Russia has been banned from competing in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in South Korea. Following a seventeen-month investigation, the International Olympic Committee or IOC ruled that Moscow had deliberately manipulated the global anti-doping program through a state-sponsored conspiracy. Russian officials have reacted with anger, accusing the IOC of being part of an anti-Russian campaign. Henry Ridgwell reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

In the 1950s and ’60s, segregationist whites waved Confederate flags and slapped defiant bumper stickers on cars declaring Mississippi “the most lied about state in the Union.”

Those were ways of defiantly pushing back against African-Americans who dared challenge racial oppression, and taking a jab at journalists covering the civil rights movement.

Decades later, as Mississippi marks its bicentennial, the state is getting an unflinching look at its complex, often brutal past in two history museums, complete with displays of slave chains, Ku Klux Klan robes and graphic photos of lynchings and firebombings.

The Museum of Mississippi History takes a 15,000-year view, from the Stone Age through modern times. The Mississippi Civil Rights Museum concentrates on a shorter, but intense span, from 1945 to 1976.

They open Saturday, the day before the 200th anniversary of Mississippi becoming the 20th state.

The two distinct museums under a single roof are both funded by state tax dollars and private donations. Officials insist the museums aren’t intended to be “separate-but-equal” in a state where that phrase was invoked to maintain segregated school systems for whites and blacks that were separate and distinctly unequal.

“We are telling a much longer story in the Museum of Mississippi History, a much deeper story in the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum,” said Katie Blount, director of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. “We want everybody to walk in one door, side by side, to learn all of our state’s stories.”

The general history museum depicts Native American culture, European settlement, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction. It examines natural disasters, including the Mississippi River flood in 1927 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005. It also has only-in-Mississippi items such as the crown Mary Ann Mobley wore as Miss America 1959.

The museums’ opening caps a yearlong bicentennial commemoration. Some events celebrated Mississippi’s success at producing influential authors and musicians, such as William Faulkner, Richard Wright, B.B. King and Elvis Presley. Others took a critical look slavery and segregation.

President Donald Trump is scheduled to attend the museums’ opening on Saturday.

Republican Gov. Phil Bryant, a Trump supporter, invited the president. The Mississippi NAACP president is asking Bryant to rescind the invitation, with state chapter president Charles Hampton saying “an invitation to a president that has aimed to divide this nation is not becoming of this historic moment.”

Mississippi – one of the nation’s poorest states, population 59 percent white and 38 percent black – remains divided by one of its most visible symbols. It’s the last state with a flag featuring the Confederate battle emblem that critics see as racist. All eight public universities, and several cities and counties, stopped flying it in recent years.

There’s no flagpole outside the new museums.

Civil rights

Ellie Dahmer, the 92-year-old widow of slain civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer, said the flag represents an unabashed defense of slavery. She marveled at the existence of the civil rights museum in a state that won’t abandon the banner.

A display in the museum tells of the 1966 KKK firebombing of the Dahmer home outside Hattiesburg after local NAACP leader Vernon Dahmer announced he’d pay poll taxes for black people registering to vote. He fired back at Klansmen who were shooting at his burning house. The family escaped, but Vernon Dahmer’s lungs were seared; he died. The couple’s 10-year-old daughter was severely burned.

Parts of the Dahmers’ bullet-riddled truck are in the museum with photos.

The Mississippi museum joins several others focused on civil rights: the Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta; the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee; the Rosa Parks Museum in Montgomery, Alabama; Birmingham Civil Rights Institute in Alabama. The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington has attracted crowds since opening in 2016.

Eddie S. Glaude Jr., a 49-year-old Mississippi native who chairs African-American Studies at Princeton University, said “Mississippi was ground zero” for the civil rights movement, and it’s significant that the state presents an honest account of its history.

“America can’t really turn a corner with regards to its racist and violent past and present until the South, and particularly a state like Mississippi, confronts it – and confronts it unflinchingly,” Glaude said.

In the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, columns list about 600 documented lynchings – most of them of black men. One gallery’s ceiling shows decades-old racist advertising images.

Ku Klux Klan robes are on display. So’s the remnant of a cross that was burned in 1964 outside white merchants’ in McComb after they refused to fire black employees who registered to vote. So are mug shots of black and white Freedom Riders, who were arrested in Jackson in 1961 for challenging segregation on buses.

A large display tells about Emmett Till, the black teenager from Chicago who was kidnapped and killed after witnesses said he whistled at a white woman working in a Mississippi grocery store in 1955.

