Over the past three decades Ara Mirzaian has fitted braces for everyone from Paralympians to children with scoliosis. But Msituni was a patient like none other — a newborn giraffe.

The calf was born Feb. 1 at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park in Escondido, north of San Diego, with a front leg bending the wrong way. Safari park staff feared she could die if they didn’t immediately correct the condition, which could prevent her from nursing and walking around the habitat.

But they had no experience with fitting a baby giraffe in a brace. That proved especially challenging given she was a 178-centimeter-tall newborn and growing taller every day. So, they reached out to experts in orthotics at the Hanger Clinic, where Mirzaian landed his very first animal patient.

“It was pretty surreal when I first heard about it,” Mirzaian told The Associated Press this week during a tour to meet Msituni, who was strutting alongside the other giraffes with no troubles. “Of course, all I did was go online and study giraffes for like 24/7 until we got out here.”

Zoos increasingly are turning to medical professionals who treat people to find solutions for ailing animals. The collaboration has been especially helpful in the field of prosthetics and orthotics. Earlier this year, ZooTampa in Florida teamed up with similar experts to successfully replace the beak of a cancer-stricken great hornbill bird with a 3D-printed prosthetic.

The Hanger team in California had fit orthotics for a cyclist and kayaker who both went on to win medals at the 2016 Paralympics in Brazil and customized a brace for a marathoner with multiple sclerosis who raced in seven continents.

And in 2006, a Hanger team in Florida created a prosthetic for a bottlenose dolphin that had lost its tail after becoming tangled in ropes from a crab trap. Their story inspired the 2011 movie Dolphin Tale.

But this was a definite learning curve for all, including Matt Kinney, a senior veterinarian for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance in charge of Msituni’s case.

“We commonly put on casts and bandages and stuff. But something that extensive, like this brace that she was provided, that’s something we really had to turn to our human (medicine) colleagues for,” Kinney said.

Msituni suffered from hyperextended carpi — wrist joint bones in giraffes’ front limbs, which are more like arms. As she overcompensated, the second front limb started to hyperextend as well. Her back leg joints also were weak but were able to be corrected with specialized hoof extenders.

And given that she weighed more than 55 kilograms at birth, the abnormality was already taking its toll on her joints and bones.

While the custom braces were being built, Kinney first bought post-surgery knee braces at Target that he cut up and re-sewed, but they kept slipping off. Then Msituni wore medical grade braces for humans that were modified for her long legs. But eventually Msituni broke one.

For the custom braces to work, they would need to have a range of motion but be durable, so Hanger worked with a company that makes horse braces.

Using cast moldings of the giraffe’s legs, it took eight days to make the carbon graphite braces that featured the animal’s distinct pattern of crooked spots to match her hide.

“We put on the giraffe pattern just to make it fun,” Mirzaian said. “We do this with kids all the time. They get to pick superheroes, or their favorite team and we imprint it on their bracing. So why not do it with a giraffe?”

In the end, Msituni only needed one brace. The other leg corrected itself with the medical grade brace.

When they put her under to fit the custom brace, Mirzaian was so moved by the animal’s beauty, he gave her a hug.

“It was just amazing seeing such a big, beautiful creature just lying there in front of me,” he said.

After 10 days in the custom brace, the problem was corrected.

All told, she was in braces for 39 days from the day she was born. She stayed in the animal hospital the entire time. After that, she was slowly introduced to her mom and others in the herd. Her mom never took her back, but another female giraffe has adopted her, so to speak, and she now runs along like the other giraffes.

Mirzaian hopes to hang up a picture of the baby giraffe in her patterned brace so the kids he treats will be inspired to wear theirs.

“It was the coolest thing to see an animal like that walk in a brace,” he said. “It feels good to know we saved a giraffe’s life.”
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California’s minimum wage will rise to $15.50 an hour for workers at all businesses, large and small, on Jan. 1, 2023, under an automatic inflation trigger built into state law and never previously activated, the governor’s office projected on Thursday.

