Clothing collections raise £50,000 for air ambulance service
Jordan Mattinson started organising collections in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic and the first events were held at Whitehaven RUFC.
He has continued hosting collections at Hensingham ARLFC, with members helping out on the days.
Tens of thousands of pounds have been raised since the collections started. The event offers people the chance to recycle while supporting the Great North Air Ambulance Service.
Following the latest event which was held on Saturday, the total raised for the charity now stands at £50,000.
Jordan, of Whitehaven, said: 'We really appreciate everyone who's donated over the last few years and anyone who's shared the social media and news posts so people see when the collections are.
'The GNAAS is a service that we hope we will never need, but if you do, you'd like to know it's there. With it not being government funded, it's crucial that donations like this carry on to make sure they can keep running this life saving service.
'We'll keep doing the drop off days and hopefully we can turn that £50,000 into £100,000 and more over the next few years.'
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Atlantic
22 minutes ago
- Atlantic
COVID Revenge Is Supercharging the Anti-Vaccine Agenda
Four and a half years ago, fresh off the success of Operation Warp Speed, mRNA vaccines were widely considered—as President Donald Trump said in December 2020 —a 'medical miracle.' Last week, the United States government decidedly reversed that stance when Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. canceled nearly half a billion dollars' worth of grants and contracts for mRNA-vaccine research. With Kennedy leading HHS, this about-face is easy to parse as yet another anti-vaccine move. But the assault on mRNA is also proof of another kind of animus: the COVID-revenge campaign that top officials in this administration have been pursuing for months, attacking the policies, technologies, and people that defined the U.S.'s pandemic response. As the immediacy of the COVID crisis receded, public anger about the American response to it took deeper root—perhaps most prominently among some critics who are now Trump appointees. That acrimony has become an essential tool in Kennedy's efforts to undermine vaccines. 'It is leverage,' Dorit Reiss, a vaccine-law expert at UC Law San Francisco, told me. 'It is a way to justify doing things that he wouldn't be able to get away with otherwise.' COVID revenge has defined the second Trump administration's health policy from the beginning. Kennedy and his allies have ousted prominent HHS officials who played key roles in the development of COVID policy, as well as scientists at the National Institutes of Health, including close colleagues of Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (and, according to Trump, an idiot and a 'disaster'). In June, Kennedy dismissed every member of the CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which has helped shape COVID-vaccine recommendations, and handpicked replacements for them. HHS and ACIP are now stacked with COVID contrarians who have repeatedly criticized COVID policies and minimized the benefits of vaccines. Under pressure from Trump officials, the NIH has terminated funding for hundreds of COVID-related grants. The president and his appointees have espoused the highly disputed notion that COVID began as a leak from 'an unsafe lab in Wuhan, China'—and cited the NIH's funding of related research as a reason to restrict federal agencies' independent grant-awarding powers. This administration is rapidly rewriting the narrative of COVID vaccines as well. In an early executive order, Trump called for an end to COVID-19-vaccine mandates in schools, even though few remained; earlier this month, HHS rolled back a Biden-era policy that financially rewarded hospitals for reporting staff-vaccination rates, describing the policy as ' coercive.' The FDA has made it harder for manufacturers to bring new COVID shots to market, narrowed who can get the Novavax shot, and approved the Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for only a limited group of children, over the objections of agency experts. For its part, the CDC softened its COVID-shot guidance for pregnant people and children, after Kennedy—who has described the shots as 'the deadliest vaccine ever made'—tried to unilaterally remove it. Experts told me they fear that what access remains to the shots for children and adults could still be abolished; so could COVID-vaccine manufacturers' current protection from liability. (Andrew Nixon, an HHS spokesperson, said in an email that the department would not comment on potential regulatory changes.) The latest assault against mRNA vaccines, experts told me, is difficult to disentangle from the administration's pushback on COVID shots—which, because of the pandemic, the public now views as synonymous with the technology, Jennifer Nuzzo, the director of the Pandemic Center at Brown University School of Public Health, told me. Kennedy justified the mRNA cuts by suggesting—in contrast to a wealth of evidence—that the vaccines' risks outweigh their benefits, and that they 'fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.' And he insisted, without proof, that mRNA vaccines prolong pandemics. Meanwhile, NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya argued that the cancellations were driven by a lack of public trust in the technology itself. In