The central gallery provides a hopeful respite: An abstract sculpture 30 feet (9 meters) tall lights up as a soundtrack plays the folk song “This Little Light of Mine.” As more visitors enter, more voices join the chorus and more lights flicker, symbolizing how one person’s work can become part of a larger effort that leads to change.
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From: MeNeedIt

YouTube says it’s hiring more people to help curb videos that violate its policies.

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki says “some bad actors are exploiting” the Google-owned service to “mislead, manipulate, harass or even harm.”

She says Google will have more than 10,000 workers address the problem by next year, though her blog post Monday doesn’t say how many the company already has.

Wojcicki says YouTube will also use technology to flag “problematic” videos or comments that show hate speech or harm to children. It’s already used to remove violent extremist videos.

YouTube is also taking steps to try to reassure advertisers that their ads won’t run next to gross videos.

There have been reports of creepy videos aimed at children and pedophiles posting comments on children’s videos in recent weeks.
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From: MeNeedIt

What do a former U.S. president, LeBron James and a guy who really, really likes chicken nuggets have in common? They all made the biggest splash on Twitter this year.

Twitter on Tuesday released its top trending people and topics for 2017, ranging from sports to politics to Korean boy bands. It was a year in which almost every sector of society was mashed together or clashing on social media, with the “Tweeter in Chief,” President Donald Trump, leading the way.

The top retweet came from fast food lover Carter Wilkerson, who begged people to retweet him so that he could get a year’s worth of free chicken nuggets from Wendy’s. He fell short of the 18-million retweet bar set by the fast-food chain, but Wendy’s gave Wilkerson the nuggets anyway for the effort.

President Barack Obama , with 1.7 million retweets in August, was second. Obama took three of the top 10 spots on the list. Cleveland Cavaliers star Lebron James was seventh, with a tweet that criticized President Donald Trump over his decision to rescind Stephen Curry’s invitation to the White House to celebrate the Golden State Warrior’s NBA championship.

Curry, and others on the team, said that he didn’t want to visit Trump in the White House.

While he did not make the most retweeted list, Trump took the top spot for the most tweeted about elected world leader. He also came in No. 1 for top tweeted U.S. elected officials, with Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan taking second and third. PBS’ special live coverage of Trump’s inauguration day was the most viewed live stream broadcast of the year.

With the media in Trump’s crosshairs, it was also in the sights of Twitter users. The top three tweeted news outlets were Fox News , CNN and The New York Times .

Some other highlights: #halamadrid was the top sports hashtag, @NFL was the top sports handle and the most tweeted about musicians were Korean boy band BTS, also known as the Bangtan Boys.
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From: MeNeedIt

Hillary Clinton is returning to New Hampshire for the first time since just before the 2016 presidential election.

The former Democratic presidential candidate is signing copies of her new book, “What Happened” on Tuesday in Concord. Clinton won New Hampshire’s four electoral college votes in last year’s election, though President Donald Trump — without offering evidence — blames voter fraud for his loss in the state.

Clinton also is heading to Boston, where she will be honored with the Big Sister Association of Greater Boston’s “Believe in Girls” award for working to improve the lives of women and girls.

Greater Boston chapter president and CEO Deb Re says Clinton embodies the resilience and self-confidence the group hopes to inspire in young women.
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From: MeNeedIt

The government of Brazil’s President Michel Temer is far from assembling the coalition needed to pass a landmark pension reform, but potential supporters of the measure are now more organized, a key legislator said on Monday.

“We’re still enormously far (from having the needed votes), but we have a party leader committed, a party president committed, one party that’s set to commit,” Brazil’s lower house speaker, Rodrigo Maia, told journalists after an event in Rio de Janeiro.

Pension reform is the cornerstone policy in President Temer’s efforts to bring Brazil’s deficit under control. But the measure is widely unpopular with Brazilians, who are accustomed to a relatively expansive welfare net.

In order to curry support from Congress, Temer and his allies watered down their original proposal in November, requiring fewer years of contributions by private sector workers to receive a pension.

According to several government sources, Temer’s allies have grown more optimistic in the last week about the reform’s chances.

However, speed is essential for the bill’s passage. A congressional recess begins on Dec. 22, and lawmaking thereafter will be hampered by politics, as lawmakers ramp up their campaigns for 2018 elections.
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From: MeNeedIt

Under intense pressure from all sides, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will decide Tuesday whether to ban Russia from next year’s Winter Olympics over alleged institutionalized doping.

Anti-doping agencies and many athletes want Russia to be completely excluded from Pyeongchang, but Moscow has vehemently denied state involvement and complained of political manipulation.

