Korean cosmetics firm to use genetic testing to customize skincare

By Kim Kyoung-ae & Kim Tae-gyu, UPI News Korea

Dubbed My Skin Solution, Amorepacific's service will be provided in conjunction with LabGenomics, a Korean healthcare company specializing in molecular diagnostics. 

Photo courtesy of Amorepacific

SEOUL, June 27 (UPI) -- South Korea's leading cosmetics maker, Amorepacific, said it will offer beauty consulting and products based on direct-from-consumer genetic testing.

Dubbed My Skin Solution, the service will be provided in conjunction with LabGenomics, a Korean healthcare company specializing in molecular diagnostics.

Customers 19 and older can obtain the customized skincare service by purchasing from its website a gene test kit costing around $77.

Once the kit arrives, the customer swabs the inside of their cheek and put the resulting gene sample inside a tube to send to LabGenomics.

The turnaround for the test is expected to be about a week, during which LabGemomics will study the 11 genes related to skin aging, pigmentary deposit, and acne, as well as 58 other genetic characteristics like obesity and diet, the company said.

"The test will allow the customers to learn what condition their skin is in at the moment, as well as its genetic features -- all the information necessary for tailored skin management," an Amorepacific official told UPI News Korea.

"They will be invited to visit our dedicated office in central Seoul, where we can offer them detailed analysis, along with skin-management guides based on the genetic information we gleaned," he said.

Amorepacific has no plans to offer the service outside the country yet, due to regulations restricting at-home gene testing in many foreign countries.

South Korea ranks among the Top 10 cosmetics markets in the world, with annual sales at $15.71 billion in 2021, according to Expert Market Research.

The market is expected to grow by more than 5% annually to $21.54 billion by 2027.

RELATED Skincare company Murad agrees to pay $3.3M to settle Iran sanctions violations

Although AmorePacific has always been the dominant player in Korea, its sales and profit had decreased recently, its bottom line halving to $114 million in 2022 from the previous year due primarily to lackluster performance in China.

To counter the slide, the company has been aggressively expanding in other markets, including the United States, and adopting new technologies that could help enhance its push.

AmorePacific is not the first Korean company to incorporate direct-to-customer gene testing, which was enabled after the revision of laws in 2021.

A new law allows government-certified entities to engage in direct-to-customer gene testing.

South Korea's largest mobile carrier, SK Telecom agreed to a partnership for genome analysis business with the genetic testing company Macrogen in 2021.

Lotte Healthcare formed a similar partnership, joining forces last year with Theragen Bio to tap into the genetics-testing business.

Detractors worry that the private gene-testing can lead to unexpected consequences.

"Direct-to-customer genetic testing encompasses everyone. I'm not sure the government has done sufficient review of its effects on the whole population," Hanyang University Professor Shin Young-jeon said in a phone interview.

"There are concerns that companies are using the technology commercially and taking advantage of it without a full understanding."

June on course to be the hottest yet recorded in Britain

Previous mean average record of 14.9°C

set in 1940 and 1976

The UK is set for the hottest June ever recorded. Getty

Simon Rushton

Jun 27, 2023

June is shaping up to be the hottest June in British recorded history.

Cooler weather forecast for this week is unlikely to bring the average temperatures down enough for the record not to be broken.

Provisional data will be confirmed on July 3. The previous mean average record of 14.9°C was set in 1940 and 1976.

The Met Office has not recorded a June as hot as the current year since it began collecting temperature data in 1884.

Mike Kendon, a climate information scientist with the Met Office, said: “With only a few days of near-average temperatures forecast for the remainder of the month, overall, this June will turn out to be provisionally the hottest June on record for the UK for both mean and average maximum temperature.

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“Meteorologically, June started with high pressure over the UK bringing often settled and dry conditions with plenty of sunshine.

“Once that high pressure subsided, warm, humid air took charge over the UK, with 32.2°C the highest temperature recorded so far this month and high temperatures for the vast majority of the UK.

“What has been particularly unusual is the persistent warmth for much of the month, with temperatures reaching 25°C widely for at least two weeks, and at times 28°C to 30°C – whereas we would more typically expect maximum temperatures in the high teenagers or low 20s at this time of year.”

Last Sunday, the UK hit another temperature peak for the joint hottest day of the year so far.

The temperature rose to 32.2°C in Coningsby, Lincolnshire, matching this year's record set on June 10 in Chertsey, Surrey.

Coningsby is also where the UK's hottest temperature of 40.3°C was recorded on July 19 last year.

Climate change, driven by human use of fossil fuels, is bringing hotter, drier weather to the UK as well as greater disruption to traditional rainfall patterns.

Drought warnings have been issued for much of the UK and Ireland, according to data from the Copernicus satellite, with a hosepipe ban introduced on Monday for South East Water customers in Kent and Sussex.