May, the Trump administration also pulled more than $700 million in funds from Moderna that had initially been awarded to develop mRNA-based flu vaccines. The mRNA funding terminated so far came from HHS's Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority; multiple NIH officials told me that they anticipate that similar grant cuts will follow at their agency. (In an email, Kush Desai, a spokesperson for the White House, defended the administration's decision as a way to prioritize funding with 'the most untapped potential'; Nixon echoed that sentiment, casting the decision as 'a necessary pivot in how we steward public health innovations in vaccines.') COVID is a politically convenient entryway to broader anti-vaccine sentiment. COVID shots are among the U.S.'s most politicized vaccines, and many Republicans have, since the outbreak's early days, been skeptical of COVID-mitigation policies. Although most Americans remain supportive of vaccines on the whole, most Republicans—and many Democrats—say they're no longer keen on getting more COVID shots. 'People trust the COVID vaccines less,' Nuzzo told me, which makes it easy for the administration's vaccine opponents to use attacks on those vaccines as purchase for broader assaults. For all their COVID-centric hype, mRNA vaccines have long been under development for many unrelated diseases. And experts now worry that the blockades currently in place for certain types of mRNA vaccines could soon extend to other, similar technologies, including mRNA-based therapies in development for cancer and genetic disease, which might not make it through the approval process at Kennedy's FDA. (Nixon said HHS would continue to invest in mRNA research for cancer and other complex diseases.) Casting doubt on COVID shots makes other vaccines that have been vetted in the same way—and found to be safe and effective, based on high-quality data—look dubious. 'Once you establish that it's okay to override something for COVID,' Reiss told me, 'it's much easier to say, 'Well, now we're going to unrecommend MMR.'' (Kennedy's ACIP plans to review the entire childhood-immunization schedule and assess its cumulative effects.) Plenty of other avenues remain for Kennedy to play on COVID discontent—fear of the shots' side effects, distaste for mandates, declining trust in public health and medical experts —to pull back the government's support for vaccination. He has announced, for instance, his intention to reform the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, which helps protect manufacturers from lawsuits over illegitimate claims about a vaccine's health effects, and his plans to find 'ways to enlarge that program so that COVID-vaccine-injured people can be compensated.' Some of the experts I spoke with fear that the FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee—the agency's rough equivalent of ACIP—could be remade in Kennedy's vision. The administration has also been very willing to rescind federal funding from universities in order to forward its own ideas: Kennedy could, perhaps, threaten to withhold money from universities that require any vaccines for students. Kennedy has also insisted that 'we need to stop trusting the experts'—that Americans, for instance, shouldn't have been discouraged from doing their own research during the pandemic. He could use COVID as an excuse to make that maxim Americans' reality: Many public-health and infectious-disease-focused professional societies rely on at least some degree of federal funding, Nirav D. Shah, a former principal deputy director of the CDC, told me. Stripping those resources would be 'a way to cut their legs off'—or, at the very least, would further delegitimize those expert bodies in the public eye. Kennedy has already barred representatives from professional societies, including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, from participating in ACIP subcommittees after those two societies and others collectively sued HHS over its shifts in COVID policy. The public fight between medicine and government is now accelerating the nation onto a path where advice diverges over not just COVID shots but vaccines generally. (When asked about how COVID resentment was guiding the administration's decisions, Desai said that the media had politicized science to push for pandemic-era mandates and that The Atlantic 'continues to fundamentally misunderstand how the Trump administration is reversing this COVID era politicization of HHS.') The coronavirus pandemic began during the first Trump presidency; now its legacy is being exploited by a second one. Had the pandemic never happened, Kennedy would likely still be attacking vaccines, maybe even from the same position of power he currently commands. But without the lightning rod of COVID, Kennedy's attacks would be less effective. Already, one clear consequence of the Trump administration's anti-COVID campaign is that it will leave the nation less knowledgeable about and less prepared against all infectious diseases, Gregory Poland, a vaccinologist and the president of Atria Research Institute, told me. That might be the Trump administration's ultimate act of revenge. No matter who is in charge when the U.S. meets its next crisis, those leaders may be forced into a corner carved out by Trump and Kennedy—one from which the country must fight disease without adequate vaccination, research, or public-health expertise. This current administration will have left the nation with few other options.
