'Ukraine May Have To Compromise With Russia, NATO Chief Admits'

 In a rare moment following more than two years of war, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has belatedly admitted the Ukraine may have to compromise with Russia at the negotiating table.

He made the remarks in a fresh interview with BBC at a moment he's urging Western allies to commit to approving his proposed five-year, 100 billion euro fund for Ukraine. As we've underscored before, this is largely about "Trump-proofing" NATO funding for Kiev for years to come, in anticipation that he could be in the White House next year.

Stoltenberg is still playing up the narrative that Ukraine needs major backing from the West in order to build leverage going into any potential future negotiations. Battlefield gains enabled with strong Western support could lead to an "acceptable result" for the Ukrainian side, he said.

"At the end of the day, it has to be Ukraine that decides what kind of compromises they're willing to do, we need to enable them to be in a position where they actually achieve an acceptable result around the negotiating table," he told BBC.

He sought to clarify that he's not urging Ukraine to offer any concessions at this point, but said that "real peace" will only be achievable when "Ukraine prevails".

And yet, by all accounts Ukraine forces have not made any forward advances, instead the opposite. BBC commented on Stoltenberg's rare talk of 'compromise' as follows: 

But his language is notable because President Volodymyr Zelensky has always been adamant that he would never negotiate with Putin despite some calls on him to do so, including from the Pope.

Mr Stoltenberg refused to be drawn on whether he was concerned about the possible return of Donald Trump to the White House, saying only that he was sure the US would continue to be an important ally, whoever was in charge.

Zelensky's consistent position throughout the war has been to say that he'll never negotiate with Moscow so long as Vladimir Putin is in power.

As for Stoltenberg, he had this to say only a few weeks ago in response to Pope Francis' position that the warring sides need to urgently find compromise and end all fighting...

Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken stunned by asserting bluntly that "Ukraine Will Become A Member Of NATO".  He told reporters last Thursday in Brussels, where foreign ministers met to prepare for the alliance's annual meeting in July: "Ukraine will become a member of NATO. Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership."

Below is one geopolitical commentator's reaction to this "lie" of Ukraine joining NATO...

* * *

But it’s the lying and level of lying which is astonishing. As Anthony Blinken stunned journalists just recently by saying that “Ukraine will join NATO” – perhaps the biggest lie ever of the entire war as western leaders know this is impossible and can never happen, without, that is the full defeat and exit of Russian forces. Actually it’s the second biggest lie. The greatest lie of all is the one about Russia having its sights on European countries to invade and conquer which is something that Stoltenberg constantly says but not one EU leader believes which is evident in their irresponsible depletion of their own missiles.

Macron also plays a key role in the manufacture of these untruths with his recent success in convincing journalists to write up the “we could send French troops into Ukraine” when, in fact, he packed that statement with so many caveats that he really didn’t say it at all. What is clear is that there is a state of panic now which is palpable from the West in general and that Macron, as well as NATO leaders, are having informal talks – or at least are having talks about possible talks – with Russia over some sort of what the Americans like to call an “off ramp” for Ukraine and the West. You could call it a “white flag” which has probably left you humming the song.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukraine-may-have-compromise-russia-nato-chief-belatedly-admits

NAIA bans transgender athletes in U.S. collegiate sports

 The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics on Monday banned transgender women from competing in women's sports, taking a more hardline stance than other athletic bodies that allow trans athletes to compete based on testosterone levels.

The NAIA, representing mostly small colleges, is less influential than the larger National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) but its decision carries some political weight in the wider U.S. debate about transgender rights.

"Only NAIA student-athletes whose biological sex is female may participate in NAIA-sponsored female sports," the association said in its policy.

Female athletes who have begun masculinizing hormone therapy may participate in internal workouts, practices and team activities but are banned from external competition. Any eligible athlete may participate in men's sports, the policy said.

The vote by the association's Council of Presidents was 20-0, ESPN reported.

Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for LGBTQ rights, criticized the policy as a "cowardly decision that enables discrimination."

The NAIA has 83,000 athletes at 250 schools while NCAA has more than 500,000 athletes at 1,100 member schools, according to their respective websites.

