February 17, 2023

Friday, February 17,2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

To read an article excerpted in this Roundup, click on its blue title. Each “blue” article is hyperlinked so you can read the whole article.

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Joe is always busy.

Biden tries to calm tensions over Chinese aerial spying.

WASHINGTON — President Biden sought to calm the furor over Chinese aerial spying on Thursday, reassuring Americans that the latest objects shot down were not tied to Beijing and announcing that he planned to speak with President Xi Jinping to keep lines of communication open.

In his first extended statement about the spate of floating craft above North America, Mr. Biden said the original Chinese spy balloon downed by an American missile on Feb. 4 represented a “violation of our sovereignty” that was “unacceptable.” But he said the three objects shot down since then were likely research balloons, not spy craft. ( 2 minute video of the President speaking on this issue — watch in this post…NY Times).

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Kamala is always busy.

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Republican minority leader McConnell speaks for support of Ukraine. This is a big deal.

Watch 👇 McConnell make the case for why support for Ukraine should be bi-partisan.

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Pennsylvania’s Senator John Fetterman has checked himself into Johns Hopkins Hospital.

More when we know it.

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Expect great leadership in the Blue State of Michigan. The state government is now completely blue.

Touch👇 to see Governor Gretchen Whitmer in action.

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As to Ohio, don’t forget what happened with that train. And now there is another derailment, in Michigan.

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Everyone knew that Trump lost, even Fox and a Georgia Grand Jury sees no voter fraud.

Fox Stars Privately Expressed Disbelief About Election Fraud Claims. ‘Crazy Stuff.’

Newly disclosed messages and testimony from some of the biggest stars and most senior executives at Fox News revealed that they privately expressed disbelief about President Donald J. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him, even though the network continued to promote many of those lies on the air.

The hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, as well as others at the company, repeatedly insulted and mocked Trump advisers, including Sidney Powell and Rudolph W. Giuliani, in text messages with each other in the weeks after the election, according to a legal filing on Thursday by Dominion Voting Systems. Dominion is suing Fox for defamation in a case that poses considerable financial and reputational risk for the country’s most-watched cable news network.

“Sidney Powell is lying by the way. I caught her. It’s insane,” Mr. Carlson wrote to Ms. Ingraham on Nov. 18, 2020.

Ms. Ingraham responded: “Sidney is a complete nut. No one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”

Mr. Carlson continued, “Our viewers are good people and they believe it,” he added, making clear that he did not. The messages also show that such doubts extended to the highest levels of the Fox Corporation, with Rupert Murdoch, its chairman, calling Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims “really crazy stuff.” (NY Times).

The Report from the Grand Jury in Georgia.

The report is only 9 pages long. There are 2 conclusions.

1. The members of the grand jury reached a unanimous conclusion that “no widespread fraud took place in the Georgia 2020 presidential election that could result in overturning that election.” That conclusion, they wrote, came after they heard “extensive testimony on the subject of alleged election fraud” from poll workers, investigators, technical experts, state officials and even “persons still claiming that such fraud took place.”

2. A majority of the grand jurors believed “that perjury may have been committed by one or more witnesses,” and recommended that the District Attorney from Fulton County, GA, Fani Willis, “seek appropriate indictments for such crimes where the evidence is compelling.”

Click here. Here is the redacted report itself.

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Nearly 200 contributors petition The New York Times, on its coverage of Trans youth.

NEARLY 200 NEW YORK TIMES CONTRIBUTORS ARE DENOUNCING THE PAPER’S ANTI-TRANS COVERAGE.

More than 170 past and present New York Times contributors signed an open letter on Wednesday calling out the paper’s coverage of transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people. The missive points to “what one journalist has calculated as over 15,000 words of front⁠-⁠page Timescoverage debating the propriety of medical care for trans children published in the last eight months alone,” as well as “reporting on trans children that omits relevant information about its sources.” Among the prominent journalists and writers who signed the letter are Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, Ed Yong, and Lucy Sante. Several current Times staffers are also signatories, as are actress Cynthia Nixon and writer-director Lena Dunham.

