All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

Record Arctic temperatures will have ‘devastating effects’, UCC scientist warns

“The record warming in Siberia is a warning sign of major proportions,” the climate scientist warned. “And it is another sign that the Arctic amplifies global warming even more than we thought.”  Lead scientist at the Moscow-based Voeikov Main Geophysical Observatory, Andrei Kiselyov, said in the Arctic the temperature increased by 0.69C every decade. “In that respect, we’re ahead of the whole planet,” Mr Kiselyov said.

Source: Record Arctic temperatures will have ‘devastating effects’, UCC scientist warns

India calls in army to run facilities in New Delhi as coronavirus cases surge

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NEW DELHI (REUTERS) – India reported 16,000 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday (June 24), its highest daily increase since the outbreak began, and the government called in the army to manage new treatment centres with thousands of additional hospital beds in New Delhi.

At more than 456,000 confirmed coronavirus cases so far, India is the fourth-worst hit country in the world, behind the United States, Brazil and Russia, according to a Reuters tally.

Cases are expected to keep rising as state governments ease restrictions in place since lockdown was first imposed in late March.

New Delhi, the sprawling capital of more than 20 million people, also recorded its highest single-day increase on Wednesday, with more than 3,900 cases. Local government data showed that of the roughly 13,400 beds allocated to Covid-19 patients in the city, around 6,200 were occupied.

The federal home ministry said the city would have around 20,000 additional beds available by next week at temporary facilities run by army doctors and nurses.

These include a 10,000 bed facility hosted at a religious centre and railway coaches turned into wards.

“Armed Forces personnel have been detailed for providing medical care and attention to Covid-19 patients housed in the Railway coaches in Delhi,” Home Minister Amit Shah said.

The city government estimates it will have 550,000 Covid-19 cases by the end of July, and will require 150,000 beds by then.

Delhi’s Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said that a new federal government order to take every positive patient to an assessment centre as opposed to evaluating them at home was stretching already limited resources.

“Our ambulance system, our medical system is under pressure now. Today, we are having to take patients in buses,” Mr Sisodia said, adding that he had written to the federal home ministry. “This (rule) is creating chaos in New Delhi.”

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When the coronavirus hit, Japan already had an army of contact tracers, East Asia News & Top Stories – The Straits Times

US once did contact tracing for STDs and TB but let it slide. We were mistaken and thousands have died because of that error.

Kawasaki’s seven public health centres are part of a web of over 450 such institutions across Japan which played a crucial role in limiting the nation’s outbreak. The centres meant Japan already had an army of trained contact tracers when the virus struck, and may provide a model for other countries as they look to build systems that will future-proof them for the next pandemic. Experts contend that the existence of these centres, which implement and execute central public health policy from giving the elderly diet advice to investigating child abuse, are one of the key reasons Japan was able to avoid an explosion in coronavirus cases.

Source: When the coronavirus hit, Japan already had an army of contact tracers, East Asia News & Top Stories – The Straits Times

Open Thread | The Nursing Home That Took Care of Business 👏👏 | 3CHICSPOLITICO

The oldest African-American owned and operated nursing home in the state has had no infections from coronavirus among its residents and employees, @DanRodricks writes, because its director took immediate action. https://bit.ly/37IHpB5

Baltimore Sun

Source: Open Thread | The Nursing Home That Took Care of Business 👏👏 | 3CHICSPOLITICO

Protest News That Did Not Make It — In Saner Thought

For damn near a month protests over police brutality was been waging and giving us bloggers lots to write about. But there are a few things that did not make the nightly news during the protests….. First….. Via CREW: During recent protests against the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers Floyd, Trump’s deployment […]

Protest News That Did Not Make It — In Saner Thought

How False Antifa Protest Rumors Spread – The New York Times

on the local level, the source of the false information has usually been more subtle, and shows the complexity of stunting misinformation online. The bad information often first appears in a Twitter or Facebook post, or a YouTube video there. It is then shared on online spaces like local Facebook groups, the neighborhood social networking app Nextdoor and community texting networks. These posts can fall under the radar of the tech companies and online fact checkers.

“The dynamic is tricky because many times these local groups don’t have much prior awareness of the body of conspiratorial content surrounding some of these topics,” said Renée DiResta, a disinformation researcher at the Stanford Internet Observatory. “The first thing they see is a trusted fellow community member giving them a warning.”

Justice Department Pressured Prosecutors to Go Easy on Roger Stone, Attorney Says

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A Justice Department lawyer who prosecuted Roger Stone is alleging that attorneys involved in the case were pressured by their superiors to “cut Stone a break” due to his relationship with the president. 

Stone was convicted of five counts of making false statements—as well as obstruction of Congress and witness tampering—after lying to the House Intelligence Committee about his efforts in 2016 to contact WikiLeaks regarding Democratic emails hacked by Russia. Evidence compiled by special counsel Robert Mueller showed that Stone consulted personally with Donald Trump and senior Trump campaign officials about Stone’s efforts to glean information on WikiLeaks’ plans for disseminating the stolen emails.

“What I heard—repeatedly—was that Roger Stone was being treated differently from any other defendant because of his relationship to the President,” Aaron Zelinsky says in written testimony submitted to the House Judiciary Committee ahead of a hearing scheduled for Wednesday. “I was told that the Acting US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Timothy Shea, was receiving heavy pressure from the highest levels of the Department of Justice to cut Stone a break, and that the US Attorney’s sentencing instructions to us were based on political considerations. I was also told that the acting US Attorney was giving Stone such unprecedentedly favorable treatment because he was ‘afraid of the President.’”

Shea was installed as acting head of the DC federal prosecutors’ office by Attorney General William Barr after Barr removed former US Attorney Jessie Liu. Shea is now the acting head of the Drug Enforcement Administration. This alleged meddling in the Stone case appears to be part of a pattern. Barr later moved to drop a case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, who had already pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States. And late last Friday, Barr ousted the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Geoffrey Berman, who was overseeing several cases related to Trump associates. Spokespeople for the DOJ, the DC US attorney’s office, and the DEA did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Zelinsky’s testimony.

Zelinsky describes how Shea and other Justice Department officials pressured the front-line prosecutors in the case to recommend a more lenient sentence for Stone than those prosecutors believed was fair. Zelinsky says their jobs were threatened. “We were told by a supervisor that the US Attorney had political reasons for his instructions, which our supervisor agreed was unethical and wrong,” he says. “However, we were instructed that we should go along with the US Attorney’s 10 instructions, because this case was ‘not the hill worth dying onand that we could ‘lose our jobs’ if we did not toe the line.”

The prosecutors initially suggested that Stones should receive more than seven years in prison. But the day after a 2:48 am tweet in which Trump complained that the recommendation was “horrible and very unfair,” Zelinsky says he learned that the department would issue a new memo recommending a lighter sentence.

In failing to adhere to normal sentencing guidelines, the department “treated Roger Stone differently and more leniently in ways that are virtually, if not entirely, unprecedented,” Zelinsky says. He and other lawyers who prosecuted Stone withdrew from the case in protest of this political interference.

It’s not clear if the DOJ reversal actually affected Stone’s sentence. US District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ultimately sentenced Stone to 40 months in prison, citing “the egregious nature of Stone’s conduct.” Cleary referring to Trump, Jackson said it was important that the sentence not be influenced by anyone whose “political career was aided by the defendant. And surely not someone who has personal involvement in the events underlying the case.”

Read Zelinsky’s prepared testimony: