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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden, whose son Beau was an Iraq war veteran, is using his first Veterans Day in office to announce an effort to better understand, treat and identify medical conditions suffered by troops deployed to toxic environments.

It centers on lung problems suffered by troops who breathe in toxins and the potential connection between rare respiratory cancers and time spent overseas breathing poor air, according to senior White House officials. Federal officials plan to start by examining lung and breathing problems but said they will expand the effort as science identifies potential new connections.

Biden planned to travel to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on Thursday to participate in a wreath-laying ceremony and deliver remarks.

The new federal effort is also designed to make it easier for veterans to make claims based on their symptoms, to collect more data from troops who are suffering and to give veterans more time to make medical claims after symptoms such as asthma and sinus problems develop.

“We’re discovering there is a whole host of lung conditions related to deployment,” said Dr. Richard Meehan, an immunologist and rheumatologist. The retired U.S. Naval Reserve officer, who served in the Mideast during the 1990s and again in 2008, is co-director of the Denver-based National Jewish Hospital Center for Excellence on Deployment-Related Lung Disease.

Biden has hypothesized about a potential link between his son Beau’s death from an aggressive brain cancer after returning from Iraq and his exposure to toxins in the air, particularly around massive pits where the military disposes of waste by burning. There’s no scientific evidence to suggest that link.

Beau Biden’s death was a defining moment for Joe Biden, one he said affected his decision to sit out the 2016 presidential race. The younger Biden deployed from October 2008 until September 2009 as a captain in the Delaware Army National Guard. In 2013, he was diagnosed with a tumor, and he died two years later at age 46.

Meehan, who is investigating the role of inhalation exposures among military personnel who were deployed to Southwest Asia, said it isn’t only burn pits that are the issue — the air quality in some countries is so poor that troops would not be allowed to work there under civilian federal workplace guidelines. The center receives funding from the Department of Defense, along with private donors.

Meehan has worried that troops who came back with breathing problems were being compared with regular Americans to determine whether there was a higher rate of lung illness. But those deployed with the U.S. military are in peak physical condition and can generally run faster and are stronger and more fit than average Americans. To come back unable to make it up stairs without getting winded or unable to lift anything without breathing heavily is highly unusual.

“When you compare them to another group, you have to compare them to another healthy, fit group,” Meehan said. “That’s one of the problems overlooked in surveys that have shown no higher incidence of cancer.”

The new rules will allow veterans to make claims within 10 years of service, and the government has changed how it determines what symptoms count and why.

The U.S. military has been aware for years of the health risks associated with open-air burn pits. In 2013, federal investigators found a military camp in Afghanistan was operating a pit for more than five years, nearly four times longer than Pentagon rules allowed. The Defense Department has said burn pits should only be used as a temporary last resort when no other alternative trash disposal method is feasible, still they persisted for years.

States Should Regulate Broadband like a Utility, Say CWA Panelists

Broadband advocates called today for state regulatory frameworks to hold broadband providers accountable as they deploy services, particularly to underserved areas.

On the heels of the bipartisan infrastructure bill passing the House last week, panelists during a Common Cause and Communications Workers of America event noted that states need the legislative authority to ensure the services of internet providers actually reach those lacking connectivity.

“All we see is investment from corporations in the same affluent areas where they can get the biggest return on investment,” said Martin Szeliga, Broadband Brigade midwest lead at CWA. Local workers know the lay of the land in their communities and are best positioned to do the job, he explained, instead of hiring out-of-state contractors. Companies need to invest in locally trained workers and ensure dependable service.

He pointed to an incident in Houston, Texas, where a provider subcontracted placing a mile of cable. This “fly-by-night contractor” accidentally hit and knocked out the water lines of the entire Woodside neighborhood, he said, because “they simply do not have the relationship that local workers do” with the community and the land, he said.

Szeliga does not live in a remote part of the state of Michigan. He lives right next to the international airport and Dow Jones’ global headquarters, yet had to use a wireless jetpack to connect to today’s event. He also coordinates internet schedules with his family’s work and classroom Zoom meetings.

“There’s been this narrative going around that there are not enough workers to do that work that’s going to be created by this infrastructure funding,” said Brian Thorn, senior researcher at CWA. But the reality is that workers have been “laid off in record numbers … [and] the workforce to complete all of this work is ready and able to do this without additional training or apprenticeship programs,” he argued.