The announcement came a day before Governor Gavin Newsom, a first-term Democrat, was slated to present his revised budget plan to the state legislature controlled by his party, including a proposed $11.8 billion inflation-relief spending package.

The economic stimulus proposal, similar to one enacted last year to help California recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, includes a plan Newsom previewed in recent weeks offering $400 tax rebates to vehicle owners to help offset escalating gasoline costs.

Newsom said his package taps into a “historic” state budget surplus to help individuals and families cope with rising costs of living, which the state Finance Department projects will grow 7.6% between fiscal year 2021 and fiscal 2022.

Regardless of whether Newsom’s package becomes law, the Finance Department estimates that some 3 million workers stand to benefit from the first inflation-based minimum wage hike expected to take effect under a labor statute enacted in 2016.

That law requires an automatic 50-cent-per-hour increase above California’s prevailing minimum wage levels – already the highest any state requires for larger companies – whenever the U.S. consumer price index rises more than 7% from year to year.

That means the statewide minimum wage for companies employing 26 or more workers, and those with 25 or fewer workers, will both go to $15.50 in the new year. Without an inflation trigger, the minimum wage for smaller companies was due to have topped out at $15 in January, catching up with the level now required at larger firms.

Only two states — Massachusetts and Washington state — exceed California’s existing $14 minimum wage for smaller companies. They require at least $14.25 and $14.49 per hour, respectively, at businesses of all sizes, U.S. Labor Department figures show.

The District of Columbia is higher still, at $15.20 an hour. The U.S. federal minimum hourly wage is currently set at $7.25.

Other highlights of Newsom’s inflation package include $2.7 billion in emergency rental assistance for low-income tenants and $1.4 billion to help utility customers pay overdue bills.

The California Republican Party issued a statement urging the legislature to suspend state gasoline taxes as “the most effective way to relieve pain at the pump.”
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A predominantly Black college in central Illinois named after Abraham Lincoln and founded the year the former president was assassinated will close this week, months after a cyberattack that compounded enrollment struggles due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Lincoln College, which saw record enrollment numbers in 2019, said in a news release that it scrambled to stay afloat with fundraising campaigns, a consolidation of employee positions, and exploring leasing alternatives.

“Unfortunately, these efforts did not create long-term viability for Lincoln College in the face of the pandemic,” the school, which opened in 1865 in Lincoln, about 170 miles southwest of Chicago, said in the release.

Then, as COVID cases fell and students returned to schools across the country, the college was victimized by a December cyberattack. It left all the systems needed to recruit students, retain them and raise money inoperable for three months.

Lincoln’s president, David Gerlach, told the Chicago Tribune that the school paid a ransom of less than $100,000 after an attack that he said originated in Iran. But when the systems were fully restored, the school that had just over 1,000 students during the 2018-19 academic year discovered “significant enrollment shortfalls” that would require a massive donation or partnership to stay open beyond the current semester.

A GoFundMe campaign called Save Lincoln College was launched with a goal of raising $20 million but as of this week, only $2,352 had been raised. And Gerlach told the Tribune that the school needed $50 million to remain open.

“The loss of history, careers, and a community of students and alumni is immense,” Gerlach said in a statement. The school did not immediately return a call Tuesday from The Associated Press.

The school also announced that the Higher Learning Commission had approved what are called Teach Out/Transfer Agreements with 21 colleges. The school held a college fair last month to give students a chance to learn where they might want to transfer.
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An infant formula shortage that began several months ago is reaching crisis proportions in the United States, as a combination of supply chain problems and a major recall are making it difficult or impossible for many parents to secure the product. 

The shortage has prompted retailers to limit the amount of formula that individuals can buy, in order to deter hoarding. It has also placed enormous strain on social services programs such as the federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, known by the acronym WIC. 

“The unprecedented scope of this infant formula recall has serious consequences for babies and new parents,” Brian Dittmeier, senior director of public policy at the National WIC Association, said in a statement provided to VOA. “Assurances from manufacturers that production has ramped up have not yet translated to new product on the shelf. Each day that this crisis continues, parents grow more anxious and desperate to find what they need to feed their infants.” 

