Unknown militants have fired three rockets at Baghdad International Airport close to part of the airport that houses U.S. military forces and Iraqi partners.Local sources told The Daily Beast that the attack consisted of three Katyusha rockets which hit the outer limits of the airport near a base which housed the advisory units for the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition.Several sources confirmed to The Daily Beast that Mohammed Rida al-Jabri, a senior member of Iraq’s Iranian-backed militia force, the Popular Mobilization Forces, was killed outside Baghdad airport late Thursday along with an unknown number of guests. It’s unclear yet whether al-Jabri and his associates were killed in the reported Katyusha rocket strike or as part of a separate incident.Iraqi officials reportedly closed the airport following the attack and locals reported that U.S. military helicopters could be seen flying overhead afterwards. Social media users posted a number of pictures and videos purporting to show a burning vehicle outside the airport perimeter late Thursday. The incident comes amid a series of rocket attacks against U.S. military facilities in Iraq that have ratcheted up tensions between American forces and Iranian-backed militias in the country. The attacks started this summer as Iran mounted a pushback campaign against the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policy against Tehran, an effort that U.S. officials say included covert attacks against Gulf oil shipments and an increase in Iranian missile and drone attacks against energy facilities in Saudi Arabia.Thursday’s attack closely resembles a similar incident in mid-December when rocket fire aimed at Baghdad International Airport injured five members of Iraq’s Counter Terrorism Service, a special operations unit which has fought closely and trained alongside American commandos.

Mr. Shah, a former researcher at the Republican National Committee, had been in the administration since Mr. Trump took office. His portfolio recently included helping prepare Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh for his Senate confirmation hearings to the Supreme Court. His departure comes as the White House press and communications teams have been depleted. Several aides have moved on to roles at government agencies or have left the Trump administration entirely”.

HONG KONG (AP) — A large fire blazed across a main street in Hong Kong on Saturday night, as protesters made a wall out of barricades and set it afire. Hundreds of protesters gathered behind the fire, many pointing laser beams that streaked the night sky above them. Earlier, the protesters threw objects and gasoline bombs over barriers set up at government headquarters. Police on the other side responded with tear gas and blue-colored water fired from a water cannon. The protesters retreated when police arrived on the street to clear them from the area, but reassembled and built the wall and set the fire on Hennessey Road in the city’s Wan Chai district. Police had yet to confront them while the fire blazed. A march to mark the fifth anniversary of China’s decision against fully democratic elections in Hong Kong was not permitted by police, but protesters took to the streets anyway in the 13th straight weekend of demonstrations. The mostly young, black-shirted protesters took over roads and major intersections in shopping districts as they rallied and marched. Police erected additional barriers and brought out two water cannon trucks near the Chinese government office and deployed at various locations in riot gear. While others marched back and forth elsewhere in the city, a large crowd wearing helmets and gas masks gathered outside the city government building. Some approached barriers that had been set up to keep protesters away and appeared to throw objects at the police on the other side. Others shone laser lights at the officers. Police fired tear gas from the other side of the barriers, then brought out a water cannon truck that fired regular water and then colored water at the protesters, staining them and nearby journalists and leaving blue puddles in the street. The standoff continued for some time, but protesters started moving back as word spread that police were headed in their direction. A few front-line protesters hurled gasoline bombs at the officers in formation, but there were no major clashes as police cleared the area. Democratic Party lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting said Hong Kong citizens would keep fighting for their rights and freedoms despite the arrests of several prominent activists and lawmakers in the past two days, including activist Joshua Wong. The protests were sparked by a now-shelved extradition bill. Protesters are demanding its full withdrawal, democratic elections and an investigation into alleged police brutality in what have been pitched battles with hard-line demonstrators. “I do believe the government deliberately arrested several leaders of the democratic camp to try to threaten Hong Kong people not to come out to fight against the evil law,” Lam said at what was advertised as a Christian march earlier in the day. About 1,000 people marched to a Methodist church and police headquarters. They alternated between singing hymns and chanting the slogans of the pro-democracy movement. An online flyer for the demonstration called it a “prayer for sinners” and featured images of a Christian cross and embattled Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam, who had proposed the extradition bill. Authorities rejected an application from the Civil Human Rights Front, the organizer of pro-democracy marches that have drawn upward of a million people this summer, for a march to the Chinese government office. Police said that while previous marches have started peacefully, they have increasingly degenerated into violence in the end. The standing committee of China’s legislature ruled on Aug. 31, 2014, that Hong Kong residents could elect their leader directly, but that the candidates would have to be approved by a nominating committee. The decision failed to satisfy democracy advocates in the city and led to the 79-day long Occupy Central protests that fall, in which demonstrators camped out on major streets in the financial district and other parts of Hong Kong. The participants in the religious march Saturday were peaceful and mostly older than the younger protesters who have led this summer’s movement and, in some cases, blocked streets and battled police with bricks, sticks and gasoline bombs Religious meetings do not require police approval, though authorities said late Friday that organizers of a procession with more than 30 people must notify police. The government shut down streets and subway service near the Chinese government’s office, about 5 kilometers (3 miles) west of the religious march. “A public event is expected on Hong Kong Island this afternoon which may cause severe disruptions,” police said. “Text messages have been sent to alert members of the public to mind their personal safety.” ___ Associated Press video journalists Alice Fung and Johnson Lai contributed to this report. testPromoTitleReplace testPromoDekReplace Join HuffPost Today! No thanks. Download Calling all HuffPost superfans! Sign up for membership to become a founding member and help shape HuffPost's next chapter Join HuffPost

“ILSI does not profess to have been perfect in our 40-year history,” the statement said. “Not surprisingly, there have been bumps along the way. This is why ILSI has analyzed best practices and has committed to ensuring scientific integrity in nutrition and food sector research.”Coca-Cola said in a statement that it had also been changing the way it funded scientific research through greater transparency and by ending its practice of providing the lion’s share of money for studies. In recent years, it added, Coca-Cola has sought to address mounting obesity in China by offering an array of new sugar-free beverages and through improved nutrition labeling on products. “We recognize that too much sugar isn’t good for anyone,” it said.Professor Greenhalgh’s findings were based on interviews with Chinese officials and scientists, and a review of public documents produced by Coca-Cola and ILSI.She said the industry efforts have been wildly successful, in part because China lacks a free media or watchdog organizations that might have been critical of the relationship.In just a few decades, China has gone from a nation plagued by food shortages to one buffeted by soaring obesity and chronic diseases tied to poor diet. More than 42 percent of adults in China are overweight or obese, according to Chinese researchers, more than double the rate in 1991. In Chinese cities, nearly a fifth of all children are obese, according to government surveys.The increases closely follow growing prosperity in China that began in the 1980s as Beijing embraced market economics after decades of isolation. In 1978, Coca-Cola was among the first companies allowed into the country, and ILSI arrived soon afterward. Seeking to identify influential scientists it could work with, the group found a partner in Chen Chunming, a leading nutritionist who was the founding president of the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, the forerunner of China’s C.D.C.In 1993, Ms. Chen became the head of ILSA-China and she remained a senior adviser to the organization until her death last year. Professors Greenhalgh and Popkin said that Ms. Chen was instrumental in stymying attempts to address soaring obesity by stressing the harmful impact of consuming highly processed food and sugary soft drinks.

