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Biden at Summit of the Americas: 'We’re transforming the approach to managing migration'

President Biden said Friday that the declaration to address migration signed at the Summit of the Americans aims to transform the approach to managing migration.

“With this declaration, we’re transforming the approach to managing migration in the Americas,” Biden said, flanked by other leaders. “It’s going to take all of our nations working together in partnership to address this migration issue.”

Twenty countries signed onto the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection during a meeting Biden hosted with regional governments at the summit.

Biden called the declaration a “historic commitment” and said it means “no nation is baring this responsibility alone.”

The declaration has four main pillars: Stability and assistance, promoting legal pathways of migration, having humane border management and coordinating emergency response efforts.

“We know that safe, orderly, legal migration is good for all our economies. We need to halt the dangerous and unlawful ways people are migrating, the dangerous ways,” Biden said.

Biden lauded President Rodrigo Chaves Robles of Costa Rica and President Guillermo Lasso of Ecuador for their new commitments to protect migrants in their countries, so they have a “chance to stay and rebuild their lives where they are.”

He said Chile and Canada signed onto the declaration and urged other countries to join it.

With the declaration, the U.S. announced it will provide $314 million in new funding for stabilization efforts in the Americas, develop a $65 million Department of Agriculture pilot program to support U.S. farmers hiring agricultural workers under the H-2A program and commit to resettle 20,000 refugees from the Americas during Fiscal Years 2023 to 2024.

Biden stressed that the declaration also aims to improve efficiency and fairness of asylum at the border and mentioned a Department of Homeland Security campaign focused on disrupting human smuggling.

“If you pray on desperate and vulnerable migrants for profit, we are coming for you. We are coming after you,” Biden said.

The declaration also includes commitments from Mexico to launch a new temporary labor program to provide work opportunities in Mexico for 15,000 to 20,000 workers from Guatemala per year; from Colombia’s leadership to respond to Venezuelan migrants and refugees with forward-leaning policies; and from Canada to invest $26.9 million in addressing root causes of migration.

Countries that signed onto the declaration included the U.S., Mexico, Argentine Republic, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.

Source: TEST FEED1

What is Ramsay Hunt syndrome?

(NEXSTAR) – On Friday, pop star Justin Bieber announced he has Ramsay Hunt syndrome. You may be unfamiliar with the syndrome, but you likely do know of chickenpox, which is caused by the same virus.

The Mayo Clinic explains the condition, caused by a herpes virus, “occurs when a shingles outbreak affects the facial nerve near one of your ears.” The syndrome can cause not only a shingles rash but also facial paralysis and hearing loss.

Bieber, 28, said in an Instagram video on Friday that he’s currently unable to move half of his face. The singer said he’s canceling tour dates for this reason.

“It is from this virus that attacks the nerve in my ear and my facial nerves and has caused my face to have paralysis,” said Bieber. “As you can see this eye is not blinking. I can’t smile on this side of my face; this nostril will not move. So there’s full paralysis on this side of my face.”

The condition is somewhat similar to the better-known Bell’s palsy, though Ramsay Hunt’s effects are more severe.

According to research published by Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, Ramsay Hunt recovery is much harder than recovery from Bell’s palsy (facial paralysis without a rash). Patients may also not recover completely, researchers write.

Other Ramsay Hunt symptoms include tinnitus, nausea, vertigo and involuntary eye movements.

“This is pretty serious, as you can see. I wish this wasn’t the case, but, obviously, my body’s telling me I’ve got to slow down,” Bieber explained Friday. “I hope you guys understand. I’ll be using this time to just rest and relax and get back to a hundred percent so that I can do what I was born to do.”

Bieber says he’s doing facial exercises and has “hope” that he’ll recover.

Source: TEST FEED1

Vote now for D.C.’s most influential social media users

In the capital city of the United States, many walk around with titles and connections that are used to influence organizations, politicians and legislation that affects the lives of everyday Americans from coast-to-coast. 

