Where does this bias come from?

Two scientists have launched a campaign to get a copy of a book that debunks accepted scientific “facts” about women into every state school in the UK.

The physicist Jess Wade, best known as “chief troublemaker at Imperial College London”, and Claire Murray, a chemist and beamline scientist at a UKsynchrotron, are raising funds to buy copies of Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong and the New Science That’s Rewriting the Story by Angela Saini. The actor Daniel Radcliffe has described it as one of his favourite books.

The pair are hoping to raise £15,000 via a crowdfunding campaign in an effort to encourage more girls and young women to educate themselves about the structural barriers they face and how to overcome them.

“Reading Inferior changed our lives, and completely changed the way we thought about diversity,” Wade said. “There are a huge number of campaigns to get girls into science, but while a lot of money is being spent, there is no evidence that they work.

“But Inferior is a breath of fresh air; instead of saying we are so hard done by because we are women, it is written by an engineer who is examining where this bias comes from, and how it’s invaded our social consciousness.”

I think I know one place this bias comes from: everywhere. It’s ubiquitous.

The pair point out that young women make up only a fifth of physics A-level students, a quarter of undergraduate students and a tenth of physics professors. “This isn’t because of ability – girls outperform boys at GCSE and A-level – or enthusiasm, but because we exist in a world that tells children that girls and boys are good at different things. We meet too many girls who, despite being brilliant, are not confident, and are unsure of their own potential to become scientists,” they write on the crowdfunding page.

in a world that tells children that girls and boys are good at different things – in other words the Damore memo, the one he circulated at work to explain why women didn’t belong there. I say this because I know of otherwise-intelligent people who still insist he had every right to circulate his opinion that women didn’t belong in the place where he worked, and that it’s a terrible violation of free speech that he was fired.

“The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is [shown] by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain – whether requiring deep thought, reason or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands,” Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man, published in 1871. “Thus man has ultimately become superior to woman.”

Saini also tells the less well-known story of Caroline Kennard, a member of the women’s movement in Boston, who replied in 1881: “Let the ‘environment’ of women be similar to that of men and with his opportunities, before she be fairly judged, intellectually his inferior, please.”

The author has promised to sign every book the campaign purchases, and the publisher, 4th Estate, has agreed to match the amount raised and organise distribution.

Conspiracy theories meet arson and a friendship is born.

Southern California’s Holy Fire, sparked on Monday, has already scorched more than 18,000 acres as of Friday morning and forced over 20,000 residents to flee.

Now, authorities have identified the man suspected of igniting the massive blaze.

On Wednesday, local officials arrested 51-year-old Forrest Gordon Clark, charging him with two counts of felony arson, as well as another felony charge of threatening to terrorize.

…

A glimpse through his social media presence also offers a clue into the world of conspiracy in which Clark, who claimed he could read minds, lived.

JJ MacNab, who covers anti-government extremism for Forbes, first identified Clark’s Facebook profile. A quick skim reveals just how many conspiracy theories Clark promulgated — and why he may have allegedly started the fire in the first place. Indeed, it appears there was no conspiracy theory too ludicrous for Clark to buy into.

For instance, Clark recently started pushing messaging around “QAnon,” a bizarre theory that a global Deep State network is trying to bring down President Donald Trump in order to further their nefarious aims. While there’s no indication Clark was among the QAnon supporters who have become increasingly prominent at Trump rallies, he nonetheless pushed pro-QAnon videos on his page.

Kind of Trump himself in miniature – a head full of wind and noise, and the ability to set fire to stuff.

Likewise, Clark appeared to be a fan of Alex Jones and InfoWars, which were recently banned by platforms like Apple and Facebook. Among the most popular theories Clark promoted on social media: notions that tragic events like the 9/11 attacks and the Sandy Hook shooting were “false flags.”

For good measure, Clark also pushed other Deep State-style conspiracy theories, including Agenda 21 — which claims the United Nations will effectively eliminate Americans’ sovereign rights — and Jade Helm, which posited that a 2015 military exercise would provide cover for the Obama administration to impose martial law.

It doesn’t require either intelligence or sanity to do great harm.

I saw a lot of uproar yesterday about Boris Johnson’s column dissing the burqa, and now he’s being “investigated” over it.