The proposed partnership has nonetheless stoked a fierce debate within Iran. Mr. Zarif, the foreign minister, who traveled to Beijing last October to negotiate the agreement, faced hostile questioning about it in Parliament last week.The document was provided to The Times by someone familiar with its drafting with the intention of showing the scope of the projects now under consideration.Mr. Zarif said the agreement would be submitted to Parliament for final approval. It has the support of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, two Iranian officials said.Ayatollah Khamenei’s top economic adviser, Ali Agha Mohammadi, appeared on state television recently to discuss the need for an economic lifeline. He said Iran needs to increase its oil production to at least 8.5 million barrels a day in order to remain a player in the energy market, and for that, it needs China.Iranian supporters of the strategic partnership say that given the country’s limited economic options, the free-falling currency and the dim prospect of U.S. sanctions being lifted, the deal with China could provide a lifeline.“Every road is closed to Iran,” said Fereydoun Majlesi, a former diplomat and a columnist for several Iranian newspapers on diplomacy. “The only path open is China. Whatever it is, until sanctions are lifted, this deal is the best option.”But critics across the political spectrum in Iran have raised concerns that the government is secretly “selling off” the country to China in a moment of economic weakness and international isolation. In a speech in late June, a former president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, called it a suspicious secret deal that the people of Iran would never approve.

Enlarge this image President Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort (left), has continued cooperating with the Justice Department after his plea agreement. Alex Brandon/AP hide caption toggle caption Alex Brandon/AP President Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort (left), has continued cooperating with the Justice Department after his plea agreement. Alex Brandon/AP President Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, will be sentenced in federal court in Virginia on Feb. 8, a judge ordered on Friday.Manafort made a brief court appearance in Alexandria, Va., where Judge T.S. Ellis III also dismissed the 10 counts on which a jury was deadlocked in Manafort's trial over bank and tax fraud earlier this year. Manafort wore a green jail jumpsuit and sat in a wheelchair.He has a "serious medical condition" related to his diet, a person close to him told NPR. The person asked not to be identified.But in court, defense lawyer Kevin Downing said Manafort hoped his health situation would improve once Manafort came under custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He is being held in the city of Alexandria's jail."There are significant issues with Mr. Manafort's health right now due to the terms of his confinement," Downing said.Prosecutors declined to offer an estimate of when Manafort's cooperation would end. The judge said Manafort could always get credit for his cooperation after he is sentenced under the legal rules."It is true that Mr. Manafort is cooperating and he will receive the benefit of that cooperation, if any," Ellis said.Manafort was convicted of eight counts in the tax and fraud trial in the Eastern District Court of Virginia earlier this year. The jury foreman from that case attended the hearing on Friday and sat in the audience as a spectator.Manafort also pleaded guilty to related federal charges in Washington, D.C., in a plea agreement to avoid a trial there and in exchange for cooperating with prosecutors.He has been meeting with the office of Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller.

Coca-Cola’s influence in China shaped efforts against obesity to focus more on the impact of physical activity over nutrition, research has found.Susan Greenhalgh, a social scientist and China expert at Harvard University, led the research published Jan. 9 in the BMJ and The Journal of Public Health Policy, in which she looked at how Coke and other corporations worked with a Washington-based industry-funded group called the International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) in China beginning about two decades ago.The group, which was founded by a former Coke executive and receives funding from companies that include Coke, PepsiCo, Red Bull, Nestlé, and McDonald’s, fostered extremely close relationships with China’s health ministry. Its Chinese branch is housed within the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a unit of the health ministry, according to the study. These relationships may have shaped China’s messaging around obesity to focus more on the importance of physical activity rather than restricting the consumption of sugary drinks and processed foods, Greenhalgh says, though she cautioned it’s difficult to precisely measure the impact on policy.“When I reviewed China’s policies, I could see them using the very same language Coke did,” Greenhalgh told the Harvard Gazette. “For example, they talk about energy balance and making physical activity part of medical treatment or balancing eating and moving … their policy aligns very well with Coke’s interests, and it’s out of alignment with some of the policies advocated by the World Health Organization.”Coca-Cola and the ILSI didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from Quartz. In a statement to the New York Times, Coke said that in recent years it was changing how it supported scientific research and incorporating greater transparency. It also noted that Coca-Cola has made strides to prevent obesity in China by providing sugar-free drinks and better nutritional labels on all their products. “We recognize that too much sugar isn’t good for anyone.”ILSI told the Times that it was committed to “evidence-based food and nutrition research.”Beginning in the late 1990’s, ILSI-China began organizing obesity conferences and establishing itself as an authority on obesity. It created guidelines for obesity prevention and control, which were then issued in the name of China’s health ministry, though ILSI-China’s involvement was not disclosed. Experts at the obesity conferences often had financial ties to Coke or ILSI, the studies note.Between 2004-2009 a third of the group’s sponsored or co-sponsored obesity activities focused on physical activity, while from 2010-2015 the majority of activities became geared towards focusing on combating obesity by physical activity. By 2015 activities centered around nutrition had sunk to 23 percent from 40 percent from 2009.One initiative that resulted from these efforts was Happy 10 Minutes, a 2004-2015 campaign that encouraged school children to get 10 minutes of daily exercise. The program was modeled after a pet project of the former Coca-Cola executive who founded ILSI, according to the studies.As consumption of Coca-Cola and other sugary drinks and fast food has grown in China, so too have obesity rates. The Global Burden of Disease study reported that China had 15 million obese children in 2015, the highest number in the world.

YouTube banned several prominent far-right figures from its platform on Monday, including white nationalist leader Richard Spencer and right-wing internet personality Stefan Molyneux. The bans also include two accounts associated with white nationalist group American Renaissance, former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard David Duke, and NPI/Radix, an organization founded by Spencer. The crackdown comes after YouTube pushed other white nationalists off its platform earlier this year.The banned accounts repeatedly broke YouTube rules against alleging that certain groups are inherently worse than others, according to YouTube. “We have strict policies prohibiting hate speech on YouTube, and terminate any channel that repeatedly or egregiously violates those policies,” a YouTube spokesperson said in a statement. “After updating our guidelines to better address supremacist content, we saw a 5x spike in video removals and have terminated over 25,000 channels for violating our hate speech policies.”Molyneux, a Canadian who styles himself as a philosopher, had amassed more than 900,000 subscribers on YouTube with his videos, which often featured Molyneux performing long monologues about his beliefs. He has frequently suggested that Black people and other non-white groups are innately inferior to white people, and praised the idea of all-white countries after a trip to Poland. Despite those remarks, Molyneux has found at least one prominent fan, Donald Trump Jr., earning frequent retweets from him.Molyneux disputed his ban on Twitter on Tuesday, calling it an “egregious error” and asking YouTube to reconsider. Paypal banned Molyneux from its payment platform in 2019.

