It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Testimonies from over 200 people accusing the Ugandan president, his son, and other senior officials of killings, torture, and other crimes against humanity have been submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
In total, there are 26 officials that have been accused of aiding the incarceration and systemic abuse of Ugandans who supported opposition leader Bobi Wine in 2021.
Among those accused is President Yoweri Museveni who has been in power for nearly four decades, and his son Gen. Muhoozi Kainerugaba.
Faruk Kirunda, the president's deputy press secretary, labeled the accusers as political opponents with the goal of "tarnishing the image of President Museveni".
Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor for the ICC, has previously stated that his office is overwhelmed with investigations of alleged war crimes in Afghanistan and Ukraine.
It may be months or years before the ICC announces whether it will investigate a case.
Physical violence. Sexual harassment. Verbal abuse. Indifferent management. Long hours on graveyard shifts. And a chance that you’ll catch a deadly illness.
If that sounds like an ideal job, consider working in a hospital.
A new survey finds that hospital doctors and nurses — including those at institutions ranked among the best in the nation — are suffering from job burnout at alarming rates.
Doctors don’t fare much better: 32% reported feeling burnout, and 23% of hospital doctors would quit if possible.
The nationwide survey of 21,050 clinicians was conducted at 60 hospitals recognized by the American Nurses Credentialing Center as Magnet hospitals offering the best in nursing care and patient support.
The COVID-19 pandemic was a breaking point for many health-care workers, who worked under brutal conditions and with the fear that they might contract the deadly coronavirus — and carry it home to their families.
Hospital doctors and nurses agree that increases in nurse staffing is the best solution to clinician burnout.Getty Images/iStockphoto
But working conditions haven’t improved much since the pandemic crisis ended. Nationwide shortages of nursing staff and doctors were cited as a leading source of the problems.
“Hospitals have not been able to recover,” study author Dr. Linda Aiken, professor at Penn Nursing’s Center for Health Outcomes and Policy Research at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Post.
But, Aiken added, “Things were bad before the pandemic,” and burnout was almost as high. When the pandemic hit, hospitals “got caught flat-footed.”
Among nurses in the survey, 87% agreed that improving nurse staffing was “very important” to their well-being, and 45% of doctors agreed.
Many clinicians over the age of 55, however, have simply decided to go into retirement early.
“There’s been a tremendous number of physicians and nurses … that have chosen to retire early solely because of the fact that they were working their tails off during COVID,” Dr. David Hass, president of the Connecticut State Medical Society, told NBC Connecticut.
Workplace safety has also been cited as a serious problem: In the years since 2010, the rate of workplace violence injuries in hospitals has increased 95%, according to a 2021 report from the AFL-CIO.
Nurses and doctors are openly hostile to wellness programs and resilience training that fails to address the root causes of widespread burnout.
Getty Images/iStockphoto
Other serious concerns revealed by the survey included a lack of any control over workloads and concerns about patient safety.
For example, more than half of physicians and nurses are not confident that their patients can safely manage their care after they are discharged from the hospital.
And “more than one-quarter of nurses give their own hospital an unfavorable grade on patient safety,” Aiken said.
“Patients are going to die unnecessarily,” she added, largely as a result of nurse staffing shortages. “Nurses are the glue that holds the hospital together.”
The response from hospital management has too often focused on helping doctors and nurses adapt to their grueling workplace conditions, instead of improving those conditions — “a focus that angers many clinicians because it places the burden of adapting on them,” the study authors wrote.
Clinicians are “flat-out hostile” to efforts like resilience training — like wellness advice, yoga classes and quiet rooms — that fail to address the underlying problem.
“There’s a big disconnect between clinicians and management,” Aiken noted. “They know what needs to be changed.”
“There’s really a shortage of nurses working in hospitals,” she added. “That’s the single most important thing hospitals can do to reduce clinicians’ burnout.”
EPA sets stricter limits on hydrofluorocarbons used in refrigerators, air conditioners
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency is enforcing stricter limits on hydrofluorocarbons, highly potent greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air conditioners that contribute to global warming.
A rule announced Tuesday will impose a 40% overall reduction in HFCs starting next year, part of a global phaseout designed to slow climate change. The rule aligns with a 2020 law that calls for an 85% reduction in production and use of the climate-damaging chemicals by 2036.
Officials said refrigeration and air conditioning systems sold in the United States will emit far fewer HFCs as a result of the rule, the second step in a 15-year phasedown of the chemicals that once dominated refrigeration and cooing equipment.
Here’s a look at HFCs and what the United States and other countries are doing to limit their use. . WHAT ARE HFCs?
More than 130 countries, including the United States, have signed a 2016 global agreement to greatly reduce use and production of HFCs by 2036.
The Senate ratified the so-called Kigali Amendment to the 1987 Montreal Protocol on ozone pollution last year in a rare bipartisan vote. The measure requires participating nations to phase down production and use of HFCs by 85% over the next 13 years, as part of a global phaseout intended to slow climate change.
Scientists said the agreement, reached in Kigali, Rwanda, could help the world avoid a half-degree Celsius of global warming.
U.S. spends millions worldwide to clean up widely banned bombs destined for Ukraine
Part of a cluster bomb found on the ground south of Mykolaiv, Ukraine. Photo: Matteo Placucci/NurPhoto via Getty Images
The U.S. has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years helping other countries clean up unexploded bombs — including the same type of controversial weapon that it now plans to send to Ukraine.
Why it matters: President Biden's decision Friday to green-light the transfer of widely banned cluster munitions to Ukraine in its ongoing fight against Russia has sparked humanitarian concerns — even among some in his own party.
