11 minutes

Nashville Banner
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Wally Dietz, Metro Legal director, will retire on July 16 after five years of high-profile litigation against the state and the Trump administration, and his successor is Tyler Yarbro, currently the managing partner of Dodson Parker Behm & Capparella and the board chair of the Tennessee Freedom Circle. The post Metro Legal Director Wally Dietz to Retire in July appeared first on Nashville Banner.

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Wally Dietz, Metro Legal director, will retire on July 16 after five years of high-profile litigation against the state and the Trump administration, and his successor is Tyler Yarbro, currently the managing partner of Dodson Parker Behm & Capparella and the board chair of the Tennessee Freedom Circle. The post Metro Legal Director Wally Dietz to Retire in July appeared first on Nashville Banner.

Brenna Williams paused to fight emotion on a stage in Salt Lake City Wednesday as she talked about the effects she’s worried a massive data center could have on the Great Salt Lake and its Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. And that was before she got into her concerns about her grandchildren, who have asthma, […]

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Utah News Dispatch
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Brenna Williams paused to fight emotion on a stage in Salt Lake City Wednesday as she talked about the effects she’s worried a massive data center could have on the Great Salt Lake and its Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. And that was before she got into her concerns about her grandchildren, who have asthma, […]

12 minutes

法国国际广播电台
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大家好,欢迎收听法国报纸摘要,举世瞩目的「特习会」在周四5月14日当地时间上午10点于北京举行,成为法国今天各大日报头版头条。《费加罗报》表示,在激烈对峙之后,特朗普如今在北京寻求与习近平缓和关系。对于台湾议题,据《解放报》最新报道指出,中国领导人习近平就向他的美国同行特朗普明确表达了自己的意图。峰会伊始,中国就警告说,如果美国在台湾问题上处理不当,中美之间将出现“冲突”。

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大家好,欢迎收听法国报纸摘要,举世瞩目的「特习会」在周四5月14日当地时间上午10点于北京举行,成为法国今天各大日报头版头条。《费加罗报》表示,在激烈对峙之后,特朗普如今在北京寻求与习近平缓和关系。对于台湾议题,据《解放报》最新报道指出,中国领导人习近平就向他的美国同行特朗普明确表达了自己的意图。峰会伊始,中国就警告说,如果美国在台湾问题上处理不当,中美之间将出现“冲突”。

12 minutes

Nashville Banner
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Nashville Electric Service crews aggressively trimmed the towering oaks along Park Plaza in Centennial Park, drawing criticism from citizens and a Metro councilmember. The trees were central to the park's master plan. The post NES Sparks Anger With Work on Centennial Park Oak Trees appeared first on Nashville Banner.

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Nashville Electric Service crews aggressively trimmed the towering oaks along Park Plaza in Centennial Park, drawing criticism from citizens and a Metro councilmember. The trees were central to the park's master plan. The post NES Sparks Anger With Work on Centennial Park Oak Trees appeared first on Nashville Banner.

El XXI Concurso de Fotografía organizado por la Asociación de Amigos del IES Monelos confirma el talento emergente de jóvenes creadores y reivindica la fuerza cultural de la fotografía en Galicia.

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Mundiario
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El XXI Concurso de Fotografía organizado por la Asociación de Amigos del IES Monelos confirma el talento emergente de jóvenes creadores y reivindica la fuerza cultural de la fotografía en Galicia.

เมื่อวันที่ 8 พ.ค. 2569 ที่อาคารรัฐสภา มีเสวนาหัวข้อ “สิทธิมนุษยชน สิทธิแรงงานและชุมชน เงื่อนไขกลไกที่เกี่ยวข้องก่อนเข้าเป็นสมาชิก OECD และ FTA ไทย-EU” นักวิชาการและผู้เชี่ยวชาญแลกเปลี่ยนถึงความสำคัญที่ไทยจะต้องแก้ปัญหาสิทธิมนุษยชนก่อนก้าวสู่สมาชิก OECD และการทำข้อตกลงการค้าเสรี (FTA) กับสหภาพยุโรปนั้น เพราะประเทศไทยกำลังเผชิญกับบททดสอบครั้งใหญ่ที่ไม่ใช่แค่เรื่องตัวเลขทางเศรษฐกิจ แต่คือการปฏิรูปโครงสร้างสิทธิมนุษยชนและธรรมาภิบาลทั้งระบบ