The nationwide protests over police brutality and the killing of George Floyd have attracted attention from some members of an extremist online subculture: the so-called “boogaloo” movement.Believers in boogaloo ideology — a focus on visible gun ownership, with some advocating for a violent civil war against the federal government — have shown up to protests in Minneapolis, Las Vegas, and other cities, sometimes wearing Hawaiian shirts (based on a movement in-joke) and carrying large guns. In Las Vegas on Wednesday, federal prosecutors announced charges against three “alleged members of the Boogaloo movement” with military ties, accusing them of taking part in a conspiracy to spark violence at protests held over the weekend and charging them with possessing a Molotov cocktail. And in Columbia, South Carolina, an EMS worker believed to have an affiliation to the boogaloo movement was arrested and fired from his job for his role in riots that took place in that city. Their appearances at protests have drawn new attention — though as far as we know now, members of those groups have been a small percentage of those involved in violence. In a May 27 memo, the Department of Homeland Security raised concerns that domestic terror groups could target the protests, including allegations from the FBI that “a white supremacist extremist Telegram channel incited followers to engage in violence and start the ‘boogaloo’ by shooting in a crowd.” The loosely affiliated boogaloo movement and its ties to white nationalist or white supremacist groups are extremely complicated. Not all boogalooers are white supremacists, and some in white nationalist and white supremacist circles don’t agree with the group’s philosophy of provoking conflicts with law enforcement for the purpose of fomenting a war. And while frequently using racist images and tropes online, many members of the boogaloo movement have no specific ties to white nationalism or the wider white power movement. (White nationalism is a specific ideology urging the creation of a white ethnostate, not just a different term for racist.)The extremely online nature of the boogaloo — the intense volume of memeing and thick sheen of irony — makes it difficult to parse what people in the movement want to do or why some would be taking part in protests against police brutality. And for some boogalooers, members of a movement of sorts based on in-jokes layered upon in-jokes, that confusion is part of the point. The term boogaloo stems from the 1980s film Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo and is meant to imply a lesser “sequel” to something that has already happened. For many followers, that something would be the Civil War. The boogaloo movement originated largely on 4chan’s /k/ forum, where users discuss weapons and guns. And research shows that the term “boogaloo” has been used on the forum since 2012, in reference to Obama’s reelection causing a second Civil War (as in Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo). As radicalization researcher and podcast host Robert Evans told me, “It’s essentially a joke that people wrapped a bunch of different stuff in.” That vaguely ironic jokiness has remained among people who identify as “Boogaloo Bois.” For example, some people who follow the movement use the terms “big igloo” or “big luau” to avoid saying “boogaloo” on social media platforms — which resulted in a new symbolism for Hawaiian shirts. As Evans explained at the investigatory website Bellingcat: By this point, Hawaiian shirts (a sartorial necessity at any big luau) had already become a way for individuals to signify their anticipation of the coming civil war. Activists at the Richmond gun rights rally on January 20, 2020, were spotted wearing Hawaiian shirts and full combat gear. Since then, Hawaiian shirts paired with guns have been a common sight at anti-lockdown protests, with members of existing radical right or “patriot movement” organizations using the garments to signal their affiliation with the Boogaloo movement. In addition, Evans argued that while some members of the movement, such as it exists, are racist and espouse white nationalist viewpoints, others are not. Open source materials suggest that, for now, the apocalyptic, anti-government politics of the “Boogaloo Bois” are not monolithically racist/neo-Nazi. As we have observed, some members rail against police shootings of African Americans, and praise black nationalist self defense groups.This matches what counterterrorism researchers have seen within the movement as it reacts to current events. On Facebook, Boogaloo supporters debated the best way to express sympathy for the protestors. Some worried that [Black Lives Matter] protestors would distrust the Boogaloo Bois, while others insisted that fighting police would demonstrate to BLM activists that they and the Boogaloo Bois were on the same side.For example, Chevy McGee, a Colorado man alleged to belong to the boogaloo movement arrested at a protest last week with guns and tactical gear voiced support for Black Lives Matter (through the lens of anti-police sentiment) on social media. But he had also planned to attend an anti-coronavirus shutdown “Reopen Colorado” protest in early May (but was prevented due to the arrest of an associate). And in Nevada, two men alleged by the government to be part of the boogaloo movement first planned to spark violence at a “Reopen Nevada” protest by setting off smoke bombs to start a panic. When that plan fell through, authorities allege, they and a third man allied by a desire to “violently overthrow the United States government” then planned to blow up a power converter “to hopefully create civil unrest and rioting throughout Las Vegas” following the death of George Floyd. According to the charging document, the men aimed to model their actions after those of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).Their main political ideology, and the guiding sentiment of the movement more widely, appears to be anti-government sentiment with a general focus on gun confiscation as a major concern. JUST CONFIRMED: Denver Police seized these guns and tactical gear from two men who showed up to the protest on Friday. One of them, Chevy McGee, tells me he didn't break any laws. McGee is part of the "Boogaloo" movement. #9NEWS pic.twitter.com/A5K8psce4j— Jeremy Jojola (@jeremyjojola) June 1, 2020 But it’s even unclear as to whether boogaloo followers constitute a distinct political bloc. I spoke with Evans on Tuesday, and he told me, “I’m not really entirely happy calling it a movement, but I don’t know what else to call it.” White nationalists and avowed racists have also taken up the boogaloo mantle (and it’s worth noting that the publicly stated interests of members of the movement may differ from those they may genuinely support). For example, failed House candidate and rabid racist and anti-Semite Paul Nehlen embraced the movement after a shooting at a California synagogue in 2019. The /k/ board, where the movement got its start, is steeped in racist memes and has been for much of its history. And not to mention that at the heart of the boogaloo concept is a desire to recontest the Civil War. As with the alt-right, the memeing and jokes that make up a large part of the movement can, for some, give effective cover to a desire for violence. Evans told me that for some people who follow the boogaloo movement, there’s an element of the “sunk costs” fallacy at play, as people who began discussing “boogaloo” originally as a joke start taking the idea of a civil war against the government more seriously. “Most of them [were] joking at first, but they started buying body armor and weaponry and training and stockpiling. And I think over time, the investment that they put into this idea made them more committed to making it happen,” he said. For many, the first time they’ve heard of the boogaloo movement has been when referenced by politicians alleging that outside influences — like boogalooers, white nationalists, or antifa — are behind the violence that’s beset some American cities in the wake of anti-police brutality protests. But members of the boogaloo movement are unlikely to be the majority of those arrested at either the protests or the violence. In Minneapolis, Seattle, Cleveland, Dallas, Atlanta, and elsewhere, the majority of those arrested during the protests and violence haven’t been outside agitators traveling the country to start fights and cause violence. Rather, they’ve been people largely from the same places where they are arrested. As the Washington Post detailed regarding anti-police brutality protests and rioting in Minneapolis:Of the 57 people arrested through Saturday morning, 47 (82 percent) provided a Minnesota address to authorities, said Jeremy Zoss, a spokesman for the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office. Most of them gave addresses from Minneapolis and St. Paul, according to data provided to The Washington Post. The 10 other people arrested were from another state or the state wasn’t provided, Zoss said. Sacramento leaders blamed recent havoc on outsiders. Nearly all arrests were locals https://t.co/X3qI4wneEp— The Sacramento Bee (@sacbee_news) June 3, 2020 And the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Howard Graves told the New York Times, “I have not seen any clear evidence that white supremacists or militiamen are masking up and going out to burn and loot.” As my colleague Li Zhou detailed, the “outside agitators” trope has a lengthy history:It’s a statement that activists have heard before, used throughout history to undermine the legitimacy of protests. By framing protests as the result of “outside” influence, lawmakers are able to undercut the validity of the protest itself and question activists’ capacity for organizing such a large-scale movement. At the same time, they’re able to maintain that they actually support activists’ broader cause of combatting police violence, while cracking down on protesters.It’s not to say that white nationalists or anti-government activists or virtually any group of any political stripe aren’t playing a part in the protests and violence taking place now. Evidence and legal documents say they are. But while boogalooers may be going from state to state to participate in anti-police brutality protests (or earlier this spring, anti-stay-at-home protests), the evidence indicates that they are far from the majority of those protesting. Support Vox’s explanatory journalismEvery day at Vox, we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you, and our audience around the world, with information that has the power to save lives. Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment: to empower you through understanding. Vox’s work is reaching more people than ever, but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles, videos, and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires. Please consider making a contribution to Vox today.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday allowed President Donald Trump to continue sending migrants back to Mexico while they await decisions on their asylum applications in the US for the foreseeable future, setting up yet another high-stakes legal battle over one of the administration’s core immigration policies. Without explaining their reasoning, the justices decided to allow the policy to remain in effect while the government appeals a lower court ruling that would have blocked the policy in California and Arizona, but kept it in place across all other areas of the southern border. If the Supreme Court decides to take up that case — the most likely outcome — the policy will remain in effect until the justices issue a final ruling. If not, then the lower court’s block will stand. The policy, known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) or the “Remain in Mexico” program, went into effect in January 2019. Since then, more than 60,000 asylum seekers have been sent back to Mexico, where they’re under threat from drug cartels and kidnappers and are dependent on volunteers for basic supplies.The Ninth Circuit had blocked MPP earlier this month, allowing migrants to present themselves at ports of entry and to be admitted to the US to pursue their asylum claims, rather than being forced to stay in Mexico. But it delayed implementing the block on the policy for a week to give the high court time to intervene. “The Court of Appeals unequivocally declared this policy to be illegal,” Judy Rabinovitz, special counsel in the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement Wednesday. “The Supreme Court should as well. Asylum seekers face grave danger and irreversible harm every day this depraved policy remains in effect.”It’s the third time that the justices have prevented lower courts from blocking Trump’s immigration policies. They also allowed the administration to implement a rule that prevents migrants from applying for asylum if they passed through another country other than their own before arriving in the US and a policy that imposes a wealth test on immigrant applying to enter the US, extend their visa, or convert their temporary immigration status into a green card. The Trump administration had warned in court filings that blocking the policy would create a “substantial risk of immediate chaos on the border, threatening irreparable harm to the government, migrants, and the United States public.” The administration has credited the policy for the recent 75 percent drop in arrests at the southern border as well as for helping to all but end the practice of detaining families — since most have instead been sent back to Mexico under the program.A Department of Justice spokesperson reiterated the importance of MPP to the administration’s efforts to improve border security in a statement on Wednesday.“The Migrant Protection Protocols ... have been critical to restoring the government’s ability to manage the Southwest border and to work cooperatively with the Mexican government to address illegal immigration,” they said. In its decision blocking the policy, the Ninth Circuit found that the government had no authority to send asylum applicants to a neighboring country under immigration statute, or even based on longstanding practice. The court also found that the program violated the US’s international obligations, codified in the Refugee Act, to not return asylum seekers to countries where they would likely face persecution.“[U]ncontested evidence in the record establishes that non-Mexicans returned to Mexico under the MPP risk substantial harm, even death, while they await adjudication of their applications for asylum,” the opinion states.Before MPP, both migrants who waited in line at the border and those who were apprehended between ports of entry would have been held at a US Customs and Border Protection processing facility until a border agent determined whether they should be released, transferred to immigration detention, or deported. But under MPP, they are mostly being sent back to Mexico and allowed to enter the US only to attend their immigration court hearings.They have been waiting in Mexican border cities, where some migrants are lucky to find housing in shelters, hotels, or rooms for rent. But for more than 5,000 others, only colorful tents and tarps, some held up by sticks and stones, stand between them and the elements, even as temperatures drop below freezing. The encampments are clustered around bridges linked to US ports of entry along the Rio Grande, where they rely on volunteers for basic necessities like clean drinking water and warm clothes.In the camps, migrants remain at risk for extortion, kidnapping, and rape at the hands of cartels and other criminal actors. The advocacy group Human Rights First has identified more than 1,000 public reports of murder, torture, rape, kidnapping, and other violent attacks against migrants sent back to Mexico under MPP.In Matamoros, a city of about 500,000 people across the border from Brownsville, Texas, about 2,000 migrants had moved into makeshift tent encampments along the Rio Grande — so close to the US border that they can show up at the port for processing whenever their names are called.Matamoros is a dangerous place: The US State Department has issued a Level 4 “Do Not Travel” advisory for the region due to high rates of violent crime, kidnapping, and robbery.The encampment has grown to house several thousand people. Some tents have been erected on land contaminated with feces due to a lack of public toilets, raising concerns about E. coli infections. Migrants have no access to running water, leading to poor hygiene and the spread of rashes and funguses. There are concerns the flu will spread throughout the camps, too.Basic health care services come from US-based nonprofits, including Global Response Management, which are stretched thin. Other volunteers cross the border daily, bringing supplies like bedding and food.Sometimes, parents try to send their children to the port of entry alone so that US officials will be forced to process them, believing they will be safer in the US than in the camps, Yael Schacher, a senior US advocate at Refugees International, said. Their settlements are so close to the port that they can wave to their children as they cross the border.Trump administration officials have dismissed media reports of the dangers facing migrants waiting in Mexico. The US has continued to send aid to Mexico — $139 million in 2018 — but otherwise, advocates haven’t seen any evidence of a US presence on the Mexican side of the border administering aid to migrants.Had the Ninth Circuit’s block on MPP gone into effect, it would have raised concerns that migrants could have overwhelmed the ports of entry. Processing could have taken a long time if asylum seekers decided to rush the ports and line up by the thousands, especially since the administration limits the number of migrants it screens each day. And those admitted to the US could have potentially been detained in US facilities while they wait for their immigration court hearings, Anwen Hughes and Kennji Kizuka, both attorneys at Human Rights First, told Vox.Indeed, at least hundreds of migrants showed up at the ports after the Ninth Circuit’s initial ruling, some of them carrying copies of the Ninth Circuit’s decision blocking the policy. But they were later turned away by border agents wearing riot gear.