The Met Office graph shows the mean average daily temperature for June 2023. PA

South West Water customers in Cornwall have been subject to a hosepipe ban since August last year which has since been extended to others in Devon.

Along with parts of East Anglia, the region has not left drought status since the extreme heat last summer which saw 40°C bring destructive grass fires and more than 3,000 excess deaths during the heatwaves.

Four of the top 10 warmest Junes have occurred this century: 2018 (14.8°C), 2003 (14.5°C), 2006 (14.5°C) and 2017 (14.4°C).

Mr Kendon said: “While the UK has always had periods of warm weather, what climate change does is increase the frequency and intensity of these warm weather events, increasing the likelihood of high-temperature records being broken, as we saw for 2022's annual temperature for the UK.

“It is particularly telling that of the 12 months of the year, for UK average maximum temperature the records for the warmest months include 2019 (February), 2018 (May), 2015 (December), 2012 (March), 2011 (April), 2011 (November), 2006 (July) and now 2023 (June).

“Statistics such as this clearly tell us of the changing nature of the UK's climate and how it is particularly affecting extremes.”

Provisional confirmation of June 2023’s position in the weather and climate records will be published on Monday 3 July, including confirmation on any provisional records for other regions of the UK.

What’s preventing Syrian refugees’ return home? Distrust of Assad.

|
By Taylor Luck Special correspondent
Dominique Soguel Special correspondent

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
June 27, 2023|RAMTHA, JORDAN; AND BASEL, SWITZERLAND

Some mornings Bassam al-Masri walks to a farm at the edge of Jordan’s northern border town of Ramtha and looks across the Yarmuk River valley into Syria. On a clear day, he can see the mosque where he preached and the remains of his house in Daraa 7 miles away.

Although the Syrian refugee could walk to his hometown in two hours, it remains, for him, as unreachable as ever – no matter the recent reconciliation between Arab states and President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the resulting promises of safe returns.

“The only guarantee that we could return safely is for Assad to go,” says Mr. Masri, among millions of Syrians living in the Middle East and Europe who long to return home but fear they cannot. “As long as he is present, we are permanently separated from our homeland. He cannot be trusted.”

WHY WE WROTE THIS

A story focused on TRUST

After the Arab League reinstated Syria, some Syrian refugees had dared hope for measures to enable their return home. But in interviews and polls, most say they’ve seen nothing that convinces them that now is the time.

In interviews and polls, Syrian refugees say they have seen nothing that convinces them to trust Mr. Assad in the wake of the Arab League’s early May decision to reinstate Syria.

Syria’s membership had been suspended in 2011 following Mr. Assad’s brutal crackdown on dissent in the early days of Syria’s civil war, a conflict that left hundreds of thousands dead and millions displaced. And a few refugees had dared hope that the Arab world reconciliation would be followed by concrete measures to rebuild trust.

Aziz Taher/ReutersView

But so far not even the “bare minimums” that they would expect are on the table: a general amnesty, reconciliation, transparency on the fate of the missing, and guarantees of a safe return for those who fled.

Without such measures, the vast majority of Syrians in exile say returning home is impossible: Any guarantee by Mr. Assad – regarded as a serial promise-breaker who has shown no contrition for the systematic destruction, torture, and killings under his command – cannot be trusted.

For Syrians whose lives have been upended by war, seeing Mr. Assad invited to events such as COP28, to be held in early December in Dubai, is a shock.

‘The Wounded World’ probes one of W.E.B. Du Bois’ greatest regrets

“It is a massive disappointment for most Syrians living in or outside Syria,” France-based Syrian journalist Samir Tawil says of the diplomatic move. “It’s like the Syrian regime won against the Syrian people, against the Arab world, and against the whole world. But the biggest loser is the Syrian people.”
Present at the beginning

Mr. Masri is intimately familiar with the Assad regime’s record. Daraa’s historic Al-Omari Mosque, where he preached, was a flashpoint for the first protests that erupted in the town in March 2011 over the arrest and torture of 15 teenagers who spray-painted graffiti demanding Mr. Assad’s overthrow.

Police killings of Daraa protesters would spark nationwide peaceful demonstrations – part of the regionwide Arab Spring – that eventually escalated into civil war.

In those first days, Mr. Masri worked with local officials and security services to soothe tensions and reach a peaceful solution. He preached to his flock not to protest. For his troubles, he was tortured and disfigured by regime security services, losing a kidney.

“You can’t believe this regime’s promises or reason with them because they know no way other than oppression and violence. Trust me, I’ve tried,” Mr. Masri says from his Ramtha apartment.

Taylor LuckView caption

With Arab states’ embrace of Mr. Assad, Mr. Masri and many Syrians believe that the dictator feels “protected and promoted,” with no incentive to take responsibility or reconcile with opponents.

“If the Assad regime had any intention to reconcile or offer a guarantee to make us feel safe to return, it could at least tell us the fate of the thousands of our relatives missing in its prisons,” he says. “At the very least tell us who is alive and who is dead so that we can begin to mourn and heal.”