Thousands of people flock to the city to hold this type of power, but many fail to have the impact they hoped they would. 

In the end, only a few can be among the most influential in one of the world’s most powerful cities.

We want to hear from you, our readers, on who you believe has the most influence in politics and on Capitol Hill. 

Which politicians, lobbyists or other political influencers in DC – from both sides of the political spectrum – have the most impact on day-to-day politics inside the Beltway, and in the homes of millions of Americans?

Nominate who you believe has the most influence on the hill below. Nominations will close at noon on July 1. 

Following nominations, 10 people will be chosen based on your votes and will make up The Hill’s inaugural, audience-based list of D.C.’s most influence social media users. 

Source: TEST FEED1

Income support policies could save thousands of US lives: study

Over 37 million Americans currently live in poverty according to Census Bureau statistics, with increases among non-Hispanic white and Hispanic individuals seen between 2019 and 2020. 

Income is also commonly cited as a social determinant of health as low income individuals are more likely to suffer from chronic disease and die from any cause in the United States.

Several solutions have been proposed to address wealth inequality, which disproportionately affects people of color. These include implementing the Earned Income Tax Credit, increasing Social Security income, and raising the minimum wage. 

By modeling the potential health benefits of four hypothetical income support policies, researchers found each policy could prevent thousands of deaths among working age adults annually when compared with no intervention. Findings of the exploratory analysis were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Health Forum. 

The four policies modeled included a universal basic income intervention whereby each adult received $1000 per month, and a smaller transfer of $500 per month for those with a household income of less than $100,000 per year–the latter intervention being a modified version of the LIFT act.

The third intervention provided an income guarantee of at least 100 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) for 1 adult (measured at $12,760 in 2019) while the last policy was a negative income tax, which guaranteed an income equal to 133 percent of the FPL and rewarded earned income up to a threshold, researchers explained. Each policy was referred to as universal basic income, modified LIFT act, poverty alleviation, and negative income tax, respectively. 

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Incomes were defined based on the 2020 Annual Social and Economic Supplement and CDC data were used to estimate all-cause mortality rates. 

Adults in the models were aged 18 to 64 and simulations estimated all-cause mortality over 5 to 40 years into the future. 

Researchers found universal basic income averted between 42,000 and 104,000 deaths among adults each year, compared with 19,000 to 67,000 deaths averted each year from a negative income tax. 

The modified LIFT act reduced deaths by 17,000 to 52,000 each year and poverty alleviation led to 12,000 to 32,000 deaths averted. 

The models also showed moving individuals from low-income groups to higher-income groups yielded more pronounced benefits with regard to all-cause mortality. 

Under the universal basic income scheme, researchers estimated each death averted costs between $16 to $43 million, while these numbers drop under the LIFT act model to $3.7 to $12 million. 

Although the Environmental Protection Agency puts the value of a statistical life used at $7.4 million, these cost estimates “do not reflect any potential reductions in health care spending that are associated with improvements in population health like those modeled in this study, or potential productivity gains from longevity among working-age adults,” researchers said. 

Additional factors that contribute to mortality such as education, employment or wealth were not taken into account in the study, and authors note future research should include information on race and ethnicity. 

“Despite decades of research that has demonstrated that income is an important determinant of health, discourse around income support policies has disproportionately emphasized their economic benefits and costs, with little to no focus on the health benefits that these interventions might provide,” they wrote.

Source: TEST FEED1

Stocks fall sharply on inflation news

Stock markets fell sharply Friday on news that inflation is continuing to rise, hitting a 40-year year high of 8.6 percent.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average of major U.S. stocks fell nearly 2.75 percent to hit 31,392.

The S&P 500 index fell 2.91 percent to 3,900.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq dropped more than 3.5 percent to fall below 11,340.