Former British foreign secretary Boris Johnson will face an internal investigation over complaints that he violated the ruling Conservative Party’s code of conduct when he wrote in a newspaper column last week that women in burqas resemble “bank robbers” and “letter boxes.”

…

His most recent column noted his opposition to a new ban on face veils in Denmark but veered away to critique traditional Islamic garb, calling niqabs and burqas “oppressive and ridiculous.”

Well guess what, they are oppressive and ridiculous. That’s not to say Tory provocateurs need to insult powerless women for wearing them, but let’s not pretend they’re anything but oppressive. Also, “traditional Islamic garb” is annoyingly euphemistic. It’s “traditional” only in some majority-Muslim countries; many Muslims say it’s not Islamic; and it’s not mere “garb” but an imprisoning stifling tent that erases women from public life.

Critics said it was outrageous that a Conservative aspirant to top office and Britain’s former face to the world would launch such a broadside against traditional Islamic attire.

Let’s word that more accurately and see how it sounds: Critics said it was outrageous that a Conservative aspirant to top office and Britain’s former face to the world would launch such a broadside against the custom of forcing women to wear a concealing tent whenever they leave home. Not quite such a slam dunk, is it. The issue isn’t mere “traditional Islamic attire”; the issue is different rules for men and women, and male supremacy, and the subordination of women.

Longtime Johnson watchers suggest that he is modeling his rhetoric on Trump and seeking to bolster support among right-wing Conservative supporters.

Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, a member of the House of Lords and a Conservative, tweeted, “Boris is merely a symptom, the disease of Islamophobia runs far deeper.” She said she welcomed an investigation, “but let’s not pretend this is an isolated incident.”

Fair enough, but let’s also not pretend that the burqa is just a neutral article of clothing.

Space Force all the way!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 9, 2018

Michelle Bachelet will be the next UN high commissioner for human rights.

Ms. Bachelet, 66, who was imprisoned and tortured during Chile’s right-wing dictatorship and years later became a pediatrician and politician, will be stepping into a particularly difficult and contentious role at the 193-member organization.

The Times tried to talk to her but she hasn’t gotten back to them yet.

The change comes as the Trump administration has taken an increasingly dim view of human rights diplomacy at the United Nations. The administration withdrew from the Human Rights Council in June, partly over the frequent criticism of Israel and other actions that the administration described as two-faced.

After Mr. al-Hussein’s office criticized the White House over the practice of separating children from parents to deter undocumented immigrants, Nikki R. Haley, the American ambassador, angrily accused it of ignorance and hypocrisy.

As if separating children from parents to bully people out of claiming asylum were anything other than a violation of human rights.

Ms. Haley had a measured reaction to the choice of Ms. Bachelet.

“The failures of the Human Rights Council make the Secretary-General’s selection of a new High Commissioner for Human Rights all the more important,” she said in a statement. “It is incumbent on the Secretary-General’s choice, Ms. Bachelet, to avoid the failures of the past.”

That’s not a measured reaction, it’s a cold grudging lecture from someone who doesn’t give a rat’s ass about human rights and who has no business in that job in the first place.

Human rights advocates welcomed the choice of Ms. Bachelet.

“As a victim herself, she brings a unique perspective to the role on the importance of a vigorous defense of human rights,” Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “People worldwide will depend on her to be a public and forceful champion, especially where offenders are powerful.”

Ms. Bachelet became involved in Chilean human rights activism practically at the onset of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship in September 1973. She was studying medicine at the University of Chile and active in the Socialist party when a military coup toppled the government of Salvador Allende.

Her father, a general in the air force, was arrested and tortured by subordinates and died in prison of heart failure in March 1974. Ms. Bachelet and her mother, Ángela Jeria, were detained by Chile’s secret security agency in January 1975 and tortured for weeks.

After their release, Ms. Bachelet and her mother spent years in exile. She returned to Chile in 1979, finished school and became a pediatrician and public health advocate, specializing in children traumatized by political violence. She later held positions in the government, including health minister and defense minister, and was president from 2006 to 2010 and again from 2014 until this year.

