Tensions have been rising between Manila and Beijing, fueled by rival flag-raising displays on the disputed Sandy Cay in South China Sea.

“When we made the arrest, that was the third time he had come to Comelec,” said Philippine National Bureau of Investigation spokesman Ferdinand Lavin on Wednesday, referring to the country’s election commission.

The man, a Macau passport holder, was allegedly using an “IMSI catcher,” a device capable of mimicking a cell tower and snatching messages from the air in a 1 to 3 kilometer radius.

The arrested man also visited other locations, including the Philippine Supreme Court, the Philippine Department of Justice and the U.S. embassy, according to Lavin.

China denied any attempt to tamper with Philippine elections.

“We will not and have no interest in interfering in such internal affairs of the Philippines,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Guo Jiakun said on Wednesday when asked about the arrest at a news conference.

“We also advise individual politicians in the Philippines not to take the chance to hype up issues related to China, make something out of nothing and seize the opportunity to profit.”

On April 3, China said it had detained three Filipinos for espionage, prompting the Philippines to claim it was retaliation for Manila’s arrest of five Chinese nationals a week earlier.

The latest arrest came as Manila signed an agreement with New Zealand allowing the deployment of troops on each other’s territory, a move aimed at bolstering security in a “deteriorating” strategic environment, and one likely to further antagonize China.

New Zealand Minister of Defence Judith Collins said that the deal reflected a commitment based on understanding “the risks to the international rules-based order.”

Both countries had “a real understanding that the strategic environment that we are operating in is deteriorating,” Collins said.

“There are those who follow international law and there are those who want to redefine it,” Teodoro said, referring to China’s so-called “nine-dash line” in the South China Sea.

Beijing claims nearly the entire sea under its “nine-dash line,” a claim rejected by an international tribunal in 2016, which ruled in favor of the Philippines’ assertion that China’s claims were unlawful.

Despite the ruling, China has continued to assert its presence through patrols, island-building, and militarization, while the Philippines has sought to defend its claims through diplomatic protests and military partnerships.

“We need to deter this kind of unwanted behavior,” he said, adding that Manila and Wellington would work toward “military-to-military training.”

The agreement with New Zealand serves as the latest example of the Philippines strengthening defence and diplomatic ties with like-minded partners, as Chinese-Philippine relations continue to be tested by repeated confrontations between their coastguard vessels in the disputed South China Sea.

The Philippines and Japan pledged on Tuesday to deepen security ties, agreeing to begin talks on a defense pact and enhance intelligence sharing, while jointly opposing efforts to change the status quo in the East and South China Seas by force.

Manila is also reportedly in talks with Canada and France to establish potential defense agreements.

Edited by Mike Firn.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

A few months ago, Sen. Ted Cruz announced that he had uncovered $2 billion of science grants funded by former President Joe Biden’s administration that prioritized “radical political perspectives” or “neo-Marxist theories.’’ His aides on a congressional committee assembled the list by searching the project descriptions for 699 key terms like “women,” “diversify,” “segregation” and “Hispanic culture.”

When Cruz released the database of this allegedly “woke” research earlier this month, we decided to run our own experiment. We asked one of the models powering ChatGPT, which can sift through large amounts of data, to evaluate all 3,500 grant descriptions in the database as if it were an investigative journalist looking for Marxist propaganda, “woke ideology,” or diversity, equity and inclusion. The model tried to give us descriptions of how each project might fit those themes. We were particularly interested in the grants where it came up blank. We then read through the researchers’ full summaries of those and many other grants, including each one described in this story, looking for references to some of the keywords on the list.

We found that Cruz’s dragnet had swept up numerous examples of scientific projects funded by the National Science Foundation that simply acknowledged social inequalities or were completely unrelated to the social or economic themes cited by his committee.

Among them, for example, was a $470,000 grant to study the evolution of mint plants and how they spread across continents. As best we can tell, the project ran into trouble with Republicans on the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation because of two specific words used in its application to the NSF: “diversify,” referring to the biodiversity of plants, and “female,” where the application noted how the project would support a young female scientist on the research team.

