in samoa.vists. he met with senior officials in samoa and kept the drumbeat alive that measles vaccine was killing children in samoa. as a consequence, vaccination rates fell from 70% to 30%. and between september and december of 2019, there was a massive measles epidemic. in this island nation of 200,000 people, there were 57,000 cases of measles and 83 deaths. most of those deaths were in children less than four years of age. and robert f. kennedy jr. had everything to do with that. and that shows you how disinformation can kill. geoff: he's drawn criticism most recently for saying that covid ethnically targets -- that's the phrase he used -- white and black people, and not certain jewish and chinese people. is there any evidence to support that? dr. offit: no, there's evidence that doesn't support it. actually, the paper that he points to, he should have read exactly when that paper was submitted for publication. it was submitted before covid ever came into the united states. those researche

but during that period, as vaccine skepticism was spreading in samoa.unior became a local celebrity in the country. he was an honored guest of the samoan prime minister, and he would later tell a samoan paper that the prime minister came to share the skepticism about vaccines. and around that time, samoan prime minister halted his country's infant measles vaccine program. which goes a very long way and explaining why vaccination rates dropped so very precipitously and samoa, and dozens of children died. and then, once the outbreak of measles were underway, the anti vax group tried to blame the outbreak on the vaccines themselves, saying vaccinated children were shedding the virus, and spreading it. that claim was quickly contradicted by health experts. and doctors finally got the disease under control by pushing vaccination rates back up, rfk junior continued to cast doubt on the effectiveness of vaccines. >> the thing that cured it was nutrition, and -- not the vaccine. >> that claim was patently untrue. but that dangerous, and deadly anti-vax campaign

>> in samoa, there was two people that died after a measles vaccine.rks there is they have an mmr vaccine in powder form. it needs to be diluted in water. nurses made a mistake, they diluted it in a muscle relaxant. the children stopped breathing and died immediately. they realized what the mistake was. it was a nursing error. rfk junior seized on that, flooded facebook with the information that the measles vaccine is killing children. he went to samoa and met with anti-vaccine activist. he kept that drumbeat alive. vaccination rates fell from 70% to 30%. in this island nation, there were 57 cases. he had everything to do with that. that shows you have this information can kill. >> he said covid ethnically targets white and black people. not certain jewish and chinese people. is there any evidence to support that? >> there is evidence that does not support that. he should have read exactly when the paper was submitted. it was submitted before covid ever came into the u.s. researchers are trying to make a prediction based on certain genetic differences

>> we have a field rep in american samoa. we also have a number of staff members in washington, d.c. that work on all the territories. since i arrived in oia last year i have been working on assessment of our resources. i cannot give you a timetable right now but we are working on it. >> thank you, madam chairwoman. >> the chair recognizes mr. so long for five minutes for questions. >> thank you and good morning to our witnesses. welcome. madame secretary, thank you very much for the recent workshop conference you held for the insular area officials to come together and get updated on potential programs coming. that should be very helpful. it will bring -- we always have these things when there are big programs involved chair this at the start was very helpful. i appreciate this including the proposed increases for cip which was last in 1993. empowering energy assistance. because -- we move forward in the next year. i can expect about 13,000 families in the northern marianas who get assistance and roughly 16,000 people on med

it means sexton can't play in the fixtures against italy, england and samoa, but he will be availablemania on nine september. sexton is planning to retire after this world cup. britain's wheelchair racer, hannah cockroft, has won a 14th world title, continuing her dominance in the 800m. she clocked 1:51:57 — a para athletics world championships record. but it was still over six seconds slower than her own world record time. great britain are fifth in the medal table with eight golds so far in paris. china leads with 1a golds. well these championships are a bit of a warm—up for the paris paralympics which take place in the same city in 13 months' time. and although the crowds have been better there than at the last worlds in dubai, the president of the international paralympic committee admits there's work to do to advance the paralympic movement in france. i think we need a lot of promotion here in the lead up to the games. i remember every single host of the games and lit up we needed to do a lot of promotion, events that the test events, promoting ticket sales, even for london, stil

