Digital divide: ‘My children’s classroom is a car park’

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During the coronavirus pandemic, life has turned to the internet. But not everyone has it.

Staggering Number of Hysterectomies Happening at ICE Facility, Whistleblower Say

A whistleblower complaint filed Monday by several legal advocacy groups accuses a detention center of performing a staggering number of hysterectomies on immigrant women, as well as failing to follow procedures meant to keep both detainees and employees safe from the coronavirus.

The complaint, filed on behalf of several detained immigrants and a nurse named Dawn Wooten, details several accounts of recent “jarring medical neglect” at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, which is run by the private prison company LaSalle South Corrections and houses people incarcerated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In interviews with Project South, a Georgia nonprofit, multiple women said that hysterectomies were stunningly frequent among immigrants detained at the facility.

“When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp,” said one woman, who said she’d met five women who’d had hysterectomies after being de

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A whistleblower complaint filed Monday by several legal advocacy groups accuses a detention center of performing a staggering number of hysterectomies on immigrant women, as well as failing to follow procedures meant to keep both detainees and employees safe from the coronavirus.

The complaint, filed on behalf of several detained immigrants and a nurse named Dawn Wooten, details several accounts of recent “jarring medical neglect” at the Irwin County Detention Center in Ocilla, Georgia, which is run by the private prison company LaSalle South Corrections and houses people incarcerated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In interviews with Project South, a Georgia nonprofit, multiple women said that hysterectomies were stunningly frequent among immigrants detained at the facility.

“When I met all these women who had had surgeries, I thought this was like an experimental concentration camp,” said one woman, who said she’d met five women who’d had hysterectomies after being detained between October and December 2019. The woman said that immigrants at Irwin are often sent to see one particular gynecologist outside of the facility. “It was like they’re experimenting with their bodies.”

In one case, Wooten said, a woman who ended up with a hysterectomy was not properly anesthetized and overhead the doctor say that he’d taken out the wrong ovary. That woman had to go back and get her other ovary removed as well, Wooten said.

“We’ve questioned among ourselves, like, goodness, he’s taking everybody’s stuff out,” said Wooten, who was a full-time employee at Irwin until July. “That’s his specialty, he’s the uterus collector. I know that’s ugly.”

“Is he collecting these things or something,” she continued. “Everybody he sees, he’s taking all their uteruses out or he’s taken their tubes out. What in the world.”

Wooten also said she’d talked to several detained immigrants who’d had hysterectomies but didn’t know why. One detained immigrant told Project South that, ahead of the scheduled procedure, she was given multiple different explanations about what would happen and why it was necessary.

While ICE reported in August that 41 immigrants at Irwin have tested positive for COVID-19, Wooten believes that the true number may be much higher, according to the complaint. Women housed in multiple units in the facility allegedly exhibited COVID-19 symptoms, but were not tested for the virus for weeks. Immigrants have also allegedly continued to be transferred in and out of the facility, against guidelines by the Centers for Disease Control and the advice of Irwin’s own medical director.

The complaint also alleges that both the detained immigrants and staffers at Irwin lacked the personal protective equipment they need to stay safe during the coronavirus pandemic: People in both groups have only received one mask each since the pandemic broke out. It is also impossible to socially distance within the facility, according to the complaint. 

“There is no way to protect [against COVID-19] at all here in the facility,” one immigrant said. “We share everything together. There is no way at all we can feel protected here in the facility.

Detained immigrants also said that the medical and quarantine unit in one part of the Irwin facility were filthy. One woman said she had to clean her cell using shampoo because staffers wouldn’t give her any cleaning chemicals; she recalled seeing another woman use her socks to do the same. 

“If it wasn’t for my faith in God, I think I would have gone insane and just break down and probably gone as far as hurting myself,” the woman said. “There are a lot of people here who end up in medical trying to kill themselves because of how crazy it is.”

Some men at the facility even went on hunger strike, demanding to be released or to have better protections against the coronavirus, according to the complaint. But nothing  changed.

Meanwhile, employees are also expected to work even if they have COVID-19 symptoms and are awaiting their test results, Wooten said. And management at the facility also allegedly refuses to tell officers if any detained immigrants have tested positive for COVID-19, which could heighten their risk of contracting the virus. 

“Ms. Wooten explained that she believes ICDC is hiding information about COVID-19 in order to keep things quiet,” the complaint alleged. “She stated that everyone in the facility is scared at this point, so management does not want to tell officers and detained immigrants the truth because they are afraid of an uproar. Instead, the secrecy has created a ‘silent pandemic’ where even if officers get COVID-19 from the facility, the officers won’t be able to blame ICDC because no one knows how prevalent COVID-19 is inside ICDC due to not testing detained immigrants and not sharing who has the virus.”