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เมื่อวันที่ 8 พ.ค. 2569 ที่อาคารรัฐสภา มีเสวนาหัวข้อ “สิทธิมนุษยชน สิทธิแรงงานและชุมชน เงื่อนไขกลไกที่เกี่ยวข้องก่อนเข้าเป็นสมาชิก OECD และ FTA ไทย-EU” นักวิชาการและผู้เชี่ยวชาญแลกเปลี่ยนถึงความสำคัญที่ไทยจะต้องแก้ปัญหาสิทธิมนุษยชนก่อนก้าวสู่สมาชิก OECD และการทำข้อตกลงการค้าเสรี (FTA) กับสหภาพยุโรปนั้น เพราะประเทศไทยกำลังเผชิญกับบททดสอบครั้งใหญ่ที่ไม่ใช่แค่เรื่องตัวเลขทางเศรษฐกิจ แต่คือการปฏิรูปโครงสร้างสิทธิมนุษยชนและธรรมาภิบาลทั้งระบบ

The owner of an illegally demolished East Nashville structure has filed an application to build a replica in its place, following an order from the Metro Historic Zoning Commission to rebuild the structure as close to its original form as possible. The post Owner of Illegally Demolished Historic East Nashville Structure Applies to Rebuild appeared first on Nashville Banner.

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The owner of an illegally demolished East Nashville structure has filed an application to build a replica in its place, following an order from the Metro Historic Zoning Commission to rebuild the structure as close to its original form as possible. The post Owner of Illegally Demolished Historic East Nashville Structure Applies to Rebuild appeared first on Nashville Banner.

Облус, шаар жетекчилеринин жер-жерлерде эл менен жолугушууларында мал ылаңы көбөйүп жатканы тууралуу маселелер дээрлик ар бир облуста көтөрүлүп жатат. 14-майда президенттин Талас облусундагы өкүлү Эрмат Жумаевдин Айтматов районундагы Аманбаев айыл өкмөтүнүн тургундары менен жолугушуусунда акыркы убактарда малдын ылаңы күч алганы тууралуу айтылды. Айыл тургундары мамлекеттик ветеринардык дарыгерлер жетишсиздигин белгилешти. Ага жооп кылган райондук ветеринария адиси бодо малды ылаңдан...

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Облус, шаар жетекчилеринин жер-жерлерде эл менен жолугушууларында мал ылаңы көбөйүп жатканы тууралуу маселелер дээрлик ар бир облуста көтөрүлүп жатат. 14-майда президенттин Талас облусундагы өкүлү Эрмат Жумаевдин Айтматов районундагы Аманбаев айыл өкмөтүнүн тургундары менен жолугушуусунда акыркы убактарда малдын ылаңы күч алганы тууралуу айтылды. Айыл тургундары мамлекеттик ветеринардык дарыгерлер жетишсиздигин белгилешти. Ага жооп кылган райондук ветеринария адиси бодо малды ылаңдан...

14 minutes

Nashville Banner
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Rep. John Rose has released a new ad for his bid for Tennessee Governor, touting his experience in business as a way to distance himself from his primary opponent, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, and cast himself in the same light as President Donald Trump. The post AD WATCH: John Rose Touts CEO Experience, Trump Connection in New Ad appeared first on Nashville Banner.

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Rep. John Rose has released a new ad for his bid for Tennessee Governor, touting his experience in business as a way to distance himself from his primary opponent, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, and cast himself in the same light as President Donald Trump. The post AD WATCH: John Rose Touts CEO Experience, Trump Connection in New Ad appeared first on Nashville Banner.

These are the facts most everyone agrees on: Juan Carlos Rodriguez Romero pulled out of his apartment complex to start a DoorDash shift on the icy roads of St. Paul four days before Christmas, during the early stages of Operation Metro Surge.  The driver behind him flicked on the emergency lights. The immigration agents — […]

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Minnesota Reformer
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These are the facts most everyone agrees on: Juan Carlos Rodriguez Romero pulled out of his apartment complex to start a DoorDash shift on the icy roads of St. Paul four days before Christmas, during the early stages of Operation Metro Surge.  The driver behind him flicked on the emergency lights. The immigration agents — […]

14 minutes

Washington State Standard
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A federal judge is weighing whether to toss redrawn political maps for Washington’s Legislature that he approved two years ago, a move that state officials warn would take “a wrecking ball” to the upcoming primary, possibly forcing it to be rescheduled. The legal tussle centers on U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik’s controversial penning of […]

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Washington State Standard
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A federal judge is weighing whether to toss redrawn political maps for Washington’s Legislature that he approved two years ago, a move that state officials warn would take “a wrecking ball” to the upcoming primary, possibly forcing it to be rescheduled. The legal tussle centers on U.S. District Court Judge Robert Lasnik’s controversial penning of […]

Memphis Safe Task Force agents are engaging in a “startling pattern of retaliation, intimidation, and harassment” against bystanders who record their activities, a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union alleges. Filed Wednesday on behalf of four Memphis residents who have suffered pushback after observing and documenting the multi-agency law enforcement crackdown, the […]

