The U.S. needs stronger policies and guidance to combat Legionnaires’ disease, a form of pneumonia caused by inhaling air contaminated with Legionella bacteria from water systems, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Last week, the International Commission on the Clinical Use of Human Germline Genome Editing held its first public meeting at the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington, D.C.

We tend to think of the process of seeing as fairly objective — that our eyes are similar to cameras, neutrally taking in light and turning it into pictures. But research has shown that biases buried beneath our awareness can powerfully shape how we see.

Between one-third and one-half of U.S. clinicians experience burnout and addressing the epidemic requires systemic changes by health care organizations, educational institutions, and all levels of government, says a new report from the National Academy of Medicine.

The first-ever Nobel Prize Summit, Our Planet, Our Future, will bring together Nobel Laureates and other world-renowned experts and leaders to advance new insights into global sustainable development and explore actions that need to be taken to ensure humanity’s future on a prosperous, stable, and resilient planet.

Sethuraman “Panch” Panchanathan, executive vice president and chief research and innovation officer at Arizona State University (ASU), and ASU’s named representative to the National Academies’ Government-University-Industry-Research Roundtable (GUIRR), has been nominated by President Trump to serve as the next director of the National Science Foundation.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommends ways to make supply chains -- the systems that provide populations with critical goods and services, such as food and water, gasoline, and pharmaceuticals and medical supplies – more resilient in the face of hurricanes and other disasters, drawing upon lessons learned from the 2017 hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine finds that there is no risk-free setting for giving birth, whether at home, in a birth center, or in a hospital.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) this week requested that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine rapidly examine the information and data needed to help determine the origins of the novel coronavirus that is causing a global outbreak of respiratory illness.

NASA should collaborate with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), industry, academia to research the full effects that increased unpiloted air vehicle traffic would have on society, including ramifications to sound, privacy, environmental matters, and cybersecurity, says a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Although the immediate side effects of antimalarial drugs are widely recognized, few studies were designed specifically to examine health problems that might occur or persist months or years after people stopped taking them.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine urges systemic action to change the culture in STEMM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine) to address the underrepresentation of women in these fields.

WASHINGTON — In response to the COVID-19 outbreak, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has asked the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to establish a Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine announced today that Harvey Fineberg, former president of the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) and current president of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, will serve as the chair of the Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats.

Formed earlier this month, the National Academies’ Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats was assembled at the request of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in response to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The recently formed National Academies Standing Committee on Emerging Infectious Diseases and 21st Century Health Threats, assembled at the request of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, has been providing rapid expert consultations on several topics, such as social distancing and severe illness in young adults.

A new rapid expert consultation from a standing committee of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

National Academy of Medicine President Victor J. Dzau will provide remarks on behalf of the Global Preparedness Monitoring Board during a virtual event on May 4 to launch an online pledging effort, the Coronavirus Global Response.

and how to organise them

; Credit: Beatrice the Biologist / Scientific American

Today's dryku:
Food budgets are tight
Droughts do raise vegetables' price
But don't make snakes bite

Food:

• The USDA released its monthly food price outlook. Looks like prices are going to be up at least 3.5%. Fresh fruit could go up by 6%. Bloomberg has a chart showing how produce is projected to hit its highest price in 18 years. (LA Times)

Critters:

• Southern California seems to be seeing a higher rate of rattlesnake bites this year. Despite the article's headline, experts in the story say it's not because of the drought. A shorter winter has brought snakes out of hibernation earlier, meaning a longer active season, meaning more need for anti-venin.

