Startup of the Week: 54gene is bringing medicine out of the dark ages – Thinknum Media

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Health technology is a rapidly growing industry, and I dont think I need to explain why. Just look around you. Here we are, six months into a pandemic with little improvement in sight. How is there not a reliable treatment for COVID-19 yet? With over 24 million cases worldwide, how will the eventual vaccine be able to effectively immunize the whole world when there are still treatments for diseases from outbreaks past that dont work for many patients?

Our Startup of the Week, 54gene ($54GENE), has some answers. According to 54gene, the African genome is the most genetically diverse than all others in the world combined, yet makes up for only 3% of the data used for research and development of medicines and treatments.

At a BusinessDay panel in March, CEO Abasi Ene-Obong described the problem which 54gene addresses. Twenty-five percent of Africans cannot metabolize [a certain HIV drug], he said. Why is that? Because when that drug is being discovered and being trialed, the drug companies did not look at Africans.

By increasing access to this deep well of information, 54gene hopes to help create better medical solutions.

Thats a pitch that has investors quickly hopping aboard. 54gene is a very young company, only founded in 2019. In that short time, the company raised $4.5 million in a seed round and $15 million in Series A. With a massive pool of data at its fingertips that could have major consequences on global medicine, 54gene is the philosopher in Platos Cave, returned to a small world stuck in its ways armed with a universe of possibilities.

54genes growth shows the scale of the opportunity it has tapped into. In 2020 alone, the Lagos and Washington-based companys workforce has grown by 81 employees - a 225% increase in just six months. 54gene has managed to grow to a size that many startups take years to achieve in a fraction of the time.

54genes timing was impeccable. Breaking into the scene just before COVID-19 became a pandemic, 54gene was prepared with a solution to many of the concerns now facing the medical community. It is already involved in testing services and offers a mountain of data that could help with development of vaccines and treatments, making it easy to see why investors have quickly taken to the young company.

CEO Abasi Ene-Obong is refreshingly honest about the company goals as well. The cliche of the startup that says its making the world a better place is real and rampant, and 54gene sets itself apart by actually offering something that could positively impact the lives of patients across the planet, and by being clear about its goals as a profit-driven company.

I think [people invested in us] because they understood the potential for good. But one of the things Id like to say is that impact investment is not the same as charity, Ene-Obong said. As a company founder and CEO, I want to make money. I want to be profitable. That is one of the metrics Ill judge myself by. But at the same time, I want to do good.

Ene-Obong and 54gene are certainly on their way to accomplishing both. It is one of the fastest-growing health disruptors in the world, and has the potential to make waves across the healthcare industry on a global scale. Years down the road, you may find yourself taking a treatment and experiencing no side effects. It may be thanks to 54gene that you end up giving it little to no thought.

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Startup of the Week: 54gene is bringing medicine out of the dark ages - Thinknum Media

UM School of Medicines Institute of Human Virology Recruits Top HIV/AIDS Epidemiologist Shenghan Lai Along with Team of Researchers – Newswise

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Newswise Baltimore, MD, August 31, 2018 Robert C. Gallo, MD, the Homer & Martha Gudelsky Distinguished Professor in Medicine, Co-founder and Director of the Institute of Human Virology (IHV) at the University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM), and Man E. Charurat, PhD, MHS, Professor of Medicine, Director of the Division of Epidemiology & Prevention and CIHEB Global Director at the IHV, announced today that Shenghan Lai, MD, MPH and Hong Lai, PhD, MPH, in addition to three staff members, and two more to add, have joined the Institute of Human Virology. The faculty began their positions on April 1 with Professor and Associate Professor academic appointments in the UMSOMs Department of Epidemiology & Public Health.

Dr. Shenghan Lai was most recently Professor of Pathology, Radiology Epidemiology and Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine (JHM). He began his research in HIV/AIDS and Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs) in the late 1980s. His research interests include epidemiology, drug abuse, HIV/AIDS, STIs, prevention and intervention, cardiac imaging, preventive cardiology, medical consequences of HIV infection, and international health.

Dr. Hong Lai was most recently Associate Professor of Radiology at JHM. Since 2002, she has been the lead epidemiologist on five National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded studies investigating HIV/cocaine-associated comorbidities. These include coronary calcification, left ventricular regional dysfunction, the presence and development of coronary stenosis, coronary plaque progression and cognitive decline.

We are pleased to have Dr. Shenghan Lai and Dr. Hong Lai join the Institute, said Dr. Gallo, who is also Co-Founder and International Chairman of the Scientific Leadership Board of the Global Virus Network (GVN). Together, they will add depth to our Division of Epidemiology and Prevention and provide opportunities for cross-collaborations within the Institute.

The research team led by Dr. Lai has accomplished a lot, especially for Baltimore City, said Dr. Charurat. We are excited to have them continue scientific advancements here.

Dr. Shenghan Lai has been heavily involved in epidemiology and prevention of HIV infection in countries with greater HIV prevalence for more than 10 years. He has focused on high-risk groups such as intravenous drug users, sex workers, and men who engage in sex with other men. Dr. Lai is recognized as a leading epidemiology researcher in the infectious disease epidemiology, and world renowned for his research on the effects of HIV infection and cocaine use on sub-clinical cardiovascular disease. He is the principal investigator of several NIH-supported studies, focusing on HIV natural history and cardiovascular complications of HIV and drug abuse. Dr. Lai received his degrees from Peking Union Medical College in Beijing, China, and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. He has more than 250 peer-reviewed publications and numerous book chapters.

The Institute, led by Dr. Gallo, has a long history of serving the medically underserved African American population in Baltimore, said Dr. Shenghan Lai. We look forward to further exploring why HIV or other factors influence comorbidities among one of the poorest communities in this country. Our highest priority is to use science as a weapon to fight against health disparities and IHV is the best place for us to achieve our goals.

Dr. Hong Lai is the lead author of several publications demonstrating that the use of cocaine promotes subclinical coronary atherosclerosis in users with HIV infection. Further, she identified that reduced cocaine use with a cash-based incentive intervention was significantly associated with a lowered endothelin-1, endothelial marker, and reduced coronary plaque burden in chronic cocaine users with existing coronary plaques.

In addition to growing our cardiovascular research, we look forward to expanding our studies in two new areas., said Dr. Hong Lai. These include improving our understanding of how HIV, drug abuse - especially opioid - and other factors exacerbate cognitive decline among underserved population in Baltimore and reducing health disparities among Baltimores African American population.

With more than 100 publications, Dr. Hong Lais key contribution to science includes the first report that vitamin D deficiency is associated with hidden heart disease among underserved African Americans with HIV infection.

These new faculty members will provide crucial expertise in HIV to help us strengthen our departmental programs in infection control and in health disparities and population health, said Jay Magaziner, PhD, MSHyg, Professor and Chair of the Department Epidemiology & Public Health.

University of Maryland School of Medicine Dean E. Albert Reece, MD, PhD, MBA, who is University Executive Vice President for Medical Affairs and the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor, added, I want to extend a warm welcome to these new faculty members, and I am eager to see the cross pollination that will take place as they share their expertise and enter into important research collaborations that will advance the field of HIV epidemiology, he said.

About the Institute of Human Virology

Formed in 1996 as a partnership between the State of Maryland, the City of Baltimore, the University System of Maryland and the University of Maryland Medical System, IHV is an institute of the University of Maryland School of Medicine and is home to some of the most globally-recognized and world-renowned experts in all of virology. The IHV combines the disciplines of basic research, epidemiology and clinical research in a concerted effort to speed the discovery of diagnostics and therapeutics for a wide variety of chronic and deadly viral and immune disorders - most notably, HIV the virus that causes AIDS. For more information, http://www.ihv.org and follow us on Twitter @IHVmaryland.

About the University of Maryland School of Medicine

The University of Maryland School of Medicine was chartered in 1807 and is the first public medical school in the United States and continues today as an innovative leader in accelerating innovation and discovery in medicine. The School of Medicine is the founding school of the University of Maryland and is an integral part of the 11-campus University System of Maryland. Located on the University of Marylands Baltimore campus, the School of Medicine works closely with the University of Maryland Medical Center to provide a research-intensive, academic and clinically based education. With 43 academic departments, centers and institutes and a faculty of more than 3,000 physicians and research scientists plus more than $400 million in extramural funding, the School is regarded as one of the leading biomedical research institutions in the U.S. with top-tier faculty and programs in cancer, brain science, surgery and transplantation, trauma and emergency medicine, vaccine development and human genomics, among other centers of excellence. The School is not only concerned with the health of the citizens of Maryland and the nation, but also has a global vision, with research and treatment facilities in more than 30 countries around the world. For more information, visit http://www.medschool.umaryland.edu.

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UM School of Medicines Institute of Human Virology Recruits Top HIV/AIDS Epidemiologist Shenghan Lai Along with Team of Researchers - Newswise

New Game Changers in Medicine Episode: Warfarin–The Life-Saving Anticoagulant That Started Out as a Rat Poison – PRNewswire

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NEW YORK, Aug. 31, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --Game Changers in Medicine, the new monthly podcast from Dramatic Health, premieres its third episode, Warfarin: How a rat poison became one of the world's most widely prescribed drugson September 2, 2020. Warfarin, an anticoagulant, first came into commercial use in 1948 as a rat poison.Just four years later it was approved for medical use in the United States and went on to become one of the world's most prescribed drugs. Produced by Dramatic Health co-founder and CEO Sean T. Moloney, the series is hosted by renowned medical futurist Dr. Rubin Pillay of the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB).

For details on the podcast series, visit http://www.gamechangersinmedicine.comor hyperurl.co/h4jouh

The Dramatic Health and Game Changers in Medicine teams have gathered a distinguished group of experts to discuss the science and serendipity behind the discovery of warfarin. Dr. Christopher Rowan, a highly recognized cardiologist from Reno, NV's Renown Health joins the conversation, along with Kevin Walters, Historian and Strategic Research Coordinator at the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF); and Ramya M. Rajagopalan, Ph.D. of the Institute for Practical Ethics at UC/San Diego. Those who listened to our earlier episode on the discovery of the smallpox vaccine will recognize Dr. Paula Traktman, Professor and Dean of Graduate Studies at the Medical University of South Carolina, and formerly affiliated with the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Dramatic Health, a national healthcare video company, is the producer of the six-part podcast series Game Changers in Medicine. The series premiered in July with an episode about Vitamin K and an enterprising Boston house doctor. The August episode showcased the creation of a smallpox vaccine and its parallels to today's urgent search for a COVID-19 vaccine. Game Changers in Medicine ranked #27 in Apple Podcasts: Life Sciences in the United States according to Chartable as of August 21, 2020.Both episodes, a series backgrounder, and additional material about the podcast series are available at http://www.gamechangersinmedicine.comand can be accessed wherever you find your podcasts.

Contact: Mark G. Auerbach. [emailprotected]

SOURCE Dramatic Health, Inc.

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New Game Changers in Medicine Episode: Warfarin--The Life-Saving Anticoagulant That Started Out as a Rat Poison - PRNewswire

Improper use of PPE. Medicine to the wrong patient. Injuries from falls. A look at the problems inside Orchard Villa as COVID-19 deaths climbed -…

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Orchard Villa, the Pickering long-term-care home with the most COVID-19 deaths in the province, continued to fail to comply with provincial legislation designed to protect residents even after more than 70 residents died and military personnel were sent in to assist.

As the pandemic raged on in May and June of this year, inspectors from the Ministry of Long-Term Care acting on a complaint found more than a dozen instances in which the home failed to comply with regulations, including not ensuring staff received infection control training within one week of hire, failing to ensure a resident who had fallen received a proper skin assessment, and failing to stop staff from administering a drug to a resident that was not prescribed.

These findings are in addition to more than 120 citations of failure to comply with the Long-Term Care Homes Act and its regulations between July 2015 and December 2019 recently detailedby the Star.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, 206 residents of the 233-bed Orchard Villa have been infected with COVID-19. Seventy-one residents in the long-term-care home died, and another seven died in the adjacent retirement home. More than 100 staff members have tested positive for the virus. The Durham Region Health Department declared the COVID-19 outbreak at Orchard Villa over on June 11.

