North America | United States | Corruption

FDA: Government Recommends Untested, Unlicensed Vaccines for Pregnant Women

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In response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, the FDA has admitted, for the first time, that government agencies, including the CDC, are recommending vaccines for pregnant women that have neither been licensed for pregnant mothers by FDA nor tested for safety in clinical trials. The lawsuit, filed by Children’s Health Defense (CHD) attorney, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on behalf of Informed Consent Action Network(ICAN), a vaccine safety advocacy group, sought all clinical trial data used by FDA to approve influenza vaccines for pregnant women. The FDA’s terse reply: “We
North America | United States | Corruption

CDC Official Steps Down After Coca-Cola ILSI Scandal Comes to Light

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Two days after it was revealed that a veteran leader within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was assisting Coca-Cola and International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI) in influencing world health authorities on issues related to sugar and beverage policy, Dr. Barbara Bowman has now stepped down from her position. Dr. Barbara Bowman, the disgraced former director of the CDC’s division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention began working with the CDC in 1992 and has since been involved with a number of different initiatives within that division which is charged with providing �
International | Corruption

IMF’s Christine Lagarde: “When The World Goes Downhill, We Thrive”

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When we wrote earlier that based on a leaked Wikileaks transcript, which the Greek government interpreted “as revealing an IMF effort to blackmail Athens with a possible credit event to force it to give in on pension cuts which it has rejected”, the article promptly went viral. While it remains to be determined if the IMF indeed made such an implied threat, we attribute this spike in interest to the general public’s surprise that the IMF could stoop to such a low, even by its own standards, level as to use a nation of 11 million people as a lab rat on which to conduct policy experiments.
North America | United States | Activism

Beth Clarkson, Kansas statistician, suing the state to obtain election records, says voting results don’t add up

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A university mathematician found something that didn't add up, and now she's suing the state of Kansas to make sure every vote counts. Wichita State University statistician Beth Clarkson requested Sedgwick County release election records for the recent election. This week, Secretary of State Kris Kobach asked a judge to block that request. Clarkson said the election results in some counties, including Johnson County, are impossible to audit. During a celebration for the 95th anniversary of the 19th amendment, which gave women the right to vote, Clarkson said, “If we’re not bei
Middle East | Palestine | Corruption

Family members deny Gaza women their inheritances

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Many Palestinian women are being deprived of their inheritances in the Gaza Strip, and the problem is widespread and growing, especially among families who own land. Amina Hassan (a pseudonym) and her three sisters say they became the victims of their brother, who seized most of their real estate inheritance. Amina, who lives in the city of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza, told Al-Monitor she and her sisters have been suffering from social and financial problems ever since their brother stole their inheritance in 2007 and they initiated legal procedures to claim it in 2008. She said, �
South Asia | Pakistan | Ethics

Women in region of Pakistan forbidden to vote

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As local elections in Pakistan are drawing nearer, the local jirga – a traditional group of leaders that make decisions according to the teachings of Islam – has become active in the Odigram area of Swat valley in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, barring women from voting. The jirga is trying to convince elders to stop women from going to the polls on May 30 in order to follow the region’s conservative traditions.
North America | United States | Business

This Is Why Bud Light Had No Problem Releasing An Offensive Marketing Campaign

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Yesterday, Bud Light issued an apology after facing a firestorm of criticism over beer labels that read, “The Perfect Beer For Removing ‘No’ From Your Vocabulary For The Night.” The labels are part of the “Up For Whatever” marketing campaign, which also faced criticism for a tweet during St. Patrick’s Day saying, “You can also pinch people who aren’t #UpForWhatever.” Both taglines could be construed to endorse unwanted sexual contact or, in the case of the most recent one, rape. Plenty of women know about rape culture and have fought against it, but women may not have be
North America | United States | Ethics

Study: Women may do the worst in interviews with men who say they support equality

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A new study finds women have the worst outcomes when they interview with men who claim to support equality, but show high levels of implicit bias. Here’s what to do about it. The study found that, when interviewing with men who’d shown high levels of implicit bias, women performed poorly (as determined by a third-party evaluator, as well as the women’s self evaluations). But here’s the really surprising thing: The very worst outcomes happened when women interviewed with men who showed high levels of implicit bias, but low explicit bias—in other words, those who told the researchers
Asia | Malaysia | Crimes

Citing false rape claims, Hizbut Tahrir says women must prove sexual assault

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Women are required to prove rape under Islamic criminal law, Hizbut Tahrir Malaysia (HTM) said today as the hardline Islamist group claimed that most sexual assault cases involve false accusations. HTM also told a seminar on hudud that Islam does not accept DNA evidence and that one of the ways of proving rape instead is by obtaining either two male witnesses, or one male and two female witnesses. “The danger is that if the woman wants to betray other people, she commits adultery with a man, but when she regrets it, she reports to the police saying she was raped,” HTM spokesman U