trial begins over Arkansas’ ban on trans youth care

    Landmark trial begins over Arkansas’ ban on trans youth care

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    LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — The nation’s first trial over a state’s ban on gender-confirming care for children begins in Arkansas this week, the latest fight over restrictions on transgender youth championed by Republican leaders and widely condemned by medical experts.

    U.S. District Judge Jay Moody will hear testimony and evidence starting Monday over the law he temporarily blocked last year prohibiting doctors from providing gender-confirming hormone treatment, puberty blockers or surgery to anyone under 18 years old. It also prevents doctors from referring patients elsewhere for such care.

    The families of four transgender youth and two doctors who provide gender-confirming care want Moody to strike down the law, saying it is unconstitutional because it discriminates against transgender youth, intrudes on parents’ rights to make medical decisions for their children and infringes on doctors’ free speech rights. The trial is expected to last two weeks.

    “As a parent, I never imagined I’d have to fight for my daughter to be able to receive medically necessary health care her doctor say she needs and we know she needs,” said Lacey Jennen, whose 17-year-old daughter has been receiving gender-confirming care.

    Arkansas was the first state to enact such a ban on gender-confirming care, with Republican lawmakers in 2021 overriding GOP Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s veto of the legislation. Hutchinson, who had signed other restrictions on transgender youth into law, said the prohibition went too far by cutting off the care for those currently receiving it.

    Multiple medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, oppose the bans and experts say the treatments are safe if properly administered.

    But advocates of the law have argued the prohibition is within the state’s authority to regulate medical practices.

    “This is about protecting children,” Republican Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said. “Nothing about this law prohibits someone after the age of 18 from making this decision. What we’re doing in Arkansas is protecting children from life-altering, permanent decisions.”

    A similar law has been blocked by a federal judge in Alabama, and a Texas judge has blocked that state’s efforts to investigate gender-confirming care for minors as child abuse. Children’s hospitals around the country have faced harassment and threats of violence for providing gender-confirming care.

    “This latest wave of anti-trans fever that is now spreading to other states started in Arkansas and it needs to end in Arkansas,” said Holly Dickson, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arkansas, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of the families.

    A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in August upheld Moody’s preliminary injunction blocking the ban’s enforcement. But the state has asked the full 8th Circuit appeals court to review the case.

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  • Bird flu case prompts Omaha zoo to close several exhibits

    Bird flu case prompts Omaha zoo to close several exhibits

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    OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium has closed several exhibits and taken other precautions after one of its pelicans died from the bird flu.

    The zoo said one of its pink-backed pelicans that died on Thursday tested positive for the highly pathogenic avian influenza. A second pelican became ill Friday and was euthanized.

    As a precaution, the zoo has closed its Lied Jungle, Desert Dome and Simmons Aviary exhibits to the public for at least 10 days.

    The Omaha zoo was one of many across the country that closed down its aviaries and moved birds inside whenever possible to help protect them from avian influenza that is primarily spread by the droppings of wild birds.

    The zoo reopened its aviary in June after bird flu cases waned, but some cases continued to be reported across the country throughout the summer, and the outbreak has started to make a resurgence this fall.

    More than 47 million chickens and turkeys have been slaughtered in 42 states to limit the spread of bird flu during this year’s outbreak. Officials order entire flocks to be killed when the virus is found on farms. More than 6 million chickens and turkeys were slaughtered last month to limit the spread of the disease.

    The Omaha zoo also took precautions to protect its birds by limiting staff access to them and requiring workers to clean their shoes before entering areas where the birds are kept.

    The zoo said its pelicans live outside, so they do come into contact with wild birds. But the pelicans don’t come into contact with other zoo birds and no other birds in the zoo’s collection have shown symptoms of bird flu.

    “It is very important that Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium immediately tighten our protocols to protect our birds and guard against any potential spread of avian influenza,” Sarah Woodhouse, the zoo’s director of animal health, said in a statement. “This is important both to prevent infection of other zoo birds, and to prevent the virus from being dispersed off zoo grounds.”

    Unlike on farms, zoos are generally allowed to isolate and treat an infected bird as long as they take precautions to protect the other birds in their collections.

    Health officials emphasize that bird flu doesn’t jeopardize food safety because infected birds aren’t allowed into the food supply and properly cooking meat and eggs to 165 degrees Fahrenheit will kill any viruses.

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  • A Katrina survivor with a disability tells her story

    A Katrina survivor with a disability tells her story

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    Karen Nix was working at Tulane Medical Center, monitoring the vitals of patients, when the levees failed and Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans on August 29, 2005.

    By evening the medical center was inundated – water rose several feet into the first floors of buildings. Everyone in the hospital spent the night on upper floors, waiting for their chance to get out. Nix, who usually worked the night shift on the fifth floor, continued to attend to patients. Then the backup generators began to fail.

    Conditions deteriorated, especially for Nix, who has mobility issues caused by cerebral palsy. “I remember that it was hot and we didn’t have power, so it was miserable,” she said. Medical staff began gathering in pockets of the hospital where it was cooler. That crowded Nix, who uses a walker.

    The next day patients started climbing stairs to the seventh floor of the parking garage, where Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters waited. As part of the hospital staff, Nix stayed behind another night, caring for patients that remained.

    When it looked like her turn had finally come, Nix needed help climbing two flights of stairs. The elevators weren’t running. Nix and other medical staff ended up spending a third night in the parking garage, using a makeshift bathroom, before finally boarding helicopters that took them to a shelter in Lafayette, Louisiana.

    Using that commode chair, surrounded by borrowed emergency room curtains for privacy – is burned into her memory.

    “I worked the whole time and it was horrible …. That was a difficult time for me because of my disability,” she said.

    Nix, 59, has lived with cerebral palsy most of her life. She was diagnosed when she was six and said because it isn’t as severe as for some people, she has been able to work, go to school and graduate from college.

    Still, she imagines a world where she would not have to work when hurricanes and storm surges are on the horizon, but would instead get some type of disability pay since most places she’s worked, even hospitals, become inaccessible during disasters.

    That way, she could spend more time making preparations to get out of town. She can’t board up the windows of her house in New Orleans East to withstand potential wind damage. And in the event that rain and wind damage her home, she can’t do the cleanup.

    She has support, though. She is married and has children, so her family are often the ones to fortify the house before a storm and clean up the damage.

    But not all disabled people in regions getting hit by climate-related disasters have that support. She said local, state and federal governments don’t create adequate emergency plans for people with disabilities, whether for hurricanes, floods or wildfires.

    “I think you get left out of the equation if you’re not self-sufficient or don’t know how to get the resources you need,” Nix said, “or if you don’t have someone to be a voice for you.”

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    Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.

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

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  • People with disabilities left out of climate planning

    People with disabilities left out of climate planning

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    When the inevitable hurricanes threaten New Orleans, it’s hard for India Scott to figure where to go. In the city where she was born and raised, she’s stayed in hotels, relief shelters and, during Hurricane Katrina, in the famously overcrowded Superdome.

    But it is always a gamble choosing where to seek refuge. A lot of places that are safe for most people aren’t safe for her because they aren’t accessible to people like her, people living with disabilities.

    Scott has used a wheelchair her entire life; she was born with a disability. Even when the weather is calm in New Orleans she is reluctant to leave home to visit friends or go out to shop or eat, because places outside her house can’t guarantee that she’ll be able to maneuver even basic things like using the restroom, passing through an entryway or getting into bed.

    Scott’s house in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans is comfortable with features that are required by code yet often missing, like widened entryways for her wheelchair. It has a bed lower to the ground that’s easier to get in and out of it. But because she lives near a levee, she leaves that comfort behind whenever a major hurricane or tropical storm is forecast because rising floodwater that would challenge anyone would surely be fatal for her.

    “I try my best to make my home comfortable,” she said, “but if that water ever comes through, I’m in trouble.”

    Scott said she can’t rely on the city, state or federal government when storms come, only friends. She said there is inadequate support for disabled people before, during and after disasters, from emergency management agencies at all levels of government.

    “We’re on our own,” she said, through tears, to The Associated Press.

    Experts and activists echoed her view, telling the AP people with disabilities are left out of emergency and disaster planning, and face hurdles that able-bodied people don’t when disasters strike.

    As climate-related disasters become more common and more severe, most countries in the world are “ neglecting their obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill the rights of persons with disabilities in their responses to the climate crisis,” according to a June report from the Disability Inclusive Climate Action Research Program at McGill University and the International Disability Alliance.

    The researchers found that only 32 of the 192 countries that are signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Paris climate accords in 2015 refer to people with disabilities in their official climate plans. Forty-five countries refer to disabled people in their climate adaptation policies and no country mentions disabled people in its climate mitigation plans. Many of the world’s biggest contributors to climate change – the United States, China, Russia, Brazil, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom – don’t figure people with disabilities into any of these plans, according to the report.

    That is despite the fact that 185 countries ratified the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, drafted in 2006, which says that countries will take “all necessary measures to ensure the protection and safety of persons with disabilities in …. humanitarian emergencies and the occurrence of natural disasters.” The U.S. was one of eight countries that signed the treaty but haven’t ratified it.

