'Global cancer cases expected to increase 77 percent by 2050: WHO'

 The World Health Organization expects global cancer cases to increase 77 percent by 2050, according to a new report from the U.N. agency.

The data released Friday by the organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), examined 2022 data for over 185 countries and 36 forms of cancer.

IARC found that 10 types of cancer made up two-thirds of the world’s new cases and deaths in 2022.

Lung cancer was the most commonly occurring cancer, with 2.5 million new cases. Female breast cancer ranked second with 2.3 million new cases, followed by colorectal cancer with 1.9 million new cases and prostate cancer with 1.5 million new cases.

There were 1.8 million deaths due to lung cancer, which accounted for 18.7 percent of all cancer deaths in 2022, the report found.

Cervical cancer was the most common cancer in women in 25 countries, many in sub-Saharan Africa.

The report found women were less likely to be diagnosed, but more likely to die from breast cancer in countries that have a low Human Development Index (HDI) due to “late diagnosis and inadequate access to quality treatment.”

The HDI is WHO’s “summary measure of human development” — a measure of a country’s average achievements based on the health, knowledge and standard of living of its people.

“WHO’s new global survey sheds light on major inequalities and lack of financial protection for cancer around the world, with populations, especially in lower income countries, unable to access the basics of cancer care,” Dr. Bente Mikkelsen, director of the Department of Noncommunicable Diseases at WHO, said in the report.

The organization predicts that there will be 35 million new cancer cases in 2050. The prediction reflects population aging and growth, as well as exposure to risk factors like tobacco, alcohol, obesity and environment.

“The impact of this increase will not be felt evenly across countries of different HDI levels. Those who have the fewest resources to manage their cancer burdens will bear the brunt of the global cancer burden,” Dr. Freddie Bray, head of the Cancer Surveillance Branch at IARC, said in the report.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4446262-global-cancer-cases-expected-increase-by-2050-who-report/

Case dropped against man charged for threatening to kill Biden, Harris

 A federal judge dismissed the criminal case against a Michigan man who was accused of threatening to kill President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia Morris said after the defendant appeared in court for a preliminary examination and hearing the arguments from the government and defense counsel, she would dismiss the case because she could not find probable cause for further proceedings.

Russell Warren, the defendant, was ordered to be released from the custody of the U.S. Marshal Service after the charges were dismissed against him.

Warren “did not say that he was going to do anything to harm either the president or (Harris),” Morris told The Detroit News via email after the hearing. “His message called on someone or others to ‘take’ him or her and he wanted them to be taken to prison where they would be hanged, which would be accomplished by law enforcement and the courts.”

“He did not threaten to take or kidnap them to any secluded place nor did he threaten to harm them by his own hands,” Morris added.

Warren, 49, was charged on Monday with making threats to kill the president, vice president and other senior U.S. government officials.

His account on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, showed hundreds of messages where he threatened public figures including journalists, celebrities, former Cabinet members of the Trump administration and 2024 presidential candidates, as well as other politicians.

He also made threats to destroy the Smithsonian museums, Air Force One, Disney theme parks, One World Trade Center, Mount Rushmore and other locations.

The U.S. Secret Service identified Warren using his IP address and arrested him on Jan. 29. He was previously arrested on charges of assault with a deadly weapon in 2022.

The charge of threats against the president and other senior government officials can bring a prison sentence of up to five years if convicted.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4446110-case-dropped-man-charged-threatening-kill-biden-harris/

'Cuellar: GOP lawmakers ‘irresponsible’ to reject border bill when ‘nobody has seen text’'

 Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) said it is “irresponsible” to reject a bipartisan border bill “without even reading it” in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, Saturday.

“The crisis at our Southern Border should not be about party politics. The entire nation is finally feeling the burden that border communities have felt for years,” Cuellar’s post read. “It is irresponsible to reject a bipartisan border security bill without even reading it. We have a crisis at our border that demands solutions now.”

“Democrats and Republicans must come together to get the job done,” Cuellar continued.

Cuellar also included a clip of a recent interview he did on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in which he questioned how someone could push back against a bipartisan border bill that they haven’t read.

“Nobody has seen the text,” Cuellar said.

House Republicans appear to be close to striking down a chance at border legislation, despite a history of wanting changes to border and migration policy tied with more Ukraine

In a Dear Colleague letter last Friday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said Senate legislation on border security and Ukraine aid, if the proposed terms that came out so far were accurate, would be “dead on arrival” in the House.

“I wanted to provide a brief update regarding the supplemental and the border, since the Senate appears unable to reach any agreement,” he wrote. “If rumors about the contents of the draft proposal are true, it would have been dead on arrival in the House anyway.”

GOP members in the House are painting upper chamber colleagues recently as sellouts who want to compromise with Democrats.