Other projects our AI assistant led us to included:

• Developing a device that could treat severe bleeding. It seems to have caught the committee’s attention for using the words “victims” — as in gunshot victims — and “trauma.”
• Creating biosensors to detect infectious diseases. The grant appears to have been tagged for the repeated use of “POC,” an acronym often used for “people of color” but in this context meaning “point of care” — that is, the place where people receive medical treatment — and “barrier,” referring to a part of the biosensor itself.
• Designing eye-tracking technology for diagnosing and treating concussions. It appears to have gotten flagged for referencing “traumatic” brain injuries and the “status,” meaning the condition, of patients.

It’s “very frightening,” said Charlotte Lindqvist, a biology professor at the University at Buffalo who is conducting the research on mint plants.

Lindqvist spends hours a day grinding up plant samples and analyzing their DNA to identify genetic differences between species. Studying plant diversity, she said, could help secure more resilient food systems. “We are really trying very, very hard ... to move our world forward, understanding it better through our sort of foundational, sometimes groundbreaking research,” she said, “and then you get flagged and blacklisted because there is a word like ‘female’ in your project.”

Staff for the Republicans on the Senate committee assembled their report by examining all NSF grants awarded to projects that began between January 2021 and April 2024. Using their list of keywords, they flagged those earmarked for research that they said was “often based on neo-Marxist theories that identified merit by physical or ethnic attributes, not one’s talent, work ethic, or intellectual curiosity.”

Evaluating the merits of these awards would require a deep understanding of dozens of scientific fields, from gravitational waves to DNA methylation. But the report describes a crude approach; while staffers did attempt to account for the different ways their keywords can be used, they did not manually review all grants. The report also failed to acknowledge that the NSF has a legal mandate to make science more inclusive of women, racial minorities and disabled people.

Cruz released the full database just as the Trump administration’s NSF said it was examining research grants to make sure they complied with the president’s executive orders terminating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Cruz said he requested “significant scrutiny” of the grants in his database. At the time, the NSF was using a similar list of keywords for its review.

Neither Cruz’s office nor a spokesperson for Republicans on the committee responded to requests for comment.

It’s not clear if approved projects that are still waiting for payments will get their money. A federal judge ruled last Friday that the administration can’t cancel or freeze grants for supporting diversity, equity and inclusion programs. When asked how it would respond to the judge’s preliminary injunction, an NSF spokesperson directed ProPublica to an agency webpage, which had not been updated with information about the court ruling at the time of publication.

“NSF is working expeditiously to conduct a comprehensive review of our projects, programs and activities to be compliant with the existing executive orders,” a spokesperson told ProPublica in response to questions about its review process.

The Senate committee’s list includes words like “diversify” and “biases,” which have technical meanings unrelated to social issues. Although the report’s authors worked to remove grants flagged for those reasons, some, like Lindqvist’s, slipped through.

The lack of precision in the committee’s methodology is “obviously laughable,” said Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of international affairs at Princeton University who studies the rise and fall of constitutional governments. But she also worries about what might happen if lawmakers take a more serious approach, such as trying to ban research on racial inequality, similar to how Congress severely limited studies on gun violence.

The NSF evaluates grant proposals based on two factors. The first is intellectual merit. Every application is reviewed by a panel of experts — often other academics — who specialize in the same topic. They pore over detailed applications that include data, references and researchers’ qualifications, far more information than the brief summaries evaluated by the Senate committee.

The other factor is “broader impacts,” which could include how the research might benefit societal well-being or make science more inclusive.

Currently, federal laws require the NSF to support research at historically Black colleges and universities and other institutions that serve groups who are underrepresented in science. Congress also ordered the NSF to fund efforts “designed to increase the recruitment, retention, and advancement” of members of these groups in scientific careers.

“All of that is hard-wired into federal funding,” Scheppele said. “If anyone was ‘woke,’ it was Congress.”

Laws passed by Congress have more legal weight than executive orders, so the NSF shouldn’t prioritize Trump’s order over its mandate to support underrepresented people in science, Scheppele said. The White House, she said in an email, is “literally asking the NSF to violate the law!”