In an email to the Star, Jason Gay, executive director of Orchard Villa, said during the four weeks inspectors were at the home, they reviewed a wide range of operations and found the home to be clean, with adequate PPE and other supplies.

When inspectors identified an area of improvement, action was immediately taken and most were resolved before the inspectors left the home. This action included on-going education of staff on our Falls Prevention Policy and the Skin and Wound Care Policy, he said. We are currently auditing to ensure compliance with these policies.

He added that the homes staff are hardworking and compassionate people, and they always impress us with their dedication and willingness to learn.

Sharon Navarro, a spokesperson for Lakeridge Health, which has assumed temporary management of Orchard Villa long-term-care home on June 12 for 90 days at the behest of the provincial government, said work is well underway to stabilize the homes staffing and operations and to help the facility develop the capacity to meet quality and safety standards.

In late April, when Durham Regions medical officer of health asked Lakeridge Health to lead the homes response to the outbreak, the home was significantly understaffed, said Navarro, adding that at one point during the outbreak, Orchard Villa had only 20 per cent of its full staffing complement.

She said staffing levels have now been corrected and meet current standard ratios for long-term-care homes, and that all staff and leaders receive mandatory infection prevention and control training. There is also continuous auditing of environmental cleaning, dietary compliance and hand hygiene, and PPE levels are audited daily to ensure a 30-day supply, Navarro said.

The citations for non-compliance stemming from the May and June inspections are detailed in a July 27 report and describe a wide range of problems touching on different aspects of resident care.

One notice of compliance failure issued by inspectors details the case of a resident sent to hospital after a fall. The inspection report says three staff members lifted the resident off the floor and into bed instead of using a lifting device as mandated by the homes own falls prevention and management policy. In this case, inspectors asked the home to come up with a voluntary plan of correction.

Another notice describes a complaint made to the ministry of long-term care about a resident who suffered multiple injuries due to falls, one of which resulted in hospitalization. Inspectors reviewing the residents clinical notes found that staff did not perform a skin assessment using a clinically appropriate instrument on two occasions. They also found that the home failed to ensure that a member of registered nursing staff examined the residents skin.

The report also says that while in the home, an inspector witnessed a personal support worker (PSW) helping a resident with a drink while wearing just a cloth mask and goggles even though a sign posted on the residents door directed staff to wear full personal protective equipment (PPE) including a mask, face shield, gown and gloves. The inspector interviewed the PSW, who said that they were aware of the requirements to don full PPE but used their own cloth mask due to sensitive skin to the surgical mask provided by the home.

June Morrison, whose father George died on May 3 at the age of 95 after contracting COVID-19 at Orchard Villa, said she is not surprised to learn that the home was found to have further compliance failures.

I personally think they need their licence revoked. They have proven time after time based on the inspection reports that they fail to live up to regulations and legislation, Morrison said.

George Morrison was admitted to hospital with apparent anorexia, dehydration and a urinary tract infection before his death, his daughter said.

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I dont think theyve learned anything, said Cathy Parkes, whose father Paul Parkes, an Orchard Villa resident, died on April 15 at age 86. It wasnt until three weeks after her dad died that Parkes says she learned he had tested positive for COVID-19.

Both Parkes and Morrison have filed lawsuits against Orchard Villa and its owner. They are also among 41 families calling for a criminal investigation into what occurred at the home.

Ministry inspectors also found that Orchard Villa failed to ensure staff received training within one week of hire, as required by amendments to regulations under the Long-Term Care Homes Act made in March to deal with the pandemic. The changes to the regulation mandated that training on such areas as infection prevention and control, the residents bill of rights and the homes policy on abuse and neglect of residents within one week.

Inspectors interviewed several personal support workers and registered practical nurses at Orchard Villa who confirmed that they had no training in the areas required by the regulation changes. Some said they had training on donning and doffing of PPE and hand hygiene. The ministry asked the home to write a voluntary plan of correction.

In another instance, inspectors reviewing a residents clinical records that the resident was given a medication they were not prescribed.

The licensee has failed to ensure that no drugs are administered to a resident in the home unless the drug has been prescribed for the resident, says the inspection report. It does not say what happened, if anything, to the resident.

Clearly the oversight of that facility has been in my view negligent on the face of it because you see no directors orders issued, you see no licence revocations, you see no cease admissions. That speaks to oversight that is off the rails, said Patricia Spindel, former associate dean of health sciences at Humber College and co-founder of Seniors For Social Action Ontario (SSAO), a group of social activists from across Ontario.

A directors order is issued by the director of performance improvement and compliance at the ministry of long-term care and can include revocations of licence, mandatory management orders and return of funding orders, among other things.

When you have homes in this kind of trouble and for this period of time and theres been no licence revocation, that just makes no sense to me, added Spindel.

Gillian Slogget, a spokesperson for Minister of Long-Term Care Merrilee Fullerton, said the government and its health partners continue to work around the clock to safeguard the residents and staff at the home. She said repeated non-compliance is of serious concern and can result in escalated measures and sanctions by the ministry.

Long-term care is a huge priority for our government and every option is on the table to make it better. We are forging ahead with the critical work we had underway before this pandemic hit, and will leave no stone unturned as we undertake badly needed system transformation, Slogget said.

Laura Tamblyn Watts, CEO of CanAge, a national seniors advocacy group, says the province must address the conditions we are asking our seniors to live in and that includes looking at what incentives long-term-care home owners have to respond to compliance failures.

We know that when theres consistent failure to comply and where outcomes are dangerous to residents, that there needs to be not just appropriate support but appropriate response, which means there needs to be teeth in the inspections and legislation, she said.

What weve seen with COIVD is not so much a surprise but just an illumination of the problems in the system that we always knew were there. The question is: will we now actually fix it?

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Improper use of PPE. Medicine to the wrong patient. Injuries from falls. A look at the problems inside Orchard Villa as COVID-19 deaths climbed -...

Premenstrual Syndrome Medicine Market to Witness Robust Expansion Throughout the Forecast Period 2020 2026 – The Daily Chronicle

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Market Study Report, LLC recently added a report on Premenstrual Syndrome Medicine market that delivers a holistic view on industry valuations, market size, profit estimations, SWOT analysis and regional landscape of the market. In addition, the report points out key challenges and growth opportunities, while examining the current competitive standings of key players in during the forecasted timeline.

The Premenstrual Syndrome Medicine market report includes crucial insights regarding this business landscape and analyzes all the segments of this business vertical. The document delivers pivotal data pertaining to the key industry players and their respective gross earnings. Additionally, data regarding the regional scope and the competitive spectrum is mentioned in the study.

Request a sample Report of Premenstrual Syndrome Medicine Market at:https://www.marketstudyreport.com/request-a-sample/2758877?utm_source=thedailychronicle.in&utm_medium=SHR

The COVID-19 disease outbreak has forced worldwide governments to impose strict lockdowns. This has not only resulted in shutdown of processes and operations of various manufacturing, but also resulted in scarcity of labor. Additionally, insufficient supply of raw materials may result in modifications in terms of the expansion rate of Premenstrual Syndrome Medicine market in the subsequent years.

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Report Overview:It includes six chapters, viz. research scope, major manufacturers covered, market segments by type, Premenstrual Syndrome Medicine market segments by application, study objectives, and years considered.

Global Growth Trends:There are three chapters included in this section, i.e. industry trends, the growth rate of key producers, and production analysis.

Premenstrual Syndrome Medicine Market Share by Manufacturer:Here, production, revenue, and price analysis by the manufacturer are included along with other chapters such as expansion plans and merger and acquisition, products offered by key manufacturers, and areas served and headquarters distribution.

Market Size by Type:It includes analysis of price, production value market share, and production market share by type.

Market Size by Application:This section includes Premenstrual Syndrome Medicine market consumption analysis by application.

Profiles of Manufacturers:Here, leading players of the global Premenstrual Syndrome Medicine market are studied based on sales area, key products, gross margin, revenue, price, and production.

Premenstrual Syndrome Medicine Market Value Chain and Sales Channel Analysis:It includes customer, distributor, Premenstrual Syndrome Medicine market value chain, and sales channel analysis.

Market Forecast Production Side: In this part of the report, the authors have focused on production and production value forecast, key producers forecast, and production and production value forecast by type.

For More Details On this Report: https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/global-premenstrual-syndrome-medicine-market-insights-and-forecast-to-2026

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2. Global Hemin Drugs Market Insights and Forecast to 2026Hemin Drugs Market report covers the market landscape and its growth prospects over the coming years, the Report also brief deals with the product life cycle, comparing it to the relevant products from across industries that had already been commercialized details the potential for various applications, discussing about recent product innovations and gives an overview on potential regional market.Read More: https://www.marketstudyreport.com/reports/global-hemin-drugs-market-insights-and-forecast-to-2026

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Premenstrual Syndrome Medicine Market to Witness Robust Expansion Throughout the Forecast Period 2020 2026 - The Daily Chronicle

The Married to Medicine Cast Serves as Medical Advisors at the March on Washington – Bravo

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The Married to Medicine cast has come together for the health of America.

Dr. Jackie Walters, Dr. Simone Whitmore, Dr. Heavenly Kimes, Dr. Contessa Metcalfe, Toya Bush-Harris, and their significant others traveled to Washington, D.C. this week to participate in the March on Washington on Friday, August 28. The event commemoratedthe 57th anniversary of the historic March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech.

The Married to Medicine cast kicked off the weekend of powerful events in the fight for racial justicewith a dinner with Rev. Al Sharpton and civil rights attorney Ben Crump.

In addition to participating in the March on Washington, the Married to Medicine cast served as medical advisors at the event, offering testingfor coronavirus (COVID-19) at a mobile testing site in the city presented by America Know Your Status. "According to the CDC, there is increasing evidence that racial and ethnic minority groups, especially Black, Indigenous and Latino populations are being disproportionately affected by COVID-19," Dr. Heavenly shared in a post on Instagram in advance of the event. "Long-standing systemic health and social inequities have put many people from racial and ethnic minority groups at increased risk of getting sick and dying from COVID-19."

The initiative was organized by Dr. Heavenly's husband, Dr. Damon Kimes, who launched Georgia Know Your Status in June to help prevent the spread of the disease in his home state. Since then, they have tested thousands of patients for COVID-19 in Georgia, including hundreds at an event in collaboration with Gizelle Bryant's partner, Jamal Bryant, and his New Birth Missionary Baptist Church in Stonecrest, Georgia on August 22. Dr. Jackie, Dr. Contessa, and her husband, Dr. Scott Metcalfe, have also previously joined Dr. Heavenly and Dr. Damon in administering COVID-19 testsin Georgia.

The Married to Medicine cast also emphasized the importance of voting. "Remember to vote in the 2020 presidential election!" the Instagram post promoting the event read. "Our lives depend on it."

Dr. Jackie opened up about how meaningful it was to be able to take part in this eventin a post on Instagram on August 28."Being here was amazing but to get invited by the@real_sharpton [and] sit among VIPs was surreal! We spent our time encouraging the masses to register to vote, wear their mask and we offered covid testing@georgiaknowyourstatus," she wrote in the post."Being born is a gift but being able to make a difference and leave a mark on the earth makes us fulfill part of our purpose for being born. I give honor to God for his protection and his love to everyone!

TheMarried to Medicinecast has been active in their support of the Black Lives Matter movement and racial equality. Toyaand her sons, Ashton and Avery, have protested in support of the movement. Dr. Jackie took part in the Instagram Live panel,Amplify Our Voices: An Open Dialogue on Being Black in America, in June. Dr. Simone and Toya, as well as her husband, Dr. Eugene Harris, joined other Bravolebs in the intimate roundtable discussion,Race in America: A Movement Not a Moment, in August.

Viewers will be able to see more of the Married to Medicine cast's experience at the March on Washington in the upcoming Season 8.

All photos courtesy of Dr. Heavenly Kimes; Dr. Simone Whitmore; Dr. Contessa Metcalfe

For the latest reporting on the Black Lives Matter movement fromNBC Newsand MSNBCs worldwide team of correspondents, including a live blog with minute-to-minute updates, visitNBCNews.comandNBCBLK.

