Samsung union workers start 'indefinite' strike in South Korea

By Thomas Maresca


Unionized workers at Samsung Electronics began an 'indefinite' strike on Wednesday after claiming that the tech giant did not engage in dialogue over wage and benefit demands. The National Samsung Electronics Union members rallied ahead of the strike on Monday at Hwaseong, outside of Seoul. Photo by Yonhap

SEOUL, July 10 (UPI) -- Unionized workers at Samsung Electronics declared an "indefinite general strike" on Wednesday, calling for a wage increase and other benefits in what has become the largest labor action in the tech giant's 55-year history.

A three-day strike that began this week was scheduled to end on Wednesday. However, the National Samsung Electronics Union announced a change of plans, citing a lack of engagement from the company.

The union "confirmed that the company has no intention of dialogue even after the first general strike, and declared a second indefinite general strike from July 10," the NSEU said in a statement.

"We have confirmed that there will be a clear production line disruption, and the company will regret this decision," it said. "Management will eventually bend its knees and come to the negotiating table. We are confident in our victory."

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The NSEU has more than 30,000 members, accounting for almost a quarter of Samsung Electronics' total South Korean workforce of roughly 125,000.

A one-day strike held last month by the NSEU marked the first-ever walkout at the smartphone and chipmaking leader, which went decades without a significant labor union presence. Samsung, the country's largest private employer, changed its stance after a 2019 trial found dozens of top executives guilty of union-busting activities.

Union leaders and Samsung management started wage negotiations in January but failed to come to an agreement. The NSEU's current demands include a 3.5% raise in base pay, an additional vacation day, an improved performance bonus system and compensation for all members who participated in the strike.

More than 6,000 union members joined the initial three-day strike on Monday, with some 5,000 coming from the semiconductor division, the NSEU said earlier this week.

Samsung Electronics said that there have been no disruptions in production lines so far and vowed that none would occur, according to local media.

Analysts also predict a limited impact from the strike on the Suwon-based company.

"Because semiconductor factories rely on automated production and have low actual manpower requirements, even if the strike is prolonged, our current assessment is that it will not affect Samsung's production capacity," Avril Wu, an analyst at Taipei-based Trendforce, told UPI.

The strike comes on the heels of the company's explosive profit growth in the second quarter, thanks to a strong recovery in the memory chip market driven by artificial intelligence demand.

On Friday, Samsung Electronics said in a regulatory filing that its operating profit reached $7.5 billion for the April-June period, up 1,452.2% on year.

FUCK THE TALIBAN
Taliban does not recognize women on Afghan Olympic team: sport official

Agence France-Presse
July 8, 2024 7

Afghanistan's Taliban government says does not recognise the three female athletes who will represent the country at the Paris Olympic Games this month (VALENTIN FLAURAUD/AFP)

Afghanistan's Taliban government does not recognize the three female athletes who will represent the country at the Paris Olympic Games this month, a spokesman for their sports department said.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has invited a squad of six Afghan athletes -- three women and three men -- in consultation with Afghanistan's largely exiled national Olympic committee.

"Only three athletes are representing Afghanistan," said Atal Mashwani, the spokesman of the Taliban government's sports directorate, referring to the male competitors.

"Currently, in Afghanistan girls' sports have been stopped. When girls' sport isn't practiced, how can they go on the national team?" he told AFP.

All three of the women and two of the male athletes are living outside Afghanistan.

The only one training in the country is a judo fighter, whilst his squad mates will feature in athletics and swimming.

The women will compete in athletics and cycling.

The IOC said it had not consulted Taliban officials about the team and they were not invited to the games.

Spokesman Mark Adams last month confirmed Afghanistan's national Olympic committee -- including the president and secretary-general who are both living in exile -- remain "its sole interlocutors for the preparation and participation of the Afghan team".

But Afghan committee CEO Dad Mohammad Payenda Akhtari, who is still in the country, said whilst female athletes were organised abroad, his committee coordinated with Taliban authorities over the male ones.