Some health departments said that they had, with a few exceptions, been able to keep formula in stock for WIC recipients.  

In an email exchange with VOA, a District of Columbia health department spokesperson said, “Since the beginning of the national infant formula shortage, DC Health has been working with its WIC formula vendor, local retail stores, and its WIC grantees … to ensure all families receiving DC WIC benefits have continuous access to infant formula. While there have been spot shortages of infant formula in some stores, DC Health and its WIC grantee partners are assisting DC WIC families, and currently these families are able to purchase a range of infant formulas using their WIC benefits.” 

A crisis with multiple causes 

The baby formula supply started to become unsteady in the second half of 2021, according to Datasembly, a firm that tracks sales at grocery and retail stores. In the first half of last year, out-of-stock rates for infant formula held steady, between 2% and 8%, the company found. As the year went on, however, the rates began climbing, ending the year at over 15%. 

The growing scarcity in the U.S. was primarily attributed to various supply chain woes caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Rates climbed sharply in February, after Abbott, one of the three companies that produce virtually all infant formula in the U.S., announced a voluntary recall of its products after discovering dangerous bacteria in one of its manufacturing plants.  

The Abbott plant was shut down, and as of Thursday, it still had not received permission to begin production again.  

By the beginning of April, Datasembly was reporting out-of-stock rates above 30%. At the end of last week, the rate had leaped to 43%. 

Few import options 

When U.S. domestic production of crucial goods is disrupted, market participants’ natural reaction is to import foreign-made goods to satisfy demand. But with infant formula, it’s not that simple. 

Food and Drug Administration rules covering infant formula are so strict that almost all foreign-made formula cannot be legally sold in the U.S. That includes formula that meets standards for sale in the European Union and in developed countries such as Canada and Mexico. 

Abbott, which has an FDA-certified manufacturing facility in Ireland, has been air-shipping formula from the country daily, but the volume has not been meeting the need. 

Increasing production difficult 

Converting other food-manufacturing facilities to produce infant formula is not feasible because it poses an unacceptable health risk, the FDA said in a statement.  

“It’s important to understand that only facilities experienced in and already making essentially complete nutrition products are in the position to produce infant formula product that would not pose significant health risks to consumers,” the agency said.  

The FDA is aware that parents nationwide are struggling, Commissioner Robert M. Califf said in a statement.  

“We are doing everything in our power to ensure there is adequate product available where and when they need it,” he said. “Ensuring the availability of safe, sole-source nutrition products like infant formula is of the utmost importance to the FDA. Our teams have been working tirelessly to address and alleviate supply issues and will continue doing everything within our authority to ensure the production of safe infant formula products.” 

White House announces actions 

On Thursday, the White House announced the administration of President Joe Biden was taking several steps to alleviate the crisis.  

The administration said it would work with states to loosen the rules WIC participants follow when buying formula. The program usually requires them to use WIC funds to buy specific kinds of formula, and in packages of a specific volume. Easing those rules will help reduce the stress on many families, the administration said. 

The White House said it would ask the Federal Trade Commission to “crack down” on any businesses taking advantage of the shortage to raise prices to “unfair” levels.  

Finally, the administration said that in the coming days, the FDA would announce steps to make it easier to import infant formula from other countries. 

Congress gets involved 

In Congress, Representative Frank Pallone, a Democrat who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said Wednesday that his committee would investigate the formula shortage this month.  

“The focus of this hearing will be on better understanding the causes of the shortage, what has been done to increase production and supply thus far, and what more still needs to be done to ensure access to safe formula across the nation,” Pallone said. 

While Pallone praised the Biden administration’s actions, the top Republican on the committee, Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington state, criticized the White House for its slow response. 

“We are asking the questions. We’ve been raising the alarm to President Biden for months,” she said. “We’ve been seeing the empty shelves. We’ve been seeing the rising cost on families.”  

She added, “On behalf of every parent and caregiver who is unsure as to whether they will be able to feed their children, we need answers and we need accountability.” 