The Daily Dish is your source for all things Bravo, from behind-the-scenes scoop to breaking news, exclusive interviews, photos, original videos, and, oh, so much more. Subscribe to The Daily Dish podcast, join our Facebook group, and follow us on Instagramfor the latest news hot off the presses. Sign up to become a Bravo Insider and be the first to get exclusive extras.

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The Married to Medicine Cast Serves as Medical Advisors at the March on Washington - Bravo

SPORTS MEDICINE: In NBA bubble concussion acumen absent – The Times of Northwest Indiana

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The Panthers Kawann Short, an E.C. Central grad, has played a key role on the defensive line.

The big, bold and colorful mural on the outside wall of Columbus Drive Gyros hits you like a storm surge while entering the building.

Its a life-size painting of hometown hero Kawann Short, defensive tackle for the Carolina Panthers, in his No. 99 uniform and holding the Super Bowl 50 trophy triumphantly in his right hand, an event that was not to be.

Throughout Northwest Indiana, there were banners, posters and pep rallies throughout the city in support of the E.C. Central grad. Social media kept him in touch daily with the Region, as if he were standing at the corner of Chicago Avenue and Indianapolis Boulevard, taking it all in.

One particular banner stretched across Columbus Drive at Alder Street, proclaimed: East Chicago is proud of our hometown Kawann Short. We are East Chicago Super Bowl 50. Go Panthers!

That 10-by-10-foot mural at Columbus Drive Gyros was painted Jan. 28 by the artist known as Fhat Cousins, who worked on his labor of love for eight hours.

Im 6-foot, and I still have to look up at it, said restaurant owner John Troupis. Its a win-win for the city because it went viral on social media. People are always pulling up, taking pictures of it.

Kawann loved it and ended up sharing it (on social media). It lit a fire under everybody to join the celebrating.

E.C. Central and middle school football players watched the 2016 Super Bowl in the high schools mini-theater, with a pre-game video message delivered by Kawann Short.

Ive seen so much of the love coming from home. Its sincere and coming from the heart, he said by phone prior to the game. East Chicago isnt very big. It has only about 30,000 but they respect people who get out and do things with their lives.

And when you do, they gladly jump on board and support you 100 percent.

The 44th overall pick in the 2013 draft, Short went from five sacks combined over his first two seasons to an eye-popping 11 in 2105-16 a team record for defensive tackles before the NFL championship game.

But what really jumps out to students of the game is 11 sacks, 55 tackles and three forced fumbles by a 4-3 interior lineman who also is a fierce pass rusher on the edge.

Short has transformed from a player who flashed across the screen once a game to a surefire Pro Bowler.

Im just out here doing what Im doing and trying to help this team win. Its the only thing I can ask or work for, said the 6-foot-3, 315-pound Short.

Short has partnered with Athletes for Charity, HealthLinc and the East Chicago Fire and Police Departments to create academic incentives to benefit youth. Hes launched a Youth Literacy Project to deliver books and academic incentives to children in need of encouragement when it comes to reading and academic achievement.

They always come back. Theyve never forgotten about their city and thats whats so great, said Steve Segura, multimedia director of East Chicago.

Getting involved, sending a positive message, can work wonders in any environment.

Some guys play this game 16-17 years and havent been to the Super Bowl. Ive played three years and Im here, said Short, who had a video message for the citys football players watching Super Bowl 50 game at the high school:

Ive been in your position and in the same seats many years ago. I had a vision and a dream to be where I am today, Short said. East Chicago ... you guys have been behind my back 100 percent. I appreciate you guys for being there, showing love and support. Youve been amazing. Have a blessed day.

As kids, ETwaun Moore and Short often stopped at Columbus Drive Gyros for a quick bite after school. It was a popular hangout with their basketball teammates.

ETwaun was the star point guard and Kawann a power forward on the Cardinals 2006-07 team. Owner John Troupis recalled how the players, prior to sectionals, had assured him they were going to win the 4A championship.

He made a deal. Win state and its all you can eat.

The Cardinals advanced through the tourney knocking off Lowell, Munster, South Bend Adams, Valparaiso and Marion for a shot at Indianapolis North Central, featuring high school phenom Eric Gordon.

E.C. Central prevailed, 87-83.

It wasnt long after when Moore and Short, holding the trophy, led the Cardinals into Columbus Drive Gyros and said: Were really hungry!

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SPORTS MEDICINE: In NBA bubble concussion acumen absent - The Times of Northwest Indiana

University of Medicine and Health Sciences Launches Dextrocardia Podcast – PR Web

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Dextrocardia is a medical term for when your heart is the other way around. Caribbean medical schools have many misconceptions, but this podcast might just help you look at things from the other way around.

New York, NY (PRWEB) August 31, 2020

University of Medicine and Health Sciences (UMHS), a small, mission-driven medical school with a commitment to student support and a legacy of successful residency placements in the United States and Canada, today announced the launch of Dextrocardia, a new podcast that explores life as a medical student in the Caribbean. Produced by UMHS and hosted by second-year medical student Nihal Satyadev, the series will feature conversations with fellow medical students, UMHS faculty, and medical practitioners and focus on the unique challenges faced by Caribbean medical students in the era of COVID-19, career advice, and the role of healthcare workers in the context of social justice issues and the Black Lives Matter Movement. The first episode is now available at https://dextrocardia.podbean.com/ and all major podcast platforms, including Apple, Google, Spotify, and YouTube.

As the most popular alternative path to becoming a doctor in the United States and Canada, the journey of a Caribbean medical student is fraught with ups and downs. From sleepless nights studying to the overwhelming relief upon passing the all-important Step 1 exam and the euphoria of matching into a dream residency, Dextrocardia tells this story through conversations with medical students, faculty, and healthcare practitioners. The series seeks to dispel common misconceptions about Caribbean medical schools and impart practical advice to students in Basic Science, clinical rotations, and undergraduate programs.

Dextrocardia is a medical term for when your heart is the other way around, said podcast creator and host Nihal Satyadev. Caribbean medical schools have many misconceptions, but this podcast might just help you look at things from the other way around.

Prior to enrolling at UMHS, Satyadev earned his Masters in Public Health from George Washington University and a BA from the University of Redlands. A social entrepreneur and Alzheimer's advocate, Satyadev is the CEO and co-founder of The Youth Movement Against Alzheimer's, a 501(c) 3 nonprofit organization providing opportunities for college and high school students to advocate, research, and provide care for those battling with the disease. Satyadev has also published research assessing the correlation between Alzheimers Disease and periodontal disease.

Episode 1 of the series features Satyadevs interview with UMHS student Stephanie Vang. In this premiere episode, Vang discusses her work as a teachers assistant (TA) for anatomy and shares advice for fellow students about what it takes to get an A in the class - a standard course taught in the Basic Science portion of medical school.

Discussion topics for upcoming episodes include:Conversation with an Anatomy TA Conversation with a Histology TAConversation with a Neuroscience TAConversation with a Biochemistry TAMedical Research - How medical students can pursue researchBlack Lives Matter - How medical students can get involved, plus a deep dive into racial inequities in healthcare, medicine, and medical education

Dextrocardia is now available on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, and YouTube with new episodes dropping on alternate Tuesdays at 5 am EST. To access the latest episodes and information about the podcast, visit https://dextrocardia.podbean.com/.

About UMHSThe University of Medicine and Health Sciences (UMHS), is a small, mission-driven medical school with a commitment to student support and a legacy of successful residency placements in the United States and Canada. UMHS was founded in 2007 by medical education pioneers Warren and Robert Ross to deliver a highly personalized school experience. Graduates of UMHS earn a Doctor of Medicine degree (MD) and qualify to practice medicine throughout the United States and Canada. Students begin their Basic Science studies in St. Kitts, West Indies, and complete their clinical training in the United States. With an unprecedented 96% student retention rate, the vast majority of students that begin their medical studies at UMHS go on to obtain residencies. For more information visit https://www.umhs-sk.org/.

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University of Medicine and Health Sciences Launches Dextrocardia Podcast - PR Web

Anti-covid-19 medicines are being approved too easily – The Economist

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Aug 29th 2020

WHAT DO A malaria drug, a Russian vaccine and the blood plasma of people who have recovered from covid-19 have in common? All have been approved for use by governments in response to the coronavirus pandemic, with little or no scientific substance to back those decisions up.

On March 28th, near the pandemics beginning, Americas Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued emergency-use authorisation for hydroxychloroquine, an established but not risk-free antimalarial medicine which was controversially being proposed by some people, including Donald Trump, the countrys president, as a possible covid treatment. It did so, the authorisation stated, based on limited in vitro and anecdotal clinical data. On August 11th Vladimir Putin, Mr Trumps Russian counterpart, said his government was the worlds first to approve a coronavirus vaccine, despite a lack of proper tests. And on August 23rd Mr Trump announced approval of the use of convalescent plasma therapy to treat covid-19. He described it as a very historic breakthrough on the basis of a study the statistics of which the head of the FDA, Stephen Hahn, got publicly and spectacularly wrong.

That regulators move fast in emergencies is to be applauded. But these three examples have raised worries that sometimes they are moving too fast, and possibly for the wrong reasons. In one instance, indeed, things have gone full circle. Hydroxychloroquines approval was rescinded on June 15th, after a series of well-conducted trials showed that it had no effect on covid-19. The worry is that the other two approaches may prove similarly futilediverting attention and effort from more promising avenues or, worse, causing actual harm.

The Russian announcement was of the development, by the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, in Moscow, of Sputnik V. This involves two injections, three weeks apart (see chart). Each shot is of a harmless virus that has been modified to express one of the proteins made by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes covid-19. This is a perfectly sensible approach. Unfortunately, Sputnik V has not yet been through the trials, normally involving many thousands of people, which would be needed to show that it works and is safe. In fact, it has been given to a mere 76 people, and no results from these tests (nor from any of the animal tests that the institute says it has run) have yet been published. Mr Putin has, in other words, simply redrawn the finishing line for making a vaccine, stepped over it, and declared victory.

Americas behaviour is not much better. Again, the approach behind the product approved is reasonable in principle, but insufficiently tested. Convalescent plasma therapy transfuses blood plasma from those who have recovered from an infection (and which is therefore rich in antibodies against whatever had infected them) into patients with the illness to be treated. As Soumya Swaminathan, chief scientist of the World Health Organisation (WHO), observes, this tactic has been used to treat infectious diseases for over 100 years, and is effective against some, but not others. Trials of it as a treatment of covid-19 are therefore under way around the planet, but Dr Swaminathan says the results so far are not conclusive, and the trials themselves have been small. As a result, the WHO considers it an experimental therapy.

Not so, apparently, the FDA. Mr Trump made his announcement with Dr Hahn on the same platform. Two things have upset people about this. One is that the basis for the emergency approval was an observational study of ways of administering plasma (either less or more than three days after diagnosis) rather than a randomised controlled trial in which some patients were given a placebo instead of the treatment under test. The other is that, even granted this difference, the advantage seen in the study in question was too inconclusive to justify the approval given.

Dr Hahn described the benefits of treating early with convalescent plasma by saying that, if the data continue to pan out, [of] 100 people who are sick with covid-19, 35 would have been saved because of the administration of plasma. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine at the George Washington University Medical Centre, tweeted that this was shockingly wrong, and that the actual figure was 3.2. Dr Hahn has since clarified that he confused the relative reduction in risk of mortality (of 35% between the two arms of the study) with an absolute risk reduction. That is a pretty fundamental mistake.

Meanwhile, in Hong Konga part of the world which looked as though it had SARS-CoV-2 under controlnews has emerged of someone who, having had covid-19 once and recovered, has now been infected by a slightly different strain of the virus. Extrapolating from a single case is risky, but this one calls into question how long someone who recovers from infection retains immunity from re-infection. The answer is crucial to understanding how herd immunity to the virus develops in populations, and may also have implications for vaccine development. Doctors will now be looking hard for similar examples, so that such understanding can be improved.

Editors note: Some of our covid-19 coverage is free for readers of The Economist Today, our daily newsletter. For more stories and our pandemic tracker, see our hub

This article appeared in the Science & technology section of the print edition under the headline "Trials and tribulations"

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Anti-covid-19 medicines are being approved too easily - The Economist

University Orthopedics Welcomes Dr. Andrew Chen to Sports Medicine Team – OrthoSpineNews

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EAST PROVIDENCE, R.I. (August 25, 2020) University Orthopedics (UOI) today announced the addition of Dr. Andrew Chen to its renowned Sports Medicine team.