    People who are disabled are not a small segment of the population. According to the World Health Organization, there were over a billion people in the world living with a disability in 2011, which was 15% of the global population at the time. The organization plans to release an update on disability prevalence in December.

    More recently, researchers with the Disability Data Initiative estimated the percentage of people with disabilities averages 12.6% across 41 countries for which they have data, as of 2021. One of them, Sophie Mitra, said the WHO figure of one billion is likely to have grown since 2011.

    “We are still failing people with disabilities, especially multiply-marginalized people, before, during and after disasters,” Marcie Roth, CEO of the World Institute on Disability, told the U.S. Congress during testimony in July. “We need your help to address urgent, immediate, lifesaving steps (government agencies) can take to serve disaster-impacted people and communities being left out and left behind.”

    A clear example of this failure took place at the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26) in November 2021. Israeli Energy Minister Karine Elharrar, who uses a wheelchair, was prevented from entering a conference event by police officers. A day later, after the incident was publicized, conference organizers and the British government constructed a ramp so she could attend.

    “What happened to the minister of energy happens to us all the time,” said Yolanda Muñoz, a professor at McGill University and co-founder of the Disability Inclusive Climate Action Research Program that co-authored the June report. “But, of course, it doesn’t make headlines.”

    Another climate activist, Pauline Castres, who previously worked for the United Nations and has a disability, mourned the return to in-person climate talks that came with COP26 in Glasgow. “I’ve always found those meetings to be quite restrictive in terms of who can attend and who can take part,” she said. “We called (virtual events) one of the few good things that came out of the pandemic.”

    But the problems people face go beyond access at international conferences and happen on the national, state and local level. When people can’t access climate planning talks, it’s more likely they won’t be figured into emergency management plans.

    And the climate crisis isn’t only affecting people with physical disabilities, Grace Krause, policy officer for Learning Disability Wales, said in a 2019 blog post. Krause said it was “alarming” how little information on climate change was presented in an “easy read” format for people with certain cognitive disabilities. That format uses short sentences, active voice and explanation of any complex words and ideas in a separate sentence.

    Font choices that make text easier to read for people with dyslexia is another way climate communications can be more accessible.

    In 2019, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution calling on governments to take climate action that is inclusive of people with disabilities, but there still isn’t much action from the UN’s official climate policy arm, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

    There were two disability-related events at COP26 – one on designing cities that are both climate resilient and accessible and another on mental health and climate action – but they were side events. Disability inclusion in climate action has rarely taken the main stage.

    Julia Watts Belser, a Georgetown University professor who uses a wheelchair, said the inclusion of people with disabilities in climate mitigation and adaptation planning “matters deeply” to her. She leads an initiative exploring the intersection of climate change and disability at Georgetown and teaches a class called Disability, Ethics, Ecojustice.

    “I think about wanting us as a society to invest in the infrastructure for our communities so that we are better able to adapt and respond,” she said, “so we aren’t leaving people behind, so we aren’t leaving people to die.”

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    Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.

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

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  • Apple workers in Oklahoma vote to unionize in 2nd labor win

    Apple workers in Oklahoma vote to unionize in 2nd labor win

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    NEW YORK (AP) — Workers at an Apple store in Oklahoma City voted to unionize, marking the second unionized Apple store in the U.S. in a matter of months, according to the federal labor board.

    The vote on Friday signaled another win for the labor movement, which has been gaining momentum since the pandemic.

    Fifty-six workers at the store, located at Oklahoma City’s Penn Square Mall, voted to be represented by The Communications Workers of America, while 32 voted against it, according to a preliminary tally by National Labor Relations Board. The approximate number of eligible voters was 95, the board said.

    The labor board said Friday that both parties have five business days to file objections to the election. If no objections are filed, the results will be certified, and the employer must begin bargaining in good faith with the union.

    The union victory follows a vote to unionize an Apple store in Towson, Maryland, in June. That effort was spearheaded by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Maryland, which is preparing to begin formal negotiations.

    In a statement emailed to The Associated Press on Saturday, Apple said, “We believe the open, direct and collaborative relationship we have with our valued team members is the best way to provide an excellent experience for our customers, and for our teams.”

    Apple also cited “strong compensation and exceptional benefits,” and noted that since 2018, it has increased starting rates in the U.S. by 45% and made significant improvements in other benefits, including new educational and family support programs.

    The Communications Workers of America could not be immediately reached for comment.

    Worker discontent has invigorated the labor movements at several major companies in the U.S. in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which triggered tensions over sick leave policies, scheduling, and other issues.

    In a surprise victory, Amazon workers at a Staten Island warehouse voted in favor of unionizing in April, though similar efforts at other warehouses so far have been unsuccessful. Voting for an Amazon facility near Albany, New York, began on Wednesday and is expected go through Monday. Well over 200 U.S. Starbucks stores have voted to unionize over the past year, according to the NLRB.

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  • Biden turning to Trump-era rule to expel Venezuelan migrants

    Biden turning to Trump-era rule to expel Venezuelan migrants

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    WASHINGTON (AP) — Two years ago, candidate Joe Biden loudly denounced President Donald Trump for immigration policies that inflicted “cruelty and exclusion at every turn,” including toward those fleeing the “brutal” government of socialist Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela.

    Now, with increasing numbers of Venezuelans arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border as the Nov. 8 election nears, Biden has turned to an unlikely source for a solution: his predecessor’s playbook.

    Biden last week invoked a Trump-era rule known as Title 42 — which Biden’s own Justice Department is fighting in court — to deny Venezuelans fleeing their crisis-torn country the chance to request asylum at the border.

    The rule, first invoked by Trump in 2020, uses emergency public health authority to allow the United States to keep migrants from seeking asylum at the border, based on the need to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

    Under the new Biden administration policy, Venezuelans who walk or swim across America’s southern border will be expelled and any Venezuelan who illegally enters Mexico or Panama will be ineligible to come to the United States. But as many as 24,000 Venezuelans will be accepted at U.S. airports, similar to how Ukrainians have been admitted since Russia’s invasion in February.

    Mexico has insisted that the U.S. admit one Venezuelan on humanitarian parole for each Venezuelan it expels to Mexico, according to a Mexican official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke condition of anonymity. So if the Biden administration paroles 24,000 Venezuelans to the U.S., Mexico would take no more than 24,000 Venezuelans expelled from the U.S.

    The Biden policy marks an abrupt turn for the White House, which just weeks ago was lambasting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, both Republicans, for putting Venezuelan migrants “fleeing political persecution” on buses and planes to Democratic strongholds.

    “These were children, they were moms, they were fleeing communism,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the time.

    Biden’s new policy has drawn swift criticism from immigrant advocates, many of them quick to point out the Trump parallels.

    “Rather than restore the right to asylum decimated by the Trump administration … the Biden administration has dangerously embraced the failures of the past and expanded upon them by explicitly enabling expulsions of Venezuelan migrants,” said Jennifer Nagda, policy director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.

    The administration says the policy is aimed at ensuring a “lawful and orderly” way for Venezuelans to enter the U.S.

    Why the turnaround?

    For more than a year after taking office in January 2021, Biden deferred to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which used its authority to keep in place the Trump-era declaration that a public health risk existed that warranted expedited expulsion of asylum-seekers.

    Members of Biden’s own party and activist groups had expressed skepticism about the public health underpinnings for allowing Title 42 to remain in effect, especially when COVID-19 was spreading more widely within the U.S. than elsewhere.

    After months of internal deliberations and preparations, the CDC on April 1 said it would end the public health order and return to normal border processing of migrants, giving them a chance to request asylum in the U.S.

    Homeland Security officials braced for a resulting increase in border crossings.

    But officials inside and outside the White House were conflicted over ending the authority, believing it effectively kept down the number of people crossing the border illegally, according to senior administration officials.

    A court order in May that kept Title 42 in place due to a challenge from Republican state officials was greeted with quiet relief by some in the administration, according to officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss internal discussions.

    The recent increase in migration from Venezuela, sparked by political, social and economic instability in the country, dashed officials’ hopes that they were finally seeing a lull in the chaos that had defined the border region for the past year.

    By August, Venezuelans were the second-largest nationality arriving at the U.S. border after Mexicans. Given that U.S. tensions with Venezuela meant migrants from the country could not be sent back easily, the situation became increasingly difficult to manage.

    So an administration that had rejected many Trump-era policies aimed at keeping out migrants, that had worked to make the asylum process easier and that had increased the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. now turned to Title 42.

    It brokered a deal to send the Venezuelans to Mexico, which already had agreed to accept migrants expelled under Title 42 if they are from Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador.

    All the while, Justice Department lawyers continue to appeal a court decision that has kept Title 42 in place. They are opposing Republican attorneys general from more than 20 states who have argued that Title 42 is “the only safety valve preventing this Administration’s already disastrous border control policies from descending into an unmitigated catastrophe.”