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Tennessee Lookout
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Memphis Safe Task Force agents are engaging in a “startling pattern of retaliation, intimidation, and harassment” against bystanders who record their activities, a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union alleges. Filed Wednesday on behalf of four Memphis residents who have suffered pushback after observing and documenting the multi-agency law enforcement crackdown, the […]

14 minutes

Iowa Capital Dispatch
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National Democrats are investing in Iowa’s U.S. Senate race heading into the 2026 election cycle, with the Senate Majority PAC announcing Thursday a planned $13.4 million television reservation in Iowa targeting U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running to become the GOP nominee for the seat. The announced reservation is expected to hit Iowa’s airways in […]

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Iowa Capital Dispatch
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National Democrats are investing in Iowa’s U.S. Senate race heading into the 2026 election cycle, with the Senate Majority PAC announcing Thursday a planned $13.4 million television reservation in Iowa targeting U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson, who is running to become the GOP nominee for the seat. The announced reservation is expected to hit Iowa’s airways in […]

14 minutes

Minnesota Reformer
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Minnesota’s school funding crisis has moved past the point of being a nagging problem; it is a full-blown emergency, finally made impossible to ignore by painful cuts across the state. For too long, the default approach at the Capitol has been to apply short-term, stop-gap solutions, effectively trying to patch a sinking boat with duct […]

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Minnesota Reformer
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Minnesota’s school funding crisis has moved past the point of being a nagging problem; it is a full-blown emergency, finally made impossible to ignore by painful cuts across the state. For too long, the default approach at the Capitol has been to apply short-term, stop-gap solutions, effectively trying to patch a sinking boat with duct […]

15 minutes

El Diari de l'Educació
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Els instituts francesos apunten cada vegada més cap a un escenari de major polarització social. Segons el darrer informe del Tribunal de Comptes (PDF), prop de 1.550 centres dels 6.700 existents arreu del país presenten una baixa mixitat social: uns 800 escolaritzen pràcticament només alumnat desafavorit, i uns 750 només alumnat afavorit. Aquesta segregació és [...] L'entrada Més del 40% dels instituts de París, Lió i Montpeller es troben altament segregats ha aparegut primer a El Diari de l'Educació.

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El Diari de l'Educació
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Els instituts francesos apunten cada vegada més cap a un escenari de major polarització social. Segons el darrer informe del Tribunal de Comptes (PDF), prop de 1.550 centres dels 6.700 existents arreu del país presenten una baixa mixitat social: uns 800 escolaritzen pràcticament només alumnat desafavorit, i uns 750 només alumnat afavorit. Aquesta segregació és [...] L'entrada Més del 40% dels instituts de París, Lió i Montpeller es troben altament segregats ha aparegut primer a El Diari de l'Educació.

Según el derecho inmobiliario de Nueva York, todos los arrendatarios pueden constituir una “asociación de inquilinos”. Este grupo puede ayudarte a ejercer tus derechos como inquilino y a reportar incumplimientos en el edificio. También puede ofrecer reuniones mensuales para mantenerte al tanto de los acontecimientos en la propiedad.  Esta guía te explica tus derechos al […] The post Cómo formar una asociación de inquilinos en Nueva York: conoce tus derechos appeared first on Documented.

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Según el derecho inmobiliario de Nueva York, todos los arrendatarios pueden constituir una “asociación de inquilinos”. Este grupo puede ayudarte a ejercer tus derechos como inquilino y a reportar incumplimientos en el edificio. También puede ofrecer reuniones mensuales para mantenerte al tanto de los acontecimientos en la propiedad.  Esta guía te explica tus derechos al […] The post Cómo formar una asociación de inquilinos en Nueva York: conoce tus derechos appeared first on Documented.