Mashwani claimed the government was supporting them with training and scholarships.

"We only take the responsibility for three male athletes participating in the Olympics Olympics," he told AFP.

The participants will compete under the black, red and green flag of the old Western-backed government which crumbled after the withdrawal of US troops three years ago.

Since surging back to power in 2021, the Taliban government has enforced curbs squeezing women out of sport as well as secondary schools and universities.

The United Nations has described the restrictions as "gender apartheid".

The IOC banned Afghanistan from the games in 1999, during the first period of Taliban rule between 1996 and 2001 when women were also barred from sport.

Afghanistan was reinstated after the Taliban were ousted by the post-9/11 invasion, but the Paris games mark the first summer Olympics since their return.

This time the IOC has taken a different approach -- approving the Afghan team under a system ensuring all 206 nations are represented, in cases where athletes wouldn't otherwise qualify.

Led by left coalition, French election shows 'how you defeat the far right'

Edward Carver,

 Common Dreams
July 8, 2024 

People wave French national tricolors as fireworks light up the sky during an election night rally following the first results of the second round of France's legislative election at Place de la Republique in Paris on July 7, 2024. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP)

Political figures from across the world congratulated France's left-of-center coalition following parliamentary elections on Sunday in which it gained the most seats of any group, outperforming the far-right party that many feared would take control of the National Assembly, in what the The Washington Post called "one of the greatest political upsets in recent French history."

In the second and final round of voting, the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) won roughly 180 out of the 577 seats in the assembly, far from a majority but more than President Emmanuel Macron's centrist coalition, which won about 160, or Marine Le Pen's far-right Rassemblement National (RN), which won about 140 or 145.

Several parties including the leftist La France Insoumise (LFI), the center-left Parti Socialiste (PS), and Les Écologistes, a green party, joined forces to form the NFP after Macron announced a snap election in early June.

The parties came together out of fear of the RN, which led the polls and had the strongest showing of any party or alliance in the first round of the parliamentary elections on June 30. The NFP also opposed Macron's neoliberal agenda and supported progressive economic policies such as a lower retirement age.

Jeremy Corbyn, member of U.K. parliament and standard-bearer of the British left, said the French results provided "an urgent, valuable lesson."

"Don't concede ground to those who sow division and fear," Corbyn, who himself was reelected a few days ago, wrote on social media. "Build a bold left movement that offers an alternative of inclusion and hope. That is how you defeat the far right."

Similarly, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) argued that the French results offered confirmation of the popularity of progressive economic platforms like the NFP's.

"Here's a simple fact: If politicians stand with working families, working families will stand with you," Sanders wrote on social media. "As it turns out, lowering the retirement age and raising the minimum wage are very popular. Congratulations to the French left for taking on right-wing extremism and winning."

Several members of France's multiracial soccer team, currently competing in the UEFA European Football Championship in Germany, expressed joy and relief at the results of the election back home.

"The victory of the people," midfielder Tchouameni Aurélien wrote on social media.

Forward Marcus Thuram reacted similarly.

"Congratulations to all those who came forward in the face of the danger that hovered over our country," he wrote. "Long live diversity, long live the republic, long live France. The fight continues."

The effort to defeat the far right involved multiple levels of negotiation between left and centrist parties—not just the formation of the NFP, which prevented member parties from running candidates against one another, but also strategic cooperation between the NFP and Ensemble, Macron's own coalition, before Sunday's second round of voting.

Last week, going into the second round, more than 300 of the 577 legislative races had three or more candidates still in contention—in most cases, one NFP candidate, one Ensemble candidate, and one RN candidate. Because of a shared fear of the far right, the NFP and Ensemble negotiated to drop their third-place candidates from more than 220 races so that left and centrist votes wouldn't be split.


The strategy worked, with RN leaders, who last week had been openly speaking about obtaining a parliamentary majority of 289 seats, left with only about half of that figure or less—though even 140 seats marks a significant gain for the party, which had only 88 previously. The tallies are still being finalized, with different media outlets reporting slightly different totals

.

