Mexico to send aquatic drone into shaft with trapped miners
yesterday

National Guards stand along the road that leads to where miners are trapped in a collapsed and flooded coal mine in Sabinas in Mexico's Coahuila state, Thursday, Aug. 4, 2022. The collapse occurred on 10 miners after they breached a neighboring area filled with water on Wednesday, officials said. (AP Photo/Elizabeth Monroy)

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico will attempt to send an aquatic drone into a collapsed coal mine where 10 miners have been trapped since last week.

Laura Velázquez, national Civil Defense coordinator, said Monday that images from the drone could help authorities decide whether to send in divers without putting them at risk.

She also said that 25 pumps were working to remove water from the flooded shafts. Water that was once 111 feet (34 meters) deep was now between 55 and 78 feet (17 and 26 meters) deep.

The mine in Sabinas, Coahuila about 70 miles southwest of Eagle Pass, Texas, collapsed last Wednesday with 15 miners inside. Five managed to escape with injuries. Authorities say the miners breached a neighboring space filled with water. There has been no contact with the remaining 10.

The miners’ families are desperate and some complained Sunday that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador gave them little information when he visited the site.

“I appreciate that he has come to take a photo with my pain, the pain of my family and the pain of everyone of us here,” said Lucía Rodríguez, mother of one of the miners, in a video circulated on social media. “I hope that his photographs serve his policy well.”

The president said that as a public servant you have to be willing “to always pay the tax of humiliation,” but that his conscience is clear because the rescue teams arrived to the site in two hours and have been working day and night to rescue the miners.

The state and federal prosecutor’s offices have opened investigations to determine those responsible for the accident. Such small mines are often the result of locals who get concessions and then contract teams of miners. Experts say they seldom have the safety plans and equipment necessary to reduce the risk of accidents.

In June and July of 2021, cave-ins at two Coahuila mines claimed the lives of nine miners.

Mexico’s worst mining accident also occurred in Coahuila on Feb. 19, 2006, when an explosion ripped through the Pasta de Conchos mine while 73 miners were inside. Eight were rescued with injuries including serious burns. The rest died and only two of their bodies were recovered.

López Obrador’s administration promised two years ago to recover the remaining 63 bodies, a highly technical endeavor that has still not begun.

Global warming could affect children's fitness
By HealthDay News

Lack of fitness could put kids at greater risk of suffering heat-related health problems, such as dehydration, heat cramps, heat exhaustion or heat stroke, researchers say.

Photo by Skitterphoto/Pixabay

Children are not as physically fit as their parents were when they were kids, and this will likely harm them as the Earth warms, new research claims.

The findings are based on a comprehensive review of more than 150 studies that looked at how children maintain physical activity, exercise and cope with heat, as well as how this might change as global temperatures rise. The research was published recently in the journal Temperature.

"Fitter adults are better able to tolerate higher temperatures, due to a combination of physiological, behavioral and psychological factors," said Shawnda Morrison, an environmental exercise physiologist at Slovenia's University of Ljubljana. She is an expert in adaptive and integrative human physiology in extreme environments.

"Yet, as the world warms, children are the least fit they have ever been. It is imperative that children are encouraged to do daily physical activity to build up, and maintain, their fitness, so that they enjoy moving their bodies and it doesn't feel like 'work' or 'a chore' to them," Morrison said in a journal news release.

Obesity and lack of fitness could put kids at greater risk of suffering heat-related health problems, such as dehydration, heat cramps, heat exhaustion or heat stroke.

Among the research analyzed was a study of 457 boys ages 5 to 12 in Thailand. It found that overweight youngsters were more than twice as likely to have difficulty regulating their body temperature as kids of normal weight when exercising outdoors.

Another study found more children visited the emergency department at U.S. children's hospitals on hotter days. Younger children were particularly likely to need emergency care.

