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Tag: Race and ethnicity

  • Georgia runoff: Early voting for Warnock-Walker round 2

    Georgia runoff: Early voting for Warnock-Walker round 2

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    ATLANTA (AP) — In-person early voting for the last U.S. Senate seat is underway statewide in Georgia’s runoff, with Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock working to get the jump on Republican challenger Herschel Walker who is putting less emphasis on advance balloting.

    After winning a state lawsuit to allow Saturday voting after Thanksgiving, Warnock spent the weekend urging his supporters not to wait until the Dec. 6 runoff. Trying to leverage his role as pastor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s church and Georgia’s first Black U.S. senator, Warnock concentrated his efforts Sunday among Black communities in metro Atlanta.

    “What we are doing right now is soul work,” Warnock said at Liberty International Church southwest of downtown, where he rallied supporters before leading a march to a nearby early voting site where he cast his ballot. “We are engaged in a political exercise,” Warnock continued, “but this is moral and spiritual work, and for us that has always been based on the foundation of the church.”

    Walker, in contrast, did not hold public events over the long Thanksgiving weekend, and in his return to the campaign Monday night in the northern Atlanta suburb of Cumming, he did not mention early voting specifically. “Tell your friends to come with you to vote,” he said. “If you don’t have any friends, go make some friends.”

    Separately, the Republican Party and its aligned PACs are trying to drive turnout after Walker underperformed other Georgia Republicans in the general election. Walker finished the first round with about 200,000 fewer votes than Gov. Brian Kemp, who easily won a second term. Walker resumes his campaign Monday with stops in small-town Toccoa and suburban Cumming.

    Early in-person voting continues through Friday. Runoff Election Day is Tuesday of next week.

    Warnock led Walker by about 37,000 votes out of about 4 million cast in the general election but fell short of the majority required under Georgia law, triggering a four-week runoff blitz. Warnock first won the seat as part of concurrent Senate runoffs on Jan. 5, 2021, when he and Sen. Jon Ossoff prevailed over Republican incumbents to give Democrats narrow control of the Senate for the start of President Joe Biden’s tenure. Warnock won a special election and now is seeking a full six-year term.

    This time, Senate control is not in play, with Democrats already having secured 50 seats to go with Vice President Kamala Harris’s tiebreaking vote. That puts pressure on both Warnock and Walker to convince Georgia voters that it’s worth their time to cast a second ballot, even if the national stakes aren’t as high.

    As of late Sunday, almost 200,000 ballots had been cast in the relative handful of counties that opted to have weekend voting. The first day of statewide early voting on Monday added at least 250,000 more, the largest in-person early voting day in Georgia history, according to Deputy Secretary of State Gabriel Sterling. That’s included long lines in several heavily Democratic counties of metro Atlanta, enough to give Democrats confidence that their core supporters remain excited to vote for Warnock. But the total remains a fraction of the nearly 2.3 million early in-person voters ahead of the Nov. 8 general election.

    And Democrats remain cautious given that the early voting window is much shorter than two years ago, when the second round spanned two months between the general election and runoff. Voting on Saturday was allowed only because Warnock and Democrats sued amid a dispute with the Republican secretary of state over whether Saturday voting could occur on a holiday weekend.

    The senator followed up with a parade of Black leaders for weekend rallies and a march reminiscent of voting rights demonstrations during the civil rights movement.

    “We have one vote here that can change the world,” Andrew Young, a former Atlanta mayor and onetime aide to King, implored Black voters on Sunday. Rising from his wheelchair to speak, the 90-year-old former congressman and U.N. ambassador reminded the assembly of the congressional compromise that ended post-Civil War Reconstruction and paved the way for Jim Crow segregation across the South.

    “One vote at the end of the Civil War pulled all of the Union troops out of the South and lost us the rights we had fought for in the war and that people had fought for us,” he said, starting “a struggle that we have been in ever since.”

    Warnock praised the weekend turnout as he campaigned Monday with college students on the campus of Morehouse College, where he graduated. “I don’t want us to get too comfortable, or self- congratulatory,” he said. “We’ve had just two days of early voting, today is day three. We cannot take our foot off the gas.”

    Later Monday, Warnock appeared in suburban Cobb County with musician Dave Matthews, who praised Warnock as a “decent man.” The audience of hundreds included many middle-aged white voters, a key target for Warnock as he tries to reach past core Democrats to capture voters who sometimes choose Republicans.

    “When you go home, please tell all your friends that were like, on the fence, to get on the correct side of the fence,” Matthews said.

    Walker, for his part, has drawn enthusiastic crowds in the early weeks of the runoff, as well, and his campaign aides remain confident that he has no problem among core Republicans. His challenge comes with the middle of the Georgia electorate, a gap highlighted by his shortfall compared to Kemp.

    “I feel Herschel Walker benefited by having Brian Kemp in the original election on Nov. 8, and I think Kemp not being there will hurt the Republicans a little bit,” said Alpharetta resident Marcelo Salvatierra, who voted for Republican Kemp and Democrat Warnock and still supports the senator in the runoff.

    Salvatierra said he backed Kemp’s re-election “because it seems to me Georgia has done well.” But Republicans at the federal level, he said, never offered a serious counter to Democratic control of Washington, while Walker also comes with considerable personal baggage.

    “Character matters and I sense he doesn’t have character,” Salvatierra said.

    Warnock has encouraged that sentiment among core Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans. For months, he’s said Walker, a former football star making his first bid for public office, was “not ready” for the Senate. In recent weeks, he’s ratcheted up the attack to say Walker is “not fit,” highlighting the challenger’s falsehoods about his accomplishments in the private sector, along with allegations of violence against women and accusations by two women that Walker encouraged and paid for their abortions. Walker, who backs a national ban on abortions without exceptions, denies that he ever paid for any abortions.

    ___

    Follow AP’s coverage of the elections at: https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections

    Check out https://apnews.com/hub/explaining-the-elections to learn more about the issues and factors at play in the 2022 midterm elections

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  • Missouri prepares to execute man for killing officer in 2005

    Missouri prepares to execute man for killing officer in 2005

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    FOR MOVEMENT TUESDAY AT 1 AM ET. EDITED BY CBLAKE.

    A Missouri inmate convicted of ambushing and killing a St. Louis area police officer he blamed in the death of his younger brother was scheduled to be executed Tuesday, though his lawyers are seeking to have the lethal injection halted.

    Kevin Johnson’s legal team doesn’t deny that he killed Police Officer William McEntee in 2005, but contend in an appeal to the Missouri Supreme Court that he was sentenced to death in part because he is Black. The U.S. Supreme Court declined a stay request last week, and Gov. Mike Parson on Monday announced he would not grant clemency.

    “The violent murder of any citizen, let alone a Missouri law enforcement officer, should be met only with the fullest punishment state law allows,” Parson, a Republican and a former county sheriff, said in a statement. “Through Mr. Johnson’s own heinous actions, he stole the life of Sergeant McEntee and left a family grieving, a wife widowed, and children fatherless. Clemency will not be granted.”

    Johnson, 37, faces execution at 6 p.m. Tuesday at the state prison in Bonne Terre. He would be the second Missouri man put to death in 2022 and the 17th nationally.

    McEntee, 43, was a 20-year veteran of the police department in Kirkwood, a St. Louis suburb. The father of three was among the officers sent to Johnson’s home on July 5, 2005, to serve a warrant for his arrest. Johnson was on probation for assaulting his girlfriend, and police believed he had violated probation.

    Johnson saw officers arrive and awoke his 12-year-old brother, Joseph “Bam Bam” Long, who ran to a house next door. Once there, the boy, who suffered from a congenital heart defect, collapsed and began having a seizure.

    Johnson testified at trial that McEntee kept his mother from entering the house to aid his brother, who died a short time later at a hospital.

    That same evening, McEntee returned to the neighborhood to check on unrelated reports of fireworks being shot off. A court filing from the Missouri attorney general’s office said McEntee was in his car questioning three children when Johnson shot him through the open passenger-side window, striking the officer’s leg, head and torso. Johnson then got into the car and took McEntee’s gun.

    The court filing said Johnson walked down the street and told his mother that McEntee “let my brother die” and “needs to see what it feels like to die.” Though she told him, “That’s not true,” Johnson returned to the shooting scene and found McEntee alive, on his knees near the patrol car. Johnson shot McEntee in the back and in the head, killing him.

    Johnson’s lawyers have previously asked the courts to intervene for other reasons, including a history of mental illness and his age — 19 — at the time of the crime. Courts have increasingly moved away from sentencing teen offenders to death since the Supreme Court in 2005 banned the execution of offenders who were younger than 18 at the time of their crime.

    But a broader focus of appeals has been on alleged racial bias. In October, St. Louis Circuit Judge Mary Elizabeth Ott appointed a special prosecutor to review the case. The special prosecutor, E.E. Keenan, filed a motion earlier this month to vacate the death sentence, stating that race played a “decisive factor” in the death sentence.

    Ott declined to set aside the death penalty. The Missouri Supreme Court convened an emergency hearing Monday to consider the request.

    Keenan’ told the state Supreme Court that former St. Louis County Prosecutor Bob McCulloch’s office handled five cases involving the deaths of police officers during his 28 years in office. McCulloch sought the death penalty in the four cases involving Black defendants, but did not seek death in the one case where the defendant was white, the file said.

    Assistant Attorney General Andrew Crane responded that “a fair jury determined he deserves the death penalty.”

