Category: News Feeds

* A New Jersey jury awarded $750 Million against Johnson & Johnson in a contaminated talc lawsuit. That’s a lot of cheddar. [Reuters]

* Speaking of cheddar, Judge Judy has an annual salary of $47 Million, and a few different parties are fighting over the profits of her popular show. [Fox News]

* A lawyer argued that plea deals are unconstitutional, and now prosecutors allegedly won’t negotiate with her. Perhaps that too is unconstitutional? [Washington Post]

* The California senate has settled a retaliation lawsuit filed by an ex-staffer of a state senator. [Los Angeles Times]

* A man who has fought a Florida city all the way to the Supreme Court twice, and won both times, has finally received a $875,000 settlement. [ABC News]

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Jordan Rothman is a partner of The Rothman Law Firm, a full-service New York and New Jersey law firm. He is also the founder of Student Debt Diaries, a website discussing how he paid off his student loans. You can reach Jordan through email at jordan@rothmanlawyer.com.

Location: Mt Hampden, 30km outside Harare The water-shortage crisis has worsened recently due to the drought. Children are missing school twice a week. Women are being abused at water sources. Children and women are walking up to 2 kilometres to access water. Credit: Lovejoy Mtongwiza (Twitter: @LJaymut10), award-winning Zimbabwe-based photojournalist.

HARARE, Zimbabwe, Feb 6 2020 (IPS) – In November 2019, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food described Zimbabwe – a country once hailed as the bread basket of Africa – as a state on the brink of man-made starvation.

Some 5.5 million inhabitants are food insecure, with over 2 million also lacking access to essential services such as healthcare and clean water. These numbers are expected to rise to over 8 million and 3.5 million respectively in 2020, affecting some 60% of the population.

At the end of January, a Humanity First team led by Tahir Ahmad, its head of humanitarian operations, travelled to Zimbabwe to lay plans for humanitarian response efforts and set up a Zimbabwean office.

Humanity First is an international aid agency, registered in 43 countries across six continents, which has been working on human development projects and responding to disasters since 1994.

Excerpts from the interview:

Craig Dube:
What brings you to Zimbabwe, and what have you found?

Tahir Ahmad:
When we initially came here in 2018, in the wake of Cyclone Idai, we saw that Chimanimani [in southeastern Zimbabwe] was an area that seemed isolated, but was not alone in terms of need. In the problems people there were experiencing because of the cyclone – hunger, thirst, the lack of decent shelter and healthcare provision – they weren’t alone. These conditions were widespread wherever we went, even in Harare.

We’re back in Zimbabwe now to get things moving faster: get all the infrastructure in place, get everyone trained up very quickly, do needs assessments and help local Humanity First staff understand how to translate their needs assessment into project proposals that we can look at, get funds and mobilise quickly to do the work.

CD: What will Humanity First prioritise?

TA: We just came back from Mashonaland West province, and I remember driving away from every area thinking, “This challenge is too big for us”. The people there need… everything. But there are some core needs, like food and running water.

I’m a bit breathless at the moment: I saw so many people and their needs are so diverse. We were in urban areas where there were number of functioning boreholes, their hand pumps were working fairly well, and the water was flowing nicely. But this was put into perspective when an old woman told us: “The distance is fine – when I was well and when we were eating food. Now we don’t really have the strength to walk that distance.”

The price of maize, for example, is just ridiculous in the context of people’s income. In some areas the average wage is about three hundred [Zimbabwean] bond dollars per month (about USD$15), but a 10kg bag of maize is 100 bond dollars.

People are so hungry, and the heat is searing. They need sustainable food supplies, and purified water, too. Many are resorting to getting water from lakes, and there’s a risk of cholera, typhoid, or — at best — diarrhoea.

Many women want to sew to bring some value into their local economy. But if they’ve got a sewing machine, it’s either broken or they have no way of powering it any more.