Facing the same decision ahead of the Rio Summer games 18 months ago, the IOC stopped short of imposing a blanket ban and instead left decisions on individual athletes’ participation to the respective sports federations.

Russia’s anti-doping agency (RUSADA) has been suspended since a report by a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) commission headed by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren in 2015 found evidence of state-sponsored doping in Russia and accused it of systematically violating anti-doping regulations.

A further WADA report by McLaren in 2016 found that more than 1,000 Russian competitors in more than 30 sports had been involved in a conspiracy to conceal positive drug tests over a five-year period.

In the last month, the IOC’s own commission has banned more than 20 Russian athletes from the Olympics for life over doping violations at the 2014 Winter Games that Russia hosted in Sochi, while WADA has said that Russia remains “non-compliant” with its code.

The options facing the 15-member IOC Executive Board, which meets Tuesday, include a blanket ban on Russia or allowing Russian athletes to compete in South Korea as neutrals. This would mean that they could not participate under Russia’s flag and the Russian anthem would not be played at medal ceremonies.

The IOC could also do what it did at Rio and defer the decision to the international sports federations. Although Russia was barred from athletics and weightlifting, it was able to send around 70 percent of its original 387-strong squad after other sports’ federations accepted its athletes.

Delicate decision

IOC President Thomas Bach said at the time that the decision balanced “the desire and need for collective responsibility versus the right to individual justice of every individual athlete.”

The IOC could argue that the fundamental situation has not changed since then despite the evidence produced from the Sochi games and the publication of the second part of the McLaren report.

“The IOC has a delicate decision to make,” sports marketing expert Patrick Nally said. “On the one hand, it needs to show WADA and the world’s media that it is chastising Russia, but at the same time it needs to be temperate in its approach. … Banning them outright will, I think, be too negative a step.

“A compromise is necessary if the IOC wants to maintain stability. It can withstand media criticism but it can’t withstand an all-out war with one of its influential members.”

Last week, Joseph de Pencier, head of the iNADO umbrella group of national anti-doping agencies, said allowing Russia to take part in Pyeongchang would raise doubts about sport’s willingness to root out drug cheats.

Russian officials have said their country is the victim of a politicized dirty tricks campaign designed to besmirch its reputation and curb its sporting success.

On Monday, two Russian Olympic medalists urged the IOC to allow Russian athletes to compete.

“I passionately believe that it is not the answer to ban innocent, clean, young Russian athletes from competing under the Russian flag in Pyeongchang,” said Svetlana Zhurova, who won Olympic gold in speed skating in 2006.

Evgeni Plushenko, a four-time Olympic figure skating medalist, said making Russians compete as neutrals would be “unfair on them and all their competitors who in some way would feel that the competition and Olympic spirit would have been devalued.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Doctors across the U..S could soon be prescribing formerly illegal drugs as therapy for two hard-to-treat diseases – childhood epilepsy and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. A growing body of scientific evidence is leading the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to take a closer look at cannabidiol, an extract of marijuana, and MDMA, an ingredient in the party drug ecstasy.

The makers of a cannabidiol product named Epidiolex have now completed all three phases of FDA-approved clinical studies. The submission for FDA approval includes clinical data on 1,500 patients, 400 of whom had used it for more than a year. If it is approved, Epidiolex could be part of the legal arsenal for treating epilepsy within a year.

MDMA

The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) is a non-profit organization focused on beneficial medical uses of psychedelics and marijuana. It funded six Phase 2 FDA-approved clinical studies of MDMA combined with therapy for treating Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The only PTSD medicines currently approved by the FDA usually don’t work well, says Boulder, Colorado, psychiatrist Will Vanderveer, “and leave millions of people still symptomatic and suffering. And dying from suicide.”

Vanderveer worked with psychotherapist Marcela Ot’Alora, the study’s principal investigator, on the three-month long protocol, which included a monthly dose of MDMA and weekly therapy sessions. There were 28 participants. When they were given MDMA, therapists stayed with them during the eight hours the drug was active, helping them recall past traumas in a more effective way.  

Ot’Alora says the MDMA promoted trust with the therapists, and the insights gained were profound.

“It could be crying, it could be even screaming. They realize, ‘wow, I was completely going away and dissociated from the experience, and now I see what was really happening.’ Anger can come up, really getting in touch with the anger at what was done to them.”

Karen, one of the participants, was plagued by nightmares and dread after being sexually abused as a child. She says that decades of therapy and anti-depressant drugs did not help, but this protocol did.