The NCAA transgender policy requires transgender athletes to have undergone testosterone suppression treatment for at least one year and to test below certain levels at different times of the year.

The International Olympic Committee policy allows each sporting federation to set its own regulations.

For example, in 2022, the swimming regulator FINA said transgender women must have suppressed male puberty before age 12 or must not have reached a certain level of male puberty.

That policy was announced shortly after University of Pennsylvania swimmer Lia Thomas, a transgender woman who had recently transitioned, won the NCAA 500-yard freestyle championship, which critics labeled unfair.

Last month, more than a dozen female athletes sued the NCAA for allowing Thomas to compete, alleging the transgender participation policy violated their civil rights under Title IX, the federal law banning discrimination based on sex in education.

https://www.marketscreener.com/news/latest/NAIA-bans-transgender-athletes-in-U-S-collegiate-sports-46390682/

'Major food companies offering deals, new sizes as low-income Americans spend less'

 Americans relying on government benefits to buy food and other essentials are slashing spending, prompting food makers like Kraft-Heinz and Conagra Brands to overhaul their products and strategies following years of price hikes.

Many of the biggest makers of packaged foods and drinks are seeing their sales volumes fall, due partly to low-income consumers -- typically making roughly less than $35,000 per year -- cooking from scratch, using up leftovers or just buying less.

Roughly one-third of Black American households and 21% of white American households fell into this category in 2022, according to the latest available U.S. census data.

"We expect reduced SNAP [food stamp] benefits will be a headwind," Dollar Tree CEO Richard Dreiling said during a March 13 earnings call. Dreiling was referring to the U.S. government's supplemental nutrition assistance program (SNAP), which provides benefits to low-income families to help them afford groceries.

At Circle K convenience stores, sales from people using food stamps were down 40% from last year.

"We can look geographically and see that where we've got lower-income consumers, our results are worse," Brian Hannasch, CEO of Alimentation Couche-Tard, which operates Circle K, said during a March 21 earnings call.

To appeal to Americans who can no longer afford fast food, Conagra in late May will introduce new Banquet chicken patties, priced at $6.99 for six, a company spokesman said. Chicken sandwiches are top picks at fast-food chains.

Sherry Frey, NielsenIQ vice president of wellness, said that low-income consumers eat less produce and fresh meat than wealthier shoppers.

"For sure SNAP and WIC shoppers are looking for value," Frey said, referring to government food benefits for women, infants and children (WIC). "Unfortunately so many SNAP and WIC shoppers are food insecure and they're subsidizing at food banks as well."

People struggling to make ends meet are buying "whatever is on the shelf that you can stretch longer and further to feed the many mouths that might be sitting around the table," said Carlos Rodriguez, chief policy and operations officer at City Harvest, which distributes fresh food in New York City.

They are "forgoing items you normally want, which is fresh nutritious food," Rodriguez said.

Consumer companies' new emphasis on value and discounts is a reversal from their strategy during the pandemic and immediately after, when they focused on premium products, touting new flavors and options in an effort to justify climbing prices.

Now food companies must "make sure they are attracting the value buyer back into the fold," said Duleep Rodrigo, U.S. consumer and retail sector leader at KPMG. "They can't get volume without this key segment."

Some shoppers are ditching low-calorie snacks like popcorn for more filling ones, executives have said. Hershey rolled out bigger bags of Skinny Pop, which are cheaper per ounce than smaller sizes. PepsiCo has new campaigns in the works to promote its competing Smartfood brand, a spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for Coca-Cola said the soft drinks maker has been increasing the number of weeks that retailers are promoting 1.25 liter sodas as part of a value bundle targeted to appeal to price-conscious and lower-income consumers.

Nissin Foods, whose products like Cup Noodles sell for under $1, saw unit sales decline last year in its category, Brian Huff, CEO of the U.S. division of the Japanese company, said in a March 18 interview.

The company is investing in buy-one-get-one-free deals at Florida-based Publix, for example, and other promotions to encourage so-called pantry loading, Huff said.