We saw many instances of grandmothers who no longer have children, for various reasons – including deaths, illness or abandonment – and are living in dire poverty, with a yard full of grandchildren

We saw people who were unable to work because of cataracts; one grandmother we met was pretty close to blindness because of them. Before that, she had been able to sustain her family; she had some technical expertise in carpentry, and she had sold food as well. If we restore her sight, it’ll make a big impact not only for her, but for the nine grandchildren she’s looking after.

There are plenty of elderly people who are completely immobilised, and disabled kids who need special care and attention; wheelchairs, or at least crutches. It’s more a case of what don’t they need, really, than what they need. If I told you what they need, I’d be here all day.

CD: How do you make change happen as an organisation? What capacity do you have to say, “These are the things we can do to bring change”?

TA: As an organisation, our expertise is about mobilising logistics, it’s not just about supplying immediate needs. One thing we’re looking to do is a root cause analysis, which is essentially:

You’re hungry. Why are you hungry?
Because I have no food.
Why have you got no food?
Because I have no money.
Why have you got no money?
Because farming isn’t going on very well.
Why is it not going very well?

Because of poor irrigation systems.
This root cause analysis is a process of asking, why, why, why?

There are a number of places where, if we could just get a few boreholes installed, we could give farmers access to water, perhaps fund a few irrigation systems. Not install them ourselves, but fund people to do it, which will give them the ability to self-sustain. In the meantime, though, there are areas that need food now.

I simply don’t see enough of a marketplace where we can say, here’s some cash, some vouchers or some EcoCash [mobile money]; go buy your own food. The marketplace is not functioning well, and the supply is not flowing well enough to serve the number of people we want to serve. Once we get that immediate stuff done, then we’ll be looking at, how we turn immediate assistance into development. We are looking at sustainable livelihoods.

CD: As a Zimbabwean, I find it hard to imagine the scale of the challenges some regions of my country are facing.

TA: Absolutely. You can go to a shopping mall in Harare and buy coffee and a few cakes, and that’s the equivalent of five people’s monthly wage in some rural areas.

I would really encourage people from Harare and other major cities to go out to rural areas. Go and see for yourselves, and come back and advocate. Advocate, advocate, advocate.

CD: What people and organisations will Humanity First be engaging within Zimbabwe?

TA: Operational partnerships happen out there in the field. You bump into people, you go to coordination meetings, and you try not to duplicate efforts. The key thing is getting an understanding of the operational environment.

We spent a big chunk of this trip talking to multiple NGOs and the Zimbabwean government. NGOs and other actors tend to work in isolation, but this time I think everyone’s seen that the challenges are big. You cannot work together.

CD: In 2020, why do we still need humanitarian aid organisations?

TA: A few years ago, the future of aid was cash transfers. But everything is dependent on the marketplace and the environment, because every disaster or crisis is different. The solution has to be government-led, and in Zimbabwe, it is to a degree. It is about investing resources in manpower and human capital development, planning and programming toward that end goal of human development.

When we talk about aid, we talk about humanitarian actors coming in… and in many cases not being very effective. It’s because traditionally they have just been treating symptoms, where, if people are hungry, they don’t ask why, they just give food and walk away.

So, the challenge for us, and for many organisations, is thinking about what the end status we want to see is, and who we need to work with to make it happen, although that’s a very simplistic way of putting it.

We have a long-term desire for involvement here, not from a humanitarian perspective, but a development perspective. The plan is to design the development programme first and then look at the humanitarian programme as the enabler, almost the precursor. In contexts like Zimbabwe, it is the development part that is the most challenging.

CD: How do you ensure that the people and areas you serve do not become aid-dependent?

TA: That’s pretty simple: sustainable livelihoods. If you have a sustainable livelihood focus from the outset, then generally people won’t be looking for handouts. And in fact, here in Zimbabwe, no one’s looking to us for sympathy. No one’s begging.

