IAEA team samples seawater near Fukushima plant to ensure safe release of wastewater


This photo shows the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, northern Japan, on Aug. 22, 2024. (Kyodo News via AP)

BY MARI YAMAGUCHI
 October 7, 2024

TOKYO (AP) — A team of scientists from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in Fukushima on Monday as part of an annual monitoring and sampling mission to ensure safety of the discharge of treated radioactive wastewater into the sea, officials said.

Japan began discharging the wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in August 2023. The plant was damaged in the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, triggering meltdowns in its three reactors and large amounts of radioactive water to accumulate.

China protested and blocked imports of Japanese seafood, which has hit Japanese seafood exporters

The IAEA team will take samples from the plant, coastal waters and a fish market in nearby Iwaki city. It will also visit to a national laboratory near Tokyo and meet with Japanese officials.

In late September, Japan and China announced a deal that would ease China’s seafood ban and include Beijing in the monitoring of the wastewater discharges under the framework of the IAEA.

The latest IAEA mission, which included experts from China, is not related to the China-Japan deal, officials said.

Japan says the discharge meets international safety standards and is being monitored by the IAEA. Japan has criticized China over its seafood ban as unscientific and demanded an immediate end to the measure.

Police say 10 people are dead and an unknown number are missing after a mine collapse in Zambia

 October 7, 2024

LUSAKA, Zambia (AP) — At least 10 people died and an unknown number are missing after a mine collapsed in central Zambia, police said Monday.

Authorities said rescue operations were underway and it wasn’t clear exactly how many miners were underground. The collapse occurred in the district of Mumbwa, about 150 kilometers (93 miles) west of the capital, Lusaka. No cause was immediately given for the collapse.

Nine bodies were recovered from the site and a tenth person died in a hospital, said Charity Munganga Chanda, police commissioner for the Central Province. Five were injured and being treated in the hospital.

Collins Nzovu, a government minister and the local member of Parliament, said 20 miners were missing and feared dead, although police didn’t confirm that number.

The miners are suspected of being informal ones, which is common in the southern African country.


Dozens of informal miners died last year in Zambia when they were buried by landslides while working in an open-pit copper mine in the town of Chingola near the northern border with Congo.
___

Analysis: Year into Gaza war, new reality but no peace without justice for Palestinians

By Dalal Saoud
UPI
Oct. 7, 2024 /

 Smoke rises after an Israeli airstrike at Dahieh Saint Therese area in the southern suburb of Beirut, Lebanon, on Monday. Lebanese Minister of Health, Firas Abiad, announced Saturday that more than 2,000 people have been killed and more than 9,600 others injured in Lebanon since the beginning of the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. Photo by EPA-EFE

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Oct. 7 (UPI) -- On Oct. 7, 2023, the world woke up to a new reality in the Middle East: Hamas staged a daring attack against Israel that quickly went out of control. And Israel responded with utmost and disproportionate brutality against Gaza and then Lebanon, and the region turned upside down.

One year later, the Gaza war remained unresolved, with no cease-fire in place, an official death toll close to 42, 000 people and large destruction of the besieged Strip. Hamas is still fighting, firing rockets into Israel and holding 97 out of 250 Israeli hostages and prisoners it captured.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still far from achieving his Gaza war objectives: eliminating Hamas, securing the release of the Israeli captives and ensuring that the destroyed Strip does no longer constitute a threat to Israel's security.

Instead, Netanyahu went on destroying Lebanon's Hezbollah, trying to push the United States into war with Iran and boasting that he is reshaping the Middle East.

Imposing a new regional order, a new Middle East without solving the 76-year-old Palestinian conflict, would put the region on top of a volcano and turn it into a space for more violence and conflicts, analysts said.

The daring, spectacular "Al-Aqsa Flood Operation," masterminded by Hamas hunted leader Yahya Sinwar last Oct. 7, aimed at imposing a prisoner swap, stopping the "Abraham Accords" that led to a new normalization trend between Israel and some Arab countries, and bringing back world attention to the Palestinian cause.

"It is true that the Palestinian question is back [to the forefront], but it is back within the framework of a second Nakba," Ziad Majed, an associate professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the American University of Paris, told UPI. The Nakba [Catastrophe] refers to the mass displacement and dispossession of Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

The ongoing war on Gaza and the full siege imposed by Israel have even more devastating consequences: at least 41,909 people, mostly civilians, killed; 10,000 feared to be buried under the rubble; 97,303 wounded and some 1.9 million people - or about 90 percent of Gazans - have been displaced internally at least once.

The destruction of homes, hospitals, schools and universities, as well as starvation and widespread multidimensional poverty, are leading to a full-fledged humanitarian catastrophe. The Strip turned into an "unlivable" space.

On the Israeli side, about 1,200 people have been killed, including about 800 civilians and 346 soldiers, while 90,000 Israelis remained internally displaced, according to the Foreign Ministry.

Most importantly, the attack "shattered the sense of security that Israel supposedly provided for its citizens, reinforcing a preexisting sense of perpetual victimhood that evokes historical memories of violence and persecution," Palestinian-American historian Rashid Khalidi wrote.

The "Al Qqsa Flood" operation also caused a big change inside Israel that, in all its past wars, could not tolerate a high number of casualties and captives, according to Rami Rayess, Lebanon's director of the Institute for Palestine Studies.

"Such a transformation was the result of a competition between the far right and the more extremists ... even those limited voices who used to call for peace do not exist anymore inside Israel," Rayess told UPI.

Hamas probably underestimated such a change in Israel.

Rayess explained that Israel, supported by the US and its other allies, justified the excessive use of force against Gaza on the basis that it was facing an "existentialist war and needed to defend itself."