Nevertheless, absent broadband regulation and appropriate state oversight, Thorn said it will be “really difficult to achieve that build-out beyond what the companies want to do themselves.”

“We need some kind of regulation to help encourage wider deployment to the areas like where Marty lives,” Thorn added.

Some state public utility commissions have already begun treating broadband as a regulated utility, he said, as they have the authority to “take broadband regulation into their own hands … absent [Federal Communications Commission] oversight.” The California PUC already declared its authority over broadband, Colorado is looking at designating broadband as a utility, and lawmakers in Michigan and New York introduced a broadband regulations bill this year.

And states are continuing to play an increasing role, said Yosef Getachew, Media & Democracy program director at Common Cause. “There is a lot of interplay and intersectionality between deployments, funds that support deployment initiatives, [broadband] mapping and authority” over broadband regulation, he added. He pointed out that Georgia has begun to produce its own broadband maps with the level of data granularity needed for accurate deployment.

The pending package is a “strong down payment to addressing connectivity issues,” but contains grant programs that are not permanent, Getachew warned. States must learn to find permanent solutions for their communities by comprehensively addressing the three legs of the stool: access, affordability, and digital equity and inclusion.

“This is a pretty universal issue that bridges the gap between partisan politics. It’s very difficult to find somebody against affordable high-speed internet,” Szeliga said, particularly in the current age where even “the fridge has an IP address.” Ensuring and incentivizing providers to deploy the best networks to the necessary places from the get-go will pay off in the long run.

“If we take the steps now to do it right … it’ll pay dividends down the road and nothing bad can come from that initial investment,” he said.

WILMINGTON, Del. — Boeing is proposing a $237.5 million lawsuit settlement to end complaints about its troubled 737 MAX airliners but the bigger question is whether the payment will allow the company to fully recover from the crashes that killed 346 people.

Boeing’s best-selling airplane was grounded for 20 months beginning in 2019 until software and pilot training upgrades were completed.

The settlement it proposed Friday would resolve claims by investors who accused the corporate directors of jeopardizing the company’s future by safety and governance lapses.

The settlement requires Boeing to establish an ombudsman program to give employees a method for reporting safety issues without fear of reprisal. In addition, the board of directors must add a member who is a product safety specialist.

The $237.5 million to shareholders follows $2.5 billion Boeing paid in compensation and penalties after the 2018 Lion Air crash in Indonesia that killed 189 and the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash that killed 157 just minutes after takeoff from Addis Ababa in 2019.

In both cases, Boeing’s software that controlled maneuvering of the 737 MAX airplanes was blamed.

Airline regulators around the world immediately grounded 387 of the planes. The FAA cleared the aircraft to fly again on Nov. 18, 2020. Canada and Ethiopia allowed resumption of their service in January 2021. They are still grounded in China.

Boeing also has resumed delivering the upgraded 737 MAX to airlines around the world. But the investors who sued are asking whether the company has done enough.

Last week, Michael O’Leary, chief executive of European discount carrier Ryanair, said in a pre-recorded statement to investors, “Boeing is losing customers all over the place.” Ryanair is Boeing’s biggest customer in Europe.

Boeing led the world in aircraft manufacturing revenue until the FAA grounded the 737 MAX.

In 2018, Boeing reported $101 billion in revenue, while Airbus Industries — it’s nearest competitor — reported $75.1 billion.

By the next year, after the crashes, Airbus replaced Boeing as the world’s biggest aircraft manufacturer with $78.9 billion in revenue. Boeing earned $76.6 billion in the same year.

The shareholders’ lawsuit depicted a company that made a series of bad decisions leading to the 2018 and 2019 crashes.

Part of the problem was the popularity of the 737 MAX. After gaining FAA certification in 2017, the company ramped up production at factories that strained to keep pace with the orders of Boeing’s most profitable aircraft.

An FAA investigation later raised questions about whether some workers performed tasks beyond their skill set to avoid falling behind schedule.

Boeing’s strategy for serving customers worked well until Lion Air Flight 610 fell out of the sky near Jakarta. Five months later, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 went down.

When the drop in airline passengers from the COVID-19 pandemic was added to Boeing’s plight, about $30 billion of cash disappeared from the company’s bottom line.

The shareholders’ lawsuit accused Boeing’s directors and officers of breaching their fiduciary duties and acting with gross negligence in their rush to complete the 737 MAX’s design and development.

