December, 07 2009, 08:57am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Elizabeth Hitchcock, Public Health Advocate
U.S. Public Interest Research Group
Office: 202-546-9707, ext. 316
elizabeth@pirg.org
Additional information: Jane Regan
Communications Director
U.S. Public Interest Research Group
jregan@pirg.org
Consumer Group Launches Additional Tools to Help Parents, Toy Shoppers
Due to overwhelming interest in keeping kids safe this holiday
season, two new social media sites - https://www.facebook.com/toysafety and https://www.twitter.com/toysafetynews - were launched on
Monday.
WASHINGTON
Due to overwhelming interest in keeping kids safe this holiday
season, two new social media sites - https://www.facebook.com/toysafety and https://www.twitter.com/toysafetynews - were launched on
Monday.
The
sites are the work of the U.S. Public
Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG), which just two weeks ago released its
24th annual Trouble
in Toyland report and a new, popular new interactive toy safety tool,
https://toysafety.mobi
The
consumer group kicked off the new tools because of the overwhelming interest in
the report and interactive site - accessible by mobile phone and home
computer.
Since
November 24, the launch date of Trouble in Toyland and the site,
over 20,000 people have used https://www.toysafety.mobi, which Mobithinking
recently called "mobile site of the week."
Almost
20,000 people have accessed the Trouble in Toyland report and
more than 30,000 have checked out https://www.toysafety.net, the toy safety page on
U.S. PIRG's website.
The
report and site have also received nationwide media attention and were featured
in the Washington
Post, on CNN-Money,
ABC's
"Now You Know," and in or on almost 100 other broadcasts, newspapers,
and online news sites and blogs across the country.
"Now,
in addition to our new toy safety site and this year's toy safety report,
people can stay up to date on important news and developments relevant to toys
and kids' health by subscribing to our Twitter feed or by becoming fans
of our Facebook page,"
explained Elizabeth
Hitchcock, U.S. PIRG's Public Health Advocate and the author of the
24th annual Trouble in Toyland
Trouble
in Toyland
and https://www.toysafety.mobi provide parents and
others with a list of dangerous toys and other products, as well as with
guidelines to help shoppers avoid three common hazards in children's
products: toys and products which could cause choking, which could cause deafness,
or which could contain potentially dangerous chemicals. People can also send in
reports toys and products they think are dangerous via an online report page.
The
new social media sites have links to the report and interactive site, but they
also will provide frequent updates on toy safety and on other issues of concern
to parents.
"There
is clearly an interest in keeping our kids safe from all the potentially
dangerous toys and other products out there. We hope that these two new
initiatives will help parents and others stay abreast of developments,"
Hitchcock said.
Hitchcock
noted that progress has been made on toy and product safety in the past year,
thanks to the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) and new
leadership at the CPSC.
But
there is still more work to be done to protect America's kids, she added.
As
an example, Hitchcock cited her own 24th annual Trouble in
Toyland, which found 16 dangerous children's toys and products,
like a toy
cell phone so loud, it can damage a child's hearing, a cloth baby book containing
lead paint, or a stacked rings toy with parts that could block a child's
airway.
"However,
we can report some success," Hitchcock said. "Since we released our
report, at least four of the toys we found are no longer for sale at the stores
where we bought them, but there are likely more dangers out there. That's
why we've launched the Facebook and Twitter efforts."
LINKS:
Facebook
- https://www.facebook.com/toysafety
Twitter
- https://www.twitter.com/toysafetynews
Interactive
toy safety site - https://www.toysafety.mobi
U.S.
PIRG's toy safety page and a link to Trouble in Toyland
report - https://www.toysafety.net
U.S. PIRG, the federation of state Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs), stands up to powerful special interests on behalf of the American public, working to win concrete results for our health and our well-being. With a strong network of researchers, advocates, organizers and students in state capitols across the country, we take on the special interests on issues, such as product safety,political corruption, prescription drugs and voting rights,where these interests stand in the way of reform and progress.
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U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders said Monday that he would put forth an amendment to remove offensive military funding for Israel from a House-passed aid package that the Senate is set to consider this week.
The amendment would "cut billions in offensive military funding to Israel from the proposed national security supplemental package," Sanders (I-Vt.) said in a statement. The package, approved by the Republican-controlled House over the weekend, includes $17 billion in unconditional military assistance to the Israeli government, which stands accused on the world stage of perpetrating genocide in Gaza.
The senator said he would also offer an amendment to "protect essential humanitarian operations" in the Gaza Strip, where millions of people are facing the possibility of starvation due to Israel's suffocating and illegal blockade. At least 28 children under the age of 12 have starved to death in Gaza in recent weeks.
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— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) April 23, 2024
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Over 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by U.S.-backed Israeli troops, and Columbia University students have been suspended and arrested by New York Police Department officers in recent days for protesting the slaughter—which led to a walkout by the Ivy League institution's faculty on Monday.