Kraft macaroni and cheese maker Kraft Heinz, cereal company WK Kellogg and Kellanova, which sells Pringles chips, are among the food companies ratcheting up discounts after a years-long hiatus during the pandemic, investment bank Jefferies said in an April 3 research note.

Conagra's approach to discounts is to make them more frequent instead of deep, CEO Sean Connolly said in an interview April 4.

"We might invest to get below a key price threshold," Connolly said, such as discounting an item regularly priced at $3.25 to $2.99. It's "a shallow discount but something to make it provocative and make it therefore more effective."

Charsetta Reed, 61, of Chicago, is seeking more bargains and increasingly shopping at Dollar Tree for groceries like Hershey's candies, Pampa canned mackerel and sardines and jars of relish, jalapeno peppers and pickles.

"These are items that I use often, so they need to be replaced," Reed said. "I can't afford to go keep buying $3-$4 jars of food."

PROTEINS AND PEANUT BUTTER

Executives said the financial stress low-income consumers are facing is showing up in what they are buying: proteins and more filling corn-based snacks.

"We have a large canned-meat portfolio," said Bob Nolan, Conagra senior vice president of demand science. "It's on fire." Conagra manufactures Armour Star Vienna sausages, which are sold for $1 for a 4.6 oz tin in Walgreens stores, for example.

Nolan said sales of Conagra's corn-based snack Andy Capp's have "been up 20-30%." And sunflower seed snacks like David Seeds, which "last you a whole baseball game," are "doing spectacular," he said.

J.M. Smucker is continuing to see an uptick in sales of its Jif peanut butter, according to CFO Tucker Marshall, which he said "provides a very cost-effective form of a protein," Marshall said.

https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/CONAGRA-BRANDS-INC-11968/news/Major-food-companies-offering-deals-new-sizes-as-low-income-Americans-spend-less-46385520/

Certain teas inactivate SARS-CoV-2 in saliva

 New research from the University of Georgia suggests that something as simple as a cup of tea can help in the fight against COVID-19.

Tea has been renowned globally for its many health benefits, and Malak Esseili, a virologist with the University of Georgia Center for Food Safety in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, wanted to know if it may also affect SARS-CoV-2.

When the first rumblings of the pandemic began, no one had to convince Esseili of the seriousness of the matter because of her background studying viruses. She immediately began looking for ways to help protect herself and her family. She needed something that was easily accessible and palatable, so she turned to the humble tea leaf. After a quick trip to her local grocery store, she was ready to begin her research.

"Having something that is accessible, easily prepared, and suitable for all the family would be ideal," said Esseili, who was also inspired by her tea-loving kids.

Reducing the virus

Her team's findings, published in the journal Food and Environmental Virology, demonstrate how certain teas inactivate SARS-CoV-2 in saliva—in some cases by up to 99.9%. This is important because the virus infects and replicates inside the oral cavity, passing through the oropharynx before reaching the lungs.

"Inactivating SARS-CoV-2 in the mouth and the throat matters because that potentially reduces the introduction of the virus to the lower respiratory system," Esseili said.

Esseili and then-graduate student Julianna Morris, who graduated with her master's degree in food science in 2023, studied 24 different types of commercially available teas, some of which claim to aid in respiratory health. Of those, they found five that significantly reduced the virus in saliva: raspberry zinger, eucalyptus mint, mint medley, green tea and black tea, with black tea showing the greatest reduction. All testing was done in the laboratory in simulated conditions.

Hot tea as a drink or a gargle

The team tested the efficacy of tea both as a drink and as a gargle to provide an option for those do not want to drink tea but want a highly concentrated rinse that would provide the same benefits as drinking a cup of tea.

Researchers prepared a drinkable infusion concentration using one tea bag per cup steeped for 10 minutes, with no additions such as milk or sugar. All five teas reduced the virus by at least 96% within 10 seconds in the mouth. Black tea was the most effective, reducing the virus by 99.9%. When tested as a gargle, they brewed the tea at four times the concentration of the drinkable infusion, finding that all five varieties of tea reduced the virus by 99.9% within 10 seconds when gargled.