The lawsuit was led by the New York State and Local Retirement System, the New York State Common Retirement Fund and the Fire and Police Pension Association of Colorado.

New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, who helps oversee the New York funds, said in a statement that the pension funds sued Boeing’s directors “because they failed in their fiduciary responsibility to monitor safety and protect the company, its shareholders, and its customers from unsafe business practices and admitted illegal conduct.”

He added, “It is our hope, moving forward, that the reforms agreed to in this settlement will help safeguard Boeing and the flying public against future tragedy and begin to restore the company’s reputation. This settlement will send an important message that directors cannot shortchange public safety and other mission-critical risks.”

WASHINGTON — A New York law that strictly limits the circumstances under which gun owners can carry their weapons outside their homes seems unlikely to survive the scrutiny it received from the Supreme Court on Wednesday.

But the justices also seemed to be looking for a way to rule narrowly in the case, worried that a broad ruling could strike restrictions currently in place to protect those who rely on mass transit or patronize bars, restaurants and other public gathering places.

The New York law at the heart of Wednesday’s oral arguments has been on the books since 1931. It mandates that in order for an individual to carry a concealed handgun in public for self-defense, the person applying for a weapons license must demonstrate “proper cause.”

In other words, they have to show an actual need for carrying the weapon.

People who secure a gun license in New York State get either a “restricted” license, which allows them to carry a gun only under certain circumstances — like hunting or going to a local gun club or range for target shooting — or an “unrestricted” license, which gives them a broader ability to carry a weapon in public.

In the case before the court, both of the individual plaintiffs, Robert Nash and Brandon Koch, said they each requested a license that would have allowed them to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.

One received a permit to carry a gun to and from work, and both acquired licenses to carry weapons for hunting and shooting practice.

But both Nash and Koch, who are residents of upstate New York, claim they were subsequently denied the application on the grounds they failed to show “proper cause” to carry a firearm in public because each did not “demonstrate a special need for self-defense that distinguished him from the general public.”

Wood seems to be the gift that keeps on giving. Researchers have tinkered with its chemistry and physical structure to make it transparent, squishy, strong as steel, filter water, and turned it into bioplastic and Styrofoam-like insulation. But they are not done coaxing it to do even more.

In the most recent engineering endeavor, researchers report a way to fold flat sheets of hardwood and mold into 3D shapes that are lightweight but exceptionally tough. The structures are six times stronger than the raw wood that the researchers start with, and as strong as commonly used structural materials such as aluminum alloys.

“For the first time we’re able to mold wood in the way you mold plastic or metal,” says Liangbing Hu, director of the Center for Materials Innovation at the University of Maryland, who led the work reported in Science. “In addition to properties of a material, shape really matters.”

The work could open up brand new uses for wood in furniture, vehicles, and buildings. Plastics and aluminum are commonly used in these applications because they are strong, lightweight, and can be easily molded into various shapes.

But wood is a cheaper, more sustainable alternative, Hu says. It does not carry the environmental footprint of petroleum-based plastics and the energy burden of processing metals. In addition, it is a renewable resource that can help sequester carbon dioxide as it grows.

To broaden wood’s applications, researchers including Hu have fundamentally changed its properties. They usually remove lignin—the glue-like component that gives wood strength and rigidity—to make it see-through or squishy, for instance. The approach retains the natural structure of wood that imparts strength, such as the hollow, parallel channels and fibers that run along its length.

To make the new moldable wood, Hu and his colleagues first removed about half the lignin from a piece of basswood using a special water-based chemical solution. This softens the wood as it swells mildly. Next, they air-dry the wood for 30 hours. As the water evaporates, the cell walls shrivel, and the channels and fibers in the wood close. Then the researchers soak the shrunken wood in water just for a few minutes. “The dry wood is very thirsty for water so sucks it up very quickly,” Hu says.

But the short, quick burst of hydration makes the cell walls swell so fast, it’s almost like a shock wave went through them. The result? Under a microscope, the wood shows a unique structure with wrinkled cell walls, channels partially open, and fibers mostly closed. The accordion-like cell wall structure allows the wood to be compressed and be pulled taut.

The researchers used the technique to make roll up wood; twist it into a helix, fold it into a star, and make a 3D honeycomb structure that looks like corrugated cardboard. They also report folding engineered wood in half and opening it back up 100 times without it breaking. A similarly thick aluminum sheet cracks after just three cycles of folding and unfolding.