RELATED  Most kids in child care programs aren't getting enough exercise

Children's aerobic fitness is 30% lower than that of their parents at the same age, according to the research. The past 30 years have seen rapid declines in child physical activity globally, with most children not meeting the World Health Organization's guideline of performing an average of at least 60 minutes of physical activity each day.

Even worse, this physical inactivity accelerated, especially in Europe, during the pandemic, the study found.

It could also become harder for unfit children to meet minimum activity levels if parents perceive rising outdoor temperatures as "too hot to play."

RELATED Study: Young boys who play sports less likely to have anxiety, depression

Meanwhile, these higher temperatures could trigger outbreaks of new diseases, according to the study. Movement restrictions in response to these future outbreaks could be devastating to children's physical fitness.

On top of that, children aren't simply smaller adults.

How their body maintains internal temperature is different, Morrison explained. They sweat less than adults in heat and lose heat by increasing blood flow to their skin, which can require the heart to work harder, she said. Most research on how the body adapts to higher temperatures is on adults, with little conducted on children that's newer than 15 to 30 years old.

Morrison suggests activities to get kids moving. This can be a combination of structured games, such as football, basketball and baseball, and active play with friends and family. Preferably, these activities would happen outdoors.

PE classes are the best and most cost-effective way to increase fitness levels and equip children to continue exercising throughout their lives, according to the study, but families can get active, too.

"Do what you love to do, whether it's a family bike ride or rollerblade, a stroll through the woods or walking the dog," Morrison said.

"Make sure the activity raises everyone's heart rate, enthusiasm, and positive energy and importantly, try not to completely avoid the heat but choose times of the day that are less hot [mornings/evenings] to keep active, since we need to keep ourselves moving in this new warming world," she said.

More information

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion has more fitness tips for kids.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Study connects climate hazards to 58% of infectious diseases

By SETH BORENSTEIN

1 of 4

FILE - A man walks past a house abandoned after it was inundated by water due to the rising sea level in Sidogemah, Central Java, Indonesia, Nov. 8, 2021. Climate hazards such as flooding, heat waves and drought have worsened more than half of the hundreds of known infectious diseases in people, such as malaria, hantavirus, cholera and even anthrax, according to a new study released Monday, Aug. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Dita Alangkara, File)


Climate hazards such as flooding, heat waves and drought have worsened more than half of the hundreds of known infectious diseases in people, including malaria, hantavirus, cholera and anthrax, a study says.

Researchers looked through the medical literature of established cases of illnesses and found that 218 out of the known 375 human infectious diseases, or 58%, seemed to be made worse by one of 10 types of extreme weather connected to climate change, according to a study in Monday’s journal Nature Climate Change.

The study mapped out 1,006 pathways from the climate hazards to sick people. In some cases downpours and flooding sicken people through disease-carrying mosquitos, rats and deer. There are warming oceans and heat waves that taint seafood and other things we eat and droughts that bring bats carrying viral infections to people.

Doctors, going back to Hippocrates, have long connected disease to weather, but this study shows how widespread the influence of climate is on human health.

“If climate is changing, the risk of these diseases are changing,” said study co-author Dr. Jonathan Patz, director of the Global Health Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Doctors, such as Patz, said they need to think of the diseases as symptoms of a sick Earth.

“The findings of this study are terrifying and illustrate well the enormous consequences of climate change on human pathogens,” said Dr. Carlos del Rio, an Emory University infectious disease specialist, who was not part of the study. “Those of us in infectious diseases and microbiology need to make climate change one of our priorities, and we need to all work together to prevent what will be without doubt a catastrophe as a result of climate change.”

In addition to looking at infectious diseases, the researchers expanded their search to look at all type of human illnesses, including non-infectious sicknesses such as asthma, allergies and even animal bites to see how many maladies they could connect to climate hazards in some way, including infectious diseases. They found a total of 286 unique sicknesses and of those 223 of them seemed to be worsened by climate hazards, nine were diminished by climate hazards and 54 had cases of both aggravated and minimized, the study found.