The committee report singled out some projects for simply acknowledging that people from certain demographics face unique challenges. That includes a University of Houston study of maternal mortality that examines why Black, Indigenous and other people of color in the U.S. are nearly three times as likely as white women to die during pregnancy or within the first year after childbirth. Another project, which involved using drones to deliver defibrillators to people suffering cardiac arrest, appeared to be flagged because it noted that emergency response times are slower in low-income and minority neighborhoods.

In other cases, the keywords that caught the committee’s attention may have come from outreach efforts meant to broaden the impact of the research. A $6 million nuclear astrophysics project to study the origins of the universe includes a reference to attracting a “diverse group” of students interested in the subject and a summer school program for increasing interest in nuclear-science careers, “especially among women and minorities.”

That’s in line with a 1998 law that ordered the NSF to develop “intellectual capital, both people and ideas, with particular emphasis on groups and regions that traditionally have not participated fully in science, mathematics, and engineering.”

Congress recognized “you’re going to get better science” that way, said Melissa Finucane, vice president of science and innovation at the Union of Concerned Scientists. When you get different perspectives interacting and thinking about complex problems, she said, you’ll get different and new ways of solving a problem.

The report’s “sledgehammer” methodology ignores the substantial scientific merit of these projects, many of which address “critical national needs in areas such as aerospace, agriculture, and computing infrastructure — as well as the need to broaden the talent pool,” a spokesperson for Democrats on the Senate committee said in an email. The email said that ranking Democrat Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington “understands that there is no way the United States can compete” with the rest of the world on innovation “without ensuring that NSF funding emphasizes the participation of women and minorities in STEM,” a reference to science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Rice University professor Vicky Yao has seen firsthand how efforts to broaden participation can increase excitement and interest in science.

When Yao applied for a research grant in 2022, she included outreach to community college students, many of whom are from underrepresented populations and don’t have access to research opportunities.

When ProPublica informed Yao her $610,000 project was on the Senate committee’s list, she found it bizarre that such technical work on DNA methylation — a process that can affect cancer and neurological diseases — could be labeled as “woke.”

The committee’s choice of keywords is so sweeping that shutting down the research that uses those terms would end not just diversity programs but also vast fields of research on social science (“Black communities,” “racial inequality,” “LGBT”), climate change (“net zero,” “climate research,” “clean energy”) and medicine (“white women,” “victims,” “trauma”).

If any research related to women or minority populations is under fire, then “we’re talking about maybe 65% of the American population. So at that point, what’s left?” said Dominic Boyer, an anthropology professor at Rice University whose project on reducing flood risk was flagged by the committee. “Under what authority, or according to what philosophy, can a government invalidate or discredit research that’s focusing on two-thirds of the population?”

Boyer received an award of $750,000 to use nature-based solutions like rain gardens to reduce flooding in Houston, where Hurricane Harvey displaced tens of thousands of people in 2017. His team has begun collaborating closely with residents from three neighborhoods: two lower-income communities where the residents are mostly Hispanic, Black or Asian, and a middle-income neighborhood with mostly Hispanic and white residents.

He initially assumed that’s why his research was flagged. But it turned out that the triggering keywords may have come from boilerplate language that describes the specific NSF program that funded Boyer’s work: Strengthening American Infrastructure. The portions of the grant’s program description containing those keywords were written by the NSF during Trump’s first term. It used the words “socioeconomic” and “equal opportunity” to explain why infrastructure is important to society. The same description is found in more than two dozen other grants on the committee’s list.

Boyer said it speaks to a kind of “Orwellian absurdity” that “these words can only have one meaning, and it’s the meaning that they would like to politicize.”

Sharon Lerner contributed reporting and Brandon Roberts contributed data reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Agnel Philip and Lisa Song.

Right after we broadcast, Israel carried out “targeted strikes” in Beirut as it appears to be preparing for a ground invasion of southern Lebanon as an expansion of its war on Gaza.

Following deadly Israeli attacks that blew up walkie-talkies and pagers across Lebanon this week, killing at least 37 people and wounding around 3,000, Israeli officials have pledged to ramp up their campaign against Hezbollah. Hezbollah characterized the devastating pager explosions as a “declaration of war.” In Beirut, we hear from journalist Rania Abouzeid about the aftereffects of the attack and the prospects of war on the Lebanese front. “There is certainly a sense of heightened anxiety as people wonder what else, what other devices in their vicinity, may explode,” she says.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

It’s a critical time for journalists. 