Between her presidential terms, Ms. Bachelet was an under secretary general of the United Nations and the first executive director of U.N. Women, an organization that promotes gender equality.

So an outstanding choice then.

Good. The LA Times:

A federal judge in Washington halted an apparent deportation-in-progress Thursday and threatened to hold Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions in contempt after learning that the Trump administration tried to remove a woman and her daughter while a court hearing appealing their deportations was underway.

“This is pretty outrageous,” said U.S. District Court Judge Emmet G. Sullivan after being told about the removal. “That someone seeking justice in U.S. court is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her?”

“I’m not happy about this at all,” the judge continued. “This is not acceptable.”

The woman, known in court papers as Carmen, is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed this week by the American Civil Liberties Union that challenges a recent decision by Sessions to exclude domestic and gang violence as reasons that people can qualify for asylum in the United States.

Meanwhile, Trump and Pence are sweating with excitement at their big plans to put SOJERS in SPASE.

The creation of a new branch of the military — the first since the Air Force was created in the wake of World War II in 1947 — could require a significant reorganization of the Pentagon. Some officials within the military and national security communities fiercely oppose the idea. The Air Force in particular might lose key responsibilities. The proposal would also need congressional approval.

Also it would be a little pricey, but hey, they can just get rid of Medicare and Social Security and bob’s your uncle.

White House officials have been working with national security leaders to aggressively move ahead without Congress. The first step would be to create a U.S. Space Command by the end of the year, a new combatant command that would have dedicated resources, be led by a four-star general and be tasked with defending space, the way the Pentagon’s Pacific Command oversees the ocean.

The Pentagon will also begin pulling space experts from across the military and setting up a separate acquisitions office, dedicated to buying satellites and developing new technology to help it win wars in space.

And there will of course be a golf course division.

Updating to add: I’m not the only one who sees it this way.

When I hear the term "Space Force" I think of boys playing in a sandbox with their G.I. Joe's and model rocket ships, not a sober or coherent evaluation of the risks of military escalation in or on the final frontier.

— Dan Rather (@DanRather) August 9, 2018

Saudi Arabia likes executing people even more than the US does.

The European Saudi Organization for Human Rights, a human-rights group, said 146 people were executed in 2017, slightly lower than 154 in 2016. “Such a level of executions has not been witnessed since the mid 1990s,” the group said in a report released this week. The group said that as of April 2018, Saudi authorities had executed 47 people and were on pace to meet last year’s figure. Dozens more, it said, continue to face the death penalty, including some under the age of 18.

That’s out of a population of 32 million, so a tenth of ours in the US. We executed 23 people last year, 20 the year before that – with a high of 98 in 1998; source. Both are shameful but the Saudis are ahead of us on the numbers.

Saudi Arabia employs the death penalty, which sometimes is carried out by gunfire, and usually in public, in response to a wide variety of transgressions, including murder, adultery, atheism, and sorcery and witchcraft. Despite this, it has in recent years found itself on various UN panels that oversee human rights and women’s rights around the world. (The country is hardly alone in its punitive practices—or its membership of elite UN panels. Iran, its main regional rival, executes more people per capita than anyone else in the world, also citing shariah as justification; techniques include stoning, hanging, and being thrown off a cliff. The U.S. is among the few Western nations that conducts executions, though it is mostly carried out by lethal injection.)

Saudi Arabia’s practices have been widely condemned by the international community and human-rights groups, but given its angry response to Canada’s alleged “interference” in its internal affairs, the kingdom looks unlikely to change the way it metes out its punishments. Saad al-Beshi, a Saudi executioner, said in a 2003 interview that he was “very proud to do God’s work.”

“It doesn’t matter to me: two, four, 10—as long as I’m doing God’s will, it doesn’t matter how many people I execute,” he said, according to the BBC. He added: “No one is afraid of me. I have a lot of relatives, and many friends at the mosque, and I live a normal life like everyone else. There are no drawbacks for my social life.”

Yes, that’s the big danger of religion, that delusion that one is “doing god’s will” and that that makes whatever horrible thing one is doing Good and Virtuous.

What’s Prince Jared been up to? Trying to make sure Palestinian refugees starve and die.

