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  • Loretta Lynn’s songs resonate anew amid abortion debate

    Loretta Lynn’s songs resonate anew amid abortion debate

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    By KRISTIN M. HALL

    October 6, 2022 GMT

    NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Loretta Lynn, the Grammy-winning country music icon who died Tuesday at 90, lived through — and sang about — decades of advancements for women’s social movements, achievements now endangered.

    A mother multiple times over by the end of her teens, she gave voice to those who had historically had little control over childbirth and their own sexuality. Some of her songs reflected the lives of many rural women and mothers, lamenting their invisible labor and the repressive and gendered roles that kept them tied to a singular identity.

    For some of those working in reproductive health care today in her home state of Kentucky, Lynn’s music proves all too relevant. Lynn, who sang about birth control after Roe v. Wade became a landmark legal decision protecting abortion rights, died only months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 case, creating a massive shift in reproductive rights across the country. In November, Kentucky voters will decide whether to eliminate the right to abortion in the state’s constitution.

    Kate Collins, 34, was not of the generation who heard “The Pill” or “One’s on the Way” when they first played on the radio, but Lynn’s voice provided a soundtrack to her childhood. In addition to growing up in a home where classic country music was part of the lexicon, Collins grew up in a family that talked about abortion and birth control, which led her to start volunteering as an escort at a clinic in Kentucky. But it wasn’t until high school that she began to put together the context of what Lynn was singing about.

    Loretta Lynn, in her own words

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    <p>Loretta Lynn told AP Radio in 2010 that people can relate to her music because it’s about things everyone goes through.
    </p>

    “She talks about being able to wear the clothes she wants,” Collins, who now volunteers as a case manager on the Kentucky Health Justice Network’s abortion resources hotline, said of 1975′s “The Pill.” “Because of my access to birth control, I could go out to bars with my friends and wear miniskirts. And that was not something I ever had to think twice about until the lyric finally hit me.”

    “The Pill,” written by Lorene Allen, Don McHan and T.D. Bayless, was recorded prior to the Roe v. Wade decision, but Lynn held onto the song for years before she felt fans were ready to listen.

    “When we released it, the people loved it. I mean the women loved it,” she wrote in her 1976 autobiography, “A Coal Miner’s Daughter.” “But the men who run the radio stations were scared to death. It’s like a challenge to the men’s way of thinking.”

    Men in country music were singing about abortion, premarital sex and divorce in the ’60s and ’70s with little or no blowback, but it was rare that a woman could sing about wanting to enjoy sex with her husband without the consequences of an unplanned pregnancy, as Lynn did.

    “It is, in fact, not about anything other than control of women and their pleasure, or anyone who can get pregnant and their pleasure,” Collins said.

    Lynn was frank about her experiences giving birth so young, being mentally unprepared and not physically ready. She wrote that she couldn’t afford to stay overnight after the birth of her second child, so she went back home to wash diapers and draw water from the well 24 hours after delivery. She experienced miscarriages, nearly dying because she had no money to go to the doctor. And still she kept on getting pregnant, giving birth to six children.

    She wrote that she couldn’t even sign her own consent form to have a caesarean section because she was still a minor and her husband, Oliver Lynn — known as “Dolittle or ”Mooney” — was out on a logging job and unreachable.

    “I love my kids but I wish they had the pill when I first married,” she wrote. “I didn’t get to enjoy the first four kids; I had ’em so fast. I was too busy trying to feed ’em and put clothes on ’em.”

    She said birth control was as a way for women to protect themselves: “The feelin’ good comes easy now/Since I’ve got the pill/It’s gettin’ dark it’s roostin’ time/Tonight’s too good to be real/Oh, but daddy don’t you worry none/’Cause mama’s got the pill,” she sang.

    And she did not mince words about her feelings about abortion.

    “That’s also why I won’t ever say anything against the abortion laws they made easier a few years ago,” she wrote in the 1976 memoir.

    “Personally, I think you should prevent unwanted pregnancy rather than get an abortion. I don’t think I could have an abortion. It would be wrong for me,” she added. “But I’m thinking of all the poor girls who get pregnant when they don’t want to be, and how they should have a choice instead of leaving it up to some politician or doctor who don’t have to raise the baby. I believe they should be able to have an abortion.”

    As Collins sees it, Lynn was explaining — in her own way — the idea of bodily autonomy. Collins also sees a connection between the rollback of abortion rights to the attacks on gender-affirming care for transgender people.

    More than 45 years after Lynn sang about the pill, in Kentucky and in many other states, clinics are barred from providing abortions. While self-managed abortions using prescription medication are safe and very effective, Collins worries about desperation sinking in for those seeking help and the collateral damage of people with dangerous pregnancies or miscarriages.

    “It is really easy to feel like you’re flipping the discography back and now we’re going to go from ‘The Pill’ to ‘One’s on the Way,’” she said.

    ___

    Follow Kristin M. Hall at https://twitter.com/kmhall

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  • French writer Annie Ernaux awarded Nobel Prize in literature

    French writer Annie Ernaux awarded Nobel Prize in literature

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    PARIS (AP) — French author Annie Ernaux won this year’s Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for blending fiction and autobiography in books that fearlessly mine her experiences as a working-class woman to explore life in France since the 1940s.

    In more than 20 books published over five decades, Ernaux has probed deeply personal experiences and feelings – love, sex, abortion, shame – within a society split by gender and class divisions.

    After a half-century of defending feminist ideals, Ernaux said “it doesn’t seem to me that women have become equal in freedom, in power,” and she strongly defended women’s rights to abortion and contraception.

    “I will fight to my last breath so that women can choose to be a mother, or not to be. It’s a fundamental right,” she said at a news conference in Paris. Ernaux’s first book, “Cleaned Out,” was about her own illegal abortion before it was legalized in France.

    The prize-giving Swedish Academy said Ernaux, 82, was recognized for “the courage and clinical acuity” of books rooted in her small-town background in the Normandy region of northwest France.

    Anders Olsson, chairman of the Nobel literature committee, said Ernaux is “not afraid to confront the hard truths.”

    “She writes about things that no one else writes about, for instance her abortion, her jealousy, her experiences as an abandoned lover and so forth. I mean, really hard experiences,” he told The Associated Press after the award announcement in Stockholm. “And she gives words for these experiences that are very simple and striking. They are short books, but they are really moving.”

    French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted: “Annie Ernaux has been writing for 50 years the novel of the collective and intimate memory of our country. Her voice is that of women’s freedom, and the century’s forgotten ones.”

    While Macron praised Ernaux for her Nobel, she has been unsparing with him. A supporter of left-wing causes for social justice, she has poured scorn on Macron’s background in banking and said his first term as president failed to advance the cause of French women.

    Ernaux’s books present uncompromising portraits of life’s most intimate moments, including sexual encounters, illness and the deaths of her parents. Olsson said Ernaux’s work was often “written in plain language, scraped clean.” He said she had used the term “an ethnologist of herself” rather than a writer of fiction.

    Dan Simon, Ernaux’s longtime American publisher at Seven Stories Press, said that in the early years, “she insisted that we not categorize her books at all. She did not allow us to refer to them as fiction and she did not allow us to refer to them as nonfiction.”

    Ultimately, he said, Ernaux has created “a genre of fiction in which nothing is made up.”

    “She’s a great storyteller of her own life,” Simon said.

    Ernaux worked as a teacher before becoming a full-time writer. Her first book was “Les armoires vides” in 1974 (published in English as “Cleaned Out”). Two more autobiographical novels followed – “Ce qu’ils disent ou rien” (“What They Say Goes”) and “La femme gelée” (“The Frozen Woman”) – before she moved to more overtly autobiographical books.

    In the book that made her name, “La place” (“A Man’s Place”), published in 1983 and about her relationship with her father, she wrote: “No lyrical reminiscences, no triumphant displays of irony. This neutral writing style comes to me naturally.”

    “La honte” (“Shame”), published in 1997, explored a childhood trauma, while “L’événement” (“Happening”), from 2000, dealt like “Cleaned Out” with an illegal abortion.

    Her most critically acclaimed book is “Les années” (“The Years”), published in 2008. Described by Olsson as “the first collective autobiography,” it depicted Ernaux herself and wider French society from the end of World War II to the 21st century. Its English translation was a finalist for the International Booker Prize in 2019.

    Ernaux’s “Mémoire de fille” (“A Girl’s Story”), from 2016, follows a young woman’s coming of age in the 1950s, while “Passion Simple” (“Simple Passion”) and “Se perdre” (“Getting Lost”) chart Ernaux’s intense affair with a Russian diplomat.

    Ernaux has described facing scorn from France’s literary establishment because she is a woman from a working-class background.

    “My work is political,” she said at the news conference. She described growing up in a milieu outside the elite, a world of “people above you” and the seeming impossibility of becoming a famous writer.

    The literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers, as well as too male-dominated. Last year’s prize winner, Tanzanian-born, U.K.-based writer Abdulrazak Gurnah, was only the sixth Nobel literature laureate born in Africa.

    More than a dozen French writers have captured the literature prize, though Ernaux is the first French woman to win, and just the 17th woman among the 119 Nobel literature laureates.

    Olsson said the academy was working to diversify its range, drawing on experts in literature from different regions and languages.

    “We try to broaden the concept of literature but it is the quality that counts, ultimately,” he said.

    Ernaux said she wasn’t sure what she would do with the Nobel’s cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000).

    “I have a problem with money,” she told reporters. “Money is not a goal for me. … I don’t know how to spend it well.”

    A week of Nobel Prize announcements kicked off Monday with Swedish scientist Svante Paabo receiving the award in medicine for unlocking secrets of Neanderthal DNA that provided key insights into our immune system.

    Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John F. Clauser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger won the physics prize on Tuesday for work showing that tiny particles can retain a connection with each other even when separated, a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement.

    The Nobel Prize in chemistry was awarded Wednesday to Americans Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless, and Danish scientist Morten Meldal for developing a way of “snapping molecules together” that can be used to explore cells, map DNA and design drugs to target cancer and other diseases.

    The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on Monday.

    The prizes will be handed out on Dec. 10. The prize money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, in 1895.

    ___

    Keyton reported from Stockholm and Lawless from London. Masha Macpherson in Clergy, France; John Leicester in Le Pecq, France; Frank Jordans in Berlin; Naomi Koppel in London; Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.

