Remember the Good ol’ Dubya Days?

At Least Jared Kushner Used A Time-Honored Defense: Jared Kushner testified before a congressional committee on Monday, behind closed doors and not under oath, about his various meetings with Russians and multiple revisions of his security clearance forms during the 2016 campaign, the transition, and beyond. His on the record account reminds us of an old anecdote one hears in a first-year law school criminal defense class. The story goes like this: Plaintiff says my dog bit her. My defense is: My dog isn’t a biter; another dog bit her; she wasn’t bit; I don’t own a dog.

In other words, what Kushner basically said was: I didn’t know about any meetings with Russians; if I encountered any Russians we only exchanged small talk, never colluded; if I met with any Russians I arrived late and left early and didn’t know what I was doing there, never colluded; I never relied on Russian money for my businesses and so no pressure and no collusion; my staff never tells me anything and they act on their own; I remember nothing, but I know I didn’t collude.

Or, as The Washington Post put it: “His defense appears to be that he was so naive and oblivious he didn’t know what was going on—and then so memory-challenged and sloppy that he did not fill out his security clearance forms accurately.” And that’s all you need to know about the Kushner story except maybe this, again from the Post: “If not evidence of malicious deception, the story reveals a young man who is in over his head and out of his depth to such a degree that he does not know he is in over his head and out of his depth.”

Child Born With HIV Has Been in Remission For Almost Nine Years: On Monday, at the 9th International AIDS Society Conference on HIV Science in Paris, researchers announced that a nine-year-old South African child has been living with HIV in remission for most of its life, without long-term use of HIV drugs. The child (who was not identified for its protection) was diagnosed with HIV 32 days after birth and enrolled in a clinical trial in which it was given early treatment for 40 weeks. After 40 weeks, treatment ended and for nearly nine years, the child has maintained nearly undetectable levels of the virus, and there is no evidence of an HIV infection. Researchers say this is the third case of long-term HIV remission after early, but not continuous, drug treatment. They plan to continue tracking the child’s progress and determine if early treatment of HIV in infancy may potentially lower the need for life-long drug therapy.

For Female Politicians in Latin America, It’s “Three Steps Forward and Six Steps Back”: President Michelle Bachelet of Chile, although not at all comparable to Sisyphus of Greek mythology, must sometimes feel just as beleaguered as her term in office ends next year. First elected in 2006, she was widely regarded as the first female Latin American head of state to be voted in on her own merits, without riding the coattails of a politically powerful husband. Her victory inspired women across the region, and she championed their issues, steering legislative efforts on workplace discrimination, domestic violence, and women’s health care.

Not eligible to run for a second consecutive term, Bachelet served in 2010 as the first executive director of UN Women. In 2014, she was elected to a second presidential term and, for a few years, her tenure, along with those of female presidents Dilma Rousseff in Brazil and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina, signaled that the global push for gender equality in politics was finally gaining ground.

Now with Rousseff impeached and de Kirchner fighting corruption charges, Bachelet is the last female head of government standing in the Americas. After her term ends in 2018, no country in North or South America is expected to have a female president, raising troubling questions for women’s rights advocates who hoped that the region’s recent track record of electing women was a lasting step toward gender equality.

Are women held to a higher standard than their male political counterparts? Presidents often lose support while in office, but these female presidents suggest sexism and blatant misogyny exposed them to particularly virulent backlashes (see also: President Park Geun-Hye of South Korea, impeached this past March). They describe being subjected to gender-based criticisms, such as being too emotional, or indecisive, or strident, or unable to lead, and often to extremely crude, unprintable attacks. Yet, when female politicians complain about political double standards, they are often accused of playing the “gender card,” according to a professor at Oklahoma State University. Ah yes, the good ol’ gender card. Like the ‘race card,’ it really is a fun game to play when you’re, you know…running a country’s government or whatever.

Fake News Spreading Online Before Kenyan Election: Less than three weeks before Kenya holds a highly contested general election, social media networks such as Facebook and WhatsApp are being used to spread fake news in order to sway public opinion. As campaigning intensifies, there have been, in addition to fake news,  increasing numbers of attack ads being published online. In a country that has the 14th fastest mobile internet speed in the world and where as much as 88 percent of the population accesses the internet through their phones, fake news can travel fast. A study showed that 90 percent of Kenyans had heard or seen false stories related to the election, but those polled didn’t fully trust information shared on platforms such Facebook and WhatsApp. Mainstream media outlets like television, newspapers, and radio were rated as more trustworthy sources.

The Kenyan government has been closely monitoring activity on these apps, and the Communications Authority of Kenya and the National Cohesion and Integration Commission also established rules that could see users jailed for five years or fined one million shillings ($9,625) if they are “impolite, disrespectful, or incite violence” when sharing political content on social media. Companies like Google are also helping to combat the dissemination of fake news on its search engine. Its communications manager for east and francophone Africa said the company is working with fact-checking organizations such as Africa Check to review online content and to remove from their search results websites reported to be spreading misleading or inaccurate stories.

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