The new study doesn’t do the calculations to attribute specific disease changes, odds or magnitude to climate change, but finds cases where extreme weather was a likely factor among many.

Study lead author Camilo Mora, a climate data analyst at the University of Hawaii, said what is important to note is that the study isn’t about predicting future cases.

“There is no speculation here whatsoever,” Mora said. “These are things that have already happened.”

One example Mora knows first-hand. About five years ago, Mora’s home in rural Colombia was flooded — for the first time in his memory water was in his living room, creating an ideal breeding ground for mosquitoes — and Mora contracted Chikungunya, a nasty virus spread by mosquito bites. And even though he survived, he still feels joint pain years later.

Sometimes climate change acts in odd ways. Mora includes the 2016 case in Siberia when a decades-old reindeer carcass, dead from anthrax, was unearthed when the permafrost thawed from warming. A child touched it, got anthrax and started an outbreak.

Mora originally wanted to search medical cases to see how COVID-19 intersected with climate hazards, if at all. He found cases where extreme weather both exacerbated and diminished chances of COVID-19. In some cases, extreme heat in poor areas had people congregate together to cool off and get exposed to the disease, but in other situations, heavy downpours reduced COVID spread because people stayed home and indoors, away from others.

Longtime climate and public health expert Kristie Ebi at the University of Washington cautioned that she had concerns with how the conclusions were drawn and some of the methods in the study. It is an established fact that the burning of coal, oil and natural gas has led to more frequent and intense extreme weather, and research has shown that weather patterns are associated with many health issues, she said.

“However, correlation is not causation,” Ebi said in an email. “The authors did not discuss the extent to which the climate hazards reviewed changed over the time period of the study and the extent to which any changes have been attributed to climate change.”

But Dr. Aaron Bernstein, interim director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at Harvard School of Public Health, Emory’s del Rio and three other outside experts said the study is a good warning about climate and health for now and the future. Especially as global warming and habitat loss push animals and their diseases closer to humans, Bernstein said.

“This study underscores how climate change may load the dice to favor unwelcome infectious surprises,” Bernstein said in an email. “But of course it only reports on what we already know and what’s yet unknown about pathogens may be yet more compelling about how preventing further climate change may prevent future disasters like COVID-19.”

Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment

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Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Third fuel tank collapses as helicopters battle Cuban blaze

Issued on: 08/08/2022 

The fire at a Cuban fuel depot has been raging for days 

YAMIL LAGE AFP

Matanzas (Cuba) (AFP) – Cuban army helicopters scrambled to contain a blaze that felled a third tank at a fuel depot on Monday after burning for days, as the search continued for 16 missing firefighters.

According an official update, the confirmed toll from the fire was one person dead, with 24 people receiving treatment in hospital -- five of them in a critical condition. Many others were treated for burn wounds.

The fire on the outskirts of Matanzas, a city of 140,000 people 100 kilometers (60 miles) east of Havana, broke out late Friday after lightning struck one of eight tanks at the depot.

On Monday, the governor of the western Matanzas province said the blaze had spread to a third tank, which collapsed like two others before it.

"The third tank also collapsed, after the second spilled its fuel" as it caved in on Sunday, governor Mario Sabines told state TV.

He said the blaze area was "very big" and the containment effort "very complex."#photo1

Aircraft, firefighters and other specialists and equipment arrived in Cuba from Mexico and Venezuela on Sunday after the island nation asked for help from "friendly countries."

Sabines said the teams were preparing an operation to attack the flames with foam, "but this could take a while."

Efforts 'intensifying'

Some 1,900 people had been evacuated from around the disaster site, officials have said.

"Work is intensifying to combat the fire," the Cuban presidency said on Twitter Monday, adding this was a "decisive day" for the effort.

After the first tank caught fire late Friday, the blaze spread to a second tank by the early hours of Saturday.

The first two tanks collapsed overnight Sunday, causing three more reported injuries and spilling their oil.

According to the Cupet state oil company, the first tank had contained about 26,000 cubic meters of crude, about half its capacity.