When you look at the root-cause level, Zimbabweans are looking for ways to support themselves. Communities genuinely understand that food supplies aren’t always sustainable. You can do a six-month [food aid] programme, but there’s little point if people will be starving in the seventh month.

If instead you have a sustainable livelihood focus, and invest the time in your assessments, speak to as many people as possible, understand local economies, and understand the systems and see how one factor within a local economy can have massive repercussions in the wider economy within a good systems thinking frame, then you can have massive impact in terms of sustainability.

CD: What are the key challenges for Humanity First’s work in Zimbabwe?

TA: It’s not going to be the government or their structures – counter to what I thought would be the case. I mean, the government is doing the best they can. I’ve had a few meetings with ministers and they are leveraging all the help they can get. I know there are a lot of detractors of the Zimbabwean government, but every meeting I’ve had has been very welcoming. They have only been enablers.

The big challenge is going to be inflation. It’s going to be people’s ever-greater needs if we’re not fast enough. We are racing against the clock – and that’s the whole humanitarian community, not just us.

We need to act fast enough to fight issues like cholera, typhoid and malnutrition. We need to get here and start working straight away in a coordinated manner.

CD: What makes you hopeful?

TA: We did a community gathering with 500 people in Mashonaland West. We had only asked for 100, but many more people came, and some had travelled 7 km or more. And what gave me hope, in dialogue with them on both an individual level and a focus group level, was their resilience.

I found myself thinking, what if this had happened to me? I have no idea what I would do. I imagined having no income at all and no one to rely on, no vertical resilience coming from the state, and not being able rely on my friends or family or the wider community. I wouldn’t know how to survive.

But the people we met were doing it. Imagine: you have no food, no electricity, no water, no transportation, no IT capacities, no ways to communicate and you’ve got a limited skillset. What do you do? But they make it happen: Zimbabweans’ resilience makes me hopeful. They are tough as nails, but time is our challenge.

*Craig Dube is a Zimbabwean native and health equity professional working in the fields of socio-political determinants of unequal health outcome and poverty alleviation. He is a 2018-19 Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity. Craig completed an MSc in Inequalities and Social Science at the London School of Economics in 2019, followed by a traineeship at Oxfam UK.

Post published in: Featured

Vegetable vendors in Zimbabwe. While the country is experiencing massive food shortages, many vendors say they are forced to throw rotting vegetables away as people don’t have the money to purchase their goods any longer. Credit: Michelle Chifamba/IPS

BULAWAYO, (IPS) – Piles and piles of rotting vegetables at food markets situated right in Zimbabwe’s central business district would elsewhere be viewed as a sign of plenty.

But this Southern African nation has not been spared the irony of food wastage at a time of food shortages.

In Bulawayo’s sprawling vegetable market in the CBD, which provides a livelihood for hundreds of vendors, rotting vegetables have become the norm.

With the country facing an ever-growing food crisis that has seen international appeals for humanitarian assistance, the lack of activity at vegetable markets in the country’s major cities highlights the challenges developing countries face with balancing food production and consumption.

“We cannot give away the vegetables just because we fear they will rot,” said Mihla Hadebe, who sells anything from tomatoes to cabbages to mangoes and cucumbers.

“Even if we lower prices, people just do not have money that is why you see a lot of vegetables rotting like this,” Hadebe told IPS from his vegetable stall.

And this is happening at a time vendors say there is a shortage of vegetables that range from staples such as African kale, cabbages and tomatoes, and whose shortages have pushed up prices.

While a bunch of kale sold for ZWD.2  (about 1 US cent) in December, the price has now shot up to ZWD5 (about 3 US cents), Hadebe said “because there is nothing [available] where we buy these veggies. The farmers say there is no water”.

According to the Southern Africa Media in Agriculture Climate and Environment Trust (SAMACET) and the Food and Agriculture Organisation it is difficult to quantify the losses but they acknowledge the wastage in Zimbabwe is quite huge.

