'Pretending to be president': Trump slammed for gifting White House 'key'

Kathleen Culliton
April 24, 2024 


Donald Trump gives former Japanese prime minister Taro Aso 

a ceremonial “key to the White House” on April 23. (Trump campaign)

Former President Donald Trump received a digital tongue-lashing Wednesday after a post-hush money trial photo-op saw him hand Japan's former prime minister a White House "key."

Trump invited Taro Aso to Trump Tower's golden lobby on Tuesday, just hours after he left Manhattan's criminal court, to present his guest with a golden key.

The resultant photo — which shows Trump and Aso, the deputy head of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, beaming into the camera — caused NBC executive Mike Sington to raise the proverbial eyebrow on X.


"Not sure what gives him the right to do this," Sington wrote. "Probably Citizen Trump once again pretending to be President."

Sington was hardly alone.

"Did he steal that key?" replied @SojournadaTruth. "Only a lunatic like Trump would do this."

Trump's New York City trial — in which he stands accused of falsifying business records to hide hush money payments ahead of the 2016 presidential election — is one of three in which prosecutors contend he broke the law to claim residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

While Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg focuses on Trump's initial White House bid, special counsel Jack Smith and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis levied charges linked to the 2020 loss he baselessly has claimed was a victory.

This contention spurred much mockery from those who saw Trump handing out the White House "key."

"Still pretending to be president," replied William Buecker. "This is actually kind of sad."

"He will never let go," added X user CarrieT. "He believes he is president for life."

Another viewer poked fun at Trump's recent bids to funnel funds into dwindling campaign coffers that have included selling $59.99 Bibles and $399 golden sneakers.

Replied X user Covfefe — also the "bizarre" Trump typo that went viral in 2017, "I’m guessing he’ll sell Trump keys soon at $39.95."

THE GUARDIAN 2016

WAIT, WHAT?!

‘I’m kind of shocked’: Amy Coney Barrett backs up Sonia Sotomayor in abortion case

David Edwards
April 24, 2024 

Amy Coney Barrett (Photo by Susan Walsh for AFP)


Conservative Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett appeared to briefly take the side of liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor on abortion rights Wednesday.

The high court was hearing oral arguments on the conflict between Idaho's stringent abortion ban and a federal law that mandates emergency medical care standards in hospitals, including for pregnant women.

Sotomayor asked Idaho lawyer Joshua Turner about a woman who was brought to the emergency room at 14 weeks of pregnancy

"This particular patient, they tried, had to deliver her baby," the justice said. "The baby died. She had a hysterectomy, and she can no longer have children. All right, you're telling me the doctor there couldn't have done the abortion earlier?"

"Again, it goes back to whether a doctor can, in good faith, medical judgment," Turner replied before he was interrupted.

"That's a lot for the doctor to risk," Sotomayor noted. "When Idaho law changed to make the issue whether she's going to die or not, or whether she's going to have a serious medical condition, there's a big daylight by your standards, correct?"

"It is very case-by-case," Turner insisted.

"That's the problem," Sotomayor pushed back before Barrett weighed in.


"I'm kind of shocked, actually," the conservative justice reacted, "because I thought your own expert had said below that these kinds of cases were covered, and you're now saying they're not?"

"No, I'm not saying that," Turner responded.

"Well, you're hedging," Barrett observed. "I mean, Justice Sotomayor is asking you, would this be covered or not? And it was my understanding that the legislature's witnesses said that these would be covered."

"Yeah, and those doctors said if they were exercising their medical judgment, they could, in good faith, determine that life-saving care was necessary," Turner explained.

"But some doctors — couldn't doctors might reach a contrary conclusion, I think is what Sotomayor is asking you," Barrett pointed out.

Watch the video below from C-SPAN.

CLIMATE CRISIS

Thousands in heatwave-hit Bangladesh pray for rain

Agence France-Presse
April 24, 2024 

Muslims offer special prayers for rain in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka as an extreme heatwave hit the country (Abdul Goni/AFP)

Thousands of Bangladeshis gathered to pray for rain on Wednesday in the middle of an extreme heatwave that prompted authorities to shut down schools around the country.

Extensive scientific research has found climate change is causing heat waves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.

Bangladesh's weather bureau says that average maximum temperatures in the capital Dhaka over the past week have been 4-5 degrees Celsius (7.2-9 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the 30-year average for the same period.

Muslim worshippers gathered in city mosques and rural fields to pray for relief from the scorching heat, which forecasters expect to continue for at least another week.