“I don’t walk around just thinking I’m garbage anymore. You know, I feel like, wow, you know, I’m kind of a good person here.” James was a combat medic, and returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan with PTSD. He tried a number of different therapies, but still felt like he was in a dark cave, with no way out. Then he found the MDMA study. In an on-line documentary about the study, he describes the drug as “a kind of light,” and the therapists as “guides. And I could see around the cave and figure out how to get out of there. It was really helpful.”  

The MDMA plus therapy protocol eliminated symptoms in nearly 70 percent of the participants previously diagnosed with treatment resistant PTSD.  The final step before requesting FDA approval as a prescription medicine is Phase Three trials, which are scheduled to begin next year.
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From: MeNeedIt

NASA has nailed an engine test on a spacecraft 13 billion miles away.

Last week, ground controllers sent commands to fire backup thrusters on Voyager 1, our most distant spacecraft. The thrusters had been idle for 37 years, since Voyager 1 flew past Saturn.

To NASA’s delight, the four dormant thrusters came alive. It took more than 19 hours — the one-way travel time for signals — for controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, to get the good news.

Engineers wanted to see if these alternate thrusters could point Voyager 1’s antenna toward Earth, a job normally handled by a different set that’s now degrading. The thrusters will take over pointing operations next month. The switch could extend Voyager 1’s life by two to three years.

Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is the only spacecraft traveling through interstellar space, the region beyond our solar system. Voyager 2 is close on its heels — nearly 11 billion miles from Earth. The thruster test worked so well that NASA expects to try it on Voyager 2. That won’t happen anytime soon, though, because Voyager 2’s original thrusters are still working fine.

The Voyager flight team dug up old records and studied the original software before tackling the test. As each milestone in the test was achieved, the excitement level grew, said propulsion engineer Todd Barber.

“The mood was one of relief, joy and incredulity after witnessing these well-rested thrusters pick up the baton as if no time had passed at all,” he said in a statement.

The twin Voyagers provided stunning close-up views of Jupiter and Saturn. Voyager 2 also offered shots of Uranus and Neptune.
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From: MeNeedIt

Anthony walks the streets of Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood looking for two competing things: His next heroin fix – and help in what he says is his struggle to end addiction.

He traces the habit to one fateful day.

“I shattered my leg and I was on oxycodone pain medication prescribed through my doctor,” recalls the 28 year-old, who asked for anonymity to share his story. “I withdrew so bad, a friend put me on heroin and it’s been a slippery slide for five years.”

He ended up in Kensington, a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood where drug users can find some of the cheapest and purest heroin in the country. The area is also home to unscrupulous healthcare providers who continue to over-prescribe opioid medications. 

Open drug use occurs within easy view of storefronts. Teenagers riding their bikes pass addicts in zombie-like states on the sidewalks and porches. Kensington is a destination for heroin users from afar. Many end up staying to feed their addiction.

“We have not only people from other parts of the state, we have people from other parts of the country who come here,” said Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Special Agent Patrick Trainor. “Unfortunately, it’s sparked a heroin tourism industry,”

The drug epidemic is not a new phenomenon for Kensington. For decades, it’s contended with addicts. More than half the population lives below the poverty line, 2.5 times the rate of the rest of Philadelphia. The wide availability of prescription opioids from healthcare providers, along with the influx of individuals from outside the community, has made matters dramatically worse.

In 2017, a deal was reached by city officials to clear out an open air heroin market known as El Campamento, or “The Tracks.”

It existed beneath sunken train tracks, hidden from street level. The property was riddled with syringes and all kinds of drug paraphernalia.

People in the area regularly died from drug overdoses. At times, 75 to 125 opioid addicts lived there in makeshift homes.

“It was contained,” said Councilwoman Maria Quinones Sanchez, who represents the Philadelphia district that includes Kensington. “But now it’s out in the open and people are kind of struggling about dealing with the problem. What are we going to do with it? Because this problem is not going to go away in the next six months or in the next year,” said Sanchez.

Pure Heroin Fills the Streets of Kensington

The attraction of Kensington is simple: cheap and powerful heroin primarily piped in by Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. And in the streets of Kensington, drug dealers compete with one another to sell heroin, some laced with fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.

“In order to compete, you have to have the purest stuff on the street, we’ve seen purity levels in Philadelphia around 93% at times, and that’s street purity level,” said (Drug Enforcement Administration) DEA Special Agent in Charge Gary Tuggle. “So in order to compete with that, many groups have started to adulterate that 50% [of heroin] or so with fentanyl. Often not recognizing the fact that fentanyl is 80 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, 50 to 80 times more powerful than heroin.”