    ___

    Follow all AP stories about the Nobel Prizes at https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes

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  • Afraid of heights, he climbed Mount Everest — now he’s helping others conquer their fears too

    Afraid of heights, he climbed Mount Everest — now he’s helping others conquer their fears too

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    Vivian James Rigney is no casual traveler.

    The executive coach and speaker has visited more than 80 countries and lived on three continents.

    He’s also climbed the highest mountains on all seven continents, the so-called Seven Summits.

    It’s a feat that took him 14 years — one, he estimates, that fewer than 1,000 people have completed.

    And he did it despite being “terrified of heights,” he said.

    In an interview with CNBC Travel, Rigney talked about what he learned — and how much it cost him — to reach some of the highest points on earth.  

    The cost to climb

    Rigney estimates he’s paid between $170,000 and $180,000 to climb the Seven Summits, he said.

    “Everest is, by far, the most expensive,” he said, adding that he paid about $80,000 when he climbed it in 2010.

    “You have to save and build a plan,” he said. “That’s why it took me years. I started, then I went to business school, all my money was gone into that, then I started again, got a new job … Piece by piece, I gradually got through it.”

    But there’s another cost — the time away from work, said Rigney. Luckily, he said his employers supported his goals.

    “If you have a good employer … they can see [personal goals] as something which can help lift the spirits of the company,” he said.

    From ‘easy’ to ‘excruciatingly painful’  

    In addition to costs, the Seven Summits vary considerably in terms of climbing difficulty, said Rigney.  

    He said Africa’s Mount Kilimanjaro is “easy,” calling it “technically not challenging at all.”

    But it is high enough to feel altitude sickness, he said, which stops some climbers from reaching the top.

    Kilimanjaro can be climbed in a week, he said. Antarctica’s Vinson Massif can take two weeks — “if you’re lucky” — and North America’s Denali three to four weeks.

    But Mount Everest is a “massive logistical operation” that takes about two months, he said. It’s by far the most difficult and dangerous climb, he said, calling the experience “excruciatingly painful.”  

    “Every cell in your body is saying you shouldn’t be here,” he said. “Your intuition is going nuts.”

    Rigney climbed Mount Everest for about four to five hours a day. The rest of the time “you’re recovering in your tent alone … no devices, no internet … nothing.”

    Courtesy of Inside Us LLC

    He said he arrived “bulked up and super fit.” Despite consuming 7,000 to 8,000 calories a day — mainly potatoes, pasta and dry food — he said he lost 20 pounds during the Everest climb.

    Staying warm takes a tremendous amount of energy, he said. Everything freezes, he said, including LCD camera screens.

    “We have what we call a pee bag. You pee in this bag, and you seal it and you put that into the sleeper bag with you because it’s warm.”

    There are only about three to five days in the climbing season that climbers can reach Everest’s summit. If they do, it’s a quick victory, said Rigney.

    “People don’t hang around the summit for hours,” he said. “You get the heck off the mountain as quick as you can.”

    From climbing to coaching

    Rigney is now an executive coach and speaker, teaching corporate executives lessons he learned from pushing himself, mentally and physically, to the limit.

    He’s also the author of “Naked at the Knife’s Edge,” a book about how he’s used some of the most harrowing moments from his Everest climb for professional success.

    Climbers don’t stay long once they reach Mount Everest’s peak, said Rigney. “You get the heck off the mountain as quick as you can.”

    Courtesy of Inside Us LLC

    He said he helps “overachievers… [with] tons on their mind” achieve balance and break habits “which pull us along … as though we’re on a conveyor belt.”

    For example, fear — whether it’s of public speaking or his own fear of heights — can be overcome using tricks of the mind, he said.

    And leaders must learn to accept things that are out of their control, be it an injury or a pandemic, he said.  

    He said he still laughs when he thinks about arriving at a small airplane hangar in Kathmandu one hour before he was scheduled to fly to the foothills of the Himalayas.

    After climbing the “Seven Summits,” Rigney said he is deliberately choosing travel experiences that are less risky. He said several years ago, he found a hobby that is both challenging and fun: scuba diving.

    Courtesy of Inside Us LLC

    “I remember going up to this gentleman … and I said ‘Hey… what time do you think we’ll be leaving?’” said Rigney. “He said: ‘Maybe today, hopefully by tomorrow, likely by the end of the week.’”

    Ten minutes later, another climber, who got the same answer, exploded with anger, he said.  

    “Eventually this guy looks over, red with steam coming out his ears, and we are just howling. I think it finally clicked — like this is where you are. This is about weather in the Himalayas!”

    It’s just one of a long list of “things we can control and things we cannot,” said Rigney.

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  • Philadelphia apologizes for experiments on Black inmates

    Philadelphia apologizes for experiments on Black inmates

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    PHILADELPHIA — The city of Philadelphia issued an apology Thursday for the unethical medical experiments performed on mostly Black inmates at its Holmesburg Prison from the 1950s through the 1970s.

    The move comes after community activists and families of some of those inmates raised the need for a formal apology. It also follows a string of apologies from various U.S. cities over historically racist policies or wrongdoing in the wake of the nationwide racial reckoning after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.

    The city allowed University of Pennsylvania researcher Dr. Albert Kligman to conduct the dermatological, biochemical and pharmaceutical experiments that intentionally exposed about 300 inmates to viruses, fungus, asbestos and chemical agents including dioxin — a component of Agent Orange. The vast majority of Kligman’s experiments were performed on Black men, many of whom were awaiting trial and trying to save money for bail, and many of whom were illiterate, the city said.

    Kligman, who would go on to pioneer the acne and wrinkle treatment Retin-A, died in 2010. Many of the former inmates would have lifelong scars and health issues from the experiments. A group of the inmates filed a lawsuit against the university and Kligman in 2000 that was ultimately thrown out because of a statute of limitations.

    Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said in the apology that the experiments exploited a vulnerable population and the impact of that medical racism has extended for generations.

    “Without excuse, we formally and officially extend a sincere apology to those who were subjected to this inhumane and horrific abuse. We are also sorry it took far too long to hear these words,” Kenney wrote.

    Last year, the University of Pennsylvania issued a formal apology and took Kligman’s name off some honorifics like an annual lecture series and professorship. The university also directed research funds to fellows focused on dermatological issues in people of color.

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  • Lebanon records first case of cholera since 1993

    Lebanon records first case of cholera since 1993

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    The recorded case comes as neighbouring war-torn Syria is struggling to contain an outbreak of the waterborne disease.

    Lebanon has recorded its first case of cholera since 1993, the crisis-hit country’s health ministry announced, as neighbouring war-torn Syria is struggling to contain an outbreak of the waterborne disease that has spread across the country during the past month.

    Lebanon began a downward spiral in late 2019 that has plunged three-quarters of its population into poverty. Rampant power cuts, water shortages, and skyrocketing inflation have deteriorated living conditions for millions.

    Caretaker Health Minister Firas Abiad said on Thursday that the case was recorded on Wednesday in the impoverished, predominantly rural northern Lebanese region of Akkar and that the patient, a Syrian national, was receiving treatment and in stable condition.

    According to the World Health Organization, a cholera infection is caused by consuming food or water infected with the Vibrio cholerae bacteria, and while most cases are mild to moderate, not treating the illness could lead to death.

    Impoverished families in Lebanon often ration water and are unable to afford private water tanks for drinking and domestic use.

    Abiad has met authorities and international organisations following the confirmed case to discuss ways to prevent a possible outbreak.

    He said that the case is likely the result of the outbreak in Syria crossing the porous border between the countries.

    Richard Brennan, regional emergency director of the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region, confirmed that the organisation has been in talks with authorities in Lebanon and other countries bordering Syria to bring in the necessary supplies to respond to possible cases in the country.

    “Cross-border spread is a concern, we’re taking significant precautions,” Brennan said. “Protecting the most vulnerable will be absolutely vital.”

    Brennan added that vaccines are in short supply relative to global demand.

    In neighbouring Syria, the outbreak has claimed dozens of lives and is posing a danger across the front lines of the country’s 11-year-long war, stirring fears in crowded camps for the displaced who lack running water or sewage systems.

    The UN and Syria’s health ministry have said the source of the outbreak is likely linked to people drinking unsafe water from the Euphrates River and using contaminated water to irrigate crops, resulting in food contamination.

    Syria’s health services have suffered heavily from its years-long war, while much of the country is short on supplies to sanitise water.

    Syrian health officials – as of Wednesday – have documented at least 594 cases of cholera and 39 deaths.

    Meanwhile, in the rebel-held northwest of the country, health authorities documented 605 suspected cases, dozens of confirmed cases, and at least one death.

    Lebanon’s water infrastructure is also decrepit, and the healthcare system has been hit hard by a three-year financial crisis and the August 2020 Beirut port blast that destroyed critical medical infrastructure in the capital.

    Despite humanitarian aid from donor countries, Abiad said the sector would struggle to cope with a large-scale outbreak.

    “We have a very clear signal that the Lebanese healthcare system needs support to strengthen [it],” he said. “Otherwise … it won’t be able to hold.”

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  • U.S. risks prolonging pandemic if it doesn’t back WTO push to get vaccines and treatments to lower-income countries, lawmakers warn

    U.S. risks prolonging pandemic if it doesn’t back WTO push to get vaccines and treatments to lower-income countries, lawmakers warn

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    The U.S. is at risk of prolonging the COVID pandemic if it fails to back an initiative that aims to get vaccines, diagnostics and treatments to lower-income countries, a congressional group has told President Joe Biden.

    In a letter to Biden from the group led by Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon, the group urged him to back the World Trade Organization’s agreement in June to ease exports of lifesaving therapies.

    “With more than 600 million shots in arms, 21,500 free testing sites, the ability to order at-home tests for free, and more treatments available now than at any point in the pandemic, the outlook in the United States is better than ever. Unfortunately, however, the prospect for many low-income countries is not so positive — putting the United States’ own success in jeopardy,” the lawmakers wrote.

    The letter was sent ahead of a meeting of the WTO council for trade-related aspects of IP rights that is due to kick off Thursday.

