RationalWiki:What is going on in the world?/August 2022

August 2022
 Following Greg Abbott's order that the Texas Child Protective Services must treat gender-affirming healthcare for transgender minors as child abuse, a group of its staffers report in court that the agency is "on the brink of collapse". About 2,300 employees for the agency quit this year. One worker stated: "The focus has been taken so far away from child safety that I don't want to do this job anymore". Others report overworked employees and mismanagement of children's cases.  Public support for labor unions in the U.S. is at 71%, the highest it has ever been since 1965  A survey of US rail workers says that ~96% are prepared to strike, come 9/16. In the UK — where Royal Mail and rail workers have already been striking — unions are planning coordinated strikes and 'waves of industrial action' after the Trades Union Congress initiated a campaign to raise the national minimum wage to £15 an hour. The press calls this a 'summer of discontent'.  Legal trouble for U.S. conservative media: Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson And Lou Dobbs To Be Deposed In Dominion Lawsuit Against Fox News. And: Sandy Hook families ask judge to order Alex Jones to relinquish control of [Infowars, alleging he transferred millions to himself and family].  Mikhail Gorbachev, last leader of the Soviet Union, is dead at 91.  J.K. Rowling's new book (which is almost as long as the Bible) is about a fictional Youtuber who is "cancelled" by "Social Justice Warriors" and stabbed to death for making racist, ableist and transphobic animations. Among the content this character is cancelled for is a 'joke' about a "hermaphrodite worm", in probable reference to criticism of a worrying paragraph in Rowling's "The Silkworm" novel that included a young girl offering her "hermaphrodite's body" after revealing her penis.  Germany's 3-month trial of a nationwide local public transport ticket at 9 euro per month, has been hailed a massive success with over 52 million tickets sold over the period, saving 1.8m tonnes of CO2 emissions and getting a fifth of the regular passengers switching from cars to public transport. Plus, an addition benefit over helping lowing inflation. Discussions are now being raise about creating a similar scheme for the future for around €69 per month.  The self-identified political right has grown significantly among Jewish citizens of Israel over just a handful of years, and the political left and center have shrunk, according to a study by the Israel Democracy Institute.   Open-source intelligence group Bellingcat has revealed that a Peruvian-Italian jeweller who had charmed NATO officials in Naples, Italy before suddenly disappearing, was in fact a member of Russia's GRU. She was founded out after a bumbled arrangement with her Russian passport.  A provision in the Inflation Reduction Act legally defines greengas emissions as pollution, effectively reversing the  ruling  The Northern Irish division of the Protestant scouting-like youth organisation the is seriously thinking about splitting away from its mother organisation due to increasing secularisation of the main British and Irish branch and finance issues.  Ten banks and 348 ESG funds "banned" in Texas. The state alleges this is because they "boycott" fossil fuel companies with preference to renewable energy companies. It follows a similar action by West Virginia.  In the House sub-committee report, it was revealed that Mehmet Oz tried to directly persuade the Trump White House to use hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19.  The mutually-owned Bank Australia has said that it will no longer fund car loans for new fossil fuel vehicles from 2025, to encourage the compulsion of EVs in Australia, which at the moment is only 2% of vehicle sales.  Vietnam  [https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/22/vietnam-says-homosexuality-not-a-disease-in-major-win-for-lgbtq has removed homosexuality and transsexuality from its list of mental disorders, asked medical staff not to treat it and is planning to ban conversion therapy. ]  One step backward: Japanese court rules that trans women are not legally the parents of any of their children born after their transition. <vote poll=world202093350366>  One step forward; Singapore set to decriminalise homosexuality. Predictably, religious and reactionary groups fall back to 'defend marriage'. <vote poll=world202093350365> A study finds that 90% of marine species face extinction if greengas emissions don't drop <vote poll=world202093350364>, the daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, the far-right Rashist philosopher who is referred to as "Putin's Brain", [https://www.dw.com/en/daughter-of-putin-ally-alexander-dugin-killed-by-car-bomb-investigators/a-62878656 has been killed in car bomb on the outskirts of Moscow. Russia blames Ukraine for the killing, which it denies.] Update: An anti-Putin underground partisan group that calls itself the, has claimed it was behind the explosion. <vote poll=world202093350363> Greece celebrates the end of EU oversight over the country's budget after twelve years, which was put as a condition of the country's "troika" bailout back in 2009 by the EU, European Central Bank and the IMF. <vote poll=world202093350362> 2,000 indigenous Panamanians forced to relocate as a result of climate change <vote poll=world202093350361> Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and 14 co-sponsors introduce bill that would make all gender-affirming care for minors a felony punishable by 10 to 25 years in prison as well as prohibit higher education on the matter. <vote poll=world202093350360> Cuba says it will allow foreign investors into its