"Praying for rains is a tradition of our prophet. We repented for our sins and prayed for his blessings for rains," Muhammad Abu Yusuf, an Islamic cleric who led a morning prayer service for 1,000 people in central Dhaka, told AFP.

"Life has become unbearable due to lack of rains," he said. "Poor people are suffering immensely."

Police said similarly sized prayer services were held in several other parts of Bangladesh.

The country's largest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, issued a statement calling its members to join the prayer services planned for Wednesday and Thursday.

- 'All linked to climate change' -


Authorities ordered all schools last week to cancel classes until the end of the month.

The UN children's agency said it was "urging parents to be extra vigilant in keeping their children hydrated and safe" through the heatwave.

"The severity of this heatwave underscores the urgent need for action to protect children from the worsening impacts of climate change," UNICEF said in a statement.


Temperatures across Bangladesh have reached more than 42C (108F) in the past week.

"April is usually the hottest month in Bangladesh. But this April has been one of the hottest since the country's independence (in 1971)," government forecaster Tariful Newaz Kabir told AFP.

Kabir said fewer rainstorms than average for the period had contributed to the heat.

"We expect the high temperature will remain until the end of this month," he said.

Hospitals in the southern coastal district of Patuakhali had recorded local outbreaks of diarrhoea due to higher temperatures and the resulting increased salinity of local water sources, state medical officer Bhupen Chandra Mondal told AFP.

"The number of diarrhoea patients is very high this year," he said. "This is all linked to climate change."

Hundreds of thousands march in Argentina against education austerity

dpa
2024/04/24

People take part in a protest against the cuts being made to education and science by President Milei's ultra-liberal government. Numerous people demanded financial support for state colleges and universities. 

Cristina Sille/dpa

Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Argentina to protest against cuts in the higher education sector.

According to the University of Buenos Aires, more than 500,000 demonstrators protested in the capital alone on Tuesday against the strict austerity programme of President Javier Milei's ultra-liberal government.

"We are defending the public, open and free university, which is one of the great achievements of our people and which we will not give up," said Nobel Peace Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel at the central rally in front of the Casa Rosada, the seat of government.

"We are defending our right to live in dignity."

The education system in Argentina is considered to be one of the best in Latin America. Studies at public universities are free of charge and many young people from other countries in the region also come to the country to study.

As part of its austerity policy, the Argentinian government recently cut the budget of public universities by 71%. If the funds are not increased, the University of Buenos Aires will no longer be able to pay the salaries of its staff from the middle of the year, newspaper La Nación reported.

Argentina has been in a severe economic crisis for years. The ultra-liberal Milei has imposed harsh austerity measures on the country, cutting thousands of jobs in the public sector, reducing subsidies and winding down social programmes.

On Monday, he announced the first quarterly budget surplus in more than 15 years. However, critics say Milei's harsh austerity programme is plunging many people into poverty and is putting the country's future at risk, including with the cuts in the education sector.

People take part in a protest against the cuts being made to education and science by President Milei's ultra-liberal government. Numerous people demanded financial support for state colleges and universities. Cristina Sille/dpa

 

U$A
FTC Chief Says Tech Advancements Risk Health Care Price Fixing

2024/04/23

New technologies are making it easier for companies to fix prices and discriminate against individual consumers, the Biden administration’s top consumer watchdog said Tuesday.

Algorithms make it possible for companies to fix prices without explicitly coordinating with one another, posing a new test for regulators policing the market, said Lina Khan, chair of the Federal Trade Commission, during a media event hosted by KFF.

“I think we could be entering a somewhat novel era of pricing,” Khan told reporters.

Khan is regarded as one of the most aggressive antitrust regulators in recent U.S. history, and she has paid particular attention to the harm that technological advances can pose to consumers. Antitrust regulators at the FTC and the Justice Department set a record for merger challenges in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2022, according to Bloomberg News.

Last year, the FTC successfully blocked biotech company Illumina’s over $7 billion acquisition of cancer-screening company Grail. The FTC, Justice Department, and Health and Human Services Department launched a website on April 18, healthycompetition.gov, to make it easier for people to report suspected anticompetitive behavior in the health care industry.

The American Hospital Association, the industry’s largest trade group, has often criticized the Biden administration’s approach to antitrust enforcement. In comments in September on proposed guidance the FTC and Justice Department published for companies, the AHA said that “the guidelines reflect a fundamental hostility to mergers.”

Price fixing removes competition from the market and generally makes goods and services more expensive. The agency has argued in court filings that price fixing “is still illegal even if you are achieving it through an algorithm,” Khan said. “There’s no kind of algorithmic exemption to the antitrust laws.”