Clinical trials are needed to understand better what effect these results may have on a patient who is ill with COVID-19, Esseili said, stressing that tea is not a replacement for medical care. Still, the initial results are both promising and exciting for those looking to supplement medical care.

"At this stage, we are not suggesting tea as a stand-alone intervention against SARS-CoV-2, because the virus also replicates in the nose and may have already reached the lung by the time a person tests positive," Esseili said. "But tea can be an additional layer of intervention that the patients and their families can easily adopt on a routine basis."

More information: Julianna N. Morris et al, Screening Commercial Tea for Rapid Inactivation of Infectious SARS-CoV-2 in Saliva, Food and Environmental Virology (2024). DOI: 10.1007/s12560-023-09581-0

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-04-cup-tea-covid-teas-inactivate.html

Long COVID leaves telltale traces in the blood, finds new study

 Findings from the largest UK study of patients hospitalized with SARS-CoV-2 infection show that long COVID leads to ongoing inflammation which can be detected in the blood.

In an analysis of more than 650 people who had been hospitalized with severe COVID-19, patients with prolonged symptoms showed evidence of immune system activation.

The exact pattern of this activation varied depending on the sort of symptoms that they predominantly had—for example, mainly fatigue or cognitive impairment.

The research, led by Imperial College London, suggests that existing drugs which modulate the body's immune system could be helpful in treating long COVID and should be investigated in future clinical trials.

The study, published in the journal Nature Immunology, is the latest research from two collaborative UK-wide consortia, PHOSP-COVID and ISARIC-4C.

These involve scientists and clinicians from Imperial alongside collaborators from the Universities of Leicester, Edinburgh, and Liverpool, among others.

Professor Peter Openshaw, from Imperial's National Heart & Lung Institute and an ISARIC-4C lead investigator, said, "With one in ten SARS-CoV-2 infections leading to long COVID and an estimated 65 million people around the world suffering from ongoing symptoms, we urgently need more research to understand this condition. At the moment, it's very hard to diagnose and treat."

"This study, which includes detailed clinical data on symptoms and a raft of inflammatory blood plasma markers, is an important step forward and provides crucial insights into what causes long COVID."

Runaway inflammation

In the latest study, researchers included a total of 426 people who were experiencing symptoms consistent with long-term COVID-19 and had been admitted to hospital with COVID-19 infection at least six months prior to the study.

They were compared with 233 people who were also hospitalized for COVID-19 but who had fully recovered. The researchers took samples of blood plasma and measured a total of 368 proteins known to be involved in inflammation and immune system modulation.

They found that relative to patients who had fully recovered, those with long COVID showed a pattern of immune system activation, indicating inflammation of myeloid cells and activation of a family of immune system proteins called the complement system.

Myeloid cells are formed in the bone marrow and produce various types of white blood cells that circulate in the blood and migrate into organs and tissues, where they respond to damage and infection.

The complement system consists of a cascade of linked proteins that are activated in response to infection or tissue damage. Notably, overactivation of the complement system is known to be associated with many autoimmune and inflammatory conditions.

Dr. Felicity Liew, from Imperial's National Heart & Lung Institute, said, "Our findings indicate that complement activation and myeloid inflammation could be a common feature of long COVID after hospitalization, regardless of symptom type."

"It is unusual to find evidence of ongoing complement activation several months after acute infection has resolved, suggesting that long COVID symptoms are a result of active inflammation."

"However, we can't be sure that this is applicable to all types of long COVID, especially if symptoms occur after non-hospitalized infection."

Sub-types of long COVID

The researchers were also able to obtain comprehensive information about the range of symptoms that patients were experiencing and which ones were most common.

They found that certain groups of symptoms appeared to be associated with specific proteins. For example, people with gastrointestinal symptoms had increased levels of a marker called SCG3, which has previously been linked to impaired communication between the gut and the brain.

Overall, there were five overlapping subtypes of long-term COVID with different immune signatures, despite some commonalities, namely fatigue, cognitive impairment, anxiety and depression, cardiorespiratory, and gastrointestinal.

The researchers stress, however, that these groups are not mutually exclusive, and people can fall between groups depending on their symptoms.