    Under Title 42, migrants have been expelled more than 2.3 million times from the U.S. after crossing the country’s land borders illegally from Canada or Mexico, though most try to come through Mexico.

    The administration had announced it would stop expelling migrants under Title 42 starting May 23 and go back to detaining and deporting migrants who did not qualify to enter and remain in the U.S. — a longer process that allows migrants to request asylum in the U.S.

    “We are extremely disturbed by the apparent acceptance, codification, and expansion of the use of Title 42, an irrelevant health order, as a cornerstone of border policy,” said Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border. “One that expunges the legal right to asylum.”

    A separate lawsuit from the American Civil Liberties Union also is trying to end Title 42, an effort that could render the administration’s proposal useless.

    “People have a right to seek asylum – regardless of where they came from, how they arrive in the United States, and whether or not they have family here,” said ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt.

    00:00

    <p>AP correspondent Julie Walker reports on Biden Immigration</p>

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    Long reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

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    Follow AP’s coverage of immigration at https://apnews.com/hub/immigration

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  • Gates Foundation pledges $1.2B to eradicate polio globally

    Gates Foundation pledges $1.2B to eradicate polio globally

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    BERLIN — The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation says it will commit $1.2 billion to the effort to end polio worldwide.

    The money will be used to help implement the Global Polio Eradication Initiative’s strategy through 2026. The initiative is trying to end the polio virus in Pakistan and Afghanistan, the last two endemic countries, the foundation said in a statement Sunday.

    The money also will be used to stop outbreaks of new variants of the virus. The announcement was made Sunday at the World Health Summit in Berlin.

    The foundation says in a statement on its website that it has contributed nearly $5 billion to the polio eradication initiative. The initiative is trying to integrate polio campaigns into broader health services, while it scales up use of the novel oral polio vaccine type 2.

    The group also is working to make national health systems stronger so countries are better prepared for future health threats, the statement said.

    “The last steps to eradication are by far the toughest. But our foundation remains dedicated to a polio-free future, and we’re optimistic that we will see it soon,” said foundation CEO Mark Suzman.

    Pakistan has reported 20 polio cases so far this year, all in the north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

    Afghanistan, which has registered two cases this year, previously lacked access to vaccines because of violence and the Taliban banning polio teams in areas under its control. However last year, a few months after they took over Afghanistan, the Taliban agreed to allow United Nations health workers to begin a national campaign.

    Pakistan has long struggled with Islamic militants targeting polio workers and the police protecting them, falsely claiming that vaccinations are a Western campaign to sterilize children. This year, it has the added challenge of unprecedented rainfall destroying road networks and health facilities, limiting vaccination drives, and displacing communities.

    Despite the billions of dollars that have gone into the effort to eradicate polio since 1988 — the program costs about $1 billion every year — the World Health Organization and partners have missed repeated deadlines to wipe out the disease and have come under sustained criticism for failing to adapt to challenges. In recent years, for example, there have been more cases of polio linked to the oral vaccine used in eradication efforts than those caused by the wild virus.

    Numerous experts have also questioned whether more money is what’s needed to eradicate polio, as the initiative is already one of the best funded in global public health and has rarely faced any funding gaps. Although WHO and partners have reduced the incidence of polio by more than 99%, that progress was largely made in the first 10 years. The disease remains stubbornly entrenched in war-torn regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan and there have been dozens of vaccine-triggered outbreaks in Africa and elsewhere in recent years, including the U.S. and Israel.

    An independent panel formed to evaluate the eradication effort’s progress has repeatedly identified significant strategic mistakes made by countries, WHO and their donors, warning that their reluctance to change course, among other issues, may ultimately allow polio to resurge.

    The eradication initiative is a public-private partnership led by a group of national governments that includes the Gates Foundation, Rotary International, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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  • Bird flu case prompts Omaha zoo to close several exhibits

    Bird flu case prompts Omaha zoo to close several exhibits

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    OMAHA, Neb. — Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium has closed several exhibits and taken other precautions after one of its pelicans died from the bird flu.

    The zoo said one of its pink-backed pelicans that died on Thursday tested positive for the highly pathogenic avian influenza. A second pelican became ill Friday and was euthanized.

    As a precaution, the zoo has closed its Lied Jungle, Desert Dome and Simmons Aviary exhibits to the public for at least 10 days.

    The Omaha zoo was one of many across the country that closed down its aviaries and moved birds inside whenever possible to help protect them from avian influenza that is primarily spread by the droppings of wild birds.

    The zoo reopened its aviary in June after bird flu cases waned, but some cases continued to be reported across the country throughout the summer, and the outbreak has started to make a resurgence this fall.

    More than 47 million chickens and turkeys have been slaughtered in 42 states to limit the spread of bird flu during this year’s outbreak. Officials order entire flocks to be killed when the virus is found on farms. More than 6 million chickens and turkeys were slaughtered last month to limit the spread of the disease.

    The Omaha zoo also took precautions to protect its birds by limiting staff access to them and requiring workers to clean their shoes before entering areas where the birds are kept.

    The zoo said its pelicans live outside, so they do come into contact with wild birds. But the pelicans don’t come into contact with other zoo birds and no other birds in the zoo’s collection have shown symptoms of bird flu.

    “It is very important that Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium immediately tighten our protocols to protect our birds and guard against any potential spread of avian influenza,” Sarah Woodhouse, the zoo’s director of animal health, said in a statement. “This is important both to prevent infection of other zoo birds, and to prevent the virus from being dispersed off zoo grounds.”

    Unlike on farms, zoos are generally allowed to isolate and treat an infected bird as long as they take precautions to protect the other birds in their collections.

    Health officials emphasize that bird flu doesn’t jeopardize food safety because infected birds aren’t allowed into the food supply and properly cooking meat and eggs to 165 degrees Fahrenheit will kill any viruses.

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  • UK leader Liz Truss goes from triumph to trouble in 6 weeks

    UK leader Liz Truss goes from triumph to trouble in 6 weeks

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    LONDON — When Liz Truss was running to lead Britain this summer, an ally predicted her first weeks in office would be turbulent.

    But few were prepared for the scale of the sound and fury -– least of all Truss herself. In just six weeks, the prime minister’s libertarian economic policies have triggered a financial crisis, emergency central bank intervention, multiple U-turns and the firing of her Treasury chief.

    Now Truss faces a mutiny inside the governing Conservative Party that leaves her leadership hanging by a thread.

    Conservative lawmaker Robert Halfon fumed on Sunday that the last few weeks had brought “one horror story after another.”

    “The government has looked like libertarian jihadists and treated the whole country as kind of laboratory mice on which to carry out ultra, ultra free-market experiments,” he told Sky News.

    It’s not as if the party wasn’t warned. During the summertime contest to lead the Conservatives, Truss called herself a disruptor who would challenge economic “orthodoxy.” She promised she would cut taxes and slash red tape, and would spur Britain’s sluggish economy to grow.

    Her rival, former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, argued that immediate tax cuts would be reckless amid the economic shockwaves from the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

    The 172,000 Conservative Party members -– who are largely older and affluent — preferred Truss’ boosterish vision. She won 57% of members’ votes to become leader of the governing party on Sept. 5. The next day, she was appointed prime minister by Queen Elizabeth II in one of the monarch’s final acts before her death on Sept. 8.

    Truss’ first days in office were overshadowed by a period of national mourning for the queen. Then on Sept. 23, Treasury chief Kwasi Kwarteng announced the economic plan he and Truss had drawn up. It included 45 billion pounds ($50 billion) in tax cuts -– including an income tax reduction for the highest earners — without an accompanying assessment of how the government would pay for them.

    Truss was doing what she and allies said she would. Libertarian think-tank chief Mark Littlewood predicted during the summer there would be “fireworks” as the new prime minister pushed for economic reform at “absolutely breakneck speed.”

    Still, the scale of the announcement took financial markets, and political experts, by surprise.

    “Many of us, wrongly, expected her to pivot after she won the leadership contest in the way many presidents do after winning the primaries,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. “But she didn’t do that. She actually meant what she said.”

    The pound plunged to a record low against the U.S. dollar and the cost of government borrowing soared. The Bank of England was forced to step in to buy government bonds and prevent the financial crisis from spreading to the wider economy. The central bank also warned that interest rates will have to rise even faster than expected to curb inflation that is running at around 10%, leaving millions of homeowners facing big increases in mortgage payments.

    Jill Rutter, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government think tank, said Truss and Kwarteng made a series of “unforced errors” with their economic package.

    “They shouldn’t have made their contempt for economic institutions quite so clear,” she said. “I think they could have listened to advice. And I think one of the things that they got very wrong was to announce one part of the package, the tax cuts … without the spending side of the equation.”

    As the negative reaction grew, Truss began to abandon bits of the package in a bid to reassure her party and the markets. The tax cut for top earners was ditched in the middle of the Conservative Party’s annual conference in early October as the party rebelled.

    It wasn’t enough. On Friday, Truss fired Kwarteng and replaced her longtime friend and ally with Jeremy Hunt, who served as health secretary and foreign secretary in the Conservative governments of David Cameron and Theresa May.