"That came with reviving Greater Israel's plan, starting with the attempt to push the Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip, expand settlements in the West Bank and force its people out to Jordan, as well as with promoting building settlements in southern Lebanon," he said.

"Expulsing the Palestinians from their land is an old plan that reemerges to revive Greater Israel's dream."

What Hamas possibly has achieved -- though at a very high cost -- was the realization that the Palestinian question cannot be ignored anymore, Arab normalization with Israel stopped and Israel's global reputation damaged with mounting calls on the U.N and International Court of Justice to investigate its "crimes against humanity and genocide."

However, it couldn't prevent Netanyahu and his far-right allies in the government from "seizing the opportunity to start a full-scale war on the Palestinians, not only in Gaza where they are trying to impose a change in demography, but also East Jerusalem and the West Bank with accelerated plans to increase settlements and colonization budget," Majed said.

"This is part of their approach for a final solution in which they will end the Palestinian project of a state, aspirations for self-determination," he said, also referring to a Knesset vote last July rejecting the establishment of a Palestinian state, thus the two-states solution.

The announcement a few years ago that Israel is a Jewish state has made the one-state solution even more difficult, Majed said.

According to Rayes, "peace options are diminishing" with Israel rejecting all settlement proposals.

So what's left for the Palestinians?

Probably the only good outcome was the resulting global outrage provoked by the "genocide" committed by Israel in Gaza and a new political awareness in the West about the roots of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Majed explained that a "new political culture" is starting to shape the minds of students and a new generation of people not only in Western countries, but also around the world "about the notion of justice, freedom, self-determination and interest in international law."

"This is new, and this is in contradiction with the fact that international law is less and less respected by international actors," he said. "Something might change, but it will take lots of time .... The hope is in this new generation, the new culture that is emerging at a tragic moment in the region."

The Palestinians have tried over the years every possible means from armed resistance, Oslo peace treaty, multiple Intifadas (uprisings) to Hamas-like armed resistance, with the hope of winning a state of their own, but to no avail.

"It will not take long before the Palestinians invent new ways and means for resistance," Rayess said. "At the end, they have no other option but to resist in the absence of a viable path toward a lasting, sustainable peace."

Moreover, Netanyahu's new Middle East plan is unlikely to succeed even if Israel achieves a military victory.

"It is an aggressive plan, built over the bodies of the Palestinians and Lebanese. It will not work and would just lead to a new cycle of violence, more instability, more frustration and to more reactions that will also go out of control ... unless there is a political solution and the question of impunity and international law is addressed," Majed said.

How Hurricane Helene became deadly disaster across 6 states

By Cary Mock, University of South Carolina
THE CONVERSATION

Oct. 7, 2024 

View of damages left behind by Hurricane Helene in Cedar Key, Fla. Photo by Cristobal Herrera-Ulashkevich/EPA-EFE

Some hurricanes are remembered for their wind damage or rainfall. Others for their coastal flooding. Hurricane Helene was a stew of all of that and more. Its near-record-breaking size, storm surge, winds and rainfall together turned Helene into an almost unimaginable disaster that stretched more than 500 miles inland from the Florida coast.

At least 230 people died across Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia as Helene flooded towns, destroyed roads and bridges and swept away homes.

In Florida, Helene's storm surge caused damage along hundreds of miles of coast. As residents there began the clean up and recovery, another dangerous hurricane was headed their way. Some of the same areas hit hard by Helene on Sept. 26 -- including Tampa Bay and Cedar Key -- could see flooding again from Hurricane Milton, expected to make landfall as early as Wednesday.

The majority of Helene's victims were far from the coast, caught off guard as the storm unleashed more than 20 inches of rain in the mountains that quickly turned streams and rivers into raging torrents.

I study hurricane history as a geographer and climatologist in one of those hard-hit states, South Carolina. Helene was by far the deadliest inland hurricane on record, exceeding Hurricane Agnes in 1972, which killed 128 people in the northeastern United States. And it was the third deadliest in the continental United States since operational forecasting began in the 1960s, after Hurricanes Katrina (2005) and Camille (1969).

Meteorologists routinely assess three major components of hurricanes: wind intensity, storm surge and rain. Here's how those elements combined with Helene's vast size and forward speed to make the storm far more destructive than its wind speed alone suggested.

Helene's destructive winds

Helene was no doubt the strongest hurricane to hit Florida's Big Bend area north of Tampa since 1851. It made landfall near Perry, Fla., late on Sept. 26, as a Category 4 hurricane with sustained winds of 140 mph.

The storm's fast forward movement -- it was traveling northward about 30 mph after landfall -- and its large size meant Helene's winds were still powerful when it reached Georgia and South Carolina, areas that rarely experience winds that damaging. More than 2 million homes lost power across the two states, and more than a quarter-million of them were still without power a week after the storm.

Valdosta, in southern Georgia, was hit with near-Category 2 intensity winds, around 90 to 95 mph. The city has only seen a few hurricanes over the past century, including Idalia in 2023. Augusta, on the other side of Georgia near the South Carolina border, saw sustained tropical storm wind gusts up to 69 mph.

Near-record storm surge

Helene's size was an important factor. The hurricane was huge -- about 400 miles across, similar in size to Hurricane Katrina, and among the largest to make landfall in the continental United States.

That large size contributed to Helene's destructive storm surge. Hurricanes push on the ocean, causing water to build up into a storm surge that can swamp the coast with water several feet above normal ocean height. Large, powerful storms push on a larger ocean area and for a longer period of time, building up a larger storm surge.

Helene's storm surge peaked around 15 feet in the Big Bend area, according to early estimates. That would make it among the highest storm surges on record in the region dating back to the mid-1800s. Field analyses will take several weeks to verify the height.