Mr. Tawil, who obtained asylum in Paris in 2016, is also well-versed in the Assad regime’s trustworthiness.

Working for Syrian state television when the revolution erupted, he witnessed his neighborhood cemetery fill with the corpses of peaceful demonstrators while the channel claimed the security forces were battling armed terrorists.

That was one reason he left the country. Helicopter attacks on his neighborhood were another.

“We left as refugees fleeing death,” he says. “There is no guarantee possible that would return us to death. As long as the Assad and intelligence service apparatus remains in place, there is no return possible.”

Photo Courtesy of Samir Tawil

Fear of reprisals


A large majority of Syrian refugees in neighboring states rule out returning, despite facing increasingly dire economic straits. Dwindling humanitarian aid, a shift in international assistance to Ukraine, and post-COVID global inflation complicate their survival. Yet even if they wanted, many would have no home to return to, as war has reduced many areas to rubble.

Many point out that mistrust extends beyond the Assad regime. With Syrian families and neighbors divided by rival armies, militias, and proxy groups, some fear lingering violence as well as reprisal attacks from fellow Syrians seeking to settle old scores.

Shamseh Mustafa has lived in the Jordanian border town of Mafraq with her seven children and extended family since they fled their village outside Aleppo in 2012. When a United Nations funding shortfall earlier this year caused a three-month pause in their rental assistance, her family of 12 was evicted from their apartment. Now they share a rented, bare, 12-foot-by-6-foot room.

With no money for transportation, her two eldest daughters, Baraa, 18, and Israa, 16, and her 8-year-old nephew Ahmed dropped out of school this spring.

The family is in debt and struggles to pay the electricity bill. Still, a return to Ms. Mustafa’s abandoned 2-acre farm and bombed-out house in Syria “is out of the question.”

“We can’t even say the word ‘return.’ There is no safety, no economy, no trust in Syria. There is nothing to return to,” she says. “Even if a miracle from God brought peace and turned Syria into a paradise, what will cleanse the hatred that has been planted in people’s hearts?

“Can you sleep at night knowing that a relative or stranger may come and kill you to settle an old score?” she says. “Bad blood like that cannot cleanse.”
Lebanese pressure

Syrian farmer Ahmed Abu Omar moved with his wife and six children into a plastic tent in Lebanon’s Arsal camp in 2012. The summers have been hot, winters cold. Dependent on humanitarian aid, the family can only afford meat three times a year. Their diet is heavy on rice and pickled goods. The bulk of the budget is taken up by $20 per month rent for the land beneath their tent.

“If we could go back in a dignified and safe way, we would go back,” says Abu Omar, who declined to include his last name for safety reasons.

Photo Courtesy of Ahmed Abu Omar

A political transition and the reconstruction of the country are necessary conditions for his return. A personal obstacle is reclaiming his partially destroyed home – the section still standing is now occupied by fellow Syrians who refuse to vacate and falsely accuse him of rebel activity.

“We were waiting impatiently for the Arab summit in Saudi Arabia,” he shares. “We thought step-by-step things will move forward, but until now, nothing has happened. There has been no release of the detainees. ... Half of Syria is displaced. There’s been no goodwill-building measures. It’s like nothing happened. It’s as if the whole thing gave Assad power.”

Most Syrians in Lebanon feel pressure to leave the country, he says. In a country still reeling with economic crisis and looking for scapegoats, the refugees are subjected to restrictions on their economic participation as well as political rants by sectarian leaders.

But the refugees are frightened of what would await them, he says, particularly the pro-regime gunmen, or shabiha. “The shabiha do whatever they want,” he says, “they are accountable to no one.”

Soheib Ahmed el-Abdu, a chef-turned-humanitarian activist, agrees. “The [pro-Assad] militias will settle scores with any members of the opposition so the situation is not safe, even if there was a political transition,” he says.
Returning, and disappearing

Concerns for the fate of returnees are shared in northern Jordan, where reports of activists going missing as soon as they cross the border have heightened insecurity among the refugees. The border town of Ramtha is awash with stories of friends, relatives, and neighbors who voluntarily returned to Syria – and were never heard from again.

Family members tell the Monitor of missing brothers and cousins who returned to Syria, showing WhatsApp conversations with returnees that abruptly stop, mobile phones disconnected.

The disappeared include one of the first Syrians who crossed back during a grand reopening of the Jordan-Syrian border in October 2018. After he was interviewed by Syrian state television and given sweets by Syrian officials who hugged him as a “lost brother,” he disappeared. He later reemerged in a regime prison where he reportedly remains today.

Unlike Jordan, Lebanon is home to many political players close to Mr. Assad and in favor of sending Syrians back, and there are recent reports that hundreds of refugees had been forcibly repatriated. In April, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued a joint statement urging the Lebanese army to stop the summary deportations.