say again -- whether it is with the solomon islands or fiji or care about or any of these partners, samoa and the like -- our message is the same. we come to the region in partnership. we respect the sovereignty of all of our partners. they will make their own sovereign decisions how they want to proceed with whom they want to partner. what we tried to make clear is what we offer to the region. we try to underscore our shared objectives and shared interest. in maintaining a free and open and secure and prosperous region. we also try to share our concerns and experience that decisions some of our partners make may have implications for their own sovereignty and security down the line. we engage with all of these partners and to try and demonstrate the strength of our commitment and step up our engagement, we opened in january of this year our new embassy in the solomon islands to make sure we are present there every day. working together with our partners in the solomons about what we can bring to the table. it is why we opened in may, our new embassy in tonga. why, the secretary will form

anyway, the navy worked up new timetables based on observations that appear in samoa, even though it was a thousand miles away. the cop top command tried. they rounded up australians and new zealand naval reserve officers who were somewhat familiar with the tides of tarawa. the consensus was you get five feet, you'd it over the coral. and i have to say this was a defended beachhead. what does that mean? the japanese because of their culture, because of actually their sense of superior already this disbelief that were the chosen ones literally believed you did not need modern weaponry to defeat the americans they thought the americans were weak. they thought the west was weak. they thought that of sons would not tolerate a war. and after a year, we would come to the negotiating table that have been the worst mistake made in the history of humankind humankind. but they were smart. they started playing defense up to then. it was all offense. and you've probably seen the movies banzai attack boats and all this stuff, and they played defense. they had emplacements rimming the shore. you c

including zealand, which was a main ally and client, and then other smaller island nations heard about samoa, fiji, etc. etc. and then from paris. we covered course the principality of monaco, but also about half africa. when i started. in 94 in paris there no no legal attache in at all. the embassy in paris. and we had a staff maybe about five agents and five support people. by then we covered all the french speaking part of africa and a lot of other countries. and they did legal attache in rome covered the east side of africa, egypt down to somalia to south africa. and that's how we had a divide by the time i left, the fbi was in the process of opening an office in south africa, in algiers in rabat, morocco. now they've opened many more throughout africa. and louis freeh did a lot of that. he he saw, you know, there was a expression in the us government then with the military we need boots on ground. and louis freeh came up with the expression we need wingtips on the and it does make a big difference i mean all of these countries except i outright hostile countries to a greater extent all

athletes who come from small island developing states, you know, place like saint kitts and nevis and samoa new guinea, the commonwealth games are a highlight for athletes and it's something that their young athletes work towards. and then just to cancel it like this, obviously just for political reasons, is outrageous. and you make a good point, by the way, about the lockdowns . dan about the lockdowns. dan andrews, this premier we're talking about long locked down for melbourne longer than any other city in the whole world. yeah, in the whole world. children were in schools for something like 240 days. >> yeah. alexander do you think what he really wants to do is get australia out of the commonwealth altogether? >> oh, i'm sure he'd be happy to see australia leave the commonwealth. well, let me let me just say this, though. he is only a state premier. of course australia does have national australia does have a national government i'm very government and i'm very surprised . i'm very surprised surprised. i'm very surprised the federal government hasn't intervened and tried to put together

china for example, yesterday reached example, samoa yesterday reached its all time record temperature52.2 in the wintertime goes down to —53. you know, it's 100 degrees c difference between in winter and now. their record summer on the other side of the atlantic. the southwest usa , atlantic. the southwest usa, particularly phoenix, 70 days of plus 48 degrees c death valley getting very close to the all time record . these these you time record. these these you know, individual records are falling like ninepins left , falling like ninepins left, right and centre. um ocean temperatures extremely hot record temperatures in the north atlantic, certain parts of the mediterranean, even the north sea, despite what our weather antarctic ice starting to disappear at record levels . you disappear at record levels. you know, you join the dots and you know, you join the dots and you know the word climate change comes right, right up front. >> and in terms of record words, i mean, i was reading that the european space agency saying that they could be the hottest temperatures ever recorded in euro