“This is why we don’t listen to the Senate Republicans,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) said in a Fox News interview. “What they did in the Senate is once again some ham-handed deal that would help the Democrats save face, give Republican leadership an ability to say that they did something. And if it became law, the American people would quickly realize nothing changed, except that the politicians patted themselves on the back”

“We’re just not interested in that,” Donalds added.

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4446316-cuellar-irresponsible-reject-border-bill-nobody-seen-text/

Iraqi government accuses US of lying about circumstances of airstrikes, violating international law

 An Iraqi government spokesperson has accused the U.S. of violating international law and lying about the circumstances surrounding its retaliatory strikes over a recent attack in Jordan.

The strikes killed 16 people, including civilians, and wounded 25, Bassem Al-Awadi, Iraqi government spokesperson, said in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter Saturday.

He alleged that the U.S. “deliberately deceived and falsified the facts, by announcing prior coordination to commit this aggression, which is a false claim aimed at misleading international public opinion and disavowing legal responsibility for this rejected crime in accordance with all international laws.”

Al-Awadi added that “all parties” must realize that Iraq refuses to let its lands become “an arena for settling scores,” and that the nation’s sovereignty and land are not the place to “send messages” between opponents or demonstrate force.

“This aggressive strike will put security in Iraq and the region on the brink of the abyss, and it also contradicts efforts to establish the required stability,” Al-Awadi continued.

The government spokesperson vowed Iraq would “make every effort required by moral, national, and constitutional responsibility to protect our land, our cities, and the lives of our children in all types of armed forces.”

The U.S. started an initial round of airstrikes on groups supported by Iran in Syria and Iraq Friday, in retaliation for a recent attack on a base in Jordan that killed three U.S. service members.

U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said it started airstrikes Friday evening in Iraq and Syria against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force “and affiliated militia groups.”

“U.S. military forces struck more than 85 targets, with numerous aircraft to include long-range bombers flown from the United States,” CENTCOM said in a statement. “The airstrikes employed more than 125 precision munitions.”

White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said the strikes were meant to reduce capabilities, as well as send a message to Iran and groups it supports to halt attacking Americans.

“We believe that these targets fell into exactly that criteria,” he said. “And the goal here is to get these attacks to stop. We’re not looking for a war with Iran.”

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4446052-iraqi-government-accuses-us-lying-circumstances-jordan-airstrikes-violating-international-law/

DNC chair tells Haley that South Carolina Dems aren’t ‘bailing you out’

 Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair Jaime Harrison warned GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley ahead of the Palmetto State primary that South Carolina Democrats won’t be “bailing” her out.

While speaking during an event Saturday morning in Columbia, S.C., Harrison relayed a message to Haley that she should not expect assistance from Democrats, where the campaign is looking to close the gap between former President Trump and Haley in her home stage.

Harrison also slammed the former South Carolina governor’s record in her home state, keying in on healthcare.  

“We know Nikki Haley,” Harrison said. “We know Nikki Haley very well. Nikki Haley was a governor of this state who allowed her hometown hospital to close, where her parents still live.”

“Nikki Haley is a governor in the state who blocked 250,000 people from getting health care in this country,” he continued. “Nikki Haley is the governor that signed the most one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country.” 

The DNC head, who called Haley a “MAGA minion” in October, continued the same attack against her, bundling her, again, into the “Make America Great Again” movement led by Trump.

“My message to Nikki from you know, bless her heart from the very start, is that we’re not gonna vote for you, because you didn’t do anything for us,” he said.

“You didn’t do anything for us so we aren’t gonna bail you out. You know, we got two MAGA apples in this field that’s left, and both of them are right,” Harrison added. “And so Democrats in South Carolina bail neither one of them out.”  

Haley, who is the only remaining major candidate running against Trump, has an uphill climb in her home, just three weeks before the state’s primary kicks off.

Currently, she is trailing by over 30 points, according to the latest The Hill/Decision Desk HQ aggregate of polls. Still, her allies in the state have pointed to some recent polling that shows her narrowing the lead the former president has.

With the Trump campaign shifting its focus to the general election, where he will likely face a rematch with President Biden, Haley’s camp has rolled out a series of ads on Thursday to tout her record when she was the state’s governor. She’s also hit both Biden and Trump on age, calling them “grumpy old men” in her latest attacks.

In a statement to The Hill, Haley’s spokesperson suggested Democrats prefer Trump over Haley, because they are worried about her defeating Biden.

“Nothing would make Democrats happier than Donald Trump being the Republican nominee because they know they can’t beat Nikki Haley,” spokesperson AnnMarie Graham-Barnes said in the statement. “South Carolina remembers everything she did as governor, and 70 percent of Americans are looking for an alternative to two grumpy old men.”

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4446381-dnc-chair-tells-haley-south-carolina-dems-wont-bailing-her-out/

Dearborn mayor ramps up police force near places of worship, citing ‘inflammatory’ WSJ op-ed

 The mayor Dearborn, Mich., announced Saturday the city, just outside of Detroit, will ramp up price presence around places of worship and city infrastructure in the wake of an op-ed from the The Wall Street Journal that he labeled “inflammatory.”