The second contained 52,000 cubic meters of fuel oil. It was not immediately clear how full the third tank was.#photo2

Firefighters had been battling to prevent the third tank from catching fire, dousing it with water to keep it cool, but ultimately to no avail.

The depot supplies the Antonio Guiteras thermoelectric plant, the largest in the communist nation.

The disaster comes at a time the island -- with an outdated energy network and persistent fuel shortages -- has faced mounting difficulties in meeting energy demands.

Since May, authorities have imposed energy blackouts of up to 12 hours a day in some regions -- sparking protests around the Portugal-sized nation of 11 million people.

© 2022 AFP

More than 100 injured, one dead, 17 missing after fire at Cuban oil facility

Officials in Cuba on Sunday said that 122 people were injured, at least one person had died and 17 people were missing after a fire at a crude oil storage facility. Photo by Ernesto Mastrascusa/EPA-EFE

Aug. 7 (UPI) -- More than 100 people have been injured and one has died after a fire sparked by a lightning strike at a crude oil storage facility in Cuba, officials said Sunday.

At least 122 people were injured in the blaze, with 24 still hospitalized, including five in critical condition, Cuban state-run media outlet La Prensa reported. The Ministry of the Interior later recovered a body at the scene.

In addition to the injuries and deaths, 17 people remained missing Sunday.

The fire began Friday night after lightning struck the Matanzas Super Tanker Base, about 60 miles east of Havana.

Two storage units, one containing about 918,000 cubic feet of petroleum and the other carrying about 1.8 million cubic feet of fuel oil, were impacted by the blaze.

Officials said the fire did not pose an immediate threat to the nearby Antonio Guterres power plant, one of the largest in the island nation.

Specialized fire crews from Mexico and Venezuela were on the scene trying to combat the blaze and prevent it from spreading to other tanks and installations.

"This morning was, once again, difficult," the Cuban presidency said. "Firefighters continue fighting the intense fire as help comes from friendly countries. Today will be a pivotal day in our fight for life."

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canal Bermudez expressed "deep gratitude" to Mexico, Venezuela, Russia, Nicaragua, Argentina and Chile for offering aid.

Carlos Fernandez de Cossio, vice minister of foreign affairs, also said that the Cuban government had accepted "technical guidance" offered by the United States to combat the fire.

"We deeply appreciate the condolences and expressions of help from people and organizations in the U.S. regarding the #Matanzas incident, including from the U.S. government, which offered technical advice, a proposal is already in the hands of specialists for proper coordination," he wrote on Twitter.

A spokesperson for the U.S. State Department told the Miami Herald that the Biden administration was "closely tracking the situation, including any humanitarian needs that may emerge."

"The U.S. embargo authorizes U.S. persons to provide disaster relief and response in Cuba," the spokesperson said.

Firefighters battle big blaze at Cuba tank farm for 2nd day

By ANDREA RODRÍGUEZ

August 7, 2022

1 of 12

People watch a huge plume of smoke rise from the Matanzas supertanker base, as firefighters work to douse a fire that started during a thunderstorm the night before, in Matanzas, Cuba, Sunday, Aug. 7, 2022. Cuban authorities say lightning struck a crude oil storage tank at the base, sparking a fire that sparked four explosions that injured more than 121 people, one person dead and 17 missing.

 (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)


HAVANA (AP) — Cuban firefighters were joined by special teams sent by Mexico and Venezuela on Sunday as they battled for a second day to control a fire blazing at a big oil tank farm in the western province of Matanzas.

The blaze began Friday night when lightning struck a storage tank during a thunder storm, and the fire spread to a second tank early Saturday, triggering a series of explosions, officials have said.

“The mission of the day is to keep the third tank cold,” in hopes of preventing the flames from spreading into more of the site, provincial Gov. Mario Sabines said.

Most of the fuel held in the tank where the fire initially started was believed to have been consumed, officials said.