As of June 12, 128 people were admitted to a hospital for a snakebite and of those, 93 received doses of anti-venin, Heard said. In 2013, 269 Californians went to a hospital for a snakebite and of those, 166 received anti-venin, he said. Simply doubling the number of patients needing anti-venin treatment would equal 186, more than 2013. (Some patients get “dry bites” meaning no venom is injected and therefore do not need anti-venin, he said). (Contra Costa Times)

• It's been a mixed bag for salmon this year. Some have needed to be trucked out to the ocean, because their streams are too dry. In the case of coho salmon, the drought has actually caused a record number to enter the ocean. It's not all good news though:

Biologists say that only 206 salmon egg clusters, known as "redds," were counted in the Lagunitas this year, well below the 20-year average of 250 "redds." And the fish that headed off to the ocean may not fare as well. They are smaller than normal and could face more difficult ocean conditions due to the warming pattern known as El Niño, scientists say. (Chico Enterprise-Record)

Fireworks:

• Sacramento cops are out in force, looking for illegal fireworks. The sheriff's department will double its number of officers on the hunt. Starting this week, having the little fire starters can mean jail time. (CBS Sacramento)

Water jerks:

• Everyone seems to be at a loss on how to get people to start saving water. Beatrice the Biologist may have stumbled onto the answer — it's a mixture of shame and badges. I'm going to print out the car one and post it in my window. Maybe then people will stop judging me for my filthy Camry. (Scientific American)

How has your community been affected by the drought? Share your story with a photo on Twitter or Instagram. Tag it #mydrought. For more details on our photo project, click here.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Less water in Hoover Dam means less power coming from the Dam's generating units. ; Credit: Dawn Danby/via Flickr

Monday's fat stack of news also includes some views about what to do about drought and Western water supplies.

The New York Times has published six answers to the questions "What are the best ways to share the water? And how can we ensure it lasts for the foreseeable future?" Pat Mulroy, former general manager of the Southern Nevada Water Authority, weighs in, as do several other think tankers:

[N]ew energy and fuel production options have become more water intensive. Unconventional oil and gas production methods such as hydraulic fracturing have significant implications for local and regional water quality and quantity. Bioenergy consumes water at various stages of production (including irrigation for crops) and also has impacts on water quality and quantity...We should be pursuing cleaner energy and streamlined approaches to conserving water in order to truly safeguard our water supply. (Newsha Ajami/Stanford University)

An incredible 40 percent of the water consumed by Americans goes into meat and dairy production. Livestock must drink water and there is some water use at the farm, but most of this water is for the producing animal feed...Is this a wise allocation of the limited supply of freshwater in America? (Arjen Hoekstra/University of Twente, Netherlands)

• Closer to home, the Sacramento Bee has an ongoing series about drought solutions. Mariposa County resident Tom DeVries, who lives in forestland at 4,000 feet, offers his take:

Trees take water; a big one can draw 100 gallons a day out of the ground. All that junk forest in California is sucking up water that should be filling my spring and well and flowing downhill toward the rest of you. (Sac Bee)

• You know who else has good ideas about how to conserve water in drought? Australians. (KQED)
• Jay Lund from UC Davis modeled a "mega-drought" with his team and found that the economic consequences of a big drought event could be mostly managed through smarter water conservation policies. (California Water Blog)
• Falling water levels at Lake Mead are lowering Hoover Dam's energy production. Generating units have recently been "derated," meaning that they're expected to have a lower capacity for producing electricity now that there's less water to turn turbines. (EE News)
• Jason Dearen and Garance Burke report on "senior rights holders," and how poorly California accounts for water use by people who have rights dating back before 1914 at anytime, and how much that matters now during the drought. (AP)
• You're gonna see a lot of these stories all week: it's a terrible year for setting off fireworks. I bet rural fire chiefs have their teeth on edge already. (Merced Sun-Star)
• And we'll finish up in Southern California. In the first of a duo of Dana Bartholomew stories, the Daily News reports on Turf Terminators, a company that offers to leverage the recently-raised turf removal incentive and swap out homeowners' lawns for less thirsty landscapes...essentially for free, since the company's premise is that it can do the work for the price of the rebate. (Daily News)
• In the second, Bartholomew profiles a Studio City water-conservation demonstration at homes along Rhodes Avenue. (Daily News)
• And a UCLA project examining water use and conservation potential in territory served by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power suggests that we're not pricing water well enough to encourage conservation. Authors of a policy brief with the California Center for Sustainable Communities say dual metering, for inside and outside, would also improve conservation. (Imperial Valley News)