    McCulloch does not have a listed phone number and could not be reached for comment.

    Johnson’s 19-year-old daughter, Khorry Ramey, had sought to witness the execution, but a state law prohibits anyone under 21 from observing the process. Courts have declined to step in on Ramey’s behalf.

    The U.S. saw 98 executions in 1999 but the number has dropped dramatically in recent years. Missouri already has two scheduled for early 2023. Convicted killer Scott McLaughlin is scheduled to die on Jan. 3, and convicted killer Leonard Taylor’s execution is set for Feb. 7.

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  • Lawyers: Buffalo supermarket gunman plans to plead guilty

    Lawyers: Buffalo supermarket gunman plans to plead guilty

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    BUFFALO, N.Y. — A white gunman who targeted a Buffalo supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood plans to plead guilty on Monday to killing 10 people and wounding three others, according to lawyers representing victims’ relatives.

    Payton Gendron, 19, is scheduled to appear in Erie County Court for a hearing that was postponed for a week by a snowstorm.

    Gendron’s lawyers disclosed in recent weeks that he planned to plead guilty to all of the counts in a state indictment and to waive his right to appeal, according to attorneys John Elmore and Terrence Connors, who represent families of those killed and injured.

    Erie County District Attorney John Flynn declined to comment on the nature of Monday’s court appearance, citing a court-imposed gag order.

    The 25-count grand jury indictment includes charges of murder, murder as a hate crime and domestic terrorism motivated by hate, which carries an automatic life sentence upon conviction.

    Gendron also faces charges for separate federal hate crimes that could result in a death sentence if he is convicted. The U.S. Justice Department has not said whether it would seek capital punishment.

    Investigators said Gendron drove about three hours to Buffalo from his home in Conklin, New York, intending to kill as many Black people as possible at a store that he chose because of its location in a predominantly Black neighborhood.

    Shortly before opening fire with an AR-15-style rifle on May 14, he posted documents that outlined his white supremacist views and revealed that he had been planning the attack for months. Inside the store, he roamed the aisles and livestreamed the attack from a helmet-mounted camera as he shot store employees and shoppers.

    Those killed ranged in age from 32 to 86.

    He was arrested in the parking lot upon exiting through the store’s front entrance.

    Relatives of the victims have since called on Congress to address issues of white supremacy and gun violence. A food summit organized by Buffalo-based attorney and activist Kevin Gaughan last month focused on closing the “grocery gap” laid bare by the attack on the neighborhood’s only supermarket.

    The supermarket was closed for two months.

    ———

    For more AP coverage of the mass shooting: https://apnews.com/hub/buffalo-supermarket-shooting

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  • Asian faiths try to save sacred swastika corrupted by Hitler

    Asian faiths try to save sacred swastika corrupted by Hitler

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    Sheetal Deo was shocked when she got a letter from her Queens apartment building’s co-op board calling her Diwali decoration “offensive” and demanding she take it down.

    “My decoration said ‘Happy Diwali’ and had a swastika on it,” said Deo, a physician, who was celebrating the Hindu festival of lights.

    The equilateral cross with its legs bent at right angles is a millennia-old sacred symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism that represents peace and good fortune. Indigenous people worldwide used it similarly.

    But in the West, this symbol is often equated to Adolf Hitler’s hakenkreuz or the hooked cross – a symbol of hate that evokes the trauma of the Holocaust and the horrors of Nazi Germany. White supremacists, neo-Nazi groups and vandals have continued to use Hitler’s symbol to stoke fear and hate.

    Over the past decade, as the Asian diaspora grew in North America, calls to reclaim the swastika as a sacred symbol became louder. These minority faith communities are being joined by Native Americans whose ancestors used it in healing rituals.

    Deo believes she and people of other faiths shouldn’t have to sacrifice or apologize for a sacred symbol simply because it is often conflated with its tainted version.

    “To me, that’s intolerable,” she said.

    Yet to others, redeeming the swastika is unthinkable.

    Holocaust survivors could be re-traumatized by the symbol that represents a “concept that stood for the annihilation of an entire people” and the horrors they experienced, said Shelley Rood Wernick, managing director of the Jewish Federations of North America’s Center on Holocaust Survivor Care. Her grandparents met at a displaced persons’ camp in Austria after World War II.

    “I recognize the swastika as a symbol of hate,” she said.

    Steven Heller, author of “Swastika: Symbol Beyond Redemption?”, said it is “a charged symbol for so many whose loved ones were criminally and brutally murdered.” Heller’s great-grandfather perished during the Holocaust.

    “A rose by any other name is a rose,” he said. “For many, it creates a visceral impact.”

    The symbol itself dates back to prehistoric times. The word “swastika” has Sanskrit roots and means “the mark of well being.” It has been used in Hindu prayers, carved into the Jains’ emblem, marked Buddhist temple locations, and represented the four elements for Zoroastrians.

    The symbol is ubiquitous in India today. It also has been found in the Roman catacombs as well as various places in Greece, Iran, Ethiopia, Spain and Ukraine.

    The symbol was revived during the 19th century excavations in the ancient city of Troy by a German archaeologist, who connected it to Aryan culture. Historians believe this is what made it appealing to the Nazi Party, which adopted it in 1920.

    In North America, in the early 20th century, swastikas made their way into architectural features, military insignia and team logos. Coca-Cola issued a swastika pendant. The Boy Scouts awarded badges with the symbol until 1940.

    The Rev. T.K. Nakagaki said he was shocked when he heard the swastika referred to as a “universal symbol of evil” at an interfaith conference. The New York-based Buddhist priest thinks of swastikas as synonymous with temples.

    In his 2018 book titled “The Buddhist Swastika and Hitler’s Cross: Rescuing a Symbol of Peace from the Forces of Hate,” Nakagaki posits that Hitler referred to it as the hooked cross or hakenkreuz.

    “You cannot call it a symbol of evil or (deny) other facts that have existed for hundreds of years, just because of Hitler,” said Nakagaki, who believes more dialogue is needed.

    The Coalition of Hindus of North America is among several faith groups leading the effort to differentiate the swastika from the hakenkreuz. They supported a new California law that criminalizes the public display of it, making an exception for the sacred swastika.

    Pushpita Prasad, a spokesperson for the Hindu group, called it a victory, but said the legislation unfortunately labels both the sacred symbol and Hitler’s as swastikas.

    It’s led to self-censorship. Vikas Jain, a Cleveland physician, said his family hid images containing the symbol when they had visitors because of the lack of understanding. Jain says he stands in solidarity with the Jewish community, but is sad that he cannot freely practice his Jain faith.

    Before WWII, the name “Swastika” was popular in North America, including for housing subdivisions in Miami and Denver, an upstate New York hamlet and a street name in Ontario. Some have been renamed while others continue to carry it.

    The Oregon Geographic Names Board will soon vote to rename Swastika Mountain in Umpqua National Forest.

    The mountain’s name, taken from a nearby ranch that used a swastika cattle brand, made news in January when hikers were rescued off the butte, said Kerry Tymchuk, the Oregon Historical Society’s director. A Eugene resident questioned the name, spurring the vote, he said.

    For the Navajo people, the symbol represents the universe and life, said Patricia Anne Davis, an elder of the Choctaw and Dineh nations. She said Hitler took a spiritual symbol “and made it twisted.”

    In the early 20th century, traders encouraged Native artists to use it on their crafts. After it became a Nazi symbol, several tribes banned it.

    “I understand the wounds and trauma that Jewish people experience when they see that symbol,” Davis said. “All I can do is affirm its true meaning. …It’s time to restore the authentic meaning.”

    Jeff Kelman, a New Hampshire-based Holocaust historian, believes the hakenkreuz and swastika were distinct. Kelman, who takes this message to Jewish communities, is optimistic about the symbol’s redemption.

    “When they learn an Indian girl could be named Swastika and she could be harassed in school, they understand how they should see these as two separate symbols,” he said. “No one in the Jewish community wants to see Hitler’s legacy continue to harm people.”

    Greta Elbogen, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor whose family members were killed at Auschwitz, said learning the swastika is sacred to so many is a blessing and feels liberating. Elbogen, born in 1938 when the Nazis forcibly annexed Austria, went into hiding in Hungary before immigrating to the U.S.

    Elbogen said she no longer fears the symbol: “It’s time to let go of the past and look to the future.”

    For many, the swastika evokes a visceral reaction unlike any other, said Mark Pitcavage, an Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism researcher who maintains the group’s hate symbols database.

    The ADL explains the sanctity of the swastika in many faiths and cultures, but Pitcavage said Hitler polluted the symbol: “While I believe it is possible to create some awareness, I don’t think that its association with the Nazis can be completely eliminated.”

    ———

    Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

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  • Midterms free of feared chaos as voting experts look to 2024

    Midterms free of feared chaos as voting experts look to 2024

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    Before Election Day, anxiety mounted over potential chaos at the polls.

    Election officials warned about poll watchers who had been steeped in conspiracy theories falsely claiming that then-President Donald Trump did not actually lose the 2020 election. Democrats and voting rights groups worried about the effects of new election laws, in some Republican-controlled states, that President Joe Biden decried as “Jim Crow 2.0.” Law enforcement agencies were monitoring possible threats at the polls.