Davey, a 31-year-old heroin addict knows firsthand how strong, and dangerous, the fentanyl laced drug can be. “I had a good friend, the bag was empty, I scraped an empty bag for him, some grains, and just a tiny amount and he overdosed,” Davey said. “That’s just how powerful it is.”

Philadelphia recorded 900 overdose deaths in 2016. Officials say the city is on track for at least 1,200 deaths in 2017. Overdoses are the number one cause of death in Philadelphia for every age group from 25 to 44, the number two cause from age 45 to 54, and the number three cause from age 55 to 64.

“It’s extraordinary to have an epidemic like this appear on leading causes of death,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, Philadelphia’s Health Commissioner. “The problem is not only not slowing down, but it’s accelerating. There are not enough beds for addicts he said.

“I lived through the worst drug epidemics in the country’s history. The post-Vietnam heroin epidemic, the crack cocaine epidemic of the ‘80s and early ‘90s and then there’s this particular opioid epidemic that dwarfs the other two,” Tuggle said.

“It has a feeder system to it that the others didn’t have. And that’s the misuse and abuse of prescription opioids,” Tuggle said.

“We still have a major focus on the enforcement piece, but we also engage with the community in prevention and education to try to drive down that insatiable demand for opioids that exists in this country,” said Tuggle. The engagement includes non-traditional partnerships within the public health sector such as treatment providers and medical examiners where they analyze data to assist in explaining the drug epidemic trends.

Councilwoman Sanchez wants all sectors working together to ensure those who understand what is happening are the ones leading the fight. “We now have to have the political will to sit all of those actors at the table and say, ‘OK, how do we work our way backwards,” she said.

The biggest obstacles are lack of treatment facilities and housing for addicts and others. Estimates suggest that 30,000 heroin addicts are in Philadelphia, currently, only half would have access to proper treatment.

“Not all people who are drug users have housing, and housing is often a part of treatment. It’s hard for people to get treatment if they are living on the street,” said Dr. Farley. 

A Community Connected beyond the Drug Epidemic

On a recent walk down Kensington Avenue, Sanchez recalls growing up in the neighborhood and her commitment to the people.

“All I see is people who survive despite circumstances that are sometimes created outside of their control, and those are the folks that I represent,” she said. “And so my job is to be the cheerleader for those folks who work really hard and despite all the situation, whether it’s the teacher, principal, the librarians, you know, the folks that are here.”

Convenience store owner Sam Kuttab said things have improved some. He plans to stay in Kensington.

“About 10 years ago we had a big fire here and the insurance company paid us good money,” Kuttab said. “We could have just taken the money and moved on. But we felt there is a community here, there’s a community here that really appreciated our services, and we appreciated them. So we put our money back into this neighborhood, and it’s paid off,” he said.

Officials recognize there are obstacles, but unless they do something impactful more people will die in Kensington and Philadelphia.
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From: MeNeedIt

President Trump’s opioid commission is calling for more federal funding to battle addiction and deadly opioid drug-related overdoses in the United States. More than 175 Americans are dying every day and the Trump administration has declared the opioid crisis a “public health emergency”. VOA’s Chris Simkins takes us to a hard hit Philadelphia neighborhood where the opioid epidemic is on open display.
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From: MeNeedIt

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says his government will launch a cryptocurrency (digital currency) to circumvent what he called a financial “blockade” by the U.S. government.

The new currency will be called the “petro,” the leftist leader said in his TV address Sunday, and will be backed by the socialist-run, OPEC nation’s oil, gold and mineral reserves.

That will allow Venezuela to advance toward new forms of international financing for its economic and social development, Maduro said.

“That Venezuela is going to implement a new cryptocurrency system from the oil reserves, Venezuela will create a cryptocurrency, the petro-currency, the petro, to advance in monetary sovereignty, to make their financial transactions, to overcome the financial blockade. This will allow us to move towards new forms of international financing for the economic and social development of the country. And it will be done with a cryptocurrency issue backed by reserves of Venezuelan riches of gold, oil, gas and diamond.”

Maduro did not give any details what the new currency’s value will be, how it will work or when it will be launched.

The government also announced the creation of a “blockchain observatory” software platform for buying and selling virtual currency.

Opposition leaders objected to Maduro’s announcement, which they said needed congressional approval. Some questioned whether the digital currency would even be introduced in the midst of turmoil.

Venezuela’s traditional currency, the bolivar, has significantly declined in recent weeks as U.S. sanctions make it harder for the country to stay current on its foreign debt.
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From: MeNeedIt