Resisting the Global Crackdown on Civil Society

Civil society is increasingly coming under assault around the world, as authoritarian governments grow more bold and sophisticated in stifling independent groups that monitor elections, expose corruption, or otherwise give citizens a voice in how they are governed. In response, senior U.S. officials have reaffirmed their support for universal rights, including freedom of association, while mid-level officials have criticized specific abuses against civil society. However, only modest U.S. government efforts have dealt systematically with the global nature of the crackdown on civil society. This weak U.S. response to the crackdown hurts U.S. interests and undermines U.S. credibility abroad. The U.S. government needs to respond to the threats against civil society more forcefully.To curb the global crackdown, the United States needs to systematically oppose efforts by authoritarian governments to control civic space, take vigorous political and diplomatic measures to support civil society organizations that come under threat, and get around government restrictions designed to isolate local organizations from the international community. Effective U.S. policy to defend civil society needs to respond comprehensively to the global nature of the crackdown and, at the same time, turn the tide in key countries where repression of civil society has significant regional repercussions. While bipartisan collaboration is critical to make such policy effective, a strong U.S. response to the global crackdown on civil society must begin in the White House

SECONDARY EFFECT OF 8-AZAGUANINE ON THE INDUCED OR CONSTITUTIVE SYNTHESIS OF PENICILLINASE IN BACILLUS CEREUS. EUR 509.e

1. 1. During the restoration of protein synthesis caused by guanosine after inhibition by azaguanine, the differential rate of synthesis of penicillinase (penicillin amidohydrolase, EC 3.5.2.6) is much reduced. 2. 2. This effect is observed irrespective of the state of induction, or repression, of the penicillinase-making system during the action of azaguanine. © 1963.SCOPUS: ar.jSCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Election Systems Vulnerability to Corruption Assessment: Final Report