Jared Kushner, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior advisor, has quietly been trying to do away with the U.N. relief agency that has provided food and essential services to millions of Palestinian refugees for decades, according to internal emails obtained by Foreign Policy.

His initiative is part of a broader push by the Trump administration and its allies in Congress to strip these Palestinians of their refugee status in the region and take their issue off the table in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, according to both American and Palestinian officials. At least two bills now making their way through Congress address the issue.

They think like real estate sharks. “Get those people out of our way so that we can arrange things the way we like them and make a profit at the same time.”

[Kushner’s] position on the refugee issue and his animus toward the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) is evident in internal emails written by Kushner and others earlier this year.

“It is important to have an honest and sincere effort to disrupt UNRWA,” Kushner wrote about the agency in one of those emails, dated Jan. 11 and addressed to several other senior officials, including Trump’s Middle East peace envoy, Jason Greenblatt.

“This [agency] perpetuates a status quo, is corrupt, inefficient and doesn’t help peace,” he wrote.

The United States has helped fund UNRWA since it was formed in 1949 to provide relief for Palestinians displaced from their homes following the establishment of the State of Israel and ensuing international war. Previous administrations have viewed the agency as a critical contributor to stability in the region.

But many Israel supporters in the United States today see UNRWA as part of an international infrastructure that has artificially kept the refugee issue alive and kindled hopes among the exiled Palestinians that they might someday return home—a possibility Israel flatly rules out.

So just tell them get out, sorry not sorry, you were in the way so now you have to go away and shut up. Don’t slam the door on your way out.

Arizona State finds that Krauss did it.

An investigation by Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe concluded this week that high-profile astrophysicist and atheist Lawrence Krauss violated the university’s sexual harassment policy by grabbing a woman’s breast at a conference in Australia in late 2016.

“Responsive action is being taken to prevent any further recurrence of similar conduct,” ASU’s executive vice president and provost, Mark Searle, wrote in a 31 July letter to Melanie Thomson, a microbiologist based in Ocean Grove, Australia, who is an outspoken advocate for women in science. Thomson, who witnessed the breast-grabbing incident, received the investigative reportfrom ASU’s Office of Equity and Inclusion (OEI) and shared it with Science.

In response to an email asking what specific actions the university is taking, an ASU spokesperson wrote: “Professor Lawrence Krauss is no longer director of Arizona State University’s Origins Project, a research unit at ASU. Krauss remains on administrative leave from the university. It is the policy of the university not to comment on ongoing personnel matters.”

I wonder if there’s still some way Krauss and his buddies can find to blame women.

H/t Dave Ricks

A highly interesting interview with the actor Kathleen Turner, who – surprise! – has a lot to say about attitudes to and behavior towards women.

I randomly caught Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on TV the other night and it made me wonder if you’d watched Elizabeth Taylor’s performance before you played Martha?

God, no. Quite the opposite. For a while I felt like half my life was making her wrongs right.

Sorry, Elizabeth Taylor’s?

Yes. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof — you ever listen to her voice? It’s awful.

But you’ve got one of the all-time great voices. Maybe that makes you a tough critic.

No. She has a bad voice, badly used. In any case, people are after me all the time to do Sweet Bird of Youth, and I’m like, “Enough Taylor shit.”

Truth about Taylor’s voice, it was dreadful – thin, weak, little girl-ish.

What else, aside from luck, has driven your career?
Rage.

What do you mean?
I’m fuckin’ angry, man.

About what?
Everything.

Where does that anger come from?
Injustice in the world.

How does rage show up in your work?

In my cabaret show I use this passage from Molly Ivins: “Beloveds, these are some bad, ugly, angry times. And I am so freaked out. Hatred has stolen the conversation. The poor are now voting against themselves. But politics is not about left or right. It’s about up and down. The few screwing the many.” She wrote that over ten years ago and it’s no less true today.

Only more true today.

How difficult was it to deal with the knowledge that some guys in Hollywood had arbitrarily decided you were no longer viable as a leading lady?

It took adjustment. You have to remember that my first big role was Body Heat, and after that I was a sexual target. I understood later, from Michael Douglas, that there was a competition between him and Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty about who would get me first. None of them did, by the by.

How did learning about that competition make you feel?

