The Associated Press Health & Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
>Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education
https://www.hhmi.org/science-education
We live in a world that is increasingly reliant on science and technology. Our future depends upon a thriving scientific community, and educators and institutions committed to the development of both scientists and a scientifically informed public. Because that future begins in today’s classrooms, HHMI invests in individuals, institutions, initiatives, and media that advance learning. And we nourish the public understanding of science by bringing important stories of scientific discovery to a wide variety of audiences.
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-technology-business-misinformation-public-health-d68aa3f6f6bc44e36c77c33cff4a450a
Fighting wave of misinfo, YouTube bans false vaccine claims
YouTube is wiping vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories from its popular video-sharing platform.
The ban on vaccine misinformation, announced in a blog post on Wednesday, comes as countries around the world continue to offer free immunizations for COVID-19 to a somewhat hesitant public. Public health officials have struggled to push back against a steady current of online misinformation about the COVID-19 shot since development of the immunization first got underway last year.
YouTube’s new rules will prohibit misinformation about any vaccine that has been approved by health authorities such as the World Health Organization and are currently being administered. The platform had already begun to crack down late last year on false claims about the COVID-19 vaccine.
YouTube, which is owned by Google, will delete videos that falsely claim vaccines are dangerous or cause health issues, like cancer, infertility or autism — a theory that scientists have discredited for decades but has endured on the internet. As of Wednesday, popular anti-vaccine accounts, including those run by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., were kicked off YouTube.
“We’ve steadily seen false claims about the coronavirus vaccines spill over into misinformation about vaccines in general, and we’re now at a point where it’s more important than ever to expand the work we started with COVID-19 to other vaccines,” YouTube said in a prepared statement.
The new rule will apply to general claims about vaccines as well as statements about specific vaccines, such as those given for measles or flu.
Claims about vaccines that are being tested will still be allowed. Personal stories about reactions to the vaccine will also be permitted, as long as they do not come from an account that has a history of promoting vaccine misinformation. ___
Associated Press writer David Klepper in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.
https://apnews.com/article/capitol-police-chief-tom-manger-the-ap-interview-7d957f74410074dab59b62bb3c389a25
The AP Interview: Capitol Police chief sees rising threats
The newly installed chief of the U.S. Capitol Police says the force, still struggling six months after an insurrection that left its officers battled, bloodied and bruised, “cannot afford to be complacent.” The risk to lawmakers is higher than ever. And the threat from lone-wolf attackers is only growing.
In an interview with The Associated Press, J. Thomas Manger said his force is seeing a historically high number of threats against lawmakers, thousands more than just a few years ago. He predicts authorities will respond to close to 9,000 threats against members of Congress in 2021 — more than 4,100 had been reported from January to March.
“We have never had the level of threats against members of Congress that we’re seeing today,” Manger said. “Clearly, we’ve got a bigger job in terms of the protection aspect of our responsibilities, we’ve got a bigger job than we used to.”
Manger touted changes that have been made in intelligence gathering after the department was widely criticized for being woefully underprepared to fend off a mob of insurrectionists in January. Officials had compiled intelligence showing white supremacists and other extremists were likely to assemble in Washington on Jan. 6 and that violent disruptions were possible. Police officers were brutally beaten in the insurrection.
>Spanish Police Seize Over a Tonne of Cocaine Bound for Europe
The Australian government right now.
>Parks and Rec
>So basically snl because the same guy makes it
is that so? when SNL started to suck I assume
>That would be awesome.
https://apnews.com/article/prisons-caribbean-guillermo-lasso-ecuador-guayaquil-c5dc03879284357e6a97ff75724274df
At least 100 dead in gang clash at Ecuador jail; 5 beheaded
A battle between gangs in a prison in Ecuador’s coastal city of Guayaquil killed at least 100 inmates and injured 52 more in what authorities are calling the worst penitentiary massacre in the country’s history. At least five dead were reported beheaded, officials said Wednesday.
President Guillermo Lasso decreed a state of emergency in Ecuador’s prison system, and authorities attributed the bloodshed at the Guayas prison to gangs linked to international drug cartels fighting for control of the lockup.
The prisons bureau said in a tweet that “as of the moment more than 100 dead and 52 injured have been confirmed” in Tuesday’s fighting that involved guns, knives and bombs.
“It is a tragedy … that fighting among bands, criminal groups seeking internal control reaches these levels,” prisons bureau director Bolívar Garzón told radio FMundo.
Ecuador’s department of communication said the president was going to hold a news conference to announce the details of the state of emergency.
“In the history of the country, there has not been an incident similar or even close to this one,” said Ledy Zúñiga, the former president of Ecuador’s National Rehabilitation Council.
Zúñiga, who was also the country’s minister of justice, said she regretted that steps had not been taken to prevent another massacre following deadly prison riots last February.