 

Cedar Key, Fla., about 50 miles east of the center of Helene, had a storm surge of about 9.3 feet, which would be the highest in its 20th century record. That area reported three higher storm surges in the past: in 1896, at 12.5 feet, and in 1842 and 1848, both at about 15 feet.

Tampa Bay, almost 200 miles south of Helene's center, saw a destructive storm surge of over 6 feet. The Tampa area has seen worse, including a 15-foot storm surge in 1848, but Helene's damage there was still widespread. Twelve people near Tampa died in the storm.

Rain and flooding in the mountains

Much of Helene's most devastating impact occurred far inland, as the storm moved up the mountains.

Normally, fast-moving storms are less of a rain hazard, but Helene was a big exception. In the southern Blue Ridge Mountains, Helene's rain was enhanced by the terrain and what's known as orographic uplift. When a storm is forced to rise up a mountainside, the air cools and condenses, dropping more precipitation.

In the mountains, that rainfall quickly funnels into streams and rivers. Asheville, N.C., a fast-growing city of about 95,000 residents, is located in a bowl in mountainous terrain. That left it and other nearby cities highly susceptible to high river runoff and extreme flooding. To make matters worse, the area was already saturated from a storm just ahead of Helene.

The French Broad River crested at Asheville at 24.67 feet, shattering the previous 1916 record of 22 feet, also caused by remnants of a hurricane.

In South Carolina, the storm was so big that its rain bands covered the entire state. The National Weather Service at Greenville-Spartanburg reported that Upstate South Carolina received 8 to 24 inches of rain.

Atlanta received 11.2 inches in a 48-hour period, setting a record.

Assessing hurricane risk in a warming world

Helene's devastation is an important reminder that hurricanes can't be judged by wind speed alone. The commonly used Saffir-Simpson scale, which ranks storms by Categories 1-5, is primarily based on wind intensity. Helene ranked as a Category 4 storm, but its damage was on par with some of the most destructive hurricanes in history.

As the climate warms, hurricane risk is changing. Warm ocean water fuels hurricanes, and warmer air can hold more moisture, creating stronger destructive storms. Helene's extraordinary rainfall and the consequences may become a signature of future hurricanes.

Cary Mock is a professor of geography at University of South Carolina.

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

U.S. overdose deaths drop 10%, new data shows

By Robin Foster,

 HealthDay News
Oct. 7, 2024 

In findings that suggest inroads are being made in the battle against America's opioid epidemic, new government data shows a 10% drop in overdose deaths. Photo by Adobe Stock/HealthDay News

In findings that suggest inroads are being made in the battle against America's opioid epidemic, new government data shows a 10% drop in overdose deaths.

The statistics, compiled by states and posted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, show just over 100,000 people died of a drug overdose during the 12-month period ending in April.

Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, described the drop as the largest on record and credited the administration's dual strategies of beefing up public health interventions while cracking down on drug suppliers.

"This has not happened by accident," Gupta told the Washington Post.

Experts also credited the widespread availability of the overdose antidote naloxone, the Post reported.

But there is also a less sunny analysis of the decline: Because fentanyl took so many lives in recent years, the group of potential victims has shrunk, Dr. Daniel Ciccarone, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine who studies overdose trends, speculated to the Post.

Importantly, the CDC data remains preliminary and could change because state data lags as coroners and medical examiners conclude death investigations.

Overdoses reached historic rates in recent years as fentanyl took over the nation's heroin supply, the Post reported. Overdose deaths in 2021 topped 100,000 nationally for the first time. In 2022, the spike slowed but still reached nearly 110,000 confirmed deaths, a record high.

Last year, an estimated 108,318 people died in what federal officials described as the first annual decrease in deaths since 2018.

Even that 2018 dip had been fleeting, as fatalities rose again and spiked during the pandemic, the Post reported.

Still, the 2018 decrease was more gradual while the recent drop has been steep, said Nabarun Dasgupta, a senior scientist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Injury Prevention Center. Overdoses not resulting in death have also decreased in many states, Dasgupta told the Post.

Dasgupta said he believes that by the end of 2024, there could be 20,000 fewer deaths than the year before.

"This will be a historic moment for public health. Something has changed -- that I'm sure of," Dasgupta said. "Where the direction lines go from here, I have no idea."

Dasgupta theorized that changes in the illicit drug supply may be playing a major role.

Other drugs are appearing alongside fentanyl, depending on the region. In some cases, drug dealers add the tranquilizer xylazine to fentanyl. The tranquilizer prolongs the sedating effect and staves off opioid withdrawal so that users may consume less fentanyl each day, experts suggest.

While the latest CDC data does not include demographics, a recent analysis from the health policy research organization KFF compared fatal overdoses from the second half of 2023 to the same period the year before and found deaths decreased among most racial and ethnic groups.

Still, White people experienced a more significant decline in deaths than other groups, KFF policy analyst Heather Saunders, who wrote the analysis, told the Post.

More information

The National Institute of Drug Abuse has more on overdoses.

Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Increases in human lifespan beginning to slow

By Carole Tanzer Miller, 

HealthDay News

Oct. 7, 2024 

New research shows that the dramatic increases in life expectancy seen during the 19th and 20th centuries have slowed considerably.

 Photo by Adobe Stock/HealthDay News

So much for the idea that most people born today will live 100 years or more.

New research shows that the dramatic increases in life expectancy seen during the 19th and 20th centuries have slowed considerably.

In the world's longest-living populations, life expectancy at birth has risen just 6.5 years, on average, since 1990, after nearly doubling over the 20th century as a result of advances in preventing disease.