Anthropocene magazine, published by Future Earth, gathers the worlds’ best minds to explore how we might create a Human Age that we actually want to live in.

Prachi Patel is a Pittsburgh-based freelance journalist who writes about energy, materials science, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and computing. Writes for Scientific American, IEEE Spectrum, Chemical & Engineering News, and MRS Bulletin. Find her at

Source: Shaoliang Xiao et al. Lightweight, strong, moldable wood via cell wall engineering as a sustainable structural material. Science, 2021.

WASHINGTON — After almost three hours of arguments Monday it appears a majority of the justices in the U.S. Supreme Court are inclined to allow abortion providers to challenge the state of Texas’s near total abortion ban.

But they also appeared less inclined to allow a broader challenge filed by the Biden administration that Chief Justice John Roberts at one point called “as broad as can be.”

On Monday, the justices heard two challenges to the law. The first was brought by abortion providers in Texas, and the second was brought by the Justice Department.

The law, which bans most abortions after about six weeks, has been in effect since Sept. 1 when the Supreme Court declined to intervene, except for a 48-hour period in early October when it was blocked by a lower court.

The law makes no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from r**e or in**st, and since it was enacted, it has caused clinics in the state to turn away women seeking the procedure.

That led to the Supreme Court getting involved again two weeks ago, and at what, for it, was extraordinary speed.

If the court allows the providers to continue their lawsuit, they or a lower court would then have to issue a separate order to put the law on hold while the legal battle played out.

On Monday, the justices limited their review to the Texas law’s unique structure: it bars state officials from enforcing it and instead leaves enforcement to private citizens or organizations, who can bring civil lawsuits against anyone who assists a pregnant woman seeking an abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy.

In that way, it subjects clinics, doctors and others who facilitate an abortion to large financial penalties.

Opponents of the law say the law was crafted that way specifically to shield it from challenges in federal court, while making it impossible to sue the state for its implementation.

Texas State Sen. Bryan Hughes, who authored the six-week abortion ban, didn’t disagree when The Well News asked him about that provision of the bill on the steps of the Supreme Court Monday morning.

“This is really the work of Jonathan Mitchell, a former solicitor general of Texas who is now in private practice,” Hughes said. “My name is on the bill, but it’s really his baby. And what he did is he looked at all the ways that blocked us from doing this in the past, and he showed us how to put measures and countermeasures into the bill so we could do it.”

“So far, it’s working,” he continued. “So we’re encouraged.”

In September, the justices voted 5-4 to allow the law to take effect, but on Monday, as hundreds of pro-choice and anti-abortion advocates rallied side-by-side in front of the high court, two conservative justices seemed more concerned by the structure of the Texas law than they did two months ago.

Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanah raised questions about the critical provision, with Kavanaugh going so far as to suggest “there’s a loophole that’s been exploited here” and suggesting, on principle, that the Supreme Court should close it.

Barrett’s biggest concern seemed to be a provision in the Texas law that limits which legal arguments alleged abortion providers can make to defend themselves when sued under the statute. In particular, she seemed worried that under the law, abortion providers would be unable to argue or demonstrate that “an award of relief against other defendants or other potential defendants will impose an undue burden on women seeking an abortion.”

“I’m wondering if, in the defensive posture in state court, the constitutional defense can be fully aired,” she said.

Both Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor tore into the law — and its backers — with Kagan telling Judd Stone II, who argued the case for Texas, that until Texas passed the law no state has dreamed of trying to make an end-around Supreme Court precedent so blatantly.

Later, picking up on a suggestion from Justice Stephen Breyer, Kagan said “the entire point of this law, its purpose and its effect, is to find a c***k in the armor of Ex parte Young that set out a basic concept of how our government is supposed to work and how we seek review of unconstitutional state laws.”

Ex parte Young, dating from 1908, is the Supreme Court case that allowed federal lawsuits against officials acting on behalf of states to proceed despite the state’s sovereign immunity, when they acted contrary to any federal law or contrary to the constitution.

“The fact that after … these many years, some geniuses came up with a way to evade the commands of that decision, as well as the command of the even broader principle that states are not to nullify federal constitutional rights and to say, ‘Oh, we’ve never seen this before. So we can’t do anything about that.’ I guess I just don’t understand the argument,” Kagan said.