Elections in Afghanistan are highly susceptible to corruption, which undermines the credibility of the electoral process, calls into question the legitimacy of election results, and deprives citizens of their right to choose their representatives and President. Despite repeated electoral reform efforts, allegations of widespread fraud have recurred in each recent election cycle. To assess the electoral process’ vulnerability to corruption, the Independent Joint Anti- Corruption Monitoring and Evaluation Committee (MEC) conducted a review of electoral regulations and procedures, extensive interviews with election officials and other key stakeholders, including Wolesi Jirga candidates, field research in 18 Provinces into the experiences of more than 800 voters in the 2018 Wolesi Jirga elections, and direct observations and interviews with over 325 voters in the 2019 presidential election in eight Provinces. The main findings of MEC’s research are as follows: • The independence, accountability, and integrity of the Independent Election Commission (IEC) and the Independent Electoral Complaints Commission (IECC) are open to question. • The election Commissions, particularly the IEC, are fairly lax in maintaining standards of integrity among Secretariat staff. • The voter registration process had serious flaws and produced an inaccurate voter list. • Campaign finance is poorly regulated, and punishment for infractions is weak. Only 12 percent of Wolesi Jirga candidates submitted a complete and consistent report on their campaign contributions and expenditures. • The voting process on election day, particularly at polling centers in insecure areas, is vulnerable to vote buying, intimidation of voters, and election fraud. Poll workers are at times complicit in corruption. • Biometric devices provided no verification of voter identity in 2018 because they were not connected to the voter list. • Allegations of widespread bribery marred the 2018 elections. • The vote tabulation process in 2018 was slow, opaque, and fairly inaccessible. The IEC took more than a month to release preliminary results of the Wolesi Jirga elections for all but five Provinces and took over six months to announce final results for Kabul. • Vote recounts are prone to tampering. The IECC’s expansive decision in 2018 to invalidate all votes in Kabul paved the way for a recount that was riddled with allegations of bribery and was described by a senior IEC official as “doomsday.” • The IECC, contrary to its own procedures, failed to publicly release the decisions of Provincial Complaints Commissions, which make up 94 percent of all IECC decisions related to the Wolesi Jirga elections. 5 • The IECC denied MEC’s requests to view select case files on electoral complaints that arose in the Wolesi Jirga elections. The lack of transparency raises questions about the integrity of the IECC’s adjudication of electoral complaints. • Despite allegations of widespread bribery and electoral fraud in the Wolesi Jirga elections, few senior officials or powerful individuals were punished for electoral crimes, and former IEC and IECC Commissioners were convicted on dubious grounds. • Bribery in elections carries a lighter punishment than bribery in other contexts. MEC offers a series of detailed recommendations at the end of this report to strengthen the integrity of elections in Afghanistan. Highlights of key recommendations include the following: • IEC and IECC Commissioners should be nominated by a committee of elections experts and selected by consensus among elections stakeholders based on nominees’ expertise in election management, independence, impartiality, and integrity. • The IEC and IECC should each develop and implement an anti-corruption policy, create a written procedure for addressing staff misconduct, and write a regulation on contacts with candidates. • The IEC should create a new voter registration list after 2019 based on e-Tazkiras, require e-Tazkiras for voter identification, preload biometric voter verification devices with biometric data of voters at their assigned polling station, and ensure that all devices are properly preloaded with biometric data. • The Election Law should be amended to substantially increase the penalties for campaign finance violations, disqualify candidates who fail to submit campaign finance reports, and make false reporting a criminal offense. • The IEC should add training material for poll workers on how to respond to voter intimidation, ballot stuffing, and electoral fraud. • The IEC should provide polling station managers with the technology to transmit initial results electronically, collect initial results as vote counts are completed, and post initial results on the IEC’s website within 48 hours after the polls close. • The IECC should post all Provincial Complaints Commissions’ decisions on its website by the end of the next business day. • The IECC should introduce an electronic Case Management System for electoral complaints, with an audit trail to document every modification made to case files. • During vote recounts, the IEC should release partial results at the end of each day. • Penal Code Article 423 should be amended to increase the punishment for bribery in elections and to require candidates and election officials to report demands, offers, or facilitating of bribes to relevant authorities within 48 hours. 6 • Election Law Article 97 should be amended to require the IECC to refer cases of suspected electoral crimes to the Attorney General’s Office as they arise. • The Attorney General’s Office should fulfill its legal mandate to secure convictions of candidates, senior election officials, and other powerful individuals guilty of electoral crimes and publicly report each month on the status of its elections-related investigations and prosecutions. • The Supreme Court should amend the Law on Jurisdiction and Authority of the Judiciary to establish a permanent, special court to exercise jurisdiction over electoral crimes. MEC presented these recommendations in two interim Election Systems VCA reports, circulated to stakeholders in March and in August 2019, and in briefings to IEC and IECC Commissioners and senior Secretariat officials, presidential campaign representatives, investigators at the Attorney General’s Office, international donors, and senior officials of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan. The interim reports were not released publicly, to avoid any appearance of interference in the electoral process, but MEC encouraged stakeholders to adopt its recommendations, particularly the recommendations that could be implemented in time for the 2019 presidential election. This final report aims to support the long-term improvement of electoral institutions for future elections in Afghanistan. The IEC took some measures in line with MEC’s recommendations to strengthen the integrity of the September 2019 presidential election. These measures included selecting Provincial Election Officer competitively, pre-loading voter registration lists onto biometric voter verification devices, and instructing polling center managers to take photos of result sheets after the vote count and send the photos right away to IEC headquarters. While many more safeguards are needed to protect electoral integrity, these initial IEC anti-corruption measures show that when electoral integrity is prioritized, progress can be made in reducing the risks of corruption in Afghanistan’s elections. Elections require maximum transparency. When the electoral process is transparent from start to finish and is actively observed by stakeholders, it is inoculated to at least a significant degree against corruption. At the same time, fair and honest elections require the institutions that administer and oversee elections to act with integrity. The fight against corruption in elections is not a purely technical exercise. Strong internal controls at the IEC and IECC may reduce the election system’s vulnerability to corruption, but they are no substitute for effective leadership committed to a culture of integrity. Without such commitment, election officials probably will seek ways around the internal controls, once again become complicit in gaming the system, and avoid punishment for misconduct. While the IEC and IECC remain central to any effort to rid Afghanistan’s elections of corruption, the integrity of Afghanistan’s elections is not their responsibility alone. Candidates share the responsibility to ensure the integrity of elections, including to adhere to the Election Law and refrain from bribery. Responsibility also falls to the Government, National Assembly, political 7 parties, civil society, and Afghan citizens, who each need to do their part to uphold integrity in elections, demand it of other stakeholders, and hold corrupt individuals to account. The determination of voters to turn out for the Wolesi Jirga elections in 2018, despite pervasive security threats and lives lost, reflects their commitment to a fair and honest process to choose their representatives. With improvements in electoral institutions and commitment by stakeholders, Afghanistan can strengthen the integrity of its elections, curb the corruption that marred elections in the past, and give citizens genuine confidence in the electoral process