Hello from Nairobi.This week’s newsletter is heavy on the ongoing hantavirus outbreak. I’m fascinated by this story. Not because the virus itself looks like it will become a global emergency (I strongly believe it won’t), but because the story around it has taken on a force of its own. We’ll also cover Indonesia’s push to eliminate a type of cancer, fake rumors of shrinking genitals in central Africa, and the spiraling health crisis in Cuba.My name is William Herkewitz, and I’m a journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya. This is the Global Health Checkup, where I highlight five of the week’s most important stories on outbreaks, medicine, science, and survival from around the world.With that, as we say in Swahili: karibu katika habari — welcome to the news.The hantavirus outbreak … breaks out of health newsLast week, I wrote about the hantavirus outbreak as a marginal item. An interesting story, but not quite a major event.Since then, I’ve been gobsmacked by how far this story has traveled. Not only are most major media outlets covering the outbreak from dozens of angles and follow-ups, but it’s moved well beyond the usual lane of global health stories into full zeitgeist-meme territory. The outbreak is clearly catching the broader public’s attention, eliciting no small amount of fear and anxiety… so what gives? Was I wrong to dismiss it?Disease breakdown: Hantavirus is a family of rare viruses usually carried by rodents. People typically get infected by breathing in particles from infected rodent urine, droppings, or saliva. The strain at play here is Andes virus, one of the few hantaviruses known to spread from person to person, as seen in South American outbreaks going back decades. It can cause severe respiratory illness, with symptoms appearing up to 42 days after exposure. There is no specific treatment or vaccine, so care is mostly supportive. First off, I won’t argue that the story isn’t captivating. It has all the ingredients of a thriller movie: a rare and deadly disease. A cruise ship unable to reach port. Wealthy, international passengers who had already disembarked and scattered across the globe. The ongoing scramble to contain and quarantine.And yet, even with all of this, the World Health Organization and national public health agencies globally have been in full-on reassurance mode. Despite the attention, you can’t find serious global health professionals in panic over this outbreak. Not only has the WHO said that it “assesses the risk to the global population posed by this event as low,” but even for the people stuck on the actual cruise(!), “the risk for passengers and crew on the ship is considered moderate.”It’s worth taking a big step back here, to break down what actually makes an infectious disease objectively frightening in an outbreak. And why this ain’t it. (Fair warning: What follows is my own aggressive oversimplification, but a sound and useful one.)Let’s imagine a mad scientist had created a disease-making box with four dials that control how “scary” an outbreak gets. And the way you tweak those settings will determine whether your virus, bacteria, or parasite is a local headache or a global nightmare. Those dials are:Deadliness: What are the straight odds this disease kills you? Existing medical defenses: Do we already have vaccines, treatments, or diagnostics that can fight the illness, or blunt the damage?Infection window: When and how long will someone spread this disease? Are apparently healthy people passing it around for days, is it just a brief affair that requires someone to be visibly ill?Finally, contagiousness: How easily does the infection spread? Are we looking at something that hangs in the air for hours like measles, or does it require close contact with infected fluids or tissues, like Ebola?Now, if the Andes virus came out of our imaginary disease-making box, here’s where our objective fear dials would be set.On deadliness, the dial is set to… “nightmare”! We’re looking at a fatality rate around 40%. No, not the deadliest disease we know of, but let’s not split hairs. Nobody sane would ever willingly risk those odds.On medical defenses, the dial is also set to “maximum fear.” There is no specific treatment and no vaccine currently available for this virus, so care is mainly supportive. Ok, so we’re off to a terrible start.But the infection window setting is mixed. The bad news is that symptoms can appear as late as 42 days after exposure. That long incubation period means infected people can travel far before anyone knows they are infected, potentially seeding new clusters. But (!) there’s a crucial caveat: People are not contagious that whole time. In fact, the evidence we have suggests that people with the Andes virus are infectious only once they are visibly sick. So we’re setting this dial down to “mild alarm.”This all brings us to the most important dial: contagiousness. And this one is set way down to “low-grade unease.” Ultimately, this is the big reason health officials are cautious, but not sounding alarms. Yes, the Andes virus is unusual among hantaviruses because it can spread from person-to-person. But the word “can” is doing a lot of work. As Ion Genomics has reported, the virus does not appear to be some strange new mutant. So, as in older outbreaks, person-to-person spread is largely limited to close contact with a sick person, including direct physical contact, for prolonged periods of time in an enclosed space, or exposure to body fluids. (You can see why a cruise ship is the perfect incubator.) Simply put, it just does not appear to move easily through casual contact.That’s reassuring, because this type of spread is laggardly enough that competent public health responses can typically move faster than the virus. If officials can identify contacts, monitor them, isolate anyone who gets sick and quarantine people at highest risk, there is a very high likelihood of containing this outbreak. Yes, that containment still requires vigilance, real work, and potentially more deaths. After all, this virus spreads and creeps in ways that do not quash instantly. But “quashing” is nevertheless where we’re headed.Admittedly, Andes virus sounds terrifying. And for the unlucky people who get sick, it absolutely is. But scary as a disease is not the same thing as scary as an outbreak. And so, my big takeaway here: The objective risk and threat of this outbreak is incommensurate with the news coverage it has received.Now, I’m not wagging my finger at the coverage. People are interested, and I get why. But don’t mistake the amount of coverage, or the, uh, “cinematic focus” of it, for a measure of how concerned you should be. As a threat, this hantavirus is not obviously more alarming than, say, Nipah virus: a comparably deadly infection with similar dynamics, which causes recurring outbreaks every few years in South Asia… all without a fraction of the spotlight.What the hantavirus panic gets rightTo gut-check that read, I reached out to Dr. Ronald Nahass, a clinical professor of medicine and president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He agreed with the assessment that the epidemiology here does not justify outsized worry, but argued the outbreak still