F.D.A. Approves Powerful New Opioid Despite Warnings of Likely Abuse – The New York Times Correct bribes paid – more will die and drug company will get rich!

An F.D.A. spokeswoman said that while the issue was not brought formally in front of the drug safety committee, “there were drug safety and risk experts on the committee whose expert input was taken very seriously throughout this process.”

‘Are You Actually an M.D.?’: A Black Doctor Is Questioned as She Intervenes on a Delta Flight – The New York Times How racist are we? Read this.

Dr. Stanford said she was not challenged for the rest of the two-hour flight. As they were descending, she said, one attendant told her they would not need to check her license anymore because “it seems like you were able to handle everything.” She interpreted the encounter as biased because of the persistent questioning about whether she was a physician even after she had provided proof. “It never stopped,” she said. “I just couldn’t figure out why we were having this discussion.” Delta apologized to Dr. Stanford on Wednesday and said it was investigating, according to the email it sent her. On Thursday, Anthony Black, a Delta spokesman, noted that the airline had changed its policy about medical credentials in 2016 to say flight attendants are not required to verify credentials from someone who says she or he is a physician, physician assistant, nurse, paramedic or emergency technician.

Here’s How Much Bots Drive Conversation During News Events | WIRED

Late last week, about 60 percent of the conversation was driven by likely bots. Over the weekend, even as the conversation about the caravan was overshadowed by more recent tragedies, bots were still driving nearly 40 percent of the caravan conversation on Twitter. That’s according to an assessment by Robhat Labs, a startup founded by two UC Berkeley students that builds tools to detect bots online. The team’s first product, a Chrome extension called BotCheck.me, allows users to see which accounts in their Twitter timelines are most likely bots. Now it’s launching a new tool aimed at news organizations called FactCheck.me, which allows journalists to see how much bot activity there is across an entire topic or hashtag.

Source: Here’s How Much Bots Drive Conversation During News Events | WIRED

Friday Open Thread | Ex-Florida GOP chair shreds Trump: The worst “social poison to afflict our country in decades” | 3CHICSPOLITICO

Al Cardenas, a frequent Trump critic, tweeted his comment in response to the president’s new campaign ad on immigration. “You are a despicable divider; the worse social poison to afflict our country in decades,” Cardenas tweeted in a post that has since been deleted. “This ad, and your full approval of it, will condemn you and your bigoted legacy forever in the annals of America’s history books.”

Source: Friday Open Thread | Ex-Florida GOP chair shreds Trump: The worst “social poison to afflict our country in decades” | 3CHICSPOLITICO

Treaties That Ended The Cold War

In the late 1980’s the US and the USSR made several treaties to limit weapons of mass destruction……and 30+ years later those treaties are falling apart….

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Nuclear Planning Group (NPG) was probably the Alliance’s most important and secretive institution during the Cold War. Notably, it worked out NATO members’ joint strategy and tactics for using non-strategic nuclear weapons in a possible all-European war with the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. Such a confrontation seemed all too possible—and sometimes almost inevitable—during acute crisis situations that brought the Cold War opponents to the brink in 1949, 1956, 1962, 1973 and 1983. In the last of the aforementioned crises, tensions spiked as the United States deployed nuclear-tipped land-based cruise missiles as well as medium-range Pershing II ballistic missiles on the territory of several European NATO allies to counter the threat of the deployment of hundreds of Soviet SS-20 nuclear intermediary missiles known in Russia as Pioneer. The Soviets produced over 800 Pioneer missiles, and each carried a heavier payload than the Pershing IIs; but their U.S. counterparts were stealthier and much more accurate.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2018/10/10/agreements_that_ended_the_cold_war_are_disintegrating_113882.html

The INF Treaty, what is it?

https://www.state.gov/t/avc/trty/102360.htm

One of the main treaties from those days was the INF Treaty…..Trump with the urging of Bolton is thinking about withdrawing from this treaty….

Years of US allegations that Russia is violating the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) may be coming to a head, with John Bolton reportedly pushing hard for President Trump to withdraw outright from the pact.

Instead of negotiating over the questions, Bolton wants the US to just withdraw outright, despite that being a major escalation on tensions with Russia. State Department and Pentagon officials are both opposed to this.

The administration was to have talks on Monday to discuss Bolton’s idea, but this has been postponed, at least for now. Still, Congress is also pushing for action on Russia, as part of general hostility toward Russia.

(antiwar.com)

Trump has made it official and pulled out of the treaty……

President Donald Trump said Saturday he will pull the United States from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty because Russia has violated the agreement. The 1987 pact, which helps protect the security of the U.S. and its allies in Europe and the Far East, prohibits the United States and Russia from possessing, producing or test-flying a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 300 to 3,400 miles. “Russia has violated the agreement. They have been violating it for many years,” Trump said after a rally in Elko, Nevada, per the AP. “And we’re not going to let them violate a nuclear agreement and go out and do weapons and we’re not allowed to.” The agreement has constrained the US from developing new weapons, but America will begin developing them unless Russia and China agree not to possess or develop the weapons, Trump said.