    Yet Election Day, and the weeks of early voting before it, went fairly smoothly. There were some reports of unruly poll watchers disrupting voting, but they were scattered. Groups of armed vigilantes began watching over a handful of ballot drop boxes in Arizona until a judge ordered them to stay far away to ensure they would not intimidate voters. And while it might take months to figure out their full impact, GOP-backed voting laws enacted after the 2020 election did not appear to cause major disruptions the way they did during the March primary in Texas.

    “The entire ecosystem in a lot of ways has become more resilient in the aftermath of 2020,” said Amber McReynolds, a former Denver elections director who advises a number of voting rights organizations. “There’s been a lot of effort on ensuring things went well.”

    Even though some voting experts’ worst fears didn’t materialize, some voters still experienced the types of routine foul-ups that happen on a small scale in every election. Many of those fell disproportionately on Black and Hispanic voters.

    “Things went better than expected,” said Amir Badat of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. “But we have to say that with a caveat: Our expectations are low.”

    Badat said his organization recorded long lines at various polling places from South Carolina to Texas.

    There were particular problems in Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston. Shortages of paper ballots and at least one polling location opening late led to long lines and triggered an investigation of the predominantly Democratic county by the state’s Republican authorities.

    The investigation is partly a reflection of how certain voting snafus on Election Day are increasingly falling on Republican voters, who have been discouraged from using mailed ballots or using early in-person voting by Trump and his allies. But it’s a very different problem from what Texas had during its March primary.

    Then, a controversial new voting law that increased the requirements on mail ballots led to about 13% of all such ballots being rejected, much higher compared with other elections. It was an ominous sign for a wave of new laws, passed after Trump’s loss to Biden and false claims about mail voting, but there have been no problems of that scale reported for the general election.

    Texas changed the design of its mail ballots, which solved many of the problems voters had putting identifying information in the proper place. Other states that added regulations on voting didn’t appear to have widespread problems, though voting rights groups and analysts say it will take weeks of combing through data to find out the laws’ impacts.

    The Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU School of Law is compiling data to determine whether new voting laws in states such as Georgia contributed to a drop in turnout among Black and Hispanic voters.

    Preliminary figures show turnout was lower this year than in the last midterm election four years ago in Florida, Georgia, Iowa and Texas — four states that passed significant voting restrictions since the 2020 election — although there could be a number of reasons why.

    “It’s difficult to judge, empirically, the kind of effect these laws have on turnout because so many factors go into turnout,” said Rick Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles law school. “You also have plenty of exaggeration on the Democratic side that any kind of change in voting laws are going to cause some major effect on the election, which has been proven not to be the case.”

    In Georgia, for example, Republicans made it more complicated to apply for mailed ballots after the 2020 election — among other things, requiring voters to include their driver’s license number or some other form of identification rather than a signature. That may be one reason why early in-person voting soared in popularity in the state this year, and turnout there dipped only slightly from 2018.

    Jason Snead, executive director of the conservative Honest Elections Project, which advocates for tighter voting laws, said the fairly robust turnout in the midterm elections shows that fears of the new voting regulations were overblown.

    “We are on the back end of an election that was supposed to be the end of democracy, and it very much was not,” Snead said.

    Poll watchers were a significant concern of voting rights groups and election officials heading into Election Day. The representatives of the two major political parties are a key part of any secure election process, credentialed observers who can object to perceived violations of rules.

    But this year, groups aligned with conspiracy theorists who challenged Biden’s 2020 victory recruited poll watchers heavily, and some states reported that aggressive volunteers caused disruptions during the primary. But there were fewer issues in November.

    In North Carolina, where several counties had reported problems with poll watchers in the May primary, the state elections board reported 21 incidents of misbehavior at the polls in the general election, most during the early, in-person voting period and by members of campaigns rather than poll watchers. The observers were responsible for eight of the incidents.

    Voting experts were pleasantly surprised there weren’t more problems with poll watchers, marking the second general election in a row when a feared threat of aggressive Republican observers did not materialize.

    “This seems to be an increase over 2020. Is it a small increase? Yes,” said Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida. “It’s still a dry run for 2024, and we can’t quite let down our guard.”

    One of the main organizers of the poll watcher effort was Cleta Mitchell, a veteran Republican election lawyer who joined Trump on a Jan. 2, 2020, call to Georgia’s top election official when the president asked that the state “find” enough votes to declare him the winner. Mitchell then launched an organization to train volunteers who wanted to keep an eye on election officials, which was seen as the driver of the poll watcher surge.

    Mitchell said the relatively quiet election is vindication that groups like hers were simply concerned with election integrity rather than causing disruptions.

    “Every training conducted by those of us doing such training included instruction about behavior, and that they must be ‘Peaceful, Lawful, Honest,’” Mitchell wrote in the conservative online publication The Federalist. “Yet, without evidence, the closer we got to Election Day, the more hysterical the headlines became, warning of violence at the polls resulting from too many observers watching the process. It didn’t happen.”

    Voting rights groups say they’re relieved their fears didn’t materialize, but they say threats to democracy remain on the horizon for 2024 — especially with Trump announcing that he’s running again. Wendy Weiser, a voting and elections expert at the Brennan Center, agreed that things overall went smoother than expected.

    “By and large, sabotage didn’t happen,” Weiser said. “I don’t think that means we’re in the clear.”

    ___

    Follow the AP’s coverage of the 2022 midterm elections at https://apnews.com/hub/2022-midterm-elections.

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  • Type 2 diabetes genes linked with gestational diabetes in South Asian women

    Type 2 diabetes genes linked with gestational diabetes in South Asian women

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    Newswise — The same complex genetics that contribute to a higher risk of type 2 diabetes may also increase the risk of developing diabetes during pregnancy among women of South Asian descent, a study published today in eLife shows. 

    The discovery may lead to new ways to identify women who would benefit from interventions to prevent diabetes during pregnancy.  

    People of South Asian descent have an elevated risk of developing type 2 diabetes. Women in this group are also twice as likely to develop a condition called gestational diabetes during pregnancy than women of European descent. But why South Asians are at an increased risk of these two conditions is not currently clear.

    “Only a handful of studies have looked at how genetic and environmental factors interact in gestational diabetes in South Asian women,” says lead author Amel Lamri, a research associate at McMaster University and Population Health Research Institute (PHRI) in Ontario, Canada. “None have looked at how the genes associated with type 2 diabetes may interact with environmental factors to contribute to gestational diabetes in South Asian women.” 

    To close this gap, Lamri and colleagues assessed the relationship between genes associated with type 2 diabetes, environmental factors, and gestational diabetes. They examined whether having genetic signatures linked with type 2 diabetes risk is also connected with gestational diabetes in 837 and 4,372 South Asian women who participated in the SouTh Asian BiRth CohorT (START) study, and the Born in Bradford (BiB) study respectively. 

    The team measured the genetic risk of type 2 diabetes using a polygenic risk score, which estimates the hereditary risk of an individual developing a disease based on the number of risk alleles they have. The researchers found that South Asian women with higher type 2 diabetes polygenic risk scores also had a higher risk of gestational diabetes; each incremental increase in the score was associated with a 45% increase in the risk of developing this condition. 

    When the scientists studied the gestational diabetes risk at the population level, they found that having a polygenic risk score in the highest one-third explained 12.5% of the risk of developing this condition in South Asian women. When they combined a family history of type 2 diabetes and having a polygenic risk score in the top third, it explained 25% of the risk of developing gestational diabetes.  

    “These results show that a higher type 2 diabetes polygenic risk score and a family history of diabetes are strongly and independently associated with gestational diabetes in women of South Asian descent,” explains Lamri. 

    The scientists also looked at whether environmental factors modulated these genetic risk factors. Most of the environmental factors they considered (with the possible exception of body mass index and diet quality) did not significantly alter the risk of diabetes during pregnancy in both studies. But the authors note that the studies may not have been large enough to detect more modest environmental effects, and that further studies are needed in order to confirm the modulatory effects they observed . 

    “Our results support the idea that type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes share a common genetic background,” concludes senior author Sonia Anand, the Michael G. DeGroote Chair in Population Health, and a senior scientist at PHRI, McMaster University, and Hamilton Health Sciences. “If future studies confirm our results, this information may help identify which women would benefit most from interventions to help prevent diabetes during pregnancy.” 

    ##

     

    About eLife

    eLife transforms research communication to create a future where a diverse, global community of scientists and researchers produces open and trusted results for the benefit of all. Independent, not-for-profit and supported by funders, we improve the way science is practised and shared. From the research we publish, to the tools we build, to the people we work with, we’ve earned a reputation for quality, integrity and the flexibility to bring about real change. eLife receives financial support and strategic guidance from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Max Planck Society and Wellcome. Learn more at https://elifesciences.org/about.

    To read the latest Genetics and Genomics research published in eLife, visit https://elifesciences.org/subjects/genetics-genomics.

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  • Fear of COVID-19 continues to impact adversely on psychological wellbeing

    Fear of COVID-19 continues to impact adversely on psychological wellbeing

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    Newswise — Research by psychologists from the School of Psychology at Swansea University found that people’s fear of COVID-19 has led to worsened mental health. The study, just published in the Journal of Health Psychology, also found that older participants and those from minority ethnic groups were most likely to experience COVID-19 fear.

    The researchers examined the impact of COVID-19 fear on key aspects of psychological wellbeing with an online survey of the same sample of participants at two different timepoints during the pandemic.