CPJ spoke to reporters and editors across India about their plans for covering these historic parliamentary elections in a difficult environment for the media, which has seen critical websites censored, prominent editors quit and independent outlets bought by politically-connected conglomerates, while divisive content has grown in popularity. 

Here are their biggest concerns:

Political violence 

During the run-up to the 2019 vote, there was a rise in assaults and threats against journalists during clashes between political groups, particularly in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, and Jammu and Kashmir, according to data collected by CPJ and the Armed Conflict & Location Event Data Project. 

“Our state is now very famous or infamous for pre-poll, and post-poll, and poll violence,” Ishani Datta Ray, editor of Anandabazar Patrika newspaper in the eastern state of West Bengal, said at the launch of CPJ’s safety guide for journalists covering the election. “We have to guide them [our journalists] and caution them about the perils and dangers on the field.”

Dozens of citizens were killed in West Bengal’s 2019 and 2021 elections, largely due to fierce competition between the state’s ruling Trinamool Congress and the BJP.

Datta Ray described how she spent the night on the phone to one of her journalists who was part of a group who were beaten during a clash between two political parties and trapped in a building in Kolkata, West Bengal’s capital, as party activists attempted to set fire to one of the reporters, whom they had doused in petrol. The journalists were eventually rescued by police and locals.

“Nobody should die for a newspaper. Your life is precious,” said Datta Ray. “If there is a risk, don’t go out.” 

Mob violence

Many journalists fear that they will not receive adequate protection or support from their newsrooms on dangerous assignments. 

More than a dozen journalists were harassed or injured during the 2020 Delhi riots, the capital’s worst communal violence in decades, in which more than 50 people died.

One female reporter told CPJ on condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisal, that she and a Muslim colleague were sent to out report without any safety gear.

“People were standing with knives and swords on the streets of Delhi and asking journalists for their IDs” to try to determine their faith based on their names, she said. 

The journalist’s colleague was beaten up and she was thrown on the ground by a rioter. After she posted about the incident on social media, her employer summoned her back to the office. 

“She said that everyone must be thinking that we are not protecting our reporters. I said, ‘Leave what everyone thinks. What are you doing? You are not protecting your reporter. In fact, you’re shooting the messenger,’” she told CPJ.

Datta Ray described how politicians sometimes try to turn their supporters against journalists by calling out their names at rallies and saying, “They are against us. Don’t read that newspaper.” 

“We’ve had to text people that ‘Just come out of the crowd … Don’t stay there,’” she said. “You don’t have to cover the meeting anymore. Just come out because you don’t know what could happen.’” 

Criminalization of journalism 

Since the last general election, a record number of journalists have been arrested or faced criminal charges, while numerous critical outlets have been rattled by tax department raids investigating fraud or tax evasion.  

For the last three years of CPJ’s annual prison census, India held seven journalists behind bars — the highest number since its documentation began in 1992. All but one of the 13 journalists recorded in CPJ’s 2021-23 prison censuses were jailed under security laws. Some appear in multiple annual censuses due to their ongoing incarceration. 

Six were reporting on India’s only Muslim-majority region, Kashmir, where the media has come under siege following the government’s 2019 repeal of the region’s constitutional autonomy. 

India’s longest imprisoned journalist, Aasif Sultan, was arrested in 2018 for alleged militant ties after publishing a cover story on a slain Kashmiri militant. 

Since 2014, CPJ’s research shows, at least 15 journalists have been charged under India’s anti-terror Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, which allows for detention without trial or charge for up to 180 days, since 2020.

Datta Ray also said she was dealing with a growing number of cases against local journalists.

“Every institution should have a very strong back up of a legal team,” she said, recounting how West Bengal police spent five hours raiding the house of Parkash Sinha, a journalist who covers federal investigative agencies for ABP Ananda news channel, which is part of the same media group.

“You don’t know if your write up, if your TV report, has angered any establishment, any police,” said Datta Ray, who worked with lawyers to advise the reporter via a conference call while the February raid was going on. “You can be slapped with any kind of charges.”

“They copied everything from his personal laptop and from pen drives … they cannot do but they did it,” she said. 