“There are raids and Syrians are being thrown on the other side of the border,” says Mr. Abdu, the activist. “The returns are being carried out in a militia or mafia style, not through political or diplomatic channels.

“Those who were returned, no one knows what became of them,” he says. “Were they detained? Did they get beaten? Nobody knows.”

DECRIMINALIZE ALL DRUGS

Huge Increase in Transnational Crime in Asia ‘Golden Triangle’

By Baher Kamal

In the United States and Canada, overdose deaths, predominantly driven by an epidemic of the non-medical use of fentanyl, continue to break records. Credit: Shutterstock.

MADRID, Jun 27 2023 (IPS) - How come that in a world where technology is -or is about to be- able to detect an ant in a jungle, the traffickers of death continue to carry out their lucrative criminal activities everywhere and in all fields, from weapons to prostitution, enslavement and drugs, to deadly fake medicines, through oil, gas and poisoned food.

In the specific case of Asia, a specialised organisation reports the Asian ‘Golden Triangle’ is where historically opium was grown to produce heroin for export, but where, in recent years, the trade of “even deadlier and more profitable synthetic drugs have taken over.”

Transnational organised crime groups anticipate, adapt and try to circumvent what governments do, and in 2022 we saw them work around Thai borders in the Golden Triangle more than in the past

Jeremy Douglas, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific

In its June 2023 report, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) informs that East and Southeast Asian synthetic drug supply remains at ‘extreme levels’ and diversifies.

The report, “Synthetic Drugs in East and Southeast Asia: latest developments and challenges 2023”, confirms an expansion and diversification of synthetic drug production and trafficking in the region, while trafficking routes have shifted significantly.

“Thailand, Laos and Myanmar are at the frontlines of illicit trade in Asia dominated by transnational organised crime syndicates.”

 

Methamphetamine, ketamine…

‘High volumes’ of methamphetamine continue to be produced and trafficked in and from the region while the production of ketamine and other synthetic drugs has expanded.

“Transnational organised crime groups anticipate, adapt and try to circumvent what governments do, and in 2022 we saw them work around Thai borders in the Golden Triangle more than in the past,” said Jeremy Douglas, UNODC Regional Representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

 

‘Unwanted’ to be seen

“Traffickers have continued to ship large volumes through Laos and northern Thailand, but at the same time they have pushed significant supply through central Myanmar to the Andaman Sea where it seems few were looking.”

Douglas added that criminal groups from across the region also started moving and reconnecting after lengthy pandemic border closures, with late 2022 and early 2023 patterns starting to look similar to 2019.

 

Hidden in “legal products”

Moreover, synthetic drugs containing a mixture of substances and sometimes “packaged alongside legal products” continue to be found throughout East and Southeast Asia, with serious health consequences for those who knowingly, or unknowingly, consume the products.

Moreover, the world drug problem is a complex issue that affects millions of people worldwide.

Many people who use drugs face stigma and discrimination, which can further harm their physical and mental health and prevent them from accessing the help they need, the UN warns on the occasion of the 2023 International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking (26 June).

 

“Unprecedented” increase

The increase in the production of synthetic drugs in recent years has been “unprecedented” according to the UNODC Regional Representative.

It is not just drugs which are being trafficked across the region: chemical precursors to manufacture synthetic drugs are being illegally transported into Myanmar in quantities far larger than the drugs that are trafficked out, UNODC further explains.

 

Trafficking also in people, wildlife, timber…

In fact, a myriad of cross-borders issues, including drug and precursor chemical trafficking, migrant smuggling, human trafficking, wildlife and forestry crime, and, in some locations, the movement of terrorist fighters alongside public health and pandemic-related matters.

 

The impact of legalising the use of cocaine

Cannabis legalisation in parts of the world appears to have accelerated daily use and related health impacts, according to the World Drug Report 2022, which also details record rises in the manufacturing of cocaine, the expansion of synthetic drugs to new markets, and continued gaps in the availability of drug treatments, especially for women.

According to the report, around 284 million people aged 15-64 used drugs worldwide in 2020, a 26% increase over the previous decade.

“In Africa and Latin America, people under 35 represent the majority of people being treated for drug use disorders.”

Globally, the report estimates that 11.2 million people worldwide were injecting drugs. Around half of this number were living with hepatitis C, 1.4 million were living with HIV, and 1.2 million were living with both.

Reacting to these findings, UNODC Executive Director, Ghada Waly stated: “Numbers for the manufacturing and seizures of many illicit drugs are hitting record highs, even as global emergencies are deepening vulnerabilities.”

At the same time, mis-perceptions regarding the magnitude of the problem and the associated harms are depriving people of care and treatment and driving young people towards harmful behaviour, said Waly.

 

Key trends by region

In many countries in Africa and South and Central America, the largest proportion of people in treatment for drug use disorders are there primarily for cannabis use disorders. In Eastern and South-Eastern Europe and in Central Asia, people are most often in treatment for opioid use disorders.