Structural problems

Some people involved in the WIC program question the wisdom of allowing a system to persist in which only a few companies supply something as vital as infant formula. They also question the tactics of infant formula manufacturers, who provide free samples to new mothers, which many see as discouraging breastfeeding.

“As a country, we must take a hard look at how we got to this moment,” said Dittmeier of the National WIC Association.  

“The infant formula industry is highly concentrated, with only three companies bidding for contracts in the WIC space,” he said. “For decades, this small number of manufacturers have been allowed to target new parents in hospitals and other settings, undermining public health efforts to promote breastfeeding. 

“These tactics are abetted by policies that do not support new mothers in sustaining breastfeeding, including the more than 9 million women who work in jobs that do not have statutory protections for nursing or pumping.” 

He added, “Every day, we hear from parents who are hurt, angry, anxious and scared. The lives of their infants are on the line. It is time for answers and accountability as we all work to improve the supply and ease the worries of parents enduring this national crisis.” 
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U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday appealed to world leaders to step up efforts to respond to the next phase in the global pandemic, as the United States itself reaches a grim COVID-19 point – without the billions of dollars in emergency funding Biden has asked of Congress. 

“Today, we mark a tragic milestone here in the United States: one million COVID deaths,” Biden said in a pre-recorded message Thursday morning to attendees of the second U.S-led virtual COVID summit, co-hosted by Belize, Germany, Indonesia and Senegal. 

The U.S. has recorded about 82 million COVID cases, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Estimates of the total deaths vary, but as of Thursday Johns Hopkins University data said 999,009 deaths have been recorded.

New U.S. cases and hospitalizations have been rising in recent weeks, but the number of deaths has stayed relatively low, at around 300 per day, down from more than 3,000 per day back in February. 

Biden added, “Around the world, many more millions have died. Millions of children have been orphaned, with thousands still dying every day. Now is the time for us to act. All of us together. We all must do more, must honor those we have lost by doing everything we can to prevent as many deaths as possible.”

The U.S. comes to this gathering without a commitment from Congress for the $5 billion in global funding that Biden has asked for: a fact that Germany’s leader seemed to highlight in his introductory comments. 

“So what is needed?” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said. “The short answer is ‘money.’” 

Money, indeed, is the main focus of this gathering of leaders. Scholz pledged $885 million dollars to global COVID efforts on Thursday. Other wealthy nations announced new commitments, with Italy pledging $208 million to the global Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator; South Korea pledging $300 million to that initiative; and South Africa pledging to donate 5 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and 10 million doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to other African nations. 

Vice President Kamala Harris appealed to the U.S. Congress to approve the White House’s funding requests. 

“We have called upon the United States Congress for $22.5 billion dollars in additional emergency funding to battle COVID,” she said. “Five billion dollars of that would be dedicated to continue our leadership and helping to save lives around the world. We will continue to advocate for these life-saving resources as part of our global commitment.”

Co-host President Macky Sall of Senegal said Africa has so far managed to avoid the dire predictions at the beginning of the pandemic, because of strong continental leadership. 

“In Africa, we have been able to remain resilient in the face of COVID-19 with relatively few positive cases and deaths compared to the rest of the world, whereas the worst was feared,” he said. “Our countries have adopted response strategies, each within their means. We have also coordinated our ongoing efforts at the continental level under the leadership of President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa with the support of the African Union Commission and Africa CDC,” referring to the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health experts, however, have questioned whether Africa’s true death toll has been seriously underreported.  “The numbers are so staggeringly different that arguments about demographic or health advantages are no longer plausible in explaining the gap,” write demographic and health experts Toshido Kaneda and Lori Ashford of the Washington-based Population Reference Bureau. “Rather, COVID-19 cases and deaths in sub-Saharan Africa appear to be vastly undercounted.”

What the US is doing – and what it isn’t

Biden said that the U.S. is continuing to fight the pandemic by sharing U.S government-developed COVID-19 technologies with the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Technology Access Pool. And, he said, the U.S. will start a pilot program with the Global Fund to expand access to rapid testing and antiviral treatments. 

