Today's most interesting news articles with links and brief summaries...
Student climate strike planned for March 15th in the US and other countries to demand climate action
LINK: https://www.thenation.com/article/greta-thunberg-climate-change-strike/
On March 15, tens of thousands of high-school and middle-school students in more than 30 countries plan to skip school to demand that politicians treat the global climate crisis as the emergency it is.
What bigger debt is there than the theft of a livable future? At the March 15 School Strike 4 Climate, young people will call in that debt and, in the United States at least, demand real solutions in the form of the Green New Deal championed by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
In New York City, 13-year-old Alexandria Villasenor decided last December to emulate Thunberg's example: Every Friday, she skipped her classes to occupy a bench outside the United Nations headquarters with a sign proclaiming "School Strike 4 Climate." Now she's among the leading organizers of the March 15 strikes planned in the United States.
In Dublin, striking students displayed an impressive grasp of climate science-particularly the need to stop releasing additional CO2 into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel-chanting, "No more coal, no more oil, keep the carbon in the soil." Thunberg has stated in an interview with The Guardian that there have been student strikes for climate on every continent except Antarctica-70,000 strikers total by the third week of January.
H.I.V. Is Reported Cured in a Second Patient, a Milestone in the Global AIDS Epidemic
March 4, 2019.For just the second time since the global epidemic began, a patient appears to have been cured of infection with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, scientists reported on Tuesday.
The new patient has chosen to remain anonymous, and the scientists referred to him only as the "London patient."
"Everybody believed after the Berlin patient that you needed to nearly die basically to cure H.I.V., but now maybe you don't."
Although the London patient was not as ill as Mr. Brown had been after the transplant, the procedure worked about as well: The transplant destroyed the cancer without harmful side effects.
Google Employees uncover ongoing work on censored search engine for China
LINK: https://theintercept.com/2019/03/04/google-ongoing-project-dragonfly/
Google employees have carried out their own investigation into the company's plan to launch a censored search engine for China and say they are concerned that development of the project remains ongoing, The Intercept can reveal.
The group has identified ongoing work on a batch of code that is associated with the China search engine, according to three Google sources.
Google's Caesar Sengupta, an executive with a leadership role on Dragonfly, told engineers and others who were working on the censored search engine in mid-December that they would be allocated new projects funded by different "Cost centers" of the company's budget.
If Google is still developing the censored search engine, Bacciarelli said, "It's not only failing on its human rights responsibilities but ignoring the hundreds of Google employees, more than 70 human rights organizations, and hundreds of thousands of campaign supporters around the world who have all called on the company to respect human rights and drop Dragonfly."
Doctors prescribe MDMA as first government approves drug as PTSD treatment
The drug could soon be used as a treatment for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder after Israel approved it to treat 50 patients.
Israel's Ministry of Health has approved the use of MDMA to treat PTSD in 50 patients in Haifa's Rambam Medical Center plus psychiatric hospitals in Be'er Yaakov, Lev Hasharon, and Be'er Sheva.
Studies have shown that patients with PTSD - where it's difficult to deal with painful memories - can overcome their traumas, long-term, with the aid of MDMA. Last year, one psychotherapist who hopes to use the drug to treat patients says that America is 'on track' to allow the use of the drug by 2021.
Several studies have shown that MDMA can have positive effects in patients suffering post-traumatic stress disorder.
Mueller report to be printed 'instantly', say publishers who are prepared to race ‘the most anticipated investigative document of this century’ into print
LINK: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/04/mueller-report-to-be-printed-instantly-say-publishers
Publishers are lining up to release special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia report as a book - if and when it is made public.
Last week, independent press Skyhorse Publishing said it would release a book version of the report once it had access to the documents, telling Publishers Weekly that "We know that making the Mueller report instantly available will be both a public service and good business".
The publisher said the report was "One of the most urgent and important special investigations ever conducted in US history", and that the investigation "Looms as a turning point in American history, which will make the Mueller report essential reading for all citizens concerned about the fate of the presidency and the future of our democracy".