In the United States and Canada, overdose deaths, predominantly driven by an epidemic of the non-medical use of fentanyl, continue to break records. Preliminary estimates in the United States point to more than 107,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021, up from nearly 92,000 in 2020.

 

Conflict zones magnets for synthetic drug production

This year’s report also highlights that illicit drug economies can flourish in situations of conflict and where the rule of law is weak, and in turn can prolong or fuel conflict.

Information from the Middle East and South-East Asia suggest that conflict situations can act as a magnet for the manufacture of synthetic drugs, which can be produced anywhere. This effect may be greater when the conflict area is close to large consumer markets.

Historically, parties to conflict have used drugs to finance conflict and generate income. The 2022 World Drug Report also reveals that conflicts may also disrupt and shift drug trafficking routes, as has happened in the Balkans and more recently in Ukraine.

 

A possible growing capacity to manufacture amphetamine in Ukraine

According to the UNODC report, “there was a significant increase in the number of reported clandestine laboratories in Ukraine, skyrocketing from 17 dismantled laboratories in 2019 to 79 in 2020. 67 out of these laboratories were producing amphetamines, up from five in 2019 – the highest number of dismantled laboratories reported in any given country in 2020.”

 

Gender treatment gap

Women remain in the minority of drug users globally yet tend to increase their rate of drug consumption and progress to drug use disorders more rapidly than men do. Women now represent an estimated 45-49% of users of amphetamines and non-medical users of pharmaceutical stimulants, pharmaceutical opioids, sedatives, and tranquillisers.

The treatment gap remains large for women globally. Although women represent almost one in two amphetamine users, they constitute only one in five people in treatment for amphetamine use disorders.

The World Drug Report also spotlights the wide range of roles fulfilled by women in the global cocaine economy, including cultivating coca, transporting small quantities of drugs, selling to consumers, and smuggling into prisons.

 Drone footage captures 'curious' whale swimming alongside kayaker off Sydney coast

Uganda activists file new Paris case over TotalEnergies' East Africa oil pipeline project

Ugandan activists have brought another legal case against French oil giant TotalEnergies, seeking damages over alleged food and land rights violations in the company’s East Africa operations

By RODNEY MUHUMUZA 

Associated Press

June 27, 2023, 

KAMPALA, Uganda -- Ugandan activists brought another legal case Tuesday against French oil giant TotalEnergies, seeking damages over alleged food and land rights violations in the company's East Africa operations.

The civil suit filed in Paris comes four months after the collapse of a similar case brought by activists who wanted to stop TotalEnergies' pipeline project in Uganda and Tanzania, alleging environmental risks and an infringement of rights.

Campaigners who oppose a project they insist violates the Paris climate accord were disappointed when the case was dismissed on procedural grounds before going to trial.

The new litigation cites TotalEnergies’ alleged failure to comply with France’s “duty of vigilance” law and seeks compensation for the company's alleged violations of land and food rights over six years.

TotalEnergies has long denied the allegations.

Five French and and Ugandan civic groups, including the French branch of Friends of the Earth and the Uganda-based Africa Institute for Energy Governance, or AFIEGO, are plaintiffs in the case.

Community challenges stemming from TotalEnergies' projects include under-compensation as well as the "construction of small, inappropriate replacement housing that is not suitable to the family sizes of affected households,” said Dickens Kamugisha, AFIEGO’s chief executive.

TotalEnergies is the majority shareholder in the 897-mile (1,443-kilometer) East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline, which would carry oil from wells in western Uganda to Tanzania's Indian Ocean port of Tanga. Authorities have described it as the world’s longest heated oil pipeline.

Some oil wells are to be drilled within western Uganda’s Murchison Falls National Park, where the Nile River plummets 130 feet (40 meters) through a 20-foot-wide (6-meter-wide) gap and the surrounding wilderness is home to hippos, egrets, giraffes and antelopes.

The pipeline would then pass through seven forest reserves and two game parks, running alongside Lake Victoria, a source of fresh water for 40 million people.


That route's ecological fragility is one reason why some activists oppose the project despite assurances from TotalEnergies that the pipeline’s state-of-the-art-design will ensure safety for decades.

Ugandan authorities see the oil drilling project and the pipeline as key to economic development, saying oil wealth could help lift millions out of poverty.

Uganda is estimated to have recoverable oil reserves of at least 1.4 billion barrels.

HOW WE MISTREAT OUR COUSINS

Heartwarming Video Shows Chimp Caged Entire Life Sees The Sky, Grass For The First Time

ALL OUR RELATIONS

By Marvin Ang
06/27/23 

GETTY IMAGES

KEY POINTS

Vanilla was never allowed outside her five-foot-square cage until she was two years old

In the video, Vanilla gets greeted by a fellow chimpanzee and alpha male Dwight with a hug

Vanilla is settling well and continues to survey the bigger area she was allowed to live in

A video of a chimpanzee seeing the open sky for the first time has recently made rounds online, warming the hearts of online users.