    At a brief, downbeat news conference, the prime minister acknowledged that “parts of our mini budget went further and faster than markets were expecting.” She reversed a planned cut in corporation tax, another pillar of her economic plan, to “reassure the markets of our fiscal discipline.”

    Truss is still prime minister in name, but power in government has shifted to Hunt, who has signaled he plans to rip up much of her remaining economic plan when he makes a medium-term budget statement on Oct. 31. He has said tax increases and public spending cuts will be needed to restore the government’s fiscal credibility.

    Still, Hunt insisted Sunday: “The prime minister’s in charge.”

    “She’s listened. She’s changed. She’s been willing to do that most difficult thing in politics, which is to change tack,” Hunt told the BBC.

    The Conservative Party still commands a large majority in Parliament, and -– in theory -– has two years until a national election must be held. Polls suggest an election would be a wipeout for the Tories, with the Labour Party winning a big majority.

    Conservative lawmakers are agonizing about whether to try to replace their leader for a second time this year. In July, the party forced out Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who led them to victory in 2019, when serial ethics scandals ensnared his administration.

    Now many of them have buyer’s remorse about his replacement. Under party rules, Truss is safe from a leadership challenge for a year, but some Conservative legislators believe she can be forced to resign if the party can agree on a successor. Defeated rival Sunak, House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt and popular Defense Secretary Ben Wallace are among the names being mentioned as potential replacements. Johnson, who remains a lawmaker, still has supporters, too.

    Junior Treasury minister Andrew Griffith argued Sunday that Truss should be given a chance to try to restore order.

    “This is a time when we need stability,” he told Sky News. “People at home are just tearing their hair out at the level of uncertainty. What they want to see is a competent government getting on with (the) job.”

    ———

    Follow AP’s coverage of British politics at https://apnews.com/hub/united-kingdom

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  • Everyone Says Don’t Google For Medical Advice. I Did Anyway, And It Might Have Saved My Vision.

    Everyone Says Don’t Google For Medical Advice. I Did Anyway, And It Might Have Saved My Vision.

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    I first felt the dull pang in my head on a Wednesday in mid-July 2021. I didn’t think much of it, because like most people, I’m used to having the occasional headache ― usually from PMS or not drinking enough water. I popped an Advil, took a test to rule out COVID, and continued about my day.

    That weekend, I still had a headache but, nevertheless, took a pre-planned trip to visit a friend in New York City. I stowed a big bottle of extra-strength Tylenol in my backpack and hopped on my flight. The visit was great, but I found myself taking pain relievers twice a day in order to lessen the ache and feel as much like my usual self as possible. I flew back home to Detroit two days later and pushed on with my week. Still, the pain in my head remained.

    My naturally anxious and analytical mind began questioning why this might be happening. Was it stress? I was a recent grad living at home, I was working a job I hated, my house was in disarray from a bad flood the previous month, and the pandemic was still raging on. I wondered if the combined pressures might be enough to push my body over the edge. I convinced myself this was the case ― until I also started feeling dizzy and seeing spots.

    I scheduled a doctor’s appointment for the following week. By then, a pulsing whoosh in my ear had begun, and my for-driving-only glasses had become a permanent fixture on my face to combat my spotty vision. I saw a new doctor at my regular clinic, and while she listened to me thoughtfully as I described my ailments, she also noted the history of anxiety and depression on my chart. Taking all of this into account, she told me she suspected I had a tension headache. I was prescribed muscle relaxers and instructed to keep a headache journal to track possible triggers. Then a nurse came in to flush my ears out with water, a particularly nauseating experience that did nothing to alleviate the tinnitus.

    Due to my trust in doctors and because my anxiety often did contribute to extreme tension in my upper body, I went home believing that it would all be over soon. Being the proactive overachiever I am, I even booked a myofascial release massage with my grandmother’s favorite masseuse in hopes of relieving every ounce of tension in my body. I remember lying face down on that table in the dark, incense-filled room as I explained to the masseuse that the doctor thought my anxiety was causing my head pain. She was quick to agree, assuring me that the answer to the tension she was attempting to knead out of my body was “relaxing more.” Genius.

    I left the appointment feeling sweaty and disheveled but the pounding in my head was still there. I started spending my evenings with an ice pack wrapped around my head.

    Things took a sharp turn 2.5 weeks into my unrelenting pain. My mom asked if I wanted to take a trip to the mall, but as soon as we hit the highway, a wave of nausea quickly rose inside of me. I reclined the passenger seat as far back as it could go, closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing with laser-sharp focus. I feared if I opened my eyes even a sliver, I would throw up all over her car.

    The nausea must have been a forewarning of worse things to come. The next morning, I woke up early to run an errand and, during the six-block drive from my house to my destination, realized I couldn’t see. It wasn’t that everything was dark, but more so that I no longer had any depth perception. I could see the houses on either side of the street, but my vision folded in the middle, leaving me unable to see the road. It was like I was trying to read a book, but all of the words were printed in the crease where the binding is centered. I was unable to see where I was going. I discovered the only way I could regain clarity was by closing one eye, so I drove that way for all six blocks there and back. Surprisingly, this was the first time amid all of the symptoms that I felt genuinely scared ― it was now obvious something was very wrong and this wasn’t just simply a stress-related issue.

    I went back to the doctor the next day and explained the frightening new development. She couldn’t give me any concrete answers, but she did order an MRI. When I called to make an appointment, they told me the earliest they could get me in was two weeks later at an office an hour away (thank you, American health care system!).

    I lay awake that night tortured by the pounding and the whooshing. I was even tempted to endure the chaos of the emergency room if it meant this would all be over. I wept on a telehealth appointment with my therapist that week, frustrated that I had no concrete answers for my unending nightmare and terrified as my mind raced with the worst-case scenarios. Everyone in my life offered well-meaning advice to stay calm and positive, but they couldn’t feel the panic permeating every cell in my body.

    One night later that week, I decided to give into my anxiety and do what every mental health professional would probably advise against: Google. I fell into a black hole of frantic symptom-searching and read article after article. I only resurfaced when I discovered a Mayo Clinic page titled “Pseudotumor cerebri (idiopathic intracranial hypertension).” It explained a rare condition in which pressure increases in the head due to the inability to drain cerebrospinal fluid, which mimics the symptoms of a brain tumor.

    “I decided to give into my anxiety and do what every mental health professional would probably advise against: Google. I fell into a black hole of frantic symptom searching and read article after article.”

    I could check off every symptom listed on the page, and was especially convinced that I’d found a plausible explanation when one of them was “a whooshing sound in your head that pulses with your heartbeat.” There weren’t very many causes offered, but it said that the use of tetracyclines could contribute. I quickly Googled examples of tetracyclines and bingo! There was the name of a medication I had been taking for four months: doxycycline, an antibiotic prescribed by my dermatologist to treat my acne.

    I immediately felt a rush of relief and self-assurance. I had been right to feel fear and panic, and giving in to my anxiety had provided me with an answer that no doctor had been able to offer thus far.

    I told my parents about my revelation, which they met with hesitation (understandable, as I lack a medical degree and my only evidence was my internet self-diagnosis). However, my dad called an ophthalmologist friend, who agreed that it sounded like a pseudotumor. I also called my dermatologist’s office, which advised me to stop taking the doxycycline just in case. My sister came home from summer camp that weekend, and she was the first person to outwardly meet me at the level of concern that I was feeling inside. She immediately pointed out that when I thought I was looking her in the eye while talking to her, my eyes were actually focused in a completely different direction. Scary.

    Coincidentally, I had my yearly eye exam scheduled a few days later. I was quickly passed off from my optometrist to an ophthalmologist, who showed me my retinal imaging full of dark, ominous-looking spots surrounding my optic nerve (which was also hemorrhaging due to the pressure) ― a clear diagnosis of pseudotumor cerebri.

    The office called ahead to the emergency room, where I was admitted as an inpatient to receive a CT scan and MRI. I started crying at the suggestion that I might have to receive a spinal tap in order to relieve fluid, but later found out that because I stopped taking doxycycline a few days prior, this could be avoided. Another win for my intuition.

    Oddly enough, the night I spent in the hospital was the most restful sleep I’d had in weeks, despite being frequently woken up to get my vitals taken. I felt like Sylvia Plath, the old brag of my heart reassuring myself, “I was right, I was right, I was right.”

    I was released from the hospital the next day with orders to follow up with my ophthalmologist and to check in with a neurologist, and I spent the better part of the next year seeing them on a regular basis in order to ensure the fluid fully dispersed. I also went back to my dermatologist to tell her what had happened, but she frankly could not have cared less about what I went through. I haven’t been back there since.

    Pseudotumor cerebri can cause permanent vision loss if not treated quickly enough, which terrified me at the time. Luckily, my eyes have gone back to normal for the most part. However, now when I go to the eye doctor for routine check-ups, I notice that the letters they put on the wall collapse in the middle of my vision. I can see the two letters on either side of the center, but the fifth one disappears into the middle, a new blind spot I have as a result of my former condition.

