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from Anglican Journal
Canada’s federal government announced Aug. 31 that the residential school system would be declared an event of national historical significance, and that two former residential schools—Portage La Prairie Residential School in Manitoba and Shubenacadie Residential School in Nova Scotia—would be declared national historic sites. This step represents official recognition that the harm caused by the residential school system is “a crucial defining part of Canadian history that must be understood and addressed in the present,” the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) stated regarding the announcement. More than 150,000 First Nation, Inuit and Métis children attended residential schools between the late 1800s and the time of last school’s closure in the 1990s. Many of these students experienced mental, physical or emotional abuse, and thousands died while attending the schools. Government-funded and often church-run, the schools forced students to be separated from their families, communities and cultures in an attempt to assimilate Indigenous cultures; the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) characterized the system in its 2015 report as perpetrating “cultural genocide.”
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from Asia Times
LEAST BIASED, HIGH; News & Media Website based in Hong Kong
Headaches, confusion and delirium experienced by some Covid-19 patients could be the result of the coronavirus directly invading the brain, according to a study published Wednesday. The research is still preliminary – but offers several new lines of evidence to support what was previously a largely untested theory. According to the paper, which was led by Yale immunologist Akiko Iwasaki, the virus is able to replicate inside the brain, and its presence starves nearby brain cells of oxygen, though the prevalence of this is not yet clear.
The United States has revoked the visas of more than 1,000 Chinese students and researchers under an order by President Donald Trump that accused some of them of espionage, the State Department said Wednesday. Trump, in a May 29 proclamation as tensions rose with Beijing on multiple fronts, declared that some Chinese nationals officially in the United States for study have stolen intellectual property and helped modernize China’s military.
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from Competitive Enterprise Institute
Neither major political party holds a monopoly on bad ideas when it comes to federal policy towards the technology sector, according to a new report released today by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Terrible Tech 2.0,” co-authored by CEI experts ... catalogues and analyzes the worst tech policy proposals coming out of Washington, DC and concludes that a hands-off approach from the federal government – a “separation of tech and state” – will best foster innovation. The report finds a bipartisan impulse toward interventionist policies aimed at the Internet, apps, devices, and the algorithms and artificial intelligence that make them possible. It highlights how these interventionist policies – by Republicans in particular – would lead to legal and regulatory uncertainty for entrepreneurs and less innovation.
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from FEE (Foundation for Economic Education)
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS, HIGH, non-profit organization
Callous disregard of property rights creates long-term instability that scares away business investment and reduces economic opportunity.
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from The Moscow Times (Russia)
LEFT-CENTER, HIGH, English-language online-only newspaper based in Moscow
Russia has pushed back against claims its published research into a Covid-19 vaccine included “highly improbable” and “statistically unlikely” results. A group of scientists and doctors published an open letter to Russia’s Gamaleya research center, which is leading the Sputnik V vaccine’s development, and renowned British medical journal The Lancet on Wednesday outlining a number of concerns over apparent “duplication” of results regarding antibody production in patients who were administered the vaccine in Phase 1/2 trials. Almost 30 health and science professionals have signed the letter as of Thursday afternoon, which calls on Russia and The Lancet to publish the full raw research results so they can further scrutinize the data. Deputy research director of the state-run Gamaleya institute Denis Logunov, the study’s lead author, hit back against suggestions the data could be falsified. He confirmed Thursday that he had submitted the original data as well as a “full clinical protocol” to The Lancet’s editorial office. One U.S.-based scientist who peer-reviewed the original research told The Moscow Times he does not share the concerns raised in the open letter. “Bottom line, I saw no reason to doubt the legitimacy of these results over others I have read and reviewed. But of course one can never know,” said Naor Bar-Zeev, an associate professor and deputy director of the International Vaccine Access Center at Johns Hopkins University.