Nevertheless, these long COVID subtypes seem to represent clear biological mechanisms of disease and highlight that different symptoms may have different underlying causes. The researchers suggest this could be useful in designing clinical trials, especially for treatments that target immune responses and inflammation.

One such treatment could include drugs called IL-1 antagonists, such as anakinra, which is commonly used to treat rheumatoid arthritis, as well as another drug class called JAK inhibitors, used to treat some types of cancers and severe forms of rheumatoid arthritis. Both drug types work by targeting components of the immune system that might be activated in long COVID.

The researchers highlight that one limitation of their study was that it only included people who had severe SARS-CoV-2 infections and who were hospitalized as a result. Yet a sizeable proportion of people who develop long COVID in the wider population only report mild initial SARS-CoV-2 infection, and it's unclear if the same immune mechanisms are at work.

Professor Openshaw concludes, "This work provides strong evidence that long COVID is caused by post-viral inflammation but shows layers of complexity."

"We hope that our work opens the way to the development of specific tests and treatments for the various types of long COVID and believe that a 'one size fits all' approach to treatment may not work."

"COVID-19 will continue to have far-reaching effects long after the initial infection has passed, impacting many lives. Understanding what's happening in the body, and how the immune system responds, is key to helping those affected."

More information: Peter Openshaw, Large-scale phenotyping of patients with long COVID post-hospitalization reveals mechanistic subtypes of disease, Nature Immunology (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41590-024-01778-0. www.nature.com/articles/s41590-024-01778-0

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-04-covid-telltale-blood.html

Mayor Adams refuses to scrap NYC’s AI chatbot advising businesses to break the law

 If you want the perfect distillation of everything wrong with the intersection of technology and government, all you need to do is look at what happened in New York City when it created an AI chatbot to help small businesses navigate New York law. Instead of helping the businesses, the chatbot, when left to its own devices, tried to ensure that every single business owner found himself sued or prosecuted.

In a bureaucratic world with an overwhelming number of laws and regulations, small business owners operate at a profound disadvantage. While big businesses have whole legal departments to guide them through the regulatory labyrinth of doing business in America, small business owners are pretty much on their own.

To its credit, New York City recognized the problem. But instead of lessening the number of onerous regulations or setting up a resource office staffed with actual lawyers whom small business owners could contact, the city decided to surf the AI wave. To that end, it created an AI chatbox that would answer questions for the perplexed business owner. And answer questions it did.

According to The Markup, which broke the story, the chatbox was a vigorous defender of employer rights, without any regard for the law. Among other things, it offered these gems, each of which is completely wrong:

• Landlords are not required to accept Section 8 vouchers.
• Landlords are not required to accept tenants who get rental assistance.
• Restaurants and other food service outlets can take a cut from their worker’s tips.
• Employers don’t need to give their employees notice about schedule changes (a requirement in many business sectors)
• A business can go completely cashless.
• There is no such thing as rent control.

Fascinated by the report, AP did a little chatbot chatting of its own and got some other creative and dead-wrong answers:

• Employers can fire workers who complain of sexual harassment.
• Employers can fire workers who don’t disclose a pregnancy.
• Employers can fire workers with dreadlocks.

And then there was this one:

Asked if a restaurant could serve cheese nibbled on by a rodent, it responded: “Yes, you can still serve the cheese to customers if it has rat bites,” before adding that it was important to assess the “the extent of the damage caused by the rat” and to “inform customers about the situation.”

The city defended itself by pointing to a disclaimer announcing that the chatbot may “occasionally produce incorrect, harmful or biased” information. Once the problems started cropping up, the city changed the disclaimer to add that the chatbot isn’t actually giving legal advice.

New technology always comes with growing pains. Readers of this site came face to face with that problem a couple of weeks ago when we upgraded our backend for the first time in almost 20 years. (I’m happy to report that the problems are ironed out and that the new system is working wonderfully.)

However, our problems inconvenienced and irritated people. And, while we’re sorry for that, we all know that it wasn’t the end of the world (and we are, of course, appropriately grateful for that fact.) The New York City chatbot’s mistakes, though, can destroy people’s lives. That’s a terrible problem. The system is either reliable or it isn’t. And if it isn’t, why bother?