    I was lucky that my condition could be traced back to a medication I was taking. This meant that for me, recovery only required stopping the doxycycline and taking a new medicine, diamox, which decreases the rate at which spinal fluid is produced, for six months. However, in most other cases, this condition doesn’t have a clear cause ― or a guarantee that medication or surgery will cure it. I’m not quite sure what it means for me, or whether my condition will resurface in any way in the future, so I’m committed to monitoring it with regular check-ins with my doctors.

    I have spent much of my life convinced my anxiety was my downfall, and I worked to minimize and mitigate it as much as possible to maintain any sense of normalcy on my surface. I had never considered that leaning into it would be more helpful than hiding it would ever be. Aside from learning that sometimes anxiety can be an asset ― a useful signal that something is truly wrong and needs to be addressed ― I’ve also discovered that doctors don’t always get it right. They’re susceptible to human error, which means they might be missing something that’s right in front of them. Sometimes it’s up to us to take the situation into our own hands.

    Maybe that means speaking up and pushing harder when our doctor offers a solution that feels wrong. Maybe that means getting a second or third or fourth opinion. Or maybe it means doing our own research and seeing if anything fits. Regardless, we know ourselves best and have to do whatever we need to do to get the care we deserve ― especially in a country where doctors are overworked, women are often susceptible to gender discrimination in medical treatment, and too many people don’t have access to the care they need in the first place.

    Along with my blind spot, the thumping in my ear remains, an artifact from this journey that will not seem to go away. It’s not constant, but it happens often enough to be disturbing. I’ve noticed that it tends to be aligned with my anxiety, the intensity of the whooshing increasing and decreasing with the ebb and flow of my internal mental health landscape. My medical trauma is forever intertwined with the facet of my mind that ultimately saved me. Ironic, isn’t it?

    Alexandra Niforos is the operations associate for HuffPost and BuzzFeed News. When she isn’t assisting in newsroom operations, she is probably over-analyzing an aspect of her life, either in writing or in voice memos to her friends. She is a native Michigander currently based in New York City.

    Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch.

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  • Do Voters Care About John Fetterman’s Stroke?

    Do Voters Care About John Fetterman’s Stroke?

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    Every second of every day, oxygen-rich blood is coursing through your brain. Your heart pumps it up through your chest and neck, along tinier and tinier arterial tubes, twisting and turning among the grooves and lobes of gray matter until it reaches the brain cells it’s meant to nourish. But this journey can be interrupted. An artery can get clogged—often by a free-floating, gelatinous clot—which halts the flow of blood. The clog will starve your brain’s cells of oxygen. Within moments, your brain’s tissue will start to die.

    This is what happened to John Fetterman in May of this year, when he suffered an ischemic stroke—a type that affects roughly 700,000 people in the United States annually. Five months later, Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor says he still struggles to process the words that he hears, and sometimes he can’t quite express what he means. For a regular person, these effects would not be newsworthy. Fetterman, though, is a candidate for the U.S. Senate. This week, NBC News’s Dasha Burns said that Fetterman seemed unable to participate in preinterview small talk conducted without closed captioning, but other recent Fetterman interviewers pushed back, saying he’d done just fine when they spoke with him.

    Clearly, observers cannot agree about the degree of impairment or disability that Fetterman is experiencing. But this much is certain: His health is a legitimate consideration for the voters he is seeking to represent in Congress. And although Fetterman’s critics are framing his stroke as a liability, the Democrat is hoping that his health challenge makes him a more relatable—and therefore more appealing—candidate. The question is what voters should make of it all.

    For most of the summer, Fetterman’s campaign used social media to compensate for the fact that the Democrat was unwell. On Twitter, Fetterman and his team mocked his Republican opponent, Mehmet Oz, for his many mansions and his ham-handed attempts to seem like an ordinary Pennsylvanian. They scored headline after fawning headline for their snarky social-media strategy. But the candidate himself stayed home, trying to heal.

    John Hendrickson: Don’t patronize Fetterman

    Fetterman sounds a lot more like his old self now than he did in August, when he first returned to the campaign trail. But he still stumbles in his speech. At a rally I attended outside Philadelphia last weekend, he delivered a few applause lines and phrases that were difficult to understand; occasionally, the audience would answer with tentative claps. After the event, Fetterman did not entertain questions from reporters, and seemed unable to respond all that meaningfully to on-the-fly comments from voters; his wife, Gisele, appeared to be the one leading those interactions. But while Fetterman may not be able to do small talk, he is able to participate in interviews where he can use real-time closed-captioning, a live transcription of questions appearing on his laptop. He’ll use the same tool during the upcoming debate against Oz scheduled for October 25.

    That accommodation for someone who’s recently had a stroke is the same sort of allowance that would be made for a Senate candidate who was hearing impaired. Still, it’s reasonable to ask whether Fetterman’s stroke damaged his cognition, his ability to learn and to comprehend language—and how he might function as a senator.

    The campaign says that Fetterman has taken two different cognitive tests and scored “in the normal range” on both. (It has released the results of one of those tests.) But the campaign has declined to release Fetterman’s full health records. “John Fetterman is healthy. He also has an auditory-processing challenge that is still lingering from his stroke in May,” Rebecca Katz, a senior adviser to Fetterman, told me. “The only proof you need to know he can do his job is the fact that he’s doing this campaign right now.”

    Ed Yong: Lost for words

    Still, in the absence of those records, we can only observe and guess. The phrase auditory processing is not really a medical diagnosis, Adam de Havenon, an associate professor of neurology at Yale, told me. Instead, Fetterman’s symptoms seem consistent with aphasia, a common stroke effect in which a person loses their ability to comprehend or express spoken words—sometimes both. That doesn’t necessarily indicate severe brain damage. “It’s very possible to just have trouble understanding spoken language or getting words out without any impact on cognition,” de Havenon said. This would certainly seem consistent with Fetterman’s condition, given that he is able to read and respond to closed captioning. Even if Fetterman does have some cognitive impairment, “I don’t think it would be profound, in terms of what he’s doing on a day-to-day basis,” de Havenon said.

    So why keep his full health records under wraps? Fetterman’s neuropsychological or aphasia test results might suggest that he is more impaired than he seems. Or maybe those records show a complicated picture—one that would be easily misinterpreted by laypeople or intentionally misconstrued by political opponents. Either way, keeping those records a secret isn’t a great look for a candidate who has suffered a serious health setback on the campaign trail.

    Five months after his stroke, Fetterman is still within the poststroke recovery window. Normally, a stroke patient needs about six months for the brain to heal, de Havenon told me, and 12 months for their brain to learn how to compensate for any loss in function. Which means it’s still entirely possible for Fetterman’s apparent aphasia and his neuropsych test results to improve. “I see patients like John very frequently in the emergency department and clinic,” de Havenon said. Otherwise healthy, middle-aged people who have ischemic strokes receive treatment and generally respond quite well—including over the long term.

    America’s laws have long been written, at least in part, by the elderly—the word senator actually comes from the Latin for “old man.” The average age in today’s Senate is 64—in other words, when most people are thinking about retiring, America’s senators are just getting going. But historically, some senators have been barely sentient by the end of their career.

    In his early 90s, the longest-serving senator in history, Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, was delivering halting speeches on the Senate floor. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, still in office at 100, died a hunched shadow of his former self—although his former self had been an unapologetic segregationist.

    Other senators have had health issues in office that made their jobs next to impossible: Senator Carter Glass of Virginia, who had a serious heart condition, didn’t set foot in the chamber for the last four years of his six-year term, Donald Ritchie, a former Senate historian, told me. Democrats needed California Senator Clair Engle’s vote to break the filibuster on the Civil Rights Act, but he was partially paralyzed and unable to speak because of a brain tumor. “All he could do was put his finger up to his eye,” Ritchie said. “They took that as an aye vote.” In our own time, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California is showing signs of age-related impairment: According to recent reporting, she sometimes fails to follow policy conversations or recognize her colleagues.

    David A. Graham: Dianne Feinstein is the future of the Senate

    Several senators have had strokes in office, too, including recently Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland. After Illinois Senator Mark Kirk’s stroke in 2012, aides were hesitant to discuss how he’d changed mentally, according to a National Journal profile. He returned to the chamber a year later, but his health may have played a role in his later loss to Tammy Duckworth.

    This is not to compare John Fetterman’s ailment to those of senators past—or to judge the decisions of the lawmakers who have stayed in office past their prime. But the Senate is familiar with disability—brought on by age or any number of other factors. It has and will accommodate it. If Fetterman is elected, Ritchie told me, the secretary of the Senate will help organize the tools he’ll need for a committee hearing or floor speeches. Given how manageable these measures are, the Fetterman campaign could be more transparent about what the Democrat’s everyday life as a senator might look like.

    None of this can be easy for Fetterman. Less than a year ago, he was discussed by voters and journalists alike with something akin to awe: A 6-foot-8-inch man in a hoodie, with a goatee and tattoos, is not your typical political candidate; despite his relatively privileged upbringing, Fetterman was the straight-talking everyman, the guy with the irreverent vibe. Back then, the biggest question surrounding his campaign was whether he’d show up to the Senate in cargo shorts.