How has your community been affected by the drought? Share your story with a photo on Twitter or Instagram. Tag it #mydrought. For more details on our photo project, click here.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

When it comes to water usage, not all car washes are created equal. Most car washes don’t recycle water, but more and more newly built car washes are starting to. Santa Ana Express Car Wash opened three years ago and its million-dollar equipment recycles 70 percent of its water.; Credit: Maya Sugarman/KPCC

Washing your car with a garden hose can use up to 120 gallons of water. Most corner conveyor belt operations use less, but all that water can add up, as we told you in August.

That’s why the group LA Waterkeeper is challenging motorists to drive dirty and pledge to skip car washes for 60 days. 

"Water conservation is the easiest and most affordable way to quickly reduce water demand and also extend supplies into next year," says Liz Crosson, the group's executive director. 

This summer Ventura County’s water agency asked people to skip washing their rides for a month; some people got detailing and car washes as a reward. Crosson’s group is hoping bragging rights will be enough of an incentive. (Though there are some as-yet-undisclosed prizes.)

People who live in LA are really excited and interested by the cars that they drive," Crosson says. "And frankly, you can have a dirty car and you can have a sticker and have an excuse for having a dirty car so it saves your image too."

The campaign’s just kicking off this weekend (at the Abbott-Kinney festival), but Crosson’s already optimistic for success. Early adopters of the pledge are hundreds of people from the online site Reddit and the general manager for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

GO DIRTY FOR THE DROUGHT. Take the #DirtyCarPledge to not wash your car for 60 days. Ready, Set, Go Dirty! http://t.co/TsxdvsgpCv

— LAWaterkeeper (@LAWaterkeeper) September 25, 2014

From the ED, I’m Molly Peterson, 89-point-3. KPCC.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

On Broad Beach in Malibu, high tide not only wets sand but also retaining walls and broken down rock revetments. What happens next in homeowners' efforts to get sand trucked in here will go to the State Lands Commission - and the next Controller likely will weigh in on the problem. ; Credit: Molly Peterson/KPCC

The most common question I’ve been asked about the statewide Controller race this election year is the same question I get every four years. “Wait, we have one?”

The inevitable follow-up question: “What does this person do?” Down-ballot races in California’s state election can seem like a tedious part of a the voting process. Most of us just don't take the time to research them. In 2010, the last time we elected statewide executives, 435,308 of those people who voted for Governor just didn’t bother to vote for anybody in the Controller race. 

But in addition to being the chief fiscal officer of the 8th-largest economy in the world, the Controller sits on something like 80 state commissions and boards. And if you’re interested in California’s environment, a biggie there is the State Lands Commission.

The State Lands Commission oversees roughly 4 million acres of submerged land and tidelands, holding them in trust for the public. Right now it's looking at policy alternatives to respond to sea level rise. It manage the state's offshore oil-drilling leases. It even gets authority over historical shipwrecks! 

Three issues coming before to the Lands Commission mean the Controller matters:  

• Coastal Access and Martin’s Beach: At the end of September, Governor Jerry Brown signed a law requiring the State Lands Commission to negotiate with Vinod Khlosa, a private property owner who famously shut down coastal access over his land this year. The commission has all of next year to negotiate with Khlosa. If no deal is reached, it can use eminent domain authority to force public access – something that would represent a big break in historical practice, because that authority hasn’t ever been used in the 76 years that the commission has existed.
• Malibu’s Broad Beach has been rapidly eroding under pressure of waves and storms worsened by climate change, and very rich homeowners there have been seeking to add sand in front of their houses to combat the risk of damage to very expensive properties. Earlier this year, those homeowners successfully completed an application to the State Lands Commission, and the commission was expected to decide on it in October. The decision’s been put over till after the election.
• Fracking: Offshore oil made news late last year and earlier this year when some operators didn’t report that they were using drilling and production techniques collectively referred to as hydraulic fracturing. The news prompted the EPA to require chemical disclosures for drilling operations it oversees.  The state agencies that should be overseeing these issues – the Coastal Commission and the Lands Commission – are considering their next moves too.

