Iranian student turned around at the airport was deported despite order from a federal judge, attorneys say

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/01/22/dehghani-student-deported/



On Tuesday morning, protesters dressed in bulky puffer jackets and salt-stained boots gathered outside the federal courthouse in Boston. They were there to support Shahab Dehghani, an Iranian student who was supposed to be starting his spring semester at Northeastern University, but instead had been abruptly pulled aside by customs officials and told that his visa was revoked when he landed at Logan International Airport on Sunday night.

But it was too late. Though Dehghani, 24, was supposed to appear in court that morning, the college student was no longer in the United States. He had been placed on a return flight to France the night before, just minutes after a federal judge issued an order saying he should be allowed to remain in the country until a court could review his case, his attorneys said.

“We feel this is a pattern of Customs and Border Protection ignoring court orders and ignoring the law,” Kerry Doyle, one of several immigration attorneys working on the Iranian national’s behalf, told reporters.

While it remains unclear why Dehghani was denied entry at the airport, the economics major’s case has angered immigration advocates and members of Congress who say that Iranian students are increasingly being deported or turned around at airports after arriving in the United States on valid student visas. In a statement to MassLive, Sen. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) called it “part of a disturbing pattern from the Trump administration of disregarding the law and targeting Iranian students."

Dehghani, whose full name is Mohammad Shahab Dehghani Hossein Abadi, began attending the University of Massachusetts at Boston in 2015 and later transferred to Northeastern, CommonWealth Magazine reported. After two years in Boston, he returned home to visit his family in Iran. But the break from his studies meant that he had to once again apply for a student visa.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/01/17/ted-lieu-devin-nunes-shove-it/



The politicians’ dueling played out, as it almost always does these days, largely on Twitter and cable TV.

Rep. Ted Lieu (D) alleged in December that fellow California Rep. Devin Nunes (R) conspired with Lev Parnas, a former associate of President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, to undermine the United States. Parnas has pleaded not guilty to violating campaign finance laws.

Then a lawyer for Nunes, who is the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, sent a multi-page missive threatening to sue for damage to Nunes’s reputation, Lieu tweeted. The Democratic congressman replied with a letter of his own and posted a photo of the document online.

“I welcome any lawsuit from your client and look forward to taking discovery of Congressman Nunes,” he wrote. “Or, you can take your letter and shove it.”

On MSNBC’s “Hardball” on Friday, Lieu doubled down. “It turns out that based on text messages in the record and the amazing interview on [MSNBC’s] Rachel Maddow Show that I’m right,” he said. “Truth is a defense.”

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/16/economy/women-more-jobs-than-men/index.html

New York (CNN Business)Women held slightly more jobs than men in December — the first time that's happened in nearly a decade.

The numbers are super close, with women holding 50.04% of American jobs, but economists note it's a data point worth watching because it could mark a turning point in the US labor market.

Sectors that have traditionally been dominated by men, like manufacturing and construction, have slowed amid the US-China trade war.
Meanwhile, jobs in the health care sector, which employs more women than men, have been on an upswing. In 2019, for example, 399,000 health care jobs were added to the US economy, more than in any other sector. In contrast, the manufacturing sector added only 46,000 jobs and construction added 151,000 jobs last year.

As America's population ages, the health care industry is expected to continue growing and adding new jobs: the older people get, the more care they need. That's why hiring in the sector is thought to be recession-proof.
It's also why women's job numbers are expected to keep growing.

Even though 60% of physicians and surgeons are men, female employees still make up the vast majority of the broader health care industry, BLS data shows. 89% of registered nurses are female. Similarly, home health aides, one of the fastest growing jobs in the US economy, are 89% female.

Australia's indigenous people have a solution for the country's bushfires. And it's been around for 50,000 years

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/12/world/aboriginal-australia-fire-trnd/index.html?

(CNN)The fires in Australia have been burning for months, consuming nearly 18 million acres of land, causing thousands to evacuate and killing potentially millions of animals.