I don’t like being thought of as a trophy. Let me tell you, when Jack and I were shooting Prizzi’s Honor a bunch of us went to his place up on Mulholland [Drive]. Jack said, knowing Warren’s interest in me, “Why don’t you call Warren and tell him I don’t have a corkscrew.” “Why?” “You’ll see how fast he gets here.” There was an unspoken assumption that women were property to be claimed.

See: #MeToo.

She talks about learning to act rather than try to make the audience like her.

Do you have sympathy for actors who choose differently?

Certainly in terms of film, there is intense pressure to repeat successful characters. I’ll give you an example, but you mustn’t include her name. [Very famous Hollywood actress] has played the same role for 20 years. She even looks pretty much the same. She’s probably one of the richest women out there, but I would shoot myself if I were like that, only giving people what they expect.

Any guesses? Mine is Julia Roberts or else Meg Ryan. I thought of Ryan first but I think Roberts is richer.

From a performance standpoint how much easier is it to act with someone when there’s no interpersonal tension? Was working with Michael Douglas, whom you liked, easier than working with Burt Reynolds, whom you didn’t? Or do your personal feelings for the other actor just not matter?

Working with Burt Reynolds was terrible. The first day Burt came in he made me cry. He said something about not taking second place to a woman. His behavior was shocking.

It’s almost as if a theme is beginning to emerge.

This is a sort of left-field question, but President Trump seems like someone you would’ve bumped into at a party in New York in the ’80s. Have you ever met him?

Yes. Yuck. He has this gross handshake.

What’s he do?

He goes to shake your hand and with his index finger kind of rubs the inside of your wrist. He’s trying to do some kind of seductive intimacy move. You pull your hand away and go yuck.

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww.

You didn’t think any of the press about your being “difficult” or your drinking or your illness was cynical?
The “difficult” thing was pure gender crap. If a man comes on set and says, “Here’s how I see this being done,” people go, “He’s decisive.” If a woman does it, they say, “Oh, fuck. There she goes.”

Let’s all be that woman.

A piece of a Fresh Air interview yesterday that struck me as odd. The interview is with David Kirkpatrick,  the New York Times Cairo bureau chief from 2011 to 2015.

GROSS: So you’re living in London now, still working for The New York Times. And I’m wondering, like, if you think the lens through which you’re seeing London has been affected from your years in Cairo.

KIRKPATRICK: My time in Cairo and covering the Arab Spring has made me much more sensitive than I was previously to what I guess I should just call anti-Muslim bigotry. I find that when I move in sophisticated liberal circles in the U.S. or the U.K., the only group that you can make sort of pejorative generalizations about today in respectable circles is Arabs and Muslims.

You know, I was at dinner just the other night with a bunch of journalists in London, and we were talking about the Arab Spring. And one of them said to me, yeah, so what really went wrong there? Was it Islam? And I was really struck because I can’t – you know, you can’t substitute any other religion in that sentence and get away with saying it in polite company. And I wasn’t nearly as sensitive to that as I was when I – once I got back from having covered Egypt.

The first odd thing is – yes you can. Of course you can. Mormonism? Catholicism? The reactionary brand of Haredi Judaism that prompts men to refuse to sit next to women on airplanes? The reactionary Christianity of a Mike Pence? Of course you can plug any of those into those two questions in polite company. Not all polite company, to be sure, because a great many polite people do think it’s absolutely taboo to breathe a critical word about religion no matter what – but a great many polite people don’t think that, too. Atheism: it’s a thing; secularism: it’s a thing.

The second odd thing is – seriously? He’s indignant that someone mentioned Islam in the context of the Arab Spring?

The third odd thing is, Islam is not Muslims, and being critical of Islam is not the same thing as despising all Muslims as a group. On the other hand we are allowed to take people’s belief systems into account. I’m wary of Republicans, and a lot more than wary if they’re fans of Trump.

Oh good, more women getoutery.

His appointment is the first of its kind in British history. No other mayor has hired an LGBT adviser to help tackle problems facing the community — despite the Labour party itself having an LGBT advisory panel. But yesterday, it was announced that Carl Austin-Behan would serve as the first LGBT adviser to Andy Burnham, the directly elected Labour mayor of Greater Manchester.