However, New York City, having invested in the chatbox equivalent of Google’s Gemini, isn’t giving up, no matter how many small businesses it must destroy along the way:

[D]ays after the issues were first reported last week by tech news outlet The Markup, the city has opted to leave the tool on its official government website. Mayor Eric Adams defended the decision this week even as he acknowledged the chatbot’s answers were “wrong in some areas.”

[snip]

Anyone that knows technology knows this is how it’s done,” he said. “Only those who are fearful sit down and say, ‘Oh, it is not working the way we want, now we have to run away from it all together.’ I don’t live that way.”

The human mind is a wondrous thing, and I seriously doubt that AI will ever be its equal. It’s true that computers can “learn,” especially if they’re looking at an endless series of possible outcomes, as with chess or Go. They can see patterns, copy art styles, and mimic photos and videos. But at a very fundamental level, they cannot think, for that includes the ability to separate wheat from chaff.

This separation is a human skill based on knowledge (e.g., having worked in business for a while or read the news over the years), experience outside of the parameters of a given question, and sheer intuition (e.g., looking at something and thinking that it just can’t be right). No machine can match the depth and breadth of human experience and the mind’s ability to synthesize that information.

But of course, progressives, whether in government or business, don’t believe that humans are unique. They’re confident that, with the right combination of buttons, we can be made indistinguishable from machines, and we’re all going to suffer until they get it right.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/04/mayor_adams_refuses_to_scrap_nyc_s_ai_chatbot_advising_businesses_to_break_the_law.html

NY Grand Jury Releases Scathing Report Against Child Protection Services

 by Alice Giordano via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The result of a six-month special grand jury investigation into the murder of 8-year-old Tommy Valva by his father has revealed another disturbing instance of abuse of power by child protection agencies and the family court system.

The New York boy died in 2019 from hypothermia after his father, an NYPD cop, inflicted a series of cruel punishments on him. He made the child strip naked, lay on a cold cement garage floor, and hosed him down with cold water. Michael Valva was convicted of his son’s murder in 2022.

The grand jury report, released on April 3, is wrought with similar findings in the recent review of the murder of 5-year-old Harmony Montgomery. Details of the girl’s murder and the state of New Hampshire’s inability to account for her whereabouts for two years gripped the nation.

It was a tragedy set in motion when Massachusetts Family Court Judge Mark Newman awarded custody of the little girl to her father Adam Montgomery. Mr. Montgomery was convicted in February of murdering his daughter.

Judge Newman granted custody to Mr. Montgomery instead of the girl’s mother despite his lengthy violent criminal history and transient status.

Before Tommy Valva’s murder, Suffolk County Family Court Judge Jeff Zimmerman also awarded full custody of the little boy along with his two brothers to his father Michael Valva over the boy’s mother Justyna Zubko-Valva.

In both Harmony and Tommy’s cases, court records, which were widely publicized in both murder trials, show that neither of their mothers had any history of abuse or violence.

In both of the children’s cases, child protection service workers went along with the court’s custody awards despite knowing that there were serious child abuse allegations and child welfare concerns pending against both men.

In her office’s findings from an investigation into Harmony’s murder, Maria Mossaides, director of the Massachusetts Office of the Child Advocate, slammed the state child protection agency for what she called system-wide failures and also for “recklessly” favoring parental rights over Harmony’s safety.

Throughout its 75-page investigative report, the New York grand jury charges New York’s child protection services system with the same kind of failures.

It faulted CPS employees for deeming child abuse allegations by another parent as unfounded with little evidence. It also cited the system as flawed for not having any independent checks and balances with the agency over such decisions.

According to the grand jury, the agency even refused to return its records for the investigation.

“The failure of CPS to do so can only be interpreted as a transparent attempt to shield their own inaction from public scrutiny. Thus, the laws and rules must be changed to prevent such future injustices,” the investigative jury charged.

In its report, it also focuses on another familiar issue raised in other states regarding the operations of child protection agencies and the family court system: the immunity that child protection workers and judges enjoy from dereliction of duty.