“Effective immediately — Dearborn police will ramp up its presence across all places of worship and major infrastructure points,” Mayor Abdullah Hammoud (D) said in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter Saturday,

“This is a direct result of the inflammatory @WSJ opinion piece that has led to an alarming increase in bigoted and Islamophobic rhetoric online targeting the city of Dearborn,” Hammoud continued. “Stay vigilant.”

The WSJ released an op-ed Friday entitled “Welcome to Dearborn, America’s Jihad Capital,” which claims that there is “[l]ocal enthusiasm for jihad against Israel and the West” in the city, which has a majority Arab American population.

President Biden made a trip to Michigan Thursday, even with frustrations he is facing from the population in the Wolverine State about how he is handling the current conditions in Gaza, amid the war between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas.

On Wednesday, community members came together to protest Biden’s visit in Dearborn. The White House schedule for the president’s Thursday trip to the Midwestern state was vague and when White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was confronted about it, she told reporters that she did not know of any specific concerns.

“I do want to say, more broadly, that the president has met with Americans with varying opinions about the conflict between Israel and Hamas,” she said during a gaggle on Air Force One. “Officials at the White House are also in regular contact with Muslim and Arab American leaders in Michigan and across the country.”

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim advocacy group, has recently said it received an “unprecedented” amount of complaints of Islamophobia and anti-Arab bias in the month after Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel last October, and sparked the ongoing war.

The organization claimed it had received 1,283 complaints of bias, a 216 percent increase in comparison to the year before.

“The Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian rhetoric that have been used to both justify violence against Palestinians in Gaza and silence supporters of Palestinian human rights here in America has contributed to this unprecedented surge in bigotry,” CAIR Research and Advocacy Director Corey Saylor said in a statement at the time.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/4446423-michigan-mayor-ramps-up-police-force-near-places-of-worship/

Warehouse Workers and Drivers at Keurig Dr. Pepper Wisconsin Vote Out Teamsters

 Workers from Keurig Dr. Pepper facilities across the Badger State have exercised their right to remove unwanted Teamsters Local 200 union officials from power at their workplaces. The ouster follows the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) January 26 certification of an election in which nearly 60% of participating drivers and warehouse workers from facilities in Oshkosh, Eau Claire, and Tomah voted to end the union’s bargaining power. 

Oshkosh-based Keurig Dr. Pepper driver Ray Cotts spearheaded the effort to remove the union by submitting a union decertification petition to the NLRB in November 2023 with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. His petition contained more than enough employee signatures to trigger a union decertification vote under NLRB rules. The NLRB held the election beginning December 22, 2023, and counted ballots on January 16. 

Wisconsin is a Right to Work state, meaning union officials cannot impose contracts that force workers to pay union dues just to get or keep a job. However, even in Right to Work states, union officials in a unionized workplace are empowered by federal law to impose a union contract on all employees in a work unit, including those who oppose the union. A successful decertification vote strips union officials of that power.

Employees Across U.S. Seeking Freedom from Union Control

Across the country, workers are increasingly attempting to exercise their right to vote out union officials they disapprove of. According to NLRB data, since 2020 decertification petitions filings have gone up by over 40 percent. Despite this trend, the Biden NLRB is attempting to make it substantially more difficult for workers to decertify unions, and could soon issue a final rule invalidating the Election Protection Rule, a policy which contains multiple important safeguards regarding employees’ right to decertify unions they oppose.

The Biden NLRB’s proposed rule, among other things, will give union bosses the power to use “blocking charges,” or unproven allegations of employer misconduct, to prevent workers from voting to decertify a union. The proposed rule will also strip workers of the ability to file for a secret ballot election after a union installs itself via “card check,” a coercive process that bypasses the NLRB’s standard election process and instead permits union bosses to collect cards from workers (often through strong-arm tactics) that are counted as “votes” for the union.  

“We are proud to help Mr. Cotts, his coworkers, and a growing number of employees around the country exercise their right to vote out union officials that don’t serve their interests,” commented National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix. “It’s concerning, however, to see the Biden NLRB marching forward its scheme to grant union officials more power to trap workers under union control, while cutting back on employees’ rights to resist union influence.”

“The 23 flavors in Dr. Pepper may always be a mystery, but the Biden NLRB’s forced-unionism agenda is clear for everyone to see. At every turn this Board has sought to rewrite the law to give the Administration’s union political allies more coercive power while limiting the rights of independent-minded workers opposed to union affiliation,” Mix added.  

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in about 200 cases nationwide per year. Its web address is www.nrtw.org.

https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2024/02/01/warehouse_workers_and_drivers_at_keurig_dr_pepper_facilities_across_wisconsin_vote_out_teamsters_union_1009054.html