revealed something real. “A public health fire drill,” as he put it, and one that showed how important clear communication still is.First off, we spoke about why this, of all outbreaks, has captured so much attention given the reality of the disease dynamics. My imperfect theory has been that the outbreak mirrors a lot of the media dynamics of a celebrity death. Deaths of course happen every day, but certain deaths break through because the person or circumstances make them feel unusually vivid and close. And this story has vividness in spades. After all, “cruise from hell” is narratively almost too good. Also, at a certain point, public interest starts feeding on itself. The more coverage a story gets, the more it signals that this is something worth paying attention to, and so the more people want to hear about it.Nahass broadly agreed that the narrative setting was doing a lot of work (granted, neither of us are media theorists) but he added another factor I had underweighted: the memory of Covid.Nahass likened the event to a kind of public “PTSD” from the early days of the last pandemic. With a ship at sea, passengers trapped in uncertainty, people dying from a transmissible disease, “that is extraordinarily similar to some of the stories we heard during the Covid outbreak, and so obviously that brings back those images,” he said. “And so we all feel that.” Still, his greater point was this: Put aside the science for a moment, public health is about people, and the public’s reaction and interest should matter as much as the underlying epidemiology. If people are worried this could be Covid 2.0, meet them where they are.Sure, he said, “the biology doesn’t necessarily rise to the level of a SARS virus or a novel influenza virus.” But the anxiety is real, and that “emotional toll, or anxiety toll,” he said, and the practical questions people have about what this means for them, well, that’s more than enough to make the focus worthwhile. And there’s a clear upside. This response is an opportunity for public health organizations to build trust, he said, and to show what a competent outbreak response actually looks like before the next real crisis arrives.Now … as for how this moment has initially been met, Nahass was blunt enough to assign grades. He gave the WHO decent marks, especially given that no single country, and not even the WHO, had clear authority over a ship at sea. “I’d give them a B, or maybe a B-minus,” he said.His assessment of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was harsher: “The CDC certainly gets a failing grade. They were absent,” he said, noting that it took the organization almost a week to put out a public response, and to Nahass, that silence fit a larger problem. Behind the scenes, the United States was missing from the kind of global outbreak response it once helped lead.In the end, Nahass framed the ongoing hantavirus outbreak as “a public health fire drill,” one that showed how much that we still have not learned from the last pandemic. “God forbid this had been something more transmissible,” he said, noting that “we had potential vectors across the United States before we knew what it was.”Nahass thinks the United States’ takeaway should be a wake-up call about the cost of pulling back from global health, such as departing the WHO. “We’re all interconnected,” he said, “we have to be able to respond to these kinds of events globally.” As for the rest of the world, I think this “fire drill” is also a useful warning at a moment when the WHO’s global pandemic treaty is still sitting unfinished, as we’ve covered extensively. Because next time might not be another drill.Fake rumors of shrinking genitals… no laughing matter!We’ve gone long on hantavirus coverage, so I’ll be brief with the other stories of the week.Reuters covered a story about a fake disease conspiracy theory in the Democratic Republic of Congo that has become a real public health crisis. Last year, rumors of a mysterious illness causing men’s genitals to shrink spread through social media, local outlets, and churches in a province in the center of the country. The rumors elicited “angry mobs [which] attacked and killed four health workers conducting vaccination research,” among other damage and deaths. “In all, at least 17 killings related to the atrophy rumor have been reported,” although Reuters could not independently verify all of them.The story is grotesque (enough so that I’m not even attempting the obvious jokes), with a broader, painfully familiar warning. Misinformation is not background noise in public health. And it can create new dangers of its own, turning ignorance or confusion into fear and violence, directed at the very people trying to deliver much needed health care.Cuba: an ‘epidemic of flies, rats, [and] waste’The Guardian has a depressing follow-up on Cuba’s deepening health crisis, which we’ve reported on before. As a U.S. oil blockade chokes off fuel supplies, the capital city of Havana has been forced to cut back on trash collection, leaving waste piling up across the city and residents burning trash in the streets. One resident described it as “an epidemic of flies, rats, waste, and foul odors.” The piece tracks the obvious health risks of all that uncollected and burning waste: toxic smoke, vermin, flies, and gastrointestinal diseases. One Havana doctor told The Guardian, “at the hospital, we’ve seen an increase in hygiene-related illnesses and gastrointestinal issues.”Less obvious, but just as worrying, trash heaps can collect rainwater in discarded plastic and other debris, causing fears of rising “mosquito-borne illnesses, with the Aedes aegypti [mosquito] species proliferating." That mosquito is one of the primary vectors for many infectious diseases, like dengue, Zika, chikungunya, and yellow fever.It’s a rough story, and Cuba’s crisis has many causes. But right now, the U.S. fuel blockade is plainly a driving force, enough so that two members of Congress wrote in The New York Times this week after visiting the island, calling for the blockade to end for medical and humanitarian reasons, even while acknowledging the failures of the Cuban government.Indonesia’s shot at curing [a type of] cancer We’ll finish today with an inspiring piece in Think Global Health on Indonesia’s push to eliminate cervical cancer, a disease that still kills more than 20,000 women there each year.This cancer is unique because it’s a form of the disease where most cases are caused directly by a virus. In this case, the human papillomavirus, or HPV. In countries like Indonesia, HPV is responsible for an estimated “94% of cervical cancer deaths.” So screening and vaccination efforts against this virus are dramatically effective at cutting cancer deaths. The hard part, as always, is reaching the people you most need. Indonesia’s “285 million people are spread across 17,500 islands,” with a third of the government’s districts classified as remote. So the story here is ultimately about whether an ambitious national health program can reach people on the outskirts of the country. – WilliamWilliam Herkewitz is a reporter covering global public health for Healthbeat. He is based in Nairobi. Contact William at wherkewitz@healthbeat.org.