The bottom fell out of markets as a result of the latest consumer price index (CPI) data from the U.S. Department of Labor. Analysts were hoping that the CPI would continue to decrease as it did last month from an annual rate of 8.5 percent in March to 8.3 percent in April.

Instead, the CPI gained 0.3 percentage points from April to hit 8.6 percent in May.

The rise constitutes a major blow to investor confidence, since it shows that prices following the onset of the pandemic have yet to hit a ceiling and could continue to rise.

This is almost sure to result in additional interest rate increases and balance sheet slashes by the Federal Reserve Bank, which has already signaled it will continue to raise rates at meetings later this year.

President Biden, who has said that fighting inflation is his top economic priority, spoke at the Port of Los Angeles on Friday, a site of many of the shipping bottlenecks and supply chain shocks that have been the core driver of rising prices.

“I understand Americans are anxious, and they’re anxious with a good reason,” he said. “I was raised in a household where when the price of gasoline rose precipitously, it was a discussion at the table. It made a difference.”

Source: TEST FEED1

How 3D printing of organs could revolutionize medicine

Researchers and biotech companies working to revolutionize the field of tissue and organ engineering are making major medical breakthroughs thanks to 3D printing. 

Surgeons in San Antonio successfully transplanted a 3D printed ear implant made from human stem cells onto a 20-year-old woman who was born with microtia, a rare birth defect in which the outer ear is deformed. 

3DBio Therapeutics, a regenerative medicine company, announced the landmark procedure last week as part of a first-of-its-kind clinical trial that includes 11 microtia patients. 

The process utilizes conventional 3D printing techniques, where a computer model of the ear is fed into a printer. But instead of laying down materials such as plastic, metal or resin, a biocompatible material, or “bioink,” is used to build a scaffold that acts like a skeleton for the tissue being printed. The scaffold is then seeded with cells from the patient and cultured so cells can multiply. From there, the implant is transplanted onto a patient. Researchers say since the cells came from the patient’s own tissue the new ear is unlikely to be rejected by the body. 

While laboratory-grown ears and other tissues have been implanted in patients before, the recent announcement from 3DBio Therapeutics marks the first time a 3D printed implant made from living tissue was used to replace a body part in a patient. 

“Up to this point in the field, there have been a number of tissues that have been engineered and implanted in patients. But these have been actually created by hand, one at a time,”  Anthony Atala, director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine who is not involved in the study, said. Atala and his team successfully implanted the world’s first laboratory grown bladder in a patient in 1999. 

“What the printer does is it gives you several advantages. It gives you more precision and reliability because you can create the structures in the same manner every time. It gives you scalability because you’re able to produce more of them in an automated manner. And by doing so, it also gives you a decreased cost of the products,” he said. 

The microtia procedure is among several recent advances in organ and tissue engineering and could pave the way for more ambitious projects, such as the eventual 3D printing of more functional tissues or organs such as livers and kidneys for transplants, although researchers emphasize successfully doing so is still far out in the future. 

But earlier this month, a separate company called United Therapeutics revealed it produced a 3D printed human lung scaffold that could be seeded with a patient’s own stem cells to create tolerable, transplantable human lungs that would not require immunosuppression to stop the body from rejecting the organ. The ultimate goal is to create an unlimited supply of transplantable lungs in the future. The company called it the “world’s most complex 3D-printed object” and expects human clinical trials in the next five years, a goal Atala says is achievable. 

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The technology in the coming decades could be a gamechanger for the roughly 10,000 organ transplants that occur annually and the more than 100,000 people standing by on waiting lists.

“There’s millions and millions of people who just can’t get on the waiting list because they don’t qualify. So there’s really a need for organs,” Adam Feinberg, co-founder of regenerative medicine company FluidForm and professor of biomedical engineering and materials science and engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, said.

Feinberg said his lab at Carnegie Mellon in 2010 started adapting 3D printers for bioprinting as patents for plastic printers were expiring and companies began making cheap open source desktop printers. 