Humans appear to be hitting a biological limit to life, the evidence suggests.

"Most people alive today at older ages are living on time that was manufactured by medicine," said lead author S. Jay Olshansky, of the University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health. "But these medical Band-Aids are producing fewer years of life even though they're occurring at an accelerated pace, implying that the period of rapid increases in life expectancy is now documented to be over."

A child born in the United States today can expect to live to 77.5 years. A baby girl has a lifespan of 80.2 years and a boy, 74.8, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.

Olshansky has been studying life expectancy for decades. He published a paper in the journal Science in 1990 that said that people were approaching a ceiling for life expectancy at about 85. Others disagreed, forecasting that advances in health care would lead to further gains.

The new study -- published Monday in the journal Nature Aging -- forecasts that gains in life expectancy will continue to slow as more people experience the unyielding effects of aging.

It looked at data from Hong Kong and eight countries where life expectancy is the highest and at the United States, one of a few countries where life expectancy dropped during the period studied.

"Our result overturns the conventional wisdom that the natural longevity endowment for our species is somewhere on the horizon ahead of us -- a life expectancy beyond where we are today," Olshansky said in a university news release. "Instead it's behind us -- somewhere in the 30- to 60-year range. We've now proven that modern medicine is yielding incrementally smaller improvements in longevity even though medical advances are occurring at breakneck speed."

Even though more people may live to 100, they'll be the exception, he said. That's just the opposite of thinking among insurers and wealth-management firms, who make calculations based on the assumption that most people will live to be 100.

"This is profoundly bad advice," Olshansky said.

While the study notes that science and medicine may produce further benefits, efforts to improve quality of life rather than extending it may make more sense. Researchers called for investment in geroscience, the biology of aging, arguing that it may be key to the next wave of health and life extension.

"This is a glass ceiling, not a brick wall," Olshansky noted.

Reducing risk factors, working to eliminate disparities and encouraging people to embrace healthier lifestyles can enable people to live longer and healthier, he said.

"We can push through the glass health and longevity ceiling with geroscience and efforts to slow the effects of aging," he added.

More information

Learn more about life expectancy in the U.S. at the National Center for Health Statistics.

Copyright © 2024 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Democratic lawmakers tell companies they want answers on 'shrinkflation' prices

UPI
Oct. 7, 2024 

 “Even as our economy recovers from the pandemic, people are still hurting from high prices at the grocery store," said Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa. (pictured this past month on Capitol Hill), on the topic of "shrinkflation." 

Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI |

Oct. 7 (UPI) -- Two Democrat lawmakers have accused some of America's biggest food and beverage corporations of profiting from "shrinkflation" and demanded they stop engaging in the practice.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and her House colleague Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., join a growing number of lawmakers and other officials calling for federal action to stop the practice of shrinkflation, which is when a corporation makes a product smaller but charges a higher or same price for it.

In letters obtained Sunday and addressed to General Mills, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, Dean and Warren cite alleged tactics used over the years to pad company profits, and accused the companies of "dodging taxes" and taking part in a "pattern of profiteering" via shrinkflation.

Warren said "it's just plain wrong" and characterized the corporate acts as "price gouging" and "tax dodging," adding, "We can't let them get away with this."

"People have noticed that their box of Cheerios and bag of Doritos are smaller, but prices are higher," Warren told NBC News. "And at the same time these giant corporations are paying lower tax rates than the average American."

While overall inflation rose by 14% from July 2020 to July 2022, corporate profits, however, grew by 74% over that same period, according to a report on "greedflation" by Pennsylvania's senior Sen. Bob Casey, a Democrat.

"Even as our economy recovers from the pandemic, people are still hurting from high prices at the grocery store,'" said Dean.

Warren and Dean's letters request three specific points of information: the average price charged per ounce of soda or per ounce of cereal every year since 2018; how much more in federal taxes would have been paid had the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act not been in effect; and financial information relating to corporate executive bonuses or incentives during periods where American's saw high inflation.

Charging more for products such as cereal while reducing size, said Dean, "means that Americans are paying more for less and big corporations are paying less than their fair share in taxes.

Roughly 59% of the American population think corporate greed is a "major cause" of inflation while 25% say corporate greed is only a "minor" cause, according to data released in February from Navigator Research.

Casey's report indicates that household products, such as toilet paper and paper towels, were nearly 35% more expensive per unit than in January 2019, with more than 10% of price increases allegedly due to shrinking the sizes of rolls and packages. It also points to a more than 26% price increase on Doritos and Oreos since January 2019, with nearly 10% of that "accomplished by giving families fewer chips and cookies for their dollar," the report stated.

But an industry insider defended the practice by noting that price increase markups over the last three years "are not unusual" compared with other past economic recoveries.

"The industry remains focused on providing the best products at the most competitive price to consumers," Sarah Gallo, senior vice president of federal affairs at Consumer Brands Association, a trade group of which Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and General Mills belong, told NBC.

Meanwhile, a marketing expert pointed out how reducing the size of products is looked at as an alternative to directly forcing higher pricers on U.S. consumers during periods of inflation.

"Final price increases draw much bigger backlash than volume decreases," Nailya Ordabayeva, an associate professor of marketing at the Boston University's Questrom School of Business. "So, between the two evils, the downsizing becomes a preferred option," she added.

This is part of a broader legislative push by congressional Democrats to tackle the shrinkflation issue.

President Joe Biden, in his State of the Union speech earlier this year, had urged Congress to pass a "shrinkflation" bill, even going so far as to mention its sponsor -- also a fellow native of Biden's birthplace Scranton.

In February, Warren joined her Senate colleague from Dean's Pennsylvania in introducing the Shrinkflation Prevention Act.