Enlarge this image Bullhorns are seen during a demonstration in front of the Supreme Court on June 29. The court had a momentous term with cases ranging from President Trump's financial records to immigration and abortion. Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Alex Wong/Getty Images Bullhorns are seen during a demonstration in front of the Supreme Court on June 29. The court had a momentous term with cases ranging from President Trump's financial records to immigration and abortion. Alex Wong/Getty Images A momentous Supreme Court term is over. The last strokes of the pen were devoted to repudiating President Trump's claim that he is categorically immune from state grand jury and congressional subpoenas. But the term also featured just about every flashpoint in American law — including abortion, religion, immigration and much more.Here are six takeaways:1. John Roberts may be the most powerful chief justice since the 1930s. He is the first justice since then to be both the controlling vote and the chief justice. That means that when he is in the majority, he has the important power to assign who will write an opinion, and that choice may well determine whether the decision is written broadly or narrowly. This term, Roberts was in the majority an astounding 97% of the time; he assigned the opinion in all but two cases.2. Probably the most historic opinions he wrote were those rejecting Trump's claim that he is categorically immune from state grand jury and congressional subpoenas for his pre-presidential financial records. Law Chief Justice John Roberts Rebuked Trump This Term. What's He Up To? But in an election year, Roberts also wrote a variety of decisions that for now will likely keep the court out of the political maelstrom. His signature immigration decision prevented Trump from immediately getting rid of the program that offers protections for people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, known as "DREAMers." But it left ample room for conservative actions down the road. Roberts also cast the deciding vote in a major abortion case that preserved the status quo, for now, but left plenty of leeway for the court to chip away at abortion rights in the future. And he likely wrote the court's unsigned opinion, dismissing as moot the first major gun rights case heard by the court in a decade. That too leaves room for gun rights proponents to come back attacking gun regulations in the future. 3. Religion is the one area where social conservative won consistent victories this term. In three separate decisions, the court made clear that the high wall of separation between church and state, a doctrine that prevailed for much of the 20th century, is now a relic of the past. It has been replaced by a heavy emphasis on the free exercise of religion and an accommodation between church and state. Roberts wrote the court's 5-to-4 decision gutting provisions in most state constitutions that have long barred using taxpayer funds for religious schools. In another case, the court ruled that under the Constitution, lay teachers at parochial schools may not be protected by the nation's fair employment laws.And in a third case, the court ruled that under the Affordable Care Act, employers with religious or moral objections may opt out of providing free birth control coverage in their employee insurance plans. 4. While conservatives have a clear five-justice majority, they can't seem to work together. Perhaps for reasons of either ego or frustration, conservatives wrote way more separate concurring and dissenting opinions — a total of 60 — compared to the liberals, who wrote far fewer concurring opinions and almost always dissented as a group. The liberals seem to know they are playing defense. When they can get a fifth vote to prevail, they don't go off on their own in a way that could diminish their impact. Politics You Won't See Trump's Taxes Before Election Day, But He Could Face Bigger Problems The four most conservative justices write many more separate opinions and are much more long-winded — their separate opinions total 734 pages.When you drill down to the 20 cases that were decided by 5-to-4 or 6-to-3 votes, the numbers are even starker. Conservatives wrote 14 of 17 concurring opinions, meaning that they signed on to the outcome of the ruling but not on to all — or sometimes any — of the reasoning behind it. And they wrote eight of the nine solo dissents and eight of the 11 solo concurrences, writing for themselves alone. The only time Chief Justice Roberts wrote a concurring opinion for himself alone was in the abortion case, presenting a Louisiana law identical a Texas law struck down four years ago. Roberts, who dissented from the Texas decision, nonetheless cast the deciding fifth vote to invalidate the same law from Louisiana, citing the duty to adhere to precedent. But he did not join the liberals' reasoning, and in fact seemed to invite future cases that could undermine abortion rights. 5. Of the two Trump appointees to the court, Neil Gorsuch has been at once the most predictable and unpredictable this term. Predictable because in most cases he has turned out to be every bit as conservative as his political supporters hoped, and liberal detractors feared. But in two major majority opinions that he wrote, he completely defied early predictions. The most headline-grabbing was his decision for a six-justice majority declaring that LGBTQ employees are protected by the 1964 law barring employment discrimination based on sex. National Aimee Stephens, Transgender Woman At Center Of Major Civil Rights Case, Dies At 59 In another decision, on Thursday, he delivered to Native Americans their first major Supreme Court victory in many decades. Writing for himself and the court's four liberals, Gorsuch declared that much of eastern Oklahoma, including the state's second largest city of Tulsa, falls within Indian lands belonging to the Creek Nation. Gorsuch's decision invoked the mistreatment and broken promises inflicted on Native American tribes over the course of U.S. history, and concluded that the land in eastern Oklahoma still belongs to the Creek Nation because Congress never revoked the treaties under which the land was designated as, in the words of the opinion, "Indian Country." To hold otherwise, wrote Gorsuch, would "elevate the most brazen and longstanding injustices ... rewarding wrong and failing those in the right." Law Supreme Court Rules That About Half Of Oklahoma Is Native American Land Although the decision could have major consequences, state and tribal officials immediately said that they could reach an amicable compromise to resolve those issues. That said, the fact is that the court's ruling has provided Native Americans the kind of leverage in negotiations that they have not had before. 6. Headline cases buried other personal court news. On June 21, Chief Justice Roberts fell while walking at a Maryland country club near his home, hitting his head hard enough to require stitches and an overnight stay in the hospital. The court did not disclose the incident when it occurred, but confirmed it on July 7, after the Washington Post first reported the incident. Court press officer Kathy Arberg said in a statement, "The Chief Justice was treated at a hospital on June 21 for an injury to his forehead sustained in a fall while walking for exercise near his home. The injury required sutures, and out of an abundance of caution, he stayed in the hospital overnight and was discharged the next morning." Law Top 5 Moments From The Supreme Court's 1st Week Of Livestreaming Arguments Arberg said doctors had had ruled out a seizure (he suffered a seizure in 1993 and another one in 2007). She said doctors believe the fall last month "was likely due to light-headedness caused by dehydration." On a different note, Ginni Thomas, an outspoken conservative activist and wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote to protest an overhead banner on Main Street in the tiny town of Clifton, Va., population 300. The banner reads, "Welcome to Clifton, where Black Lives Matter." Thomas is white; her husband is the Supreme Court's only black justice. "BLM is a bit of a dangerous Trojan Horse and they are catching well-meaning people into the dangerous posturing that can invite mob rule and property looting," Ginni Thomas wrote, according to the Washington Post. "Let's not be tricked into joining cause with radical extremists seeking to foment a cultural revolution because they hate America."