Positions on these issues don’t really come up when it comes to the Controller race, though both Betty Yee and Ashley Swearengin have gone on the record to say they’re against fracking. 

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Wirecard’s Boon enhances customer experience by...

Flowbird Group has announced recent developments that limit...

Rubber stoppers are placed onto filled vials of the investigational drug remdesivir at a Gilead manufacturing site in the United States.; Credit: /AP

Updated at 4:59 p.m. ET

The Food and Drug Administration has given emergency use authorization to the antiviral drug remdesivir to treat hospitalized patients with the coronavirus, President Trump on Friday told reporters at the White House.

Gilead CEO Daniel O'Day said remdesivir maker Gilead Sciences is donating 1.5 million vials of the drug and will work with the federal government to distribute it to patients in need.

The news comes days after preliminary results from a study of the drug showed it can help patients recover faster. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, hailed the findings earlier this week as "quite good news."

The authorization means remdesivir can be distributed in the U.S. and given intravenously to treat COVID-19 patients — both adults and children — who are hospitalized with severe disease, the FDA says. The agency defines that category as "patients with low blood oxygen levels or needing oxygen therapy or more intensive breathing support such as a mechanical ventilator."

Discussing the findings about the drug's ability to help COVID-19 patients, O'Day cautioned earlier Friday that remdesivir is used to treat advanced cases, in which people are already hospitalized. The recent positive findings, he said, are a starting point in the fight against the respiratory disease.

"We want to continue to see how we can expand remdesivir to more patient populations," O'Day said on NBC's Today show. "Clearly with other medicines and vaccines to come, this is part, I think — the beginning of our ability to make an impact on this devastating virus."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

President Trump walks outside the White House in January. The president received intelligence briefings on the coronavirus twice that month, according to a White House official.; Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

President Trump twice received intelligence briefings on the coronavirus in January, according to a White House official. The official tells NPR the briefings occurred on Jan. 23 and Jan. 28.

"The president was told that the coronavirus was potentially going to 'spread globally,' " the official said of the first briefing, which came two days after the first case of the virus was reported in the United States. "But the 'good news' was that it was not deadly for most people," the official said the president was told.

Five days after that initial briefing, the president was briefed again, according to the official. This time, "he was told that virus was spreading outside of China, but that deaths from the disease were happening only in China," the official said. "He was also told that China was withholding data."

The question of what Trump knew about the coronavirus, when he was aware of it and the tenor of those conversations have come under heavy scrutiny, as the administration faces criticism that it was slow to respond to early warnings about the virus. In the time since the president's January briefings, the U.S. has reported more than 1.1 million cases of the coronavirus — more than any other nation. In all, more than 66,000 Americans have died.

The president has defended his handling of the crisis — pointing to steps like his decision at the end of January to restrict travel into the U.S. from China. But for much of the following month, the president and some of his top surrogates downplayed the threat of the virus.

"We pretty much shut it down coming in from China," the president said in an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News early in February. By the end of the month, with the virus reported in several dozen countries at that point, he continued to tell reporters that the risk "remains very low ."

During his State of the Union address, roughly a week after being told that China was withholding data, Trump said his administration was "coordinating with the Chinese government and working closely together on the coronavirus outbreak."

To this point, the White House has offered little clarity publicly about the exact dates when Trump was briefed about the virus. Asked about this on Thursday, Trump told reporters that he spoke with intelligence officials about the coronavirus "in January, later January," adding that intelligence officials had confirmed that this was the case.

On Monday, when The Washington Post reported that Trump received more than a dozen classified briefings in January and February, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence responded, "The detail of this is not true," and declined to elaborate.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wears a mask on Capitol Hill on April 30. Members in the House will not return over coronavirus fears but the Senate is scheduled to return on Monday.; Credit: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a rare joint statement on Saturday, declined an offer from the White House to make rapid COVID-19 tests available for Congress.