Sinha has denied the charges in the ongoing case, which relate to a land dispute.

Attacks by other journalists 

Under Modi, Indians have become increasingly divided along political lines — and that includes the media. Government officials have labeled critics as “anti-national” and cautioned broadcasters against content that “promotes anti-national attitudes.” 

In February, India’s news regulator ordered three news channels to take down anti-Muslim content that it said could fan religious tensions, while the Supreme Court has called for divisive TV anchors to be taken off air.

Journalists are not immune.

“Indian media is very, very polarized now,” Dhanya Rajendran, editor-in-chief of The News Minute, said at CPJ’s launch event. “We are seeing a clear divide in the Indian media, where one side is continuously egging the government to go arrest people from the other side, to take action, branding them as ‘anti-national.’”

She highlighted October’s police raid on the news website NewsClick, which has been critical of the BJP, and the arrest of its editor Prabir Purkayastha, who remains behind bars on terrorism charges for allegedly receiving money from China.

“We saw many Indian TV anchors go on air and ask for the arrest of the editor Prabir. They continue to call him all kinds of names,” said Rajendran, as she called for more solidarity among journalists and newsrooms.

Online harassment

Ismat Ara was among 20 Muslim women journalists whose pictures and personal information were shared for a virtual “auction” in 2022 by an online app called Bulli Bai, a derogatory term to describe Muslim women. Ara filed a police complaint which led to the arrest of the app’s creators.

Trolling is still a regular occurrence for her. This month, she posted on social media about being on an election assignment in the northern state of Uttarakhand, which is known for its Hindu pilgrimage sites. One of the comments on X, formerly known as Twitter, said, “In future you will have to apply for visa to visit these places in India.”

Since she was chased by a mob at the Delhi riots, Ara said she usually hides her Muslim identity while reporting.

“I think it helps not to be visibly Muslim,” she said, adding that she removed a picture of herself in a hijab on X after a BJP aide asked for her handle to check for “negative stories.” 

Some journalists at The News Minute receive abusive comments whenever they publish stories, Rajendran said.

“People have disturbed sleep patterns, they lose their confidence, they self-censor themselves, they do not want to tweet out stories,” she said, urging journalists to talk about their experiences with friends and colleagues.

Online censorship

In recent years, India has become a world leader in imposing internet shutdowns, according to the digital rights group Access Now. 

Government requests to platforms like X, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, to take down or block content and handles in India for defamation, impersonation, privacy and security, or inflammatory content have increased multifold in the last few years. From October to December 2023, India had the most video takedowns globally with over 2 million YouTube videos removed. 

In early April, YouTube blocked prominent Hindi language news channels Bolta Hindustan and National Dastak without explanation. 

On Tuesday, X said it had blocked several posts by politicians and parties, which made unverified claims about their opponents, in compliance with orders from the Election Commission of India, while noting that “we disagree with these actions” on freedom of expression grounds. 

Digital rights experts have criticized India for failing to respect a 2015 Supreme Court order to provide an outlet that has allegedly produced offensive content with a copy of the blocking order and an opportunity to be heard by a government committee before taking action.

Device hacking 

Digital security is another growing concern. After The News Minute was raided by the income tax department, Rajendran said she organized a training for her staff on how to respond if an agency wants to take your device or arrest you.

Siddharth Varadarajan, editor of The Wire news website, has been repeatedly targeted with Pegasus spyware. 

“We need to fight for our right to work as journalists without this sort of intrusive, illegal surveillance,” he told CPJ. “A first step is to educate ourselves and devise technologically sound strategies to cope with surveillance.” 

In the wake of the revelations, Varadarajan’s devices were analyzed by a committee established by the Supreme Court but its findings have not been made public. 

“Until recently, journalists were primarily trained to uncover and disseminate the truth,” Rajendran concluded. 

“In today’s landscape, it is equally vital to educate both aspiring journalists and seasoned professionals on methods to safeguard themselves, their sources, and their personal devices.”

B.P. Gopalika and Naresh Kumar, chief secretaries of the states of West Bengal, and Delhi, respectively, did not respond to CPJ’s emails seeking comment on authorities’ efforts to protect journalists during the election.

