Omicron leaves testing labs overwhelmed, causing frustrating delays to get results
LOS ANGELES — As the omicron surge drives infection rates to record highs, testing has emerged as an essential tool for limiting its spread. But over the last month, laboratories and manufacturers have struggled to keep up with the demand.
In December, neighborhood pharmacies sold out of rapid antigen tests. Getting an appointment for the more sensitive and definitive PCR test took days, and results even longer. Once again, the pandemic had exposed a weakness in the country's health care system.
"I think that unfortunately, we are as unprepared for the type of surge we are experiencing — from a testing perspective — as we were a year ago," said Omai Garner, who directs the clinical microbiology testing laboratory for UCLA Health.
Free at-home coronavirus testing kits, now available to households around the country, promise to ease the bottlenecks, but questions over shortages and delays threaten to undermine confidence. Answers, however, lie in the numbers.
Before the surge, Garner estimated that his lab was processing about 700 PCR tests a day. Today that number is close to 2,000. Nor was his lab alone in its running at capacity.
—Los Angeles Times
Ivanka Trump asked to testify by Jan. 6 committee about Capitol riot
Ivanka Trump will be called to voluntarily testify before the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol as the panel closes in on former President Donald Trump.
Ivanka Trump, a senior aide in her father's administration, was sent a letter asking to submit to questioning about what she knows about the violent attack and what her father did or didn’t do about it.
“(We are) inviting some people to come and talk to us ... Ivanka Trump,” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the committee’s chair, told reporters on Capitol Hill.
Ivanka Trump is the first member of the ex-president’s immediate family to be asked to testify, a significant escalation in the committee’s intense effort to get to the bottom of the attack.
The congressional panel has deemed Trump’s oldest daughter a crucial witness because she reportedly visited her father several times in the White House on Jan. 6 as the mob of his supporters marauded through the Capitol, hunting down perceived enemies.
—New York Daily News
Cal State system adds caste to anti-discrimination policy in groundbreaking decision
LOS ANGELES — The California State University announced it has added caste as a protected category in its system-wide anti-discrimination policy, a hard-fought policy deeply meaningful to Dalit students of South Asian decent.
The Cal State policy came after years of activism from Dalit students and allies to bring an end to caste discrimination they encountered on campuses across California.
"I commend the incredible work and dedication of the students, employees and other partners whose efforts ensure that our policies align with our bold aspirations," said Cal State Chancellor Joseph I. Castro.
Caste-oppressed people call themselves Dalit, which means "broken people." Formerly known as untouchables, Dalits fell at the bottom of a centuries-old — and now outlawed — social hierarchy that governed the lives of over a quarter-billion people worldwide, including many in the U.S.
Caste was handed down at birth and determined a person's social status based on so-called spiritual purity reflected by a feudal ranking of professions. Although caste discrimination is officially banned in India and other South Asian countries, the practice is rampant in the region and among communities in the diaspora.
—Los Angeles Times
German abuse study accuses Pope Emeritus Benedict of misconduct
MUNICH, Germany — A report prompted by sexual abuse allegations in the German Catholic Church accuses Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI of misconduct on four counts during his time as archbishop of Munich and Freising between 1977 and 1982.
Benedict — known then as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — has denied any wrongdoing.
Critics have long accused Benedict of failing to act on abuse in the clergy. They have focused on the case of a priest from the western German state of North Rhine Westphalia, who allegedly abused boys repeatedly.
The priest was relocated from North Rhine Westphalia to Benedict's home state of Bavaria, where he was convicted of child abuse and is said to have repeatedly relapsed.
This case alone takes up 370 pages of the report, which is over 1,700 pages long.
At least 497 victims have been counted in the study. Most of them were male children and adolescents who were targeted between 1945 and 2019, the law firm Westpfahl Spilker Wastl (WSW) announced in Munich. It prepared the expert opinion on behalf of the archdiocese.
According to the study, there were at least 235 alleged perpetrators - among them 173 priests and nine deacons.
—dpa