"Congress is grateful for the Administration's generous offer to deploy rapid COVID-19 testing capabilities to Capitol Hill, but we respectfully decline the offer at this time," Pelosi and McConnell said. "Our country's testing capacities are continuing to scale up nationwide and Congress wants to keep directing resources to the front-line facilities where they can do the most good the most quickly."

McConnell, R-Ky., plans to bring the Senate back into session on Monday, while Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said this week the House would not bring representatives back over coronavirus fears.

On Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said on Twitter that the Trump administration would send three Abbott "point of care testing machines and 1,000 tests for their use" to Capitol Hill.

President Trump on Saturday tweeted: " No reason to turn it down, except politics. We have plenty of testing. Maybe you need a new Doctor over there. Crazy Nancy will use it as an excuse not to show up to work!"

Pelosi and Hoyer said they made the decision based on advice from the Capitol's attending physician, Brian Monahan. "The House physician's view was that there was a risk to members that was one he would not recommend taking," Hoyer said Tuesday.

So far, Rand Paul of Kentucky is the only senator to have tested positive for the coronavirus. In the House, seven members have tested positive or presumed to be positive for the coronavirus.

On Friday, McConnell shared guidelines from Monahan urging lawmakers and staff to maintain six feet of distance, limit the number of people in offices and to wear masks when possible.

Monahan has told Republican leaders that his office does not have the capacity to proactively test all 100 senators and can only test those who are ill, Politico reported.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A woman passes a closed Social Security Administration office in Los Angeles in 2013. Some 53,000 of the agency's workers are now working from home.; Credit: Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

The coronavirus pandemic has forced many people to work from home, and that includes employees of the federal government. The numbers vary by agency, but at the Social Security Administration, some 53,000 workers are doing so.

Social Security field offices are closed. But the shutdown hasn't stopped the agency from processing claims for new benefits and appeals of benefit denials. And according to statistics that the SSA sent its workers, the agency has been doing so at a faster pace than before.

"Telework is proving a great boon to the service Social Security provides to the American people," says Ralph deJuliis, who works at the SSA's office in Tulsa, Okla. "We are getting the checks to people faster and quicker."

DeJuliis is president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council 220, which represents many Social Security workers. And he says he hopes the SSA will continue allowing employees to work from home.

Telework, he says, is "good for the employees, good for the public. We've got the work done. We kept the public out of harm's way because, let's face it, we deal with mostly people who are old or disabled. They are at the highest risk."

According to deJuliis, the SSA has found that its backlog of pending cases has fallen by 11% since March 23, when the agency instituted wide-scale telework, and that calls from recipients are answered more quickly.

Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says it's not surprising that productivity is up.

"Actually, there are studies that have been done, including studies in government agencies — small-scale studies, to be sure — but they have shown that productivity does rise when people get to work from home," she says.

Jeff Neal, a former head of human resources at the Department of Homeland Security, says it's not surprising that people become more productive when they work from home.

"The really good workers might be sitting there at their home desk, wherever that is," he says. "And they're supposed to stop at 5 o'clock, and they look at their watch or their computer and they realize it's 7 o'clock and they've still been working, because they get into things and they start getting stuff done and they just keep on going."

It's unclear how many federal workers across the government are teleworking. According to the most recent statistics, from two years ago, 42% of the some 2.1 million government employees were eligible to telework, although only about half of those were in fact working from home.

The Trump administration had been hostile to teleworking, Neal says, because in its view it sees it as a benefit to federal workers. But Neal says it's also a benefit to taxpayers.

"If people view it as what it really is, which is something that is in the interest of the federal government to have, then they would continue it because it helps them hire. It helps them retain people," he says. "And most importantly, it helps them remain operational during a national emergency. So it's a very good thing."

And Sawhill at Brookings says she expects teleworking will continue to increase both in government and the private sector after the coronavirus crisis ends.