Hmmmm. Wait. He’s a guy. How can he tackle (all) the problems facing Ls? Which “community” is “the community” here? Gay men remain men, and lesbians remain women, and having men speak for women isn’t always an ideal arrangement.

Just hours before Burnham unveiled this new role, which comes with its own panel of LGBT specialists and an annual grant, Austin-Behan spoke out against Labour activists who oppose transgender rights.

In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Austin-Behan — who in 2016 also became Britain’s first out gay lord mayor — said party members who campaign against trans women being fully accepted as women should no longer be allowed in the party.

The former Labour councillor said the party should take a “zero tolerance” stance on anti-trans activists, following hundreds of its members reportedly campaigning against the inclusion of trans women in women-only shortlists.

So Austin-Behan is fine with it if women-only shortlists are made up entirely of trans women? So he doesn’t see that as at all and in any way unfair to women? But then he doesn’t have to, does he, because it doesn’t affect him. He’s not forced to think clearly about it because it won’t deprive him of any potential opportunities. He’s a man, and men don’t need men-only shortlists, because men are already the majority by a wide margin. If women-only shortlists fill up with trans women that’s no skin off his ass because he’s not eligible either way.

“It goes against the values of what the Labour party is,” said Austin-Behan. “Because it’s about equality, diversity, and inclusion and the only way you’re going to tackle that is if we’re all on board.”

But what about inclusion for women? Just women? Boring old women who aren’t trans anything but are just women?

“I think there needs to be a lot of questions about their integrity,” he said of those found to be signing petitions or otherwise publicly opposing trans rights. “I completely disagree with the whole thing — the [opposition to] shortlists that it has to be what you were at birth. That’s utter rubbish. If people are trans women, then they are women.”

Easy for him to say.

Asked if trans-exclusionary Labour members should be able to remain in the party, Austin-Behan said: “No… Not at all, in the same way if someone doesn’t give the same respect to a lesbian or a gay man or anyone who is bisexual then I disagree with that and action needs to be taken.”

What is “respect” in that sentence? What does it mean? For that matter what is “exclusionary”? Women-only shortlists are “exclusionary” by definition, so what is his point?

Trans rights are “human rights” he said, adding “everyone should be treated as they wish to be treated” and as such people need to be better informed about the issues…

That’s another one of those fatuous generalizations that make no sense once you analyse them. Should Donald Trump be treated as a stable genius just because he insist he is one? Should I be treated as a neurosurgeon if I decide to start saying I am one? Should Paul Ryan be treated as a responsible ethical Speaker of the House just because he has a strong jaw? Everyone should be treated fairly; that doesn’t translate to everyone should expect the entire world to accept truth-claims about identities no matter what.

Trump-supporting Congress dude busted for insider trading.

Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y. was arrested Wednesday morning on federal insider trading charges, law enforcement officials said.

An indictment obtained from a federal grand jury alleges relates to Australian biotech company Innate Immunotherapeutics, on which Collins served as a board member.

The indictment alleges Collins scrambled to call his son from the White House lawn and tell him non-public information about a failed drug trial in which they both owned shares.

Nice touch that he did it from the White House lawn. I wonder if he passed Melania in her $1400 plaid shirt and pristine jeans pretending to “garden.”

Collins was Trump’s first supporter in Congress, and was reportedly a member of his transition team after the 2016 presidential election. The 27th congressional district in New York, which Collins currently represents, voted for Trump at a higher level than any other district in the state in 2016.

Well they have so much in common – the corruption, the corruption, and the corruption.

The GOP congressman reportedly surrendered to federal agents in Manhattan on Wednesday morning. He is expected to appear in federal court in lower Manhattan later today. The U.S. attorney for the SDNY is expected to detail the charges in a press conference at noon.

It was just a little phone call.

The indictment reveals that the results from a more than three-year-long clinical trial for Innate’s primary drug were passed to the company’s board members on June 22, 2017. The trial, Innate CEO Simon Wilkinson told the board in an email, was a failure.

“I have bad news to report,” Wilkinson wrote, explaining the “clinical failure” of the trial. The company’s stock price “was tied to the success” of the drug, the indictment says.