As the leader of comprehensive orthopedic care in the region, UOI is committed to providing enhanced outcomes for all patients experiencing acute and chronic pain and injury. The addition of Dr. Chen will help to ensure that all patients requiring non-surgical treatment continue to receive the highest quality orthopedic care available.

We are thrilled to welcome Dr. Chen to the practice, said Edward Akelman, M.D., President of University Orthopedics. Just like all of the clinicians at University Orthopedics, Dr. Chen is committed to a higher level of patient care. This dedication to enhanced patient outcomes is at the heart of our practice and will make him an additional asset to our Sports Medicine team.

Dr. Chens specialty is Primary Care Sports Medicine. He treats a wide range of sports-related injuries including finger, hand, and wrist injuries; elbow issues; shoulder issues and pathologies; hip pain and injuries; knee pain and injuries; and ankle and foot problems. Dr. Chen will also treat chronic tendinopathies and injuries that have failed conservative management.

I take pride in not only helping my patients recover from an injury, but also returning them to optimum health so they excel in the sports and activities they love, Dr. Chen said. I am honored and humbled to be joining such an experienced and well-regarded team like the one at University Orthopedics.

Dr. Chen recently completed a fellowship with Case Western Reserve University at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center. He holds an undergraduate degree from Carnegie Mellon University and an MD from Jefferson Medical College. Additionally, he is board-certified in family medicine through the American Board of Family Medicine. He has served as team physician for Kent State University, Lake Erie College, and Hawkin Upper School, which is a college prep school in Ohio.

Dr. Chen is joining UOI September 1 and will eventually be located at UOIs new Mansfield, Massachusetts location when it opens in January 2021.

About University Orthopedics

University Orthopedics (UOI, universityorthopedics.com), with clinic locations in Barrington, East Greenwich, East Providence, Johnston, Providence, Middletown, North Providence, and Westerly, is a regional center for orthopedics, sports medicine, and rehabilitation. UOI includes more than 40 board-certified orthopedic, fellowship-trained musculoskeletal and sports medicine physicians. These specialists are faculty members of the Department of Orthopaedics at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University who teach medical students, orthopedic residents, and fellowship sub-specialty surgeons.

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University Orthopedics Welcomes Dr. Andrew Chen to Sports Medicine Team - OrthoSpineNews

Writer, heal thyself An Irishmans Diary on literature and medicine – The Irish Times

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As a self-published writer with a comic novel and two column collections to my name, I have little time for the precious sensibilities of the traditional publishing industry, now competing with a new generation of DIY authors as well as the sales-inhibiting effects of Covid.

What moves me to despair instead especially at this time of year, when we should be reclining on a sun-baked beach in the Algarve, book in hand is the number of bestselling authors who consider the application of pen to paper (or fingertip to laptop key) their secondary vocation. These include the usual suspects: athletes, politicians, actors, and celebrity chefs.

The medical profession, however, harbours a high percentage of these double-jobbers, as any sanctioned visit to your favourite battened-down caravan park or jellyfish-infested beach will confirm. (Provided your mask doesnt slip, of course, and you can safely observe your fellow holiday-makers preferred reading matter before its whipped from their hands and tossed into the sea by a rogue gust.)

On the fiction side, the bestseller lists regularly feature the medical thrillers of Robin Cook, Tess Gerritsen, and Irelands own Paul Carson, all med-school grads and one-time medical practitioners.

On a more contemporary note, neuroscientist Lisa Genova tapped into our anxiety around neurological disorders when she self-published her first book, Still Alice, in which a 50-year-old college professor is afflicted with early-onset Alzheimers. (Julianne Moore starred in the film adaptation and won the 2015 Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of the title character.) In subsequent novels, Genova has dealt with autism and Huntingtons Disease.

But the grandaddy of literary MDs has to be the legendary and now departed Michael Crichton, who chose not to practise and instead became a one-man entertainment industry whose catalogue of accomplishments includes the TV series ER and the multi-media phenomenon Jurassic Park.

Not to be outdone, the non-fiction list also offers an intriguing line-up. Here we have medics who do indeed handle their words with a surgical precision: Lewis Thomas, Jerome Groopman, and perhaps the dean of medical writers, Oliver Sacks, whose 1973 book Awakenings provided the material for the Oscar-nominated film of the same name.

But theres one moonlighting MD who really worries me. His name is Atul Gawande and hes a general surgeon at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston as well as a professor at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.

Dr Gawande is also a staff writer for the New Yorker and has scooped two National Magazine Awards. Plus, he was featured a few years ago as one of Time Magazines 100 Most Influential People, a position a literary wannabe like me will never occupy no matter how many people I desperately attempt to befriend on Facebook.

The good doctor is primarily an essayist, a form I, too, have come to favour in recent years for its brevity and versatility. His writing is so good and displays such insight and understanding that Im tempted to turn the tables and perform a couple of routine surgical procedures. (Im sure theres a YouTube video I could consult.)

The exalted status of Dr Gawande and his peers is exceptional, though.

Most writers are happy to plod along in a different sphere.

According to US Labor Department figures, the average writer earns just over $20 an hour for his or her efforts. Now, 20 bucks an hour might seem a paltry sum. But when you consider that a writer might spend half of every working day surfing the internet or heading to the kitchen for a snack or staring out the window for inspiration so Im told that wage starts to look pretty good.

As for the average income of Irish writers, thats harder to pin down. (I gave up after a 10-minute Google search anyway.) But the fact that theres a tax exemption scheme for writers seems to me a clear admission that the returns are going to be pretty low if you decide to pen a novel, play, or short story.

The way I see it, then, traditional versus DIY publishing isnt the issue. Nor is it online shopping versus the face-to-face retail experience.

For literary practitioners like me, its those darn bestselling book docs.

So please, gentlemen and ladies, look at it from our side. Despite what I said earlier, struggling writers can hardly go out and earn a little extra cash by performing life-saving surgery or overseeing vital psychiatric therapies.

Whereas the way the worlds going, practising medics will never be out of work.

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Writer, heal thyself An Irishmans Diary on literature and medicine - The Irish Times

Trump and the RNC should remind Cuban voters of Fidel Castro, not their political home – NBC News

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As the daughter of Cuban refugees, I grew up so enamored with American freedom and what it meant for my community that I joined the CIA as an undercover officer and served my country proudly on three tours, including one to Afghanistan. During that time, I witnessed corrupt leaders destroy democracy around the world in many of the same ways that Fidel Castro had in Cuba, forcing my family to flee. Now Im seeing similar tactics employed by President Donald Trump here at home.

My fellow Cuban Americans must come to grips with the reality that the actions of the current Republican administration bear deep similarities to the Cuban government.

When I watched U.S. agents hustle protesters into unmarked vans in Portland, Oregon, in July, I recalled the frighteningly similar stories my grandparents told me about Cuba after the communist revolution of 1959, when speaking out could get you imprisoned or killed. When news broke in 2018 about family separations at the southern U.S. border, it reminded me of the years my mother spent rehearsing how she might handle Cuban border agents potentially refusing to let her parents accompany her on a Freedom Flight to resettle in the United States.

While its understandable that Cuban immigrants once felt an affinity for the GOP as the party that faced down communism and championed economic advancement, my fellow Cuban Americans must come to grips with the reality that the actions of the current Republican administration bear deep similarities to the Cuban government our families fled from. As the Republican National Convention kicks off its effort to re-elect President Donald Trump on Monday night, its time for Cuban voters to admit that the GOP is no longer their political home.

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This political reckoning is imperative, and urgent, because of the key role Cuban voters play in deciding the fate of the nation. Cubans are one of the largest immigrant groups in the United States, with some one million living in the crucial swing state of Florida. And among Latino voters, they disproportionately support the Republican Party.

The Cuban vote was solidly red in 2016 and 2018, despite the trend of Latino voters being reliably blue. Exit polls from Cuban Americans in Florida indicated that 54 percent supported Trump in his first presidential election, compared with only 35 percent of Latinos nationwide. Floridas Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis won twice as many Cuban American votes as did his Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum.

This seems perplexing until one dives into Cubas unique history. When the Castro regime took over in 1959, it confiscated wealth and land from thousands of Cubans, now worth roughly $7 billion. As a result, many Cubans who eventually fled to the U.S. now tend to equate the Democratic Party, particularly democratic socialists such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., with the communist ideology that led to their mass dispossession. Cubans also continue to blame Democratic President John F. Kennedy for abandoning the Cuban counterrevolutionaries during the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, a failed U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow the Castro regime.

However, this thinking ignores some key points that should spur reflection. It was President Lyndon Johnson, also a Democrat, who passed the 1966 Cuban Adjustment Act that granted a special path to permanent residency for Cubans who were admitted into the U.S. and present in the country for at least one year.

More recently, the Republican positions that enamored many Cubans fashioning themselves as defenders of fiscal responsibility and hawkish national security have been discarded by Trump. Instead, Trump, and the Republican Party under him, have threatened enemies with imprisonment, attempted to corrupt elections, egregiously mismanaged economic headwinds and established a cabal of relatives and associates with outsize access to resources, investment opportunities and tax-funded programs meant for citizens of modest means.

Particularly disturbing has been the Trump administrations handling of immigrants. It has handled a flow of migrants at the Mexican border by locking them in cages, incarcerated the most immigrants in U.S. history, and separated children from their parents, many of whom have yet to be reunited.

Cuban Americans should be under no illusion that they are different, either because of their politics or the oppression they fled from during the Cold War. Trump has greatly increased their removal: During his first year in office, he deported 160 Cubans, a 150 percent increase from the previous year, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained over 1,600 undocumented Cubans. By 2018, that number had grown to over 8,500. In January, a Cuban man died in ICE custody, the sixth such death since October.

While many Hispanic and Latino voters in the United States support Democratic initiatives such as raising the minimum wage, enforcing stricter gun reform laws and providing universal health care, Cubans have often continued to oppose these measures out of fear that too much government involvement in their lives would result in another Castro-like regime. But Cuban Americans need to realize that Trumps purported support for our community is far outweighed by his actions.

Indeed, if Cuban allegiance to Republicans has been based on feeling welcomed and favored in this country of freedom, that loyalty is clearly no longer merited. Re-electing Trump would only embolden his mandate to enact even more draconian abuses of power, and his similarities with Latin American caudillos such as Castro are only likely to increase.

If Cuban allegiance to Republicans has been based on feeling welcomed and favored in this country of freedom, that loyalty is clearly no longer merited.

The recent news out of Portland has revealed what Trump will do to Americans he deems problematic. Cubans chose to come to the U.S. for freedom and opportunity, but as this weeks Republican convention is sure to highlight, the Republican Party is itself in a fight for its future; split between those offering unwavering support for Trumps policies, no matter how outrageous, and those committed to a conservative platform based on the principles of democracy.

Although the Cuban American community may remain conservative, it should recognize that its values do not align with the current administrations rhetoric and actions. In November, Cubans should once again choose freedom and opportunity, by voting for Joe Biden.

A.J. Fuentes Twombly is a former CIA officer and a fellow at the Truman National Security Project.

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Trump and the RNC should remind Cuban voters of Fidel Castro, not their political home - NBC News

It’s Never Been More Clear: Fare Hikes Won’t Save the MBTA – Boston magazine

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Transportation

The MBTA says an increase is on the table as it seeks to solve its budget woes in the midst of a pandemic. It shouldn't be.

Fare gate photo via MediaNews Group/Boston Herald/Getty Images | Mask photo by Sebastian Condrea/Getty Images | Illustration by Spencer Buell

The MBTA has a serious budget issue on its hands. With so many would-be commuters working from their living rooms, ridership on public transit around Boston has plummeted. And since fares typically cover about a third of the Ts budget, the agency is preparing for a coronavirus-sized hole in its balance sheet, one that may require drastic action to repair.