“Suddenly there was all this innovation. And the question I asked my students was, can we use this to build a bioprinter because existing bioprinters at the time were like a quarter million dollars, which is not realistic,” he said. 

Feinberg helped develop a form of 3D bioprinting called FRESH, which involves engineering tissue in a support gel to keep the structure secure during printing. FluidForm has since used the process to build parts of the human heart, including ventricles, valves and blood vessels. 

FluidForm is working on building functional parts of the human heart to help the biopharma industry develop better drugs to treat different kinds of cardiomyopathy, heart failure, arrhythmias and other heart conditions. Feinberg said the work is important as there’s currently no good model for developing new heart drugs. 

“Heart disease is still the leading global cause of death, so developing better drugs is pretty critical,” he said. 

The company is also developing 3D printing technology to build scaffolds to heal wounds that are too large to heal on their own. 

Over at Stanford University, Mark Skylar-Scott’s team is using 3D bioprinting processes to manufacture heart and vascular tissue. Researchers are hoping to help treat congenital heart defects in children. 

“I think while the dream of tissue engineering has lived on, its ability to really create tissue is only really starting to look like a real possibility,” Skyler-Scott said. 

“And thanks to decades of work by pioneers in the field, we’re starting to see these therapies entering clinical trials, which is very exciting,” he said. 

Skylar-Scott, assistant professor of bioengineering in the schools of engineering and medicine at Stanford, noted that while progress has been made on easier targets and clinical trials of simpler tissues, such as the outside of an ear, are moving forward, it will still likely be decades until there is whole solid organ printing. 

“But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be laying the groundwork now. There is real reason for excitement in the field. These technologies are changing the game.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Democrat gaveled out as he tries to read names of children killed by guns this year

Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) took to the House floor on Thursday to read the names of young children killed by guns this year, but was forced to conclude his remarks due to time constraints after getting through only a fraction of the 600 names.

Casten’s comments came minutes after the House passed a bill to nationalize red flag laws, which aim to keep guns out of the hands of individuals deemed a risk to themselves and others. The legislation was brought up in the wake of last month’s mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and Uvalde, Texas.

The Uvalde massacre at Robb Elementary School killed 19 students and two adults.

Casten, who voted in favor of the legislation, asked to address lawmakers for one minute.

“I wanted to take a moment after the shootings this week just to read the names of the children under 10 years old in America who have been killed by guns so far this year,” the Illinois Democrat said on the House floor.

He then proceeded to read the names and ages of more than 20 young children killed by gun violence this year. A video of the remarks posted to the congressman’s Twitter account show images of the children as their names were read.

After roughly a minute and 15 seconds of reciting names, Casten recognized that the clerk of the House was gaveling him to conclude his remarks, as is customary when a lawmaker exceeds their allotted time to speak.

“I realize you’re gaveling me out. There are 600 names on this list,” he said, showing the sheets of paper he was reading from.

“I can’t read these in a minute. Are we gonna act, or are we gonna throw up useless thoughts and prayers? It’s time to act,” he added.

The House has focused on firearm legislation in the past two weeks following the shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde. On Wednesday, the chamber cleared a sweeping gun package that included provisions raising the minimum age to purchase a semi-automatic weapon from 18 to 21, and banning civilian use of high-capacity magazines.

The Senate is engaging in bipartisan negotiations with the goal of passing some form of gun legislation in response to the massacres. No proposals, however, have been released yet.

Firearms were the leading cause of death among children up to 19-years-old in 2020, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). More than 4,300 children in that age range died. Motor vehicles in traffic came in second, with 3,711 deaths.

In 2020, 281 children between the ages of one and 10 died from firearms, according to the CDC.

Source: TEST FEED1

Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn's 'insurrection' definition shirt on sale

The shirt featuring definitions of the word “insurrection” worn by Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn while he attended the first June public hearing held by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot on Thursday is on sale.