The chimpanzee, identified as 29-year-old Vanilla, was a survivor of New York's Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP), a notorious laboratory that closed down in 1997.

In the facility, she was never allowed outside her five-foot-square cage until she was two years old when she, along with others of her kind, was transferred to a larger enclosure at a center in California that went out of business in 2019.

The California-based chimpanzee sanctuary, which was also threatened by wildfires, arranged for FedEx to fly Vanilla and her group to the 150-acre sanctuary of the Save the Chimps organization in Fort Pierce, Florida.

In the Sunshine State, she first had a glimpse of the blue sky, visibly enamored by how big the world is than the enclosure she was forced to live in all her life.

Her reaction was captured in a video shared at the symposium of the American Society of Primatologists Friday in Reno by Dr. Andrew Halloran, a resident primatologist of the Save the Chimps organization.

In the video, Vanilla was seen getting greeted by a fellow chimpanzee and alpha male Dwight with a hug, after which she gazed at the sky and explored her new domicile.

"In California, Vanilla lived with a handful of chimps inside a chain-link fence cage with no grass and very little enrichment," Dr. Halloran told the New York Post.

He also said that Vanilla is settling well and continues to survey the bigger area she was allowed to live in.

"When she's not exploring the island with her friends, she can usually be found perched atop a three-story climbing platform surveying her new world," Dr. Halloran added.

Vanilla's new home is also the refuge of 226 other chimpanzees rescued from different laboratories, entertainment industries, exotic pet trades and roadside zoos, per the Post.

Many of the rescued, Save the Chimps said, were previously in solitary confinement and had never interacted with others of their kind before.

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Dr. Halloran assessed each of the newly rescued chimpanzees' personalities to figure out which of the 12 chimp island communities they best match.

"She gets along with all of the other 18 chimps on her island," Dr. Halloran said of Vanilla.

"[She also] has a particularly playful relationship with the alpha male Dwight — from whom she steals food."

UK nurses fail to hold new strike after insufficient turnout

‘Ballot didn’t reach the required threshold dictated by the 2016 Trade Union Act for a strike mandate to be achieved,' says RCN union

Burak Bir |27.06.2023 - 


LONDON

A strike by nurses in England will not continue as a ballot by unions did not reach the 50% threshold required to take action, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) union said Tuesday.

Although the majority of nurses voted in favor of the industrial action, the numbers were insufficient as more than 43% took part in the vote.

"To clear the turnout threshold, approximately 140,000 ballot papers needed to be returned in the post and only 122,000 were received by the closing date of Friday 23 June," RCN said in a statement. "With an overall turnout of 43%, the ballot didn’t reach the required threshold dictated by the 2016 Trade Union Act for a strike mandate to be achieved.”

RCN General Secretary Pat Cullen vowed "to fight for the fair pay and safe staffing our profession."

"We have started something special - the voice of nursing has never been stronger and we’re going to keep using it," she said.

Union members rejected a deal in April which would have given them a one-off payment of 2% of their salary, plus a coronavirus recovery bonus of 4% for the current financial year and 5% for next year.

 

Nursing strikes in England paused due to low ballot turnout

The voter turnout did not meet the legal requirement of 50% necessary for strikes to proceed

• Kimberly Rodrigues
 
• 27 June, 2023

FILE PHOTO: NHS nurses hold banners during a strike, amid a dispute with the government over pay, in London, Britain January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN), Britain’s main nursing trade union, on Tuesday (27) announced that it had been unable to obtain a new mandate for strike action in England.

This development temporarily ends the possibility of additional strikes by tens of thousands of nurses, which has already disrupted a healthcare system under significant strain.

According to the RCN, approximately 84% of participating nurses in the ballot expressed support for further strikes.

However, the voter turnout did not meet the legal requirement of 50% necessary for strikes to proceed.

“The fight for the fair pay and safe staffing that our profession, our patients, and our NHS deserves, is far from over,” RCN General Secretary Pat Cullen said.

Cullen said she was meeting Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Tuesday to discuss the government’s plan for the NHS workforce.

“I know staff morale is low and the staffing crisis is set to worsen without immediate action. I will be telling him this today,” she added.

In April, nurses rejected a 5% pay rise offer by the government which is now being implemented for more than 1 million NHS staff in England after unions representing a majority of workers involved in the dispute voted to accept it.

The National Health Service (NHS) is dealing with record patient backlogs and serious staff shortages, and still faces other strikes involving doctors.

Junior doctors in England last week said they plan to strike for a further five days in July, and a ballot of senior doctors closes on Tuesday.

Hundreds of thousands of workers in Britain including teachers and railway staff have taken strike action over the last year, demanding better pay amid high inflation.