Authorities said a body found at the site Saturday had been identified as firefighter Juan Carlos Santana, 60. Officials previously said a group of 17 firefighters had gone missing while trying to quell flames, but there was no word if he was one of those.

Conditions were still too dangerous to mount a search for the missing firefighters, officials said.

A total of 122 people were treated for injuries, including five that officials said were in critical condition.

The governor said 4,946 people had been evacuated, mostly from the Dubrocq neighborhood, which is next to the Matanzas Supertanker Base in Matanzas city. The facility’s eight huge storage tanks hold oil used to fuel electricity generation.

Dense black smoke billowed up from the tank farm and spread westward more than 100 kilometers (62 miles) to Havana. The Ministry of Science and Technology said Sunday that the cloud contained sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide and other toxic substances.

The disaster comes as Cuba struggles with a severe economic and energy crisis, with frequent power blackouts hitting during a torrid summer. It was unknown how much fuel had been lost to the flames.

Cuba’s government had appealed for help Saturday from oil nations, and specialized firefighting teams began arriving with their equipment from Mexico and Venezuela late Saturday. They brought helicopters and specialized chemicals for fighting oil fire.

“The support (is) in the prevention of risks and also help to quell the fire by means of cooling based on water and foam,” Mexican Brig. Gen. Juan Bravo said upon arrival. “We hope that more support will arrive soon, such as chemical material.”

President Miguel Díaz-Canel met with the heads of the teams from Mexico and Venezuela to coordinate efforts for controlling the blaze. He later told Cuban media he appreciated the help, since Cuba doesn’t have experience or resources for dealing with fires of such magnitude.

Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernández de Cossío said Saturday evening that the U.S. government had offered technical help. On his Twitter account, he said the “proposal is in the hands of specialists for the due coordination.”

Minutes later, the president thanked Mexico, Venezuela, Russia, Nicaragua, Argentina and Chile for their offers of help.

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Andrea Rodríguez on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ARodriguezAP

International Cat Day was founded by animal welfare group in 2002

International Cat Day, celebrated annually on Aug. 8, was started in 2002 by the International Fund for Animal Welfare. International Cat Care, a Britain-based nonprofit, took over custodianship of the holiday in 2020. 

File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

Aug. 8 (UPI) -- International Cat Day, celebrated annually on Aug. 8, was founded in 2002 by the International Fund for Animal Welfare to celebrate feline companions and raise awareness of their needs.

The holiday was created in 2002 by IFAW to raise awareness of felines in need around the world as well as proper care of cats in the home.

International Cat Care, a Britain-based nonprofit dedicated to promoting the health and welfare of pet cats around the world, took over "custodianship" of the holiday in 2020.

The organization said the theme of International Cat Day 2022 is "cat-friendly resources."

"This year we've teamed up with world-renowned animal artist and illustrator Lili Chin to design educational materials to help us humans make sure we're providing cats with the essential resources they need to stay physically and mentally healthy in a cat friendly way," International Cat Care said in a news release.

Other holidays and observances for Aug. 8, 2022, include Assistance Dog Day, Bullet Journal Day, Dalek Day, Happiness Happens Day, National CBD Day, National Dollar Day, National Frozen Custard Day, National Zucchini Day, Odie Day, Scottish Wildcat Day, Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor's Porch Night, The Date to Create, Universal & International Infinity Day and Wear Your Mothers Jewelry Day.

Court rules AI cannot receive patents on inventions


Artificial Intelligence systems are not able to patent inventions 

because they are not human beings, a U.S. Federal Circuit Court has ruled

. File Photo by Willyam Bradberry/Shutterstock

Aug. 8 (UPI) -- Artificial Intelligence systems cannot patent inventions because they are not human beings, a U.S. Federal Circuit Court has ruled.

The ruling is against plaintiff Stephen Thaler, who brought the suit against U.S. Patent and Trademark Office director Katherine Vidal

On more than one occasion, Thaler has attempted to copyright and patent the output of AI software tools that he created.

