Outrage in China over thousands of faulty vaccines for children

(CNN)Hundreds of thousands of vaccines provided for Chinese children have been found to be faulty, inciting widespread fury and prompting the country’s President, Xi Jinping, to describe the incident as “vile and shocking.”

China’s Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) has launched an investigation into vaccine manufacturer Changchun Changsheng Biotechnology, revoking its license for human rabies vaccines and beginning a recall of all unused vaccines produced by the company.

Five senior executives of the company, including the chairwoman, were taken into custody for questioning by Changchun police, who announced they had begun an official criminal investigation into the company.

In Chinese, the term Changsheng is a play on words meaning “long life.”

Chinese company sold 250K faulty vaccines

Online message boards have been inundated with hundreds of thousands of comments since the news broke Sunday, with parents and consumers using the hashtag “#Changsheng bio-tech vaccine incident,” to post reactions on Weibo, a Chinese platform likened to Twitter.
“My home country, how can I trust you? You just let me down again and again,” one user said. “Our trust has been overdrawn again and again, it’s so irresponsible for everyone’s life,” said another.

Many of the defective vaccines were already on the market and being given to Chinese children, as part of the mandatory national vaccination program. A number have now been recalled, but there is no information at this stage as to how they could affect the health of those children who have already been injected.

One mother, surnamed Zhen from Baoding, Hebei province, told CNN she had…

Read the entire story:
https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/23/asia/faulty-vaccine-china-intl/index.html?utm_source=twCNN&utm_term=link&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2018-07-24T07%3A55%3A02

Boy, 11, graduates from college and still plans to continue education

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – An 11-year-old boy graduated from college Saturday – and he’s not done with his education.

William Maillis walked across the stage at St. Petersburg College in St. Petersburg, Florida, where he earned his associate’s degree, according to Bay News 9. He plans to transfer to the University of South Florida for his bachelor’s degree.

Ohio State psychologist Joanne Ruthsatz declared William a genius at 5. He graduated from high school in Pittsburgh at 9.

After William receives his bachelor’s degree, he said he’ll go to somewhere like the University of Florida to get a master’s and doctorate degrees in astrophysics.

An 11-year-old from Florida earned his associate’s degree and plans to attend the University of South Florida for his bachelor’s degree. USA TODAY

“I want to be an astrophysicist to prove God is real using science,” said William.

2016: 9-year-old genius already conquering college

William has been amazing people for years.

• He learned addition and subtraction at 1½.

• He knew the alphabet in three languages at 3.

• He learned algebra by 4.

• William started elementary school at 4.

William said going to college with people that were mostly twice his age was different, but he got used to it.

“Just being around them, and having them treat you like an actual friend,” William said.

“I am totally fascinated by William and the work that he has done,” Tonjua Williams, president of St. Petersburg College, told Bay News 9. “He’s extremely brilliant, very open and collaborative.”

As inspiring as he is, William has some words of inspiration for others.

“Everybody has their own genius,” he said. “Mine is in astrophysics, but everyone has their own genius.”

Follow WTSP-TV on Twitter: @10NewsWTSP

SOURCE : https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2018/07/23/11-year-old-graduates-college/818815002/

Papa John’s Creates Poison Pill For One Special Customer: The Disgraced Papa Himself

The Papa John’s board of directors announced late last night that they would be adopting something that’s known in the business industry as a “limited duration stockholder rights plan.” This is an attempt to prevent Papa “John” Schnatter from reasserting his control over his eponymous company, which has done almost everything in its power to distance itself from him after he got racist on a conference call.

Papa John himself may have been evicted from company headquarters, been removed from marketing materials, and resigned as chairman, but he still has a seat on the board, and, crucially, he and “his affiliates and associates” own 30 percent of the company. The goal of the new rights plan is to keep him and his buddies from acquiring a controlling stake in the company and returning Papa to his throne. The deal contains a so-called “poison pill” provision that kicks in if anyone acquires 15 percent of the company, or if Papa’s group bumps its stake in the company up to 31 percent. If either of those two scenarios happen, then other stakeholders would be given the opportunity to buy up stock at half the normal price, thus diluting the power of whoever is making a power play.

“The adoption of the Rights Plan is intended to enable all Papa John’s stockholders to realize the full potential value of their investment in the company,” the press release said. Papa John has been on record many times as saying he got a raw deal; the company clearly expects a fight of some kind. However, when Papas battle, it is the pizza that suffers: Papa John’s stock is tumbling following this latest news.

Source :https://deadspin.com/papa-johns-creates-poison-pill-for-one-special-customer-1827811243

The overlooked children working America’s tobacco fields

KINSTON, North Carolina—They would wake up at five or six in the morning. They didn’t know where they were going, but they knew how far it was, what time the day had to start. Yesenia Cuello’s mother would fix breakfast, or if the girls were up early they would do it themselves to help her out. Then the preparations for the day would start. Burritos, in the microwave, wrapped in napkins, wrapped in foil. The perfect food for working tobacco: You can eat it with one hand, no need for the break you won’t get anyway. Gloves, the trash bags, hats, water. Then the white van would pull up outside the trailer where they lived, and they would jump in, ready for a long day of work.