“I hugely value nurses’ work and welcome the end to disruptive strikes so staff can continue caring for patients and cut waiting lists,” health minister Steve Barclay said on Twitter. “I hope other unions recognise it’s time to end their strikes.”

How BRICS Countries Help to Define a Truly New World Order

Its upcoming summit will reveal its growing power.

HELENA COBBAN
THE NATION

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov meets with South African International Relations and Cooperation Minister Naledi Pandor as part of the BRICS Foreign Ministers Meeting in Cape Town, South Africa on June 1, 2023. (BRICS / Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

June 18, Washington, D.C.—The international grouping known as BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa—has maintained a generally low profile on the world scene since its founding in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2008–09. But last year, the combined economic output of the five BRICS members, measured in purchasing power parity, for the first time exceeded that of the US-led G7. And this year, BRICS is poised to move to a much more powerful role in world affairs: It looks as if 13 significant other nations from the Global South, including Saudi Arabia and Iran, may be admitted to the grouping at its upcoming summit, slated for late August in South Africa.

The current vitality of BRICS starkly highlights the failure of Washington’s push to strangle Russia economically and politically in response to Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. It also, more broadly, indicates that the domination that a handful of Western nations have exercised over global affairs for 500-plus years is now giving way to a very different, much less white-dominated world.

Three key developments underlie the current growth of the group’s heft. One is the anger that nations of the Global South felt at the way Western nations monopolized access to medical supplies and key patents during the fight against Covid. Another is the success in last November’s Brazilian elections of former president Lula da Silva, which ended the five-year rule of right-winger Jair Bolsonaro: With Lula’s victory, Brazil resumed its commitment to the development-focused and South-oriented policies that have always lain at the heart of the BRICS venture.

The third root of the group’s current vitality is the strong global backlash to the economic sanctions that President Biden imposed on Russia last year. Over recent decades, economic sanctions have been one of the first tools US leaders have used in response to foreign-policy challenges. In the vast majority of these cases—from the sanctions put on Cuba in 1959 through those put on Iraq in the 1990s, or those kept on Iran, Venezuela, Syria, or Afghanistan until today—these sanctions have hurt ordinary citizens very badly while entrenching the hold on power of the governments that US leaders said they wanted to reform or overthrow. (Go figure.)

In the present century, the list of countries whose leaders and national institutions are on Washington’s “Team Sanctioned” has grown ever longer. In 2018, President Trump slapped trade tariffs on China, which thereby became the founding member of “Team Tariffed.” President Biden has kept those anti-Chinese tariffs in place, while also adding sanctions on several Chinese state entities.

Then, in early 2022, Washington abruptly added Russia, which has a large and robust economic base, to Team Sanctioned. That step paradoxically boosted the efforts that the sanctioned and tariffed nations had long been making to find alternatives to the tools that Washington has used to enforce its sanctions. The period since February 2022 has seen a rapid rise in the use by these countries’ traders of currencies other than the dollar to denominate their sales of oil and other commodities. (Welcome to the rise of the petroyuan!) We have also seen big steps by policy-makers from Team Sanctioned and Team Tariffed in developing payment systems other than the SWIFT mechanism that has long been one of the major tools Washington has used to implement sanctions.


The founding impetus for the BRICS grouping was always, from 2009 on, to build economic coordination among its members. That impetus came into full play after Washington’s broad 2022 expansion of sanctions against Russia. But China has also been eager for some years to have its BRICS partners back up the increasingly successful political diplomacy it has pursued in several parts of the world. Back in March, China achieved a huge diplomatic coup when it unveiled a rapprochement between longtime US ally Saudi Arabia and US target Iran that it had been quietly working on for many months. That breakthrough has already resulted in some valuable steps toward de-escalation in West Asia (the Middle East). It also drew those two countries and the United Arab Emirates, a key Saudi ally, more closely toward the non-US trading system being established by BRICS.
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Hence the presence of those three countries’ foreign ministers at the BRICS meeting in Cape Town in early June. And hence the likelihood that these three countries will be among those admitted to full membership of BRICS this August.

Officials in the existing BRICS countries have been generally tight-lipped about which countries will be joining the bloc as it expands, and when. U.S. News & World Report names 10 countries besides the three named above that were represented in-person or virtually at the Cape Town meeting, and that may well be admitted to BRICS this August.

The whole of the statement that the BRICS foreign ministers issued at the end of their Cape Town summit is worth reading. It provides a rich picture of the bloc’s concerns and values, stressing that its work is based on “the three pillars of political and security, economic and financial, and cultural and people-to-people cooperation.” The statement includes several denunciations of “unilateral economic measures” (the UN’s code word for US sanctions).

The ministers made clear (Item 18) that they did not have a unified position on the Ukraine crisis. But they “noted with appreciation relevant proposals of mediation and good offices aimed at peaceful resolution of the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.” They also called for the full implementation of the Black Sea Grain Initiative.