    The group noted that lower-income countries are facing a higher risk of severe illness, hospitalization and death as only a small percentage of their populations are vaccinated. Just 19% of people in those countries are vaccinated, compared with about 75% in high-income countries, according to the Multilateral Leaders Taskforce on COVID-19, a joint initiative of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Health Organization and the WTO.

    U.S. known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, where the data are not being collected.

    The daily average for new cases stood at 43,149 on Wednesday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 23% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in most northeastern states by 10% of more, while cases in the western states Montana, Washington and Oregon are rising.

    The daily average for hospitalizations was down 11% at 27,184, while the daily average for deaths is down 8% to 391. 

    The new bivalent vaccine might be the first step in developing annual Covid shots, which could follow a similar process to the one used to update flu vaccines every year. Here’s what that process looks like, and why applying it to Covid could be challenging. Illustration: Ryan Trefes

    Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began

    Other COVID-19 news you should know about:

    • China’s huge Xinjiang region has been hit with sweeping COVID travel restrictions ahead of a key Communist Party congress later this month, the Associated Press reported. Trains and buses in and out of the region of 22 million people have been suspended, and passenger numbers on flights have been reduced to 75% of capacity in recent days, according to Chinese media reports. The region is home to minorities who have been forced into prison-like re-education centers to force them to renounce their religion, typically Islam, and allegedly subjected to human-rights abuses.

    • Five current or former Internal Revenue Service workers have been charged with fraud for illegally getting money from federal COVID-19 relief programs and using a total of $1 million for luxury items and personal trips, prosecutors said, the AP reported. The U.S. attorney’s office in Memphis said Tuesday that the five have been charged with wire fraud after they filed fake applications for the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan Program, which were part of a federal stimulus package tied to the pandemic response in 2020.

    • Peloton Interactive Inc.
    PTON,
    +3.84%
    said it plans to cut about 500 jobs, roughly 12% of its remaining workforce, in the company’s fourth round of layoffs this year as the connected fitness-equipment maker tries to reverse mounting losses, the Wall Street Journal reported. After enjoying a strong run early on in the pandemic, Peloton has struggled since the start of the U.S. recovery, and CEO Barry McCarthy, who took over in February, said he is giving the unprofitable company another six months or so to significantly turn itself around and, if it fails, Peloton likely isn’t viable as a stand-alone company.

    Don’t miss: Peloton CEO says ‘naysayers’ are looking at the company’s $1.2 billion quarterly loss all wrong.

    Here’s what the numbers say:

    The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 619.9 million on Wednesday, while the death toll rose above 6.55 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

    The U.S. leads the world with 96.6 million cases and 1,061,490 fatalities.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 67.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 109.9 million have had a booster, equal to 48.8% of the vaccinated population, and 23.9 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 36.6% of those who received a first booster.

    Some 7.6 million people have had a shot of one of the new bivalent boosters that target the new omicron subvariants that have become dominant around the world.

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  • Today in History: October 6, the launch of Instagram

    Today in History: October 6, the launch of Instagram

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    Today in History

    Today is Thursday, Oct. 6, the 279th day of 2022. There are 86 days left in the year.

    Today’s Highlight in History:

    On Oct. 6, 1973, war erupted in the Middle East as Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel during the Yom Kippur holiday. (Israel, initially caught off guard, managed to push back the Arab forces before a cease-fire finally took hold in the nearly three-week conflict.)

    On this date:

    In 1536, English theologian and scholar William Tyndale, who was the first to translate the Bible into Early Modern English, was executed for heresy.

    In 1927, the era of talking pictures arrived with the opening of “The Jazz Singer” starring Al Jolson, a feature containing both silent and sound-synchronized sequences.

    In 1928, Chiang Kai-shek became president of China.

    In 1939, in a speech to the Reichstag, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler spoke of his plans to reorder the ethnic layout of Europe — a plan that would entail settling the “Jewish problem.”

    In 1976, President Gerald R. Ford, in his second presidential debate with Democrat Jimmy Carter, asserted that there was “no Soviet domination of eastern Europe.” (Ford later conceded such was not the case.)

    In 1979, Pope John Paul II, on a week-long U.S. tour, became the first pontiff to visit the White House, where he was received by President Jimmy Carter.

    In 1981, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was shot to death by extremists while reviewing a military parade.

    In 2003, American Paul Lauterbur and Briton Peter Mansfield won the Nobel Prize for medicine for discoveries that led to magnetic resonance imaging.

    In 2010, social networking app Instagram was launched by Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger.

    In 2014, the Supreme Court unexpectedly cleared the way for a dramatic expansion of gay marriage in the United States as it rejected appeals from five states seeking to preserve their bans, effectively making such marriages legal in 30 states.

    In 2018, in the narrowest Senate confirmation of a Supreme Court justice in nearly a century and a half, Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed by a 50-48 vote; he was sworn in hours later.

    In 2020, President Donald Trump, recovering from COVID-19, tweeted his eagerness to return to the campaign trail and said he still planned to attend an upcoming debate with Democrat Joe Biden in Miami; Biden said there should be no debate as long as Trump remained COVID positive. (The debate would be canceled.)

    Ten years ago: Five terror suspects, including Egyptian-born preacher Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, widely known as Abu Hamza al-Masri, arrived in the United States from England and appeared in court in New York and Connecticut. (Mustafa was convicted in 2014 of supporting terrorist organizations.)

    Five years ago: The board of directors of The Weinstein Co. said movie mogul Harvey Weinstein was on indefinite leave from the company he founded amid an internal investigation into sexual harassment allegations against him. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, a grassroots effort aimed at pressuring the world’s nuclear powers to give up those weapons, won the Nobel Peace Prize.

    One year ago: A federal judge ordered Texas to suspend a new law that had banned most abortions in the state since September. (An appeals court would reinstate the law two days later.) The Los Angeles City Council voted to enact one of the nation’s strictest vaccine mandates; it required the shots for everyone entering bars, restaurants, nail salons, gyms and even a Lakers game. The World Health Organization endorsed the world’s first malaria vaccine and said it should be given to children across Africa in the hope that it would spur stalled efforts to curb the spread of the parasitic disease; the vaccine was developed by GlaxoSmithKline in 1987.

    Today’s Birthdays: Broadcaster and writer Melvyn Bragg is 83. Actor Britt Ekland is 80. The former leader of Sinn Fein (shin fayn), Gerry Adams, is 74. Singer-musician Thomas McClary is 73. Musician Sid McGinnis is 73. Rock singer Kevin Cronin (REO Speedwagon) is 71. Rock singer-musician David Hidalgo (Los Lobos) is 68. Pro Football Hall of Famer Tony Dungy is 67. Actor Elisabeth Shue is 59. Singer Matthew Sweet is 58. Actor Jacqueline Obradors is 56. Country singer Tim Rushlow is 56. Rock musician Tommy Stinson is 56. Actor Amy Jo Johnson is 52. Actor Emily Mortimer is 51. Actor Lamman (la-MAHN’) Rucker is 51. Actor Ioan Gruffudd (YOH’-ihn GRIH’-fihth) is 49. Actor Jeremy Sisto is 48. Actor Brett Gelman is 46. R&B singer Melinda Doolittle is 45. Actor Wes Ramsey is 45. Actor Karimah Westbrook is 44. Singer-musician Will Butler is 40. Actor Stefanie Martini is 32.

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  • A strong fall COVID booster campaign could save 90,000 U.S. lives and avoid more than 936,000 hospitalizations, study finds

    A strong fall COVID booster campaign could save 90,000 U.S. lives and avoid more than 936,000 hospitalizations, study finds

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    A strong fall COVID booster campaign could save about 90,000 people living in the U.S. from dying of the virus and avoid more than 936,000 hospitalizations, according to a new study by the Commonwealth Fund.

    As immunity wanes and new variants that can evade protection from early vaccines emerge, surges in hospitalizations and deaths are increasingly likely this fall and winter, the authors wrote. That makes it important that people get the bivalent boosters recently authorized by the Food and Drug Administration and help stop transmission, they wrote.

    Researchers analyzed three scenarios to evaluate the impact of vaccination on reducing fatalities, hospitalizations and medical costs to both the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

    The first measured the outcome if daily vaccination rates remain unchanged from current levels; they have gradually declined since the first wave of the omicron variant. Federal financial support has also not been replenished, amid a perception among many Americans that the pandemic is over and as congressional Republicans oppose legislative efforts to continue the pandemic fight.

    As of Oct. 3, some 68% of the U.S. population has had primary shots, but fewer than half of those have received a booster dose, and only 36% of those aged 50 and older have had a second booster.

    The second and third Commonwealth Fund scenarios looked at outcomes if rates increased by the end of 2022.

    In one scenario, researchers imagined booster uptake would track flu-shot coverage in 2020 to 2021. The other scenario assumed 80% of eligible individuals 5 and older get a booster by the end of 2022.


    Source: Commonwealth Fund

    The data found that more than 75,000 deaths could be prevented along with more than 745,000 hospitalizations if coverage reaches similar levels to 2021 to 2022 flu vaccination. The best scenario would save $56 billion in direct medical costs over the course of the next six months.

    “Stratifying by insurance type, we found direct medical costs would be reduced by $11 billion for Medicare alone under scenario 1 and $13 billion under scenario 2,” the authors wrote. “An additional $3.5 to $4.5 billion in savings would accrue to Medicaid. Even if the federal government paid all vaccination costs, accelerated campaigns would generate more than $10 billion in net savings from federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid.”

    The study comes as U.S. known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, with data not being collected.

    The daily average for new cases stood at 44,484 on Tuesday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 22% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in most northeastern states by 10% of more, while cases in the are rising in the western states Montana, Washington and Oregon.

    The daily average for hospitalizations was down 12% at 27,334, while the daily average for deaths is down 8% to 393. 

    The new bivalent vaccine might be the first step in developing annual Covid shots, which could follow a similar process to the one used to update flu vaccines every year. Here’s what that process looks like, and why applying it to Covid could be challenging. Illustration: Ryan Trefes

    Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began

    Other COVID-19 news you should know about:

    • Long COVID, a condition that can encompass symptoms such as respiratory distress, cough, “brain fog,” fatigue and malaise that last 12 weeks or longer after initial infection, is becoming a long-term challenge as both employers and workers navigate an ever-mutating virus, according to Liz Seegert, writing for NextAvenue.org. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that one in five COVID survivors younger than 65 experienced at least one incident that might be related to previous COVID-19 infection. Among those 65 and older, the rate was one in four. Their data also show that nearly three times as many people age 50 to 59 currently have long COVID than those 80 or older.