Thus far, federal relief funds for transit to the tune of more than $800 million have helped the system get by, but as officials said this week, it wont be enough. At a meeting of its Fiscal and Management Control Board on Monday, the Ts overseers said theyre expecting a gap in the fiscal year 2022 budget of between $308 million and $577 million, and General Manager Steve Poftak said it was premature to take anything off the table when it comes to this problem, according to the State House News Service. And of course, everything being on the table means the MBTA may soon be looking at fare hikes again. But what if we just skipped that whole discussion this time through? What if the MBTA was free?

Talk of killing T fares once and for all reared its head in earnest early last year, when City Councilor Michelle Wu proposed it in response to another fare hike. She has also included it in a plan for sweeping environmental reform, a Boston Green New Deal, which she rolled out earlier this month.

This is really a moment where transit agencies across the country have to rethink financing. Weve seen during the pandemic that systems that were very fragile have collapsed. And similarly, the way that we have been thinking about who should pay for transit and what the purpose of that transit is hasnt been working, Wu tells me. We have to take this moment to realize just how much of a lifeline transit is, that we need to affirm that public transportation is a public good. And we have to start funding it that way.

The fact is, ridership is down, and is likely to stay that way, even after the worst of the pandemic passes. So why would we continue to tie the fate of the MBTA to the number of people who ride it?

Its easy to dismiss the idea as a pipe dream, and the T has pointed out that revenue from fare increases has helped the agency pay for needed infrastructure improvements that would be impossible without a huge pot of money materializing at the State House. But as transit advocates have long said, a fully functioning T is itself essential to the health of the states economy, and has an impact on the prosperity of every worker regardless of whether they actually use it. As the state tries to come back from the pandemic-related economic crisis, quality and equity on public transit could undergird that recovery.

When better days arrive, it would also help encourage people to get back on public transit again. The T has done its best to reassure people of the relatively low risk of taking buses and trains in an effort to encourage public transit use, and a free ride might dissuade transit-riding Bostonians from switching over to driving cars, and nudge those who bought cars back onto the T when this is all over. Eliminating fares is a proven way to get more people to ride public transitjust ask Lawrence, which saw ridership spike after the city offered free buses on three routes.

In the past year, transit activists have focused especially on eliminating fares for buses, a move that, in addition to saving riders money, would also speed up boarding and cut down on crowding, as well as face-to-face-interactions between fare-payers and drivers. The group Livable Streets Alliance has argued that the budgetary impact of doing so would be minimalabout $36 million a year to stop collecting fares on buses in Greater Boston, or $60 million to do it statewideonce the costs associated with collecting fares are taken into account.

Buses run faster when theyre not collecting fares, and its just not that much money, especially in a $400 million deficit, to just stop collecting fares on buses, the groups Executive Director Stacy Thompson says. Fare-free buses would mean we have an efficient, flexible system. It would mean that anyone, if theyve lost their job or not, can get on the system, get to essential services. And were literally talking about pennies.

By Livable Streets calculation, it would take about a two-cent addition to the states gas tax to cover fare-free buses statewide. History has shown that Massachusetts voters hate paying more at the pump than just about anything, and have consistently voted down measures that would do so. But its illustrative to show how relatively low the per-person cost of reforming the T is when spread out to everyone in the state, and not borne disproportionately by people loading up CharlieCards.

Boston wouldnt even be the first to consider such a dramatic change: The Los Angeles public transit system this week announced its forming an exploratory committee task force to weigh the possibility of ending bus and train fares in the city. Andassistance from the federal government could help get a fare-free T past the finish line. In June, Ayanna Pressley and Ed Markey introduced legislation, called the Freedom to Move Act, that would see $5 billion in federal funds used to help states transition to fare-free transit systems.

The bottom line is that fare increases are not a law of nature, even in a budget crunch. And neither are fares, period.

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It's Never Been More Clear: Fare Hikes Won't Save the MBTA - Boston magazine

Analysis: Will Uzbekistan’s Champion of Reform Stay the Course? – Voice of America

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The international community, human rights advocates, and Uzbeks themselves were agreeably surprised when, after a quarter century of then-Uzbek president Islam Karimov's iron-fisted rule, his successor launched the nation in 2016 on a series of often bold reforms.

Today, approaching the fourth anniversary of the new president's ascent to power, many of those same analysts are giving Shavkat Mirziyoyev a mixed report card and calling for him to follow through on the reforms he put in motion.

Many Uzbeks tell VOA that Mirziyoyev won his citizens' hearts and minds by saying what they had longed to hear that the system needed transformation. His plain-spoken acknowledgment of problems ushered in a new era of high hopes and higher expectations.

And he received solid support from the international community. Daniel Rosenblum, the U.S. ambassador to Uzbekistan, says Mirziyoyev is changing the framework of internal governance with a philosophy that the state exists for its citizens, not the other way around.

"This has not always been realized in practice," said Rosenblum, "but it establishes an expectation and a standard that should begin to change things for the better."

Heightened expectations

Still, with those reforms have come heightened expectations, and in too many areas, critics say, positive steps have been counterbalanced by inertia or steps backward.

In announcing his reforms, Mirziyoyev promised rule of law, transparency and greater engagement with the world. What he has delivered is a hybrid that combines reforms with elements of the old system, leaving many to question whether Uzbekistan has escaped its authoritarian past. Fears and doubts persist amid the steps forward.

Rosenblum sees Mirziyoyev's biggest achievement as opening Uzbekistan to trade and investment, allowing the free flow of people, ideas and technology.

"I credit President Mirziyoyev with dramatically changing the tenor of relations in the region from mutual suspicion to mutual cooperation," he said in an interview.

"There is resistance," he added, because "changing established habits and ways of thinking is hard and takes time; there are people and institutions with vested interests in old ways of doing business. The public believes their quality of life should improve if reforms are 'working'but how long will their patience last?"

Mirziyoyev's biggest test has been in dealing with a once-in-a-century pandemic.

Rosenblum says Tashkent acted decisively to adopt lock-down measures. A midsummer surge in infections created some chaos, but Rosenblum credits the leadership for collaborating with the international community and for welcoming assistance and advice.

'Stopping far short'

Steve Swerdlow, a human rights lawyer and associate professor at the University of Southern California, says that progress on the most systemic issues is faltering and requires a reboot.

"Whether on freedom of expression, political pluralism, the registration of NGOs, justice for past abuses, forced evictions, or the outsize influence of the security services, Tashkent is stopping far short of what it must do and, in some areas, backsliding on rights," he said.

"Early in his presidency, Mirziyoyev promised accountability and opened up the internet and media space. But he has largely stood by as security services use the old tactics of intimidation against critical and independent voices."

In recent months, he notes, some journalists who reported on corruption or the COVID-19 response have been harassed or detained. "Instead, they should be invited to press conferences where it is possible to pose direct questions to Mirziyoyev."

Swerdlow laments that no opposition party has been allowed to enter the political scene. And despite the release of dozens of political prisoners, authorities have taken no meaningful steps to investigate the human rights violations that led to their arrests.

Helena Fraser, the U.N. coordinator in Uzbekistan, values Tashkent's championing of multilateralism, increased transparency of data and statistics, and engagement with U.N. human rights mechanisms.

"The first big challenge is the long-term culture shift to enable sustained ambitious reform," said Fraser. But the second is to match rhetoric and the promise of clear dividends to society and economy with results for the most vulnerable.

"It's about doing so in a way that shores up reforms and ensures that progress to date whether on anti-corruption, women's empowerment, diversifying energy sources, fiscal policy, or child labor is not halted or reversed, but accelerated and deeply anchored."

Fraser says recovery from the pandemic requires a culture shift and bold policy choices, including tackling inequalities, supporting civil society, and creating an enabling environment for human rights.

How fast Uzbekistan emerges from this crisis will depend not only on solidarity within society, but also on solidarity and partnerships across government, academia, civil society, businesses, the media and, of course, parliament, Fraser told VOA.

Economic successes

Jennifer Murtazashvili, director of the Center for Governance and Markets at the University of Pittsburgh, agrees that Mirziyoyev's biggest successes have been economic "eliminating archaic restrictions on foreign currency and trade"and in foreign policy.

"For decades, Uzbekistan only saw Afghanistan as a threat. Seeing Afghanistan as a friendly neighbor opens many possibilities. If reforms continue, Uzbekistan can emerge as a very serious regional hub for economies in Central and South Asia."

Murtazashvili is disappointed with the lack of public sector reform.

"The challenges with this old system of public finance, budgeting, and service delivery were on display during the second lockdown when the state tried to deliver cash directly through the community-based 'mahalla' system," she said.

"Many people reported corruption and being treated unfairly. This undermines trust in the state, as citizens experience it the same way as the past."

Mirziyoyev has called for the election of governors and mayors to ensure greater accountability. But most of this accountability still emanates from his top-down imprimatur, rather than bottom up, says Murtazashvili.

"The president has been remarkably popular. He would do well to embark on more reforms sooner rather than later. Making changes is hard in any country and requires strong public buy-in."

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Analysis: Will Uzbekistan's Champion of Reform Stay the Course? - Voice of America

Libertarians Took Control of This Small Town. It Didn’t End Well. – Washington Monthly

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From his books very title, its clear that Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling sees his story as one great big joke. As he describes it, A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear tells the strange-but-true story of Grafton, NH, a small town that became the nexus of a collision between bears, libertarians, guns, doughnuts, parasites, firecrackers, taxes and one angry llama. The bookhis firstis based on a lively article, published in 2018 in The Atavist Magazine, about an attempted political takeover of the small New Hampshire town by a motley crew of libertarians and survivalists from all across America. Their stated goal was to establish the boldest social experiment in modern American history: the Free Town Project.

A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear: The Utopian Plot to Liberate an American Town (and Some Bears) by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling PublicAffairs, 288 pp.

Their effort was inspired by the Free State Project, a libertarian-adjacent organization founded in 2003 with the goal of taking over New Hampshire and transforming it into a tiny-government paradise. After more than a decade of persistence, the project persuaded 20,000 like-minded revolutionaries to sign its pledge to move to New Hampshire and finally force the state to live up to its Live Free or Die motto. (Despite their pledged support, only about 1,300 signers actually made the move. Another 3,000 were New Hampshire residents to begin with.) The projects political successes peaked in 2018, when 17 of the 400 members of the New Hampshire House of Representatives identified as Free Statersalthough all but two were registered Republicans.

The affiliated Free Town Project set its sights on Grafton in 2004 because of both its small sizeabout 1,200 residentsand its long history as a haven for tax protesters, eccentrics, and generalized curmudgeons. The Free Town Project leaders figured that they could engineer a libertarian tipping point by bringing in a few dozen new true believers and collaborating with the resident soreheads. Over the next decade or so, Free Towners managed to join forces with some of the towns most tightfisted taxpayers to pass a 30 percent cut in the towns $1 million budget over three years, slashing unnecessary spending on such municipal frills as streetlights, firefighting, road repairs, and bridge reconstruction. But eventually, the Free Town leadership splintered and the haphazard movement fizzled out. The municipal budget has since bounced back, to $1.55 million.

But even though the Free Towners full-scale libertarian takeover of Grafton never fully materialized, they fanned the flames of a community culture that prioritized individual freedom above all elsewhether the individual sought the freedom to smoke marijuana or feed daily boxes of donuts to the increasingly aggressive local bears. The libertarian battle cry of Nobody tells me what to do! drowned out all other political debate, at least temporarily, and the results of their blindly anti-government,anti-authority mind-set were both troubling and predictable.

Hongoltz-Hetling presents the Grafton experience as a rollicking tale of colorful rural characters and oddly clever ursines. The Free Towners wacky political views, like their eccentric clothes, their rusting pickup trucks, and their elaborate facial hair, present him with seemingly limitless opportunities to display his own cleverness.

Certainly, the author is not alone in finding cause for amusement in Graftons funny little basket of deplorables. For years now, reporters and pundits have chosen to focus on the style, rather than the policy substance, of the growing libertarian right. Again and again, we read stories of rural rubes clad head to toe in MAGA swag, hunched over chipped cutlery in dingy diners, wielding biscuits to wipe the last of the sausage gravy from their oversized plates while vociferously proclaiming that taxation is theft and inveighing against the nanny state. In choosing to shoot these red, white, and blue fish in a barrel, Hongoltz-Hetling is in very good company.