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Hello from Nairobi.This week’s newsletter is heavy on the ongoing hantavirus outbreak. I’m fascinated by this story. Not because the virus itself looks like it will become a global emergency (I strongly believe it won’t), but because the story around it has taken on a force of its own. We’ll also cover Indonesia’s push to eliminate a type of cancer, fake rumors of shrinking genitals in central Africa, and the spiraling health crisis in Cuba.My name is William Herkewitz, and I’m a journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya. This is the Global Health Checkup, where I highlight five of the week’s most important stories on outbreaks, medicine, science, and survival from around the world.With that, as we say in Swahili: karibu katika habari — welcome to the news.The hantavirus outbreak … breaks out of health newsLast week, I wrote about the hantavirus outbreak as a marginal item. An interesting story, but not quite a major event.Since then, I’ve been gobsmacked by how far this story has traveled. Not only are most major media outlets covering the outbreak from dozens of angles and follow-ups, but it’s moved well beyond the usual lane of global health stories into full zeitgeist-meme territory. The outbreak is clearly catching the broader public’s attention, eliciting no small amount of fear and anxiety… so what gives? Was I wrong to dismiss it?Disease breakdown: Hantavirus is a family of rare viruses usually carried by rodents. People typically get infected by breathing in particles from infected rodent urine, droppings, or saliva. The strain at play here is Andes virus, one of the few hantaviruses known to spread from person to person, as seen in South American outbreaks going back decades. It can cause severe respiratory illness, with symptoms appearing up to 42 days after exposure. There is no specific treatment or vaccine, so care is mostly supportive. First off, I won’t argue that the story isn’t captivating. It has all the ingredients of a thriller movie: a rare and deadly disease. A cruise ship unable to reach port. Wealthy, international passengers who had already disembarked and scattered across the globe. The ongoing scramble to contain and quarantine.And yet, even with all of this, the World Health Organization and national public health agencies globally have been in full-on reassurance mode. Despite the attention, you can’t find serious global health professionals in panic over this outbreak. Not only has the WHO said that it “assesses the risk to the global population posed by this event as low,” but even for the people stuck on the actual cruise(!), “the risk for passengers and crew on the ship is considered moderate.”It’s worth taking a big step back here, to break down what actually makes an infectious disease objectively frightening in an outbreak. And why this ain’t it. (Fair warning: What follows is my own aggressive oversimplification, but a sound and useful one.)Let’s imagine a mad scientist had created a disease-making box with four dials that control how “scary” an outbreak gets. And the way you tweak those settings will determine whether your virus, bacteria, or parasite is a local headache or a global nightmare. Those dials are:Deadliness: What are the straight odds this disease kills you? Existing medical defenses: Do we already have vaccines, treatments, or diagnostics that can fight the illness, or blunt the damage?Infection window: When and how long will someone spread this disease? Are apparently healthy people passing it around for days, is it just a brief affair that requires someone to be visibly ill?Finally, contagiousness: How easily does the infection spread? Are we looking at something that hangs in the air for hours like measles, or does it require close contact with infected fluids or tissues, like Ebola?Now, if the Andes virus came out of our imaginary disease-making box, here’s where our objective fear dials would be set.On deadliness, the dial is set to… “nightmare”! We’re looking at a fatality rate around 40%. No, not the deadliest disease we know of, but let’s not split hairs. Nobody sane would ever willingly risk those odds.On medical defenses, the dial is also set to “maximum fear.” There is no specific treatment and no vaccine currently available for this virus, so care is mainly supportive. Ok, so we’re off to a terrible start.But the infection window setting is mixed. The bad news is that symptoms can appear as late as 42 days after exposure. That long incubation period means infected people can travel far before anyone knows they are infected, potentially seeding new clusters. But (!) there’s a crucial caveat: People are not contagious that whole time. In fact, the evidence we have suggests that people with the Andes virus are infectious only once they are visibly sick. So we’re setting this dial down to “mild alarm.”This all brings us to the most important dial: contagiousness. And this one is set way down to “low-grade unease.” Ultimately, this is the big reason health officials are cautious, but not sounding alarms. Yes, the Andes virus is unusual among hantaviruses because it can