    The first timepoint took place in February 2021 when daily death rates and hospitalisations were at their highest during the pandemic (to date) and vaccination rates were low. At this point, COVID-19 fear predicted higher levels of anxiety, depression, worry, loneliness, sleep difficulties and problems coping with uncertainty

    The second timepoint took place in June 2021 when daily death rates and hospitalisations had dropped considerably, and many participants had received two vaccinations.  At this  second point, levels of COVID-19 fear had decreased; however, fear of the virus still predicted higher levels of worry, sleep difficulties and problems in dealing with uncertain situations.

    In this way, the impact of COVID-19 evolved, impacting different aspects of wellbeing among the same sample of participants.

    Dr Martyn Quigley, Lecturer in Psychology at Swansea University, who led the study, said:

    “This research demonstrates the significant toll of the pandemic on the psychological wellbeing of many people, especially at the most challenging times during the pandemic. What is particularly striking though is that COVID-19 fear continued to have an impact on people’s wellbeing when circumstances had appeared to considerably improve, thus demonstrating the long-term impact of the pandemic on wellbeing.”

    The research was conducted as part of a Welsh Government (Ser-Cymru) funded project examining the impact of COVID-19 on psychological wellbeing. In addition to conducting survey-based studies, the researchers have conducted online experiments adapted from tasks regularly used in the laboratory to provide behavioural performance markers of mental health coping as we emerge from the pandemic.

    END

    Notes to editors:

    The article entitled, “Longitudinal assessment of COVID-19 fear and psychological wellbeing in the United Kingdom”, can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.1177/13591053221134848

    Swansea University is a world-class, research-led, dual campus university offering a first-class student experience and has one of the best employability rates of graduates in the UK. The University has the highest possible rating for teaching – the Gold rating in the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) in 2018 and was commended for its high proportions of students achieving consistently outstanding outcomes.

    Swansea climbed 14 places to 31st in the Guardian University Guide 2019, making us Wales’ top ranked university, with one of the best success rates of graduates gaining employment in the UK and the same overall satisfaction level as the Number 1 ranked university.

    The 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2014 results saw Swansea make the ‘biggest leap among research-intensive institutions’ in the UK (Times Higher Education, December 2014) and achieved its ambition to be a top 30 research University, soaring up the league table to 26th in the UK.

    The University is in the top 300 best universities in the world, ranked in the 251-300 group in The Times Higher Education World University rankings 2018.  Swansea University now has 23 main partners, awarding joint degrees and post-graduate qualifications.

    The University was established in 1920 and was the first campus university in the UK. It currently offers around 350 undergraduate courses and 350 postgraduate courses to circa 20,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students.  The University has ambitious expansion plans as it moves towards its centenary in 2020 and aims to continue to extend its global reach and realise its domestic and international potential.

    Swansea University is a registered charity. No.1138342. Visit www.swansea.ac.uk

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  • Spotlight on Malaysia’s king to resolve election stalemate

    Spotlight on Malaysia’s king to resolve election stalemate

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    KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Malaysia’s election uncertainty deepened Tuesday after a political bloc refused to support either reformist leader Anwar Ibrahim or rival Malay nationalist Muhyiddin Yassin as prime minister, three days after divisive polls produced no outright winner.

    The stalemate put the spotlight on the nation’s ceremonial king, who will have to find a way to resolve the impasse.

    Anwar’s Pakatan Harapan, or Alliance of Hope, topped Saturday’s elections with 83 parliamentary seats, but failed to reach the 112 needed for a majority. He has been locked in a battle to form a majority government with former Prime Minister Muhyiddin, whose Malay-centric Perikatan Nasional, or National Alliance, won 72 seats.

    Muhyiddin gained an upper hand after securing support of lawmakers from two states on Borneo island but both rivals still need the backing of the long-ruling alliance led by the United Malays National Organization for a majority.

    Caretaker Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob, a senior UMNO official, said the highest-decision making body of UMNO-led Barisan Nasional, or National Front alliance, decided at a meeting Tuesday not to support any group to form a government.

    “So far, BN has agreed to remain as the opposition,” he tweeted.

    Malaysia’s monarch, Sultan Abdullah Sultan Ahmad Shah, said the crisis must end. He urged the nation to be patient as he makes his decision.

    “We have to move on … we need to move forward for our beloved nation,” he told reporters waiting outside the palace.

    Sultan Abdullah earlier asked lawmakers to state their preferred choice for prime minister and coalition by 2 p.m. The king’s role is largely ceremonial but he appoints the person he believes has majority support in Parliament as prime minister.

    Muhyiddin’s bloc includes a hard-line Islamic ally, stoking fears of right-wing politics that may deepen racial divides in the multiethnic nation if it comes to power. The Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party was the biggest winner with a haul of 49 seats — more than double what it won in 2018. Known as PAS, it touts Sharia, rules three states and is now the single largest party.

    His alliance said it has already sent more than 112 sworn oaths by lawmakers to the king. UMNO, however, warned that individual support of its lawmakers without the party’s approval is invalid.

    The drama is a replay of the political turmoil in Malaysia that has seen three prime ministers since 2018 polls.

    In early 2020, Muhyiddin abandoned Anwar’s ruling alliance, causing its collapse, and joined hands with UMNO to form a new government.

    Sultan Abdullah at the time requested written oaths from all 222 lawmakers and later interviewed them separately before picking Muhyiddin as prime minister. But his government was beset by internal rivalries and Muhyiddin resigned after 17 months. For a second time, the monarch sought written statements from lawmakers before appointing UMNO’s Ismail Sabri Yaakob as the new leader.

    Ismail called for snap polls at the behest of UMNO leaders as the party was convinced it could make a strong comeback amid a fragmented opposition. Instead, ethnic majority Malays, fed up with corruption and infighting in the party, opted for Muhyiddin’s bloc.

    Many rural Malays, who form two-thirds of Malaysia’s 33 million people — which includes large minorities of ethnic Chinese and Indians — also fear they may lose their rights with greater pluralism under Anwar’s multiethnic alliance.

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  • 2 arrested after Twitter threats to ‘shoot up a synagogue’

    2 arrested after Twitter threats to ‘shoot up a synagogue’

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    NEW YORK — Social media posts about attacking a synagogue represented a real danger to the city’s Jewish community, Mayor Eric Adams said Monday.

    “This was not an idle threat,” Adams said at a news conference where he was joined by officials from the FBI, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and other agencies involved in the arrests early Saturday of Christopher Brown and Matthew Mahrer on charges including criminal possession of a weapon. The men were arrested at New York’s Penn Station after authorities spotted the posts.

    “This was a real threat,” he said.

    According to the criminal complaint against him, Brown made a series of threats on Twitter including, on Thursday, “Gonna ask a Priest if I should become a husband or shoot up a synagogue and die,” and then on Friday, “This time I’m really gonna do it.”

    Authorities linked the tweets to Brown, of Aquebogue, on Long Island, and identified Mahrer, of Manhattan, as an associate, said Michael Driscoll, head of the FBI’s New York office.

    A description of Brown, 21, and Mahrer, 22, went out to law enforcers, and two MTA police officers spotted the two at Penn Station late Friday and arrested them, police said.

    Brown had a large military-style knife, a ski mask and a swastika arm patch when he was arrested, authorities said.

    A bag containing a Glock-style pistol with a large-capacity magazine and 17 bullets was seized from Mahrer’s apartment building, according to the complaint. Surveillance video from shortly before their arrests showed Brown and Mahrer walking into the building, with Mahrer carrying the bag, according to the criminal complaint.

    Brown, who was charged with making a terrorist threat in addition to the weapons charges, told police that he runs a white supremacist Twitter group and Mahrer is one of his followers, according to the complaint.

    “I have Nazi paraphernalia at my house. I think it is really cool,” Brown told police, the complaint said.

    Brown said he and Mahrer met at St. Patrick’s Cathedral before buying a gun because he “wanted to get the blessing,” according to the complaint.

    Both men were arraigned in Manhattan criminal court over the weekend and are due back in court on Wednesday. Federal charges against them could be filed at a later time, Driscoll said.

    Phone messages seeking comment were left with attorneys for Brown and Mahrer.

    Adams, a Democrat and a former police officer, said threats against Jewish people or any other group must be taken seriously after attacks like the Buffalo supermarket shooting and Saturday’s shooting at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs.

    “America must defeat the rising threat of domestic terrorism,” Adams said. “It is real, it is here and we must have a formidable approach to it.”

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  • Irving rejoins Nets, seeks to keep focus on basketball

    Irving rejoins Nets, seeks to keep focus on basketball

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    NEW YORK — Kyrie Irving apologized Sunday morning to anyone who felt threatened or hurt when he posted a link to a documentary with antisemitic material, clearing the way to finally play again for the Brooklyn Nets.

    Once he did, Irving tried to keep the focus on basketball. Deeper conversations, such as about the demonstrators outside the arena or a possible appeal of his suspension without pay, would be left for another day.

    “I’m just here to focus on the game,” Irving said after scoring 14 points in helping the Nets to a 127-115 victory over the Memphis Grizzlies.

    Irving had missed eight games since he was suspended by the team on Nov. 3, hours after he refused to say he had no antisemitic beliefs when meeting with reporters at the Nets’ practice facility.

    Back at the building for the team’s morning shootaround, Irving said he should have handled that interview differently.