The first definition on Dunn’s shirt said “a violent uprising against an authority or government.” A second, attributed to Dunn himself, said “instead of accepting the results of the 2020 election, many attempted to change the results through an insurrection on 1/6/21.”

The shirt, which was made by a friend of Dunn’s, is now on sale for $28. The website selling the T-shirt shows a photo of the Capitol Police officer wearing it.

Dunn was at the Capitol on the day of the riot when a mob of supporters of then-President Trump tried to stop Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election results. The Capitol Police officer testified in the panel’s first official hearing last year in July.

“I told him about the racial slurs I endured and became very emotional and began yelling, ‘How the blank could something like this happen? Is this America?’” Dunn testified, referring to a conversation he had with another Black Capitol Police officer after the riot subsided. “I began sobbing. Officers came over to console me.”

The committee heard from another Capitol Police officer, Caroline Edwards, and documentarian Nick Quested on Thursday.

Source: TEST FEED1

House lawmakers to receive classified briefing on Afghanistan

The House Foreign Affairs Committee will hold a classified briefing on the Biden administration’s handling of the pullout of Afghanistan, according to a notice obtained by The Hill.

The hearing is not listed on the committee’s schedule for June but is expected to take place on June 15. It will also cover policy toward Afghanistan, and top State Department officials are expected to appear before the panel

A source familiar with the hearing said that the State Department was open to holding a portion of the hearing in open session so that some of the information could be public, but that the panel’s Democratic majority insisted the hearing take place behind closed doors.

The panel is led by Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) and ranking member Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas).

McCaul, in a statement to The Hill, called it “disappointing” that the committee has had “only one full committee, open hearing dedicated to Afghanistan” since August 2021.

“The American people deserve a transparent and robust investigation.”

Secretary of State Antony Blinken testified in front of the House panel about Afghanistan in September. Blinken and other Cabinet officials have answered questions on Afghanistan in multiple hearings with House and Senate committees.

The Foreign Affairs Committee’s Democratic majority, which is in charge of the hearing schedule, did not immediately return a request for comment, nor did the State Department.

The classified briefing is billed as discussing “the evolution of U.S. policy towards Afghanistan from 2017 through August 2021.” 

The U.S. pullout from Afghanistan in August 2021 left an indelible stain on the Biden administration for its failure to anticipate how the Afghan government and its military forces would fail to mount any defense against the Taliban, which took over the country and capital city of Kabul within a few days.

The briefers will include five senior officials from the State Department that were part of the U.S. operation to pull out from the country and are responsible for U.S. policy toward Afghanistan. 

The briefers will include John Bass, under secretary for management, who was dispatched to Afghanistan to run the evacuation on the ground; Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Brian McKeon and State Department Counselor Derek Chollet.

Also briefing are Molly Phee, who served as deputy special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation; and Thomas West, the special representative and deputy assistant secretary of State for Afghanistan.

The chaotic American exit from Afghanistan, colored by an air evacuation from the U.S. embassy and images of people falling to their deaths from planes departing the airport near Kabul, shocked the world.

The administration received harsh rebuke over the failure to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghan allies and hundreds of American citizens when U.S. forces left for good on August 31. A terrorist bombing near the gates of the Kabul airport on August 26 killed 13 U.S. service members, at least 170 Afghans and wounded countless others. 

In the aftermath, Republicans called for the resignation of senior Biden officials, including the secretary of Defense, secretary of State and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

More than 10 months since the Taliban’s takeover, Afghanistan has plunged into a humanitarian and economic catastrophe. The Taliban has also revoked key civil rights for women and minorities that had been hard-won over the 20-year U.S. and international involvement in the country. 

Republicans have attacked Biden and Democrats for failing to take accountability for the catastrophic pull out. The president has also failed to rebound in approval ratings that plunged with his administration’s handling of Afghanistan and have been compounded by a slew of other crises.

Source: TEST FEED1