"The sole issue on appeal is whether an AI software system can be an 'inventor' under the Patent Act," Judge Leonard Stark wrote in the ruling, issued Friday.

"Here, there is no ambiguity: the Patent Act requires that inventors must be natural persons; that is, human beings."

Thaler serves as the CEO of Imagination Engines.

In 2019, he failed to copyright an image on behalf of an AI system. In 2020, the U.S. Patent Office ruled his AI system DABUS could not be a legal inventor because it was not a "natural person," with the decision later upheld by a judge.

The opinion isn't unique to the United States.

Both the European Patent Office and Australian High Court have recently issued similar rulings.

"The Supreme Court has held that, when used in statutes, the word 'individual' refers to human beings unless there is 'some indication Congress intended' a different reading," Stark wrote in the ruling.

"Nothing in the Patent Act indicates Congress intended to deviate from the default meaning. To the contrary, the rest of the Patent Act supports the conclusion that 'individual' in the Act refers to human beings."

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FOR PROFIT PRIVATE HEALTHCARE
Inflation pushes many Americans to cut back on healthcare
By Dennis Thompson, HealthDay News


About 26% of Americans have put off medical care or prescription purchases due to higher prices, according to a recent poll. 

Photo by TBIT/Pixabay

Inflation is putting Americans' health at risk, with nearly 2 in 5 struggling to pay for the care they need, according to a new West Health-Gallup poll.

About 38% -- which translates to an estimated 98 million Americans -- said rising healthcare prices had caused them to skip treatments, delay buying prescription drugs or pay for their care by borrowing money or cutting back on driving, utilities or food in the past six months.

The poll was conducted online in June, the same month inflation reached a 40-year high of 9.1%, pollsters noted. In June, healthcare inflation hit 4.5%.

"We've known for decades that healthcare has been a financial pain for people, and that people have had to make trade-offs," said Timothy Lash, president of West Health, a nonprofit healthcare advocacy group. "When you layer inflation on top of that, it's like putting gasoline on a fire."

The poll revealed that

:One in 4 Americans (26%) have put off medical care or prescription purchases due to higher prices.

About 17% drove less, 10% cut back on utilities and 7% skipped a meal to cover medical costs.

About 6% had to borrow money to afford their care or pay medical bills.

What's more, inflation is influencing healthcare choices at every income level, the poll revealed.

More than half of U.S. households earning less than $48,000 a year have had to curb spending due to higher healthcare prices, results showed.

RELATED Staffing crisis leads to shortage of nursing home beds in U.S.

But nearly 20% of households pulling in more than $180,000 a year also have been forced to cut back, the poll found.

Women are more worried than men about medical costs, 42% to 36%. Lash said that probably reflects both the gender income gap and women's tendency to use healthcare more often than men.

These new results jibe with polling performed in the spring by the Kaiser Family Foundation, said Lunna Lopes, a KFF senior survey analyst for public opinion and survey research.

"We asked earlier this year if they or another family member had not gotten a test or treatment that was recommended by a doctor because of cost," Lopes said. "We found about a third of adults say that was the case in the past 12 months. And likewise, 4 in 10 adults say that they've put off or postponed getting healthcare they needed because of the cost."

Inflation likely has made things even harder on American families, she said.

"There's only so many dollars that people have to spend," Lopes said. "When they look at where to cut or potentially reduce spending, that's when you see people making these decisions of maybe not getting the healthcare that they need, because that's an additional expense that they'll have to budget into their monthly finances."

But Lash said the fact that healthcare costs are pinching people at every economic level and of every political stripe could make it more likely that policymakers will do something about it.

"It crosses party lines, with Republicans being more worried than Democrats," he said. The poll found that 44% of Republicans were concerned about their ability to cover needed healthcare costs over the next six months, compared with 33% of Democrats and 42% of independents.