By simply using the same algorithms to set prices, companies can effectively charge the same “even if they’re not, you know, getting in a back room and kind of shaking hands and setting a price,” Khan said, using the example of residential property managers.

Khan said the commission is also scrutinizing the use of artificial intelligence and algorithms to set prices for individual consumers “based on all of this particular behavioral data about you: the websites you visited, you know, who you had lunch with, where you live.”

And as health care companies change the way they structure their businesses to maximize profits, the FTC is changing the way it analyzes behavior that could hurt consumers, Khan said.

Hiring people who can “help us look under the hood” of some inscrutable algorithms was a priority, Khan said. She said it’s already paid off in the form of legal actions “that are only possible because we had technologists on the team helping us figure out what are these algorithms doing.”

Traditionally, the FTC has policed health care by challenging local or regional hospital mergers that have the potential to reduce competition and raise prices. But consolidation in health care has evolved, Khan said.

Mergers of systems that don’t overlap geographically are increasing, she said. In addition, hospitals now often buy doctor practices, while pharmacy benefit managers start their own insurance companies or mail-order pharmacies — or vice versa — pursuing “vertical integration” that can hurt consumers, she said.

The FTC is hearing increasing complaints “about how these firms are using their monopoly power” and “exercising it in ways that’s resulting in higher prices for patients, less service, as well as worse conditions for health care workers,” Khan said.

Policing Noncompetes

Khan said she was surprised at how many health care workers responded to the commission’s recent proposal to ban “noncompete” clauses — agreements that can prevent employees from moving to new jobs. The FTC issued its final rule banning the practice on Tuesday. She said the ban was aimed at low-wage industries like fast food but that many of the comments in favor of the FTC’s plan came from health professions.

Health workers say noncompete agreements are “both personally devastating and also impeded patient care,” Khan said.

In some cases, doctors wrote that their patients “got really upset because they wanted to stick with me, but my hospital was saying I couldn’t,” Khan said. Some doctors ended up commuting long distances to prevent the rest of their families from having to move after they changed jobs, she said.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

POST-PANDEMIC

Biden Administration Sets Higher Staffing Mandates. Most Nursing Homes Don’t Meet Them.

2024/04/22


The Biden administration finalized nursing home staffing rules Monday that will require thousands of them to hire more nurses and aides — while giving them years to do so.

The new rules from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services are the most substantial changes to federal oversight of the nation’s roughly 15,000 nursing homes in more than three decades. But they are less stringent than what patient advocates said was needed to provide high-quality care.

Spurred by disproportionate deaths from covid-19 in long-term care facilities, the rules aim to address perennially sparse staffing that can be a root cause of missed diagnoses, severe bedsores, and frequent falls.

“For residents, this will mean more staff, which means fewer ER visits potentially, more independence,” Vice President Kamala Harris said while meeting with nursing home workers in La Crosse, Wisconsin. “For families, it’s going to mean peace of mind in terms of your loved one being taken care of.”

When the regulations are fully enacted, 4 in 5 homes will need to augment their payrolls, CMS estimated. But the new standards are likely to require slight if any improvements for many of the 1.2 million residents in facilities that are already quite close to or meet the minimum levels.

“Historically, this is a big deal, and we’re glad we have now established a floor,” Blanca Castro, California’s long-term care ombudsman, said in an interview. “From here we can go upward, recognizing there will be a lot of complaints about where we are going to get more people to fill these positions.”

The rules primarily address staffing levels for three types of nursing home workers. Registered nurses, or RNs, are the most skilled and responsible for guiding overall care and setting treatment plans. Licensed practical nurses, sometimes called licensed vocational nurses, work under the direction of RNs and perform routine medical care such as taking vital signs. Certified nursing assistants are supposed to be the most plentiful and help residents with daily activities like going to the bathroom, getting dressed, and eating.

While the industry has increased wages by 27% since February 2020, homes say they are still struggling to compete against better-paying work for nurses at hospitals and at retail shops and restaurants for aides. On average, nursing home RNs earn $40 an hour, licensed practical nurses make $31 an hour, and nursing assistants are paid $19 an hour, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

CMS estimated the rules will ultimately cost $6 billion annually, but the plan omits any more payments from Medicare or Medicaid, the public insurers that cover most residents’ stays — meaning additional wages would have to come out of owners’ pockets or existing facility budgets.