Casey's bill would "crack down on corporations that deceive consumers by selling smaller sizes of their products without lowering prices."

"Corporations are trying to pull the wool over our eyes by shrinking their products without reducing their prices," Casey, a member of the Senate's Finance Committee, said in February. "Anyone on a tight budget sees it every time they go to the grocery store."

The "greedflation" issue, as Casey has characterized it, has even made its way in to Pennsylvania's hotly contested Senate race with Casey's re-election.

The SPA would direct the Federal Trade Commission to create new regulatory policies that establish "shrinkflation" as "an unfair or deceptive act or practice" and would prohibit manufacturers from engaging in the practice.

And it would empower the FTC and states to bring civil actions on corporations engaging in shrinkflation.

Similarly that same month Warren, Casey and others reintroduced the Price Gouging Prevention Ac, which would authorize the FTC and state attorneys general to enforce a federal ban against "grossly excessive price increases."

FEMICIDE

Gender-based violence: What's being done to protect women?

Ines Eisele

October 6, 2024

Gisele Pelicot's mass rape trial in France and other equally harrowing sexual violence cases have sparked outrage around the world. So what's being done to prevent such gender-based violence?

Demonstrators in Paris showed their support for Gisele Pelicot in mid-September

Image: Apaydin Alain/ABACAPRESS/IMAGO

Gender-based violence, defined as violence directed against a person because of their biological or social gender, is omnipresent.

According to estimates by the World Health Organization, almost one in three women worldwide has experienced either physical and/or sexual violence in her lifetime.

In addition to the highly publicized #MeToo movement in the United States, campaigns such as #aufschrei in Germany, mass protests in Mexico and India against rape and femicide or, most recently, the case of Gisele Pelicot in France can raise awareness, but change happens only if politicians and the judiciary follow suit.
France: Gisele Pelicot becomes a feminist icon

The case of Gisele Pelicot has shocked France and the entire world. The 72-year-old was drugged by her husband for years and abused by him and other men. Her husband filmed 200 incidents, footage that is now serving as evidence in the ongoing trial against him and 50 other men.

A key aspect of the case is that Gisele Pelicot explicitly campaigned for the trial to take place publicly, "so that the shame changes sides."

This graffiti on a wall in the south of Paris was created to honor the courage of Gisele Pelicot

Image: Geoffroy van der Hasselt/AFP/Getty Images

To show their support for Pelicot and other victims of sexualized violence, several thousand people took to the streets in cities across France in September, chanting, among other things: "We are all Gisele!"

While this has brought fundamental aspects of violence against women back into focus in France, it's not nearly enough, said Elke Ferner, chairwoman of the UN Women organization in Germany. The politician and long-standing expert on women's rights believes that changes to French criminal law are needed.

"There is not even a 'no means no' rule, according to which sexual acts against the recognizable will of the other person would be punishable," she said. "Instead, in France, active resistance must have taken place for it to be considered rape in court."
India: Discrimination and misogyny persist

The rape and murder of a female assistant doctor recently caused outrage in India. In early August, the 31-year-old was found dead in a state hospital in Kolkata, the capital of the state of West Bengal. The latest of many rape cases in the world's most populous country sparked massive protests. State hospital workers went on strike and West Bengal tightened the penalties for rape.

Indian doctors stage strike over murder of trainee 02:25

For many Indians, the crime brings back memories of the brutal gang rape of a student on a bus in the capital New Delhi in 2012. The 23-year-old died due to severe internal injuries. Back then, the protests and public outrage were even greater than now, Indian women's rights activist Ranjana Kumari told DW.

The situation is sobering, said Kumari, the director of the Centre for Social Research in New Delhi and chairwoman of Women Power Connect, a coalition of women's organizations. "When you look at the data, the crime has increased. Not just the domestic violence but also the public space crime in terms of rape and also bullying and harassing women on the streets," she said.

"And what is very shocking and upsetting is that more crime is happening with the women coming from the minority community. And from the underprivileged Dalit," she added, referring to the group lowest in the Indian caste system.

The sexual violence reflects the patriarchal and misogynistic structures of Indian society, in which change to social norms is sluggish, said Kumari. Although laws have been tightened and new programs launched in recent years, much of this remains theory rather than practice, she added.

There have been repeated cases of authorities trying to cover things up, with officials sometimes refusing to accept reports from women. "Cases take 10 to 15 years to come to any kind of justice. So what is failing are these institutions.You must start delivering justice, otherwise the the criminals get emboldened," she said.

Mexico: Women rise up against femicide

In Mexico, hundreds of women are victims of femicide every year — murdered because they are female, usually by their current or former partner. According to official data, there were 827 femicides in 2023, with the number of unreported cases likely to be significantly higher.

Experts attribute Mexico's high rates of femicide to deeply rooted cultural machismo and a problematic justice system that offers little protection for women. The alarming extent of deadly misogyny has led to a feminist movement that has gained momentum in recent years, developing into a social uprising.

In 2022, after another femicide, activists pinned photos of women killed to the wall outside the office of the attorney general

Image: Eyepix/NurPhoto/picture alliance

"Mass protests against femicides and other forms of gender violence play an important role in advancing public awareness and in holding officials to account," US lawyer Julie Goldscheid, an expert on gender-based violence, told DW.

The high level of public attention has increasingly led to the judiciary and politicians to address the issue, but far-reaching and effective measures have so far failed to materialize. Many Mexicans are now focused on Claudia Sheinbaum, who was elected as the country's first female president in June, and has already announced her intention to provide better protection for women.