The Guardian reported that "hundreds of members of the teaching cohort at Columbia walked out in solidarity with the students who were arrested" while "students put protest tents back up in the middle of campus on Monday after they were torn down last week when more than 100 arrests were made."
Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of IfNotNow, a Jewish-led U.S. group that organizes against Israel's apartheid, declared: "Solidarity with these faculty members. Shame on establishment politicians and agitators who are smearing the anti-war protest at Columbia as anything other than what it is: a courageous stand for freedom and peace."
Naureen Akhter, a founding member of the New York-based group Muslims for Progress, said: "Thank you to the professors who stood in solidarity with student protestors, who didn't give into instigators who are fanning flames of hate and division. Remember the calls are for transparency, divestment, and amnesty for students!"
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)—a critic of Israel's war on Gaza whose own daughter, Isra Hirsi, was suspended from Columbia's Barnard College last week for "standing in solidarity with Palestinians facing a genocide," as the 21-year-old junior put it—also noted the faculty walkout and "nationwide Gaza solidarity movement."
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"Procedural irregularity, a lack of transparency about the university's decision-making, and the extraordinary involvement of the NYPD all threaten the university's legitimacy within its own community and beyond its gates," they wrote. "We urge the university to conform student discipline to clear and well-established procedures that respect the rule of law."
In a statement early Monday, several hours before the walkout, Columbia University president Minouche Shafik—who last week enabled NYPD arrests of students at the encampment—announced in her first statement since the sweep that all classes would be virtual "to deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps."
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"Columbia University has actively created a hostile environment for students who are Palestinian or who support Palestinian freedom. Additionally, the administration's actions have made the campus much less safe for Jewish students," JVP said.
According to JVP:
Instead of listening to the calls of Columbia and Barnard students to divest from the genocide perpetrated by the Israeli government, the university has called in the NYPD to arrest students, suspended them, and even expelled them. At present 85 students, 15 of whom are Jewish, are suspended.
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Critics on Monday condemned far-right Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for what one group called a "hateful and dangerous" campaign speech in which he claimed that Muslim "infiltrators" would steal Indians' wealth if the opposition wins parliamentary elections that began last week.
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Modi's remarks came a day after India's seven-step election of 543 members of the Lok Sabha, or lower legislative house, began. Modi is running for a third consecutive term. He's being challenged by INC President Mallikarjun Kharge, leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha, the upper legislative house. Results will be announced on June 4.
Kharge responded to Modi's remarks by blasting the "panic-filled" address as "not only a hate speech but also a well-thought-out ploy to divert attention" by the prime minister, the BJP, and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)—a fascist-inspired political and paramilitary movement whose brand of Hindu supremacy heavily influenced the rise of the BJP.
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Washington Post opinion columnist Rana Ayyub said on social media that "this is not a dogwhistle, this is a targeted, direct, brazen hate speech against a community."
Thousands of Indians petitioned the country's Election Commission seeking punitive action against Modi.
"The prime minister, while campaigning... made a speech on April 21 in Rajasthan that has disturbed the sentiments of millions of Constitution-respecting citizens of India," one petition states. "The speech is dangerous and a direct attack on the Muslims of India."
Muslim groups around the world also slammed Modi's speech, which the U.S.-based Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) called "hateful and dangerous."
"It is unconscionable, but not surprising, that far-right Hindutva leader Narendra Modi would target Indian Muslims with a hateful and dangerous diatribe despite his role as the leader of a nation with such a diverse religious heritage," said CAIR national executive director Nihad Awad.
"We again call on the Biden administration to declare India a 'country of particular croncern' over its discriminatory and violent policies targeting Muslims and other religious minorities," Awad added. "Global Islamophobia is alive and well in India and must be confronted before it escalates to something even worse."
South Asia historian Audrey Truschke, a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, accused Modi of "straight-up fascism."
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Modi was chief minister of the western state of Gujarat in February 2002 when a train full of Hindu pilgrims was set ablaze, killing 58 people. The cause of the disaster remains disputed, but Modi was quick to blame Muslims for the fire. In a three-day paroxysm of intercommunal bloodletting, Hindu mobs murdered at least hundreds—and perhaps thousands—of Muslim men, women, and children. Many women and girls were raped. More than 250 Hindus were also killed during what came to be called the Gujarat riots, during which an estimated 150,000 people were also forcibly displaced.
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Earlier this year, Progressive International's (PI) executive body used Modi's consecration of a highly controversial Hindu temple on the former site of a 16th-century Muslim mosque destroyed by a Hindu nationalist mob as an opportunity to issue a warning about the accelerating erosion of democracy in India.
"The Modi government has made a decisive move to overthrow India's secular constitution in the name of a new Hindu supremacist nation," PI's statement asserted. "As prime minister, Modi has pushed this Hindu nationalism as India's dominant political force: banning the hijab in schools, introducing 'anti-conversion' laws, abusing municipal forces to demolish Muslim households and shops in cities, and pushing for a 'uniform civil code' in law."
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