The American Health Care Association, which represents the nursing home industry, called the regulation “an unreasonable standard” that “creates an impossible task for providers” amid a persistent worker shortage nationwide.

“This unfunded mandate doesn’t magically solve the nursing crisis,” the association’s CEO, Mark Parkinson, said in a statement. Parkinson said the industry will keep pressing Congress to overturn the regulation.

Richard Mollot, executive director of the Long Term Care Community Coalition, a New York City-based advocacy nonprofit, said “it is hard to call this a win for nursing home residents and families” given that the minimum levels were below what studies have found to be ideal.

The plan was welcomed by labor unions that represent nurses — and whom President Joe Biden is counting on for support in his reelection campaign. Service Employees International Union President Mary Kay Henry called it a “long-overdue sea change.” This political bond was underscored by the administration’s decision to have Harris announce the rule with SEIU members in Wisconsin, a swing state.

The new rules supplant the vague federal mandate that has been in place since the 1980s requiring nursing homes to have “sufficient” staffing to meet residents’ needs. In practice, inspectors rarely categorized inadequate staffing as a serious infraction resulting in possible penalties, federal records show.

Starting in two years, most homes must provide an average of at least 3.48 hours of daily care per resident. Homes won’t be required to give that level of attention to every resident, or every day; regulators will judge the average for the whole facility over several months. About 6 in 10 nursing homes are already operating at that level, a KFF analysis found.

The rules give homes breathing room before they must comply with more specific requirements. Within three years, most nursing homes will need to provide daily RN care of at least 0.55 hours per resident and 2.45 hours from aides.

CMS also mandated that within two years an RN must be on duty at all times in case of a patient crisis on weekends or overnight. Currently, CMS requires at least eight consecutive hours of RN presence each day and a licensed nurse of any level on duty around the clock. An inspector general report found that nearly a thousand nursing homes didn’t meet those basic requirements.

Nursing homes in rural areas will have longer to staff up. Within three years, they must meet the overall staffing numbers and the round-the-clock RN requirement. CMS’ rule said rural homes have four years to achieve the RN and nurse aide thresholds, although there was some confusion within CMS, as its press materials said rural homes would have five years.

Under the new rules, the average nursing home, which has around 100 residents, would need to have at least two RNs working each day, and at least 10 or 11 nurse aides, the administration said. Homes could meet the overall requirements through two more workers, who could be RNs, vocational nurses, or aides.

Homes can get a hardship exemption from the minimums if they are in regions with low populations of nurses or aides and demonstrate good-faith efforts to recruit.

Democrats praised the rules, though some said the administration did not go nearly far enough. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas), the ranking member of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, said the changes were “modest improvements” but that “much more is needed to ensure sufficient care and resident safety.” A Republican senator from Nebraska, Deb Fischer, said the rule would “devastate nursing homes across the country and worsen the staffing shortages we are already facing.”

Advocates for nursing home residents have been pressing CMS for years to adopt a higher standard than what it ultimately settled on. A CMS-commissioned study in 2001 found that the quality of care improved with increases of staff up to a level of 4.1 hours per resident per day — nearly a fifth higher than what CMS will require. The consultants CMS hired in preparing its new rules did not incorporate the earlier findings in their evaluation of options.

CMS said the levels it endorsed were more financially feasible for homes, but that assertion didn’t quiet the ongoing battle about how many people are willing to work in homes at current wages and how financially strained homes owners actually are.

“If states do not increase Medicaid payments to nursing homes, facilities are going to close,” said John Bowblis, an economics professor and research fellow with the Scripps Gerontology Center at Miami University. “There aren’t enough workers and there are shortages everywhere. When you have a 3% to 4% unemployment rate, where are you going to get people to work in nursing homes?”

Researchers, however, have been skeptical that all nursing homes are as broke as the industry claims or as their books show. A study published in March by the National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that 63% of profits were secretly siphoned to owners through inflated rents and other fees paid to other companies owned by the nursing homes’ investors.

Charlene Harrington, a professor emeritus at the nursing school of the University of California-San Francisco, said: “In their unchecked quest for profits, the nursing home industry has created its own problems by not paying adequate wages and benefits and setting heavy nursing workloads that cause neglect and harm to residents and create an unsatisfactory and stressful work environment.”

© Kaiser Health News

Tire Toxicity Faces Fresh Scrutiny After Salmon Die-Offs

2024/04/24



For decades, concerns about automobile pollution have focused on what comes out of the tailpipe. Now, researchers and regulators say, we need to pay more attention to toxic emissions from tires as vehicles roll down the road.

