Kavanaugh Lies, Diplomatic Visas, Malaria: 3 Stories You Should Read 10/2/2018
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In the category of: Serious questions of integrity for the court.
All The Lies Brett Kavanaugh Told
The Supreme Court nominee fibbed throughout his entire confirmation hearing. Republicans don’t seem to care.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said Sunday that if Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh lied under oath, his nomination is over.
“Oh, yes,” Flake told CBS News’ Scott Pelley.
Well, Senator? Do we have some news for you! Kavanaugh lied throughout his confirmation hearing. He told big lies and easily disprovable small lies. This may not even be the first time he has lied under oath: former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) said Kavanaugh lied to him in his 2006 confirmation hearing for his current seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
So, Sen. Flake, we now present to you all the lies Kavanaugh told in last week’s hearing — at least all the ones we can prove.
In the category of: Should have seen it coming, but somehow didn’t…
US ends diplomatic visas for UN same-sex partners
The US has announced it will deny diplomatic visas to same-sex partners of foreign diplomats and United Nations employees.
The change went into effect on Monday, giving partners currently in the US until 31 December to leave, get married or otherwise change their visa.
It is a reversal of rules introduced in 2009.
Currently, 25 countries have recognized same-sex marriage. Homosexuality remains illegal in 71 countries.
The new Trump administration policy update was circulated in a United Nations (UN) memo.
The memo states: “As of 1 October 2018, same-sex domestic partners accompanying or seeking to join newly arrived United Nations officials must provide proof of marriage to be eligible for a G-4 visa or to seek a change into such status.”
In the category of: Good news is still happening.
In the meantime, we need to keep investing in what works.
Researchers at Imperial College London took a new approach. They stimulated sexual development of dormant malaria parasites as it occurs in mosquitoes and then exposed the developing parasites to more than 70,000 compounds with the potential to halt the parasites’ development. Of those 70,000, only six were both active against the parasites and potentially safe to give to humans. “It was like finding needles in a haystack,” said lead researcher Dr. Jake Baum of the multi-year screening effort.
There are still a lot of challenges before the compounds identified in the study can be deployed in the field. Drug development is a complex, slow process, and testing new drugs for safety in humans is no different. The drugs would need to be stable enough to be given to a human and survive transmission into a mosquito. And to be an effective antimalarial intervention, the compound would also need to be cheap — for a malaria intervention to make a big difference, it needs to be scalable.
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