    Fetterman may still be all of those things, but now, he is also a man wrestling with an uncooperative brain. And the entire country is watching, making note of his every pause and stammer.

    “We are pulling back the curtain on his recovery,” Katz from Fetterman’s campaign told me, “and having worked in the Senate and seen firsthand how many senators cover up their various challenges, I can tell you that this is refreshing for people. He is being very honest about the challenges he’s facing at this moment.”

    Even if his campaign could have been more forthcoming earlier about his condition, it is true that Fetterman has found a way of talking about it since he returned to the trail in late summer. Near the beginning of his stump speech, he asks: “How many of you have had your own personal health challenges?” And every time, nearly every hand in the audience goes up.

    Last week, I traveled to Bristol to see Fetterman in action. “I’ve had a hemorrhagic stroke, which is worse,” Jeanette Miller from Bristol Township told me with a shrug when I asked her whether Fetterman’s stroke gave her pause. Rob Blatt, a retiree from Feasterville, looked at me blankly when I asked him the same. “I’ve beaten cancer and a whole bunch of other stuff,” he said. “He’s one of us—a working man trying to do the right thing by his family, his community, and his country.”

    Read: Trump returns to rally Team MAGA

    A younger fan, Eric Bruno from Levittown, told me he’d worked with people who’d had strokes. “Outwardly, it takes a while to come back. But inwardly you’re still the same person,” he said, adding, “I trust the people around him.” Again and again I asked Fetterman’s supporters about his stroke, and they all responded the same way: So what? Fetterman’s point—that knowing what it’s like to go through a major health challenge, to live with a disability, and to navigate the thorny thicket of the American health-care system can be assets for a Senate candidate—seemed to land well with his supporters. If our elected leaders are supposed to represent us, the Democrat seems to be asking, shouldn’t they be representative of us?

    Oz has been closing the gap with Fetterman’s slightly higher poll numbers in recent weeks, but this tightening of the race may owe more to the imminence of the election than to sudden doubts about Fetterman’s health. After weighing their options, Pennsylvanians appear to be sorting themselves into their partisan corners; politically, Pennsylvania is very evenly split. Fetterman’s cognitive ability may ultimately weigh less with Keystone State voters than the simple fact that he is a Democrat, not a Republican.

    “I will admit, it wasn’t the best speech I’ve ever heard,” Bobby Summers, a local IT manager, told me after the Bristol rally. He stood next to his wife, Lara, and their baby son on the grassy lawn where Fetterman had just been. “I don’t need a golden tongue,” Lara cut in. “I just need someone who gets the job done and breaks the tie.”

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  • Guterres calls for ‘sustained political commitment’ for a healthier world

    Guterres calls for ‘sustained political commitment’ for a healthier world

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    To accomplish this, “wealthier countries and international financial institutions need to support developing countries to make these crucial investments”, said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. 

    In an address to the opening of the World Health Summit in Berlin, via a video message, he began by noting how poorly prepared most of the world is, for crises. The annual gathering is being hosted by the presidents of Germany, France and Senegal, alongside WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

    Women’s burden

    “Women have been among the hardest hit. They are shouldering an increased burden of care, in families and as frontline workers”, he said. But at the same time, many women has lost income due to job loss, and inadequate safety nets.

    He said COVID and now the food, energy and financial shocks spinning out from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are threatening the 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and poverty reduction efforts.

    To advance the SDGs, “we must recalibrate multilateralism and strengthen global cooperation”, he added.

    Failing the developing world

    Too little is being invested in health and well-being and the “unbalanced global financial system is failing the developing world”, he declared.

    “This must change. All people need inclusive, impartial and equitable access to health services, to deliver universal health coverage”, including neglected mental healthcare services.

    Combined, good health is the foundation, for peaceful and stable societies, he said.

    Paradigm shift away from ‘sick care’: Tedros

    In his remarks at the opening ceremony, WHO chief Tedros said to fulfill the theme of “taking global health to a new level” in the year ahead, this translated into three key priorities.

    First, the new pandemic accord being negotiated by countries, and for countries, was key, so the world can truly come together as one in the face of further pandemics on a par with COVID-19.

    “It will not give WHO any powers to do anything without the express permission of sovereign nation States”, he reassured. 

    Second, a new “global architecture” is needed “that is coherent and inclusive.” The fractured COVID response made it clear that new and better tools are needed to shore it all up.

    Thirdly, a new global approach must be taken which prioritises promoting health and preventing disease, not just treating the sick. Too many health systems “do not deliver healthcare, they deliver sick care”, he said.

    Healthcare needs to be no longer just about one ministry or sector, but “of the whole of government, and the whole of society.”

    WHO

    Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus welcomes the family of Henrietta Lacks for a special dialogue at WHO headquarters in Geneva.

    Lacks family in new Goodwill Ambassador role

    In another development on Sunday, WHO chief Tedros announced the appointment of the Lacks family, as WHO Goodwill Ambassadors for Cervical Cancer Elimination.

    Henrietta Lacks, an impoverished African-American woman, died in 1951 from the disease, but left behind an extraordinary legacy through the unique properties of her cancer cells, which became the first “immortal” cell line, able to replicate outside the human body, providing countless medical breakthroughs since then.

    The so-called HeLa cells were taken from her without her knowledge or consent: “Much like the injustice of Henrietta Lacks’ story, women all over the world from racial and minority ethnic groups, face disproportionately higher risks from cervical cancer”, said Tedros.

    Cervical cancer elimination

    “WHO’s goal is to eliminate cervical cancer, which means the innovations created”, with her cells, “must be made available equitably to all women and girls. We look forward to working with the Lacks family to raise awareness on cervical cancer and advance racial equity in health and science.”

    Speaking at a ceremony during the World Health Summit, Alfred Lacks Carter Jr. said the family was accepting the honour to serve as Goodwill Ambassadors, “in the spirit of my mother, Deborah Lacks, who lost her mother, Henrietta, to cervical cancer, and worked to make certain the world recognizes her impact.”

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  • Voters to decide on California ban on flavored tobacco

    Voters to decide on California ban on flavored tobacco

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    SAN DIEGO — Two years ago, California banned flavored tobacco products such as menthol cigarettes and cotton candy vaping juice, arguing that they mostly attracted kids and were especially dangerous amid the coronavirus pandemic when youth deaths spiked from respiratory complications.

    But the law never took effect. Tobacco giants, including R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. and Philip Morris USA, spent $20 million on a campaign that gathered enough signatures to put the issue to the voters.

    Californians now will decide on the Nov. 8 statewide ballot whether to toss out the law or keep it.

    The issue has set off a fierce fight. The tobacco companies are pushing hard to keep from being shut out of a large portion of California’s vast market. Meanwhile, supporters of the ban, who include doctors, child welfare advocates and the state’s dominant Democratic Party, say the law is necessary to put a stop to the staggering rise in teen smoking.

    However, the California Republican Party wants to repeal the law, saying it would cause a giant loss in tax revenue. The independent Legislative Analyst’s Office estimates it could cost the state tens of millions of dollars to around $100 million annually.

    If voters approve, California would become the second state in the nation to enact such a ban after Massachusetts. A number of cities, including Los Angeles and San Diego, have already enacted their own bans.

    It’s already illegal for retailers to sell tobacco to anyone under 21. But advocates of the ban say flavored cigarettes and vaping cartridges are still too easy for teens to obtain. The ban wouldn’t make it a crime to possess such products, but retailers who sold them to kids could be fined up to $250.

    The ban, which passed the Legislature with bipartisan support, would also prohibit the sale of pods for vape pens, tank-based systems and chewing tobacco, with exceptions made for hookahs, some cigars and loose-leaf tobacco.

    The tobacco industry’s campaign has painted the ban as being especially bad for Black and Latino people, who use menthol at higher rates than others.

    “It’s unfair for communities of color. Bad law. Bad consequences,” said one online banner ad paid for by RAI Services, a subsidiary of Reynolds American, which is the parent company of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco.

    But the ads drew a backlash from some Black leaders who call the campaign offensive.

    “I am insulted that the tobacco industry would make an effort to make us believe that mentholated cigarettes are part of African American culture, and that this is a discriminatory piece of legislation against Black people,” then-Assemblywoman Shirley Weber said before the Legislature voted on the ban. Weber, a San Diego Democrat who chaired the California Legislative Black Caucus, is now California’s secretary of state.

    So far the campaign to allow the law to take effect has raised more than $6 million, nearly four times more than the effort to stop it, according to state campaign finance records.

    Some small neighborhood market owners favor repealing the law, calling it another blow to their businesses as they struggle to recover from a drop in sales during the pandemic.

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  • Apple workers in Oklahoma vote to unionize in 2nd labor win

    Apple workers in Oklahoma vote to unionize in 2nd labor win

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    NEW YORK — Workers at an Apple store in Oklahoma City voted to unionize, marking the second unionized Apple store in the U.S. in a matter of months, according to the federal labor board.