At the top of the list of worries is a chemical called 6PPD, which is added to rubber tires to help them last longer. When tires wear on pavement, 6PPD is released. It reacts with ozone to become a different chemical, 6PPD-q, which can be extremely toxic — so much so that it has been linked to repeated fish kills in Washington state.

The trouble with tires doesn’t stop there. Tires are made primarily of natural rubber and synthetic rubber, but they contain hundreds of other ingredients, often including steel and heavy metals such as copper, lead, cadmium, and zinc.

As car tires wear, the rubber disappears in particles, both bits that can be seen with the naked eye and microparticles. Testing by a British company, Emissions Analytics, found that a car’s tires emit 1 trillion ultrafine particles per kilometer driven — from 5 to 9 pounds of rubber per internal combustion car per year.

And what’s in those particles is a mystery, because tire ingredients are proprietary.

“You’ve got a chemical cocktail in these tires that no one really understands and is kept highly confidential by the tire manufacturers,” said Nick Molden, CEO of Emissions Analytics. “We struggle to think of another consumer product that is so prevalent in the world and used by virtually everyone, where there is so little known of what is in them.”

Regulators have only begun to address the toxic tire problem, though there has been some action on 6PPD.

The chemical was identified by a team of researchers, led by scientists at Washington State University and the University of Washington, who were trying to determine why coho salmon returning to Seattle-area creeks to spawn were dying in large numbers.

Working for the Washington Stormwater Center, the scientists tested some 2,000 substances to determine which one was causing the die-offs, and in 2020 they announced they’d found the culprit: 6PPD.

The Yurok Tribe in Northern California, along with two other West Coast Native American tribes, have petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to prohibit the chemical. The EPA said it is considering new rules governing the chemical. “We could not sit idle while 6PPD kills the fish that sustain us,” said Joseph L. James, chairman of the Yurok Tribe, in a statement. “This lethal toxin has no place in any salmon-bearing watershed.”

California has begun taking steps to regulate the chemical, last year classifying tires containing it as a “priority product,” which requires manufacturers to search for and test substitutes.

“6PPD plays a crucial role in the safety of tires on California’s roads and, currently, there are no widely available safer alternatives,” said Karl Palmer, a deputy director at the state’s Department of Toxic Substances Control. “For this reason, our framework is ideally suited for identifying alternatives to 6PPD that ensure the continued safety of tires on California’s roads while protecting California’s fish populations and the communities that rely on them.”

The U.S. Tire Manufacturers Association says it has mobilized a consortium of 16 tire manufacturers to carry out an analysis of alternatives. Anne Forristall Luke, USTMA president and CEO, said it “will yield the most effective and exhaustive review possible of whether a safer alternative to 6PPD in tires currently exists.”

Molden, however, said there is a catch. “If they don’t investigate, they aren’t allowed to sell in the state of California,” he said. “If they investigate and don’t find an alternative, they can go on selling. They don’t have to find a substitute. And today there is no alternative to 6PPD.”

California is also studying a request by the California Stormwater Quality Association to classify tires containing zinc, a heavy metal, as a priority product, requiring manufacturers to search for an alternative. Zinc is used in the vulcanization process to increase the strength of the rubber.

When it comes to tire particles, though, there hasn’t been any action, even as the problem worsens with the proliferation of electric cars. Because of their quicker acceleration and greater torque, electric vehicles wear out tires faster and emit an estimated 20% more tire particles than the average gas-powered car.

A recent study in Southern California found tire and brake emissions in Anaheim accounted for 30% of PM2.5, a small-particulate air pollutant, while exhaust emissions accounted for 19%. Tests by Emissions Analytics have found that tires produce up to 2,000 times as much particle pollution by mass as tailpipes.

These particles end up in water and air and are often ingested. Ultrafine particles, even smaller than PM2.5, are also emitted by tires and can be inhaled and travel directly to the brain. New research suggests tire microparticles should be classified as a pollutant of “high concern.”

In a report issued last year, researchers at Imperial College London said the particles could affect the heart, lungs, and reproductive organs and cause cancer.

People who live or work along roadways, often low-income, are exposed to more of the toxic substances.

Tires are also a major source of microplastics. More than three-quarters of microplastics entering the ocean come from the synthetic rubber in tires, according to a report from the Pew Charitable Trusts and the British company Systemiq.

And there are still a great many unknowns in tire emissions, which can be especially complex to analyze because heat and pressure can transform tire ingredients into other compounds.