Mexico: What challenges await President Claudia Sheinbaum?  02:14

Germany: More reforms needed

In 2013, German women began using the hashtag #aufschrei, or "outcry," on social media to report their experiences of sexism and violence. The subsequent news coverage led to a broader discussion of the topic in Germany.

This likely encouraged some changes in the years that followed: the morning-after pill has been available over the counter since 2015, and the law on sexual offenses was reformed in 2016.

Elke Ferner, of UN Women Germany, explains: "The principle of 'no means no' means that crimes that were not previously considered rape are now punished as such. Previously, if a woman did not explicitly say no because she was in a state of shock or did not want to endanger the children in the next room, it was more difficult to classify it as rape." The 'yes means yes' principle, which was also discussed at the time, would have been even clearer, assuming clear consent rather than clear refusal, she added.

Ferner believes the most pressing task in terms of women's rights and protection against violence is the planned Violence Assistance Act, which she said is sorely needed. This would give those affected by domestic violence a legal right to counselling and protection, in addition to setting the first uniform guidelines for the funding of women's shelters and counseling centers.

According to official figures, 250,000 people in Germany were affected by domestic violence last year, and every second to third day a woman dies as a result of intimate partner violence.

This article was originally written in German.

Ines Eisele Fact-checker, editor and author

Nobel Prize: Victor Ambros, Gary Ruvkun win medicine award

Matthew Ward Agius

DW

7/10/24

Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun have been awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for their research into microRNA.

Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun were announced as the joint recipients of the 2024 Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology on Monday

Image: Steffen Trumpf/dpa/picture alliance


American scientists Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun have been jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine or physiology for their shared discovery of microRNA and the role it plays in post-transcriptional gene regulation.

At the announcement by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden on Monday morning, Nobel Committee vice-chair Professor Olle Kämpe described the discovery of microRNA as "a tiny molecule that has opened a new field in gene regulation."

Though the pair worked in separate labs, their joint research focus led to them combining their resources to expand knowledge of microRNA and its role.

"The seminal discovery of microRNA has introduced a new and unexpected mechanism of gene regulation," said Kämpe.

"MicroRNAs are important for our understanding of embryological development, normal cell physiology and diseases such as cancer. As an example, tumors often perturb microRNA networks to grow."

Mutations in the roundworm species Caenorhabditis elegans were the first signs of microRNA in living organisms

.Image: Washington University School of Medicin/dpa/picture alliance

Nobel Prize microRNA discovery started with a tiny roundworm

This Nobel Prize is all about foundational genetics.

At the heart of what makes a living organism function is the ability of double-stranded DNA to be translated by single-stranded RNA molecules. These "messenger" RNA (mRNA) create an "information molecule" from DNA and move into a cell’s protein factory — a ribosome — where amino acids align to this template and then fold into specialized proteins.

These proteins are the building blocks of all living organisms. But mutations or variations to genes can cause changes in function — often benign, but potentially disease-causing.

This general pathway to organism metabolism has been understood for a long time, but as Kämpe posed, "What determines that only the right genes are transcribed into messenger RNA and then translated into the right, tissue-specific proteins at the right time?"

The answer starts with one specific organism, the roundworm species Caenorhabditis elegans. Despite its size, the roundworm has 20,000 genes that code for proteins — about the same number as a human, making it an ideal lab ‘model’ for physiological research.

Different mutations to C. elegans genes were found to cause growth changes. One triggered excessive growth via a repeating developmental pathway. Another restricted growth due to a different gene variation.

Ambros found the enlarging "lin-4" variant in 1993, with Ruvkun isolating the "lin-14" mutation present in the miniature worms a year later. What wasn’t clear was how these variations interacted and influenced cell regulation. The pair joined forces to find the answer.

A micro discovery leads to big implications for science

Ambros and Ruvkun found their respective mutations interacted — specifically, that a sequence of code on the lin-4 gene corresponded to part of a lin-14 sequence.

This was the critical moment when microRNA was determined to exist, as a distinct form of RNA.

"At this point they had discovered a novel and unexpected mechanism of gene regulation — microRNA," said Kämpe. "For a long time, however, microRNA was believed to be an oddity peculiar to C. elegans."

It required more evidence to confirm their findings.

It came in 2000, when Ruvkun found another gene — "let-7" — which was found not just in roundworm, but in humans and most animals.

Many microRNAs, it turns out, are highly conserved across animals, plants and fungi, meaning that they are largely unchanged from species-to-species and across hundreds of millions of years of biological evolution.

More than 1,000 microRNA genes have been found in humans.

"Every microRNA regulates several genes," said Kämpe. "And each mRNA is regulated by many distinct microRNAs, creating a robust system for gene regulation."

Nobel Prize in Medicine honors mRNA groundwork 02:12

When did RNA enter the public spotlight?

RNA was thrust into the public consciousness with the rise of RNA-based vaccine technology at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

These vaccine products could be developed relatively quickly by creating imitation proteins based on small sections of genetic code from the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

When used in a vaccine, these proteins provide a non-disease-causing target for the human immune system to find and create antibodies ready for the real virus.

Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman were awarded last year’s prize for their work developing mRNA vaccine technology.

However while last year’s prize was very much in recognition of work that had led to direct medical applications, this year’s is more research focused.

"This year’s prize is definitely a physiology prize," said Professor Gunilla Karlsson Hederstam, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine. "Last year, of course, [was] much a more applied discovery that was translated into vaccine development, so two quite different prizes.

"Although there are no very clear applications available yet, understanding them, knowing that they exist, understanding their regulatory networks is always the first step."

Joint laureate in the 2024 Nobel Prize for Physiology, Victor Ambros laughs with colleagues.

Image: Steven Senne/AP/picture alliance

Why type of products are being developed which utilize microRNA technology?