    “I don’t stand for anything close to hate speech or antisemitism or anything that is going against the human race,” Irving said. “I feel like we all should have an opportunity to speak for ourselves when things are assumed about us and I feel it was necessary for me to stand in this place and take accountability for my actions, because there was a way I should have handled all this and as I look back and reflect when I had the opportunity to offer my deep regrets to anyone that felt threatened or felt hurt by what I posted, that wasn’t my intent at all.”

    Fans arriving at Barclays Center for the game found the plaza area filled by dozens of members of the group Israel United in Christ, Black men chanting and handing out paraphernalia that contained antisemitic material. The organization’s website says its mission is to “wake up the 12 Tribes of Israel.”

    Asked about having that group’s support, Irving said he hadn’t seen them, adding that it was “a conversation for another day.”

    As for whether action against the Nets was coming — members of the National Basketball Players Association, including executive director Tamika Tremaglio, were at shootaround and the game — Irving said others would be handling that for him.

    “I’m sure some things will be done in the future,” Irving said. “There’s no timetable on that right now.”

    Irving said he was initially searching for more information about his heritage when he posted a link to “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America” on his Twitter page. When first asked about it, he was defiant about his right to post material that interested him. Then, he refused to apologize or clarify his religious beliefs during another interview a few days later, leading to his suspension.

    “I was rightfully defensive that there was an assumption that I could be antisemitic, or that I meant to post a documentary to stand side by side with all the views in the documentary,” Irving said, adding, “How can you call someone an antisemite if you don’t know them?”

    But his tone was more reflective while speaking for about 12 minutes Sunday morning, thanking family and friends for their support.

    “I meant no harm to any person, to any group of people and yeah, this is a big moment for me because I’m able to learn throughout this process that the power of my voice is very strong, the influence that I have within my community is very strong, and I want to be responsible for that,” Irving said. “In order to do that, you have to admit when you’re wrong and in instances where you hurt people and it impacts them.”

    Nike suspended its relationship with Irving and the fallout seemed to further strain the relationship between Irving and the Nets, who declined to give him a contract extension last summer. He missed most of their home games last season when he refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19, as was mandated at the time in New York City.

    The organization said he was “unfit to be associated with the Brooklyn Nets” when it suspended him. But the Nets praised Irving on Sunday for the steps he has since taken, though it’s unclear what those entailed.

    “Kyrie took ownership of this journey and had conversations with several members of the Jewish community,” the team said in a statement. “We are pleased that he is going about the process in a meaningful way.”

    ———

    AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA and https://twitter.com/AP—Sports

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  • UN committee takes step to treaty on crimes against humanity

    UN committee takes step to treaty on crimes against humanity

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    UNITED NATIONS — A key U.N. committee took a first step Friday toward negotiating a treaty on crimes against humanity, which can be committed at any time, not just during conflicts.

    The committee that deals with legal issues approved a resolution by consensus that would authorize its members to hold sessions in April 2023 and April 2024 to exchange views on draft articles for a treaty submitted by the International Law Commission, a U.N. expert body mandated to develop international law.

    The legal committee would then take a decision on proposing a treaty during the General Assembly session beginning in September 2024, according to the draft.

    The resolution’ now goes to the 193-member assembly where its approval is virtually assured before the end of the year.

    Richard Dicker, senior legal adviser for advocacy at Human Rights Watch, said: “With rampant offenses amounting to crimes against humanity in recent months in countries such as Myanmar, Ukraine and Ethiopia, the movement towards negotiating a treaty to prevent these crimes is a positive though overdue step.”

    While there are international treaties focusing on crimes of genocide, torture, apartheid and forced disappearances, Human Rights Watch said there is no international treaty specifically devoted to crimes against humanity.

    Crimes against humanity have been defined by the International Criminal Court.

    According to the rights group, they are acts of murder, rape, torture, apartheid, deportations, persecution and other offenses that are “committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack against a civilian population based on a government or organizational policy.”

    The proposed treaty submitted by the Law Commission in 2019 would require all countries that ratify it to include the definition of these acts in their national laws and to take steps to prevent them and to punish those responsible for committing crimes against humanity in their national courts, the rights group said.

    The draft resolution states that the General Assembly is “deeply disturbed by the persistence of crimes against humanity” and recognize “the need to prevent and punish such crimes, which are among the most serious crimes of concern to the international community as a whole.”

    Human Rights Watch said the resolution was delayed for three years by a small number of countries including Russia and China, but a new effort was made this year on a resolution to take a first step and they agreed to the consensus after several weeks of intense negotiations.

    “A treaty prohibiting crimes against humanity will provide more protection for civilians and today’s decision is an advance in extending the rule of law at a moment when that very concept is under intense assault,” the rights group’s Dicker said.

    To reach that goal, he said, “it will be crucial for supportive governments to ensure that civil society will be able to fully contribute to the deliberations over the next two years.”

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  • Malaysians vote in elections as old party, reformers clash

    Malaysians vote in elections as old party, reformers clash

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    KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Malaysians began casting ballots Saturday in a tightly contested national election that will determine whether the country’s longest-ruling coalition can make a comeback after its electoral defeat four years ago.

    Political reformers under opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim are gunning for a second victory — but with three main blocs vying for votes, analysts said the outcome is hard to predict and could lead to new alliances if there is a hung Parliament.

    Polling booths opened at 7:30 a.m. (2330 GMT) in two states on Borneo island, and half an hour later on the Malaysian Peninsula. Long lines had already formed in the capital Kuala Lumpur and other cities as voters rushed to cast ballots ahead of afternoon thunderstorms predicted in parts of the country.

    More than 21 million Malaysians are eligible to cast ballots to fill 222 seats in federal Parliament and choose representatives in three state legislatures. The Election Commission has extended voting time from nine to 10 hours, with results expected to be out late in the day.

    The main battle is between the United Malays National Organization-led alliance and Anwar’s Pakatan Harapan, or Alliance of Hope. The Perikatan Nasional, or National Alliance, which is a Malay-based bloc led by former Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin, is seen as a dark horse. Many polls have put Anwar’s bloc in the lead, but short of winning a majority. But two research houses have predicted a win for the UMNO-led Barisan Nasional, or National Front alliance.

    Apathy among voters worried about the economy and rising costs of living and the addition of some 6 million mostly young voters since 2018 polls are adding to uncertainties in the tight race. The prospect of flash floods due to seasonal monsoon rains may also affect voters’ turnout.

    “The choice today is between sticking with the status quo … or opting for a different future, with the hope that Harapan will improve lives,” said Bridget Welsh, a Southeast Asian political expert.

    Anwar’s bloc emerged the strongest in the race but it is unclear if this will translate into a victory given Malaysia’s gerrymandering and uneven proportion of voters in constituencies, she said. UMNO had lost the popular vote in past elections but still won a majority in Parliament due to a skewed electoral system that gives power to rural Malays, its traditional supporters.

    Once an omnipotent force credited with developing and modernizing Malaysia, anger over government corruption led to UMNO’s shocking defeat in 2018 polls to Anwar’s bloc that saw the first regime change since Malaysia’s independence from Britain in 1957.

    The watershed polls had sparked hopes of reforms as once-powerful UMNO leaders were jailed or hauled to court for graft. But political guile and defections led to the government’s collapse after 22 months. UMNO bounced back as part of a new government but infighting led to continuous political turmoil. In all, Malaysia’s had three prime ministers since 2018 polls.

    Initially confident of a strong comeback due to a fragmented opposition, UMNO President Ahmad Zahid Hamidi had pushed incumbent caretaker Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob to call snap polls. But the UMNO campaign has been relatively muted as infighting and corruption charges against Zahid cast a shadow over its election promise for stability and prosperity.

    The opposition has warned that a UMNO victory would result in Zahid, who is fighting dozens of graft charges, taking over as prime minister and escaping the corruption allegations. Zahid has dropped eight party leaders aligned to Ismail from the polls, but he and UMNO leaders insist Ismail remains the party’s candidate.

    Anwar, 75, has put up a strong fight as he crisscrossed the country, often drawing large crowds with his message for change and his oratory skills. Thousands of people chanted his battle cry of “We Can” at his final rally late Friday as Anwar urged them not to let corrupt leaders dictate the country’s future.

    A second victory at the ballot box would cap Anwar’s storied political journey, a former deputy prime minister whose sacking and imprisonment in the 1990s led to massive street protests and a reform movement that saw his bloc rise into a major political force.

    Anwar was in prison during the 2018 vote for a sodomy charge that critics say was trumped up. Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad led the alliance’s campaign and became the world’s oldest leader at 92 after the victory. Anwar was pardoned shortly after and would have succeeded Mahathir had their government not crumbled.

    The stakes are high for Anwar, who is contesting a new federal seat in Tambun in northern Perak state in a calculated gamble to showcase his alliance’s strength. His bloc has promised a reset in government policies to focus on merits and needs, rather than race, and good governance to plug billions of dollars it said was lost to corruption. Critics say the affirmative action policy that gives majority Malays privileges in business, housing and education has been abused to enrich the elites, alienate minority groups and has sparked a brain drain.

    But this has been a sore point with rural Malays, who have been constantly warned by UMNO of the risk of Chinese economic domination if the opposition won. Anwar’s alliance includes a Chinese-majority party that has long been used as the bogeyman by UMNO. Malays form two-thirds of Malaysia’s 33 million people, which include large minorities of ethnic Chinese and Indians.