They're showing minimal signs of slowing down. The Australian state of New South Wales, where both Sydney and Canberra are located, declared a state of emergency this week, as worsening weather conditions could lead to even greater fire danger.
But a 50,000-year-old solution could exist: Aboriginal burning practices.

Here's how it works.
Aboriginal people had a deep knowledge of the land, said historian Bill Gammage, an emeritus professor at Australian National University who studies Australian and Aboriginal history. They can feel the grass and know if it would burn well; they knew what types of fires to burn for what types of land, how long to burn, and how frequently.
"Skills like that, they have but we don't know," Gammage said.

Aboriginal techniques are based in part on fire prevention: ridding the land of fuel, like debris, scrub, undergrowth and certain grasses. The fuel alights easily, which allows for more intense flames that are harder to fight.
The Aboriginal people would set small-scale fires that weren't too intense and clear the land of the extra debris. The smaller intensity fires would lessen the impact on the insects and animals occupying the land, too, as well as protect the trees and the canopy.

https://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/i-team-anti-semitic-trolls-impersonate-rabbis-stoking-hate-after-hasidic-attacks/2257562/

What to Know
Social media posts from fake accounts have been spreading hateful, bigoted messages since attacks on Hasidic Jews
The fake accounts, which claim to be of U.S. rabbis, post messages seemingly geared at pitting Jews against African Americans
While the accounts were fairly easily exposed as phony, a question remains: Why don’t Twitter or Facebook block the content sooner?

Days after Grafton Thomas, a black man, was arrested for the Hanukkah slashing at Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg’s home in Monsey, a Twitter account calling itself “David Rothstein” wrote, “monsey stabbing was perpetrated by a black supremacist.” He followed that up with a picture of a black man missing multiple teeth and the N-word.

The racist David Rothstein account wasn’t the only one capitalizing on a tragedy to spread hate.

In December, following a fatal mass shooting at a Jersey City kosher supermarket, another troll account called Rabbi Hezekiah of ATL was born. After the crime, Rabbi Hezekiah tweeted, “Jewish landlords should not rent to colored people,” and “The problem Jews all over the world are facing is: the Black Man.”

The vile, racist tweets are just a few of the toxic social media posts that went unchecked in the days and weeks following a series of anti-Semitic attacks in the New York City region.

It wasn’t difficult to decipher the troll accounts were imposters. The profile picture for David Rothstein was actually a photo of Rabbi David Lau, one of Israel’s chief rabbis. A link under the profile picture of Rabbi Hezekiah takes readers to the homepage of Congregation Beth Shalom, a suburban Atlanta temple whose real leader is Rabbi Mark Zimmerman, a man who preaches tolerance.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/09/opinion/meghan-markle-prince-harry.html



The British press has succeeded in its apparent project of hounding Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, out of Britain. The part it perhaps didn’t bargain for, however, is the loss of Prince Harry — a much loved royal and a key part of the family’s global brand — along with her.

In a statement released this week, the couple said they want to “carve out a progressive new role” within the royal family and will “step back as ‘senior’ members, and work to become financially independent.”

The British press reacted with surprise at the “shock move abroad,” described variously as “seismic,” “selfish,” “rogue” and “an atrocious lapse of judgment.”

If the media paid more attention to Britain’s communities of color, perhaps it would find the announcement far less surprising. With a new prime minister whose track record includes overtly racist statements, some of which would make even Donald Trump blush, a Brexit project linked to native nationalism and a desire to rid Britain of large numbers of immigrants, and an ever thickening loom of imperial nostalgia, many of us are also thinking about moving.

From the very first headline about her being “(almost) straight outta Compton” and having “exotic” DNA, the racist treatment of Meghan has been impossible to ignore. Princess Michael of Kent wore an overtly racist brooch in the duchess’s company. A BBC host compared the couple’s newborn baby to a chimpanzee. Then there was the sublimely ludicrous suggestion that Meghan’s avocado consumption is responsible for mass murder, while her charity cookbook was portrayed as somehow helping terrorists.