Source: La Libération, based on data from France's interior ministry

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the leftist president of Brazil, praised the "maturity" of the groups that joined together to defeat the far right. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a centrist, expressed relief in light of the impact an RN victory could have had on the Ukraine war.

"In Paris enthusiasm, in Moscow disappointment, in Kyiv relief," Tusk wrote on social media. "Enough to be happy in Warsaw."

The coalition-building stands as a remarkable accomplishment given the challenges that it entailed: Just building the NFP alliance required tricky negotiation. Left-of-center parties, after decades of discord, formed an alliance for the first time in 2022, but it fell apart last year, and, though the PS was part of that alliance, it was not endorsed by prominent center-left figures such as former President François Hollande, who has backed the NFP.

The NFP parties didn't decide in advance whom they'd put forward for prime minister, and the different factions within the alliance are now jockeying for the position. Many of the more centrist NFP figures have declared that it can't be Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the LFI leader, whom they view as divisive.

In any case, Macron has the power to name the prime minister, and it's not clear if he would be willing to name Mélenchon, who ran against him for president in 2017 and 2022. Macron on Monday declined to accept the resignation of Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, an ally from his own party, explaining that he should stay on "to ensure the stability of the country."

That's likely just a temporary solution: Ensemble had a near-majority in the previous parliament but, having lost more than 80 seats, will no longer be strong enough to avoid a vote of no confidence in the prime minister and his government. Macron will have to name a prime minister that a majority of the incoming National Assembly approve of or risk triggering such votes of no confidence. The newly elected parliamentarians are scheduled to begin their first session on July 18.

Singapore's hell theme park dead serious about afterlife

Agence France-Presse
July 9, 2024 

At Hell's Museum in Singapore, the main attraction at the Haw Par Villa park, visitors are welcomed to a kitschy, air-conditioned hell on Earth (Roslan RAHMAN/AFP)

Gory grottos with demons impaling sinners on stakes and people drowning in a pool of blood are not part of your average theme park experience.

But at Hell's Museum in Singapore, the main attraction at the Haw Par Villa park, visitors are welcomed to a kitschy, air-conditioned hell on Earth.

Inside the sprawling park complex with over 1,000 statues and dioramas showcasing Asian culture, faiths and philosophy, Hell's Museum exhibits various religious views on the afterlife.

Visitors are encouraged to learn about the 10 Courts of Hell through intense depictions of punishments for earthly sins.

At court number two, for instance, corruption gets you frozen in ice while rapists at court seven are thrown in boiling oil.

The 10 Courts of Hell are "the result of the mixing of four different religions and philosophies: Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Confucianism", said Eisen Teo, the chief curator of Hell's Museum in the multicultural city-state.

"The sculptures and dioramas are a visual dissection of many classics, stories and moral values that many Singaporeans have and are familiar with," Teo said.

Visitor Gin Goldberg told AFP she wasn't so surprised to learn that many religions had differing opinions on the afterlife.

"One person's heaven would be another person's hell," the American said.


-- Party in hell --

The odd park stands apart from gleaming Singapore's mainstream tourist attractions such as the luxury shops of Marina Bay Sands or the towering "supertrees" of Gardens by the Bay.

Haw Par Villa was built in 1937 by entrepreneur Aw Boon Haw, known for co-developing Asia's much-loved Tiger Balm pain relief rub.


While fondly remembered by older generations, the park has had trouble attracting the Gen Z crowd and younger millenials, according to Journeys, the firm that manages the park.

To broaden appeal, it has held several rave parties and other private events -- but not too near to religious exhibits.

"After they came here (for the parties) they fell in love with the quirky, eccentric park, with these cool sculptures. Fell in love with them and they keep doing repeat visits," said Savita Kashyap, Journeys' executive director.


While Haw Par Villa isn't just about the afterlife, and raves -- it also displays scenes from Chinese folklore such as "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" -- its hellish attraction remains the top draw.