When Yesenia and her sisters told their mother they wanted to work with her back in 2005, her mom said no at first. A single mother who had just moved her four kids from California, she was determined to keep her young girls out of the fields. But the girls, who were out of school for the summer, knew money was tight. Around the trailer park, people called them chicas poderosas, “powerful girls”: When they stuck together they could get what they wanted. And so their mother relented, thinking the girls would never be able to survive the day anyway. Yesenia, who was 12 at the time, as well as her two sisters who were 10 and 11, began to work tobacco.

They had intended to use the money for kid stuff, school supplies at the local Walmart, and clothes from the flea market. When they got out there with their mother and saw how hard it was, they knew they had to keep going back. “The first day was sunup to sundown,” Yesenia told me. She now works with NC FIELD, a migrant-worker service organization, running a group for farmworker kids. “Because of that we continued to go in order to help her out. We did realize that it was really hard and she was there without us.” They gave her money to help pay the bills, keeping a small amount for themselves.

Cigarette use declines among U.S. young women, but marijuana blunt use rises

(Reuters Health) – Cigarette use decreased among young women – including pregnant women – during the past decade in the U.S., according to a new study. But, researchers found, use of marijuana blunts rose.

A blunt is a cigar that’s been hollowed out and filled with marijuana. Although researchers aren’t sure about the health implications of the increase, they want to know more given the rapid changes in state marijuana laws, the study authors wrote in the American Journal of Public Health.

“Everyone knows that smoking is bad for you. Everyone knows that women should not smoke while pregnant,” said lead study author Victoria Coleman-Cowger of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore, in an email to Reuters Health. “But until recently, research in this area has focused primarily on the prevalence and impact of smoking tobacco cigarettes during pregnancy. We now recognize that use of tobacco products and multiple substances is not uncommon, and pregnant women who smoke tobacco cigarettes are often using other tobacco products as well.”

Coleman-Cowger and colleagues analyzed data from the 2006-2016 National Survey on Drug Use and Health to understand how women of reproductive age used cigarettes, cigars, and marijuana blunts during the past month. Altogether, they had survey responses from about 8,700 pregnant women and 162,000 nonpregnant women, ages 18 to 44.

When a DNA Test Shatters Your Identity

The number of people who have mailed in their saliva for genetic insights doubled during 2017, reaching a total of more than 12 million. Most people are curious where their ancestors came from. A few are interested in health. Some are adoptees or children conceived from sperm donation who are explicitly looking for their biological parents. DNA testing companies like 23andMe and AncestryDNA regularly tout happy reunions on their websites.

But not all biological parents want to be found. In conversations and correspondence with more than two dozen people for this story, I heard of DNA tests that unearthed affairs, secret pregnancies, quietly buried incidents of rape and incest, and fertility doctors using their own sperm to inseminate patients. These secrets otherwise would have—or even did—go the grave. “It’s getting harder and harder to keep secrets in our society,” says CeCe Moore, a prominent genetic genealogist who consults for the television show Finding Your Roots. “If people haven’t come to that realization, they probably should.”

Read the entire story @ The atlantic

Duck boat victims: 9 family members among 17 who died

(CNN)The sinking of a duck boat near Branson, Missouri, took the lives of 17 people, including nine members of one family. The amphibious vehicle went down in about 40 feet of water Thursday during rough weather at Table Rock Lake.

The Stone County, Missouri, Sheriff’s Office released the names of all victims early Saturday.
Here’s what we know:

9 in family killed

The sheriff’s office listed nine victims with the surname Coleman, from Indiana. The list included four children, the youngest aged just 1.

They were: Angela (45), Arya (1), Belinda (69), Ervin (76), Evan (7) , Glenn (40), Horace (70), Maxwell (2) and Reece (9).

Speaking to CNN International on Friday afternoon, Gov. Mike Parson said, “One lady lost nine of 11 members of her family. … I had a chance to talk to her, and it’s difficult to find the right words to say other than your thoughts and prayers are with her.”
The woman’s 13-year-old nephew also survived, the governor said.

Steve and Lance Smith
Steve Smith, a vacationing retired teacher from Osceola, Arkansas, and his teenage son, Lance Smith, died in the lake, said Glenn Oakes, a church elder at the Osceola Church of Christ.

Oakes said he was informed of the deaths by in-laws of the Smiths. Oakes said Smith was a church deacon in their 35-member congregation. “It was a great loss for the church,” says Oakes.