One outstanding research question is whether 6PPD-q affects people, and what health problems, if any, it could cause. A recent study published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters found high levels of the chemical in urine samples from a region of South China, with levels highest in pregnant women.

The discovery of 6PPD-q, Molden said, has sparked fresh interest in the health and environmental impacts of tires, and he expects an abundance of new research in the coming years. “The jigsaw pieces are coming together,” he said. “But it’s a thousand-piece jigsaw, not a 200-piece jigsaw.”

This article was produced by KFF Health News, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.

Most bees don’t die after stinging – and other surprising bee facts


Australian teddy bear bees are cute and fluffy, but get a look at that massive (unbarbed) stinger! 

James Dorey Photography

THE CONVERSATION
Published: April 24, 2024




Most of us have been stung by a bee and we know it’s not much fun. But maybe we also felt a tinge of regret, or vindication, knowing the offending bee will die. Right? Well, for 99.96% of bee species, that’s not actually the case.

Only eight out of almost 21,000 bee species in the world die when they sting. Another subset can’t sting at all, and the majority of bees can sting as often as they want. But there’s even more to it than that.

To understand the intricacies of bees and their stinging potential, we’re going to need to talk about the shape of stingers, bee genitals, and attitude.
Our beloved, and deadly, honey bees

What you most likely remember getting stung by is the European honey bee (Apis mellifera). Native to Europe and Africa, these bees are today found almost everywhere in the world.

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They are one of eight honey bee species worldwide, with Apis bees representing just 0.04% of total bee species. And yes, these bees die after they sting you.

But why?

We could say they die for queen and colony, but the actual reason these bees die after stinging is because of their barbed stingers. These brutal barbs will, most of the time, prevent the bee from pulling the stinger out.
The European honeybee has a barbed stinger (left), while a native Fijian bee’s stinger is unbarbed (right). Sam Droege (left) / James Dorey (right)

Instead, the bee leaves her appendage embedded in your skin and flies off without it. After the bee is gone, to later die from her wound, the stinger remains lodged there pumping more venom.

Beyond that, bees and wasps (probably mostly European honey bees) are Australia’s deadliest venomous animals. In 2017–18, 12 out of 19 deaths due to venomous animals were because of these little insects. (Only a small proportion of people are deathly allergic.)

Talk about good PR.
So what is a stinger?

A stinger, at least in most bees, wasps and ants, is actually a tube for laying eggs (ovipositor) that has also been adapted for violent defence. This group of stinging insects, the aculeate wasps (yes, bees and ants are technically a kind of wasp), have been stabbing away in self-defence for 190 million years.

You could say it’s their defining feature.
A Sycoscapter parasitoid wasp laying eggs into a fig through her ovipositor (bottom middle). Her ovipositor sheath, which usually surrounds the ovipositor, is curved behind her and to the right. Sycoscapter wasps are sister to the aculeate wasps (they don’t sting). James Dorey Photography

With so much evolution literally under their belts they’ve also developed a diversity of stinging strategies. But let’s just get back to the bees.

The sting of the European honey bee is about as painful as a bee sting gets, scoring a 2 out of 4 on the Schmidt insect sting pain index.

But most other bees don’t pack the same punch — though I have heard some painful reviews from less-than-careful colleagues. On the flipside, most bee species can sting you as many times as they like because their stingers lack the barbs found in honey bees. Although, if they keep at it, they might eventually run out of venom.

Even more surprising is that hundreds of bee species have lost their ability to sting entirely.
Can you tell who’s packing?

Globally, there are 537 species (about 2.6% of all bee species) of “stingless bees” in the tribe Meliponini. We have only 11 of these species (in the genera Austroplebeia and Tetragonula) in Australia. These peaceful little bees can also be kept in hives and make honey.

Stingless bees can still defend their nests, when offended, by biting. But you might think of them more as a nuisance than a deadly stinging swarm.
An Australian stingless bee, Tetragonula carbonaria, foraging on a Macadamia flower. James Dorey Photography

Australia also has the only bee family (there are a total of seven families globally) that’s found on a single continent. This is the Stenotritidae family, which comprises 21 species. These gentle and gorgeous giants (14–19mm in length, up to twice as long as European honey bees) also get around without a functional stinger.
The long ovipositor of this parasitoid, and non-stinging, wasp is essentially a hypodermic needle for injecting an egg. James Dorey Photography

The astute reader might have realised something by this point in the article. If stingers are modified egg-laying tubes … what about the boys? Male bees, of all bee species, lack stingers and have, ahem, other anatomy instead. However, some male bees will still make a show of “stinging” if you try to grab them.