But not for all.

One Filipina visitor told AFP while leaving that she won't be returning anytime soon.


"It's very scary," she said.

Strike call threatens Paris airports' Olympics preparations

Agence France-Presse

July 9,2024

The most intense period is expected just after the closing ceremony on August 11

 (Miguel MEDINA/AFP)

A dispute between aviation workers and management at the French capital's airports threatens to overshadow years of preparations and a 50-million-euro investment for visitors and athletes arriving for the Paris Olympics this month.

Unions at state-controlled ADP group, which runs the main Charles de Gaulle airport and its cross-town rival Orly, announced a one-day stoppage on July 17 to press for bigger Olympics bonuses and staff recruitment.

If it continues, the stand-off with management could impact the Games, with athletes set to start arriving en masse from July 18 and hundreds of thousands of ticket holders flying in ahead of the July 26 opening ceremony.

"The fact that we are forced to call for a strike is because of the obstinate refusal of management and in particular the CEO of the company," unions said in a joint statement on Monday.

Along with train stations, Charles de Gaulle and Orly are set to be the main gateways into France for foreign Olympics fans, as well as athletes and equipment.

The ability of ADP's unions to mobilize workers next week is uncertain, however, with a previous stoppage called on May 19 having little effect on operations.

The country's air traffic controllers, despite winning large pay increases last year, went on strike again on April 25, causing thousands of flight cancellations.

- Queues -

Charles de Gaulle and Orly will the first glimpse many foreign visitors and athletes have of the French capital when they arrive for the Games.

As a result, ADP has spent 50 million euros ($54 million) upgrading its infrastructure and French authorities are deploying extra resources to make the experience as smooth and safe as possible.

"We know that there are some days that will be really intense and we will maybe have 300,000 travellers in the same day at Charles de Gaulle," Julien Gentile, director of border security forces at Paris's airports, told reporters last week.

That number is well above the daily summer average of 200,000 at the airport and is far beyond the record 250,000 daily fliers reached in the summer of 2019.

For the duration of the Games, 250 border posts will be open -- 100 more than normal -- and they will be staffed almost round-the-clock thanks to 2,000 reinforcements, including from the EU's border force Frontex.

"It's like if your supermarket had all of its tills open from the start of the day to the close," Gentile added.

Automated passport control machines, which can be used by EU travellers, as well as crowd-monitoring technology that alerts managers to the arrival of passengers, are also part of the efforts to avoid bottlenecks.

- Oversized luggage -

One of the key challenges for ADP over the Olympic period is managing irregular and sharp spikes in demand.

The busiest days are expected to come after the closing ceremony on August 11 when spectators, officials and most of the 10,000 athletes will head home.

This coincides with a big changeover period during the French school summer holidays.

"Athletes and delegations arrive in a fairly dispersed manner and will leave in very concentrated fashion," ADP deputy chief executive Edward Arkwright told reporters in April this year.

Athletes will also arrive and depart with an estimated 47,000 pieces of luggage, many of them large and cumbersome, containing items such as kayaks, bikes or polevaulting poles.

A large, specially designed temporary oversized baggage terminal has been built at Charles de Gaulle, measuring 8,000 m2 (86,000 sq. ft), with a smaller version constructed at Orly.

- 'France's image' -

As well the strike threats, the unusual baggage, and the spikes in demand, the city's airports will also have to contend with the arrival of thousands of VIPs, journalists and officials from the International Olympic Committee.

The opening ceremony -- to be proceeded by a summit hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron -- will draw more than 100 heads of state and government, all of whom require protocol services and parking space for their jets.

A vast no-fly zone around Paris, with a radius of 150 kilometers (93 miles), will be established during the opening ceremony, grounding all civilian flights.

Once out of the terminals, regular travelers will find multi-lingual "welcome teams" offering advice on travel and buying tickets at the train stations.

"There's a huge amount of work that's been done," the head of the greater Paris region, Valerie Pecresse, said at the end of June when unveiling the transport and security .