    • A retired judge opened a public inquiry on Tuesday into how Britain handled the coronavirus pandemic, saying bereaved families and those who suffered would be at the heart of the proceedings, the Associated Press reported. Former Court of Appeal judge Heather Hallett said the inquiry would investigate the U.K.’s preparedness for a pandemic, how the government responded, and whether the “level of loss was inevitable or whether things could have been done better.”

    With each mutation, the Covid-19 virus is becoming more transmissible. WSJ’s Daniela Hernandez breaks down the science of how Covid variants are getting better at infecting and spreading. Illustration: Rami Abukalam

    • Health experts are keeping an eye on new versions of the BA.5 omicron subvariant amid concerns those virus versions can evade the drugs developed to fight COVID, Salon reported. Of particular concern are two named BQ.1 and BQ.1.1, along with BA.2.75.2, which is spreading in Singapore, India and parts of Europe. Then there’s XBB, which some research suggest is the most antibody-evasive strain tested so far. The World Health Organization said in its weekly update on the virus that BA.5 descendent lineages continued to be dominant in the latest week, accounting for 80.8% of sequences shared through a global database. It also noted “increased diversity” within omicron and its lineages.

    • Eiger BioPharmaecuticals Inc.
    EIGR,
    -5.01%
    said Wednesday it will not pursue emergency authorization of its experimental treatment for mild and moderate COVID-19 infections. It had asked the Food and Drug Administration to consider an EUA application based on data from the Together trial, a Phase 3 study that has assessed 11 possible treatments for COVID-19 that is being conducted in Brazil and Canada. Eiger said the FDA instead recommended the company consider running its own pivotal trial for peginterferon lambda that would support full approval of the drug.

    Here’s what the numbers say:

    The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 619.2 million on Wednesday, while the death toll rose above 6.55 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

    The U.S. leads the world with 96.5 million cases and 1,060,446 fatalities.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 67.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 109.9 million have had a booster, equal to 48.8% of the vaccinated population, and 23.9 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 36.6% of those who received a first booster.

    Some 7.6 million people have had a shot of the new bivalent booster that targets the new omicron subvariants that have become dominant around the world.

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  • Titus 2: Woman-to-Woman Discipleship

    Titus 2: Woman-to-Woman Discipleship

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    Women have become a highlighted topic not just within the culture but in the church as well. There is one discussion that is lacking in the church when it comes to women: discipleship. 

    A healthy implemented discipleship program is the marker of a healthy church. 

    Discipleship is intentional in building not only relationships but addressing spiritual health areas that sermons cannot. This is essential to spiritual growth. It is so important, in fact, that teaching is part of the Great Commission in Matthew 28:

    “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matthew 28:19-20

    Woman-to-woman discipleship is crucial to the Body of Christ. It is vital to the health of a female believer in their walk. 

    Men cannot speak into the lives of a woman in the way another woman can. 

    Paul’s Teaching

    Titus 2 is the model for woman-to-woman discipleship within the church. Paul is writing to Titus in Crete, where he was left to help set up and equip the newly established church. A great deal of the letter focuses on the health of the church and the roles of leadership. 

    Paul was likely either addressing issues that the church was facing by giving specific instruction to Titus on how to teach and appoint the church’s leaders. 

    Within Titus 2, there is instruction specific to women regarding discipleship. In a way, it is descriptive of the discipleship life cycle of the church. 

    Looking at the full passage, it speaks to men and women equally, but we can note the special instruction for women specifically:

    “But as for you, teach what accords with sound doctrine. Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. Older women, likewise, are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.” Titus 2:1-5

    There is specific behavior from older women that should be present if they are to teach younger women. 

    Reverent in their behavior – For a woman to disciple another woman well, she must lead by example. She is to be a woman seeking to walk holy as God is holy. The phrase I use often is that she must be a woman who practices what she preaches to other women. Older women are to live out the example of spiritual maturity.

    Not slanderers – Unfortunately, women are known for gossip. Our words matter to God. What we say about others has a great impact. Women who are seeking to disciple, just like I said before, should be the example. Their words should be as reverent as their behavior. 

    Not slaves to much wine – Being a slave to wine will directly affect your behavior. If we are to guard our hearts against sin, we must put off what can cause us to stumble. 

    To teach what is good – Women and men are called to teach sound doctrine and the scriptures and to point to the gospel in all things. They cannot teach what is good if they do not know what is good. Older women should be trained to disciple younger women. This is what I call the life cycle of discipleship. Older women train younger women. Younger women will become older women, and the cycle will continue. 

    What Are Older Women to Teach?

    What exactly are older women called to teach younger women? We know they are to teach sound doctrine and what is good, but there are specific areas where only a woman can speak into the life of another woman:

    To love their husbands – Older women who are experienced in marriage can speak to the areas of marriage where a woman may struggle. They can encourage and even reprove where needed. Older women can give knowledgeable advice when it comes to marriage. This doesn’t mean you must be married for fifty years to qualify. To a newlywed in her twenties, I am an older woman who has been married for sixteen years. (There will always be a woman younger than you). 

    To love their children – This could look twofold. While older women should encourage younger women to love and care for their young ones at home, they should be encouraged to disciple their children. Those we love should be our priority for discipleship. Mothers are the first line of gospel truth in the lives of their children. 

    To be self-controlled – Self-control is a skill refined over the course of our lives. It is one that we often must be reminded of daily. For a young woman, self-control often comes in battling selfish desires or even dealing with disappointment. Older women can help be a constant reminder of what really matters in our day-to-day lives as believers. 

    To be pure – We are to be pure, chaste, and holy women. One of the main things we should be doing as believers is pursuing holiness. It is a day-by-day action of walking holy as God is holy, and we are to be encouraging one another to pursue holiness. 

    Working at home – There are many places within scripture indicating that women are the managers of the home. Women handle the day-to-day activities of the home, delegate tasks, and even control the emotional temperature of their homes. Women have a great deal of control over the home and should be encouraged to embrace the task with grace rather than resentment. 

    To be kind–- All believers should be marked by kindness, not just women. 

    To be submissive to their own husbands – The word submission leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. However, wives are called to be submissive to their husbands. They are not to be submissive to abuse or to be lorded over. Just as a wife is instructed to submit to the leadership of her husband, so her husband must submit to the leadership of the Lord. In the case of discipleship, older women can instruct in what submission is and is not. Older women can also be the first line of defense in abuse that may be taking place within the home. 

    The end result ensures that the Word of God is not “reviled.” According to Webster’s Dictionary, the word reviled means to criticize, abuse, or angrily insult. Proper discipleship leads to a proper attitude towards God’s Word. It protects believers from erring and guides them in how to walk rightly.

    All these things are written so that we may know God and honor Him with our lives.

    Related Resource – FREE Discipleship Podcast for Women!

    Check out Coffee and Bible Times – a podcast for Christian women to be encouraged and grow in their faith. Ashley, Taylor, and Mentor Mama are founders of the Coffee and Bible Time ministry. Their passion is to help inspire people to delight in God’s Word. Listen to every episode on LifeAudio.com, or click the play button below to listen to an episode right now!

    Photo Credit: ©GettyImages/monkeybusinessimages

    Michelle Rabon is a wife and homeschooling mom of three who feels called to help women thrive in their walk with Jesus every day. In 2012, she started Displaying Grace, a ministry that is focused on helping women engage with God’s Word. Michelle has also served in women’s ministry for the past five years seeking to equip women in the local church through Bible study. When she is not writing or teaching, she enjoys reading, being close to the ocean, and drinking a lot of coffee.

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  • Nobel panel to announce winner of chemistry prize

    Nobel panel to announce winner of chemistry prize

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    The winner, or winners, of the Nobel Prize in chemistry will be announced Wednesday at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm

    STOCKHOLM — The winner, or winners, of the Nobel Prize in chemistry will be announced Wednesday at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.

    Last year the prize was awarded to scientists Benjamin List and David W.C. MacMillan for finding an ingenious and environmentally cleaner way to build molecules that the Nobel panel said is “already benefiting humankind greatly.”

    A week of Nobel Prize announcements kicked off Monday with Swedish scientist Svante Paabo receiving the award in medicine for unlocking secrets of Neanderthal DNA that provided key insights into our immune system.

    Three scientists jointly won the prize in physics Tuesday. Frenchman Alain Aspect, American John F. Clauser and Austrian Anton Zeilinger had shown that tiny particles can retain a connection with each other even when separated, a phenomenon known as quantum entanglement, that can be used for specialized computing and to encrypt information.

    The awards continue with literature on Thursday. The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on Monday.

    The prizes carry a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000) and will be handed out on Dec. 10. The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, in 1895.

    ———

    Follow all AP stories about the Nobel Prizes at https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes

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  • Today in History: October 5, Truman speaks on TV

    Today in History: October 5, Truman speaks on TV

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    Today in History

    Today is Wednesday, Oct. 5, the 278th day of 2022. There are 87 days left in the year.

    Today’s Highlight in History:

    On Oct. 5, 1953, Earl Warren was sworn in as the 14th chief justice of the United States, succeeding Fred M. Vinson.

    On this date:

    In 1892, the Dalton Gang, notorious for its train robberies, was practically wiped out while attempting to rob a pair of banks in Coffeyville, Kansas.

    In 1947, President Harry S. Truman delivered the first televised White House address as he spoke on the world food crisis.

    In 1958, racially-desegregated Clinton High School in Clinton, Tennessee, was mostly leveled by an early morning bombing.

    In 1983, Solidarity founder Lech Walesa (lek vah-WEN’-sah) was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

    In 1989, a jury in Charlotte, North Carolina, convicted former P-T-L evangelist Jim Bakker (BAY’-kur) of using his television show to defraud followers. (Although initially sentenced to 45 years in prison, Bakker was freed in December 1994 after serving 4 1/2 years.)

    In 1994, 48 people were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide carried out simultaneously in two Swiss villages by members of a secret religious doomsday cult known as the Order of the Solar Temple; five other bodies were found the same week in a building owned by the sect near Montreal, Canada.