BRICS is a young and distinctive type of grouping in world politics. All its member nations (except Russia) have deep, vivid memories of the harms their peoples suffered during earlier centuries of white, Western rule over their countries. In that, they are similar to the Non-Aligned Movement of the 1960s. But the BRICS leaders are different from the NAM’s in that they do not seek to define themselves primarily in relation to the world’s large military blocs. Instead, they define their interests and goals in primarily economic terms, sidestepping as much as they can the matter of military alignment or nonalignment. (They showed that in the agnosticism they expressed in Cape Town on the issue of the war in Ukraine.) Indeed, though Washington likes to count existing BRICS member India and several of the candidate members among its allies, most BRICS members and candidate members see little problem in having Russia continue to be one of the bloc’s core members.

The current BRICS members represent more than 40 percent of global humanity. That proportion looks set to increase, perhaps dramatically, over the months ahead. (The population of majority-white countries today amounts to less than 12 percent of the world total.) Over the past year, BRICS members, like many other nations of the Global South, have shown themselves capable—to an incomplete but unexpected extent—of resisting the pressures Washington has exerted to have them line up behind its anti-Russian agenda.

After the flood: Alberta communities assessing damage as water levels recede


Published on Jun. 27, 2023, 

Visit The Weather Network's wildfire hub to keep up with the latest on the active start to wildfire season across Canada.

West-central Alberta communities are assessing damage and making repairs as flood waters recede.

In the town of Edson, 100 kilometres west of Edmonton, a state of local emergency ended Monday after a tumultuous two weeks of fire and flood.

Flooding prompted the emergency declaration on June 19, just days after town residents had been given the green light to go home after six days under wildfire evacuation orders.

Mayor Kevin Zahara said Monday that the community got more than 135 millimetres of rain, and about 60 homes and businesses in the community have flooded basements.

Parts of Edson's 6th Avenue, which connects the east and west ends of town and is the main access route for the hospital, are also closed because of flood damage.

"We're going to have to repair some roadways and underground infrastructure as well. We also have been actively looking at upgrading some of our storm sewers and sewer lines," Zahara said.
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"There's quite a large expense we're going to be facing as a municipality."

Zahara said engineers are still assessing the extent of repairs that will be needed, and the town doesn't yet have an estimate of the cost to fix the damage.
Yellowhead County resident Roxie Orge says she was surprised to find a hot tub washed up after flooding in west-central Alberta in late June 2023. (Submitted by Roxie Orge)

Some communities in the surrounding Yellowhead County were also affected by floods — at one point people who live in Lower Robb were ordered to leave their homes as rivers started to breach their banks, and a shelter-in-place order was issued for some residents of the hamlet of Peers after a bridge was damaged.

The order was cancelled on Friday, but there's a speed and weight limit in effect on the bridge until it can be re-assessed this week.

'You're not going to believe this — we have a hot tub'

Yellowhead County resident Roxie Orge told CBC on Monday that when she was checking on the aftermath of the flood around her own property, she stumbled upon a mystery.
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She and her husband watched flooding rise near their property last week, but the water didn't reach the house or garage.

"On Wednesday, when the river was still high, from the road you could see that there was a blue object on our property, quite a ways in the bush, washed up with the debris," she said, adding she thought it might be a kayak.

When they talk a walk later, checking on all the washouts and trees that had been swept away, they found something else.

"My husband basically said, 'You're not going to believe this. We have a hot tub.'"

She snapped a photo of the round, barrel-style cedar hot tub with a blue liner, which is what she had mistaken for a kayak.

Orge said she's trying to figure out who it might belong to, and how far it travelled — where it's been deposited in the bush, there probably isn't any way to get it out besides taking it apart.
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But she said she's not surprised the flooding moved something so large.

"The Edson River, which is quite a smaller river, it was just rushing and rapids. It really was insane."

Whitecourt cleaning up

Rising water levels also triggered a state of local emergency last week in Whitecourt, about 100 kilometres northeast of Edson, with evacuation orders for some riverfront properties.

Whitecourt Mayor Tom Pickard said Monday the alerts and orders have now been lifted. Some access roads around the town washed out, but he said there wasn't serious damage to city infrastructure.

But residents have been working to clean up the aftermath of flooding in the town's Festival Park and the Whitecourt Golf and Country Club, which both sit along the Athabasca River.

"When the river was flooding in, and then when it recedes, it leaves a real fine silt," Pickard said.
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"The entire golf course was flooded, so they have a lot of silt still on the course. They've a crew of volunteers working now, plus their staff, to clean that off."

Parts of Festival Park are still closed, but Pickard said Canada Day activities will be able to go ahead there as planned this weekend.

"We monitor the water levels upstream and rainfall. For now, we feel that the recent significant event is over, and we'll prepare for the next one."

Thumbnail image courtesy of Travis McEwan/CBC.

This article, written by Madeline Smith, was originally published for CBC News.