In the metro and train stations at the airports, police are set to step up patrols against pickpockets and chain snatchers.

"France's image is in the balance because this is the first step for a passenger as they arrive in the country," deputy head of border forces at Charles de Gaulle, Regis Bailleul, explained.

Texas weather extremes likely to become normal, scientists say

Fire Photo by Cullan Smith on Unsplash

By Alejandra Martinez and Yuriko Schumacher, The Texas Tribune

July 1, 2024

"Texas weather extremes likely to become normal, scientists say" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

Texas is no stranger to extreme weather, but it’s been a year. Massive wildfires, intense thunderstorms, widespread flooding, tornadoes and a tropical storm have swept the state.

And the year’s only halfway over.

In February and March, the largest wildfire in Texas history burned through more than 1 million acres, killing livestock, destroying crops and gutting infrastructure in the Panhandle northeast of Amarillo. In early May, back-to-back storms drenched Southeast Texas, swelling rivers and creeks and flooding nearby communities.

Later that month, tornadoes struck parts of North Texas and a powerful windstorm known as a derecho slammed the Houston region with 100-mile-per-hour winds, causing widespread blackouts and property damage. Most recently, Tropical Storm Alberto made landfall in northeast Mexico, dumping heavy rainfall on South Texas — but not enough to fill drought-starved reservoirs on the Rio Grande.

Climate scientists and academics say that as emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases continue to push temperatures higher, severe weather in the state is likely to worsen. They add that Texas will likely see a growing gap between wet parts of the state and dry parts as climate change alters precipitation patterns and warms oceans.

One area where the gap has grown is rainfall. This year, Huntsville recorded more than 9 inches of rainfall on May 2, three months worth of rain in just a day, while Wichita Falls, Dallas and Waco have already seen nearly double the amount of rain they normally get during the first half of the year.

“Rainfall is being concentrated in these really high-intensity storms,” said Avantika Gori, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice University in Houston.

Gori, whose research focuses on coastal and urban flooding and changes in flood risk due to climate change, said areas of Texas that are normally wet are getting wetter. “And then the areas that are historically dry, the lack of rainfall is also being amplified,” she said.

John Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist, said Texas has experienced a long-term increase in rainfall overall and it’s becoming more intense and erratic. He said the extreme rainfall in North and East Texas this year has been unusual.

“It's bad luck that we had all the rain concentrated in half of the state,” Nielsen-Gammon said.

Feifei Pan, a hydrologist and professor at the University of North Texas at Denton, says there are two ingredients needed for precipitation: rising temperatures and moisture in the atmosphere.

Warmer temperatures due to climate change cause more water to evaporate from the land and oceans, leading to increasing flood risk in Texas.

Warmer air also can hold more water vapor, which can create heavier rain when it clashes with cold air to produce severe thunderstorms, Pan said.

Forecasters predict that La Niña, a climate pattern that causes surface ocean water temperatures to cool and tends to lessen wind speeds, will allow more tropical storms to develop this year in the Atlantic. Wind changes plus warmer-than-average ocean temperatures are expected to be major drivers to this year’s predicted 17 to 25 named storms, including at least four major hurricanes.

The flip side of higher temperatures is that droughts can develop more quickly, Nielsen-Gammon, the state’s climatologist, said.

Ongoing drought in West Texas has sent water levels in two major Rio Grande reservoirs, Amistad and Falcon, plummeting to near historic lows. Amistad is at 27% of capacity, down from its 68% average over the past 30 years. Falcon is at 14% of capacity this year, 24 percentage points lower over the same time frame.

Robert Mace, executive director and chief water policy officer of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University in San Marcos, said a 1944 treaty between the U.S. and Mexico requires Mexico to deliver water to the U.S. from the six tributaries that feed into the Rio Grande. But those deliveries are behind, Mace said, because of Mexico’s own drought.