    In 2001, tabloid photo editor Robert Stevens died from inhaled anthrax, the first of a series of anthrax cases in Florida, New York, New Jersey and Washington.

    In 2005, defying the White House, senators voted 90-9 to approve an amendment sponsored by Republican Sen. John McCain that would prohibit the use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” against anyone in U.S. government custody. (A reluctant President George W. Bush later signed off on the amendment.)

    In 2011, Steve Jobs, 56, the Apple founder and former chief executive who’d invented and master-marketed ever sleeker gadgets that transformed everyday technology from the personal computer to the iPod and iPhone, died in Palo Alto, California.

    In 2015, the United States, Japan and 10 other nations in Asia and the Americas reached agreement on the landmark Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.

    In 2018, a jury in Chicago convicted white police officer Jason Van Dyke of second-degree murder in the 2014 shooting of Black teenager Laquan McDonald. (Van Dyke was sentenced to 81 months in state prison.)

    In 2020, President Donald Trump staged a dramatic return to the White House after leaving the military hospital where he was receiving an unprecedented level of care for COVID-19; Trump immediately ignited a new controversy by declaring that despite his illness, the nation should not fear the virus.

    Ten years ago: A month before the presidential election, the Labor Department reported that unemployment fell in Sept. 2012 to its lowest level, 7.8 percent, since President Barack Obama took office; some Republicans questioned whether the numbers had been manipulated.

    Five years ago: Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein announced that he was taking a leave of absence from his company after a New York Times article detailed decades of alleged sexual harassment against women including actor Ashley Judd. The National Rifle Association and the White House expressed support for controls on “bump stock” devices like those that apparently aided the gunman behind the Las Vegas attack; the NRA later said it was opposed to an outright ban on the devices. California Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation extending protections for immigrants living in the United States illegally; police in California would be barred from asking people about their immigration status or taking part in federal immigration enforcement activities.

    One year ago: A former Facebook employee, data scientist Frances Haugen, told a Senate panel that the company knew that its platform spread misinformation and content that harmed children, but that it refused to make changes that could hurt its profits. Work at all of the Kellogg Company’s U.S. cereal plants came to a halt as roughly 1,400 workers went on strike. (The strike would end in December after workers voted to ratify a new contract.) A Russian actor and a film director rocketed into space on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft to make the world’s first movie in orbit during a 12-day stay on the International Space Station.

    Today’s Birthdays: Actor Glynis Johns is 99. College Football Hall of Fame coach Barry Switzer is 85. R&B singer Arlene Smith (The Chantels) is 81. Singer-musician Steve Miller is 79. Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md., is 79. Rock singer Brian Johnson (AC/DC) is 75. Blues musician Rick Estrin is 73. Actor Karen Allen is 71. Writer-producer-director Clive Barker is 70. Rock musician David Bryson (Counting Crows) is 68. Astrophysicist-author Neil deGrasse Tyson is 64. Memorial designer Maya Lin is 63. Actor Daniel Baldwin is 62. Rock singer-musician Dave Dederer is 58. Hockey Hall of Famer Mario Lemieux is 57. Actor Guy Pearce is 55. Actor Josie Bissett is 52. Singer-actor Heather Headley is 48. Pop-rock singer Colin Meloy (The Decemberists) is 48. Actor Parminder Nagra (pahr-MIHN’-da NAH’-grah) is 47. Actor Scott Weinger is 47. Actor Kate Winslet is 47. Rock musician James Valentine (Maroon 5) is 44. Rock musician Paul Thomas (Good Charlotte) is 42. Actor Jesse Eisenberg is 39. TV personality Nicky Hilton is 39. Actor Azure Parsons is 38. R&B singer Brooke Valentine is 37. Actor Kevin Bigley is 36. Actor Joshua Logan Moore is 28. Actor Jacob Tremblay is 16.

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  • Detroit police release body cam video of fatal shooting

    Detroit police release body cam video of fatal shooting

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    DETROIT — Police body camera footage showed officers pleading with Porter Burks to drop the knife he was carrying on the dimly lit Detroit street.

    “Drop the knife for me, man. Come here real quick. You’re OK,” said a member of the Detroit Police Department’s crisis intervention team about 5 a.m. EDT Sunday on the city’s west side. “You’re not in any trouble. Can you just talk to me and drop the knife?”

    “You’re not in any trouble, OK?” the officer continued. “I just want to help you. I just want to help you, man. OK? Can you just drop the knife for me please? Please? Whatever you’re going through I can help you.”

    But Burks — who had a history of struggling with mental illness — didn’t drop the knife and after pacing in the middle of the street suddenly sprinted toward officers, who fired 38 shots in three seconds. Burks was pronounced dead at a hospital.

    On Tuesday, Detroit police showed the footage to reporters. Police Chief James White called the shooting a “very tragic situation.”

    “Not the desired outcome. This is not what we wanted,” said White who later added “our mental health crisis in this country is real. Our mental health crisis in our city is real.”

    Burks suffered from schizophrenia, police said Tuesday.

    Officers initially were called to a home on the west side about a knife-wielding man who was having a mental health crisis and spoke to a man who identified himself as Burks’ brother. The man said Burks had slashed the tires on his car.

    Burks later was found walking along a nearby street. Officers can be heard on the body camera footage telling him not to approach the officers and to put the folding knife down.

    Burks replied: “No, I am not,” minutes before sprinting toward the officers.

    Five fired their weapons. Burks suffered about 15 wounds, according to police.

    White defended the officers’ response, saying it’s part of their training.

    “The officers had to stop a threat. They felt threatened,” he said. “There’s no time in three seconds — and someone charging at you with a knife — to look over to see what other people are doing. You, as a trained police officer, are trained to stop the threat.”

    Officers intended to get Burks “some help … to get him secured and to a hospital,” White said.

    It was not Burks’ first contact with Detroit police.

    On June 26, he was admitted to a Detroit hospital psychological ward after he was found walking in his neighborhood “looking to fight someone,” police said.

    Burks escaped two days later in hospital garb and was arrested by officers as he ran in and out of traffic.

    In August 2020, he stabbed his 7-year-old stepsister in the neck. That March he stabbed his sister in the neck and his brother in the head.

    “This is not just a police matter,” White said. “We need help with this system. The officers are routinely put into this mode, and candidly, we’re seeing more and more violent episodes.”

    Advocates for people with mental illness say they face greater risk of a police encounter resulting in their death.

    Hannah Wesolowski, chief advocacy officer of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, told The Associated Press for a story last month that many communities lack a mental health crisis infrastructure, and that nearly 130 million people in the United States live in areas with a shortage of mental health providers.

    The Treatment Advocacy Center said in a 2015 report that people with untreated mental illness are 16 times more likely to be killed during a police encounter than other people approached by law enforcement.

    The officers who fired shots Sunday at Burks have been placed on administrative leave.

    State police are investigating Sunday’s shooting and will submit their findings to the Wayne County prosecutor’s office. Meanwhile, Detroit police are conducting an internal administrative probe.

    On Monday, attorney Geoffrey Fieger said his firm had been retained by the Burks’ family and was working to obtain evidence from the shooting.

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  • 2 South American researchers killed in Missouri

    2 South American researchers killed in Missouri

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    KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Missouri homicide and arson detectives are investigating the deaths of two South American researchers whose bodies were found after a weekend apartment fire near the Kansas City biomedical research center where they worked.

    Kansas City police identified the victims as Camila Behrensen, 24, of Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Pablo Guzmán Palma, 25, of Santiago, Chile.

    The Stowers Institute for Medical Research said in a tweet Tuesday that both Behrensen and Palma were predoctoral researchers there.

    “Our deepest sympathies are with their families,” the tweet said. “During this difficult time, and most importantly, out of respect to the two families, we want to honor and remember the joy, optimism, and exceptional work these two individuals embodied and all that they have accomplished.”

    Behrensen and Palma were suffering from what police described as “apparent trauma” when fire crews responded Saturday and extinguished the blaze. Both were declared dead at the scene.

    Police released few details but said there is a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest. They asked Tuesday for help from anyone with surveillance video.

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  • Loretta Lynn, coal miner’s daughter and country queen, dies

    Loretta Lynn, coal miner’s daughter and country queen, dies

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    NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Loretta Lynn, the Kentucky coal miner’s daughter whose frank songs about life and love as a woman in Appalachia pulled her out of poverty and made her a pillar of country music, has died. She was 90.

    In a statement provided to The Associated Press, Lynn’s family said she died Tuesday at her home in Hurricane Mills, Tennessee.

    “Our precious mom, Loretta Lynn, passed away peacefully this morning, October 4th, in her sleep at home in her beloved ranch in Hurricane Mills,” the family said in a statement. They asked for privacy as they grieve and said a memorial will be announced later.

    Lynn already had four children before launching her career in the early 1960s, and her songs reflected her pride in her rural Kentucky background.

    As a songwriter, she crafted a persona of a defiantly tough woman, a contrast to the stereotypical image of most female country singers. The Country Music Hall of Famer wrote fearlessly about sex and love, cheating husbands, divorce and birth control and sometimes got in trouble with radio programmers for material from which even rock performers once shied away.

    Her biggest hits came in the 1960s and ’70s, including “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “You Ain’t Woman Enough,” “The Pill,” “Don’t Come Home a Drinkin’ (With Lovin’ on Your Mind),” “Rated X” and “You’re Looking at Country.” She was known for appearing in floor-length, wide gowns with elaborate embroidery or rhinestones, many created by her longtime personal assistant and designer Tim Cobb.

    Her honesty and unique place in country music was rewarded. She was the first woman ever named entertainer of the year at the genre’s two major awards shows, first by the Country Music Association in 1972 and then by the Academy of Country Music three years later.

    “It was what I wanted to hear and what I knew other women wanted to hear, too,” Lynn told the AP in 2016. “I didn’t write for the men; I wrote for us women. And the men loved it, too.”

    In 1969, she released her autobiographical “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” which helped her reach her widest audience yet.

    “We were poor but we had love/That’s the one thing Daddy made sure of/He shoveled coal to make a poor man’s dollar,” she sang.

    “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” also the title of her 1976 book, was made into a 1980 movie of the same name. Sissy Spacek’s portrayal of Lynn won her an Academy Award and the film was also nominated for best picture.