At another point, Justice Sotomator stared down Stone, asking him whether in essence the Texas law means that “no matter how much a state intends to chill the exercise of a constitutional right … that does not give anyone a right to a federal forum when the state has deputized every citizen to act on its behalf?”

Stone stood firm. “It does not create federal jurisdiction as a consequence,” he said.

As noted above, the justices seemed less inclined to allow the Justice Department to mount a federal court challenge to the law. Justice Kagan, for instance, suggested that a ruling instead in favor of the providers would allow the court to avoid difficult issues of federal power.

Taking stock of the oral arguments, which were being live streamed from the courtroom and were blaring over a speaker system set up on the sidewalk, Hughes defended the provision, telling The Well News that the concept goes back to English Common Law, which he said allowed private citizens to bring litigation on behalf of the common good.

“Every state has a provision like this in their consumer protection laws. The Federal Tort Claims Act recognizes it,” he continued. “If you have evidence someone is defrauding the federal government, you bring a civil suit against them. And if you prove it, you’re incentivized to do that.

“So the pieces were there, but in late 2020 we had district attorneys around the country — and even in Texas publicly stated that they would not enforce the law if Roe v. Wade was ever overturned.So if the district attorneys aren’t going to do it, Texas had to respond.”

Standing among the pro-choice advocates rallying outside the Supreme Court building, Eva Stevenson, of Montgomery County, Md., was asked whether she thought the justices inside the building were mindful of the voices outside.

“I would hope so,” Stevenson told The Well News. “I mean, public officials are always talking about ‘We the People,’ and this is a reminder that people care about this issue.”

Holding up a sign that read “Forced Pregnancy is Enslavement,” Stevenson said voicing her opinion outside the Supreme Court “is pretty much all I can do right now, besides writing to senators who won’t listen.

“So being here, while everything is happening with everyone here, it’s empowering,” she said.

Nearby, another pro-choice advocate who identifed herself as Olivia from CodePink, said she thinks rallies like the one in front of the Supreme Court building Monday are vital to the national debate on important issues.

“I think we have to keep showing up and being out on the street,” she said. “We can call our Congress people, we can write letters, we can do those things, but we also need people out here to show them that we’re willing to be here and we are not going to be silent.”

Mulling the same question as Stevenson, on whether she truly believed her voice was being heard by the justices, Olivia paused.

“I don’t know. I don’t know any of the people inside. But you’d think with the staff they have, that somebody would be telling them what’s happening out here.

“At the same time, if this is a body that represents the people, they should be paying attention to what the people are doing and saying, right?”

Neither case argued Monday poses a threat of overturning the Supreme Court’s landmark decisions in Roe v. Wade decision or Planned Parenthood v. Casey, both of which prohibit states from banning abortion before viability, the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb, around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

The justices will hear a separate challenge to those decisions in a case over Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks. Those arguments are set for Dec. 1.

The justices gave no indication Monday as to how quickly they’ll rule on the Texas law or whether they would stay the law or instruct the abortion providers to ask a lower court to do so.

Asked how he’d feel if the court ultimately punted the case, deciding the question is more appropriately resolved in the Congress than in the courts, Hughes said that would be fine.

“That’s how the process works,” he said, gesturing across the street to the U.S. Capitol building as he spoke. “I mean, if you want to change the law, you’re supposed to do it over there at the Capitol, not here at the Supreme Court.

“These guys are supposed to call balls and strikes, as Chief Justice Roberts famously said,” Hughes continued. “I believe that under the law of the land, as it stands now, this Texas law should be upheld. And if someone wants to change the law of the land, they should do it over there, in the Capitol, and not here, at the Supreme Court.”

“No sir, no sir, a ruling that Congress needed to address changing the law if they wanted to strike down this law would not disappoint me in the least. That would be a proper constitutional outcome. If we’re talking about changing the law, that’s the legislative function.

“Obviously, the Supreme Court has been chipping away at Roe v. Wade for a long time, giving states more authority to protect innocent human life,” he said. “We believe they’re going to continue to do that. We don’t know if it’s going to be with this case, or the Mississippi case, or when, but we believe the Supreme Court will ultimately put this question back in the hands of the states.

“You know, what happened in 1973, seven old men on the Supreme Court decided to answer this question for the rest of the country,” Hughes said. “And ever since then, the people have been trying to take it back. And we believe they are ultimately going to be allowed to, and we believe it’s going to be soon.”

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