Zimbabwe is one of many countries included in the Food Sustainability Index, created by the Barilla Centre for Food and Nutrition and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), and the country has become the focus of concerns about under-nutrition amid a crippling drought blamed on climate uncertainty.

Vegetables are thrown away despite reminders by nutritionists of their value in daily consumption habits.

The 2018 Barilla report titled Fixing Food, noted that Zimbabwe was one of 11 African countries still lagging behind in “implementing health eating guidelines at national level.”

“Given the fact that about a third of the food the world produces is lost or thrown away, sustainable agriculture can only go so far. Tackling consumer food waste and post-harvest waste (the loss of fresh produce and crops before they reach consumer markets) will involve everything from changing consumption patterns to investing in infrastructure and deploying new digital technologies. None of this is easy,” the report noted. 

“But while enough food is already being produced to feed the world’s population, ending hunger and meeting rising demand for food will not be possible without addressing this high level of food loss and waste,” the report says.

It comes at a time when Zimbabwe seeks to address the growing problem of under-nutrition. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has already raised alarm about high levels of poor nutrition in the country, noting that the problem is especially worse among children and women.

“In Zimbabwe, nearly 1 in 3 children under five are suffering from malnutrition, while 93 per cent of children between 6 months and 2 years of age are not consuming the minimum acceptable diet,” James Maiden, UNICEF Zimbabwe spokesperson told IPS.

“Across the country about 34,000 children are critically suffering from acute malnutrition,” Maiden said.

While in urban and rural areas, families have long produced their food in community gardens, the projects have suffered because of extreme weather despite being fed by boreholes.

“What is happening is terrible. We have borehole but as you can see our vegetables are suffering under this heat,” said Judith Siziba, one of many women who plants vegetables for domestic consumption in the city of Bulawayo.

“There is nothing we can do but watch. We thought even if there are no rains, the boreholes would offer us relief but no,” she told IPS.

This is at a time concerns have been raised that climate change has also affected groundwater levels when boreholes are expected to offer relief to the agriculture sector to ensure food security.

Zimbabwe is one of many countries that have seen record high temperatures, throwing agriculture activity into uncertainty as food insecurity worsens.

This has worsened everyday diets amid poor salaries despite full supermarkets in a country that falls under sub-Saharan African region where the Food Sustainability Index says is home to the world’s hungriest populations.

The World Food Programme (WFP) says the number of people requiring food assistance continues to rise in Zimbabwe, stating that half the population — nearly 8 million people — is now facing food insecurity. It has also raised concerns about under-nourishment for both children and adults.

“WFP is working towards doubling the number of people it assists in Zimbabwe. We aim to support 4.1 million people who are facing hunger,” said Isheeta Sumra, the WPF-Zimbabwe spokesperson.

“As things currently stand, we urgently need $200 million to see us through till mid-2020. The situation is dire, and we can foresee our needs growing over 2020,” Sumra told IPS.

Nathan Hayes, an analyst with the EIU, believes the country has been slow in responding to the food and nutrition crisis.

“Making matters worse, poor rains have exacerbated the food crisis. This ongoing economic crisis means that social safety nets have been cut, leaving many families vulnerable and unable to afford sufficient food each day,” Hayes told IPS. 

Post published in: Featured

The validation meeting was convened to introduce the African Health Observatory; to introduce the concept of a National Health Observatory (NHO) and to validate and approve data for the AHO portal, with support from WHO technical staff. Program indicators that can be used to measure the country’s progress towards the SDGs and Universal Health Coverage like TB, HIV, Malaria, Nutrition, Human Resources, Health Information, Reproductive, Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health and Population Projections for the year 2011 to 2018, among others, were imported into the system and are now available via the AHO portal. This is the first step for Zimbabwe towards establishing a National Health Observatory.

“We envisage to have health data publicly available, and we continue to work towards introducing platforms that facilitate access to information on the health status of the country, so in 2020 the Ministry of Health and Child Care will be engaging its stakeholders to introduce the concept of a National Health Observatory, which, if adopted, would be implemented in the same year,” said Mr Munyanyi, Deputy Director National Health Information Systems, in the Ministry of Health and Child Care.