    Long after her commercial peak, Lynn won two Grammys in 2005 for her album “Van Lear Rose,” which featured 13 songs she wrote, including “Portland, Oregon” about a drunken one-night stand. “Van Lear Rose” was a collaboration with rocker Jack White, who produced the album and played the guitar parts.

    Reba McEntire was among the stars who reacted to Lynn’s death, posting online about how the singer reminded her of her late mother. “Strong women, who loved their children and were fiercely loyal. Now they’re both in Heaven getting to visit and talk about how they were raised, how different country music is now from what it was when they were young. Sure makes me feel good that Mama went first so she could welcome Loretta into the hollers of heaven!”

    Born Loretta Webb, the second of eight children, she claimed her birthplace was Butcher Holler, near the coal mining company town of Van Lear in the mountains of east Kentucky. There really wasn’t a Butcher Holler, however. She later told a reporter that she made up the name for the purposes of the song based on the names of the families that lived there.

    Her daddy played the banjo, her mama played the guitar and she grew up on the songs of the Carter Family. Her younger sister, Crystal Gayle, is also a Grammy-winning country singer, scoring crossover hits with songs like “Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue” and “Half the Way.” Lynn’s daughter Patsy Lynn Russell also was a songwriter and producer of some of her albums.

    “I was singing when I was born, I think,” she told the AP in 2016. “Daddy used to come out on the porch where I would be singing and rocking the babies to sleep. He’d say, ‘Loretta, shut that big mouth. People all over this holler can hear you.’ And I said, ‘Daddy, what difference does it make? They are all my cousins.’”

    She wrote in her autobiography that she was 13 when she got married to Oliver “Mooney” Lynn, but the AP later discovered state records that showed she was 15. Tommy Lee Jones played Mooney Lynn in the biopic.

    Her husband, whom she called “Doo” or “Doolittle,” urged her to sing professionally and helped promote her early career. With his help, she earned a recording contract with Decca Records, later MCA, and performed on the Grand Ole Opry stage. Lynn wrote her first hit single, “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” released in 1960.

    She also teamed up with singer Conway Twitty to form one of the most popular duos in country music with hits such as “Louisiana Woman, Mississippi Man” and “After the Fire is Gone,” which earned them a Grammy Award. Their duets, and her single records, were always mainstream country and not crossover or pop-tinged.

    And when she first started singing at the Grand Ole Opry, country star Patsy Cline took Lynn under her wing and mentored her during her early career.

    The Academy of Country Music chose her as the artist of the decade for the 1970s, and she was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1988. She won four Grammy Awards, was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2008, was honored at the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

    In “Fist City,” Lynn threatens a hair-pulling fistfight if another woman won’t stay away from her man: “I’m here to tell you, gal, to lay off of my man/If you don’t want to go to Fist City.” That strong-willed but traditional country woman reappears in other Lynn songs. In “The Pill,” a song about sex and birth control, Lynn sings about how she’s sick of being trapped at home to take care of babies: “The feelin’ good comes easy now/Since I’ve got the pill,” she sang.

    She moved to Hurricane Mills, Tennessee, outside of Nashville, in the 1990s, where she set up a ranch complete with a replica of her childhood home and a museum that is a popular roadside tourist stop. The dresses she was known for wearing are there, too.

    Lynn knew that her songs were trailblazing, especially for country music, but she was just writing the truth that so many rural women like her experienced.

    “I could see that other women was goin’ through the same thing, ‘cause I worked the clubs. I wasn’t the only one that was livin’ that life and I’m not the only one that’s gonna be livin’ today what I’m writin’,” she told The AP in 1995.

    Even into her later years, Lynn never seemed to stop writing, scoring a multi-album deal in 2014 with Legacy Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment. In 2017, she suffered a stroke that forced her to stop touring, but she released her 50th solo studio album, “Still Woman Enough” in 2021.

    She and her husband were married nearly 50 years before he died in 1996. They had six children: Betty, Jack, Ernest and Clara, and then twins Patsy and Peggy. She had 17 grandchildren and four step-grandchildren.

    ——

    Online: https://lorettalynn.com/

    ——

    Follow Kristin M. Hall at https://twitter.com/kmhall

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  • CDC scraps travel health notices as countries slow testing, and study confirms Republican-leaning counties suffered more COVID deaths than Democrat-leaning ones

    CDC scraps travel health notices as countries slow testing, and study confirms Republican-leaning counties suffered more COVID deaths than Democrat-leaning ones

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    The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has dropped its country-by-country COVID-19 travel health notices that it began issuing early in the pandemic, the Associated Press reported. 

    The reason: Fewer countries are testing for the virus or reporting the number of COVID cases. That limits the CDC’s ability to calculate travelers’ risk, according to the agency.

    CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said the agency will only post a travel health notice for an individual country if a situation such as a troubling new variant of the virus changes CDC travel recommendations for that country.

    The CDC still recommends that travelers remain up-to-date on vaccines and follow recommendations found on its international travel page.

    From the CDC: Stay Up to Date with COVID-19 Vaccines Including Boosters

    A new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research has confirmed that political affiliations played a key role as a risk factor for dying of COVID, finding evidence that Republican-leaning counties suffered higher death rates than Democratic-leaning ones.

    “We estimate substantially higher excess death rates for registered
    Republicans when compared to registered Democrats, with almost all of the difference concentrated in the period after vaccines were widely available in our study states,” the authors, Jacob Wallace and Jason L. Schwartz of the Yale School of Public Health, and Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham of the Yale School of Management wrote.

    “Overall, the excess death rate for Republicans was 5.4 percentage points (pp), or 76%, higher than the excess death rate for Democrats.”

    The researchers used data from Ohio and Florida and matched 2017 voter registration data with mortality data from 2018 to 2021. They also found a link between political affiliation and views on vaccines, with Republican-leaning counties showing far lower vaccination rates.


    Source: NBER paper

    In the U.S., known cases of COVID are continuing to ease and now stand at their lowest level since late April, although the true tally is likely higher given how many people are testing at home, where the data are not being collected.

    The daily average for new cases stood at 45,495 on Monday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 24% from two weeks ago. Cases are rising in 11 states plus Washington, D.C. They are up by double-digit percentages in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Vermont.

    The daily average for hospitalizations was down 11% at 27,854, while the daily average for deaths is down 12% to 386. 

    Coronavirus Update: MarketWatch’s daily roundup has been curating and reporting all the latest developments every weekday since the coronavirus pandemic began

    Other COVID-19 news you should know about:

    • Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd.
    NCLH,
    +16.84%
    is removing all COVID testing, vaccination and masking requirements from its health and safety protocols. The company said the new protocols, which follows “significant, positive progress” in the public health environment, will be effective Oct. 4. “Health and safety are always our first priority; in fact, we were the health and safety leaders from the very start of the pandemic,” said Chief Executive Harry Sommer. “Many travelers have been patiently waiting to take their long-awaited vacation at sea and we cannot wait to celebrate their return.” 

    See also: Would you take a cruise without such COVID-19 testing, vaccination and masks? MarketWatch asked health experts to weigh in.

    • Ringo Starr has test positive for COVID, forcing the former Beatle to cancel scheduled concerts in Canada with his All Starr Band, the AP reported. Five concert dates from Tuesday to Sunday — in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Saskatoon, Saskatchewan; Lethbridge, Alberta; and the British Columbia cities of Abbotsford and Penticton — will be rescheduled. “Ringo hopes to resume as soon as possible and is recovering at home. As always, he and the All Starrs send peace and love to their fans and hope to see them back out on the road soon,” said a statement from the band.

    The new bivalent vaccine might be the first step in developing annual Covid shots, which could follow a similar process to the one used to update flu vaccines every year. Here’s what that process looks like, and why applying it to Covid could be challenging. Illustration: Ryan Trefes

    • A federal appeals court in New Orleans on Monday became the latest to hear arguments on whether President Joe Biden overstepped his authority with an order that federal contractors require that their employees be vaccinated against COVID, the AP reported separately. The contractor mandate has a complicated legal history. It is being challenged in more than a dozen federal court districts, and the mandate has been blocked or partially blocked in 25 states. 

    • The Chinese resort city of Sanya has ordered all tourists to take PCR tests, and those who fail to do so by noon on Tuesday will be slapped with a yellow code restricting their mobility, according to local officials, the South China Morning Post reported. The city in the southern province of Hainan logged two asymptomatic Covid-19 cases on Monday. It carried out a round of mass testing and locked down several areas in Haitang district, including a scenic island that received around 2,000 tourists on Monday.

    Here’s what the numbers say:

    The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 topped 618.7 million on Tuesday, while the death toll rose above 6.54 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.

    The U.S. leads the world with 96.4 million cases and 1,059,888 fatalities.

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s tracker shows that 225.3 million people living in the U.S., equal to 67.9% of the total population, are fully vaccinated, meaning they have had their primary shots. Just 109.9 million have had a booster, equal to 48.8% of the vaccinated population, and 23.9 million of those who are eligible for a second booster have had one, equal to 36.6% of those who received a first booster.

    Some 7.6 million people have had a shot of the new bivalent booster that targets the new omicron subvariants that have become dominant around the world.

     

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  • Ideology and Dogma Ensure Policy Disaster

    Ideology and Dogma Ensure Policy Disaster

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    • Opinion by Jomo Kwame Sundaram, Anis Chowdhury (sydney and kuala lumpur)
    • Inter Press Service

    SYDNEY and KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 04 (IPS) – Central banks (CBs) around the world – led by the US Fed, European Central Bank and Bank of England – are raising interest rates, ostensibly to check inflation. The ensuing race to the bottom is hastening world economic recession.

    Going for broke

    New UK Prime Minister Liz Truss has already revived ‘supply side economics’, long thought to have been fatally discredited. Her huge tax cuts are supposed to kick-start Britain’s stagnant economy in time for the next general election.

    Anis Chowdhury

    But studies of past tax cuts have not found any positive link between lower taxes and economic or employment growth. Oft-cited US examples of Reagan, Bush or Trump tax cuts have been shown to be little more than economic sophistry.

    Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisers chairman, Harvard professor Martin Feldstein found most Reagan era growth due to expansionary monetary policy. Volcker’s interest rate hikes to fight inflation were reversed. This enabled the US economy to bounce back from its severe 1982 monetary policy inflicted recession.

