Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

Cherokee Nation Addresses Bias Against Descendants of Enslaved People – The New York Times

It has been a long-running point of racial friction between members of the Cherokee Nation and thousands of descendants of Black people who had been enslaved by the tribe before the Civil War.

Through a series of legal and political battles, those descendants, known as Freedmen, have been pushing to win equal status as members of the tribe, including the right to run for tribal office and receive full benefits like access to tribal health care and housing. And this week the Oklahoma tribe took another big step to resolve the issue by eliminating from its Constitution language that based citizenship on being descended “by blood” from tribal members listed on a late 19th-century census.

The change effectively codified in the Cherokee Constitution the effects of a 2017 federal court ruling that held that the Cherokee Freedmen should have all the rights of tribal citizens, based on an 1866 treaty that laid out the terms of emancipation. Julie Hubbard, a spokeswoman for the Cherokee Nation, said there had been about 2,900 enrolled Freedmen citizens before the 2017 ruling; another 5,600 have become enrolled citizens since then.

Health care workers get COVID-19 in the community more often than the workplace, Cedars-Sinai study finds

Health care workers might not be that different from the general population in the factors that determine their risk of getting COVID-19, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center said Wednesday.

A study led by Cedars-Sinai shows that health care workers are more likely to have antibodies to COVID-19 in their blood if they are Black or Latino or have hypertension.

But it suggests that the community — rather than the workplace — is the more common source of coronavirus exposure.

The research, published online in the peer-reviewed journal BMJ Open, was based on blood tests and a survey of more than 6,000 employees in the Cedars-Sinai Health System starting last May.

LOS ANGELES — Health care workers might not be that different from the general population in the factors that determine their risk of getting COVID-19, researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center said Wednesday.

A study led by Cedars-Sinai shows that health care workers are more likely to have antibodies to COVID-19 in their blood if they are Black or Latino or have hypertension.

But it suggests that the community — rather than the workplace — is the more common source of coronavirus exposure.

The research, published online in the peer-reviewed journal BMJ Open, was based on blood tests and a survey of more than 6,000 employees in the Cedars-Sinai Health System starting last May.

During that first wave of the pandemic, about 4% of the employees were found to have antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus in their blood, indicating they had been exposed to COVID-19.

“Our study shows that we started out last summer with a relatively low exposure rate to SARS-CoV-2,” said Dr. Susan Cheng, associate professor of cardiology at the hospital and director of the Institute for Research on Healthy Aging in the Department of Cardiology at the Smidt Heart Institute. “This fact means the vast majority of our communities have remained vulnerable to infection, and therefore vaccination and continued vigilance are critical.”

Across the board, regardless of whether they had been diagnosed with COVID-19, blood tests showed that health care workers were significantly more likely to have antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 virus if they were Black or Latino rather than of other racial or ethnic groups.

“These disparities underscore the ongoing, urgent need for us to understand why certain demographics and communities remain at higher risk in the pandemic than others,” said Kimia Sobhani, medical director of the clinical core laboratories and associate professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Cedars-Sinai. “The reasons may well include structural and societal factors that we were unable to capture.”

Another significant finding was that having antibodies to the virus was related more to having had community-based exposure, including a household member previously diagnosed with COVID-19, than to workplace exposure.

“Our data show that public health measures work,” said study co-author Dr. Peggy Miles, medical director of Employee Health Services at Cedars-Sinai. “Our workers are taking care of the sickest people, including high-risk patients, and yet we see very little transmission of coronavirus in the hospital.”

The study also found:

— Not all workers with antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 reported experiencing symptoms, but among those who did, the most common symptom was loss of smell.

— The degree of antibody response to the virus was related not only to the magnitude of exposure and severity of illness but also to the presence of hypertension, or high blood pressure, for reasons that are not yet clear.

— Asthma patients had lower antibody levels that were less often above the threshold of detection used in the study. The reason was unclear.

Related Articles

A Deeper Look at the DREAMers Who Could Feature in the Legalization Debate in Congress

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The DREAM Act of 2021 could represent one of the narrower legalization measures with better prospects for passage in a narrowly divided Congress. MPI’s latest estimates of the DREAMers who could gain conditional and then permanent legal status are offered here, as are the share of DREAMers who feature in another ongoing conversation, around essential workers in the U.S. labor market overall as well as in the health-care sector.

VEM comigo!

A person without knowledge is like a blank book. We know it exists, but we don’t know how to position ourselves, to fight for our rights. And when we don’t know how to fight for these, the others do with us what they want. They simply add the amount they think they should. ” Be an updated person, nobody loses by learning. Knowledge is everything.