Secretary of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Sanjay Jaju did not respond to CPJ’s email seeking comment on social media censorship. 

Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology S. Krishnan did not respond to CPJ’s email seeking comment on the allegations of hacking.

CPJ’s India Election Safety Kit is available in English, हिंदी, ಕನ್ನಡ, தமிழ் and বাংলা

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Kunal Majumder/CPJ India Representative.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Congressional investigators are launching an inquiry into the Food and Drug Administration’s oversight of medical device recalls for the first time in years following reports that the agency failed to issue warnings about breathing machines capable of sending hazardous particles and fumes into the lungs of patients.

U.S. Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., urged the Government Accountability Office to investigate, citing reports by ProPublica and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that detailed the role of the FDA in an ongoing health crisis that has threatened millions of people in the United States and around the world.

The news organizations revealed that the agency had received hundreds of complaints about breathing machines manufactured by Philips Respironics long before the company announced a massive recall in 2021, but took no action to alert patients or doctors.

Philips withheld thousands of additional complaints over the course of 11 years while customers who relied on the machines to breathe reported respiratory problems, kidney and liver conditions, and cancer, the news organizations found.

“It’s clear from the Philips case that information about patient harm was known for years and not properly shared or addressed,” Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a statement. “We must ensure there is adequate oversight on medical device manufacturers so that Americans know the potential risks and can make informed decisions with their health care providers.”

In their request to the GAO, the watchdog arm of Congress, Durbin and Blumenthal said they needed far more information about the FDA’s oversight of the medical device industry, including how the agency ensures that companies initiate recalls and what happens when manufacturers fail to comply.

In an email, the GAO said it accepted the lawmakers’ request to conduct an inquiry.

Philips has said that it evaluated the early complaints about its sleep apnea machines and ventilators on a case-by-case basis and launched the recall after the company became aware that an industrial foam fitted inside the devices could break down and release potentially “toxic and carcinogenic” material.

The FDA has defended its handling of the crisis, saying it received complaints about “general contamination issues” before the recall but that the debris could have been caused by external sources unrelated to foam. At least 30 of the complaints described foam degradation, but the FDA said the reports did not indicate that any patients had been harmed.

“The FDA welcomes the opportunity for GAO review of the agency’s oversight of medical device recalls,” the agency said in a statement last week.

Durbin and Blumenthal said the GAO inquiry would follow up on a similar probe in 2011 that called for changes to better protect patients. Safety advocates said a new investigation is badly needed and long overdue.

In 2022, the FDA received 3 million reports about malfunctioning devices — nearly 30 times more than in 2005, government records show. Nearly one-third described injuries and deaths.

“At the end of the day, the public should have confidence in the products that are regulated by the FDA,” said Kushal Kadakia, a public health researcher at Harvard Medical School who has written about the Philips recall.

Device safety advocates said the GAO should review whether the FDA is regularly using information in health records, insurance claims, medical device registries and other sources — data they said would greatly improve the agency’s ability to track dangerous products. The FDA moved to create a center to bring together that data years ago, but a comprehensive new system is still not in place, records and interviews show.

Former FDA analyst Madris Kinard also said the FDA should do more to ensure the safety of devices before they are marketed and sold. A controversial process at the agency allows device makers to gain clearance for a new product by showing that it is substantially equivalent to one already on the market.

Kinard said the FDA should investigate whether those older models had any safety issues before newer versions are cleared.

“Simply getting a new device to market to me isn’t innovation,” she said. “Innovation is only good if it’s helping the patient.”

Durbin and U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., have proposed legislation aimed at ensuring that doctors and patients receive vital information about recalls by requiring the FDA to create an electronic system of communication for the agency, device makers, hospitals and other providers. The bill would also require device makers to disclose more information about health risks and instruct hospitals and health care workers to pass the information to patients.

The proposal “will create an efficient, accountable system for ensuring patients are routinely notified about safety recalls for medical devices,” Chuck Bell, advocacy programs director at Consumer Reports, said in a statement. “As our health system operates today, consumers and providers may never receive any information ... or may receive it too late to avoid adverse consequences.”

Medicare claim forms should also include identifying information for devices — model numbers and names of manufacturers — to make it easier to detect troubled devices and contact patients in the event of a recall, Kadakia and others said.