Neither ICE nor LaSalle Corrections immediately responded to VICE News requests for comment on the complaint. Besides Project South, the advocacy groups Georgia Detention Watch, Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights, and South Georgia Immigrant Support Network helped file the complaint with the Department of Homeland Security’s office of the inspector general.

Cover: Gynecology surgery, Chambery Metropole Savoie Hospital, France, Conservative hysterectomy by vaginal laparoscopy in a 44-year old patient suffering from adenomyosis and uterine lymphoma. (Photo by: BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Texas changes how it reports coronavirus positivity rate | The Texas Tribune

The Texas Department of State Health Services said it will now “primarily rely” on a new calculation of the daily positivity rate — defined as the share of tests that yield positive results — that takes into account the date on which a coronavirus test was administered. Officials said the new metric will give a more accurate representation of viral transmission in Texas on a given day.

It also means that each day’s positivity rate will be an oft-changing number, fluctuating as officials collect lab results over time. Labs and hospitals report their test results to the state with varying degrees of timeliness, and state officials will have to recalculate the positivity rates for previous days as more test results from those dates pour in.

Source: Texas changes how it reports coronavirus positivity rate | The Texas Tribune

EU leaders hold trade talks with China despite rift

European leaders have been holding trade talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, despite recent tensions over China’s treatment of its Uighur population, and the Hong Kong security bill.

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A Whistleblower Says Facebook Ignored Global Political Manipulation

The 6,600-word memo, written by former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang, is filled with concrete examples of heads of government and political parties in Azerbaijan and Honduras using fake accounts or misrepresenting themselves to sway public opinion. In countries including India, Ukraine, Spain, Bolivia, and Ecuador she found evidence of coordinated campaigns of varying sizes to boost or hinder political candidates or outcomes, though she did not always conclude who was behind them.

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Facebook ignored or was slow to act on evidence that fake accounts on its platform have been undermining elections and political affairs around the world, according to an explosive memo sent by a recently fired Facebook employee and obtained by BuzzFeed News. From the report: The 6,600-word memo, written by former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang, is filled with concrete examples of heads of government and political parties in Azerbaijan and Honduras using fake accounts or misrepresenting themselves to sway public opinion. In countries including India, Ukraine, Spain, Bolivia, and Ecuador she found evidence of coordinated campaigns of varying sizes to boost or hinder political candidates or outcomes, though she did not always conclude who was behind them. “In the three years I’ve spent at Facebook, I’ve found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry, and caused international news on multiple occasions,” wrote Zhang, who declined to talk to BuzzFeed News. Her Linkedin profile said she “worked as the data scientist for the Facebook Site Integrity fake engagement team” and dealt with “bots influencing elections and the like.”

“I have personally made decisions that affected national presidents without oversight, and taken action to enforce against so many prominent politicians globally that I’ve lost count,” she wrote. The memo is a damning account of Facebook’s failures. It’s the story of Facebook abdicating responsibility for malign activities on its platform that could affect the political fate of nations outside the United States or Western Europe. It’s also the story of a junior employee wielding extraordinary moderation powers that affected millions of people without any real institutional support, and the personal torment that followed.

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Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Court Rules Trump Can Deport 300,000 Migrants Who’ve Lived in the U.S. Legally for Years

Racism rules in court too?

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Around 300,000 immigrants from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan could lose their temporary protected status and be forced to return to their home countries under a federal appeals court decision handed down Monday.

The 2-1 decision from the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is a victory for President Trump, who has tied ending the humanitarian program to his push for a “merit-based” immigration system and hardline immigration policies.

While the decision is sure to be appealed, it adds more uncertainty for hundreds of thousands of immigrant families, who may be forced to return to their home countries as early as March after decades in the U.S. Their fate has been in limbo since Trump announced plans to end their protective status in 2018.

Started in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush, the TPS program allows citizens of countries fleeing natural disasters, war, and other emergencies to stay in the U.S. To date, some 200,000 Salvadorans have received the humanitarian status; 86,000 Hondurans; 45,000 Haitians, and 2,500 Nicaraguans.

The ruling underscores the importance of the November elections as it pertains to immigrants, as the ultimate fate of the program will likely be decided by the next administration.

“These people have become a political football despite the fact that they have lived in the U.S. for decades,” said Royce Murray, managing director of programs at the American Immigration Council. “This ruling is far from the last word because the appeals process will continue and Congress could act any time.” 

Conservative political commentator Michelle Malkin hailed the decision on Twitter. “File this under Top Reasons I’m voting for Trump. ‘Temporary protected status’ has been a “bipartisan illegal alien boondoggle for two decades,” she wrote. 