Some male wasps can even do a bit of damage, though they have no venom to produce a sting.
Why is it always the honey bees?

So, if the majority of bees can sting, why is it always the European honey bee having a go? There are a couple of likely answers to that question.

First, the European honey bee is very abundant across much of the world. Their colonies typically have around 50,000 individuals and they can fly 10km to forage.

Read more: Help, bees have colonised the walls of my house! Why are they there and what should I do?

In comparison, most wild bees only forage very short distances (less than 200m) and must stay close to their nest. So those hardworking European honey bees are really putting in the miles.

Second, European honey bees are social. They will literally die to protect their mother, sisters and brothers. In contrast, the vast majority of bees (and wasps) are actually solitary (single mums doing it for themselves) and lack the altruistic aggression of their social relatives.

A complicated relationship

We have an interesting relationship with our European honey bees. They can be deadly, are non-native (across much of the world), and will aggressively defend their nests. But they are crucial for crop pollination and, well, their honey is to die for.

But it’s worth remembering these are the tiny minority in terms of species. We have thousands of native bee species (more than 1,600 found so far in Australia) that are more likely to simply buzz off than go in for a sting.

Authors

James B. Dorey

Lecturer in Biological Sciences, University of Wollongong

Amy-Marie Gilpin

Lecturer in Invertebrate Ecology, Western Sydney University

Rosalyn Gloag

School of Life and Environmental Sciences Research Fellow, University of Sydney
Disclosure statement

James B. Dorey has received funding from organisations like the University of Wollongong, Flinders University, the Playford Trust, and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (New Colombo Plan); but none in relation to this article.

Amy-Marie Gilpin receives funding from Western Sydney University and Horticulture Innovation Australia. She is also a member of the IUCN Wild Bee Specialist Group Oceania.

Rosalyn Gloag receives funding from The Australian Research Council, but not in relation to this article. She is affiliated with The University of Sydney. She is also a member of the IUCN Wild Bee Specialist Group Oceania.

The Myanmar 'water brothers' salvaging shipwrecks on the tide

Yangon (Myanmar) (AFP) – Diving into the darkness of the Yangon River, Than Nyunt starts another murky sortie in his months-long mission to salvage a sunken ship using the power of the moon.


Issued on: 25/04/2024

A diver in Myanmar works to recover a sunken ship in the Yangon River, plunging down to attach cables to the wreck and using the power of the tides to bring the boat to shore

 © Sai Aung MAIN / AFP

His target is a 53-metre (174-foot) long cargo vessel resting on the silty riverbed in Myanmar's commercial hub, whose steel carcass will fetch a tidy sum as scrap -- if he can get it to shore.

A hose running from his mask up to an oxygen pump on the boat is his lifeline and only means of communication -- one tug on it from a colleague means "come up quickly".

He stays in the dark depths for up to three hours at a time, attaching cables to the wreck.

The cables run up to the team's boat on the surface, and then to shore. When it rises on the next tide, it will drag the shipwreck a few metres along the bed.

The work is slow and dangerous but addictive, said Than Nyunt, 58.

He says he has salvaged around 40 ships, from cargo boats to passenger ferries, since he started diving over four decades ago.

"After I excavate one ship I always want to do it again and again," he told AFP from the river, wearing a Manchester United jersey and a pair of gardening gloves.

A man swims after a dive to recover a sunken ship in the Yangon River; scrap dealers buy the metal and melt it down to be used again 

© Sai Aung MAIN / AFP

"Besides making money, I want to know the condition of the wreck... I also talk with ship owners about the ship's history, and we both are delighted when we can salvage them."

The team's current shipwreck -- the Mya Nadi (Emerald River) -- is an old friend for Than Nyunt.

He salvaged the vessel in 1981 for its owner, who fitted it with a new engine and set it back to work.

Around eight years ago it sank again.
'Water brothers'

There are between 20 and 30 wrecks on the bed of the Yangon, according to Than Nyunt.

During the British colonial era, the water thronged with ships taking away teak wood and rice from the hinterlands and bringing in workers from abroad.

Workers attach cables to the sunken ships, then slowly tighten them after each tide raises the wreck, bringing it into shallower waters nearer the shore 

© Sai Aung MAIN / AFP

In World War II, fierce fighting between Japan and Allied forces sent many vessels to the riverbed.

Cyclone Nargis, which devastated Myanmar's Irrawaddy Delta in 2008, killing at least 138,000 people, sent more to the bottom.