“Right now, we rarely know what device has been used in what patient and when,” said Dr. Sanket Dhruva, a cardiologist and assistant professor at the University of California, San Francisco who has studied medical device safety and regulation. “Without this basic, really fundamental information about the device a patient has received, we can’t track the device.”

The GAO inquiry comes as a growing number of federal lawmakers call for investigations into Philips.

Schakowsky, the ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce subcommittee that oversees consumer product safety, said earlier this month that the company must be “fully held accountable and stopped from any future wrongdoing” if investigators determine that Philips failed to warn consumers in the years before the recall.

Schakowsky also cited new revelations, reported last month by ProPublica and the Post-Gazette, that a different foam placed inside replacement devices sent out by Philips after the recall was also found to emit hazardous chemicals, including formaldehyde, a known carcinogen.

“Americans should not be kept in the dark when it comes to the safety of their medical devices, and they certainly should not be forced to choose between a dangerous product and getting the care they need,” Schakowsky said in a statement.

Philips has said the new foam is safe and does not emit chemicals at dangerous levels. The FDA, which first reported that the foam failed emissions testing in 2021, said more tests are needed.

Philips said it regrets any “distress and concern” caused by the recall and is cooperating with authorities. The company also said testing on the original foam in the months after the recall found that the chemical emissions are not at levels that can cause “appreciable harm” to patients. The FDA has challenged Philips, saying in a statement in October that the studies were not adequate and that the company had agreed to conduct additional tests.

Debbie Cenziper with ProPublica and Michael D. Sallah with the Post-Gazette contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by .

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Jon Schwarz.

Before the post was deleted, some comments slammed the idea as "high-tech brainwashing," while others referenced George Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, saying that "Big Brother" would be watching them.

Anhui-based sociologist Song Da'an said the post had been removed due to its political sensitivity.

"Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center has been using biotechnology to measure the loyalty of party members and cadres," Song said. "This shows that the CCP is becoming more and more totalitarian."

"In the logic of a totalitarian society, more and more emphasis is placed on refining controllability, and party members are regarded as screws [that could come loose] and potentially cause damage; they are the enemy of the machine," he said.

Song said the technology was based on the polygraph, used by security services to detect lying, which was itself based on the word association experiments of Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung.

"They are using this technology to treat all party members as potential anti-CCP agents," he said. "The use of these technology on officials demonstrates the sorry state of affairs within party ranks."

A Jiangxi-based current affairs commentator surnamed Zhang agreed.

"They are consolidating their power to better hold onto it," Zhang said. "That's what these people want; to consolidate their position."

"Would a regime that served the people be afraid of losing political power?"

'All-seeing eye'

A call to the Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center on Monday resulted in a recorded message saying "Sorry, the person you have called isn't authorized to take your call. Goodbye."

In 2018, authorities in Zhejiang province installed an "all-seeing eye" in a high-school classroom to spot students who weren't paying attention or who fell asleep in class, official media reported.

The new system at the Hangzhou No. 11 High School links up a surveillance camera to facial recognition software that tracks students' movements and facial expressions, according to the Zhejiang Daily newspaper.

The technology was part of a trial of software and surveillance systems that could be rolled out elsewhere as part of the development of "smart campuses," the paper said.

"The system ... can perform statistical analysis on students' behaviors and expressions in the classroom and provide timely feedback on abnormal behaviors," the report said.

Data collected by the system will be analyzed by the software, and overly inattentive or sleepy behavior will generate a prompt to the teacher to admonish the offender, it said.

The data could also be used to evaluate teachers' performance in the classroom, the report said.

Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Qiao Long for RFA Mandarin.

On Monday, June 27, a vehicle carrying the journalists along with government and military officials was damaged by an explosive device in the town of Qabno, in Somalia’s central Hiiraan region, in Hirshabelle state, according to multiple media reports, a tweet by the Federation of Somali Journalists, and a joint statement from the local press freedom groups Somali Journalists Syndicate (SJS) and the Somali Media Association (SOMA).

Those reports alternatively refer to the explosive device as a roadside bomb and a land mine. CPJ was unable to immediately determine the nature of the device.