Pensamentos.me/VEM comigo!

Uma pessoa sem conhecimento é como um livro em branco. Sabemos que ela existe, mas não sabe se posicionar, lutar por seus direitos. E quando não sabemos lutar por estes, os outros, fazem conosco o que bem entendem. Eles simplesmente, acrescentam o valor que achar que devem”.

Seja uma pessoa atualizada, ninguém perde por aprender. Conhecimento é tudo.

Marii Freire Pereira

https://pensamentos.me/ VEM comigo!

Imagem: recurso.com.br

Santarém, Pá 24 de fevereiro de 2021

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The Websites Sustaining Britain’s Far-Right Influencers – bellingcat

A Bellingcat investigation into the online ecosystem sustaining popular figures on Britain’s far-right has found that many are using YouTube and other mainstream platforms—even from restricted accounts—to funnel viewers to smaller, lower-moderation platforms and fundraising sites, which continue to pay out.

This investigation was based on a database Bellingcat compiled—over three months—of popular personalities on the British far-right. It comes as the British government prepares key legislation to compel tech companies to make the internet a safer space.

Source: The Websites Sustaining Britain’s Far-Right Influencers – bellingcat

Sacred Devils Tower

Roadtirement

Remember this from the 1977 “Close Encounters” movie?

Close up shot of the columnar structure. Each “column” is about 8 feet across!

The Devils Tower is a sacred site to Native Americans and is an NPS National
Monument. Located in the Black Hills of northeastern Wyoming, this remarkable geologic butte stands nearly 900 feet tall from it base to the top. The rock is igneous and was formed when the molten lava intruded into layers of sedimentary rocks. Those rocks weathered away, leaving the Devils Tower that we see today.

There is interesting history of both the geology of the tower, as well as the history of human involvement of the site. This was the first National Monument, so designated ten years before the National Park Service was founded. Study the Devils Tower website for details about the park, its history and current covid restrictions.

We visited Devils Tower back…

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Japan won’t require Olympic vaccinations despite appeal

Seems dumb not to require vaccinations… of competitors, staff and coaches.

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Japan’s Olympics minister said Wednesday that coronavirus vaccinations would not be a prerequisite for participation at this summer’s Olympics and Paralympics, despite a World Anti-Doping Agency appeal that athletes be inoculated.

“We are putting together a number of comprehensive measures to realize a safe and secure event without needing vaccinations to be a prerequisite,” Tamayo Marukawa, who last week took over as Olympics minister, told a press conference.

Read full story here

I have had the privilege of observing / watching / somehow involved in Emek Shaveh’s work for many years… I know the war for justice is encountered with many many battles that most of the times are unsettled and lost when you are facing a system that is wholly organized and against you… winning sometimes only says that the true success is coming as long as there are people who fight sincerely for justice . Congratulations Emek SHAVEH בג”ץ: צו על תנאי נגד הרכבל בעיר העתיקהwww.inn.co.ilבעקבות עתירת ארגוני השמאל הקיצוני דורשים השופטים מהמדינה להסביר מדוע אושר פרויקט התחבורה במסלול אישור שנועד לפרויקטים תיירותיים

نادية عصام حرحش Nadia’s Jerusalem
@NadiasJerusalem

I have had the privilege of observing / watching / somehow involved in Emek Shaveh’s work for many years… I know the war for justice is encountered with many many battles that most of the times are unsettled and lost when you are facing a system that is wholly organized and against you… winning sometimes only says that the true success is coming as long as there are people who fight sincerely for justice .

Congratulations Emek SHAVEH

safe_image.php?w=397&h=397&url=https%3A%
www.inn.co.il

בעקבות עתירת ארגוני השמאל הקיצוני דורשים השופטים מהמדינה להסביר מדוע אושר פרויקט התחבורה במסלול אישור שנועד לפרויקטים תיירותיים

Boris Johnson ‘a liar’ who will blame Brexit costs on Covid, says diplomat

Sylvie Bermann, former French ambassador, puts PM’s handling of pandemic alongside Donald Trump’s

Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.

She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.

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Sylvie Bermann, former French ambassador, puts PM’s handling of pandemic alongside Donald Trump’s

Boris Johnson is “an unrepentant and inveterate liar” who feels he is not subject to the same rules as others, Sylvie Bermann, the former French ambassador to the UK during the Brexit vote, says in a new book.

She also claims some Brexiters are consumed with hatred for Germany and gripped by a myth that they liberated Europe on their own, describing Brexit as a triumph of emotion over reason, won by a campaign full of lies in which negative attitudes to migration were exploited by figures such as Johnson and Michael Gove.

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