wholesale and retail trade for the first time in 60 years. <vote poll=world202093350359> Media giant Warner Bros. Discovery has pulled out and has sold off its 50% stake in loss-making GB News, to its partner the shadowy. <vote poll=world202093350358> Millions of children to receive malaria vaccines, announces the United Nations Children's Fund. <vote poll=world202093350357> The Dutch government together with a marketing agency have created a series of mock-up stores in the city of Utrecht, for selling ecstasy to research the idea of selling the drug, in order to take if off the streets. <vote poll=world202093350356> The World Health Organization has reported the first human-dog transmission of monkeypox, after France reported a four-year-old greyhound who caught the disease off his infected owner. <vote poll=world202093350355> Tens of thousands of people yearly in southeast Asia are silently infected by bat coronaviruses related to the one that causes COVID-19, new research suggests. <vote poll=world202093350354> The local branch of Extinction Rebellion in southern France has put cement in the holes of golf courses, to protest the exception of golf greens in hosepipe bans due to the current drought. <vote poll=world202093350353> The Southern Baptist Convention is now being investigated by the Department of Justice for its mishandling of sexual abuse allegations. <vote poll=world202093350352> It has been revealed that the FBI agents were looking for at Mar-a-Lago resort for some very highly classified documents; including items relating to national defense, nuclear weapons including Trump's "key" to the nuclear arsenal, documents relating to Roger Stone and interestingly the French president. <vote poll=world202093350351> To get the Jewish vote in Liz Truss' leadership bid, she has pushed the odd claim linking alleged wokeness in the Civil Service with anti-Semitism. She has also claimed that "Jewish values" like business and traditional family values are the same as Conservative values. Naturally this has caused a backlash with the small British Jewish community. <vote poll=world202093350350>  Author Salman Rushdie, whose 1988 novel The Satanic Verses earned him countless death threats from Islamists, has been stabbed on the neck whilst giving a lecture in New York. UPDATE: Rushdie is recovering, meanwhile, Iran has blamed him for the stabbing. <vote poll=world202093350349> A nation of bastards; majority of British births now outside of wedlock. Clearly, another sign of the end times! <vote poll=world202093350348> Hundreds of children were revealed to have been subjected to strip-searches in the UK by Metropolitan Police over a two-year period. 58% were black, and 95% were male. 53% of the strip-searches resulted in no further action. <vote poll=world202093350347> Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence has been raided by the FBI. <vote poll=world202093350346> The U.S. Senate passes the Inflation Reduction Act in a party-line vote, now passed by the House. It represents the "largest climate investment in US history" (including a lifeline to nuclear power plants). Impact on emissions is projected to be quite significant. The climate investment is paid for through new taxes on large corporations and stock buybacks. The bill is also supposed to lower the cost of certain drugs (including insulin) prescribed through Medicare, though an amendment to cap insulin co-pays at $35 monthly for private insurers failed to get enough support, despite seven Republicans voting in favor. <vote poll=world202093350345> Spoon-manipulating fraud Uri Geller has announced he is creating his own micronation on an uninhabited Scottish island. Citizenship is available in return for charitable donations. "I always wanted to own an island, be like James Bond," he said, apparently unaware it is always villains who own islands.

<vote poll=world202093350343> Not that any of his brain damaged followers will acknowledge it, but Alex Jones had a very bad day in court. He admitted under oath that the Sandy Hook massacre was "100% real," and was humiliated when he found out that his legal team accidentally sent a digital copy of his cell phone to the prosecution, exposing Jones to perjury charges for lying the previous day when asked if there were any Sandy Hook-related messages on his phone. Pissing off the defendants, Jones continues to weasel out of hefty financial damages by shifting around his money. Update: "Stop the monetization of misinformation and lies. Please." The jury says Jones should pay $42 million US in punitive damages to the parents of a Sandy Hook shooting victim. His legal problems aren't over yet, either. <vote poll=world202093350342> In a ballot initiative, Kansas voters strike down proposed state constitutional amendment that would have removed protections for abortion rights. In 2019, the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the state's constitution protected abortion rights, which now remains state law. <vote poll=world202093350341> After a formal petition by KyivPride to President Zelenskyy in regards to same-sex marriage in Ukraine due to a number of LGBT soldiers fighting, [https://www.washingtonblade.com/2022/08/02/ukraine-president-backs-civil-partnerships-for-same-sex-couples/ he has formally responded by provisionally agreeing to introducing a same-sex partnership law, with a possibility of equal marriage in the future. ] <vote poll=world202093350340> U.S. House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has landed in Taiwan. Expect China to throw a fit in one way or another. <vote poll=world202093350339> Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of Al Qaeda, has reportedly been killed by a US drone strike in Afghanistan.