Images circulating on social media showed dozens of bodies in the Guayas prison’s Pavilions 9 and 10. The macabre images from inside the prison were matched by the wails of relatives of prisoners waiting outside along with armored vehicles, soldiers and ambulances.
Earlier in the day, the confirmed death toll had stood at 30, but regional police commander Fausto Buenaño had said that bodies found in the prison’s pipelines were still being identified.
Officials said it took five hours to regain control of the prison Tuesday. The violence involved gunfire, knives and explosions and erupted from a dispute between the “Los Lobos” and “Los Choneros” prison gangs, officials said.
Col. Mario Pazmiño, the former director of Ecuador’s military intelligence, said the bloody fighting shows that “transnational organized crime has permeated the structure” of Ecuador’s prisons, adding that Mexico’s Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels operate through local gangs.
“They want to sow fear,” he told The Associated Press on Wednesday after officials had confirmed 5 decapitations.
In July, the president decreed another state of emergency in Ecuador’s prison system following several violent episodes that resulted in more than 100 inmates being killed. Those deaths occurred in various prisons and not in a single facility like Tuesday’s massacre.
Previously, the bloodiest day occurred in February, when 79 prisoners died in simultaneous riots in three prisons in the country. In July, 22 more prisoners lost their lives in the Litoral penitentiary, while in September a penitentiary center was attacked by drones leaving no fatalities.
https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-business-summits-environment-environment-and-nature-547d5894934d9c20e22442989031d702
Climate activist Nakate seeks immediate action in Glasgow
Try that shit in China you phony fucks.
https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-entertainment-london-prince-charles-royalty-3d0e043e3cec2c40d26d22dda08d4199
London honors Princess Diana with blue plaque at former home
London finally honored the late Princess Diana Wednesday with a blue plaque at the place she called home in the two years before she married Prince Charles and her life in the goldfish bowl began.
For Diana, 60 Coleherne Court, an apartment near London’s fashionable King’s Road, was the start of a new adventure. Settling in the capital on reaching her 18th birthday, Diana shared the apartment with a number of friends from 1979 to 1981. It was there that she first started to court Charles.
One of her roommates then, Virginia Clarke, helped unveil the English Heritage plaque during Wednesday’s ceremony.
“Those were happy days for all of us and the flat was always full of laughter,” she said. “Diana went off to become so much to so many. It’s wonderful that her legacy will be remembered in this way.”
According to Andrew Morton’s 1992 best-selling book “Diana, In Her Own Words,” Diana described her years at the property as “the happiest time” of her life.
Diana, who died in a car crash in Paris in 1997, is the highest profile former member of the monarchy to be bestowed the honor. She was nominated by the London Assembly in 2019 after the body ran a campaign asking Londoners to suggest women worthy of a blue plaque.
“Diana had, and still has, a very special place in the hearts of Londoners and we are thrilled to see her blue plaque formally placed as a monument to her work for others,” said Andrew Boff, chairman of the London Assembly.
The honor comes in the year when she would have celebrated her 60th birthday.
“Diana was one of the world’s most famous women and she used her fame and influence to raise awareness of issues such as homelessness and landmines,” said Anna Eavis, the curatorial director at English Heritage.
“It is fitting that our blue plaque remembers her at this place where her life in the public eye first began,” she added.
The renowned London blue plaque program began more than 150 years ago. The plaques commemorate people who achieved something worthwhile in their lives and who made London their home at some point. There are more than 900 official plaques in the capital.
A Danish artist who was was given a pile of money by a museum with which to create a piece of artwork, submitted two empty canvases — titled “Take the Money and Run.”
Jens Haaning was given the equivalent of nearly $84,000 in Danish kroner and euro bank notes by the Kunsten Museum of Modern Art in Aalborg.
For its exhibition on labor conditions and money, entitled “Work It Out” that opened Sept. 24, the museum commissioned him to recreate two of his earlier pieces, which featured bank notes attached to a canvas representing the average annual wage in Denmark and Austria. As well as lending him the notes, the museum also paid him 25,000 kroner ($3,900) for the work.
But when museum officials received the completed artworks, they were blank.
“The artwork is that I have taken the money,” Haaning told a radio show on the P1 channel that is part of Danish broadcaster DR this week. He declined to say where the money was.
Jesus Christ that’s Jason Bourne
https://twitter.com/AsraNomani/status/1443349939543756801
>it's good to know you're here again
>Australians need to stock up on essentials in order to weather the coming storm.
An FBI agent goes undercover to bust a right-wing terror plot. But are the others also undercover FBI agents? Yes. They all are FBI agents.
>Key is: don’t have friends. Don’t trust anyone. Not even your wife
>Don’t trust anyone. Not even your wife
>They have house spiders the size of cats.
I don't feel so good.
Laurence Tribe
>Try staying sober
https://twitter.com/jrubinblogger
https://twitter.com/rickhasen/status/1443310382555164674
>why's it so slow?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_alcohol_spectrum_disorder
ok that's enough Greta jokes