Writing for the majority, Judge Consuelo Callahan said the court lacked jurisdiction to review the Trump administration’s decision to phase out the protections. She also rejected claims that the administration’s decision to terminate the humanitarian status was motivated by “racial animus.”

To the contrary, she wrote, evidence shows it was motivated by “its focus on American’s economic and national security interests, and its view on the limitations of TPS and the program’s seeming overextension by prior administrations.”

In dissent, Judge Morgan Brenda Christen said there was ample evidence to show that the decision to end the plaintiffs protective status was motivated by racial animus. President Trump reportedly referred to Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as “shithole countries” in 2018 in a meeting about a proposed bipartisan immigration deal.

“Remarkably, the government urges us to interpret the many denigrating comments in the record as descriptions of inferior living conditions in foreign countries, rather than evidence of racial animus,” Christen wrote. “The president’s statements require no deciphering.”

She added that the human impact of ending the humanitarian program should be taken into consideration. 

“The irreparable harm faced by plaintiffs — who include 300,000 non-citizens and 200,000 U.S. citizen children facing separation from their parents or country — could hardly be more compelling,” Christen wrote.  

The ruling could also affect immigrants from Honduras and Nepal who also have temporary protected status. A separate lawsuit was filed on their behalf but put on hold pending the outcome of this case.  

If the decision stands, Salvadorans with temporary protected status would have to leave the U.S. by early November, according to immigration-rights advocates. They said the deadline for immigrants from Nicaragua, Haiti and Sudan is early March.

College Kids Are Freaking Out About Their Infected Campuses – The New York Times

The traditional autumnal return to campus — a time of reconnecting with old friends and diving headfirst into classes and activities — had taken on morbid overtones. Students spent their first week tracking campus case numbers, getting tested, reporting peers for partying, nervously getting meals at crowded dining halls and waiting for classes to be shut down.

Their experience is not unique. Thousands of students on campuses that have resumed in-person classes have watched anxiously as coronavirus case numbers have skyrocketed around them.

Students at other colleges have flooded social media with photos of outdoor gatherings and of their crowded classrooms and dining halls, expressing outrage at their administrations. On a Reddit page for University of Georgia students, people have posted memes mocking the university’s president, Jere Morehead, for keeping the school open even as cases have skyrocketed; others have uploaded footage of packed frat parties, demanding that the administration take action.

One video posted on Twitter showed more students in a J.M.U. classroom than there were seats available. Chairs had been taped over to encourage distancing, but the result was that groups of students just sat on the floor.

Gemma Dobbs, 20, a J.M.U. theater major who tweeted about her frustration with the university’s haphazard social distancing policies, described the feeling of walking into a crowded music lecture as “apocalyptic.”

“They’re putting all this pressure on us to not party and, and my friends and I aren’t,” she said in a phone interview. “And then all of a sudden, I’m in a room with 199 other undergrads, most of whom probably live on campus, and we’re sharing our germs with each other.”

UAE, Bahrain deals to only go into effect after receiving gov’t approval – The Jerusalem Post

The agreements Israel is set to sign with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, respectively, will not go into effect until after receiving government approval, Israeli media reported on Monday. The information comes from a letter written by the prime minister’s office legal adviser, Shlomit Barnea-Fargo, which came in response to recent allegations that contents of the agreements had yet to presented and approved by the government.

Source: UAE, Bahrain deals to only go into effect after receiving gov’t approval – The Jerusalem Post

G20 leaders urged to act over Saudi detentions as summit approaches

say his name: Jamal Ahmad Khashoggi

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Human rights group says governments must threaten to boycott Riyadh conference

Only five of the 68 Saudis arrested in a purge on dissent launched by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman three years ago have been released, posing a challenge to western leaders before the G20 summit due to be held in Riyadh in November.

The human rights group Grant Liberty said that just two months before Saudi Arabia chairs the G20 leaders, 63 of those arrested were still in prison, 15 held in the notorious Al Ha’ir facility, and just three had been released permanently, with a further two on temporary release.

Continue reading…

Brexit: growing number of Tory MPs expected to abstain or vote against bill

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Several former lawyers among those likely not to back internal market bill on Monday night

More than 20 Conservative MPs, including a number of former lawyers, are expected to rebel or abstain at the vote on Boris Johnson’s internal market bill, which the government admits will break international law, risking the possibility that they will lose the Conservative whip.

Two former barristers – the ex-attorney general, Geoffrey Cox, and Rehman Chishti, who quit as the special envoy on religious freedom – have told the government they will not back the bill on Monday night, along with former solicitor Gary Streeter.

Continue reading…

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