    The vote on Friday signaled another win for the labor movement, which has been gaining momentum since the pandemic.

    Fifty-six workers at the store, located at Oklahoma City’s Penn Square Mall, voted to be represented by The Communications Workers of America, while 32 voted against it, according to a preliminary tally by National Labor Relations Board. The approximate number of eligible voters was 95, the board said.

    The labor board said Friday that both parties have five business days to file objections to the election. If no objections are filed, the results will be certified, and the employer must begin bargaining in good faith with the union.

    The union victory follows a vote to unionize an Apple store in Towson, Maryland, in June. That effort was spearheaded by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Maryland, which is preparing to begin formal negotiations.

    In a statement emailed to The Associated Press on Saturday, Apple said, “We believe the open, direct and collaborative relationship we have with our valued team members is the best way to provide an excellent experience for our customers, and for our teams.”

    Apple also cited “strong compensation and exceptional benefits,” and noted that since 2018, it has increased starting rates in the U.S. by 45% and made significant improvements in other benefits, including new educational and family support programs.

    The Communications Workers of America could not be immediately reached for comment.

    Worker discontent has invigorated the labor movements at several major companies in the U.S. in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which triggered tensions over sick leave policies, scheduling, and other issues.

    In a surprise victory, Amazon workers at a Staten Island warehouse voted in favor of unionizing in April, though similar efforts at other warehouses so far have been unsuccessful. Voting for an Amazon facility near Albany, New York, began on Wednesday and is expected go through Monday. Well over 200 U.S. Starbucks stores have voted to unionize over the past year, according to the NLRB.

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  • In France, fuel crisis frays nerves and workers’ resilience

    In France, fuel crisis frays nerves and workers’ resilience

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    VERSAILLES, France — Even close to midnight on a school night, the tipoff was too important to ignore: A nearby gas station had just been resupplied.

    So Aicha Far scooped up her 6-year-old and set off into the night. The home carer needed to refuel her car so she could continue looking after the vulnerable people on the outskirts of Paris who rely on her to keep them fed, clean and safe. The prospect of a full tank was worth dragging the kid out of bed for.

    “I wrapped him in a blanket and put him in the back,” Far recalled on Saturday, as she gently coaxed an older woman she looks after to drink her breakfast hot chocolate.

    Chronic fuel shortages in France sparked by strikes and panic buying are fraying nerves and testing both the resilience and ingenuity of millions of French workers who depend on their vehicles to do their jobs.

    More than a quarter of gas stations nationwide were still without one type of fuel or more on Saturday, the French energy minister said. In the Paris region, the number was above a third.

    Motorists have sometimes lined up for hours to refuel — not always successfully — and tempers have flared.

    In the town of Versailles, southwest of Paris, 41-year-old nurse Aurelie Martin is trying to eke out the precious fuel left in her tank — and bracing for the next time she’ll have to visit the pumps.

    She is up well before dawn to give jabs, change dressings and dispense other essential medical care to dozens of patients each morning.

    Rather than doing little hops in her Mini from one patient to the next, she’s increasingly scurrying on foot between them when she can, racking up 10 kilometers (six miles) of walking each morning to save fuel.

    “I’m doing the bare minimum by car,” she said as she made her rounds on Saturday. “I had hoped up to now that the situation would improve, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be getting better.”

    The strikes have hit French refineries and fuel depots. Strikers have demanded higher wages from what they feel should be their share of windfall profits generated by high oil and gas prices amid the global energy crisis aggravated by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

    After runs on toilet paper, pasta and other essentials at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, fuel and where to find it are the latest obsessions in France. The government has urged motorists not to panic-buy. Some gas stations have banned jerrycans.

    When Martin bumped into other nurses also making their early morning rounds on Saturday, gasoline was the first thing they talked about.

    One nurse who’d run out of fuel told Martin that one of her patients was offering to lend her his car. On messaging groups, nurses share tips about gas stations that have been resupplied or that have priority pumps for them and other essential workers.

    Martin said some of her fellow nurses have been yelled at by other motorists for trying to cut to the front of lines.

    With 30 to 40 patients to home-visit per day, Martin knows she’ll need to refuel early next week.

    “My day off is on Tuesday and I think the full tank that I had will last until then,” she said. “So on Tuesday, I’ll see if I need to spend the day lining up and that is what I will do if a gas station hasn’t been set aside for us.”

    “Truth be told,” she added, “I have been pushing back the inevitable moment.”

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  • Apple workers in Oklahoma vote to unionize in 2nd labor win

    Apple workers in Oklahoma vote to unionize in 2nd labor win

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    NEW YORK — Workers at an Apple store in Oklahoma City voted to unionize, marking the second unionized Apple store in the U.S. in a matter of months, according to the federal labor board.

    The vote on Friday signaled another win for the labor movement, which has been gaining momentum since the pandemic.

    Fifty-six workers at the store, located at Oklahoma City’s Penn Square Mall, voted to be represented by The Communications Workers of America, while 32 voted against it, according to a preliminary tally by National Labor Relations Board. The approximate number of eligible voters was 95, the board said.

    The labor board said Friday that both parties have five business days to file objections to the election. If no objections are filed, the results will be certified, and the employer must begin bargaining in good faith with the union.

    The union victory follows a vote to unionize an Apple store in Towson, Maryland, in June. That effort was spearheaded by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Maryland, which is preparing to begin formal negotiations.

    In a statement emailed to The Associated Press on Saturday, Apple said, “We believe the open, direct and collaborative relationship we have with our valued team members is the best way to provide an excellent experience for our customers, and for our teams.”

    Apple also cited “strong compensation and exceptional benefits,” and noted that since 2018, it has increased starting rates in the U.S. by 45% and made significant improvements in other benefits, including new educational and family support programs.

    The Communications Workers of America could not be immediately reached for comment.

    Worker discontent has invigorated the labor movements at several major companies in the U.S. in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, which triggered tensions over sick leave policies, scheduling, and other issues.

    In a surprise victory, Amazon workers at a Staten Island warehouse voted in favor of unionizing in April, though similar efforts at other warehouses so far have been unsuccessful. Voting for an Amazon facility near Albany, New York, began on Wednesday and is expected go through Monday. Well over 200 U.S. Starbucks stores have voted to unionize over the past year, according to the NLRB.

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  • ‘Don’t Look Back’: Refugee, plant worker writes of survival

    ‘Don’t Look Back’: Refugee, plant worker writes of survival

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    SIOUX FALLS, S.D. — As Achut Deng lay in her apartment bedroom in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, sickened alongside hundreds of her co-workers at a South Dakota meatpacking plant, she worried she was going to die.

    It wasn’t the first time she felt the imminent threat of death.

    Her childhood, shattered by war in South Sudan, had been filled with it. But as she focused on building a new life for her family — filled with long hours at the Smithfield Foods pork processing plant — she kept those traumatic memories to herself.

    In the spring of 2020, however, she spoke out to tell of the fear gripping the Sioux Falls workforce, adding to pressure that prodded the plant to implement new safety protocols that helped protect Deng and her colleagues.

    Now, Deng is telling her whole story — from fleeing massacres to the trauma she experienced as a refugee in the United States — through a memoir that she hopes will bring awareness of both the hardships, as well as the healing, for refugees.

    Deng’s book for young adults, co-authored with Keely Hutton, draws its name from the words Deng’s grandmother uttered as they fled when their village came under attack: “Don’t Look Back.”

    For decades, she followed that advice to survive. The book details her grandmother’s sacrifice to literally shield Deng from bullets during a 1991 massacre, to a refugee journey where a deadly river, a snake bite and malaria all nearly killed her. And even after arriving in the U.S., Deng writes, she suffered sexual abuse from a male guardian as well as accompanying suicidal thoughts.

    “I’m tired of being strong. I’m done being embarrassed. I’m done being ashamed of what I’ve been through,” Deng, now 37, told The Associated Press in an interview at her home in Sioux Falls.

    For years, she quietly kept her story buried beneath her work at the plant, a side hustle of catering sambusa and caring for her three sons.

    “There’s a reason why I created this busy schedule — because I don’t want to have time to myself so that I can think of the past,” she said.

    The hard work allowed Deng to achieve the life she dreamed of when she came to the U.S. as a teenager. She saved for a down payment on a home, paid for family vacations and even sponsored her parents’ immigration to America.

    When COVID-19 infections spread among Deng’s colleagues, however, her dreams came under attack once again. Sickened by the virus, she worried her sons would find her body and be left with only the stories others told about her. Deng was still haunted by finding that her own grandmother had been struck and killed by the bullets that might have hit Deng during that 1991 massacre.

    “I found myself at the very lowest point again,” Deng recounted.

    In the past, she had quietly focused on survival. This time, she spoke out. Deng appeared twice on the New York Times’ “The Daily” podcast.

    She described in compelling detail the suffering and fear among her colleagues — many of them immigrants — as the pork processing plant became one of the country’s worst hotspots for infections in the spring of 2020. Four of her colleagues died after being infected.