Disclosure: Rice University and the University of North Texas have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/07/01/texas-extreme-weather-climate-change/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Honey bees vote to decide on nest sites – why we should listen

The Conversation
July 2, 2024 

Bees on honey cells (Shutterstock)

When people think of honey bees, they often think of classic wooden hives, in which beekeepers are having to breed more and more bees just to keep managed populations stable. These man-made boxes, designed to facilitate pollination and honey production in an era before animal welfare was considered, are the hives in which scientists study honey bees.

However, these boxes have little in common with the wild nests that featured in honey bee evolution. Are we are missing something from the evolution of wild bees that might help managed bees today?

Honey bees, originally a tropical insect, colonized cold climates 600,000 years ago by evolving complex behaviour patterns for finding and selecting nest cavities in trees.

Swarming honey bees send out scouts to find suitable nests, measure them for fitness against a list of criteria such as height off the ground, volume, entrance size, and entrance location. They communicate this information to the rest of the scouts. Then the scouts engage in a voting system to select the best one and move the entire swarm sometimes over a kilometre to the new nest.

This tells us that these nests were not that common, even 600,000 years ago. However, the survival advantages warrant investing enormous amounts of energy in finding them.

Disease, predators, parasites and climate change are threatening the future of managed honey bees, pollinators of our food crops. Yet research into these pressures and honey bee behavior rarely takes account of the nest preferences of honey bees shaped by evolution.

For example an international survey of honey bee losses conducted by the Federation of Irish Beekeepers has only three yes/no questions about hives and bee research has no methods or standards on how to evaluate the quality of hives, in contrast to the elaborate measures taken by the bees themselves.

Have we, by putting honey bees into boxes for our own convenience, prevented bees coping with these pressures? Do the bees’ elaborate nest-choosing suggest strategies to help protect them?

One way to answer these questions would be to quantify the physical properties of man made research hives, in relation to the preferences of the honey bees and the context they evolved in. This would mean we could give a hive a scientifically based score relevant to the long term survival of honey bees. It would also form a basis for researching whether human built hives are helping or hindering the honey bees.



Do we make hives that are best for bees or ones that make life easier for humans. Kosolovskyy/Shutterstock

My research used the science methods more commonly used for aerodynamics and building simulations (computational fluid dynamics or CFD) and quantified the heat loss differences between hives and the nests honey bees vote for.

Heat retention is important for honey bees as they need to keep the internal temperature of part of their nest above 20°C all year round and part of it close to 34°C for most of the year.

My findings show the tree nests lose substantially less heat than the conventional hives used by researchers. My study also used CFD to visualize the air flows inside both tree and hives, which showed that the internal air circulation within the hive is of substantially different type to that inside the tree nest.

In addition the study has shown that features of man made hives inserted for the beekeeper or researcher’s convenience to easily insert and remove frames actually increase heat losses substantially.

Why has this not been done already?

In the 1930s, all sorts of hive experiments were conducted. By the 1940s, scientists concluded that different hives made little difference to bees. Thus the baseline for research, that hive characteristics could be ignored, was set.

However these experiments did not quantify key physical characteristics (such as heat loss), or determine if the experiments actually changed much physically inside the hive, or measured how man-made hives related to the preferences of honey bees. It was only in the late 1970s that research was carried out into honey bee nest preferences and then later around 2003 into the way honey bees seek out new nest locations and vote for them.

This knowledge about nest preferences and seeking has had little impact on hive based research, probably because the doctrine “hives make no difference” was well established. This means today, as in the 1950s, research does not take into consideration key physical characteristics of the hive nor place them in context with the honey bee preferences that have evolved.

The differences between the hive and the tree nest are so stark, it does call into question whether some research is really about the bees or the bees coping with us.