spread from person-to-person. But the word “can” is doing a lot of work. As Ion Genomics has reported, the virus does not appear to be some strange new mutant. So, as in older outbreaks, person-to-person spread is largely limited to close contact with a sick person, including direct physical contact, for prolonged periods of time in an enclosed space, or exposure to body fluids. (You can see why a cruise ship is the perfect incubator.) Simply put, it just does not appear to move easily through casual contact.That’s reassuring, because this type of spread is laggardly enough that competent public health responses can typically move faster than the virus. If officials can identify contacts, monitor them, isolate anyone who gets sick and quarantine people at highest risk, there is a very high likelihood of containing this outbreak. Yes, that containment still requires vigilance, real work, and potentially more deaths. After all, this virus spreads and creeps in ways that do not quash instantly. But “quashing” is nevertheless where we’re headed.Admittedly, Andes virus sounds terrifying. And for the unlucky people who get sick, it absolutely is. But scary as a disease is not the same thing as scary as an outbreak. And so, my big takeaway here: The objective risk and threat of this outbreak is incommensurate with the news coverage it has received.Now, I’m not wagging my finger at the coverage. People are interested, and I get why. But don’t mistake the amount of coverage, or the, uh, “cinematic focus” of it, for a measure of how concerned you should be. As a threat, this hantavirus is not obviously more alarming than, say, Nipah virus: a comparably deadly infection with similar dynamics, which causes recurring outbreaks every few years in South Asia… all without a fraction of the spotlight.What the hantavirus panic gets rightTo gut-check that read, I reached out to Dr. Ronald Nahass, a clinical professor of medicine and president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America. He agreed with the assessment that the epidemiology here does not justify outsized worry, but argued the outbreak still revealed something real. “A public health fire drill,” as he put it, and one that showed how important clear communication still is.First off, we spoke about why this, of all outbreaks, has captured so much attention given the reality of the disease dynamics. My imperfect theory has been that the outbreak mirrors a lot of the media dynamics of a celebrity death. Deaths of course happen every day, but certain deaths break through because the person or circumstances make them feel unusually vivid and close. And this story has vividness in spades. After all, “cruise from hell” is narratively almost too good. Also, at a certain point, public interest starts feeding on itself. The more coverage a story gets, the more it signals that this is something worth paying attention to, and so the more people want to hear about it.Nahass broadly agreed that the narrative setting was doing a lot of work (granted, neither of us are media theorists) but he added another factor I had underweighted: the memory of Covid.Nahass likened the event to a kind of public “PTSD” from the early days of the last pandemic. With a ship at sea, passengers trapped in uncertainty, people dying from a transmissible disease, “that is extraordinarily similar to some of the stories we heard during the Covid outbreak, and so obviously that brings back those images,” he said. “And so we all feel that.” Still, his greater point was this: Put aside the science for a moment, public health is about people, and the public’s reaction and interest should matter as much as the underlying epidemiology. If people are worried this could be Covid 2.0, meet them where they are.Sure, he said, “the biology doesn’t necessarily rise to the level of a SARS virus or a novel influenza virus.” But the anxiety is real, and that “emotional toll, or anxiety toll,” he said, and the practical questions people have about what this means for them, well, that’s more than enough to make the focus worthwhile. And there’s a clear upside. This response is an opportunity for public health organizations to build trust, he said, and to show what a competent outbreak response actually looks like before the next real crisis arrives.Now … as for how this moment has initially been met, Nahass was blunt enough to assign grades. He gave the WHO decent marks, especially given that no single country, and not even the WHO, had clear authority over a ship at sea. “I’d give them a B, or maybe a B-minus,” he said.His assessment of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was harsher: “The CDC certainly gets a failing grade. They were absent,” he said, noting that it took the organization almost a week to put out a public response, and to Nahass, that silence fit a larger problem. Behind the scenes, the United States was missing from the kind of global outbreak response it once helped lead.In the end, Nahass framed the ongoing hantavirus outbreak as “a public health fire drill,” one that showed how much that we still have not learned from the last pandemic. “God forbid this had been