So while this year’s prize is very much focused on discovery rather than application, the realization of the Ambros-Ruvkun research may not be far away. There are currently several vaccine-type products in clinical trial stage for cancer, cardiovascular and other diseases that use microRNA technology.

The challenge is hitting the right target. Take a cancer cell. There may be a specific gene that a vaccine needs to address, but microRNAs regulate many different genes. The risk is that a product may act more like a bulldozer than a scalpel.

"But there might be ways around that," said Kämpe, "Tumors quite often perturb the microRNA networks and they can do that by deleting the genes or mutating the genes that process the microRNA.

"In [this] case there are promising first tests to see if you can modulate the RNA-binding proteins, but to deliver microRNAs to cells and think you get one effect, I think will be very difficult."

Two more Nobel science prizes will be awarded this week, with the physics laureate to be revealed on Tuesday, and chemistry prize on Wednesday.

Joint laureate in the 2024 Nobel Prize for Physiology, Gary Ruvkun.

Image: Steven Senne/AP/picture alliance

What is the history of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine?

This year's Prize, set at 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1.06 million USD), is yet another recognition of genetic discovery.

Arthur Kornberg and Severo Ochoa were recognized in 1959 for identifying the synthesis mechanisms of DNA and RNA, while the famed trio Crick, Watson and Wilkins were awarded the prize in 1952 for unravelling the DNA Double Helix.

Fire and Mello (2006), and Karikó and Weissman (2023) have also had their work on RNA recognized.

Famed Austrian neurologist and founder of psychoanalysis Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) was nominated for his work in Physiology and Medicine but was never named as a recipient.

At 31, Canadian surgeon and pharmacologist Frederick G. Banting is the youngest recipient of the Prize in Physiology or Medicine. He was recognized in 1923 for his discovery of insulin.

The American pathologist Francis Peyton Rous is the oldest, receiving his award in 1966 aged 87 for his discovery of tumor-inducing viruses.

The prize has been declined once. In 1939, Gerhard Domagk was prevented by Germany's Nazi Government from receiving his award for his discovery of an antibiotic against Streptococcus infections. He was later able to receive his diploma and medal in 1947.

Edited by Wesley Dockery

What is microRNA? Nobel-winning discovery explained

Agence France-Presse
October 7, 2024 

Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun won the Nobel for medicine for their discovery of microRNA © Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFPn/liVictor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun won the Nobel for medicine for their discovery of microRNA © Jonathan NACKSTRAND / AFP

The Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded on Monday to two US scientists for discovering microRNA, a previously unknown type of genetic switch which is hoped can pave the way for new medical breakthroughs.

But while several treatments and tests are under development using microRNAs against cancer, heart disease, viruses and other illnesses, none have actually yet reached patients.

And the world paid little attention when the new Nobel laureates Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun revealed their discovery decades ago, thinking it was just "something weird about worms", Cambridge University geneticist Eric Miska told AFP.

Here is an explainer about how exactly these tiny genetic switches work inside our bodies.

What is microRNA?

Each cell in the human body has the same set of instructions, called DNA. Some turn into brain cells, while others become muscles.

So how do the cells know what to become? The relevant part of the DNA's instructions is pointed to via a process called gene regulation.

Ribonucleic acid (RNA) normally serves as a messenger. It delivers the instructions from the DNA to proteins, which are the building blocks of life that turn cells into brains -- or muscles.

Miska gave the example of the messenger RNA vaccines rolled out against Covid-19 during the pandemic, which insert a message with new instructions to build proteins that block viruses.

Nobel prize for medicine 2024 © Valentina BRESCHI, Sylvie HUSSON, Lise KIENNEMANN, Thierno TOURE / AFP

But the two new Nobel winners Ambros and Ruvkun discovered a whole new type of gene regulator that had previously been overlooked by science.

Rather than being the messenger which relays information, microRNA instead acts as a switch to turn other genes off and on.


"This was a whole new level of control that we had totally missed," said Miska, who has worked on microRNA for two decades, including with the new Nobel laureates.

"The discovery of microRNAs brought an additional level of complexity by revealing that regions that were thought to be non-coding play a role in gene regulation," French researcher Benoit Ballester told AFP.

What did the Nobel winners do?


Back in the 1980s, Ambros and Ruvkun had been working separately on how genes interact in one-millimetre-long roundworms called C.elegans.

When they compared their work, it led to the discovery of microRNA. Ambros revealed the finding in a 1993 paper.

"Nobody really paid much attention," Miska said, explaining that most scientists at the time thought it only applied to worms.


Then in 2000, Ruvkun published research showing that microRNA is present right across the animal kingdom, including in humans and even some viruses.

"This was not just something weird that worms do, but in fact all animals and plants are totally dependent for development and normal function on them," Miska said.

More than a thousand genes that respond to microRNAs are now believed to be in the human body.

How could this help us?

There are numerous new treatments and tests using microRNA that are undergoing trials but none have been made widely available.

"Though there are no very clear applications available yet in microRNAs, understanding them, knowing that they exist, understanding their counter-regulatory networks, is always the first step," the Karolinska Institute's Gunilla Karlsson Hedestam told journalists in Stockholm.


MicroRNAs are particularly promising for fighting cancer because some of these switches "act as a tumour suppressor, so they put a brake on cells dividing inappropriately," Miska said.

Others, meanwhile, induce "cells to divide, which can lead to cancer", he added.

Because many viruses use microRNAs, several antiviral drugs are at varying stages of development, including for hepatitis C.


One complicating factor has been that microRNAs can be unstable.

But scientists also hope they can be used as a test called a "biomarker", which could reveal what type of cancer a patient could be suffering from, for example.
What next?