    George W Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts also failed to spur growth. Instead, deficits and debt ballooned. “The largest benefits from the Bush tax cuts flowed to high-income taxpayers”. Likewise, Trump tax cuts failed to lift the US economy, with billionaires now paying much less than workers.

    After Boris Johnson stepped down, UK Conservative Party leadership contenders started by promising more tax cuts. But The Economist was “sceptical that such cuts will lift Britain’s growth rate”. Instead, it worried tax cuts would compound inflationary pressures, triggering ever tighter monetary policy.

    The Economist concluded, “It is hard to spot a connection between the overall level of taxation and long-term prosperity”. Unsurprisingly, The Economist sees Truss’ “largest tax cuts in half a century” as “a reckless budget, fiscally and politically”.

    Jomo Kwame Sundaram

    While such tax cuts mainly benefit the very rich, the costs of such monetary and fiscal policies are borne by workers and other consumers. Workers are harshly punished by austerity measures, losing both jobs and incomes to interest rate hikes.

    Tax cuts usually make things worse. Typically, these require cutting social protection and essential public services, ostensibly to balance the budget. So, already greater wealth and income inequalities will worsen.

    Governments have to cut public investments due to ballooning budget deficits. Higher interest rates and public spending cuts will also derail efforts needed to transition to more sustainable, greener futures.

    Class war

    Policy fights over inflation have many dimensions, including class. Instead of helping people cope with rising living costs, increasing interest rates only makes things worse, hastening economic slowdowns. Thus, workers not only lose jobs and incomes, but also are forced to pay more for mortgages and other debts.

    Unemployment, lower incomes, deteriorating health and other pains hurt workers. As workers want higher incomes to cope with rising living expenses, such austere policies are deemed necessary to prevent ‘wage-price spirals’.

    As usual, workers are being blamed for the resurgence of inflation. But research by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and others has found no evidence of such wage-price spirals in recent decades.

    Experience and evidence suggest very low likelihood of such dialectics in current circumstances, although some nominal wages have risen. Since the 1980s, labour bargaining power and collective wage determination have declined.

    Policymakers should address stagnant, even declining real wages in most economies in recent decades. These have hurt “low-paid workers much more than those at the top”. Even the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development club of rich countries has “worryingly” noted these trends.

    The IMF Deputy Managing Director has explained why wages do not have to be suppressed to avoid inflation. Letting nominal wages rise will mitigate rising inequality, plus declining labour income shares (Figure 1) and real wages.

    Source: IMF, World Economic Outlook, April 2017

    Profit margins had already risen, even before the Ukraine war and sanctions. US trends prompted the Bloomberg headline, “Fattest Profits Since 1950 Debunk Wage-Inflation Story of CEOs”. Aggregate profits of the largest UK non-financial companies in 2021 rose 34% over pre-pandemic levels.

    Policymakers should therefore restrain profits, not wages. Recent price increases have been due to rising profits from mark-ups. Recent trends have made it “easier for firms to put their prices up” notes the Reserve Bank of Australia Governor.

    Addressing inequality

    The IMF Managing Director (MD) recently warned, “People will be on the streets if we don’t fight inflation”. But people are even more likely to protest if they lose jobs and incomes. Worse, the burden of fighting inflation has been put on them while the elite continues to enrich itself.

    Raising interest rates is a blunt means to fight inflation. It worsens living costs and job losses, while tax cuts mainly benefit the rich. Instead, the rich should be taxed more to enhance revenue to increase public provisioning of essential services, such as transport, health and education.

    The IMF MD noted raising taxes on the wealthy will help close the yawning gap between rich and poor without harming growth. Public provision of childcare and labour market programmes (e.g., retraining) will improve labour supply. Easing worker shortages can thus dampen price pressures.

    The current situation requires addressing growing inequality. Redistributive fiscal measures – taxing high earners to fund expanded social protection and public provisioning – are time-tested means to address disparities.

    Increasing top tax rates and tax system progressivity are also socially progressive, checking growing inequality. Meanwhile, as consumer prices spiral, rising profits and high executive remuneration have to be checked.

    Supply-side policies

    The World Bank and Bank of International Settlements heads have urged reducing the current focus on demand management to counter inflation. They both insist on addressing long-term supply bottlenecks, but do not offer much practical guidance.

    Poorly coordinated ‘unconventional’ monetary policies since the 2008-09 global financial crisis have created property and stock market bubbles. These damage the real economy, worsen inequality and slow labour productivity growth, with the worst spill over effects in developing counties.

    Addressing supply bottlenecks can involve tax incentives and credit policies. But discredited supply-side mantras – e.g., labour market deregulation – must be discarded. Related fiscal and monetary policies – e.g., tax cuts for the rich and inappropriate interest rate hikes – should also be abandoned.

    Governments are losing chances to boost productivity, achieve low carbon transformation and cut inequalities. Instead, policymakers should pro-actively push desired economic changes by favouring less carbon-intensive and more dynamic investments.

    This may also require checking CBs’ monetary policy independence to more effectively coordinate fiscal with monetary policies. But this should not undermine CBs’ ‘operational independence’ to foster “orderly economic growth with reasonable price stability”.

    Governments must rise to the extraordinary challenges of our times with pragmatic, appropriate and progressive policy initiatives. To do this well, they must boldly reject the ideologies and dogmas responsible for our current predicament.

    IPS UN Bureau


    Follow IPS News UN Bureau on Instagram

    © Inter Press Service (2022) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service

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  • Nobel win for Swede who unlocked secrets of Neanderthal DNA

    Nobel win for Swede who unlocked secrets of Neanderthal DNA

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    LEIPZIG, Germany (AP) — Swedish scientist Svante Paabo won the Nobel Prize in medicine Monday for discoveries in human evolution that unlocked secrets of Neanderthal DNA that helped us understand what makes humans unique and provided key insights into our immune system, including our vulnerability to severe COVID-19.

    Techniques that Paabo spearheaded allowed researchers to compare the genome of modern humans and that of other hominins — the Denisovans as well as Neanderthals.

    “Just as you do an archeological excavation to find out about the past, we sort of make excavations in the human genome,” he said at a news conference held by Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.

    While Neanderthal bones were first discovered in the mid-19th century, only by understanding their DNA — often referred to as the code of life — have scientists been able to fully understand the links between species.

    This included the time when modern humans and Neanderthals diverged as a species, around 800,000 years ago.

    “Paabo and his team also surprisingly found that gene flow had occurred from Neanderthals to Homo sapiens, demonstrating that they had children together during periods of co-existence,” said Anna Wedell, chair of the Nobel Committee.

    This transfer of genes between hominin species affects how the immune system of modern humans reacts to infections, such as the coronavirus. People outside Africa have 1-2% of Neanderthal genes. Neanderthals were never in Africa, so there’s no known direct contribution to people in sub-Saharan Africa.

    Paabo and his team managed to extract DNA from a tiny finger bone found in a cave in Siberia, leading to the recognition of a new species of ancient humans they called Denisovans.

    Wedell called it “a sensational discovery” that showed Neanderthals and Denisovans were sister groups that split from each other around 600,000 years ago. Denisovan genes have been found in up to 6% of modern humans in Asia and Southeast Asia, indicating interbreeding occurred there too.

    “By mixing with them after migrating out of Africa, Homo sapiens picked up sequences that improved their chances to survive in their new environments,” Wedell said. For example, Tibetans share a gene with Denisovans that helps them adapt to high altitude.

    Paabo said he was surprised to learn of his win, and at first thought it was an elaborate prank by colleagues or a call about his summer home in Sweden.

    “So I was just gulping down the last cup of tea to go and pick up my daughter at her nanny where she has had an overnight stay, and then I got this call from Sweden,” he said in an interview on the Nobel Prizes homepage. “I thought, ‘Oh the lawn mower’s broken down or something’” at the summer home.

    He also mused about what would have happened if Neanderthals had survived another 40,000 years.

    “Would we see even worse racism against Neanderthals, because they were really in some sense different from us? Or would we actually see our place in the living world quite in a different way when we would have other forms of humans there that are very like us but still different,” he said.

    Paabo, 67, performed his prizewinning studies at the University of Munich and at the Max Planck Institute. During the celebrations after the news conference in Leipzig, colleagues threw him into a pool of water. Paabo took it with humor, splashing his feet and laughing.

    Paabo’s father, Sune Bergstrom, won the Nobel prize in medicine in 1982, the eighth time the son or daughter of a laureate also won a Nobel Prize. In his book “Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes,” Paabo described himself as Bergstrom’s “secret extramarital son” — something he also mentioned briefly on Monday.

    He father took a “big interest” in his work, he said, but it was his mother who most encouraged him.

    “The biggest influence in my life was for sure my mother, with whom I grew up,” he said in the Nobel interview. “And in some sense it makes me a bit sad that she can’t experience this day. She sort of was very much into science, and very much stimulated and encouraged me through the years.”

    Scientists in the field lauded the Nobel Committee’s choice.

    David Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, said he was thrilled, fearing the field of ancient DNA might “fall between the cracks.”

    By recognizing that DNA can be preserved for tens of thousands of years — and developing ways to extract it — Paabo and his team created a completely new way to answer questions about our past, said Reich, who is paid by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which also supports The Associated Press’ Health and Science Department.

    Dr. Eric Green, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, called it “a great day for genomics,” a relatively young field first named in 1987.

    The Human Genome project, which ran from 1990-2003, “got us the first sequence of the human genome, and we’ve improved that sequence ever since,” Green said.

    When you sequence DNA from an ancient fossil, you only have “vanishingly small amounts,” Green said. Among Paabo’s innovations was figuring out methods for extracting and preserving these tiny amounts. He was then able to lay pieces of the Neanderthal genome sequence against the sequencing of the Human Genome Project.

    Paabo’s team published the first draft of a Neanderthal genome in 2009, and sequenced more than 60% of the full genome from a small sample of bone, after contending with decay and contamination from bacteria.

    “We should always be proud of the fact that we sequenced our genome. But the idea that we can go back in time and sequence the genome that doesn’t live anymore and something that’s a direct relative of humans is truly remarkable,” Green said.