Devil’s Bargain, a story about Steve Bannon and Donald Trump by my friend (and former Atlantic colleague) Joshua Green. It is fascinating, well-researched, and of lasting interest, despite Bannon’s ouster from the White House, because of his ongoing Breitbart- role. Hillary Clinton’s own What Happened, as I argued 10 days ago, is much more interesting and edgy than the standard politician’s book. And while it places central responsibility for last year’s results on Hillary Clinton itself, it raises important questions about—and asks for similar introspection from—other participants, notably the “what about her emails?!?!” press. Here are two more campaign-related books very much worth reading:I watched the campaign through its ups and downs over the past two years; I often saw Katy Tur on her MSBNC and NBC broadcasts; I thought I’d heard, or could guess, pretty much what she would have to say.In fact, this is also a quite revealing and powerful book, in addition to being very entertaining. Its details of Tur’s experience with the Trump campaign, from the start when she following what was assumed to be a brief novelty/vanity effort, to the fateful conclusion last November 8, amplify the strangeness of what we have been through—and the darkness.Two themes are worth noting. One is the genuinely ugly menace of Donald Trump’s in-person dealings, especially with a young, attractive female reporter in whom he displayed an unsettlingly personal and intense interest during the campaign. (“There’s little Katy back there!” he would say randomly at rallies. In a famous episode, he gave her a backstage kiss before he went onto a TV show.) I won’t quote her whole description of an early interview with him, but it is disturbing, as are several of her other accounts. (She also talks about it, and the overall tone of menace, both from the candidate and from his supporters, in a Fresh Air interview with Terry Gross.) Sample: His face is tight. He spits out answers. He glares at me during the questions. He never smiles. Now I see [watching a replay of the interview] what my producer saw. Trump is angry…. “It’s a wrong statistic” he spits back [after a question]. “Go check your numbers! It’s totally wrong.” He’s trying to steamroll. Intimidate. Talk down. “It’s Pew Research,” I say. Now he’s fuming. Wow. His rage didn’t register in the moment. I thought it was all part of his schtick. The reality show star. But watching his face on-screen, it’s clear Trump isn’t playing. The other theme that impressed me was Tur’s explanation of why she decided that she would be leaving the world of Trump coverage when the campaign was over, no matter how it turned out. If he won, it would have been natural to follow him to the White House press pool, but she decided that she would rather not: That’s a reality of beat reporting. When the people, places, and businesses you know well do well themselves, you’re in demand. If they’re a big deal, your work is a big deal. If they take off, you career can take off, too. This is especially true if you not only have access but knowledge. I’ve been thinking a lot about access lately. Access is seductive. Access means good nuggets from the campaign … And somewhere along the way, out here on the trail, wherever it is I am right now, I decided that access journalism isn’t worth it. Tur doesn’t pretend this is some heroic sacrifice—she’s now a TV anchor—but she is thoughtful about the tradeoffs involved in “access” reporting.She also makes a point of saying that she doesn’t vote, “because I think it’s fairer that way.” I think that’s crazy, for reasons I laid out in Breaking the News (when Len Downie of the Washington Post announced a similar policy back in the 1990s). But that’s an argument for another time. You’ll enjoy and learn from this book.* * *Thanks Obama is a very different book from these other three, starting with its focus on the 2008 and 2012 campaigns rather than 2016. Litt was a 20-something precinct worker in Obama’s 2008 campaign, and eventually became part of his White House speechwriting staff. He had worked for The Onion before trying political speechwriting, and his specialty at the White House (in addition to some heavy-weather policy work) was Obama’s comedy riffs. Among these were Obama’s last few White House Correspondents Dinner appearances, including his celebrated “Luther, the Anger Translator” routine at the 2015 dinner.The book is genuinely charming, and perceptive. You can get an idea of Litt’s tone from his very effective Fresh Air interview last week.White House speechwriters, as a class, are—well, writers. This makes it the more noticeable that the collection of effective memoir-books by them is thinner than you would expect. Walter Shapiro, mentioned above, was a speechwriter during the Carter administration—as was I, and Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker, and the novelist Jerry Doolittle, and the newspaper editor Griffin Smith, and the now-Congressional candidate Bob Rackleff, and the newspaper reporter Achsah Nesmith, and others.You could find a similar lineup for most administrations (until this one). But graceful, instructive, wry speechwriter memoirs like Litt’s are the exception rather than the norm. I think Thanks, Obama will join the ranks of lasting works about the culture and texture of political life, and of coming-of-age accounts by staffers who grow up personally and politically at the same time. (This is a category whose towering examples range from literary memoir-essays like The Education of Henry Adams, to romans-a-clef like All the Kings Men by Robert Penn Warren and The Gay Place by Billy Lee Brammer, to serious policy-essays like A Political Education by Harry McPherson. Please read them all!)Staff memoirs are easier to write, or at least more fun, if you’re describing a meltdown or race-to-the-bottom political disaster—as in John Podhoretz’s mordantly comic Hell of a Ride, about his experience with George H.W. Bush. (I don’t agree with Podhoretz on much, but this is a funny, interesting book.) When I wrote about the Carter administration long ago in this magazine, it was also with a “how did that happen?” tone.Litt takes on a much higher degree of difficulty by being mainly positive and respectful of Obama and his achievements. But he avoids a pious or reverent tone by directing many of his comic talents at himself. He’s aiming for, and mainly achieves, a self-presentation as a barely-skirting-disaster naif who gradually learns what he is supposed to do. The hoary Hollywood joke is that once you can fake sincerity, everything else is easy. The political counterpart involves being able to feign self-deprecation. It’s appealing in a speaker—one reason Donald Trump simply could not perform as a Correspondents Dinner-style after-dinner humorist is that self-deprecation is a necessary part of the schtick, but is wholly outside his range—and it’s appealing in an underling’s memoir like this.For example: Perhaps there are some people who, summoned to the Oval Office for the very first time, walk in there like it’s no big deal. Those people are sociopaths. For the rest of us, attending your first Oval Office meeting is like performing your own bris. To make matters worse, when you have a meeting in the Oval Office, you don’t just go into the Oval Office. First you wait in a tiny, windowless chamber. It’s kind of like the waiting room in a doctor’s office, but instead of last year’s Marie Claire magazines they have priceless pieces of American art. And instead of a receptionist, there’s a man with a gun. And in a worst-case scenario, the man with a gun is legally required to kill you. It turns out this little room is the perfect place to second- guess every life choice you have ever made… I was on the verge of losing it completely when one of the president’s personal aides emerged. “Okay. He’s ready for you.” To my credit, the first time I walked into the Oval Office, I did not black out. In front of me I could see a painting of the Statue of Liberty by Norman Rockwell. Behind me, out of the corner of my eye, I could see the Emancipation Proclamation. Not a photocopy or poster. The. Emancipation. Proclamation. I didn’t turn to look at the document, but I could feel the message it was sending through the room. “I’m here because I freed the slaves,” it seemed to say. “What are you doing here?” And, when it comes to the But Seriously Now part of the book, Litt says: Eight years in Obamaworld taught me focus. Each news cycle—already shrunk to twenty-four hours when POTUS took office—lasted mere seconds by the time he left. He faced constant pressure to approach every issue with the frantic, hair- on- fire urgency of a tweet. More than once, I found myself frustrated by the president’s patience. To me it seemed more like delay. But nine times out of ten, Obama was right. The secret to solving big problems, I learned, is knowing which little problems to ignore. The list of things Obamaworld Taught Me could go on for several pages. I learned that decisions are only as good as the decision-making process. That generosity is a habit and not a trait. That all human beings, even presidents, look goofy chewing gum. But here, beyond a shadow of a doubt, is the single most valuable lesson I learned in public service: There are no grownups, at least not in the way I imagined as a kid. Once you reach a certain age, the world has no more parents. But it contains a truly shocking number of children. These children come in all ages, in all sizes, from every walk of life and every corner of the political map. And this is the reason I’m most grateful for my time in Obamaworld. For eight formative years, often against my will, I was forced to act like an adult…. I read the book cover-to-cover in one evening. Very well done.* * *It’s a dark time, with some positive notes. These are worth your attention.