A senior administration official told reporters on the eve of the summit that the U.S. has a three-point plan: first, to prevent complacency as new variants continue to emerge; second, to prevent deaths by focusing on the most vulnerable; and third, to lay the groundwork to prevent future pandemics. 

The White House says it’s realistic about its main constraint. 

“I think we don’t want to sugarcoat it, that we need more money,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki. “We don’t have a plan B here.” 

She urged Congress to approve the funding, “because we’re going to exhaust our treatment supply, we’ll lose out to other countries on promising new treatments, we’ll lose our place in line for America to order new COVID vaccines, we’ll be unable to maintain our supply of COVID tests, and our effort to get — help lower-income countries get COVID vaccines into arms will stall, which is especially relevant given the international summit we’re hosting.”

Absent from the summit, however, were two major vaccine developers – China and Russia. 

Russia attended the previous summit, in September; China has yet to attend the event. VOA asked a senior White House official why those two nations were not included. 

“In terms of whether Russia was invited: no, we did not extend a commitment ask to them,” he said. “And with other countries, we have extended and asked for a financial policy commitment.” He added, “We’re finding amongst the countries, the companies, the philanthropies and the nonprofits that have committed to this effort that we’ve mobilized $3.1 billion dollars of financing towards the global fight. So it’s clear other countries are stepping up to do their part.”

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus delivered his organization’s four requests to summit attendees: 

“First, we call for a policy commitment to boost vaccination, testing and treatment in countries,” he said. “Second, we call for investment in local production. Third, we call for financial commitments to fully fund the ACT accelerator and WHO strategic preparedness readiness and response plan. And fourth, we call for political commitment to support the financial intermediary fund and the new architecture for global health security.”

South Africa’s president warned that the real goal should be global, equitable action. 

“The threat of new waves and the emergence of new variants is ever present,” Ramaphosa said. “Because COVID-19 is not over yet.”

Chris Hannas contributed to this report.
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In his draft opinion overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion, conservative U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito stressed that his ruling was limited to abortion and would not affect other rights.

“Nothing in this opinion,” Alito wrote in the leaked document, “should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.”

The document is an initial draft and could change before a final decision is handed down in the next several weeks. But despite Alito’s assurances, the sweeping case it makes for reversing the 1973 decision and a subsequent abortion ruling from 1992 has raised alarm among liberals that the same rationale could be used to roll back other rights.

Among them: the right of adults to use contraception, the freedom to marry outside one’s own race, and the right to same-sex marriage — freedoms known collectively as “substantive due process rights.”

“If the rationale of the decision as released were to be sustained, a whole range of rights are in question, a whole range of rights,” President Joe Biden said last week.

Central to Alito’s argument is an old conservative objection that Roe v. Wade “manufactured” a right that has no basis in the Constitution.

In affirming the right of Norma McCorvey — the Jane Roe in the court case — to end her pregnancy, the justices ruled 7-2 that abortion is part of a “fundamental right to privacy” inherent in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

Adopted in 1868, the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause has been used by the Supreme Court to affirm a panoply of constitutional rights such as the right to marry and the right to use contraception.

But Alito argued that neither abortion nor privacy can be found in the Constitution.

Echoing another conservative criticism, he wrote that the 1973 ruling was “egregiously wrong” in part because the right to an abortion is “not deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions.”

In fact, he noted, abortion was criminalized by many states at the time of the 14th Amendment’s ratification after the American Civil War.

But just because something was illegal in the 19th century and is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution doesn’t mean it can’t be constitutionally protected, said Sonia Suter, a law professor at The George Washington University Law School.

“When you look at the way he does the analysis to say how terribly wrongly decided Roe was, you could use that exact same analysis to determine that there are aren’t other rights that are not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution,” Suter told VOA in an interview.

Caroline Fredrickson, a law professor at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the left-leaning Brennan Center, said Alito’s assurance that his ruling would have no bearing on other precedents is “misleading.”