    Paabo said they discovered during the pandemic that “the greatest risk factor to become severely ill and even die when you’re infected with the virus has come over to modern people from Neanderthals. So we and others are now intensely studying the Neanderthal version versus the protective modern version to try to understand what the functional difference would be.”

    Nobel Prize announcements continue Tuesday with the physics prize, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Oct. 10.

    Last year’s medicine recipients were David Julius and Ardem Patapoutian for their discoveries into how the human body perceives temperature and touch.

    The prizes carry a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000) and will be handed out on Dec. 10. The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.

    ___

    Ungar reported from Louisville, Kentucky. Frank Jordans contributed from Berlin; David Keyton from Stockholm, Sweden, and Maddie Burakoff from New York.

    ___

    Follow all AP stories about the Nobel Prizes at https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes

    ___

    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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  • 3 scientists share Nobel Prize in Physics

    3 scientists share Nobel Prize in Physics

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    STOCKHOLM — This year’s Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to Alain Aspect, John F. Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for their work on quantum information science.

    Hans Ellegren, Secretary General, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, announced the winner Tuesday at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.

    A week of Nobel Prize announcements kicked off Monday with Swedish scientist Svante Paabo receiving the award in medicine Monday for unlocking secrets of Neanderthal DNA that provided key insights into our immune system.

    They continue with chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on Oct. 10.

    THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

    STOCKHOLM (AP) — The winner, or winners, of the Nobel Prize in physics will be announced Tuesday at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm.

    While physicists often tackle problems that appear at first glance to be far removed from everyday concerns — tiny particles and the vast mysteries of space and time — their research provides the foundations for many practical applications of science.

    Last year the prize was awarded to three scientists — Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann and Giorgio Parisi — whose work has helped to explain and predict complex forces of nature, thereby expanding our understanding of climate change.

    A week of Nobel Prize announcements kicked off Monday with Swedish scientist Svante Paabo receiving the award in medicine Monday for unlocking secrets of Neanderthal DNA that provided key insights into our immune system.

    They continue with chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday. The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on Friday and the economics award on Oct. 10.

    The prizes carry a cash award of 10 million Swedish kronor (nearly $900,000) and will be handed out on Dec. 10. The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1895.

    ———

    Follow all AP stories about the Nobel Prizes at https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes

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  • Navy admiral to seek community input on Red Hill fuel tanks

    Navy admiral to seek community input on Red Hill fuel tanks

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    JOINT BASE PEARL HARBOR-HICKAM, Hawaii — The commander of the task force responsible for draining fuel from a World War II-era storage tank facility that leaked jet fuel and poisoned Pearl Harbor’s tap water last year said Monday he’s exploring ways to get community feedback.

    Rear Adm. John Wade told reporters at a news conference he may establish an advisory group, but he’s not sure yet what form it will take.

    He said getting input from the community will help him be more responsive. He said Hawaii’s elected officials told military leaders that it would be valuable for them to give the community a voice in their work.

    “I don’t have the structure yet. It’s still a work in progress, but I think it’s something that’s important,” said Wade, the commander of Joint Task Force Red Hill.

    Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced Wade’s appointment last month.

    In November, jet fuel spilled from a drain line at the Red Hill Bulk Fuel Storage Facility, flowed into a drinking water well and then into the Navy’s water system serving 93,000 people in and around Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. Nearly 6,000 sought medical attention for ailments like nausea, headaches and sores. The military put about 4,000 families in hotels for several months.

    The military plans to remove more than 100 million gallons (378.54 million liters) of fuel from the 80-year-old tanks by July 2024, and then close the facility afterward.

    Wade said he’s started reaching out to Hawaii’s congressional delegation and other local leaders — including Ernie Lau, the chief engineer of the Honolulu Board of Water Supply and one of the strongest critics of how the Navy has managed Red Hill over the past decade.

    Kathleen Pahinui, a spokeswoman for the Board of Water Supply, said Lau had a short introductory conference call with Wade on Friday and they expect to host Wade for an in-person meeting soon. She said the call went well and they look forwarding to meeting him and his team in person.

    In addition to Lau, Wade said he also met with Hawaii Department of Health Director Dr. Libby Chair and her environmental deputy, Kathleen Ho.

    Wade was already assigned to Hawaii last year when the spill occurred, as the person in charge of operations and training at U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. He said he wasn’t among those that had to move out their homes, but he — like others — questioned the safety of his water.

    Some military families have complained of continuing health problems like seizures and gastrointestinal issues and filed a lawsuit against the federal government in August.

    As head of the task force, Wade will report to Austin through Adm. John. C. Aquilino, the Indo-Pacific Command commander.

    Indo-Pacific Command said in a news release last month that this “will ensure awareness and support at the highest levels of the Department and as well as provide accurate and timely information to the local community.”

    Austin met with Wade last week during a visit to Hawaii that also included meetings with his counterparts from the Philippines, Australia and Japan. Austin didn’t talk to local media afterward.

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  • Bolsonaro, Lula start fight for support before Brazil runoff

    Bolsonaro, Lula start fight for support before Brazil runoff

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    RIO DE JANEIRO — Jair Bolsonaro and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, two diametrically opposed candidates for Brazil’s presidency, have started a four-week race to pursue votes ahead of a winner-take-all runoff.

    After garnering more than 90% of the vote in Sunday’s first round, leaving their competitors far behind, incumbent President Bolsonaro and ex-President da Silva are already eyeing options that can push them over the top, whether political alliances or endorsements from candidates now eliminated.

    Political analysts say Bolsonaro will seek to capitalize on an unexpectedly strong showing by the right wing as a whole to shore up support from politicians seeking advantageous alliances while da Silva — who won the first-round vote — reaches out to moderates.

    The election will determine whether a leftist returns to the helm of the world’s fourth-largest democracy or whether Bolsonaro can advance his far-right agenda for another term.

    Many polls had indicated leftist da Silva had a significant lead, with some suggesting he could even clinch a first-round victory. Most showed margins that neared or exceeded double digits. But Bolsonaro came within just five points of da Silva, forcing an Oct. 30 runoff.

    While da Silva’s tally of 48.4% of the vote was within most polls’ margins of error, Bolsonaro’s 43.2% far exceeded most of them. The president’s allies running for Congress and governorships also outperformed polls.

    “The far-right has shown great resilience in the presidential and in the state races,” said Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper University in Sao Paulo.

    Speaking after the results, da Silva said he was excited to have a few more weeks of campaigning and the opportunity to go face-to-face with Bolsonaro and “make comparisons between the Brazil he built with the Brazil we built during our administrations.”

    “I always thought that we were going to win these elections. And I tell you that we are going to win this election. This, for us, is just an extension,” da Silva said.

    Meanwhile, Bolsonaro seemed to appeal to poorer voters, who make up a significant chunk of da Silva’s base. He highlighted high inflation that has boosted the cost of food and has hurt the approval ratings of leaders worldwide.

    “I understand there is a desire from the population for change, but some changes can be for the worse” he said. Bolsonaro added that he wanted to keep Brazil from adopting leftist economic policies that would put it on a troubled economic path similar to those of Argentina and Venezuela.

    It still isn’t clear why polls missed the mark on support for Bolsonaro and right-wing candidates.

    Some analysts suggest voters had been embarrassed to tell pollsters they backed Bolsonaro and instead listed another candidate, said Arilton Freres, director of Curitiba-based Instituto Opinião. “But that in itself doesn’t explain everything,” he added, saying outdated census data also may have had an impact on the design of the polls.

    Bolsonaro and allies have repeatedly cast doubt on the polls, and pointed instead great turnouts at his street rallies. “Many people were carried away by the lies propagated by the research institutes,” Bolsonaro wrote Monday on his Twitter profile.

    The right’s positive night extended to races for congressional seats and governorships, especially candidates with Bolsonaro’s blessing.

    Bolsonaro said his party’s showing could bring fresh endorsements ahead of the runoff as other parties strike alliances in exchange for support. Bolsonaro’s Liberal Party will surpass da Silva’s Workers’ Party to become the biggest in the Senate and the Lower House, with a total of 112 seats, or 23 more than its main rival — though still are short of what is needed to pass legislation by itself.

    The right’s stronger-than-expected showing in Brazil’s populous southeast especially could benefit Bolsonaro, analysts say. His former infrastructure minister topped the race to govern Sao Paulo and will go to a runoff. The governor of Rio de Janeiro, an ally, won reelection outright, and the governor of the second most populous state, Minas Gerais, indicated he will endorse Bolsonaro in a video message Monday afternoon.

    Meanwhile, da Silva’s campaign is likely to focus on winning over the centrist vote, especially in Brazil’s most populous state, Sao Paulo, where da Silva’s politically moderate running mate, Geraldo Alckmin, is a former governor, independent political analyst Thomas Traumann said.

    Bolsonaro has expressed no interest in bringing defeated presidential candidates to his side, while da Silva has said he already reached out to competitors, who garnered about 8% of the vote combined. Analysts say there was a last-minute migration of votes from some of those candidates to Bolsonaro.

    Simone Tebet and Ciro Gomes, the third- and fourth-place finishers, together earned 8.5 million votes. The difference between Bolsonaro and da Silva in the first round amounted to 6.1 million votes, and more than 30 million people abstained.

    Before the election, Tebet hinted she might urge her backers to vote for da Silva and in televised debates, she vehemently criticized Bolsonaro’s four years in office. After results came out on Sunday, she gave her coalition of political parties 48 hours to clarify who it will back, saying after that deadline she will make her own position public.

    Center-left Gomes was a minister in da Silva’s government before breaking with him, and in 2018 became openly hostile. That would make a possible endorsement more awkward, despite their ideological common ground, said Marco Antônio Teixeira, a public administration professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, a university in Sao Paulo.

    “I want to make something clear: Lula is the favorite, period. As the momentum is Bolsonaro’s, people forget that,” Traumann said.

    Even if da Silva does come out on top, his administration will face tough opposition in Congress, according to Rey.

    “Part of the big centrist bloc will be Bolsonarista, although we don’t yet to what extent,” she said. “And Lula will have to deal with this.”

    ———

    Bridi reported from Brasilia. AP writers Mauricio Savarese, Daniel Politi and David Biller reported from Sao Paulo, Curitiba and Rio de Janeiro.

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