    The National Alliance, UMNO’s ally-turned rival, ran a sleek campaign to woo Malay supporters uncomfortable with corruption in UMNO and greater pluralism espoused by Anwar. Its leader Muhyiddin defected from Mahathir’s government in early 2020, causing its collapse. He became prime minister under a tieup with UMNO but resigned after 17 months due to infighting. Anwar’s supporters have accused Muhyiddin and leaders of his Islamic ally of hate speech against ethnic minority groups in their bid to win Malay votes.

    Mahathir, 97, is also seeking support under a new Malay movement that isn’t expected to make much headway but may split the vote. His popularity has faded and the elections are likely to be the last for Mahathir.

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  • Trailblazing director Euzhan Palcy returns for Oscar honor

    Trailblazing director Euzhan Palcy returns for Oscar honor

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    LOS ANGELES — Director Euzhan Palcy has made history more than a few times in her four decades in the movie business.

    She was the first Black woman to direct a film produced by a major studio (MGM’s “A Dry White Season”), the first Black director of any gender to win the César Award in France, the first woman to win a Venice Silver Lion (for “Sugar Cane Alley”), the only woman to direct Marlon Brando and the first Black woman to direct an actor to an Oscar nomination (also Brando). She blazed trails for a generation of Black female filmmakers, from Ava DuVernay and Amma Asante to Regina Hall and Gina Prince-Bythewood, and most of the time it wasn’t easy or fun.

    But she was driven by a conviction that she holds this day: “I was born to make movies.”

    Now after some years away from the business, she is ready, at 64, to get behind the camera again. And what better way to start a comeback than with an Oscar? On Saturday, Palcy will get an honorary statuette at the annual Governor’s Awards gala, in recognition of her contributions to motion pictures. She’s being celebrated alongside Australian director Peter Weir, songwriter Diane Warren and actor Michael J. Fox, who is getting the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, at the untelevised event.

    “I felt like this was the right time for me to show up again,” Palcy, from Paris, told The Associated Press. “I was ready.”

    Palcy was born in Martinique, in the French West Indies, in 1958, and from age 10 had set her sights on filmmaking even though it seemed like no one who was doing it, successfully at least, looked like her. Her imagination was sparked by Marcel Camus’ “Black Orpheus” and the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang and. In the mid-70s, she left for Paris, where she studied at the Sorbonne and got a master’s degree in film from the prestigious Louis-Lumière College. There she was encouraged to keep pursuing filmmaking by François Truffaut.

    But she couldn’t find anyone to give her money to make her first feature, “Sugar Cane Alley,” even after she got an important grant from the French Government that would typically pique the interest of financiers. The film would be an adaptation of Joseph Zobel’s semi-autobiographical novel about Martinique in the 1930s, the Africans working the sugar cane fields and their white owners.

    “I had a degree from the most famous film school in France and it was not enough,” Palcy said. “I was still Black, I was still a woman, and I was still young.”

    Still, she managed to make “Sugar Cane Alley” from nothing and it went on to be a great success, winning the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival and a César for best first work. The most important thing to her, though, was that it resonated with the people of Martinique who told her they’d never seen themselves on screen before.

    “Most people point it out that I was a pioneer. They say it doesn’t make you happy? And it’s not that, but it’s hard, it’s hard to be a pioneer. People think it’s a big deal and it’s great, but nothing is there and you pick a road and you pave it. That requires a lot of tenacity, a lot of fight, a lot of struggle, a lot of tears.

    “I love the metaphor of a woman who is pregnant and the pregnancy is so hard on her and it’s difficult to give birth to that baby. Then once she does, she’s exhausted. That’s the way I felt when ‘Sugar Cane Alley’ came out. I couldn’t even enjoy the success of that movie,” she said. “But it made me stronger and even more determined to fight for my stories.”

    Hollywood took notice and the exciting new talent behind the camera. Robert Redford invited her out to do the Sundance Director’s Lab, in 1984, and would be a sounding board as more offers came in. Life, for a moment, was a whirlwind of courting and offers.

    Warner Bros. executive Lucy Fisher flew her to Los Angeles and gave her a grand welcome to try to get her to make a film with them. Palcy asked about adapting “The Color Purple,” though was politely told that Steven Spielberg had already set his sights on that. She decided on “A Dry White Season.” The film almost fell apart, though, when Warner Bros. brass decided after Universal released “Cry Freedom” that two apartheid movies was too many. MGM stepped in to make it.

    Palcy has always been steadfast in her vision. Paul Newman was desperate to be in the film, but she was set on Donald Sutherland. She also convinced Brando, who had been retired for nine years, to take a role. For that, he received his eighth and final Oscar nomination.

    After that, though, Hollywood became a mixed bag. She made “Ruby Bridges” for the Wonderful World of Disney and “The Killing Yard,” a TV film about the Attica Prison riot. But then about a decade ago, she decided she had to leave. She’d heard no, and that Black films don’t sell, a few too many times. And she’d been asked to make a few too many films that didn’t speak to her.

    “I thought, I cannot betray my ideals,” she said. “So I thought I’d go away and put my energy into helping young filmmakers so I didn’t waste my time. I was just waiting for the right time to come back.”

    In the ensuing years, she’d receive many letters and emails from people asking her where she was and why she wasn’t making films. Some of her films have gotten a second life too: “A Dry White Season” got a Criterion restoration and “Ruby Bridges” started streaming on Disney+.

    “My work is not for people from yesterday,” she said. “My work is for people from the new generation.”

    Then earlier this year she had a feeling that the time to come back was now. Soon after, she got an honor in France and 24 hours later got the phone call about the honorary Oscar.

    “I said, ‘My God, what is happening?’ It was worth the sadness and the struggle I had inside me for not being able to do my movies,” she said.

    Now she just hopes that people don’t put her in a box, thinking she’s just a “political filmmaker.”

    “I want to make all kinds of movies,” she said. “I can do any genre.”

    Palcy does want to make one thing clear: Though she is forthright about the struggles and adversity she faced, she wants people to know that she is also a very positive person.

    “It was not a complaint,” she said. “But if they ask me about it, I will be honest.”

    ———

    Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr.

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  • Study: COVID-19 policies harmed minority women’s perinatal experiences, magnified inequities

    Study: COVID-19 policies harmed minority women’s perinatal experiences, magnified inequities

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    Newswise — CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Black, Indigenous and other women of color who were pregnant or gave birth during the pandemic said these experiences were overshadowed by isolation, confusion and fear, much of it caused by unclear or frequently changing institutional policies, according to a new study.

    Women from across the U.S. who participated in online focus groups said medical providers’ COVID-19 safety protocols and the lack of clarity from federal public health officials magnified existing health care disparities, compromised the quality of care they received and increased the trauma of giving birth, said first author Tuyet-Mai (Mai) Ha Hoang, a professor of social work at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

    The 41 women who participated in the study believed that these policies deeply affected their experiences and “made (their) pregnancies less about the celebration of birth and more about the management of trauma and loss,” Hoang and her co-authors wrote.

    Hoang and co-author Karen Tabb Dina, a professor in the same department, experienced some of these difficulties firsthand, as both gave birth during the pandemic. Hoang, who is Vietnamese American, delivered two babies – the first in December 2019 and the second in March 2022 – and Tabb Dina, who is African American, gave birth in May 2021. 

    “My child’s birth in March was really hard due to hospital policies that restricted visitors and the support people allowed in the room,” Hoang said. “Giving birth is a traumatic experience in itself and not having a support person there made it more difficult.”

    Tabb Dina, who birthed her third child during the pandemic, said her husband was deeply disappointed that he was not allowed to attend the ultrasound appointment with her because of the health care provider’s policies at the time, and she felt a profound sense of isolation after the baby’s birth due to the hospital’s visitor restrictions.

    “We found very consistent themes across the U.S., regardless of whether women were in big cities or rural areas,” Hoang said about the study, which included women who ranged from 19-45 years old.

    About half the study participants were African American, one-fourth were Latina, and 20% were Asian or Pacific Islanders. Two participants identified themselves as multiracial and one person as Indigenous.

    Published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, the findings may shed light on some of the structural factors behind what the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called “alarming” increases in maternal death rates for women of color from 2019-20.

    During that time, maternal death rates increased from 44.8% to 55.3% among Black women, and from 17.9% to 18.2% among Hispanic women, according to a report from the CDC published on the U.S. Government Accountability Office website.

    “We’re in a maternal and infant mortality crisis,” Hoang said. “People need to recognize that the way the health care system is set up right now is not treating pregnant patients correctly. It exacerbates risks rather than protections, especially with minoritized and marginalized communities.”

    Study participants said medical providers’ erratic COVID-19 policies increased their difficulty navigating the health care system and obtaining care. Appointments for regular perinatal care or treatment for sudden complications were nonexistent or handled very quickly, and patients struggled to coordinate tests and procedures with multiple providers.

    An Indigenous woman identified in the study as “M” told the researchers that in the early stages of pregnancy, she was losing 15 pounds per week, but emergency room providers kept telling her that what she was going through was normal. She said she was frustrated that she had to go to the ER “maybe six times before they would get me in to schedule an appointment.”

    Some of the women felt that providers were unsympathetic or indifferent to their physical pain, dignity or bodily autonomy – mirroring racial disparities that were well documented in prior research, Hoang said. These patients believed that COVID-19 testing “trumped everything, including their pain, and they had to wait for relief,” the researchers wrote.