something more transmissible,” he said, noting that “we had potential vectors across the United States before we knew what it was.”Nahass thinks the United States’ takeaway should be a wake-up call about the cost of pulling back from global health, such as departing the WHO. “We’re all interconnected,” he said, “we have to be able to respond to these kinds of events globally.” As for the rest of the world, I think this “fire drill” is also a useful warning at a moment when the WHO’s global pandemic treaty is still sitting unfinished, as we’ve covered extensively. Because next time might not be another drill.Fake rumors of shrinking genitals… no laughing matter!We’ve gone long on hantavirus coverage, so I’ll be brief with the other stories of the week.Reuters covered a story about a fake disease conspiracy theory in the Democratic Republic of Congo that has become a real public health crisis. Last year, rumors of a mysterious illness causing men’s genitals to shrink spread through social media, local outlets, and churches in a province in the center of the country. The rumors elicited “angry mobs [which] attacked and killed four health workers conducting vaccination research,” among other damage and deaths. “In all, at least 17 killings related to the atrophy rumor have been reported,” although Reuters could not independently verify all of them.The story is grotesque (enough so that I’m not even attempting the obvious jokes), with a broader, painfully familiar warning. Misinformation is not background noise in public health. And it can create new dangers of its own, turning ignorance or confusion into fear and violence, directed at the very people trying to deliver much needed health care.Cuba: an ‘epidemic of flies, rats, [and] waste’The Guardian has a depressing follow-up on Cuba’s deepening health crisis, which we’ve reported on before. As a U.S. oil blockade chokes off fuel supplies, the capital city of Havana has been forced to cut back on trash collection, leaving waste piling up across the city and residents burning trash in the streets. One resident described it as “an epidemic of flies, rats, waste, and foul odors.” The piece tracks the obvious health risks of all that uncollected and burning waste: toxic smoke, vermin, flies, and gastrointestinal diseases. One Havana doctor told The Guardian, “at the hospital, we’ve seen an increase in hygiene-related illnesses and gastrointestinal issues.”Less obvious, but just as worrying, trash heaps can collect rainwater in discarded plastic and other debris, causing fears of rising “mosquito-borne illnesses, with the Aedes aegypti [mosquito] species proliferating." That mosquito is one of the primary vectors for many infectious diseases, like dengue, Zika, chikungunya, and yellow fever.It’s a rough story, and Cuba’s crisis has many causes. But right now, the U.S. fuel blockade is plainly a driving force, enough so that two members of Congress wrote in The New York Times this week after visiting the island, calling for the blockade to end for medical and humanitarian reasons, even while acknowledging the failures of the Cuban government.Indonesia’s shot at curing [a type of] cancer We’ll finish today with an inspiring piece in Think Global Health on Indonesia’s push to eliminate cervical cancer, a disease that still kills more than 20,000 women there each year.This cancer is unique because it’s a form of the disease where most cases are caused directly by a virus. In this case, the human papillomavirus, or HPV. In countries like Indonesia, HPV is responsible for an estimated “94% of cervical cancer deaths.” So screening and vaccination efforts against this virus are dramatically effective at cutting cancer deaths. The hard part, as always, is reaching the people you most need. Indonesia’s “285 million people are spread across 17,500 islands,” with a third of the government’s districts classified as remote. So the story here is ultimately about whether an ambitious national health program can reach people on the outskirts of the country. – WilliamWilliam Herkewitz is a reporter covering global public health for Healthbeat. He is based in Nairobi. Contact William at wherkewitz@healthbeat.org.

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从社会安全福利(Social Security)到个人退休金账户(IRA) 和401(k)退休福利计划——本文为你梳理纽约市移民常见的退休规划方式。 The post 纽约移民们需要了解的退休金信息 appeared first on Documented.

Журналіста звинуватили у співпраці з проєктом «Эхо» – його запустили в Німеччині після того, як у Росії ліквідували «Эхо Москвы», очолює проєкт колишній співробітник радіостанції Максим Курников

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Журналіста звинуватили у співпраці з проєктом «Эхо» – його запустили в Німеччині після того, як у Росії ліквідували «Эхо Москвы», очолює проєкт колишній співробітник радіостанції Максим Курников

El líder chino ha dejado claro que el futuro de la relación entre las dos grandes potencias depende, por encima de cualquier otro asunto, de Taiwán.

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El líder chino ha dejado claro que el futuro de la relación entre las dos grandes potencias depende, por encima de cualquier otro asunto, de Taiwán.