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from The New American Magazine
RIGHT BIAS: John Birch SocietyWoodward Book Claim: General Mattis Plotted To Overthrow U.S. Government
It was shocking to learn recently that, while gaming out post-contested-election scenarios, Democrats considered the possibility that the military may intervene and choose the president. But now comes a claim indicating that the scenario wasn’t at all far-fetched. At issue is little-noticed information in Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward’s soon-to-be-released anti-Trump book. To wit, the Post provides this pre-released excerpt: “[Defense Secretary James] Mattis quietly went to Washington National Cathedral to pray about his concern for the nation’s fate under Trump’s command and, according to Woodward, told Coats, ‘There may come a time when we have to take collective action’ since Trump is ‘dangerous. He’s unfit.’”
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from Orthodox Christianity – orthochristian.com
Religious Organization in Moscow, Russia
A hospital on the Turkish island of Halki has been handed over to the Diyanet, the State Directorate of Religious Affairs, to be converted into an Islamic educational center. At the same time, the Orthodox theological school on the island has been closed by order of the state since 1971. The Turkish government initially announced its plans to create an Islamic center on the island in August 2018. The 660-bed capacity Heybeliada Sanatorium was created in 1924 by orders of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk to treat tuberculosis. It operated until 2005, when it was closed down by the Turkish Ministry of Health due to the difficult of access to the hospital on the island and the dramatically reduced number of patients.
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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
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Mail delays at the U.S. Postal Service have caused alarm in the run-up to a high-stakes general election that will see an unprecedented level of mail-in voting due to COVID-19, but USPS leaders and union officials say the agency is prepared to handle election mail and the real causes of the delays have been widely misunderstood. Reports of blue collection boxes and mail sorting machines being removed – coming as President Donald Trump has railed against mail-in voting – have stoked fears of politically motivated changes under new Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, a major GOP donor. But postal workers and union officials across Washington say the slowdown is the result of three other factors: a flood of packages, pandemic-related staffing problems and a move by DeJoy to cut down on late and extra truck trips.
During a visit to Whitman County on Thursday, Gov. Jay Inslee offered cash assistance to residents of the Malden area that was ravaged by a fast-moving wildfire on Monday. “This morning we freed up several hundred thousand dollars from my emergency fund for cash assistance,” Inslee said. “We want to get some cash to these families so they can eat and have a little bit of clothing, and a little bit of whatever they need to survive in the upcoming weeks.” Many people from Malden, which counted about 200 residents, and the neighboring community of Pine City were displaced after rushing to evacuate Monday afternoon. Malden Mayor Chris Ferrell said the town had about 130 homes before the fire swept over the area. “Twenty-seven are still standing,” she said Thursday.
Campfires and cigarettes. Sparking machinery and fireworks. Slash piles and debris burns that grow out of control. And, yes, even gender-reveal parties gone wrong. Our sudden, explosive wildfire season is just one more way that we manage to prove Pogo’s credo correct: We have met the enemy and he is us. The fires that increasingly plague the West – growing bigger and more destructive as the climate warms, droughts increase and the forests dry – are almost always started by something one of us did.
It could have been Hartline. Or Fairfield. Or Starbuck. Not the coffee chain, but the tiny town of less than 150 people in Columbia County. Rural first response is thin in the best of times and stretched beyond capacity in hellacious winds. What happened to Malden could have happened to any of the hundreds of obscure small towns scattered across Eastern and Central Washington. It almost happened to Edwall last week, except for a timely pause in the prevailing winds. A small spark in the bowels of a combine caught wheat stubble on fire just upwind of town. A brief lull in what had been an ordinary 7-to-10 mph wind gave the harvest crew the opening they needed to attack aggressively with fire extinguishers and shovels, literally stomping out the flames before they reached standing wheat. A half-mile beyond was the edge of town. Warehouses. Homes. Another block to the library and fire station, one more block to the church and school. We were two minutes away from being Malden. If the winds hadn’t paused to catch a breath, if the harvest crew hadn’t been alert and aggressive, the fire would have won.
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