    A mother of two children called “R” in the study told the team: “I was getting an IV in my left arm and the COVID test at the same time. I was having contractions, and everyone was working. I was still a human, and I was like ‘I’m in pain, can you stop?’ and they didn’t listen.”

    Women in the study said medical providers’ communication lacked empathy, and these patients felt shamed or discriminated against for refusing COVID-19 vaccines when they were pregnant or breastfeeding because they were concerned about the side effects on their babies.

    Those who were forced to attend appointments such as sonograms and genetic counseling alone said they felt providers bombarded them with too much information while leaving important questions unanswered – causing them to feel overwhelmed and confused.

    Conversely, many informational workshops and childbirth classes were suspended during lockdowns, leaving some expectant mothers without access to vital information and disrupting their birthing plans, the researchers found.

    The “trickle-down effect” of these COVID-19 mitigation policies was that they exacerbated patients’ stress, and those in the study said it was evident that perinatal patients were not involved in the decision-making processes.  

    U. of I. scholars Kaylee M. Lukacena, a research development manager with the Center for Social and Behavioral Science; then-doctoral student Wen-Jung (Wendy) Hsieh; and doctoral candidate B. Andi Lee also co-wrote the study.

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    University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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  • Body with gunshot found in search for Tulsa massacre victims

    Body with gunshot found in search for Tulsa massacre victims

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    A second body of a possible victim of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre has been found to have a gunshot wound, according to the city.

    “Forensic anthropologist Dr. Phoebe Stubblefield discovered that one of the three sets of remains exhumed last week contained one victim with a gunshot wound,” according to a statement late Friday from city spokesperson Carson Colvin.

    In an effort to eventually confirm the remains are those of massacre victims, investigators are seeking signs of trauma, such as gunshot wounds, based on accounts at the time.

    A portion of the bullet was removed the the head of the remains, according to the statement. The person’s race and whether the remains are those of a massacre victim are not yet known.

    Stubblefield did not immediately return a phone call to The Associated Press on Saturday.

    The remains were in a plain casket and are believed to be that of an adult male, matching information in reports from 1921, and were in the area in Oaklawn Cemetery where 18 massacre victims were reportedly buried.

    The first remains with gunshot wounds were found in June 2021 and are now with Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Forensics where DNA analysis is ongoing.

    The current excavation of the cemetery in the search for victims of the 1921 Race Massacre began Oct. 26 and has uncovered 26 unmarked graves. The work is expected to continue through Nov. 18.

    Four sets of the newly found remains have been exhumed and taken to an on-site lab for analysis.

    A search for the graves of massacre victims began in 2020 and resumed last year with nearly three dozen coffins recovered.

    Fourteen sets of the previously recovered remains were sent to Intermountain Forensics for testing, and two of those have been found to have enough DNA to begin sequencing and start developing a genealogy profile.

    None of the remains have been identified or confirmed as victims of the massacre, one of the worst known examples of white mob violence against Black Americans in U.S. history.

    More than 1,000 homes were burned, hundreds more were looted, and a thriving business district known as Black Wall Street was destroyed in the racist violence.

    Historians have estimated the death toll at between 75 and 300, with generational wealth being wiped out.

    ———

    Read more coverage of the Tulsa Race Massacre: https://apnews.com/hub/tulsa-race-massacre

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  • Alabama’s capital removes Confederate names from 2 schools

    Alabama’s capital removes Confederate names from 2 schools

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    MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Two high schools in Alabama’s capital, a hub of the civil rights movement, will no longer bear the names of Confederate leaders.

    The Montgomery County Board of Education on Thursday voted for new names for Jefferson Davis High School and Robert E Lee High School, news outlets reported.

    Lee will become Dr. Percy Julian High School. Davis will become JAG High School, representing three figures of the civil rights movement: Judge Frank Johnson, the Rev. Ralph Abernathy and the Rev. Robert Graetz.

    The schools opened in the 1950s and 1960s as all or mostly white but now serve student populations that are more than 85% African American.

    “Our job is to make our spaces comfortable for our kids. Bottom line is we’re going to make decisions based on what our kids needs may be, not necessarily on sentiment around whatever nostalgia may exist,” Superintendent Melvin Brown said, as reported by WSFA-TV.

    Julian was a chemist and teacher who was born in Montgomery. Johnson was a federal judge whose rulings helped end segregation and enforce voting rights. Abernathy was a pastor and leader in the civil rights movement. Graetz was the only white pastor who openly supported the Montgomery bus boycott and became the target of scorn and bombings for doing so.

    The new school names were given two years after education officials vowed to strip the Confederate namesakes. A debate over the school names began amid protests over racial inequality following the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota. Someone ripped down a statue of Lee outside his namesake school during the demonstrations.

    Like many other Confederate-named schools, Lee — named for the Confederate Army general — opened as an all-white school in 1955 as the South was actively fighting integration. Davis, named for the Confederate president, opened in 1968. But white flight after integration orders and shifting demographics meant the schools became heavily African American.

    The Montgomery City Council last year voted to rename Jeff Davis Avenue for attorney Fred D. Gray. Gray grew up on the street during the Jim Crow era and went on to represent clients including Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks.

    After the street name change, the Alabama attorney general’s office told city officials to pay a $25,000 fine or face a lawsuit for violating a state law protecting Confederate monuments and other longstanding memorials. The city paid the fine in order to remove the Confederate reference.

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  • Decades-Long Push to Lower Stillbirth Rate in the U.S. Has Stalled

    Decades-Long Push to Lower Stillbirth Rate in the U.S. Has Stalled

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    Newswise — A decades-long effort to lower the stillbirth rate in the United States has stalled, as has progress in closing a persistent gap in excess stillbirths experienced by Black women compared with White women, according to a Rutgers-led study.

    “Over the last 40 years, we have reduced certain risk factors for stillbirth, such as smoking and alcohol use before and during pregnancy, but these gains have been countered by substantial increases in other risk factors, like obesity and structural racism,” said Cande Ananth, chief of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and lead author of the study published in The Lancet Regional Health – Americas.

    “Our findings illustrate that past progress has now been offset by these newly identified risks,” Ananth said.

    To determine how cultural and environmental factors impact stillbirths among Black and White women in the U.S., Ananth and a team of Rutgers obstetricians examined changes in stillbirth rates between 1980 and 2020.

    Using data compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and covering all 50 states and the District of Columbia, the researchers measured how maternal age, year of death (indicative of changes in prenatal and intrapartum care and other factors) and maternal birth cohorts (indicative of social and environmental elements,  such as socioeconomic status, education, nutrition and substance use at the time of the women’s birth) shaped stillbirth trends.

    More than 157 million live births and nearly 711,000 stillbirths delivered at 24 or more weeks over the last four decades in the U.S. were included in the study.

    Consistent with previous studies, the researchers found that total stillbirth rates in the U.S. declined steadily between 1980 and 2005, backed by advances in prenatal care and maternal health. For every 1,000 women who delivered in 1980, 10 of those pregnancies ended in stillbirth. By 2005, the figure had declined to about 5 per 1,000.

    But since then, the researchers found, improvements have flatlined and the rate today is about the same as it was more than a decade ago.

    Additionally, despite efforts to reduce structural racism and increase health-care access to women of color, the disparity in stillbirth rates for Black women compared with White women remained unchanged during the 40-year period. The rate for Black women was about twice the rate of White women in 1980 (17.4 versus 9.2 per 1,000 births) and remained twofold in 2020 (10.1 versus 5.0 per 1,000 births).

    Unlike most previous work, which has focused primarily on risks such as age at delivery and social and environmental conditions, Ananth’s study added a third element: the birth cohort – the year the mother herself was born.

    Ananth said that the data demonstrates a strong link between birth cohort and stillbirth risk.

    “The cohort is a new dimension to understanding these adverse outcomes,” said Ananth. “To understand the paper’s significance, you need to view it in a three-dimensional perspective. We have age of the mother, year of delivery and the birth cohort. All three factors are time-related and intertwined.”

    Several factors might explain the stalled decline in reducing stillbirth rates. One possible cause, the researchers wrote, is a national effort in 2009 to reduce elective deliveries before 39 weeks. There also may have been a slowdown in medical advances and obstetrical intervention to predict or prevent stillbirth.

    The persistent gap in stillbirth disparities is more complicated and includes structural racism and biases, social inequality and a greater burden of chronic diseases and illness, Ananth said.

    Taken together, Ananth said these data paint a dire health care picture that needs urgent attention at local, state and national levels.

    “I am a firm believer that even one death is one too many,” he said. “Delivering a stillbirth carries so much social and emotional trauma – for the parents, and for the entire society.”

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    Rutgers University-New Brunswick

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  • Man testifies about Hawaii beating he says was hate crime

    Man testifies about Hawaii beating he says was hate crime

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    HONOLULU — A white man who says he was a victim of a hate crime when two Native Hawaiian men assaulted him while he was fixing up a home he purchased in their remote Maui village testified Wednesday that his attackers were racially motivated, even though he conceded that no racist comments can be heard in video taken during the 2014 beating.

    Christopher Kunzelman said the men beat him and told him no white people would ever live in Kahakuloa village — a comment that’s not heard in the footage. Kaulana Alo-Kaonohi and Levi Aki Jr. are on trial for one federal count each of a hate crime. Their defense attorneys don’t deny the assault, but say their actions were motivated by Kunzelman’s entitled and disrespectful attitude — not his race.