“It just doesn’t work that way,” she said in an interview with VOA. “Anybody who is familiar with the common law system understands that precedents are based on legal reasoning, and they develop. One precedent follows another. If you strike down a law based on a fundamental disagreement with the legal reasoning that underpins it, the same exact arguments will allow the other decisions to be overturned.”

Here is a look at four Supreme Court decisions that a Roe v. Wade reversal could impact.

Griswold v. Connecticut

Widely seen as a precursor to Roe v. Wade, this 1965 ruling struck down a Connecticut law that banned the use of contraception.

In 1961, Estelle Griswold, a Planned Parenthood official, and C. Lee Buxton, a Yale University gynecologist, were arrested and fined for operating a birth control clinic in Connecticut.

The two challenged their conviction, arguing that the Connecticut law violated their rights under the 14th Amendment.

In a 7-2 ruling, the court found Connecticut’s law infringed on the constitutional “right of marital privacy.”

The decision paved the way for Roe v. Wade, according to Suter.

“Roe relied heavily on the line of reasoning (in Griswold) and the sort of substantive due process,” she said.

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe, many liberals fear it could use the same reasoning to invalidate Roe’s precursor.

“If Casey (the 1992 opinion that reaffirmed abortion rights) is to fall, if Roe v. Wade is to fall, then Griswold v. Connecticut presumably is to fall, as well,” Democratic Representative Jamie Raskin, a constitutional scholar, said last week on MSNBC.

But while many conservatives have raised questions about the legal reasoning behind the contraception ruling, few expect an outright ban on birth control.

Instead, Fredrickson said, overturning Roe could lead to “a chipping away (of the right to contraception) by increasingly describing forms of birth control as abortion or ‘abortion-like’ and allowing states to regulate access to them.”

Loving v. Virginia

Before this 1967 case, more than a dozen U.S. states prohibited white people from marrying African Americans.

This historic case involved Mildred Jeter, a Black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man. Unable to marry in their own state in 1958, they traveled to Washington, D.C.

They were arrested when they returned to Virginia under the state’s laws banning interracial marriages.

Tried and convicted, they were each given a one-year jail sentence on the condition that they leave the state and not return as a married couple for 25 years.

The Supreme Court found that Virginia’s so-called anti-miscegenation statute violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

“Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides within the individual and cannot be infringed by the state,” Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the court’s unanimous decision.

“Going after Loving would be extreme,” Fredrickson said.

Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, considered the court’s most conservative member, is an African American and married to a white woman.

Lawrence v. Texas

A landmark ruling for gay rights, this 2003 decision struck down a Texas law that criminalized homosexual sex, leading to the repeal of so-called “anti-sodomy laws” around the country.

In 1998, John Lawrence and a male partner were found having sex when police entered Lawrence’s apartment in response to a disturbance call.

After being arrested and fined under Texas’ anti-sodomy law, the men challenged the statute as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

The Supreme Court agreed. Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy, a prominent champion of LGBTQ rights on the court, wrote the majority opinion.

“Petitioners’ right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in private conduct without government intervention,” he wrote.

For LGBTQ rights activists, the decision, which overturned a 1986 Supreme Court ruling upholding a similar anti-sodomy law in Georgia, was a major victory.

Obergefell v. Hodges

This 2015 decision established gay marriage as a constitutional right.

The case was brought by a group of same-sex couples challenging state laws that did not allow them to legally marry.

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that states must allow gay couples to marry and recognize such marriages performed in states where they were legal.

Again, Kennedy wrote the majority opinion. “They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.”

Hailed as a major achievement for the LGBTQ community in America, the narrowly decided case is now in jeopardy, Fredrickson said.

“I think there is a very fervent disagreement with the Obergefell decision based on the same idea of tradition in our society,” he said.

All six conservatives currently on the bench disagree with the Obergefell ruling, according to legal scholars. But whether they’d join forces to overturn it “is another story,” Suter said.
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Calling US farms the ‘breadbasket of democracy,’ president vows to do more to offset food supply issues amid Russian invasion
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