Smith’s daughter, Loren, reportedly suffered a concussion in the incident, but was rescued and was taken to a local hospital. Pam Smith, the girl’s mother, was on shore at the time of the accident. Lance Smith was 15 years old and his father was 53, police said.

Robert ‘Bob’ Williams
Williams, 73, was the driver on the duck boat.
“He’d talk to anybody,” his widow, Judy Williams, said Friday in a phone interview. “He made an effect on many lives. He would give up his life for somebody. That’s the kind of man Robert was, is.”

His grandson, Victor Richardson, told CNN: “He was a God-fearing man; he was very humble. He was the calmest spirit you could ever meet.”

Bob and Judy Williams were married for more than 30 years and lived in Branson, Richardson said.

William and Janice Bright
This husband and wife from the small town of Higginsville, Missouri, near Kansas City, died in the Branson accident, Karen Abbott, Williams Bright’s sister, told CNN affiliate WDAF.

The couple had three children, Abbott said: “My great nieces and nephews now have no grandparents.”

Police said Janice Bright was 63 and her husband was 65.

Leslie Dennison
The Stone Country Sheriff’s Office said Dennison was 64 and from Illinois.

William Asher
Asher was from Missouri and was 69, the sheriff’s office said.

Rosemarie Hamann
The sheriff’s office said Hamann was 68 and from Missouri.

CNN’s Dave Alsup contributed to this report.

Source : https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/20/us/missouri-duck-boat-incident-victims/index.html

NASA astronauts first landed on the moon 49 years ago today. Here’s what the landing looked like and how the US pulled it off.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy put a monumental goal before Congress:

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth,” Kennedy said. “No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish.”

Indeed, it took eight years to reach the moon after that, and NASA burned through $25.4 billion dollars before the Apollo program was finished. But on July 20, 1969, as people throughout the world gathered around fuzzy television sets, astronaut Neil Armstrong announced: “the Eagle has landed.”

Here’s how the US made it to the moon 49 years ago.

The first manned Apollo mission, Apollo 1, ended in tragedy in 1967. All three crew members died in a fire inside their capsule during a pre-launch test on the launch pad.

From left, Apollo 1 astronauts Virgil “Gus” Grissom, Edward White, and Roger Chaffee in front of their Saturn 1 rocket at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA

NASA said design changes after the accident made the Apollo spacecraft safer for journeys to the moon.

By July 1969, NASA astronauts had flown to the moon’s orbit twice, and the crew of Apollo 11 was ready to land on the lunar surface.

From left to right: Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and Lunar Module Pilot Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin Jr. NASA

U.K. Supermarket to Have ‘Quieter Hour’ for People With Autism

By Ceylan Yeginsu

LONDON — Dim the lights. Silence the piped-in music. Turn down the checkout beeps. For an hour on Saturdays, a British supermarket chain is introducing a weekly “quieter hour” aimed at helping people with autism have a better shopping experience by easing sensory overload.

The move by the supermarket, Morrisons, which begins on Saturday and runs from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m., has been welcomed by the National Autistic Society, which says that even small changes can make a big difference in the lives of people with autism and their families.

“Around 700,000 people are on the autism spectrum in the U.K.,” Tom Purser, of the National Autistic Society, said in an email. “This means they see, hear and feel the world differently to other people, often in a more intense way, which can make shopping a real struggle.”

Autism is a lifelong developmental disability that affects how people communicate and relate to others and how they experience the world around them. More than 60 percent of people with autism avoid shops, and 79 percent say they feel socially isolated, according to figures published by the society.

Jeddah Tower: What does the world’s next tallest skyscraper look like now?

These are the images that show what will soon be known as the world’s next tallest building rising from the desert. When the 3,280-feet-tall (1,000-meter-tall) Jeddah Tower, in Saudi Arabia, opens in 2020, it will knock Dubai’s iconic Burj Khalifa off its throne as the tallest skyscraper in the world by 236 feet (72 meters). Construction of the landmark is estimated to cost $1.4 billion.

When CNN visited the site at the end of 2017, the tower was 252 meters (826 feet) high and already had expansive views of the kingdom.

A tall order?
The tower will be the crown jewel of Jeddah Economic City, a commercial and residential project of 57 million square feet (5.3 million square meters), that will feature homes, hotels and offices, as well as tourist attractions.

But the project hasn’t been smooth sailing.

There have been various delays since construction began in 2013. Since November 2017, two of the project’s most prominent backers — Saudi Arabia’s Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a prolific investor and businessman, and Bakr Bin Laden, chairman of Jeddah Tower’s construction company Bin Laden Group — have been caught up in the kingdom’s anti-corruption purge, which saw hundreds questioned on accusations of corruption.
Jeddah Economic Company, the developer behind the skyscraper, however, has confirmed to CNN that the project will be completed by 2020, as scheduled.

Al-Waleed’s company declined to provide comment to CNN, while Bin Laden Group couldn’t be reached.