Derek Mitchell, Researcher in Mechanical Engineering, University of Leeds

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ancient Greek sanctuary slowly sinks into the Aegean Sea

Agence France-Presse
July 2, 2024 

Delos's 2,000-year-old buildings offer insight into the Hellenistic and Roman periods © Aris MESSINIS / AFP

A brief boat ride from the thrumming nightclubs of Mykonos lies the UNESCO heritage site of Delos, one of the most important sanctuaries of the ancient Greek and Roman world.
Surrounded by piercing azure waters, Delos' 2,000-year-old buildings offer a microcosm of information on daily life during the Hellenistic and Roman periods.

But within decades, because of rising sea levels brought about by climate change, the site known for its temples guarded by stone lions could be gone forever, scientists warn.

"Delos is condemned to disappear in around 50 years," said Veronique Chankowski, head of the French archaeological school of Athens (EFA), which has been excavating the site for the past 150 years under license from the Greek state.

The tiny Aegean Sea island's silent drama could not be more at odds with the bustle of neighboring Mykonos, which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.

The worst structural damage is visible in an area that once housed trade and storage buildings in the first and second centuries BCE and is not accessible to visitors.

- Seawater eroding walls -

"Water enters the stores in winter. It eats away at the base of the walls," noted Jean-Charles Moretti, the French mission's director on Delos and a researcher at the French state institute for the research of ancient architecture (IRAA).

"Every year in the spring, I notice that new walls have collapsed," Moretti, who has taken part in digs on the island for the past 40 years, told AFP.

In the space of roughly 10 years, the shoreline has moved inland up to 20 meters (66 feet) in some parts of the island as water levels have risen, added Chankowski.

A study by Aristotelio University in Thessaloniki last year found that increasing temperatures combined with high levels of humidity can significantly affect the chemical composition of certain materials used in cultural heritage monuments.

"Just like the human body, monuments are built to withstand specific temperatures," study supervisor Efstathia Tringa, a meteorology and climatology researcher at Aristotle University in Thessaloniki, told Kathimerini daily earlier this year.

A steady stream of tourists from Mykonos, who often veer away from permitted areas, constitute an additional problem.

In the summer, only a handful of archaeologists are at hand to supervise.

To the ancient Greeks, Delos was the birthplace of Apollo, god of light, arts and healing, and of his sister Artemis, goddess of the hunt.

The siblings were among the chief deities honored by both the Greeks and the Romans.

At the height of its acclaim during the Roman era, Delos attracted pilgrims and traders from across the ancient world and ultimately grew to a bustling city of some 30,000 people.

But the island's popularity proved its undoing. It was looted twice in the first century BCE and eventually abandoned altogether.

For now, wooden support beams have been used to shore up some walls, Chankowski said.

But more robust measures are complex and will require a multi-disciplinary response, she added.

"All coastal cities will lose significant areas currently located at sea level," said Athena-Christiana Loupou, a Greek archaeologist who guides groups through the site's main attractions.

"We replaced plastic straws with paper straws but we lost the war" to protect the environment, she said bitterly.

Satellite images show deforestation toll of Indonesia mines
Agence France-Presse
July 5, 2024 

Indonesia's nickel reserves are the world's largest (RIZA SALMAN/AFP)

More than 700,000 hectares of forest in Indonesia have been cleared for mining since 2001, including large tracts of primary forest, a new analysis using satellite data has found.

The TreeMap, a conservation start-up, used high-resolution imagery from several satellites and two decades of data from the long-running Landsat program to map mines and related infrastructure and track deforestation.

It estimates that mining -- including pits, processing facilities, tailings areas and roads -- resulted in the clearing of 721,000 hectares (7,210 square kilometers) of forest between 2001 and 2023.

An estimated 150,000 hectares of that was primary forest, areas with high carbon stock and tall trees that include intact old growth, according to the analysis released this week.

The group's Nusantara Atlas shows the striking disappearance of forest cover in time-lapse sequences as mines and associated infrastructure are developed.

The mines were identified using a combination of "visual interpretation and machine learning", explained David Gaveau, founder of The TreeMap.

"Open-pit mines are easily identified... by their concentric lines of benches cut into the pit sides for coal mines, or by their tendency to be located along river banks, for gold," he explained.