Despite the paper’s editorial guidelines requiring that reporters “preserve a professional detachment, free of any whiff of bias,” the Times has, according to the letter, “treated gender diversity with an eerily familiar mix of pseudoscience and euphemistic, charged language.” The letter, addressed to standards editor Philip Corbett, criticizes terminology and sourcing used in a number of pieces—from magazine stories to features to Opinion columns. Emily Bazelon’s “The Battle Over Gender Therapy" is specifically cited as having “quoted multiple expert sources who have since expressed regret over their work’s misrepresentation.” 

“The very news stories criticized in their letter reported deeply and empathetically on issues of care and well-being for trans teens and adults,” a spokesperson for the Times said in a statement. "Our journalism strives to explore, interrogate and reflect the experiences, ideas and debates in society—to help readers understand them. Our reporting did exactly that and we’re proud of it."

Bazelon’s piece is among the Times articles that have made their way into Republican-led state legislatures attempting “to justify criminalizing gender-affirming care,” the letter states. “The natural destination of poor editorial judgment is the court of law.” South Dakota on Monday became the second state, after Utah, to ban gender-affirming care for trans youth this year. Meanwhile, more than two dozen bills attempting to restrict transgender health care access were introduced at the start of 2023 state legislative sessions, according to the Associated Press. Critic and writer Jo Livingstone, who helped organized the letter, told Hell Gate that it was “willfully ignorant" to “suggest that there is no relationship between the way that we are using language at the newspaper to discuss people's lives.” They added, “This is not quite business as usual anymore." (Vanity Fair).

Click here to read the letter. https://nytletter.com/

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Biden set his 'moonshot' on cancer. Meet the doctor trying to get us there.

When it comes to curing cancer, President Joe Biden is shifting that sentiment into full throttle. And one person is taking up the challenge.

Who is she? Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, the director of the National Cancer Institute.

• Bertagnolli started in the position last October and is one of the leaders tasked with overseeing Biden's "moonshot" effort to reduce cancer rates and deaths in the United States.

• She has also served as a professor of surgery in the field of surgical oncology at Harvard Medical School; a surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital; and a member of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Treatment and Sarcoma Centers at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

• Bertagnolli's work recently became much more personal; she was diagnosed with early stage breast cancer late last year.What's the big deal?

• Since serving as vice president, Biden has touted a plan he calls his "cancer moonshot." The plan aims to cut the cancer death rate in the United States by at least 50% over the next 25 years.

  During last week's State of the Union address, Biden expressed his commitment to revamp those efforts, by making more cancers treatable, and providing more support for patients and families.

  According to the CDC, cancer was the second leading cause of death in the United States in 2020.

  At the same time, some of the most innovative cancer treatments come at a very high price. And a 2022 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found about two-thirds of adults with health care debt who've had cancer themselves or in their family have cut spending on food, clothing, or other household basics.

  Some cancer researchers have urged caution against bold claims in light of renewed focus on the moonshot initiative, tempering expectations of curing cancer.

  Bertagnolli is on board with the ambitious moonshot goal, though says it won't be easy. She says it will require a lot of collaboration, as well as more clinical trials.

So, what now?

• Biden is urging Congress to reauthorize the National Cancer Act, which established the National Cancer Institute.

• Bertagnolli says that any decrease in funding for the National Cancer Institute's research would mean it wouldn't be able to achieve the goals it has set, adding: "Funding has to support the entire range of work that's required to end cancer as we know it, which is from prevention, to early detection, all the way through treatment and and survivorship." 

• Bertagnolli says she is doing well since her own cancer diagnosis and is undergoing treatment. She is also participating in a clinical trial. (NPR).

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This 👇 made me smile. You?

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Mikaela Shiffrin ends the season with a world record.

Mikaela Shiffrin breaks modern record with gold in GS at world championships.

Mikaela Shiffrin won the gold medal in the women’s giant slalom on Thursday to become the most successful skier in the modern history of the Alpine world championships.

The 27-year-old American overcame a mistake near the end of the race to hold on to her first-run lead to beat Italian skier Federica Brignone by 0.12 seconds. Ragnhild Mowinckel of Norway finished 0.22sec behind and took bronze.

“That’s unbelievable,” Shiffrin said in a course-side interview. “I was so nervous, my God. Just … I can’t believe it.”

Touch 👇 to watch the race.

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