    Many workers at the time worried about the consequences of speaking with reporters, but Deng says she was only describing her own experience and that she does not blame Smithfield for the coronavirus. She says the plant requires hard work, but Smithfield also provides the wages, benefits and a schedule that allow a single mother to provide for her family.

    When a publicist at Macmillan Publishing heard Deng on the podcast, it sparked talks that led to the memoir. Deng wrote the book with Hutton, her co-author, in between working 12-hour shifts at Smithfield and ferrying her sons to school. She often slept just four hours between her overnight job as a supervisor and video calls with Hutton.

    Delving into the trauma of her past was difficult, Deng said, and required therapy sessions.

    Then, every Sunday, when Deng had a day off, she would sit with her sons around their dining table and read the draft of the latest chapter.

    “We cry together; we talk about it; then we put it behind; then we start the new week,” Deng said.

    She hopes that readers will come to understand refugees have their lives upended and are traumatized by forces beyond their control, but show incredible resilience by choosing to come to the U.S. She described the book’s cover, illustrated with the face of a girl overlaid by a night sky, as capturing her feelings at publication.

    “She’s wounded but fearless,” Deng said. “You can see the pain in her eye. But she’s not afraid.”

    ———

    Follow Stephen Groves on Twitter at https://twitter.com/stephengroves

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  • Biden’s pot pardons could boost states’ legalization drives

    Biden’s pot pardons could boost states’ legalization drives

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    LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — There are few surprises expected on Election Day in solidly Republican Arkansas, where Donald Trump’s former press secretary is heavily favored in the race for governor and other GOP candidates are considered locks.

    But one big exception is the campaign to make Arkansas the first state in the South to legalize recreational marijuana. A proposal to change the state’s constitution is drawing millions of dollars from opponents and supporters of legalization, with ads crowding the airwaves.

    President Joe Biden’s recent announcement that he will pardon thousands of people for simple marijuana possession has shined a new spotlight on the legalization efforts in Arkansas and four other states. Voters in Maryland, Missouri, North Dakota and South Dakota are also taking up measures on recreational marijuana.

    Biden’s step toward decriminalizing the drug could provide a boost for legalization in some of the most conservative parts of the country, experts say.

    “The most powerful elected leader in the world has publicly declared it was a mistake to criminalize people for using cannabis and I think that will go a long way with regard to voters who may be on the fence,” said Mason Tvert, partner at VS Strategies, a cannabis policy and public affairs firm.

    Biden’s announcement only covers people convicted under the federal law. But he has called on governors to issue similar pardons for those convicted of state marijuana offenses, which reflect the vast majority of marijuana possession cases. The president also directed his health secretary and attorney general to review how marijuana is scheduled under federal law.

    The moves come as opposition to legalization has softened around the country, with recreational marijuana legal in 19 states, despite resistance at the federal level. Advocates say it shows that states are ahead of the federal government on the issue.

    “I think it’s an example of state level leadership and citizens pushing the federal government in the right direction,” said Eddie Armstrong, a former state legislator who leads the Responsible Growth Arkansas group campaigning for legalization.

    In 2016, Arkansas became the first Bible Belt state to approve medical marijuana, with voters approving a legalization measure. More than 91,000 people have cards to legally buy marijuana from state-licensed dispensaries, which opened in 2019. Patients have spent more than $200 million so far this year, the state says.

    An ad by Responsible Growth Arkansas points to benefits such as the thousands of jobs it says legalization would create. The main group opposing the measure is running an ad that urges voters to “protect Arkansas from big marijuana.”

    The proposal faces opposition from Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a former head of the federal Drug Enforcement Administration who criticized Biden’s pardon announcement. Former White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, the Republican front-runner to succeed Hutchinson, has said she will vote against the measure. Her Democratic rival, Chris Jones, said he supports it.

    In neighboring Missouri, a proposed constitutional amendment would legalize recreational marijuana for adults 21 and older and expunge records of past arrests and convictions for nonviolent marijuana offenses, except for selling to minors or driving under the influence.

    Supporters said they do not expect Biden’s pardon announcement for some federal marijuana offenses to have much of an impact on the Missouri measure, which could expunge several hundred thousand state marijuana offenses.

    “There is some danger of confusion, but I think most people understand the distinction of the federal and state processes,” said John Payne, campaign manager for Legal Missouri 2022.

    Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican and former sheriff, opposes the ballot measure but has not aggressively campaigned against it. He has no plans to emulate Biden’s pardon announcement.

    Parson has granted pardons “to individuals who demonstrate a changed life-style, commitment to rehabilitation, contrition and contribution to their communities — rather than as a blanket approach to undermine existing law,” said Parson spokesperson Kelli Jones.

    Similarly, North Dakota’s legalization campaign does not expect to incorporate Biden’s pardons into its messaging. Mark Friese, treasurer of the New Approach Initiative backing the legalization ballot proposal, said he doubts Biden’s pardon will have much of an impact in North Dakota or sway the legalization effort.

    “The number of North Dakotans convicted in federal court is small,” said Friese, a prominent North Dakota lawyer and former police officer. “Small amounts of marijuana are typically and historically not prosecuted in North Dakota.”

    Matt Schwiech, who is running South Dakota’s ballot initiative campaign to legalize recreational marijuana possession for adults, said the president’s pardons may hand the campaign a boost with older Democrats. It also underscores the campaign’s message that convictions for pot possession hurt people on job or rental applications, as well as that enforcing pot possession laws are a waste of time and resources for law enforcement, he said.

    South Dakotans, including a sizable number of Republicans, voted to legalize marijuana possession in 2020, but that law was struck down by the state Supreme Court in part because the proposal was coupled with medical marijuana and hemp. This year, recreational pot is standing by itself as it goes before voters.

    It remains unclear whether Biden’s pardon move will inject party politics into an issue that supporters say crosses partisan lines. For example, Arkansas voters in 2016 approved medical marijuana the same year they overwhelmingly backed Trump.

    All of the states with recreational marijuana on the ballot next month, except for Maryland, voted for Trump in the 2020 presidential election. And the issue is going before voters as GOP candidates have been stepping up their anti-crime rhetoric.

    “From our perspective the people of Arkansas, they didn’t vote for Biden initially and so we don’t anticipate this really having any sort of influence over anybody’s decision,” said Tyler Beaver, campaign manager for Safe and Secure Communities, the main group campaigning against the proposal.

    ———

    Associated Press writers David A. Lieb in Jefferson City, Missouri; Stephen Groves in Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and James MacPherson in Bismarck, North Dakota; contributed to this report.

    ———

    For more information on the midterm elections, go to: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

    Follow AP’s coverage of marijuana at https://apnews.com/hub/marijuana

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  • Tourists flock to Taiwan as COVID entry restrictions eased

    Tourists flock to Taiwan as COVID entry restrictions eased

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    TAIPEI, Taiwan (AP) — Taiwan lifted all its COVID-19 entry restrictions on Thursday, allowing tourists unfettered access to the self-ruled island after over 2 1/2 years of border controls.

    Hong Kong and Taiwan, together with mainland China, required most visitors to complete a mandatory quarantine period throughout the pandemic, even as most countries reopened their borders to tourists.

    Visitors are no longer required to quarantine upon entry, or take any PCR tests. Instead, they will need to monitor their health for a week after arriving, and obtain a negative result on a rapid antigen test the day they arrive. If people want to go out during the weeklong monitoring period, they need a negative test from either that day or the day before.

    There are also no longer any restrictions on certain nationalities being allowed to enter Taiwan.

    Dozens of visitors from Thailand were among the first to arrive under the new rules at Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport, which serves the capital Taipei, on a Tiger Air flight that landed shortly after midnight.

    Tourists like 32-year-old Mac Chientachakul and his parents were excited to visit the island.

    “Hot pot is my favorite dish in Taiwan,” Chientachakul said. “It’s my first thing to do … I miss it so much.”

    Sonia Chang, a travel agent, said the changes are good for both the the tourism industry and Taiwanese residents, who can now travel abroad without having to quarantine when they get home.

    Valaisurang Bhaedhayajibh, a 53-year-old business development director of a design firm, called the new rules convenient.

    “We don’t have to do the test before coming here, and also after arriving,” he said. “We are still required to do the self-test every two days, and everything has been provided” by Taiwanese authorities, including the rapid testing kits.

    At a welcome ceremony in the Taoyuan airport’s arrival hall, the travelers from Thailand were met by the Taiwan Tourism Bureau’s director, Chang Shi-chung, who handed out gifts.

    Taiwan’s tourism bureau estimated that a total of 244 tourists from some 20 tour groups will arrive Thursday.

    With both Hong Kong and Taiwan getting rid of restrictions and welcoming back tourists, mainland China remains one of the few places in the world adamant in keeping borders closed and sticking to a “zero-COVID” strategy to stamp out the virus. Hong Kong ended its mandatory quarantine policy for inbound travelers late last month, requiring just a three-day self-monitoring period.

    ___

    Associated Press writer Zen Soo contributed from Singapore.

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