There are "a lot of inconsistencies" in the Biden administration's decision to send this type of weapon to Ukraine, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Axios.
“The fact that you've got to spend millions and millions of dollars 50 years later, to try to clean up the damage that was done back then, I think should be a lesson enough for us to withhold this kind of weapon," he added.
By the numbers: Since 1993, the U.S. has spent more than $4.6 billion to help other countries clear out landmines and other unexploded ordnance, including cluster munitions, according to the State Department.
During the 2022 fiscal year alone, the U.S. "supported conventional weapons destruction activities in more than 65 countries and areas with more than $376 million," it added.
During the Vietnam war, the U.S. dropped roughly 270 million cluster bombs on Laos, up to 30% of which did not explode. The U.S. has now spent decades helping to fund the cleanup.
What they're saying: "The legacy of cluster bombs is misery, death, and expensive cleanup generations after their use," Rep. Betty McCollum (D-Minn.) said in a statement opposing Biden's move.
"The U.S. pays tens of millions of dollars annually to remove cluster munitions in Laos from the Vietnam era as these remnants of war continue to kill and maim civilians," she added.
Zoom in: Cluster munitions can fall often outside of the intended target range and up to 40% fail to explode on impact as intended, meaning they can injure and kill civilians long after a conflict has ended.
The Biden administration says the cluster munitions the U.S. is sending to Ukraine have dud rates of less than 2.35%, however.
State of play: Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) have introduced an amendment to the yearly must-pass defense spending bill to ban transfers of cluster munitions altogether.
As for the cleanup of Ukraine, the U.S. previously pledged $91.5 million to help "address the urgent humanitarian challenges posed by explosive remnants of war created by Russia’s invasion," a State Department spokesperson told Axios.
But neither the spokesperson nor the White House answered questions about whether the U.S. would commit to more cleanup funding in light of Biden's decision to send cluster munitions.
What's next: "We expect this to be one of the largest landmine and unexploded ordnance challenges since World War Two," Michael Tirre, a senior official in the State Department's Office of Weapons Removal and Abatement, said in December.
The bottom line: Castro said despite the urge to "do every single thing" to help Ukraine, the decision to send cluster bombs will affect Ukrainians generations from now.
"I don't think that we should contribute to the inhumanity in this way," he said. "It's just like if a country asked us for chemical weapons. We would say no."
North Korea: US plan to send cluster munitions to Ukraine is criminal
[11/July/2023]
PYONGYANG July 11. 2023 (SABA) - On Tuesday, North Korea denounced Washington's decision to send cluster munitions to Ukraine as a "criminal act." Demand that the plan be cancelled immediately.
"Biden's admission that the decision is difficult shows that he is aware of the catastrophic consequences of the use of cluster munitions," North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency quoted North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui in a statement.
"On behalf of the North Korean government, I strongly condemn the US decision to provide weapons of mass destruction to Ukraine as a serious criminal act that brings a new catastrophe to the world, and I strongly demand that the US withdraw the resolution immediately."
This comes at the time that the US website Responsible Statecraft stated in an article that the Biden administration's decision to approve the transfer of cluster munitions to Ukraine was met with considerable opposition from Democratic lawmakers, arms control experts, human rights groups and many European allies.
The Pentagon announced last Friday that it would provide Ukraine with a new package of military assistance, valued at $800 million, including cluster munitions.
US President Joe Biden previously said in an interview with CNN that he had followed the Pentagon's recommendation on supplying cluster munitions to Ukraine, and that the decision had been very difficult. E.M
resource : Saba
UK Report: Tories' Benefit Cuts 'to Push 100,000 into Absolute Poverty'
TEHRAN (FNA)- More than 100,000 people will be forced into absolute poverty by the UK Government’s £20 cut to Universal Credit in 2022-2023, according to analysis from a top economics institute.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) published its findings ahead of a full report into “Living Standards, Poverty and Inequality in the UK”, which is funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, The National reported.
The SNP said the research meant the Tory government “must reverse their devastating cuts” in order to lift people out of poverty.
The IFS report added that it expected “the absolute poverty rate to be 0.16ppts (106,000 people) higher in 2022–23 than in 2021–22 as a result of [the £20 cut to Universal Credit]”.
It stated that other changes to the Universal Credit system had not been as impactful as the £20 increase in payments.
“Work allowances in UC – the earnings thresholds above which benefit entitlements are gradually reduced – were raised by £500 a year, and the rate at which benefits are reduced above this point (the ‘taper rate’) was reduced from 63% to 55%” in November 2021, the IFS report notes.
While these changes were permanent, the £20 weekly increase in Universal Credit payments, introduced during the pandemic, was scrapped in October 2021.
The IFS report states, “The taper rate reduction only benefits working households on UC, with bigger impacts for those with higher levels of earnings. These households tend to be further up the income distribution and often already above the poverty line."
“In contrast, the £20 uplift applied equally to all UC recipients (except those who were subject to the benefit cap) – therefore boosting incomes for those who were near the poverty line,” it continued.
David Linden, the SNP MP and his party’s social justice spokesperson at Westminster, said, “The scathing findings from the IFS report only serve to reinforce the callous nature of the Tories decision to cut Universal Credit while families were already struggling to get by and highlights the urgency of reinstating the top-up for claimants."
“Westminster must reverse their devastating cuts to Universal Credit top-up, increase it to £25-per-week and extend it to means-tested legacy benefits, as households continue to deal with the consequences of the Westminster-made cost-of-living crisis," Linden continued.
“Whilst the SNP government continues to use the full extent of its limited devolved powers to implement progressive policies such as the Scottish Child Payment and Best Start Grants, it is only with the full powers of independence can we truly address the issue of poverty,” Linden added.