Stroke risk and NSAIDs: A systematic review of observational studies

Aims: To perform a quantitative systematic review of observational studies on the risk of stroke associated with the use of individual NSAIDs. Methods and results: Searches were conducted using the Medline database within PubMed (1990-2008). Observational cohort or case-control studies were eligible if reported on the risk of cardiovascular events associated with individual NSAIDs versus the nonuse of NSAIDs. We found 3193 articles, in which 75 were eligible for review and abstraction. Of the 75 articles, 6 reported relative risk (RR) of stroke. Data were abstracted into a database using a standardized entry form. Two authors assessed study quality, and discrepancies were resolved by consensus. The pooled RR of all subtypes of incident stroke was increased with the current use of rofecoxib (RR=1.64, 95% CI=1.15-2.33) and diclofenac (RR=1.27, 95% CI=1.08-1.48). The pooled estimates for naproxen, ibuprofen, and celecoxib were close to unity. The risk of ischemic stroke was also increased with rofecoxib (RR=1.82, 95% CI=1.09-3.04) and diclofenac (RR=1.20, 95% CI=0.99-1.45). Data were inadequate to estimate the pooled RR by dose and duration, for other individual NSAIDs or nonischemic stroke subtypes. Conclusion: This meta-analysis supports an increased risk of ischemic stroke with the current use of rofecoxib and diclofenac. Additional studies are required to evaluate most individual NSAIDS, the effect of dose and duration, and the subtypes of stroke

Open Society University Network Media Literacy Module

The Media Literacy Module is a 1-hour and 20-minute class originally designed to slot into OSUN Online and Network Collaborative Courses. Aimed at introductory and intermediate students, it provides context on how news spreads on social media and drills down on how to evaluate digital media critically and assess the reliability of online content

Jointly-owned objects for collaboration: Operating-system support and protection model

As real-time collaboration becomes more frequent, it is common for a group of users to create and own an object jointly. The use of multi-user tools makes the existence of jointly owned objects a necessity: a participant who joins a multi-uscr tool written by others knows that the user agent executed in his name is not a Trojan horse if the multi-user tool is jointly owned by all the participants. In this paper, we discuss the requirements and issues behind jointly-owned objects. By generalizing these requirements we have implemented a conditionally jointly-owned object. The conditions take the form of a quorum or a list of users who have the rights to access an object or to change its protection state. We sketch a design of conditionally jointly-owned objects, and apply the same concepts to subjects. Authority- and quorum-based objects are investigated as instances of conditionally joinly-owncd objects. We show that conditionally jointly-owned objects can also be used to resolve the conflicts that may arise among joint owners. We generalize Graham and Denning's protection model to incorporate these jointly-owned entities. Operating system support for conditionally jointly-owned objects is specified at the system-call level. Examples are provided to demonsuate the usefulness of conditionally jointly-owned objects

Hormonal Risk Factors for Ovarian Cancer in Premenopausal and Postmenopausal Women

Ovarian cancer is most frequently diagnosed in postmenopausal women; however, the strongest risk predictors, pregnancy and oral contraceptive use, occur in most women in their twenties and thirties. Relatively few studies have examined how reproductive risk factors vary between pre- and postmenopausal ovarian cancer. The authors used data from a population-based, case-control study of ovarian cancer (896 cases, 967 controls) conducted in North Carolina from 1999 to 2006. Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals were calculated by using unconditional logistic regression. Inverse associations with ovarian cancer were observed with duration of oral contraceptive use, later age at last use, and more recent use among premenopausal women; no significant associations were found for postmenopausal women. Analyses limited to oral contraceptive users showed that duration was a more significant predictor of risk than was timing of use. Parity was inversely associated with premenopausal but not postmenopausal ovarian cancer. Later age at pregnancy was associated with reduced risk for both pre- and postmenopausal women. Analyses among parous women showed that pregnancy timing was a stronger risk predictor than number of pregnancies. Findings suggest that associations between ovarian cancer and reproductive characteristics vary by menopausal status. Additional research is needed to further elucidate risk factors for postmenopausal disease

The feasibility of using multiple databases to study rare outcomes: the potential effect of long-acting beta agonists with inhaled corticosteroid therapy on asthma mortality