Those who claim frequent attacks against the duchess have nothing to do with her race have a hard time explaining these attempts to link her with particularly racialized forms of crime — terrorism and gang activity — as well as the fact that she has been most venomously attacked for acts that attracted praise when other royals did them. Her decision to guest-edit British Vogue, for example, was roundly condemned by large parts of the British media, in stark contrast to Prince Charles’s two-time guest editorship of Country Life magazine, Prince Harry’s of a BBC program and Kate Middleton’s at Huffington Post, all of which were quietly praised at the time.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/01/09/more-americans-are-killing-themselves-work/



America’s climbing suicide rate has become a problem for businesses, too.

Buried in a report last month by the Bureau of Labor of Statistics on occupational fatalities was this tragic fact: More people are killing themselves in the workplace than ever before. The number of such suicides for 2018 was 304 -- an 11 percent increase from the year before and the highest number since the bureau began tracking the data 26 years ago.

Companies are struggling with how to respond.

“Ten years ago, most companies saw suicide as a personal or medical issue, and would say it has nothing to do with work,” said Sally Spencer-Thomas, a psychologist and board president of United Suicide Survivors International, a prevention advocacy group. “I was banging my head against the wall trying to convince companies to talk to me. Compared to now, when I’m getting calls from major global conglomerates seeking me out, looking for answers and strategy. There’s almost too much to do.”

In the wake of such trauma, executives often grapple with what to do: How to counsel and support coworkers and those who witnessed the death? What to say publicly and how much to disclose internally?

Last year, after a Facebook employee jumped from the fourth floor of a company building in Menlo Park, Calif., his death sparked accusations of harsh work environments for some of the company’s foreign employees. The controversy intensified after a Chinese coworker of the deceased joined in the criticism and was fired by Facebook shortly after. Facebook representatives later confirmed the Chinese employee was dismissed but said it was not because he spoke out about the suicide and work conditions.

https://www.vox.com/world/2019/7/8/18693297/us-iran-war-trump-nuclear-iraq

A deadly opening attack. Nearly untraceable, ruthless proxies spreading chaos on multiple continents. Costly miscalculations. And thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands — killed in a conflict that would dwarf the war in Iraq.

Welcome to the US-Iran war, which has the potential to be one of the worst conflicts in history.

The Thursday night killing of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who led Iranian covert operations and intelligence and was one of the country’s most senior leaders, brought Washington and Tehran closer to fighting that war. Iran has every incentive to retaliate, experts says, using its proxies to target US commercial interests in the Middle East, American allies, or even American troops and diplomats hunkered down in regional bases and embassies.

It’s partly why the Eurasia Group, a prominent international consulting firm, now puts the chance of “a limited or major military confrontation” at 40 percent.

But the seeds of conflict weren’t planted with Thursday’s airstrikes alone. Washington and Tehran have remained locked in a months-long standoff that only continues to escalate. The US imposed crushing sanctions on Iran’s economy over its support for terrorism and its growing missile program, among other things, after withdrawing from the 2015 nuclear deal last year; Iran has fought back by violating parts of the nuclear agreement, bombing oil tankers, and downing an American military drone.

The crisis has become more acute over the past week. An Iranian-backed militia killed an American contractor while wounding others in rocket attacks, leading the Trump administration to order retaliatory strikes on five targets in Iraq and Syria that killed 25 of the militia’s fighters. In protest, the militia — Ketaib Hezbollah — organized a rally outside the US embassy in Baghdad where some got inside the compound and set parts of it ablaze.

That led Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to tell reporters on Thursday that “if we get word of attacks, we will take pre-emptive action as well to protect American forces, protect American lives,” adding “the game has changed.” The US killed Soleimani hours after that statement, underscoring that change.