But had the author not chosen snark over substance, his book could have served as a peculiarly timely cautionary tale, because the conflicting philosophical principles that drive this story are central to understanding American politics today. The differences between the libertarian stumblebums who moved to Grafton and the staff of the Koch-funded Cato Institute are mostly sartorial. And the sad outcomes of Graftons wacky social experiment are now being repeated in American communities every single day.

If it seems unkind to slam a writer for indulging in a bit of a laugh as he slogs his way through a story that basically boils down to fundamentally divergent views of tax policy, consider the chapter in which Hongoltz-Hetling drags his reader into an ultimately unsatisfactory discursion into the political dynamics of French-occupied Tunisia. In the chapter, he references the work of the Oxford University professor Daniel Butt, a noted scholar of colonialism. In his discussion of Butts academic work, Hongoltz-Hetling brutally torques his sentences to produce the phrases Butt heads, Butt wipe, Butt cracks, and Butt (w)hole. Oh, how devilishly cheeky.

Look. I get it. Snark is to reporters what salmon is to bearsthey thrive on it, and many cant survive without a lot of it. But back in my crime-reporting days, our city editor routinely tossed back any sophomoric attempts to inject witticisms into odd little crime stories by asking, Would this be funny if it happened to you?

Hongoltz-Hetlings chronic prioritization of style over substance brings his reportorial judgment and diligence into question at multiple points throughout the book. He lightly glosses over one characters conviction on 129 counts of child pornography, and later compares Graftons troubling influx of sex offendersfrom eight to 22 in four yearswith an equally disconcerting drop in the tiny towns local recycling rates. Later, he chuckles about a man found in questionable circumstances with a preteen who was [asked to] leave in an impolite manner involving a very visibly wielded baseball bat. I raise this issue not solely because I am a midwestern mom who is absolutely unamused by child sex abuse, but also because Hongoltz-Hetling does not mention that pedophilia and child pornography are profoundly schismatic issues for the American libertarian community. Mary J. Ruwart, a leading candidate for the Libertarian Party presidential nomination in 2008, wrote,

Children who willingly participate in sexual acts have the right to make that decision as well, even if its distasteful to us personally. Some children will make poor choices just as some adults do in smoking and drinking to excess. When we outlaw child pornography, the prices paid for child performers rise, increasing the incentives for parents to use children against their will.

In 2008, the party refused to vote on a resolution asking states to strongly enforce existing child pornography laws.

The author takes a similarly lighthearted approach to his account of the Unification Churchs establishment of a summer retreat in Grafton in the early 1990sa lengthy episode that buttresses his portrayal of Grafton as a weirdo magnet of national proportions. In fact, there are numerous villages across this country where religious leaders have walked into town and proclaimed, This is the place, regardless of whether that place was already occupied by nonbelievers. The resulting conflicts between townspeople and the invading faithful can be deadly serious. When the Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh founded a commune of 2,000 followers in Oregons rural Wasco County in the 1980s, for example, the groups resistance to land-use laws fueled a campaign of terror against local residents. Group members poisoned hundreds of people in the county by spraying salmonella bacteria on salad bars, and the communes leaders targeted state and county officials for assassination, sending one county commissioner to the hospital with a potentially deadly case of salmonella poisoning.

Againwould it be funny if it happened to you?

These shortcomings, and many others like it throughout the book, would diminish Hongoltz-Hetlings narrative even in normal times. But today more than ever, there is nothing remotely amusing about a group of wrongheaded extremists plotting to take over a government and impose its own dangerously eccentric views on an unwitting and unprepared majority. And it is this reality that makes A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear such a painful missed opportunity. With the story of Grafton, Hongoltz-Hetling was handed the American character in an ant farm. This New England hamlet twines together the most significant strands in our history: tax aversion, religious fervor, veneration of individual liberty, and a deep vein of cantankerousness, all counterbalanced by our equally powerful belief that we are on a God-given mission to establish on this continent a shining City on the Hill. In Grafton, we find a microcosm of the constant American tension between Dont Tread on Me and E Pluribus Unum.

Certainly, one cannot fault a writer for failing to anticipate the specific details of the present disaster. This time last year, none of us could have foreseen that a new, fast-moving virus would spark a global pandemic, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, nor that wearing a mask to prevent infection would be viewed as a political statement. But the test of a great writer, or a great editor, is the ability to look deeply into a specific set of circumstances and to extrapolate from them, to assess the present and then take a leap of faith into a prophetic vision of the future. In the Grafton experience, we see clearly the chaos that can be created when a significant chunk of the community rejects the strictures of government, science, and the notion of community itself.

As I write this, more than 159,000 American lives have been sacrificed to failures of government at almost every level, and to the refusal of millions of Americans to curtailtheir sense of personal liberty and submit to relatively brief inconvenience to protect their neighbors and their communities. It is heartbreaking to think of how many more lives will be lost to COVID-19 by the time this magazine goesto print.

This is what happens when massively funded propaganda campaigns lead large numbers of Americans to lose faith in our system of government. This is what happens when that loss of faith leads to blind opposition to taxation. This is what happens when public services and public infrastructure are systematically starved of resources in the name of fiscal responsibility. And this is what happens, shamefully, when those who are best able to recognize the threat and sound the alarm choose instead to treat local politics like some sort of low-stakes sporting event for out-of-shapepeople.

Today, we are all living in Grafton. Armies of rabid bears are wandering through our streets, clawing at our window screens, and gnashing their teeth at our children while the phone rings unanswered at the state department of fish and game. The old village church is erupting in flames, but someone has slashed the tires on our towns lone fire truck, and the fire hydrantsunmaintained for adecadehave all run dry. Terrified, we beg our neighbors for help, only to be told that the Lord will protect us, or that the cataclysm in the streets is just punishment for our moral failures or our political misdeeds.

And all of this is happening because a large, disgruntled minority of Americans dutifully memorized the Declarations listing of our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness without perceiving that these rights can exist only within the context of the social contractan Enlightenment concept so deeply familiar to the Founding Fathers that, tragically, they didnt consider it necessary to mention.

Right now, I am sitting in self-imposed quarantine with my husband, in a small Michigan town far from our home. Our beloved daughtersboth adultsare thousands of miles away, in California. We havent seen them now for almost seven months, and in my darkest moments, I wonder whether we will ever be all together again in this lifetime. We are separated today, and likely will be for long weeks and months to come, because millions of my fellow Americans have been unwilling to sacrifice even a shred of their perceived personal liberty to the higher consideration of what we owe to each other.

And its not funny. None of it is funny. It isnt funny at all.

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Libertarians Took Control of This Small Town. It Didn't End Well. - Washington Monthly

Point-Counterpoint: Benefits will outweigh the consequences for college football this fall – University of Pittsburgh The Pitt News

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Thomas Yang | Senior Staff Photographer

Due to COVID-19, a football season is questionable for the Panthers.

This column is part of a point-counterpoint series. To read the opposing view, click here.

Last time Pitt football held a season amid a pandemic, they went on to win thenational championship. This years team may not reach the same heights as the 1918 Panthers although there will be a lot less competition with other leagues cancelling their schedules but there are still many reasons to play this season. Game-altering concessions must occur to pull it off, such as the absence of fans, but the benefits outweigh the compromises that must be made in what will be a year like no other.

Players have been given the freedom to opt out of the season if they dont feel safe competing or if they are worried about the long-term health issues that COVID-19 can cause. This isnt a perfect fix, though, because the coronavirus doesnt care if the players arent scared of it it can infect and hurt them all the same.

Those lasting effects, such as inflammation of the heart muscle, or myocarditis, and general organ damage due to blood clots, have been used for months to argue why the season isnt worth the risk. But some health experts think those risks are overblown. Dr. Michael Ackerman, a genetic cardiologist from the Mayo Clinic, has downplayed the effects that COVID-19 can have on the heart, saying he would take it out of the safety discussion or at least demote it to ingredient number 10.

Overblown or not, its important to understand why that risk is worth taking. To do so, one must look to the issue that has been at the forefront of football at all levels for the past decade concussions. Players know that playing football can cause concussions, which can lead to even worse health problems over time as a result of chronic traumatic encephalopathy memory loss, depression, an inability to control their emotions and early-onset dementia and continue to play in spite of that. Players have been able to answer that impossible question, whether their health or the game they love means more to them, for as long as football has been played. Why shouldnt they be allowed to answer it once again?

With many professional sports leagues back in action, college sports can follow in their trial-and-error footsteps, hopefully with more success. The NHL and NBA have put together successful seasons, even with the coronavirus looming overhead, thanks to their reliance on a player bubble.

The NCAA hasnt announced any plans like that, and a bubble isnt feasible with dozens of college teams. Instead, they will follow in the footsteps of Major League Baseball, where geographically proximate teams have played each other to limit travel and the number of teams coming into contact with one another. The NCAA is having conference-only schedules in similar fashion.

The MLB was rather lax about enforcing social distancing rules at first, leading to outbreaks among the Miami Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals, among other teams. The NCAA has long been criticized for not giving players autonomy, however, and its current approach may be more helpful in this case, limiting potential exposure through more stringent policies.

The financial aspect of college football, like it or not, must be considered as well in this decision. Popular sports such as football and basketball draw millions in ticket and merchandise sales, not to mention broadcasting deals. Although college athletic programs are a relative cash cow, theyre also one of the first things to fall by the wayside in hard times.

Stanford University, facing budget cuts as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, axed 11 varsity programs last month, and others may follow suit. Many other programs will be forced to do the same if they dont play football, with over $4.1 billion in fiscal revenue on the line for Power Five conference teams.

A school with balanced books may be less likely to make gambles in the name of fiscal gain gambles such as bringing students back to school as an excuse to charge full tuition.

In difficult times, there are no easy solutions, and a college football season in the middle of a pandemic is not without risks. With the professional leagues restarts as learning opportunities, however, a season can be held at diminished risk and give fans and players something to look forward to again.

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Point-Counterpoint: Benefits will outweigh the consequences for college football this fall - University of Pittsburgh The Pitt News

Moody’s: Coronavirus is accelerating shift to online education – Education Dive

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Dive Brief:

The pandemic will hasten a transformation of higher education business models, according to a new Moody's Investors Service report.

The crisis will accelerate many colleges' plans to grow their online footprints, though not all schools have the resources to invest in digital infrastructure, the report notes. They will also likely expand nondegree and certificate programs.

Analysts predict that once the pandemic subsides, some colleges will struggle if they haven't established a strong online presence.

At least 1,400 colleges moved to mostly online or hybrid instruction this fall as confirmed coronavirus cases spiked in the U.S, according to data kept by the College Crisis Initiative at Davidson College. The pandemic accelerated a shift toward online learning that predates the health crisis, Moody's analysts say.

"Some universities previously resistant to change will have to take more expansive steps to adapt to this transformation,"Pranav Sharma, assistant vice president at Moody's, said in a statement. "Not all universities, however, have the resources or culture to move quickly and the coronavirus will expedite existential threats for some."

Several recent deals by public universities indicate they will continue investing in online education after the pandemic ends, the report states.

The University of Arizona announced earlier this month that it's setting up a nonprofit entity to acquire Ashford University, a for-profit online college that enrolls around 35,000 students.

As part of the arrangement, Ashford's parent company, Zovio, will provide the online college with a range of academic and educational services in exchange for 19.5% of its tuition and fee revenue.

The U of Arizona said it views the acquisition as a way to reach more nontraditional students, which will be key for schools that expect demographic declines in traditional-age students over the next decade. But faculty have pushed back against the deal, saying that it could damage the university's reputation and hurt Ashford's students.

The deal is similar to Purdue University's acquisition of for-profit Kaplan University in 2018 to create its online college, Purdue University Global. Although Purdue Global had nearly $400 million in operating revenue in fiscal year 2019, it posted an operating loss of $40 million during its first full year, Moody's analysts wrote. Moreover, Purdue is still working to integrate and manage the two entities' different brands and reputations, they note.

Likewise, the University of Massachusetts revealed plans in June to partner with the private, nonprofit Brandman University to grow its online presence in the state and nationwide. Details about the arrangement are sparse, though UMass officials said neither the state nor the university would make an upfront investment.