"The Mueller investigation will join Watergate, and the Mueller report will join the 9/11 Commission report, the Warren report, and the Starr report, as one of the most important in history," said the publisher.
Mexican archaeologists discover cave filled with near perfect Mayan ceramics
LINK: https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/mayan-cave-archeologists-vessels-1.5042658
Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History says the vessels appear to date back to around 1,000 A.D. Mexican archaeologists say they've found a cave at the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza with more than 150 ceramic vessels in nearly untouched condition.
Archaeologist Guillermo de Anda said exploration of the cave began in 2018 after local Maya residents told experts about it.
Archaeologist Guillermo de Anda said the Mayas crawled into the narrow caves to deposit their offerings, which were meant as a request for rain.
De Anda said experts have crawled a few hundred metres into the cave, which in places is just 40 centimetres tall, in hopes of finding the connection to a cenote cave believed to lie under the pyramid of Kukulkan.
OxyContin drug maker mulls bankruptcy due to myriad lawsuits
LINK: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/oxycontin-bankruptcy-1.5042149
Shares of Endo International PLC and Insys Therapeutics Inc, two companies that like Purdue have been named in lawsuits related to the U.S. opioid epidemic, were down more than 12 per cent and more than five per cent, respectively, on Monday.
"As a privately held company, it has been Purdue Pharma's longstanding policy not to comment on our financial or legal strategy," Purdue said in a statement.
In July, Purdue appointed a new board chairman, Steve Miller, a restructuring veteran who held leadership positions at troubled companies including auto-parts giant Delphi and the once-teetering insurer American International Group Inc. Mortimer D.A. Sackler is the sole member of Purdue's founding family remaining on the company's board, according to records maintained by the Connecticut secretary of state.
The Oklahoma case and other lawsuits seek damages from Purdue and other pharmaceutical companies accused of fuelling the opioid crisis.
London HIV patient becomes world's second Person to be cured of AIDS
LINK: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-aids-cure-idUSKCN1QL2C0
LONDON - An HIV-positive man in Britain has become the second known adult worldwide to be cleared of the AIDS virus after he received a bone marrow transplant from an HIV resistant donor, his doctors said.
Almost three years after receiving bone marrow stem cells from a donor with a rare genetic mutation that resists HIV infection - and more than 18 months after coming off antiretroviral drugs - highly sensitive tests still show no trace of the man's previous HIV infection.
The case is a proof of the concept that scientists will one day be able to end AIDS, the doctors said, but does not mean a cure for HIV has been found.
The man is being called "The London patient", in part because his case is similar to the first known case of a functional cure of HIV - in an American man, Timothy Brown, who became known as the Berlin patient when he underwent similar treatment in Germany in 2007 which also cleared his HIV. Brown, who had been living in Berlin, has since moved to the United States and, according to HIV experts, is still HIV-free.
Chinese Doctors Admit to Forced Organ Harvesting of Falun Dafa Adherents in Phone Calls
One of the many methods human rights researchers have used to investigate state-sanctioned organ harvesting of Falun Dafa adherents in China is calling medical professionals at the hospitals in China where the practice takes place.
During many of the calls, the medical professionals admit that the source of the organs is adherents of Falun Dafa, also known as Falun Gong, a traditional meditation practice persecuted in China.
Investigator: Could you find organs from Falun Gong practitioners?
Investigator: Usually, how old is the organ supplier?
Users are angry that Facebook is letting others, including advertisers, look up users via the phone numbers they provided to enable two-factor authentication.
LINK: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/kzdxjx/facebook-phone-number-two-factor-authentication
Last week, Emojipedia founder Jeremy Burge warned in a viral Twitter thread that anyone could look him up on Facebook using his phone number, which he provided to the social network in order to enable two-factor authentication.
In May of last year, Facebook stopped requiring a phone number for two-factor.
Even if you remove your phone number from the two-factor authentication settings page, nothing changes in the privacy settings, indicating Facebook still has your phone number.
"But Facebook will even let you be targeted for ads through phone numbers INCLUDING THOSE PROVIDED *ONLY* FOR SECOND FACTOR AUTHENTICATION. Messing with 2FA is the anti-vaccination misinformation of security."