Collins was attending a congressional picnic at the White House at the time he received the email. He replied: “Wow. Makes no sense. How are these results even possible???”

About a minute after responding to the email, Collins called his son twice, but was not able to get through. Cameron Collins called him back three more times, apparently to no avail, as well.

On his fourth attempt, Collins connected with his son and spoke for just over six minutes, explaining that Innate’s drug trial had failed.

Innate issued its press release on the night of June 26; in the next trading session, the stock plummeted more than 90 percent.

Ooooopsie.

Glasgow Rapecrisis on Facebook:

Really sad to report today that we have had to close down the #GlasgowClydeRapeCrisis waiting list for all new survivors coming to the project. We can still offer telephone helpline support on 08088 00 00 14 every day of the week from 11.00 am until 2.00 pm and Monday to Thursday from 5.30 pm until 7.30 pm and we can offer drop-in services to survivors on Wednesdays from 10.30 am until 3.00 pm and Wednesday evenings from 5.30 pm until 7.30 pm. Please check our website for more info about support. We are so sorry for having to make this decision but recent loss of funding for our work with young women and girls has had a significant impact on our overall service provision with current waiting times of up to 9 months for ongoing, face to face support. We will keep everyone posted about any changes to the service and, hopefully soon, when we get our waiting list open again and can offer shorter waiting times to survivors and their families.

A commenter asked what body or bodies had withdrawn funding. The reply:

Isabelle Kerr We have had funding from BBC Children in Need for six years. It funded amazing work with young women 13 – 18 years. This year we did not get re-funded because they felt we “didn’t do enough for male survivors”. It’s a women only service – always has been.

Women-only services are no longer allowed.

Yes, the Saudis are in a snit all right.

Now deleted, here a screenshot of the threatening Saudi "infographic" featuring an airliner headed for the Toronto skyline. pic.twitter.com/LrkCLxxjFk

— Tobias Schneider (@tobiaschneider) August 6, 2018

More:

Amid a diplomatic spat between Saudi Arabia and Canada, a pro-Saudi Government Twitter account shared – and then deleted – a digitally altered image that appeared to show a plane flying towards the skyline of Toronto, Canada’s largest city.

The image, shared by the account @infographic_ksa, was accompanied by a message in English that contained the saying, “He who interferes with what doesn’t concern him finds what doesn’t please him.” The text “sticking one’s nose where it doesn’t belong!” was also superimposed over the image.

Although the image was deleted, screenshots of the tweet were quickly shared.

…

The post reminded many social media users of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, in which planes were deliberately flown into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon. A total of 2977 people were killed.

Fifteen of the 19 hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia, and Saudi royals have long been accused of complicity in the attack.

H/t Rob

Bookmarks Bookshop on Facebook:

Socialist bookshop calls for solidarity following Nazi attack

Bookmarks bookshop in Bloomsbury, central London, has called on supporters to attend a solidarity event following an attack by far right thugs.
Twelve men invaded the shop last Saturday, destroying displays, wrecking books and chanting Alt-right slogans. One was wearing a Donald Trump mask.
Since the attack Bookmarks the socialist bookshop has received messages of support from leading figures in the trade union and labour movements and thousands of activists from around the world.
Those tweeting their support include singer and activist Billy Bragg, Rupa Huq MP, historian Louise Raw and Guardian columnist Owen Jones.
David Lammy MP tweeted: “The normalisation of far right politics is already leading to chaos and vandalism on our streets. Fascist thugs attacking book shops is the logical conclusion to a political movement which rejects facts and experts. We need to be vigilant.”
Bookmarks is holding a solidarity event in the shop on Saturday 11 August from 2pm. Throughout the afternoon there will author readings as well as speakers from the trade union and labour movement.
Dave Gilchrist, manager of Bookmarks, said: “This horrific attack on a radical bookshop should send shivers down the spine of anyone who knows their history. The Nazis targeted books because they knew how important radical ideas are for challenging racism and fascism. The same is true today, and that is why we have to show that we won’t be intimidated.”
Bookmarks is also calling on supporters to donate funds to help bolster security in the shop and to replace lost stock. Donations can be transferred to: Sort Code: 30 93 29 A/c: 00089719

H/t Vanina