Moody's analysts wrote UMass' partnership differs from the Purdue-Kaplan and U of Arizona-Ashford deals because of Brandman's status as a well-established nonprofit and its stronger student outcomes.

The U.S. Department of Education's new regulations governing distance education could encourage more schools to grow their online presence, the analysts note.

For instance, the rules give some online vocational and training programs more freedom to use asynchronous education, such as prerecorded lectures. They also could make it easier for some schools to launch competency-based education programs, which are typically online and allow students to move through coursework as they demonstrate mastery of a concept or skills.

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Moody's: Coronavirus is accelerating shift to online education - Education Dive

Fact-checking the first night of the 2020 Republican National Convention – Poynter

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Republicans opened their 2020 national convention with speeches touting President Donald Trumps accomplishments interspersed with dark ruminations about what Democrats have in store for America if Joe Biden is elected.

Do you believe in American greatness, believe in yourself, in President Trump, in individual and personal responsibility? asked Kimberly Guilfoyle, a Trump supporter and former Fox News personality. They want to destroy this country, and everything that we have fought for and hold dear. They want to steal your liberty, your freedom.

The presidents son Donald Trump Jr. sounded a similar theme: It starts by rejecting radicals who want to drag us into the dark, and embracing the man who represents a bright and beautiful future for all. It starts by re-electing Donald J. Trump president of the United States.

Elected officials and former administration members who spoke Monday night included Sen. Tim Scott and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, both of South Carolina. Their speeches focused on their own biographies but also contrasted the Republican Party and Trump with radical or socialist Democrats.

We fact-checked several claims from speakers during the conventions first evening.

Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., speaks during the Republican National Convention. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

We actually saw revenues to the Treasury increase after we lowered taxes in 2017. Rest assured the Democrats do not want you to know that.

Scotts claim ismisleading.

Tax revenues rose by 0.4% between fiscal year 2017 and fiscal year 2018 (federal fiscal years run from Oct. 1 to Sept. 30.). But that small increase disappears once you account for inflation. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group that favors shrinking the federal deficit,foundthat once you adjust for inflation, tax revenues actually fell by about 1.6%. When you factor in economic growth, revenues fell even more.

In fact, the actual amount of tax revenue collected in FY2018 was significantly lower than government projections made before the tax package was signed into law, according toa February 2020 analysisby the Brookings Institution.

In 1994, Biden led the charge on a crime bill that put millions of Black Americans behind bars.

This needs context. Analysts dont cast the 1994 crime bill as the sole driver for mass incarceration.Experts sayBidens 1994 bill was part of a trend that was already underway on the state level.

Annual reports from theU.S. Bureau of Justice Statisticsshow that the Black incarceration rate rose from about 1,200 per 100,000 in 1985 to about 2,450 per 100,000 in 2000. (This is for both men and women. The rate for Black men in 2000 was3,457 per 100,000.)

But its impossible to draw a straight line between those changes and the crime bill, experts say. Also, criminal policy is driven mostly by state and local decisions, not federal.

The act didnt cause mass incarceration, Hadar Aviram, a law professor at the University of California, Hastings told us in 2019. Prison populations started rising two decades earlier, in the early 1970s, and by 1994 had already more than tripled, from 300,000 to over 1 million.

The U.S. prison population continued to rise after the 1994 act took effect. But theoverall rate of growth slowed down.

Former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley speaks during the Republican National Convention. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Says Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want massive tax hikes on working families.

This isFalse. Biden has saidhe said that no new taxes would be imposed on anyone making under $400,000.

Bidensproposalwould repeal provisions in Trumps tax law for taxpayers earning over $400,000. Specifically, Biden would:

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a group thats hawkish on the federal budget deficit, has confirmed that no direct taxes would be imposed on any household making less than $400,000 per year. Households below $400,000 a year could face small income losses indirectly, largely from the portion of higher corporate taxes that companies pass along to their workers through constraints on compensation. The vast majority of the income losses from the Biden tax proposal would fall on the top one-fifth of incomes, and especially on the top 1%, experts found.

When we brought in good-paying jobs (to South Carolina), Biden and Obama sued us. Ifought back, and they gave up.

This partially accuraterecounting of a labor dispute exaggerates some of the details.

Harking back to her time as South Carolina governor, Haley is referring to a hearing process between the National Labor Relations Board and airplane manufacturer Boeing after the company decided to start a production line in South Carolina. (It wasnt technically a lawsuit.) Boeings move in 2009 was essentially taking some work away from union plants in Puget Sound, Wash.

The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union complained, and the federal board started a hearing process against Boeing on the grounds that it built its factory in South Carolina to punish the union. Retaliation of that sort, if proven, violates federal labor law.

The union and Boeing eventually struck afour-year dealin December 2011 that provided raises, job protections and a commitment to make more planes in the Puget Sound area. With the South Carolina plant no longer seen as a threat to jobs in Washington state, the union dropped its complaint and the NLRB ended the process.

As for the political overtones that Haley mentioned, while the case was handled by the Obama-appointed general counsel, it never came before the four board members that Obama appointed. Wepreviously foundno evidence that the White House intervened.

The composition and presidential influence varies among different federal agencies, and its a stretch to portray NLRB actions as directly managed by the Obama administration.

Donald Trump Jr., speaks as he tapes his speech for the first day of the Republican National Convention. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Democrats claim to be for workers, but theyve spent the entire pandemic trying to sneak a tax break for millionaires in Democrat states into the COVID relief bill.

This statement requires more context. Trump Jr. is referring to efforts by Democrats to erase a provision in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 that caps thedeductionfor state and local taxes at $10,000. Overall the laws benefits flowdisproportionately to wealthier taxpayers.

The Democratic-led House passed a $3 trillion bill in May that included provisions to reinstate the local tax deductions for 2020 and 2021. Thebill, known as theHeroes Act, didnt reach a vote in the Senate.

Trump Jr. said Democrats tried to sneak in the tax break, but it waswidelyreportedthat Democrats wanted to roll back the deduction cap.

The deduction benefits high-income taxpayers in high-tax jurisdictions, according to theTax Foundation. New York politiciansfought against the deduction. However, it did not only affect states led by Democrats. The deduction has also been used by taxpayers in other states, such asTexas.

Trumps portrayal of Democrats trying to help out millionaires through theHeroes Actneglects that several provisions would help people of lower and moderate incomes by expanding paid sick leave and lengthening the moratorium on evictions and foreclosures.

Biden has pledged to repeal the Trump tax cuts, which were the biggest in our country.

Bidens official campaign proposal is torepealprovisions of Trumps tax law, but not the whole thing. The specific increases in his plan would primarily hit taxpayers earning over $400,000.

Inone video clipfrom May 2019, Biden said that the first thing he will do in office is repeal the GOP tax cuts. However, he appears to be shorthanding his policy in a public event. Thats not his official campaign proposal.

As for the part about the Trump tax bill being the biggest, thats also wrong.

The Joint Committee on Taxation Congresss nonpartisan arbiter of tax analysis said the 2017 tax bill would costthe government (or save taxpayers) about $1.5 trillion over 10 years, or about $150 billion a year.

Several billssince 1980 were larger, measured not only by contemporary dollars but also by inflation-adjusted dollars and as a percentage of gross domestic product, which is a measure of the size of the overall economy. In inflation-adjusted dollars, the recent tax bill is the fourth-largest since 1940. And as a percentage of GDP, it ranks seventh.Weve summarized the tax laws here.

Rep. Steve Scalise. (Kevin Dietsch/Pool via AP)

Joe Biden has embraced the lefts insane mission to defund (the police).

This isFalse. Biden has explicitly said he does not support defunding the police.

Biden in June told CBS Evening News host Norah ODonnell that he supports conditioning federal aid to police, based on whether they meet certain basic standards of decency and honorableness. In a Juneopinion piece in USA TODAY, Biden also said that abuse of power in police departments must stop and that reforms were the answer to problems. He said police departments should have the money they need to institute changes and proposed an additional $300 million to reinvigorate community policing in our country.

While I do not believe federal dollars should go to police departments violating peoples rights or turning to violence as the first resort, I do not support defunding police, Biden wrote. The better answer is to give police departments the resources they need to implement meaningful reforms, and to condition other federal dollars on completing those reforms.

Wages (are) rising the fastest for lower income levels.

Theres little evidence that the lowest-income workers are seeing wage increases that exceed those of higher-income Americans.

Since Trump took office, the lowest-income workers have seen largely stagnant wages, while the top 5% show the sharpest increase, according to federal data compiled by the liberal Economic Policy Institute.

And to the extent that lower-income workers have gained in recent years, its because of state and local minimum-wage increases pushed by Democrats, often over Republican opposition. A Washington Post analysis found that before 2016, wages for lower-paid workers rose across the country at more or less the same pace. Starting in 2017, though, wage growth in states that increased minimum wages began to accelerate.

Louis Jacobson, Amy Sherman, Samantha Putterman and Miriam Valverde contributed to this report.

This article was originallypublished by PolitiFact, which is owned by the Poynter Institute, and is republished here with permission. See the sources for these facts checkshereand more of their fact-checkshere.

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Fact-checking the first night of the 2020 Republican National Convention - Poynter

Corbella: Facts and fairness show public sector workers should have their pay cut – Calgary Herald

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The MacKinnon report states that many Alberta doctors make, on average, 35 per cent more, about $107,000, than the average in other provinces.

Thursdays fiscal update was sobering. A deficit of $24.2 billion is forecast for this fiscal year $16.8 billion higher than originally estimated in February only weeks before the World Health Organization declared on March 11 that COVID-19 was a global pandemic.

Prior to COVID, things were looking good for Alberta. According to government figures, economic activity grew by two per cent from the previous year, rig activity was up 14 per cent, oil production was up six per cent, exports were up 19 per cent and there were increases in retail, vehicle and housing sales.

Then, Alberta was hit with a triple whammy.

In March, an OPEC dispute hit oil prices very hard and, by April, with massive demand destruction due to the global pandemic and economic shutdown, we saw negative prices, said Toews.

This massive collapse in energy prices had no precedent. Bond markets were effectively inaccessible.

The world has changed dramatically and all of our expectations have changed everywhere, but in the public sector.

A new Canadian think-tank, SecondStreet.org, filed freedom-of-information requests asking governments across the country a simple question: When was the last time you cut employee pay?

The federal government which is anticipating a $343-billion deficit this year stated: Our sector officials indicated that there is no data or any information that indicates that there has ever been a negotiated pay reduction. SecondStreet.org confirmed with the feds that there have also never been any legislated pay reductions.

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Corbella: Facts and fairness show public sector workers should have their pay cut - Calgary Herald

Fred Perpall, CEO of The Beck Group, says Blacks and whites need to be more inclusive – The Dallas Morning News

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Last in a series

When Fred Perpall enters a room, he owns it.

Hes tall, confident, articulate and authentic.

He has gravitas, GQ looks and could be a stand-in for fellow Bahamian Sydney Poitier.

Thats what friends and colleagues say about him time and again.

And yet this 45-year-old leader of a global, billion-dollar Dallas enterprise will tell you that hes been pulled over by cops more than a half-dozen times for questionable traffic infractions since moving into Highland Park seven years ago as recently as earlier this month.

I got pulled over three times in one year for what they called California rolls, where I assure you I came to a stop, but apparently not enough to suit them. So lets pull you over and check your ID and registration, Perpall said. Im always courteous no matter how bogus it is.

But hell also tell you that hes been disparaged as a sellout by some Black and brown brethren because he lives in Highland Park and belongs to the Dallas Country Club.

Welcome to the world of Fred Perpall, CEO of The Beck Group, chair of the Dallas Citizens Council and a proud descendant of slaves.

Last weekend, several dozen protesters showed up in front of his house to bring attention to Black Lives Matter. They were greeted with a sign on his door saying just that.

We are getting to a binary situation, Perpall said. If you dont see African-American disparity in this country, its because you dont want to see it. If you dont see the way African-Americans are treated by many facets of our society, its because you dont want to see it.

We need to focus on uplifting these people from poverty. As a Black person, I dont equivocate on that.

If youre a good person, you know deep down inside that kids of color do not get the same investments at the same level that majority kids get. Come on, we see it all around us.