"This experience has showed us that we can get work done at home and that we can meet people's needs, the public's needs, by doing so," she says. "That doesn't mean there aren't lots of downsides. But overall, I think this is a trend that is going to accelerate sharply as a result of this recent experience."

The federal government has not given any guidance as to when it expects all federal workers to return to their offices.

The SSA issued a statement saying it continues to monitor the COVID-19 situation across the nation, promising that when it does reopen offices, it will provide a safe environment for the people it serves and its employees.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has made filling judicial vacancies his top priority ahead of the 2020 elections.; Credit: J. Scott Applewhite/AP

As new allegations emerge about his motives for retirement, Judge Thomas Griffith says that he faced no political pressure in his decision to leave the bench.

"My decision was driven entirely by personal concerns and involved no discussions with the White House or the Senate," he said in a statement provided to NPR.

Griffith said that his wife was diagnosed 11 years ago with a "debilitating chronic illness" and that her health was "the sole reason for my retirement." He said he made the decision to retire in June 2019 and privately informed his family and law clerks at the time. His retirement was announced publicly in March.

Griffith, 65, is a circuit court judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Appointed by President George W. Bush, he has served since 2005.

On Monday, The New York Times reported that Demand Justice, a liberal judicial advocacy group, filed a complaint that raises questions about whether Griffith's decision was tied to efforts by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to encourage older, conservative judges to retire in order to fill their vacancies with younger, conservative judges ahead of the 2020 election, when control of the White House and the Senate will be in play.

Griffith's retirement has paved the way for Justin Walker's nomination to fill the vacancy. Walker, 37, is a longtime McConnell ally who is currently serving as a U.S. district judge of the Western District of Kentucky, McConnell's home state.

The Demand Justice complaint was directed to the U.S. Court of Appeals, where the court's chief judge, Sri Srinivasan, has asked Chief Justice John Roberts to assign another circuit to look into the complaint about whether any ethical improprieties occurred. Griffith's statement refutes the core allegation — that his decision was fueled by political considerations or the result of a pressure campaign.

These allegations are likely to come up at Walker's confirmation hearing on Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Democrats broadly oppose Walker's nomination. He was rated "not qualified" by the American Bar Association. However, unless support for him is diminished among Republicans — unlikely with McConnell's backing — he is likely to be confirmed.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Rick Bright filed a complaint this week with the Office of Special Counsel, a government agency responsible for whistleblower complaints.; Credit: /Public Health Emergency via AP

Attorneys for Rick Bright, the government scientist who said he had been reassigned and subsequently filed a whistleblower complaint, say a government watchdog agrees that he should be reinstated to his post.

Bright was serving as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which is working on a vaccine to combat the coronavirus.

He said he was ousted from the position last month because he wanted to spend money on safe and vetted treatments for COVID-19 — not on ones without "scientific merit," such as hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug that President Trump and others had been touting.

Trump on Wednesday called Bright "a disgruntled employee who's trying to help the Democrats win an election."

Bright's attorneys say that the Office of Special Counsel, which hears whistleblower cases, determined there were "reasonable grounds" to believe that his removal was retaliatory and therefore prohibited.

Bright's attorneys say OSC plans to contact the Department of Health and Human Services to request that it put Bright's removal on hold for 45 days so the office can complete its investigation into the allegations.

The OSC said it "cannot comment on or confirm the status of open investigations."

In a statement to NPR, Caitlin Oakley, a spokesperson for HHS, said: "This is a personnel matter that is currently under review. However, HHS strongly disagrees with the allegations and characterizations in the complaint from Dr. Bright."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

A 2018 exhibit at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum at Ohio State University celebrated the artistic legacy of MAD magazine.; Credit: Andrew Welsh-Huggins/AP

The funny, freckled face of Alfred E. Neuman is more or less retiring.

One of the last widely circulated print satirical magazines in America will leave newsstands after this year, according to sources at DC Comics, which publishes MAD magazine.

