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Changing Mask Guidelines: “Awkward Dance” Between CDC and OSHA
A process is now underway for the Occupational Health and Safety Administration to issue a new set of standards. Public health experts fear that the CDC’s newest guidelines on masking––which no longer recommend universal masking in healthcare settings––may weaken OSHA standards.
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Protests in London and D.C. Against Prosecution of WikiLeaks Founder
“Fighting extradition to the United States, Assange has been imprisoned in the UK since his arrest in 2019, when the Trump administration levied 18 counts which would criminalize each step of the reporting process, including soliciting, receiving, possessing, and publishing classified information. Major news outlets and press freedom groups across the board have condemned the indictment as a landmark threat to the First Amendment’s freedom of the press.”
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* Putin’s Annexation * Biden’s Lies About Backing Iraq War 20 Years Ago
Zunes notes that the U.S. government is the “only government to recognize Israel’s illegal annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights and Morocco’s illegal annexation of Western Sahara.” … Biden has claimed: “From the moment ‘shock and awe’ started, from that moment, I was opposed to the effort.” But Zunes notes: “Biden defended the imminent launch of the invasion by saying, ‘I support the president. Diplomacy over avoiding war is dead. … I do not see any alternative. It is not as if we can back away now.’ He added, ‘Let loose the dogs of war. I’m confident we will win.’
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Assessing Early Data on Monkeypox Vaccine’s Effectiveness
The CDC released early analysis that indicates people who were eligible for the Jynneos vaccine but did not receive it were 14 times more likely to contract the virus compared with vaccinated people. But Keletso Makofane, a specialist in intersections of health and human rights concerns, said the public must be careful not to over-interpret the data.
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Israel’s Apartheid: Attacking Those Who Speak Out
Halper quotes Israeli leaders: “In 2007, Israel’s former education minister Shulamit Aloni wrote, ‘the state of Israel practices its own, quite violent, form of apartheid with the native Palestinian population.'”… Tutu, in his last published piece, called on Biden to acknowledge that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal, writing: “there are few truths more critical to face than a nuclear weapons arsenal in the hands of an apartheid government.”
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Long Covid: A New Report
The Center for Economic and Policy Research and the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center released a new report last week on long Covid.
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“Pretty Extreme”: CDC Decision to Loosen Universal Masking in Health Care Settings
This week, the CDC issued an update to its masking recommendations. The agency no longer recommends universal masking in health care settings. Epidemiologist Justin Feldman says the change in guidance is “pretty extreme.”
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Patents on 7 Out of 10 Top Drugs Set to Expire This Decade: What Next?
Patents on 7 out of 10 of the 10 highest selling drugs in the U.S. are set to expire this decade, without urgently needed patent reforms, pharmaceutical companies will be able to delay those expirations––making it nearly impossible for biosimilar generic drugs to come on the market, shutting out competition, and keeping drug prices high.
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The CIA Just Invested in Woolly Mammoth Resurrection Technology
“The embrace of this technology, according to In-Q-Tel’s blog post, will help allow U.S. government agencies to read, write, and edit genetic material, and, importantly, to steer global biological phenomena that impact ‘nation-to-nation competition’ while enabling the United States ‘to help set the ethical, as well as the technological, standards’ for its use.”
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Explosions Cause Major Damage to Both Nord Stream Pipelines
“The era of Russian domination of gas is coming to an end, an era marked by blackmail, threats and coercion,’ Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said at a ceremony for the pipeline”
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“With a tiny staff, it has managed to place on the air and in newspapers, points of view otherwise excluded from the national debate.”
Howard Zinn