Despite the claim that this was merely a reissuing, the policy did change: It now covers more types of speech. In a footnote, the government says that “speaking engagements” should also be understood to mean “written pieces intended for publication in any print or online media.” In other words, through its pre-approval process, the Justice Department wants to police, and possibly suppress, even more expression by immigration judges.Under the new guidance, the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) remains the sole arbiter for what counts as official- or personal-capacity speech, with near-total discretion to deny speaking requests through a laborious process that includes layers of review by a judge’s supervisor and three separate offices within the agency. “This process,” the new memo states, “ensures compliance with both the law and agency policy and consistency in EOIR’s communications.” Elsewhere, the policy notes that the red tape for personal speaking engagements is necessary “to determine whether they involve genuinely personal capacity events, whether there are any ethics concerns with the engagement, and whether the engagement will disrupt EOIR operations by requiring the employee to miss work.”The effect of the restrictions on speaking engagements has been profound, according to representatives for the National Association of Immigration Judges and organizations that in years past have hosted these judges. Before the 2017 policy went into effect, immigration judges routinely spoke at national conferences, law schools, and educational seminars about the intricacies of immigration law and how specific policies played out in their courtrooms. Now organizations such as the Federal Bar Association, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the Practising Law Institute, and Human Rights First can no longer count on the expertise of immigration judges at their events or trainings. Some of these organizations have turned to relying instead on retired immigration judges, according to Laura Lynch, a senior policy counsel with the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “We have been lucky that retired IJs have been willing to participate,” she told me in an email. Mark Shmueli, an immigration attorney who has organized many immigration conferences, said in an interview that he no longer bothers reaching out to active immigration judges. “We don’t even try any more,” he said. In a later email, he added: “Judges are definitely muzzled.” For their part, a number of law professors from different parts of the country raised alarms in a Slate article about how judges have had to turn down invitations to speak to their students.Some judges, an NAIJ representative told me, don’t want to go through the trouble of seeking permission from their superiors at the Justice Department—and thus miss out on speaking opportunities altogether. And many of those who do seek permission are denied it, according to records maintained by the union. One judge, for example, was not allowed to speak about the legal standards for asylum at a conference; another wasn’t allowed to speak about the basics of immigration law at an educational conference. Others were denied approval to speak about the duties of judges and the mission of the immigration-court system, and to present at a county-bar meeting about best practices for bringing asylum claims. Pro bono trainings, which aim to teach lawyers how to provide free services to clients who couldn’t otherwise afford an attorney, are also off the table.

The Conservative lead over the Labour Party probably says more about the opposition’s weakness than the government’s strength, and illustrates the scramble for votes on both sides of the Brexit divide.While Mr. Johnson is battling with Mr. Farage, Mr. Corbyn is in a fight with the newly revived centrist and pro-European Liberal Democrats under the leadership of Jo Swinson.“The competition is not between Johnson and Corbyn, it’s between Johnson and Farage on the one hand, and Corbyn and Swinson on the other,” Mr. Curtice said. “The reason Johnson is ahead is not because he has squeezed the Labour vote, it’s because he has squeezed the Brexit Party.”So Mr. Johnson’s prospects may depend largely on whether he can continue to do that as Brexit reaches another decisive moment.Having promised repeatedly to leave the bloc on Oct. 31, Mr. Johnson is hemmed in. Parliament has passed a law requiring him to request another delay if he cannot get a new Brexit agreement — and a deal with Brussels still remains a long shot.If Mr. Johnson fails to deliver Brexit, or compromises too much in the eyes of pro-Brexit Britons, Mr. Farage will be on the attack again, crying betrayal, Mr. Curtice said. Such an outcome would be ominous for the Tories and their leader.“The $64,000 question is can he deliver and what can he deliver?” Mr. Curtice said. “If he can’t get an agreement and can’t get no-deal through Parliament the question will be: ‘Is this any more than a joke?’”