It left the riverbed a rich, if risky, hunting ground for salvagers.

Wrapping a metal chain around his body to weigh himself down, Thet Oo, 38, prepares for a shift unclogging silt from the 'Emerald River'.

The job is risky; divers spend hours underwater breathing through a hose attached to a pump on the boat above

 © Sai Aung MAIN / AFP

Working in the darkness, as much as 25 metres (80 feet) down and buffeted by strong currents is risky, he says.

"My life is in the hands of the man holding the oxygen pipe... If something happens to the oxygen machine, I can only know if he gives a signal to me."

That signal is a tug on the oxygen tube, warning the diver to come up.

"However much we argue on the boat, we have to act like brothers when we are under the water," said Than Nyunt.
Tidal cranes

Pulling the wrecks using the tidal surges of the river is organic but plodding and requires much patience.
In the last stage of the salvage, the team fix tyres and sandbags to the wreck to anchor it in place © Sai Aung MAIN / AFP

"We don't have a heavy-duty crane to pull the ships," says Than Nyunt.

"When the tide rises by up to 12 feet, we can expect the ship to move up to 10 feet and we can pull it to land."

After more than four months work, the skeleton of the Emerald River is visible in the shallows.

In the last stage of the salvage, the team fix tyres and sandbags to the wreck to anchor it in place.

Another team then moves in to dismember the wreck, working with blowtorches in knee-deep water.

A scrap dealer will buy the metal and melt it down to be used again.

Divers in Than Nyunt's team can earn 25,000 to 30,000 kyat each day ($12 - 14).

Once the wreck is out of the water, another team moves in to cut away the metal with blowtorches 

© Sai Aung MAIN / AFP

He has salvaged boats all over Myanmar, and doesn't want to stop.

"I don't smoke, drink or use drugs in my life... and I have the ambition to work for as many years as possible," he said.

"I'm 58 years old right now and I can work for the next 10 years, because I'm like a sportsperson who is always active."

© 2024 AFP

US aid for Taiwan 'will only increase tensions,' China says

US President Joe Bidensigned off on fresh assistance for Taiwan, allowing the island to upgrade its military hardware. Taiwan's president-elect says it will "safeguard peace," but China says it raises the risk of war.

China on Wednesday decried a fresh package of US military aid for Taiwan, which is intended to boost the island's defenses in the case of a possible Chinese invasion.

The US Senate passed the $8 billion (€7.48 billion) military aid package late Tuesday, as part of larger legislation that includes fresh assistance for Israel and Ukraine. Having already passed the House, US President Joe Biden later on Wednesday signed the package into law.

China: US aid to Taiwan raises 'risk of conflict'

"I'd like to emphasize that the United States and Taiwan strengthening military ties will not bring about security for Taiwan," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said. He said the assistance "will only increase tensions and the risk of conflict across the Taiwan Strait."

A Chinese spokesperson for the mainland's Taiwan Affairs Office, Zhu Fenglian, said the aid violates US commitments to China and "sends a wrong signal to the Taiwan independence separatist forces."

China does not view Taiwan as a separate country, but rather as a breakaway province. The Chinese Civil War ended in 1949, with the communists taking control of the Chinese mainland and the nationalist Kuomintang retreating to Taiwan.
Taiwan 'very happy' with aid package

Taiwanese incumbent President Tsai ing-Wen, meanwhile, was pleased with the aid package.



"We are also very happy that the Senate has just passed these bills," Tsai said during a meeting with a US congressional delegation in Taipei. Tsai belongs to the center-left Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which emphasizes Taiwan's separate identity from the mainland.

A day earlier, Taiwan's incoming president, Lai Ching-te, said the US assistance would "strengthen the deterrence against authoritarianism in the West Pacific ally chain" and "help ensure peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and also boost confidence in the region." Lai is also a member of the DPP.

The US aid package will help modernize Taiwan's forces as China frequently conducts military maneuvers near the island.

Western leaders such as Biden have expressed concerns that China may take control of Taiwan by force in the coming years.

A Chinese invasion would not only cost human lives, but it could be a massive blow to the global economy — the island is a major producer of semiconductor chips which are used in everything from cellphones to automobiles.

China-Taiwan conflict: How it could ruin the global economy

The fresh US aid to Taiwan comes as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visits China on Wednesday.

Blinken is expected to meet his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on Friday, with Taiwan near the top of the agenda. The top US diplomat may also meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, who has earlier suggested that Chinese reunification with Taiwan is "inevitable."

wd/sms (AP, AFP)