Three soldiers were killed in the explosion, and Abdikarin and Khalid, reporters with the state-owned Hirshabelle TV broadcaster, were injured, according to those sources and Hirshabelle Minister of Information, Culture, and Tourism Mohamed Abdirahman, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

The journalists were covering a military campaign against the militant group Al-Shabaab at the time of the attack, Mohamed told CPJ. He said the journalists were “doing well” and had sustained some injuries to their faces but did not have any broken bones. No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, according to those sources.

“The constant threat of physical attack looms dark over Somali journalists, and the only way to assuage these fears is to root out impunity and ensure accountability whenever a journalist is harmed in the course of their work,” said CPJ sub-Saharan Africa Representative Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities should credibly investigate the injuries sustained by journalists Abdikarin Mohamed Siyad and Khalid Mohamud Osman in a recent explosion, as part of broader efforts to guarantee safety for journalists in Somalia.”

On Monday, the two journalists were taken to the town of Guri El, in central Galmudug state, and on Tuesday were evacuated to the Somali capital of Mogadishu for further medical attention, according to Mohamed and news reports.

Hirshabelle police spokesperson Diini Roble told CPJ via messaging app that police were “working to know the people behind this bombing.”

Bashiir Abdullahi Osman, the SJS press freedom coordinator for Hirshabelle state, told CPJ via messaging app, “Hirshabelle reporters work in a bad situation. The journalists’ fears are the explosions and threats posed by Al-Shabaab.”

On Wednesday, Hirshabelle Vice-President Yusuf Ahmed Hagar visited the two journalists at Kalkaal Hospital in Mogadishu and promised to cover all expenses they incurred while hospitalized, Osman said.

On November 20, 2021, a suicide bombing killed journalist Abdiaziz Mohamud Guled and injured Sharmarke Mohamed Warsame and Abdukadir Abdullahi Nur in Mogadishu, as CPJ documented at the time.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

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A congressional oversight subcommittee is investigating the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of a high-risk heart pump, citing safety issues detailed by ProPublica.

The HeartWare Ventricular Assist Device, created to treat patients with severe heart failure, stopped meeting key federal standards as early as 2014. But the FDA took no decisive action even as those problems persisted, and thousands of Americans continued to be implanted with the pump.

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By the end of 2020, the FDA had received more than 3,000 reports of deaths related to the HeartWare device, according to a ProPublica data analysis. A father of four died as his children tried to resuscitate him when his device suddenly stopped. A teenager died after vomiting blood in the middle of the night, while his mother struggled to restart a faulty pump.

“I am concerned by FDA’s slow action, over multiple administrations, to protect patients from this product despite early warning signs,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., in a scathing letter sent Tuesday to the agency’s commissioner, Dr. Robert Califf.

Krishnamoorthi, the chairman of the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Reform’s Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, requested information on how the FDA made regulatory decisions related to the HeartWare device and why it didn’t take further action.

The FDA did not provide comment to ProPublica on the subcommittee’s investigation and said it would respond directly to Krishnamoorthi. It also reiterated its response to ProPublica’s findings and said the agency had been closely overseeing the HeartWare device since 2012, with patient safety as its “highest priority.”

Medtronic, the company that acquired HeartWare in 2016, took the device off the market in June 2021. The company said that new data showed a competing heart pump had better outcomes. In response to the ProPublica investigation two months later, the company said it took the FDA’s inspections seriously and had worked closely with the agency to address issues with the device.

Medtronic declined to comment on the subcommittee’s investigation.

Krishnamoorthi asked in the letter if any steps were being taken to address how patients, doctors and other federal agencies are notified of problems that the FDA finds with medical devices.

Many patients told ProPublica they were never informed of issues with the HeartWare pump before or after their implants. Some people who still have the device said they weren’t told when it was taken off the market. Medtronic said in December it had confirmed 90% of U.S. patients had received notification of the HeartWare discontinuation, but that it was still working to reach the other 10%.

About 2,000 patients still had HeartWare pumps as of last year. The FDA and Medtronic recommended against removing those devices barring medical necessity because the surgery to do so carries a high risk.

In his letter, Krishnamoorthi gave the FDA a deadline of April 5 to respond.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Neil Bedi.