LONDON—Britain’s Parliament took an important step toward taking the country out of the European Union at the end of January, as lawmakers in the House of Commons voted overwhelmingly to back the Brexit agreement Prime Minister Boris Johnson negotiated with the bloc last year.Lawmakers had backed the deal in December, so Thursday’s decisive vote was a foregone conclusion, given Mr. Johnson’s commanding majority in the Commons. The agreement passed with 330 voting in favor and 231 against....

Enlarge this image The Surgeon General recommends more Americans carry naloxone, the opioid overdose antidote. Jake Harper/Side Effects Public Media hide caption toggle caption Jake Harper/Side Effects Public Media The Surgeon General recommends more Americans carry naloxone, the opioid overdose antidote. Jake Harper/Side Effects Public Media A few months ago, Kourtnaye Sturgeon helped save someone's life. She was driving in downtown Indianapolis when she saw people gathered around a car on the side of the road. Sturgeon pulled over and a man told her there was nothing she could do: Two men had overdosed on opioids and appeared to be dead."I kind of recall saying, 'No man, I've got Narcan,' " she says, referring to the brand- name version of the opioid overdose antidote, naloxone. "Which sounds so silly, but I'm pretty sure that's what came out."Sturgeon sprayed a dose of the drug up the driver's nose, and waited for it to take effect. About a minute later, she says, the paramedics showed up."As they were walking towards us, the driver started slowly moving," she says. Both people survived.Sturgeon had the drug with her because she works for Overdose Lifeline, a non-profit devoted to distributing naloxone, but many bystanders would be unprepared to help.Last month, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams issued an advisory urging more Americans to learn to use naloxone, and carry it with them in case they encounter someone who has overdosed.With the increase in overdoses nationwide, the advisory suggests that lay responders — people who may witness an overdose before police or EMS arrive — can play a critical role in saving lives. Shots - Health News Trump's Surgeon General Pick Built Reputation Fighting HIV And Opioids In Indiana But if you're not a medical professional, getting a dose of naloxone can be difficult. It is a prescription drug and normally a doctor or nurse would have to directly prescribe it for the person at risk of overdosing. Corey Davis, an attorney for the National Health Law Program, says that creates a barrier for people with addiction."A lot of people at risk of an overdose don't have contact with a medical provider or they're afraid because of stigma," he says.To broaden access, every state and Washington, D.C., have passed laws making it easier for friends and family members or bystanders to get and use naloxone. Just how easy it is still depends on your state, or even the pharmacy you go to.Davis says most states allow something called third-party prescribing, which lets doctors prescribe naloxone to someone who knows the person at risk of an overdose. And most states have also passed some kind of Good Samaritan law providing legal immunity for people who administer the drug or call 911.Davis says another type of law allows a kind of prescription called a standing order."But instead of having a person's name on it, it has a group of people," says Davis.A standing order could apply, for example, to anyone who takes opioid painkillers, or suffers from addiction. Or, Davis says, "Anybody who might be in a position to assist someone, which unfortunately, today means essentially everybody."In his home state of Indiana, Jerome Adams signed a statewide standing order in 2016, while serving as the state's health commissioner. It allows pharmacies, local health departments or nonprofits that register with the state and follow certain requirements to dispense the drug to anyone who requests it.But two years later, only about half of Indiana pharmacies are registered, and local advocates say many people, even some pharmacists, are still unaware of the law.Even if you understand the laws regulating naloxone in your state — and you feel comfortable asking for it at the pharmacy counter — there's still the cost, which has gone up in recent years. Two pharmacies near WFYI in Indianapolis, stock naloxone. One charged $80 for two doses of the generic form of the drug. The other charged $95 for two doses of Narcan, the brand-name version."It's expensive," says Brad Ray, a researcher at Indiana University's School of Public and Environmental Affairs. "People who are users are scraping money together to buy drugs. They're not prepared to buy naloxone with that money."Several U.S. Senators have signed on to a letter urging Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar to negotiate with drug companies to lower the price of naloxone.For people who can't afford the drug, Ray says health departments and nonprofits can help. Laws in many states allow these organizations to dispense naloxone to lay responders.Indiana's health department used federal and state funds to purchase nearly 14,000 naloxone kits since 2016, the state reports. The state distributes those free doses through county health departments. But nearly half of Indiana counties didn't request kits. And the majority of the kits went to first responders.Local health departments, Ray says, need to work harder to get naloxone to people who might use it. People who use drugs, after all, may not feel comfortable going to the government for naloxone."Getting it in the hands of users — that's the trick we need to figure out," Ray says.Corey Davis says there is one change that could really help. The Food and Drug Administration or Congress could make naloxone an over-the-counter medication to make it easier to access, and maybe cheaper. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb has the authority to do so, Davis says, but so far he has not.This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, WFYI, Side Effects Public Media and Kaiser Health News.

Brazilian police have raided addresses linked to some of Jair Bolsonaro’s most ardent online cheerleaders as part of an investigation into a fake news network investigators reportedly suspect could be linked to the president’s son.The operation’s targets were an eclectic and influential cast of hardcore Bolsonaristas including a former Femen activist-turned-anti-abortion-militant; a comic and musician whose repertoire includes a sexually explicit JK Rowling parody called “Harry Fucker”; a gun-toting, communist-bashing congressman; a hard-right blogger; and a multimillionaire retail magnate famed for placing giant replicas of the Statue of Liberty outside his stores.There was rejoicing among the president’s opponents and outrage among followers as federal police investigators executed 29 search warrants around Brazil as part of an inquiry into the alleged group and its financial backers.Mobile phones and computers were reportedly seized in homes and offices in Brazil’s capital, Brasília, and five states.Bolsonaro’s social media savvy son, Carlos Bolsonaro, attacked what he called an “unconstitutional, political and ideological” investigation. Last month one of Brazil’s top papers, the Folha de São Paulo, claimed police had identified the 37-year-old as one of the alleged key members of a “criminal fake news racket” engaged in threatening and defaming Brazilian authorities.Filipe Martins, a top presidential adviser, tweeted: “Journalists, comedians and ordinary citizens who acted spontaneously are being treated like criminals for daring to express views that displeased the establishment.”Another pro-Bolsonaro activist, Davy Albuquerque da Fonseca, complained: “This is open persecution of supporters of President Jair Bolsonaro. The nation is living through the darkest and most authoritarian period in its entire history.”The pro-Bolsonaro website, Terça Livre, accused the federal police of “intimidation” and said phones and laptops had been seized from the vehicle of its founder, the blogger Allan dos Santos, after they raided its headquarters at 6.43am on Wednesday.Opposition politicians hailed the raids as a major blow to the alleged Bolsonarian fake news machine.Marcelo Freixo, from the Socialism and Liberty party, tweeted: “The Bolsonaro family … has built a fake news network that operates from within the presidential palace and the offices of congressional allies. This is public money being used to commit crimes.”Douglas Garcia, a Bolsonarian congressman who was among the targets, painted the operation as a leftwing assault.“You want to silence the voices of conservatives on social networks … You want to criminalize other people’s freedom of opinion – the freedom the internet gives people … But you will not succeed,” said Garcia, whose office in São Paulo’s parliament was raided.