All types of mines also have distinctive "spectral signatures" -- a measurement of energy -- that are characteristic of bare land areas and are easily detectable, he added.

The group cross-referenced their findings with official maps of mining concessions, local media articles and NGO reports.

Using historical satellite images also allowed them to detect now-abandoned mines that have become overgrown.

The impact from coal mining was by far the largest, accounting for around half of all the deforestation tracked, followed by gold, tin and nickel.

And while the data showed a peak in deforestation in 2013, the problem has begun growing again in recent years.

By 2023, mining was linked to an annual loss of nearly 10,000 hectares of primary forest, Gaveau said.

Indonesia's environment ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the analysis.

The government's latest public figures, which are not broken down by cause, say over 73,000 hectares of forest area was lost in 2021-22, with more than 104,000 hectares of total deforestation that year, including "non-forest area".

Deforestation linked to mining still falls far short of the forest loss caused by palm oil and wood plantations.

But it is an area of growing concern, with Indonesia's reliance on coal increasing and the country looking to expand exploitation of its nickel reserves.

Indonesia has the world's largest reserves of highly sought-after nickel, a crucial component for the batteries used in electric vehicles.

A 2022 study found that 80 percent of global forest loss linked to mining occurred in just four countries: Indonesia, Brazil, Ghana and Suriname.

Indonesia was by far the worst affected however, accounting for nearly 60 percent of the global mining-linked forest loss tracked in the study.

'They're everywhere': Common foods linked to elevated levels of PFAS in body

Edward Carver, Common Dreams

July 5, 2024 

Eggs

Common foods including white rice and eggs are linked to higher levels of "forever chemicals" in the body, new research from scientists at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth shows.

The researchers also found elevated levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in people who consumed coffee, red meat, and seafood, based on plasma and breast milk samples of 3,000 pregnant people. The findings, published in Science of the Total Environment, add to the mounting evidence of the accumulation of PFAS, which were developed by chemical companies in the mid-20th century, in the natural environment and the body.

"The results definitely point toward the need for environmental stewardship, and keeping PFAS out of the environment and food chain," Megan Romano, a Dartmouth epidemiologist and co-author of the paper, toldThe Guardian. “Now we're in a situation where they're everywhere and are going to stick around even if we do aggressive remediation."

PFAS are a class of 16,000 compounds linked to a wide range of adverse health conditions including cancer, with research ongoing. The chemicals' development and production went effectively unregulated for decades, but has received significant attention in recent years, with alarming studies coming out regularly.

3M, a consumer goods multinational that developed and manufactured many PFAS compounds, knew that they were accumulating dangerously in the blood of the general public, but concealed it, according to a recent investigation co-published by ProPublica and The New Yorker; the article was written by journalist Sharon Lerner, who previously reported on PFAS-related deception by 3M and Dupont for The Intercept.

Such corporations may yet face unprecedented legal action. As Steven Shapin wrote in the London Review of Books on Thursday, "It is thought that the monetary scale of American lawsuits against companies responsible for PFAS water pollution may eventually dwarf those involving asbestos and tobacco, considering that people are in a position to decide whether or not to smoke cigarettes but everybody has to drink water."

While much of the concern about PFAS has rightly centered on drinking water—in which they're found worldwide—that is just one of the ways the chemicals can get into the human body. A new study this week showed they can be absorbed through the skin.

Food intake is also a primary means of accumulation in the body, and the new Dartmouth study indicates which foods are the worst. The study doesn't explore why, though Romano discussed some possible reasons with The Guardian. Rice is likely contaminated because of PFAS in soil or agricultural water, while coffee could have PFAS because of various factors including filters. Animal products can be contaminated if, among other reasons, the ground that the animals lived off was treated with PFAS-fouled toxic sludge, which is used by farmers as a cheap alternative to fertilizer.

Even consumption of backyard chicken eggs lead to elevated levels of PFAS, and that could be because of the table scraps the chickens are often fed, Romano said.