Politico
22 minutes ago
- Politico
NIAID acting director's view of ‘risky research'
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In May, Trump signed an executive order banning all 'present and all future' federal funding for gain-of-function research in countries like China,which Trump said has insufficient research oversight. He also ordered the National Institutes of Health to review and possibly halt experiments the administration believes could endanger Americans' lives. In Congress, Sen. Rand Paul's (R-Ky.) Risky Research Review Act, which hasn't yet been taken up by the full Senate, would create a panel to review funding for gain-of-function research. Not black and white: During the podcast, Bhattacharya asked Taubenberger how the institute should approach gain-of-function research. 'It's not a simple black-and-white issue,' replied Taubenberger, a senior investigator in virology who's a leading expert on the 1918 flu pandemic and sequenced the virus that caused it. He's also co-leading the effort to develop a universal flu vaccine, backed with $500 million from the Trump administration. 'Very reasonable, very well-informed people could fall on opposite sides of the line, wherever you draw the line,' he said. 'Having a wide variety of people with different levels of expertise — not just logic expertise, but safety, national security, all sorts of other questions — having them weigh in on this is really important.' Regardless of where people fall, gain-of-function work shouldn't be shut down, he said. 'Work on nasty bugs that have the potential to kill people, for which we want to develop better therapeutics, diagnostics, prognostics, treatments and preventatives, needs to happen. That's important for global health. It's important for U.S. health,' Taubenberger said. But that research has to be done very carefully, with oversight and should be evaluated on a risk-benefit basis, he warned. While the pandemic turbocharged the issue, the controversy over gain-of-function predates Covid-19. 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In a letter to Newsom, obtained by our POLITICO colleagues at California Decoded, OpenAI suggests that California should consider AI companies that sign onto national and international AI agreements as compliant with state AI rules. The letter, dated Monday, from OpenAI's Chief Global Affairs Officer Chris Lehane, comes as Sacramento continues to debate key AI legislation, including Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener's bill SB 53, which would require large AI developers to publish safety and security protocols on their websites. Lehane recommended that 'California take the lead in harmonizing state-based AI regulation with emerging global standards' when it comes to the technology, dubbing it the California Approach. World view: OpenAI and other developers have already signed, or plan to sign, onto the EU's AI code of practice and have committed to conducting national security-related assessments of their programs. Lehane said that 'we encourage the state to consider frontier model developers compliant with its state requirements when they sign onto a parallel regulatory framework like the [European Union's] CoP or enter into a safety-oriented agreement with a relevant US federal government agency.' Newsom spokesperson Tara Gallegos said, 'We have received the letter. We don't typically comment on pending legislation.' Worth noting: The EU code is a voluntary way for companies to comply with the bloc's AI Act and is nonbinding in the U.S., which has no equivalent. Commitments to work with federal regulators don't necessarily cover all the areas, like deepfakes or chatbots, where Sacramento wants to regulate AI. But the letter offers Newsom something of an off-ramp, after he vetoed Wiener's broader AI safety bill last year that would have required programs to complete prerelease safety testing. Last week, Newsom spoke with cautious positivity about Wiener's effort this year, saying it was in the spirit of an expert report on AI regulation he commissioned. But SB 53 — which would establish whistleblower protections for AI workers and require companies to publish their own internal safety testing — still faces opposition from the tech industry. Lehane's letter puts an industry-sponsored solution on the governor's desk. He framed the simplified California Approach as a way to give 'democratic AI' an edge in the race with Chinese-built programs by removing unnecessary regulation, a key priority for the Trump administration. 'Imagine how hard it would have been during the Space Race had California's aerospace and technology industries been encumbered by regulations that impeded rapid innovation,' Lehane wrote.
UPI
an hour ago
- UPI
Petro government seeks OK for largest budget in Colombia's history
Colombian president Gustavo Petro's government has proposed a national general budget bill that totals $138.4 billion that, if approved, would be the largest in the country's history. Photo by Carlos Ortega/EPA Aug. 13 (UPI) -- Colombia's Congress has begun to debate the 2026 national general budget bill, a proposal from President Gustavo Petro's government that totals $138.4 billion -- equal to 28.9% of the nation's gross domestic produce. If approved, it would be the largest in the nation's history. The proposal calls for a 6% to 8% increase over the 2025 budget and prioritizes social spending, debt service and public investment programs. Debate over the proposal comes amid strong criticism from oversight agencies and analysts because $6.53 billion of the budget depends on a tax reform that has yet to be approved. The Comptroller General's Office warned the shortfall poses a significant fiscal risk, especially since the government already has invoked an escape clause in the fiscal rule through 2028, allowing it to temporarily expand the deficit and debt beyond legal limits. In early August, the International Monetary Fund said Colombia's economy "is navigating a complex landscape." The IMF noted that "although growth has strengthened and inflation has declined, fiscal challenges remain and private investment continues to be restrained." The government's deficit rose from 4.2% of GDP in 2023 to 6.7% in 2024. As a result, gross public debt reached 61.2% of GDP at the end of 2024, approaching the fiscal rule's ceiling of 71% of GDP. "This underscores the need for sustained medium-term efforts," the IMF said. While the imbalance was not caused solely by Petro's administration, public spending has increased considerably during his tenure, particularly in operating expenses, as reflected in national budgets. This has kept government spending at levels similar to or higher than during the COVID-19 pandemic, but without any extraordinary event to justify it -- a predicament that worsens the deficit. In Colombia's current situation, boosting state revenue is among the most urgent priorities. Officials have discussed a more efficient and equitable structural tax reform, which could include changes to the value-added tax in certain sectors and a review of the personal income tax. José Manuel Restrepo, who served as commerce and finance minister under former President Iván Duque, criticized the activation of the fiscal escape clause. Regarding the tax reform needed to support the budget, he said it will not pass Congress. "So where will the $6.53 billion come from? Most likely from reduced investment," he said. "The country does need its wealthy to pay taxes, because the excessive debt left by Duque must be paid -- and not with the money of working people," Petro said on X. Another key factor is building confidence among markets and credit rating agencies. "For this, the government must be transparent in its fiscal projections and actions. Implementing a credible fiscal strategy with achievable goals is crucial to maintaining macroeconomic stability," economist Juan Carlos Gainza of Trading Colombia said. "The fiscal rule plays a vital role as the main tool for disciplining public finances and preventing excessive debt. But compliance is becoming increasingly difficult amid spending pressures and the need to finance a range of social and economic programs," Gainza said.