The gang rape of a veterinary doctor whose body was set on fire and dumped under a bridge has sent shockwaves through India, with hundreds of women taking to the streets in protest.The charred body of the 27-year-old woman was found on the outskirts of the southern city of Hyderabad on Wednesday night.CCTV footage, police reports and witness accounts suggest the attack had been premeditated. The woman’s scooter tyres had allegedly been deflated by four men, who then sat waiting in a lorry nearby and approached her to offer help.She was allegedly dragged to an uninhabited scrubland near the motorway that was hidden from the road by bushes, where she was smothered to muffle her screams and raped by the men. It is believed they then suffocated her. Her body was then put into a truck and taken to a motorway underpass, where the men set it alight and dumped it at around 2am.Her body was found at 5am by a resident of nearby Chatanpally village who noticed smoke. The body was wrapped in a blanket and had been doused with kerosene.The case has prompted revulsion across India, with many comparing it to the brutal gang rape and murder of a student on a bus in Delhi in 2012, which prompted thousands of women to take to the streets and resulted in a change in the law around what constitutes sexual crimes.On Saturday, hundreds of protesters gathered outside a police station on the outskirts of Hyderabad to demand justice, while protests also took place in Delhi and Bangalore.Four men, identified as Mohammad Areef, Jollu Shiva, Jollu Naveen and Chintakunta Chennakeshavulu, all aged between 20 and 26, have been arrested and placed in 14-day judicial custody.VC Sajjanar, the Cyberabad police commissioner, gave details of the circumstances of the attack. “The accused had consumed alcohol and noticed the veterinary doctor parking her bike at the toll plaza around 6pm,” he said in a statement. “They hatched a plan and Naveen [a suspect] deflated her scooter’s tyre. When the victim returned, Areef got down from his truck and told her about the flat tyre. After offering to help, Shiva took the bike on the pretext of getting it repaired. Then, [suspects] Areef, Naveen and Chennakeshavulu forcibly took the victim into an abandoned room nearby, where she was raped.”Three policemen have also been suspended for failing to act quickly when the woman’s disappearance was registered by her family on Wednesday, with the officers instead suggesting she had just gone off with a man and turning the family away from the police station. Before she was attacked, the woman had called her family at about 9pm to say her scooter was immobile and she was stranded by the road and scared.According to the National Commissioner for Women (NCW), the police asked the victim’s mother if she was having an affair with anyone and ignored the family’s pleas that their daughter’s failure to return home was unusual. It was only six hours after the family raised their concern that the police began to look for her.Shyamala Kunder, a member of the NCW, travelled to Hyderabad to demand justice in the case. She told the Guardian she had visited the area where the attack had happened, and said it was “deserted and unmaintained … anyone could do anything there unnoticed”.“The girl’s family are in shock,” said Kunder. “When they went to the police station to lodge a missing person report, the police only bothered to tell them it was not in their jurisdiction. If the police had responded immediately maybe the girl could have been saved. Now we are demanding immediate punishment for the perpetrators so that it sends a strong message to society.”India is the most dangerous place in the world to be a woman because of the high risk of sexual violence, according to a 2018 survey by the Thomson Reuters foundation. According to government figures, more than 32,000 rape cases were reported in 2017, but the real figure is believed to be far higher.In Delhi, one woman who staged a protest outside parliament on Saturday said she was beaten by police after she refused to move. “The only purpose of this protest is to ensure that I am not burned to death tomorrow,” she said. “Every 20 minutes, there is a rape in India. I don’t want to die.” Topics India South and Central Asia news

Twitter is taking down spam accounts run by white nationalists as the platform grapples with attempts to disrupt protesters organizing over the killing of George Floyd.“Tonight’s the night, Comrades. Tonight we say ‘F— The City’ and we move into the residential areas… the white hoods…. and we take what’s ours …” reads a tweet punctuated with a brown raised-fist emoji that was posted Sunday afternoon by the account ANTIFA_US. The tweet was taken offline for inciting violence.But something else was wrong with this account. Twitter discovered the account was not run by a purported supporter of anti-fascism, but rather a white nationalist group called Identity Evropa (which has since rebranded as the American Identity Movement). The group and its founder, Nathan Damigo, are perhaps best known for helping to plan the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina, which lead to the death of counter-protester Heather Heyer. Twitter says it has now taken down hundreds of accounts related to Identity Evropa.Spam antifa accounts have at times been flagrant in their fakery. On Monday, @OCAntifa, an account falsely posing as an anti-fascism advocate, announced that it had been running an intentionally deceptive account. “Attention antifa ‘comrades’: today marks the end of our almost three year operation. Our infiltration of your movement was a success, and the faces and identities of everyone who has attended or financially supported Marxist and seditious activities has been recorded,” the tweet read. The account has since been removed. It is against Twitter’s terms of service to use the platform to manipulate users. Another account, @AntifaAmerica, was also taken down.Antifa is a left-wing ideology that is against fascism, extreme right-wing views, and racism. It is not an actual organization. Antifa has no leadership or official presence, which makes it an easy target for infiltration and misrepresentation. The group has been blamed for violence and looting at protests seeking justice for the death of George Floyd and an end to police violence. However, it is unclear who is behind rioting at protests and whether it is organized or random. Antifa is also a frequent target of President Trump, who recently promised to designate the group a terrorist organization (a move that is not legally possible).The nonprofit research center Data & Society first highlighted how white nationalists use fake antifa accounts to damage the movement in a 2017 paper called Source Hacking. “Various white supremacist groups have consistently tried to damage Antifa’s reputation in the media by ‘doxing’ protesters (releasing their personal information) or impersonating them online,” the report notes. “Throughout 2017, right-wing manipulators utilized parody to discredit Antifa, taking advantage of available Twitter handles and public confusion about the organization and their motives.”Researchers compared the tactic to the way marketers use hashtags to bring attention to brands. Fake antifa accounts can flood hashtags to dilute the conversation, make it more difficult for authentic messages to rise to the top, and generally confuse participants. When their tweets go viral, it can stoke unwarranted fear in the general public. Hello and welcome to the official and 100% real and definitely not a parody account of the Antifa group in America. This account was made to stand Up to Cheeto Hitler aka @realDonaldTrump again this is 100% real and why are you laughing? Dammit, I demand you take me seriously! — Antifa US (@AntifaUS) July 17, 2018“There’s a long history in the United States that goes back to at least the 1960s and the infiltrators were federal agents who infiltrated both student organizations, the Black Panthers, and also the Klu Klux Klan,” says David Meyer, a professor at the University of California Irvine who studies social movements. He notes that before the internet, it was harder to pretend to be part of a movement, because it required showing up in person to planning meetings for protests. But on the internet, anonymous account creators can more easily pose as a member of any group.Twitter has aggressively tried to weed out fake accounts following the wave of 2016 election disinformation campaigns. In 2018, the company ejected millions of suspicious accounts, according to data received by The Washington Post. More spam accounts have arisen in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. A report from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University said that a significant portion of tweets about “reopening America” were either sent by bot accounts or accounts with bot assistance.Combating online account fraud is difficult: New accounts crop up all the time and can amplify their messaging quickly. Fraudsters can also move their activity from online to offline. Online social networks have empowered social movements to amass a lot of participants very quickly. However, there is no way to control who shows up. Some people may seek to undermine a protest.“In the 1960s, plotting a demonstration would take a long time, you’d go to all these meetings and you see people going to the meetings. Now when things are organized online—it’s just whoever shows up is there. You don’t know the objectives of the people who are out there,” says Meyer.