    Alo-Kaonohi and Aki punched, kicked and used a shovel to beat Kunzelman, leaving him with injuries including a concussion, two broken ribs and head and abdominal trauma, U.S. prosecutors said.

    Under questioning by Salina Kanai, a federal defender for Alo-Kaonohi, Kunzelman acknowledged that the men were enraged about Kunzelman earlier cutting locks on village gates but made no mention of his race.

    “He’s not talking about your skin color, he’s not talking about your race,” Kanai said of Alo-Kaonohi, who is heard in the video calling him “brah” and “buddy.”

    Kanai said Alo-Kaonohi, during an expletive-laced tirade about the locks, didn’t call Kunzelman a “haole,” a Hawaiian word that can mean white person.

    Kunzelman responded, “Correct, not yet.”

    More than five minutes into the incident, which was recorded by cameras on Kunzelman’s vehicle parked under the house, there was only one utterance of anything racial, Kanai said.

    “You’s a haole, eh,” Aki said in the recording.

    The video shows what is happening downstairs, including Aki pacing with a shovel on his shoulder. The video captures the sound coming from upstairs, where Kunzelman said he was beaten, but not any images.

    What’s not audible in the video is the men calling him “haole” in a derogatory way and threatening to shoot him with his own gun, even though they were shouting, Kunzelman said.

    Kunzelman testified that he and his wife decided to move to Maui from Scottsdale, Arizona, after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He said his wife loved the island.

    A Hawaiian woman visited him in his dreams and told him to buy the dilapidated oceanfront house, he said, which he and his wife purchased sight unseen for $175,000 after coming across a listing for it online.

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  • Ex-student accused in racist attack banned from campus

    Ex-student accused in racist attack banned from campus

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    LEXINGTON, Ky. — A white University of Kentucky student accused of physically assaulting a Black student worker while repeatedly using racial slurs has been permanently banned from the school.

    Sophia Rosing is no longer a student at the university following the incident Sunday and will not be allowed to reenroll, university President Eli Capilouto said in a message to the UK community Wednesday. The school’s investigation continues.

    Rosing had been set to graduate in May. She will seek help for the issues she has, her attorney, Fred Peters, said Tuesday.

    Campus police charged Rosing with first and second offenses of alcohol intoxication in a public place, third-degree assault of a police officer, fourth-degree assault and second-degree disorderly conduct, according to an arrest report.

    Rosing pleaded not guilty to the charges Monday afternoon and bonded out of jail later in the day.

    “She’s very humiliated and embarrassed and remorseful,” Peters said of his client.

    Capilouto said in his message that “this behavior was disgusting and devastating to our community.”

    “We stand by our students who were targeted by this unacceptable hostility and violence,” he said.

    Rosing was suspended on an interim basis within hours after university officials learned of the incident. The suspension banned her from campus during the investigation, Capilouto said.

    The altercation at Boyd Hall was captured on video and posted to multiple social media platforms. Kylah Spring, a freshman working as a desk clerk, says in the video that Rosing hit her multiple times and kicked her in the stomach. Spring said the attack began when she asked Rosing, who appeared to be intoxicated, if she was OK.

    Rosing can be heard using racial slurs throughout the video, and a police report says she continued using derogatory language after being taken into custody.

    Spring, who was working an overnight shift, never retaliated and said at one point: “I don’t get paid enough for this.”

    After police arrived, Rosing told an officer that she has “lots of money and (gets) special treatment,” according to an arrest affidavit. “When I told her to sit back in the chair, she kicked me and bit my hand.”

    During a rally on campus Monday night, Spring addressed the woman accused of assaulting her.

    “You will not break my spirit and you will be held accountable for your actions,” she said. “I only pray that you open your heart to love and try to experience life differently and more positively after this.”

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  • Joseph A. Johnson Award Goes to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Professor

    Joseph A. Johnson Award Goes to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Professor

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    Newswise — WASHINGTON, Nov. 9, 2022 – AIP and the National Society of Black Physicists have awarded Trevor Rhone the 2022 Joseph A. Johnson III Award for Excellence and Cacey Bester an Honorable Mention.

    Now in its third year, the award recognizes early-career scientists who demonstrate scientific ingenuity and powerful mentorship and service – the core values of NSBP founder Joseph A. Johnson.

    “Since its inception, this award has seen high-quality candidates across the board.  This was as true this year as any other,” said Michael Moloney, CEO of AIP. “We are pleased to recognize both Dr. Rhone and Dr. Bester for their exceptional science and dedication to their students. Their contributions to the physical science community exemplify the legacy of Dr. Joseph A. Johnson.”

    Rhone, an assistant professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), searches for novel two-dimensional magnetic materials using a combination of computer simulations and artificial intelligence. Some estimates put the number of possible candidate materials at 10 to the power of 100 – approximately the same number of atoms in the observable universe. Instead of relying on slow and laborious experiments to find a material with desirable properties, Rhone uses AI as a guide to accelerate materials discovery.

    “When you’re at home, and you want to find a recipe to bake a cake, you might ask Alexa,” he said. “Alexa finds a recipe and tells you what ingredients you need and how to make it. Perhaps one day, we’ll ask an ‘Atom-a’ equivalent for the recipe to make the next generation of hard drives for data storage.”

    Growing up in Jamaica, Rhone learned the importance of a good education. He obtained his undergraduate degree at Macalester College, then earned his doctorate from Columbia University for experimental studies of two-dimensional electron systems. He transitioned to materials informatics research while working at the National Institute of Materials Science in Japan and as a Future Faculty Leaders postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University before becoming an assistant professor at RPI.

    In the physics department at RPI, Rhone co-founded the DEI committee, which actively promotes equity and inclusion in the classroom. This work follows a history of his mentoring underrepresented minority students, providing physics demonstrations for high schoolers, and volunteering with NSBP.

    Rhone says many mentors supported and encouraged him along his journey, but his father was the most influential of all.

    “He would tell me stories about how he influenced the lives of others. There’s one story where he, a playwright, encouraged someone to pursue theater, his lifelong passion, despite the threat of great hardship. My father gave people the courage to pursue their dreams and helped them to find happiness doing so,” said Rhone. “Mentoring, teaching, and supporting the physics community I feel helps me to honor the memory of my father. This award is a nice reminder of what is important and it motivates me to do more.”

    “Dr. Rhone and Dr. Bester are advancing the physical sciences in so many ways,” said Hakeem Oluseyi, president of the National Society of Black Physicists. “Their research is creative and cutting-edge. Meanwhile, their emphasis of mentoring and community-building is inspiring.”

    Bester, an assistant professor at Swarthmore College, studies granular materials, a subfield of soft matter.

    “Individual grains, such as sand, coffee, and rice, are easy to describe,” she said. “But if you have thousands, or even millions of those grains, then that becomes extremely challenging. That’s because collectively, the grains can behave like a solid in some instances, or like a liquid in other instances.”

    In her lab, Bester conducts jamming and creeping experiments. Undergraduates play a key role, confining grains and studying the transition from liquid to solid and connecting these ideas to geological implications.

    She hopes to give her students the same experiences she had as a young researcher. At Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, Bester was the only student in her introductory physics class taught by Stephen McGuire, a former NSBP president.

    “It was super intimidating. I had to answer every question,” she said. “It was really scary at first, but I came to enjoy having that attention. Not only did we do the required curriculum, but I learned about what current physics research looked like.”

    From there, Bester participated in a Research for Undergraduates Experience at the University of Chicago, where she studied droplets splashing. She pursued the same line of research in Chicago for her doctorate, then worked as postdoctoral research associate at Duke University before becoming an assistant professor at Swarthmore College.

    “It feels really amazing to reach the point where my work is being acknowledged in this way,” said Bester. “It means so much to me, especially to be acknowledged by people that I have admired for such a long time: leaders of the National Society of Black Physicists and the American Institute of Physics.”

    The award and honorable mention will be presented at the National Society of Black Physicists 2022 Conference on Nov. 9 in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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    ABOUT THE JOSEPH A. JOHNSON III AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE

    Joseph A. Johnson III, of Florida A&M University, was a pioneering and renowned experimental physicist, mentor to many Black doctoral students and a founder of the National Society of Black Physicists. In honor of his iconic legacy, the American Institute of Physics and NSBP have partnered to recognize an NSBP physicist who exemplifies Johnson’s ingenuity as a scientist and passion for mentorship and service. This honor comes with a $5,000 award along with an invitation to give physics department colloquia at partner universities.

    ABOUT NSBP

    Founded in 1977 at Morgan State University, the mission of the National Society of Black Physicists is to promote the professional well-being of African American physicists and physics students within the international scientific community and within society at large. The organization seeks to develop and support efforts to increase opportunities for African Americans in physics and to increase their numbers and visibility of their scientific work. It also seeks to develop activities and programs that highlight and enhance the benefits of the scientific contributions that African American physicists provide for the international community. The society seeks to raise the general knowledge and appreciation of physics in the African American community.

    ABOUT AIP

    The mission of AIP (American Institute of Physics) is to advance, promote, and serve the physical sciences for the benefit of humanity. AIP is a federation that advances the success of our 10 Member Societies and an institute that operates as a center of excellence supporting the physical sciences enterprise. In its role as an institute, AIP uses policy analysis, social science, and historical research to promote future progress in the physical sciences. AIP is a 501(c)(3) membership corporation of scientific societies.

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    American Institute of Physics (AIP)

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