A woman goes on trial in Sweden for war crimes over allegedly abusing Yazidis in Syria


Prosecutor Reena Devgun speaks during a press conference regarding the indictment of a 52-year-old woman, associated with the Islamic State group, with genocide, crimes against humanity and serious war crimes against Yazidi women and children in Syria, in Stockholm, Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024. (Anders Wiklund/TT News Agency via AP)

BY JAN M. OLSEN
,October 7, 2024

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A 52-year-old woman associated with the Islamic State group went on trial on Monday in Sweden on charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes against Yazidi women and children in Syria.

Lina Laina Ishaq, who is a Swedish citizen, is accused of committing the crimes during the period from August 2014 to December 2016 in the Syrian city of Raqqa, which at the time was the seat of the militant group’s self-proclaimed caliphate and home to about 300,000 people.

The trial marks the first time that IS attacks against the Yazidis, one of Iraq’s oldest religious minorities, have been tried in Sweden. The hearings are expected to last about two months, most of them behind closed doors.

The crimes took place under IS rule in Raqqa, where Ishaq was living at the time.

Under IS rule, Yazidi women and children were “regarded as property and subjected to being traded as slaves, sexual slavery, forced labor, deprivation of liberty and extrajudicial executions,” prosecutor Reena Devgun said when the charges were made public last month.

The prosecution says that at her home in Raqqa, Ishaq abused Yazidis with the aim to ”completely or partially annihilate the Yazidi ethnic group,” Devgun said as the trial opened at the Stockholm District Court, the Swedish TT news agency said.


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The charge sheet, obtained by The Associated Press, says Ishaq is suspected of holding nine people, including children, for up to seven months, treated them as slaves and also abused several of those she held captive.

Ishaq, who denies wrongdoing, is also accused of having molested a baby, said to have been 1 month old at the time, by holding a hand over the child’s mouth when he screamed to silence him. She is also suspected of having sold people to IS, knowing they risked being killed or subjected to serious sexual abuse.

The Islamic State group abducted Yazidi women and children and brought them to Syria in 2014, when IS militants stormed Yazidi towns and villages in Iraq’s Sinjar region. Women were forced into sexual slavery, and boys were taken to be indoctrinated in jihadi ideology.

Three years later, when the Islamic State’s reign began to collapse, Ishaq fled from Raqqa and was captured by Syrian Kurdish troops.

She managed to escape to Turkey where she was arrested with her son and two other children she had given birth to in the meantime with an IS foreign fighter from Tunisia. She was later extradited to Sweden.

Ishaq was earlier convicted in Sweden and sentenced to three years in prison for taking her 2-year-old son to Syria in 2014, to an area then controlled by IS. She had claimed that at the time, she had told the child’s father that she and the boy were only going on a holiday to Turkey. However, once in Turkey, the two crossed into Syria and into IS-run territory.

Ishaq who already is in prison, was identified through information from a U.N. team investigating atrocities in Iraq, known as UNITAD.

No evidence of major fuel spill on Samoan reef where New Zealand navy ship sank



In this image released by New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF), HMNZS Manawanui arrives in Funafuti Lagoon, Tuvalu, on Sept. 7, 2022. (PO Christopher Weissenborn/NZDF via AP)


This image released by New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF), shows HMNZS Manawanui at the Three Kings islands off the coast New Zealand, on Dec. 1, 2023. (Petty Officer Chris Weissenborn/NZDF via AP)

Smoke rises from the sinking HMNZS Manawanui in Upolu, Samoa, Sunday, Sept. 6, 2022. (Dave Poole via AP)

BY CHARLOTTE GRAHAM-MCLAY
 October 7, 2024Share


WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Divers and marine experts found no evidence of a major fuel spill on a Samoan reef Tuesday after a New Zealand navy ship ran aground and sank, Samoa’s deputy prime minister said.

All 75 people on board the HMNZS Manawanui evacuated safely as the boat foundered about a mile off the coast of Upolu, Samoa, early Sunday. The ship was one of only nine in New Zealand’s navy and was the first the country lost at sea since World War II.

Samoan Deputy Prime Minister Tuala Tevaga Iosefo Ponifasio had earlier said a fuel spill was “highly probable.” But he said Tuesday there was no evidence of oil spilling onto the reefs, ashore and nearby area, except for “small leakages of oil coming from the vessel.” That had been contained using specialized equipment, Ponifasio said in a statement.

The vessel’s passengers — including civilian scientists and foreign military personnel — left the vessel on life boats in “challenging conditions” and darkness, New Zealand’s Chief of Navy Rear Admiral Garin Golding told reporters. It took five hours for the first survivors to reach land, he said.

One person was treated in a hospital for minor injuries and has been discharged, the military said. Up to 17 others sustained cuts, bruises or suspected concussions. An Air Force plane carrying 72 people from the ship landed at an air base in Auckland on Monday night.


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New Zealand will hold a court of inquiry into the loss of the ship. The cause of the accident is not known, but Defense Minister Judith Collins told 1News on Monday that she had been told a loss of power to the vessel had led to its grounding.


The specialist dive and hydrographic vessel had been in service for New Zealand since 2019, but was 20 years old and had previously belonged to Norway, Collins said. It was surveying a reef off the coast of Upolu, Samoa’s most populous island, when it ran aground on the reef and began taking on water.

Photos and videos taken from the shore appeared to show the ship listing before disappearing completely below the waves, with a large plume of smoke rising where it sank.

Manu Percival, a surfing tour guide who works in the area where the ship sank, told The Associated Press by phone that oil was not visible from the ship but debris had littered the water and shoreline, and locals were not gathering shellfish as they normally did. It was too soon to know if the “fragile” reef ecosystem had been damaged, he said.

Ponifasio said marine scientists were testing water samples from nearby beaches for any traces of oil.

The military said the ship, purchased for $100 million NZ dollars ($61 million) in 2018, was not covered by replacement insurance.

The state of New Zealand’s aging military hardware has prompted warnings from the defense agency, which in a March report described the navy as “extremely fragile,” with ships idle due to problems retaining the staff needed to service and maintain them. Of the navy’s eight remaining ships, five are currently operational.


Golding said the HMNZS Manawanui underwent a maintenance period before the deployment. The ship’s captain was an experienced commander who had worked on the vessel for two years, he said.
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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.
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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