Purpose: Long-acting beta agonists (LABAs) when used without concomitant inhaled corticosteroids (ICS) increase the risk of asthma-related deaths, but the effect on asthma-related death of LABA used in combination with ICS therapy is unknown. To address this question, we explored the feasibility of conducting an observational study using multiple US health care data sources. Methods: Retrospective cohort study to evaluate the likelihood of getting an upper 95% confidence limit ≤1.4 for the asthma mortality rate ratio and ≤0.40 per 10 000 person-years for the mortality rate difference, assuming no effect of new use of combined LABA + ICS (versus non-LABA maintenance therapy) on asthma mortality. Ten research institutions executed centrally distributed analytic code based on a standard protocol using an extracted (2000–2010) persistent asthma cohort (asthma diagnosis and ≥4 asthma medications in 12 months). Pooled results were analyzed by the coordinating center. Asthma deaths were ascertained by linkage with the National Death Index. Results: In a cohort of 994 627 persistent asthma patients (2.4 million person-years; 278 asthma deaths), probabilities of the upper 95% confidence limit for effect estimates being less than targeted values, assuming a null relation, were about 0.05. Modifications in cohort and exposure definitions increased exposed person-time and outcome events, but study size remained insufficient to attain study goals. Conclusions: Even with 10 data sources and a 10-year study period, the rarity of asthma deaths among patients using certain medications made it infeasible to study the association between combined LABA + ICS and asthma mortality with our targeted level of study precision

Virologic Failure Among People Living With HIV Initiating Dolutegravir-Based Versus Other Recommended Regimens in Real-World Clinical Care Settings

Background: Guidelines for initial antiretroviral treatment (ART) regimens have evolved, with integrase strand transfer inhibitors (INSTIs) increasingly prominent. Research on virologic failure (VF) with INSTI therapy is predominantly from clinical trials not care settings, especially for recently approved medications including dolutegravir. We compared outcomes among people living with HIV (PLWH) who initiated recommended regimens in clinical care across the United States. Setting: We examined 2 groups of PLWH at 8 clinics who initiated ART regimens (August 1, 2013-March 31, 2017): those ART treatment-naive at initiation, and those treatment-experienced. Methods: The outcome in this longitudinal cohort study was VF, defined as a viral load of ≥400 copies/mL ≥6 months after ART initiation. We examined the proportion of individuals who remained on, switched, or discontinued the regimen. Associations between regimens and outcomes were examined with adjusted Cox proportional hazards models. Results: Among 5177 PLWH, a lower proportion experienced VF on dolutegravir- versus other INSTI- or darunavir-based regimens for previously treatment-naive (7% vs. 12% vs. 28%) and treatment-experienced PLWH (6% vs. 10% vs. 21%). In adjusted analyses, hazard ratios were similar across regimens for the combined outcome of regimen discontinuation or treatment switch. The hazard ratios for VF comparing dolutegravir- to darunavir-based regimens was 0.30 (95% CI: 0.2 to 0.6) among previously treatment-naive PLWH and was 0.60 (95% CI: 0.4 to 0.8) among treatment-experienced PLWH. Conclusions: The proportion of previously treatment-naive PLWH remaining on recommended ART regimens did not differ by regimen. The likelihood of VF was lower with dolutegravir- than darunavir-based regimens for previously treatment-naive and treatment-experienced PLWH

Folic acid supplementation before and during pregnancy in the Newborn Epigenetics STudy (NEST)

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Folic acid (FA) added to foods during fortification is 70-85% bioavailable compared to 50% of folate occurring naturally in foods. Thus, if FA supplements also are taken during pregnancy, both mother and fetus can be exposed to FA exceeding the Institute of Medicine's recommended tolerable upper limit (TUL) of 1,000 micrograms per day (μg/d) for adult pregnant women. The primary objective is to estimate the proportion of women taking folic acid (FA) doses exceeding the TUL before and during pregnancy, and to identify correlates of high FA use.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>During 2005-2008, pre-pregnancy and pregnancy-related data on dietary supplementation were obtained by interviewing 539 pregnant women enrolled at two obstetrics-care facilities in Durham County, North Carolina.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Before pregnancy, 51% of women reported FA supplementation and 66% reported this supplementation during pregnancy. Before pregnancy, 11.9% (95% CI = 9.2%-14.6%) of women reported supplementation with FA doses above the TUL of 1,000 μg/day, and a similar proportion reported this intake prenatally. Before pregnancy, Caucasian women were more likely to take FA doses above the TUL (OR = 2.99; 95% = 1.28-7.00), compared to African American women, while women with chronic conditions were less likely to take FA doses above the TUL (OR = 0.48; 95%CI = 0.21-0.97). Compared to African American women, Caucasian women were also more likely to report FA intake in doses exceeding the TUL during pregnancy (OR = 5.09; 95%CI = 2.07-12.49).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Fifty-one percent of women reported some FA intake before and 66% during pregnancy, respectively, and more than one in ten women took FA supplements in doses that exceeded the TUL. Caucasian women were more likely to report high FA intake. A study is ongoing to identify possible genetic and non-genotoxic effects of these high doses.</p