“We’ll have to develop those weapons, unless Russia comes to us and China comes to us and they all come to us and say let’s really get smart and let’s none of us develop those weapons, but if Russia’s doing it and if China’s doing it, and we’re adhering to the agreement, that’s unacceptable,” he said. National Security Adviser John Bolton was headed Saturday to Moscow to meet with senior Russian officials at a time when Moscow-Washington relations remain frosty over the Ukrainian crisis, the war in Syria and allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential race and upcoming US midterm elections. US officials have previously alleged that Russia violated the treaty by deliberately deploying a land-based cruise missile in order to pose a threat to NATO.

Yet another international treaty the Trump thinks he can throw away….And of course Russia will have something to say…..

A day after President Trump announced his intention to scrap a landmark arms control deal with Russia, the Kremlin called the pullout “a very dangerous step.” Trump is sending national security adviser John Bolton to Moscow to meet with Russian leaders, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, and was to relay Trump’s decision. Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov was quoted as telling state news agency Tass on Sunday that a US withdrawal “will cause the most serious condemnation from all members of the international community who are committed to security and stability.” The 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty bars the US and Russia from possessing, producing, or test-flying a ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 300 miles to 3,400 miles, reports the AP.

Britain said it stood “absolutely resolute” with the US, while Germany called Trump’s move “regrettable.” Heiko Maas said Sunday that the three-decades-old treaty is “an important pillar of our European security architecture.” Maas says Germany has repeatedly urged Moscow to “clear up the serious allegations of breaching the INF treaty, which Russia has so far not done.” He says Germany is urging Washington to “consider the possible consequences” of its decision, including for a US-Russian nuclear disarmament treaty beyond 2021. But Britain’s defense secretary, Gavin Williamson, blamed Russia for making a “mockery” of the pact and called on the Kremlin to “get its house in order.” Independent Russian political analyst, Dmitry Oreshkin said, “We are slowly slipping back to the situation of cold war as it was at the end of the Soviet Union, but now it could be worse because (Russian President Vladimir) Putin belongs to a generation that had no war under its belt.”

Once again Our Dear Supreme Leader has taken it upon himself to make the world a little less safe…..nukes unregulated not a very promising situation.

EPA re-registers drift-prone dicamba. Really?

Crap!

Farmer in field



On Halloween, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made a truly scary announcement — the agency decided to continue its registration of Monsanto’s (now merged with Bayer) highly controversial dicamba-based herbicide, Xtendimax. The chemical has damaged millions of acres of farmland over the past two seasons of use, and with this decision, the devastation will continue.

Farmers were outraged at the news, feeling that EPA has seriously failed to protect their businesses from harm.

Well-documented danger

In 2017, over three million acres of soybeans were damaged by dicamba drift. Farmers and farmer support organizations, PAN included, were vocal in opposition to Xtendimax, asking EPA to pull registration of the herbicide before even more damage could occur in the next growing season.

A few states such as Arkansas took action to protect their farmers, by disallowing dicamba applications between April and October 2018. In those places that put protective measures in place, damage was reduced. But EPA didn’t take meaningful action nationally against Xtendimax after the devastating damage of the 2017 season.

In 2018, over one million acres of soybeans were damaged as of mid-July, along with numerous reports of dicamba damage to fruits, vegetables, alfalfa, commercial and residential gardens and thousands of trees. Weed scientists from Iowa to Tennessee agree that the severity of the dicamba drift crisis continues to hit specialty crop and organic farmers, conventional soybean and cotton growers, orchardists, gardeners and rural residents the hardest.

Way too little, too late

In its statement announcing the decision to re-register Xtendimax, EPA indicated it would add several label restrictions, such as prohibiting early morning or evening applications, and spraying 45 days after soybean planting and 60 days after cotton planting. But farmers are very clear that this won’t go far enough to protect vulnerable crops from harm.

Iowa farmer and PAN Board Chair Denise O’Brien shared,

Monsanto has always been determined to keep farmers running on the pesticide treadmill. The reality is we can’t afford another year of Xtend crops. We need more than a few extra hours of protection per day. We need a bold and comprehensive policy solution to this drift pandemic.

The dicamba drift crisis is a direct outcome of the chemical-intensive model of farming that has become the norm for commodity crops. The widespread use of Monsanto’s (Bayer) Roundup created weed resistance, which led to introduction of seeds genetically engineered to resist dicamba, an antiquated, drift-prone herbicide.

PAN senior scientist Marcia Ishii-Eiteman has been tracking the crisis closely:

As farmers and scientists have been saying for years, dicamba simply cannot be kept on fields: it volatilizes, drifts and will continue to cause harm until EPA has the sense and integrity to pull this product from the market.

PAN will continue to work with partners in Iowa and throughout the Midwest to find a solution to the dicamba crisis, and is a co-plaintiff, along with National Family Farm Coalition and others, in a lawsuit challenging EPA’s 2016 decision to register Xtendimax in the first place.

 
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The number of U.S.-born babies with unauthorized immigrant parents has fallen since 2007

FT_18.11.01_UnauthImmigrantBirths_births

About 250,000 babies were born to unauthorized immigrant parents in the United States in 2016, the latest year for which information is available, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. This represents a 36% decrease from a peak of about 390,000 in 2007.

The post The number of U.S.-born babies with unauthorized immigrant parents has fallen since 2007 appeared first on Pew Research Center.

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