The African Health Observatory is an online, open-access one-stop repository for health information. Its aim is to strengthen the health information system (HIS) through increasing access to health data and statistics, thereby facilitating use of evidence for policy and decision-making. The AHO is the core of a reinforced regional health information system, interacting with national health observatories (NHOs), to contribute to data collection and analysis, monitoring and evaluation at national level.

AHO products include online publications of the Region’s health situation and trends and an annual atlas of the African Health Statistics. The AHO is used to monitor the Region’s progress towards Universal Health Coverage and the Sustainable Development Goals (UHC/SDGs). According to Thandekile Moyo HMIS/ M&E Officer in WHO Country Office for Zimbabwe, “we are excited that the AHO gives countries a platform to share data which has not been historically available; and improves the availability, quality and use of information and evidence for policy and decision-making by strengthening health information systems.”

The African Health Observatory was created in 2010 following recommendations of the Algiers and Ouagadougou declarations that were endorsed by the 59th session of the Regional Committee for Africa, (AFR/RC59/5). In 2012, the 62nd session of the Regional Committee (AFR/RC62/R5) requested WHO to support Member States to establish National Health Observatories (NHOs). The African Health Observatory is centrally managed at the WHO Regional Office for Africa to ensure data, analytics and knowledge of Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and SDGs are regularly available at regional and country level.

The Kadoma validation meeting was attended by senior officers from the Ministry of Health and Child Care (MOHCC), including Health Information Systems and Monitoring and Evaluation Officers. These were introduced to the concept of a National Health Observatory and plans to establish one for Zimbabwe were mooted.

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Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition Chairperson, Rashid Mahiya, presented to the Movement for Democratic Change a Civil Society Framework on the Resolution of the Zimbabwe Crisis. The framework is a product of consultations and conversations with members of the Crisis in Zimbabwe Coalition, civil society networks, social movements, academia, business, labour, women and youth.

Explaining the rationale of the framework, Mahiya said “The framework is an attempt to offer on the menu of options, a process and key milestones that will return Zimbabwe to norm compliance with democratic governance and resolve the question of political legitimacy.”

Speaking at the event, Jestina Mukoko, chairperson of the NGO Forum and Director of the Zimbabwe Peace Project noted that a conversation must now begin to discuss the challenges that citizens are facing related to their economic and social well-being.

Civil society in the framework stressed three cardinal points as follows:

1.         Dialogue in itself is not an end but a means to arrive to a destination. An honest national conversation should reflect on the causes of the crisis and what ought to be done to arrive at a desired and shared national destination.
2.         Such a process must be broad-based and inclusive of actors beyond political parties i.e. business, civil society, academia, labor, women, youth etc.

iii.        Zimbabwe dialogue and subsequent transitional alternatives that emerge from the national conversation must seek to protect, uphold and strengthen the Constitution.

Representatives of the youth led by the National Association of Youth organizations also stressed that national conversation to address the challenges must focus on empowering the youth by expanding their political participation while addressing unemployment and broader economic issues.

The women’s cluster also highlighted the human cost of the national crisis and noted that the situation in the social services sector has left women more vulnerable to abuse. Stabile Dewa, director of the Women’s Academy for Leadership and Political Excellence (WALPE) noted that women and girls are being abused at boreholes following severe water cuts and bemoaned the dearth in the medical sector.

“Access to maternal health has become a nightmare with women now using unconventional and risky methods of delivery,” added Dewa.

Civil society also raised concerns around the militarization of civilian processes and noted that the military control all civilian spaces and this undermines professionalism, integrity, impartiality and competence. Dr Ruhanya, the director of the Zimbabwe Democracy Institute argued that the military has captured four zones of contestation; the judiciary, elections, executive and the media providing evidence of deployment of senior serving members of the military.