With the pandemic disproportionately attacking people of color and social unrest continuing to boil up from racial exclusion and injustice, Perpall and I decided to have our own version of Courageous Conversations so that he could share in unvarnished terms what it is like to be one of the few Black members of Dallas highest echelon of business establishment.

Friends Black and white tell him he leads a charmed life.

He says he works hard to make it look easy.

You feel like you live your life under a microscope always a little more watched than youd like to be, he said. And as [the protesters at his house] last weekend showed, its not just being watched by the broader community, its being watched by the minority community, too.

More than anything, Perpall wants to convey that inclusion is a two-way street.

I get deeply offended when people act as if having a very successful life is not having a Black life or that by having really close white friends who are your business peers and have the same high-level responsibilities as you, that somehow youve sold out the Black population, Perpall said. I dont know why we always have to go either/or. Some Black people are frankly terrible for doing that: Either you are with us or youre with them. Why cant it be yes and yes? Yes, Im with you, and yes, Im with them.

Some of us have to build those bridges and be what I call way-showers and show other people the way that you can live a very successful life.

And by the way, a successful life is not a white life. To be highly accomplished is not to be acting white. We cannot make excellence and accomplishment a white trait. We need to make that an American trait.

I choose to live in Highland Park because I run a large company and thats where many of my friends, colleagues and peers are. With the exception of a few bad experiences, its been overwhelmingly good.

I profiled Perpall in 2013, shortly after he took over as CEO of the legacy architecture and construction company founded by Henry C. Beck Sr. 101 years before.

Since then, Perpall has gained traction at Beck and in the community.

The firm, which is among the nations largest 100 construction contractors and is still controlled by the Beck family, has expanded its client base here and abroad, moved into technology and manufacturing, and doubled in employment and revenue. Its expected to post a profitable $1.45 billion in revenue this year despite the pandemic chaos, Perpall said.

Hes also closing out his second year as chairman of the Dallas Citizens Council, only the second Black person to lead the citys most elite business organization.

There are probably people who will say, Well, thats just a rich Black guy. What does that do for us? My feeling is, Just watch what we achieve. I say we because we is a powerful word.

Thats what we at the Citizens Council and we at Beck are trying to lean in on. We are trying to have our actions speak for us in terms of integrating and helping our communities of color.

And by the way, I dont just like being a part of this business community. I love Dallas.

When Beck looks for Minority Business Enterprise partners, Perpall has made it clear that the company needs to be focused on Black-owned companies. We have a problem in that Black people dont have opportunities in construction, he said.

In June, Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson appointed Perpall and Richard Fisher, former president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, to lead the COVID Economic Recovery Task Force, a public-private partnership to advance short-term recovery and drive long-term economic growth in Dallas.

Our work at the recovery task force focuses almost exclusively on small businesses of color, Perpall said. People who can least afford to carry the burden for this COVID-19 shutdown and the economic catastrophe that has come from it have been asked to carry the biggest burden.

Having grown up in an inner-city environment [in Nassau] with working-class parents struggling to get six of us educated, it would be an indictment to not throw the ladder back to communities like the ones where we came from.

Perpall followed his older and now-deceased brother, Randy, here in 1993 to play basketball and study architecture at the University of Texas at Arlington.

By the time Fred was 23, he had his masters degree in architecture and would soon start a promising career at Beck.

He was running Becks eastern division through its office in Atlanta when Peter Beck, grandson of the founder, brought him back to Dallas to become the fifth CEO of the family-controlled partnership.

Perpall was all of 38.

Beck has a tradition of injecting new blood at the top while the older generation is still around to give sage guidance. Beck, who was in his late 50s, considered several contenders for his potential successor. Perpall came out the winner because hed strengthened his leadership skills, successfully completing Harvard Business Schools advanced management program.

Fred emerged from being a really good architect to being an excellent business leader, said Beck, who is 65. So I made the decision to select him.

People have commented to Beck that he was a trailblazer in choosing a Black successor. I kinda give them a blank look, he said. I didnt care if the person was a female, African-American, Asian, whatever. We have so many families relying on that persons decisions and a lot of clients as well. I had to pick the very best.

Beck admits that he got internal blowback initially but not because Perpall was Black.

A lot of our people were, Gosh, hes awfully young, Beck recalled. I sent out an email to everybody explaining my decision. I reminded them that my dad took over when he was 32, Larry [Wilson] took over when he was 39, and I became CEO when I was 35, and somehow we survived all that.

Organizations need a refresh. They need a new plug. They need renewed enthusiasm. I could tell when Fred took over that it was invigorating to the company.

Perpall is grateful that Beck continues to sit in the co-pilot seat as executive chairman but makes it clear that hes comfortable at the controls.

The long handoff worked well, Perpall said. I now have the confidence to manage in a bold way. We are bringing on an entirely new generation of partners in the company. I feel pretty secure that we have a long runway in front of us. That was the advantage of getting into the role so young.

Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, who took Perpall under his wing shortly after Perpall assumed his new duties, said the city needs more Peter Becks.

Peter Beck said, You know what? Im going to take off my blinders, and I am going to go out and find the most dynamic, exciting, progressive leader that I can find, said Kirk, senior of counsel at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. Peter Beck would not have entrusted his legacy company to Fred if he was just making a cosmetic move. He entrusted it to Fred because Peter knew he could take it to a new level. And by all accounts, Freds done that.

Perpall said hes been blessed with great mentors like Beck and Kirk and wants to pay those blessings forward.

Despite the jabs I might take for how integrated of a life that I try to live, its really young African-Americans that Im trying to leave a great wake for, Perpall said. I want to show them that if they work hard in the right way, they can truly be successful and change the community from the inside. That is how I think every day.

Perpall is a cigar-smoking guys guy but a family man who puts his wife, Abi, and their two teenage daughters above all else.

Fred met Abi (short for Abigail) at a party for college students whod come home to Nassau for Christmas break. She was going to dental school at the University of Oklahoma. He was in his second year at UTA. They became teenage sweethearts and married 18 years ago as of last week.

When the family moved back to Dallas, Abi put her dental practice on hold to focus on raising their daughters, who are now 14 and 16.

They are a faith-driven family. Freds dad was a catechist in the Episcopal Church. He and Randy served at the altar from elementary through high school. Abis parents were both ordained ministers. Her father founded nine churches in the Bahamas for the Church of Christ. So faith is a big part of our life, Perpall said.

He considers Bishop T.D. Jakes, founder of the Potters House megachurch, his spiritual adviser, but he and Abi want their family to be active at a church close to home. They walk to Highland Park United Methodist Church, where they attend the churchs more casual Cornerstone service.

He said he was caught off guard when his daughters became so passionate about the killing of George Floyd. I wasnt prepared for my kids tackling these adult issues, he said. Theyre 14 and 16. But you know what? A lot of the Freedom Riders were 14 and 16.

Perpall took up golf when basketball left him with chronic back pain.

Today hes a member of the United States Golf Associations executive committee and has an enviable handicap of 6. Although for betting purposes, Id like it to be a little higher, he said.

Because of what I do, many of my friends and colleagues are members of the Dallas Country Club. I like to say Im a super-member. Im there all the time. I feel very comfortable there.

Perpall also plays at Trinity Forest with affluent business peers, most of whom are white. But he also points out that one of his oldest friends is Ray Schufford, a Black barber in Oak Cliff and a chaplain for Dallas County Fire Rescue.

I love that I can be hanging out one minute with [Trinity Forest course owner] Jonas Woods and [sports magnate] Tom Dundon, and the next minute Im with Ray in the barber shop, Perpall said. I truly love that.

Perpall and Schufford bonded immediately when they met at a pick-up basketball game when Perpall was in college and Schufford had just graduated from the University of North Texas. Perpall pledged Alpha Phi Alpha, the oldest Greek-letter Black college fraternity, so that they could be fraternity brothers.

Schuffords family owned a barbershop in Oak Cliff, and Perpall always came to have his hair cut with or without money.

Perpall is the same guy he was nearly 30 years ago, Schufford said. Its been great to see this young, driven guy become older and seasoned who is still all about helping the community and helping people.

Hes never been a person who went around and bragged about what he was doing or says what hes going to do. He just goes out and does it.

There is one marked difference, Schufford said: He dresses a lot better. He had a lot of rundown shoes back in the day. Hes pretty sharp now.

Dallas entrepreneur Dennis Cail, who is Black and one of Perpalls closest friends, said anyone who thinks Perpall has abandoned his roots is oblivious.

Theres nothing sellout about Fred. Hes so focused on being inclusive and promoting not just his Black friends but Black people in general, said Cail, co-founder of the tech startup Zirtue. He is conscious that when he walks into a room as Fred Perpall, theres a lot of privilege that comes along with that. Hes included in a lot of different things that most Black folks dont have access to.

He wants to push change once hes inside these groups and organizations. If he looks around and sees a sea of white, he thinks, Wait a minute, Im the only Black person here. Thats a problem. Hes constantly doing the math and trying to figure out how to right-size it. That much I do know for certain.

Perpall has been encouraged to run for political office state or federal which brings up his political identification.

Im a registered Independent, but I would describe myself as a raging centrist, Perpall said. I have fiscal proclivities that lean Republican, and I have social proclivities that lean Democratic. If I were to run for office, I dont know what I would run as.

For the time being, Perpall will stick to tackling issues through private enterprise.

Capitalism has a much better chance at changing outcomes in peoples lives than government because it gives people the opportunity to express their talents, be productive and to earn value for people they love. There is dignity in that.

He dismisses the contention that Dallas minority talent pool is too limited.

There are many like me. They just dont happen to sit atop this venerable, big company, he said. You have plenty of people of color who are equally as talented or more talented who can also hold their own in any room as well. For me, thats what makes Dallas feel like home. We just havent been as connected as we need to be.

Its wonderful that companies like his are mining young Black and brown rock stars for their next generation of leaders, he said. But its not enough to hire the top 10% and say, OK, weve done our job. We need to focus our resources on these communities so that the other 90% of kids have more opportunities, more options and more chances at success, Perpall said.

While there is plenty of room for improvement when it comes to racial inequality in Dallas, Perpall said it would be disingenuous to overlook the progress thats been made and the trajectory that recent events have created.

The winds are changing. The notion of being inclusive and working for equitable outcomes is as palatable and as real as its ever been, he said. The Greeks had words for time and timing. Chronos was the measurement of time and kairos was timing. Sometimes the time might be right, but the timing is off. Were at a moment when we have both time and timing on our side.

I tell my friends across the country, I dont think theres a better place in the United States to be Black right now than to be Black in Dallas. I truly believe that.

Title: CEO, The Beck Group

Age: 45

Resides: Highland Park

Born: Nassau, Bahamas

Naturalized U.S. citizen: 2009

Education: Two-year degree in architecture, College of the Bahamas, 1993; bachelors degree in architecture, University of Texas at Arlington, 1996; masters in architecture, UTA, 1998; Advanced Management Program, Harvard Business School, 2012

Personal: Married to Abi for 18 years; their daughters are 16 and 14.

Headquarters: Dallas

Founded: 1912 in Houston by Henry C. Beck Sr. He moved the company to Dallas in 1924 as a requirement for building the Cotton Exchange Building.

Ownership: Family-controlled partnership

Offices: Dallas, Fort Worth, Austin, Houston, San Antonio, Atlanta, Denver and Tampa, Fla., Mexico City and Monterrey

Projected 2020 revenue: $1.45 billion, which includes the total value of construction projects, design revenue and management fees

Employees: 1,400

Notable recent local project: Hospitality conference center for American Airlines

SOURCE: Fred Perpall

Read the whole series

Part 1: Two Black leaders are shaping the Dallas business communitys response to dual pandemics.

Part 2: Many local business leaders say theyre committed to inclusion and diversity. But will it last?

Part 3: John Olajide, CEO of Axxess Technology Solutions Inc., wants to make getting medical care at home as easy as ordering a ride share.

Today: Fred Perpall, CEO of the Beck Group, gives his unvarnished take on what its like to be a Black CEO of a $1.45 billion company in Dallas.

See the rest here:

Fred Perpall, CEO of The Beck Group, says Blacks and whites need to be more inclusive - The Dallas Morning News