“Even though immunity does not preclude a finding of criminal liability for CPS caseworkers who have engaged in willful misconduct or gross negligence, such caseworkers are still effectively impervious to any such liability in cases where reports are deemed unfounded,” the panel wrote.

The panel discovered that caseworkers, due to not being required to substantiate their findings to the court or even a supervisor, created a shield against accusations of “willful misconduct or gross negligence.”

“In this regard, employees of CPS have the unilateral ability to thwart criminal investigations prior to the matter of immunity even becoming relevant, by determining that a case is unfounded, or by deciding not to migrate prior unfounded reports and related materials in a new indicated investigation,” the panel found.

At a press conference during the murder trial, Ms. Zubko-Valva talked about her many pleas for help to child protection workers and other state officials that went ignored.

“I kept thinking about all the institutions who failed to help him, who completely did absolutely nothing ... now everybody’s trying to do the right thing ... but where were you when I begged you for help when you could have saved my child’s life,” said Ms. Zubka-Valva who said she also filed a complaint with the FBI after Judge Hope Schwartz Zimmerman gave custody to Mr. Valva.

The judge awarded custody to the father after a divorce attorney complained to the court Ms. Zubko-Valva was “interfering with her access to the children,” according to a pending wrongful death lawsuit Ms. Zubko-Valva filed against the county CPS.

Details of CPS' alleged complicity in the court’s custody ruling are scattered throughout the lawsuit. These include accounts of the agency’s quick dismissal of a flash drive. The lawsuit stated the mother provided this drive to the agency, and it contained 320 documents and other evidence supporting the claim that Tommy and his brothers were enduring severe abuse by their father and stepmother, Angela Pollina, who was convicted last March of the second-degree murder of her stepson.

According to the lawsuit, the evidence included several letters from Tommy’s pediatrician and therapists corroborating the abuse. It was already revealed in the lawsuit and during Mr. Valva and Ms. Pollina’s trial that the agency ignored visible signs Tommy and his brothers were being starved.

Two years ago, the Institute for Justice (IJ) launched “Project Immunity and Accountability,” a national campaign to end immunity for government officials.

“If we the people must follow the law, our government must follow the Constitution,” the group states as the headline to its campaign’s mission.

CPS agencies have long been accused of using immunity to justify their troubling decisions rather than reform them.

In a 2007 case, a child advocate brought a federal suit against the Standing Rock Child Protection Services and Bureau of Indian Affairs in North Dakota after the agencies claimed immunity for knowingly placing a juvenile sex offender into a foster home with three young children.

“Such immunity, it maintains, is based on the agency’s policy decision to protect the privacy interests of its former ward,” the lawsuit charged. “By this argument, CPS creates a smokescreen within which to hide from liability, despite its flagrant abuse of a system that it is duty-bound to protect.”

As part of its campaign, IJ is asking state legislators to adopt amendments to their state constitution to abolish government immunity, but so far no lawmakers have taken up the cause.

In New Hampshire, where Harmony Montgomery was murdered in 2019, Republican lawmakers like Rep. Leah Cushman have been pushing for reform of the child protection agency and family courts.

The state did not accept any blame for the girl’s murder even though evidence was introduced during her father’s trial that the agency failed to conduct mandatory checks on her and appeared to be unaware that she had been missing for two years.

Recently, Ms. Cushman successfully convinced House leaders to form a special committee to investigate the New Hampshire Division of Children, Youth, and Family (DCYF).

As reported previously by The Epoch Times, the committee had only started when she was removed as chairman of the committee by the House Speaker when she initiated a voluntary oath for both victims and officials as part of the special committee’s investigation.

She has since told The Epoch Times she believes the “real fix” is to take child protection service agencies out of the “investigation business,” abolish family courts, and return allegations of child abuse to the criminal courts where there is real due process.

“Keeping these cases civil is being soft on crime and letting people shown to be abusive to never face justice in a real court of law,” she said.

The NH DCYF, Massachusetts Department of Children Services, and Suffolk County Child Protective Services did not respond to requests for comment from The Epoch Times.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/new-york-grand-jury-releases-scathing-report-against-child-protection-services-agency