Concerns were also raised on the shrinking democratic space, with Blessing Gorejena, director of the NGO Forum for Human Rights bemoaning the criminalization of civil society work. “Currently, there are 23 people facing charges of subversion and the rights to association and expression are under threat, she added.”

The Elections Resource Centre director, Tawanda Chimhini noted that today was Global Elections Day and disappointingly there has been no movement to address the adverse issues raised on the 2018 elections. Chimhini noted that both the ruling party and opposition have not initiated debate and process in parliament to bring to account the Zimbabwe Election Commission. The absence of actions to correct the contentious issues on the electoral act and regulations and the conduct of political parties dents the prospects of free, fair and credible elections in 2023.

“Right now we are two days away from two (2) by-elections yet there are no reforms that have been instituted to ensure that elections are credible and reflect the true will and choice of citizens,” added Chimhini.

The Coalition also indicated that it will be hosting a series of meetings with political parties as part of its engagement to find a lasting solution to the persisting national crisis.

The unfolding situation in Zimbabwe has brought to the national scene the notion of a national dialogue/conversation as a platform that discusses ideas and alternatives in ending the national crisis. The phenomenon of a national dialogue is not new to Zimbabwe, in 2008 the political impasse stemming from an undemocratic election led to the Global Political Agreement (an elite political pact that extricated the voice of the citizen from the national question).

Post published in: Featured

According to Vault’s Annual Associate Survey for 2020, which Biglaw firm ranked first in hours (i.e., the business hours really aren’t that bad)?

Hint: The firm was the first to ever earn the No. 1 spot in the overall ranking for each major category in Vault’s Best Law Firms to Work For list.

See the answer on the next page.

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Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.

Shares of Biogen soared Wednesday afternoon following a decision by a special court under the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office upholding its patent on a multiple sclerosis drug.

In a 56-page decision, the Patent Trial and Appeal Board ruled against Pittsburgh-based generic drugmaker Mylan’s effort to overturn the patent covering the 480mg dose of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Biogen’s drug Tecfidera (dimethyl fumarate). Mylan had filed an inter partes review, or IPR, in 2018. Mylan had argued that claims in a key patent covering the drug, U.S. Patent No. 8,399,514 – also known as the ‘514 patent – were “obvious” and thus not patentable.

Biogen’s shares rose 25% on the Nasdaq immediately following the court’s decision and were still more than 20% higher than their Wednesday closing price late Thursday morning. Tecfidera’s patent expires in February 2028. The drug had sales of more than $4.4 billion in 2019, according to the company’s earnings report.

“Mylan strongly disagrees with the decision and plans to pursue all available options for appeal,” an emailed statement from Mylan read, noting that the company is challenging Tecfidera’s patent protection in the District Court of West Virginia, while other generic drugmakers are doing the same in Delaware.

In a note to investors Wednesday, Cowen analyst Phil Nadeau called the PTAB’s decision a “major positive” for Biogen that greatly increased the chances that Tecfidera would not face generic competition until late in the decade. On the other hand, he noted, the other cases in Delaware and West Virginia district courts challenging the drug’s exclusivity and patent are ongoing. However, it seemed based on the IPR that Mylan would not likely be able to reverse the PTAB decision, which could also bolster Biogen’s chances in the district courts.

BTIG analyst Thomas Shrader wrote that the PTAB’s decision was as one might expect, and his firm had forecast with an 80% likelihood that the court would rule in Biogen’s favor. Baird analyst Brian Skorney called the PTAB’s decision a “clear positive” for Biogen and concurred that it would bolster the biotech company’s chances in the district courts.

With the IPR out of the way, Skorney wrote that investors’ focus will shift to Biogen’s investigational Alzheimer’s disease drug, aducanumab. Biogen is seeking Food and Drug Administration approval for the drug, which targets amyloid beta, after a review of clinical data indicated it was able to treat the disease despite an earlier decision to halt the drug’s Phase III studies for futility.

Photo: Getty Images

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