While the Harvard Lampoon remains in business, The Onion hasn't been in print since 2013. The once-influential Spy was a casualty of the 1990s.

At MAD's peak in the early 1970s, more than 2 million people subscribed to it, both for its pungent political humor and deeply adolescent jokes.

In 2017, that number had reportedly dropped to 140,000.

MAD isn't completely shutting down, but it will be radically downsized and changed.

Readers will only be able to find the 67-year-old humor magazine at comic book stores and through subscriptions.

After issue No. 10 this fall, there will no longer be new content, except for end-of-year specials which will be all new. Starting with issue No. 11, the magazine will feature classic, best-of and nostalgic content, repackaged with new covers.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

Hachette Book Group employees in New York City, during a Thursday walkout protesting their company's decision to publish Woody Allen's memoir.; Credit: Kendra Barkoff Lamy/Twitter

On Thursday afternoon, dozens of employees of the publishing imprints Grand Central Publishing and Little, Brown staged a walkout to protest Grand Central's decision to publish Woody Allen's memoir, Apropos of Nothing, next month.

Both imprints are owned by Hachette Book Group (HBG), the same house that published journalist Ronan Farrow's Catch and Kill. The walkout comes after Farrow announced on Tuesday that he felt he could no longer work with HBG after the Allen acquisition.

Farrow is Allen's son with actress Mia Farrow; his sister, Dylan Farrow, has accused Allen of having sexually abused her as a child. Allen has long denied her allegations.

In his statement, Farrow wrote in part that HBG "concealed the decision from me and its own employees while we were working on Catch and Kill — a book about how powerful men, including Woody Allen, avoid accountability for sexual abuse."

Dylan Farrow also released a statement on Monday evening, in which she said in part: "Hachette's publishing of Woody Allen's memoir is deeply upsetting to me personally and an utter betrayal of my brother whose brave reporting, capitalized on by Hachette, gave voice to numerous survivors of sexual assault by powerful men. ... This provides yet another example of the profound privilege that power, money and notoriety affords. Hachette's complicity in this should be called out for what it is and they should have to answer for it."

Employees at both HBG's New York and Boston offices participated in the Thursday walkout. Many also sent out an auto-reply email that read in part: "We stand in solidarity with Ronan Farrow, Dylan Farrow and survivors of sexual assault." Those include Little, Brown executive editor Vanessa Mobley, who was the editor of Catch and Kill.

In a statement sent to NPR Thursday afternoon, HBG CEO Michael Pietsch said: "We respect and understand the perspective of our employees who have decided to express their concern over the publication of this book. We will engage our staff in a fuller discussion about this at the earliest opportunity."

NPR reached out for comment to Allen's agent, who did not respond as of publication time.

The New York Post reported that HBG employees approached the company's human resources department on Thursday afternoon to complain about the planned publication of Allen's book. A Hachette employee told NPR that HBG's CEO, Michael Pietch, attempted to hold a town hall meeting on Thursday to discuss the issue, but the employees walked out before the meeting was held.

Farrow's agent, Lynn Nesbit, told NPR on Thursday, "I feel moved almost to tears by the walkout. It was such a brave gesture to management who, in my opinion, made such a misguided decision." Signing Allen, she said, was "a betrayal of Ronan, of the women in his book, of the issues in the book and of the staff of this publisher." She added that Farrow is "grateful for the support of his colleagues at Little, Brown."

Last year, The New York Times reported that Allen had tried to sell the memoir to several major publishing houses, "only to be met with indifference or hard passes"; one source told NPR on Thursday afternoon that the title had been considered "radioactive" in the publishing world.

Farrow also said in his Tuesday statement that HBG had not fact-checked Allen's memoir, nor did it contact Dylan Farrow for any response. "It also shows a lack of ethics and compassion for victims of sexual abuse, regardless of any personal connection or breach of trust here. ... I've also told Hachette that a publisher that would conduct itself in this way is one I can't work with in good conscience."

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.