It also appears probable that microRNAs could be involved in the evolution of our species, Miska said.

While human brains are difficult to study, Miska hoped future research will discover more.

© 2024 AFP

Albania: Clashes as protesters call on government to resign

The protesters demand that the current leftist government be replaced by a caretaker cabinet. This comes as Tirana prepares to start discussions with the European Union over membership in the bloc.

Protesters in Albania demand the current government's replacement

Image: Hameraldi Agolli/AP/dpa/picture alliance


Albanian police fired teargas to disperse opposition protesters who gathered in the streets of the capital Tirana to call on longtime leftist Prime Minister Edi Rama to resign.

Thousands of protesters took to the streets, calling out chants such as: "Down with the dictatorship."

The protests, organized by the right-wing opposition, demand the replacement of the ruling government with a technocratic caretaker cabinet ahead of next year's parliamentary election.

What happened in the protests?

More than 1,000 police officers were deployed across Albania's capital Tirana ahead of the protests.

Protesters hurled petrol bombs at several government buildings, burning posters of the prime minister. Police said ten officers were hurt, while some protesters were seen with streaming eyes from tear gas.

Local media reported some were taken to hospital.

Police intensified the use of tear gas as protesters approached the parliament building.

This comes after years of corruption accusations against Prime Minister Rama's Socialists, mostly from the conservative opposition.

"[Rama] should give up, he should resign, he should go away, he should go in jail for the rest of his life," one protester told the Reuters news agency.

In office since 2013, Rama has won three consecutive elections.

Albania's opposition has been holding protests at parliament against the current government

Image: Florion Goga/REUTERS

What else has prompted the recent protests?

Former Prime Minister Sali Berisha's Democratic Party has also been holding protests at parliament in the past week after party official Ervin Salianji was imprisoned over "giving false testimony."

The party says the case is politically motivated.

The Democrats are also seeking Berisha's release from house arrest. The former prime minister has been confined to his house since last year on charges of "passive corruption."

Opposition leader Sali Berisha has been under house arrest for almost a yearImage: Armando Babani/AP/picture alliance

Both the US and the European Union (EU) have urged the opposition to engage in dialogue with the government, saying violence won't help the country integrate into the bloc.

Later this month, Albania will start discussions with the EU as to how the country aligns with it on the rule of law, the functioning of democratic institutions and the fight against corruption.

This comes after the bloc's 2020 decision to start full membership negotiations with Tirana.

ftm/ (Reuters/AP)

Albania’s opposition protests and demands a caretaker Cabinet


BY LLAZAR SEMINI
October 7, 2024

TIRANA, Albania (AP) — Opposition supporters in Albania protested again Monday, demanding that the government be replaced by a technocratic caretaker Cabinet before next year’s parliamentary election.

The conservative opposition has long accused Prime Minister Edi Rama’s Socialists of corruption, manipulating earlier voting and usurping powers of the judiciary and others.

The Democratic Party of former Prime Minister Sali Berisha has been holding protests at parliament in the past week after a colleague was convicted of slander and imprisoned in a case they consider as being politically motivated. Ervin Salianji has appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court.

The Democrats, who have staged sometimes violent protests against the government since 2013, also seek Berisha’s release from house arrest, where he was put during an investigation of alleged corruption.

A few thousand protesters gathered in front of the main government building in Tirana shouting “Down with the dictatorship” and “Berisha, Berisha.” After briefly clashing with police, they hurled Molotov cocktails.

Outside the governing Socialist Party headquarters, they again hurled Molotov cocktails and burned a poster of the prime minister, who leads the party. They then did the same outside the Interior Ministry and city hall.
Outside parliament, police used tear gas to move them away.

Hundreds of police officers had taken up positions to protect government institutions. Police said traffic was blocked on many streets downtown.


Police said 10 officers were hurt by Molotov cocktails, pyrotechnic items and hard objects. Some protesters were seen with streaming eyes from tear gas and a few were taken to a hospital, according to local media.

The Democrats’ secretary-general, Flamur Noka, ended the protest by pledging that the “civil disobedience” would continue.

The U.S. Embassy had warned its citizens to stay away from the protest.

The U.S. and European Union have urged the opposition to resume dialogue with the government, saying violence won’t help the country integrate into the 27-nation EU bloc.


In 2020, the EU decided to launch full membership negotiations with Albania, and later this month Tirana will start discussions with the bloc on how the country aligns with EU stances on the rule of law, the functioning of democratic institutions and the fight against corruption.
___

Follow Llazar Semini at https://x.com/lsemini

RELATED STORIES

Albania's former prime minister Sali Berisha is formally charged with corruption

Albania's opposition violently interrupt parliament session after lawmaker is sentenced to prison

EU, US urge Albania's opposition to end violence and resume dialogue with government


An opposition protester holds a flare during an anti-government rally set up by the opposition, in Tirana, Albania, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Hameraldi Agolli)

An opposition supporter protests during a rally, in Tirana, Albania, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Hameraldi Agolli)

Fire burns behind a riot police cordon during an anti-government rally set up by the opposition, in Tirana, Albania, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Hameraldi Agolli)

Opposition supporters scuffle with riot police during a anti-government rally, in Tirana, Albania, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Hameraldi Agolli)

Fire burns behind a riot police cordon and in front of a poster depicting the Albania Prime minister Edi Rama during an anti-government rally set up by the opposition, in Tirana, Albania, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Hameraldi Agolli)

An opposition supporter waves a wooden stick to riot police during a anti-government rally, in Tirana, Albania, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Hameraldi Agolli)

An Albania police man washes his face during an anti-government rally set up by the opposition, in Tirana, Albania, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP Photo/Hameraldi Agolli)