"And so, in this sort of environment heading into the midterm elections, there's legislation right now on the table in Congress to lower the cost of prescription drugs by allowing Medicare to directly negotiate with pharmaceutical companies," Lash said.

"That would have a very significant impact over a six-year period on the cost of prescription drugs. My hope would be, with voters energized on this issue, that that puts pressure on our elected officials," he said.

The nationwide poll was conducted online June 2-16 with 3,001 adults. The overall margin of error is plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

More information

Kaiser Family Foundation has more about healthcare costs.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Qantas asks 100 executives to fill in as baggage handlers amid staff shortage

FIRST HONEST DAY'S WORK

By Simon Druker

Qantas is asking dozens of its senior executives to fill vacancies among its baggage handlers as it attempts to cope with a staffing shortage, the airline confirmed Monday.

 File Photo by Dan Himbrechts/EPA-EFE

Aug. 8 (UPI) -- Qantas is asking dozens of its senior executives to fill vacancies among its baggage handlers as it attempts to cope with a staffing shortage, the airline confirmed Monday.

The Australian national carrier is asking for about 100 volunteers from its executive ranks to work as baggage handlers for three months amid a labor shortage.

The company is looking for volunteers to work at Sydney and Melbourne airports, two of its three primary hubs.

"The high levels of winter flu and a COVID spike across the community, coupled with the ongoing tight labor market, make resourcing a challenge across our industry," Qantas executive Colin Hughes said in a statement.

Staff will be expected to sort and scan bags, load them into aircraft and drive them around the airport. They will also need to be capable of lifting up to 71 pounds.

Volunteers will not be expected to carry out their ground handler role on top of their existing responsibilities.

The airline is in the grips of a staffing shortage. On Sunday, 19% of Qantas flights were delayed and 5% were canceled.

In July, Qantas Domestic and International CEO Andrew David penned an op-ed, detailing the challenges his company is dealing with

"Restarting an airline after a two-year grounding is complex and aviation labor markets, as with many others, are extremely tight," David wrote at the time.

"Some have pointed to Qantas' decision to outsource ground handling as a key reason the restart has been hard. This is not true. We had completed the ground handling changes before Easter 2021 when domestic travel was back to almost 100% and we didn't have the issues we had at Easter this year."

Qantas is far from alone in dealing with a lack of employees.

Sparked by rising passenger complaints over compensation for delayed and canceled flights, the U.S. Department of Transportation recently proposed stricter rules for airlines in how they define when redress is needed.

Traveler complaints have soared since the COVID-19 pandemic as the airline industry struggled with employee sicknesses and worker shortages overall. Passengers have often complained that carriers have not been properly compensating them for those inconveniences.

Surveillance of opposition leader was ‘unacceptable’: Greek PM


By AFP
Published August 8, 2022


Nikos Androulakis, leader of Greece's opposition Socialists, is taking legal action over the attempted surveillance via spyware Predator of his mobile phone - Copyright AFP Mahmud HAMS

Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis acknowledged Monday that the intelligence service’s surveillance of the head of the socialist opposition’s mobile phone was “politically unacceptable”.

Speaking in a televised address three days after two key members of his conservative government resigned over the affair, he said the surveillance had been approved by supreme court prosecutors.

But, he added: “It was a mistake.”

Opposition politicians however said the prime minister’s statement still did not explain why the surveillance had been started in the first place — or who else had been targeted.

The scandal reignited on July 26 when Nikos Androulakis, leader of the opposition Socialists, told journalists about the attempted surveillance via spyware Predator, having filed a legal complaint.

Already this year, two Greek journalists have launched legal actions saying they have been victims of similar attacks on their phones.

Mitsotakis said Monday that he had learned a few days earlier that the national intelligence service (EYP) had started surveillance of Androulakis’s phone back in September 2021, when the opposition politician was already a European deputy.

“I didn’t know about it,” he said. “If I had known, I would never have authorised it.”

– ‘Endemic faults’ –

The surveillance had lasted three months then ended automatically — in accordance with the law — in December 2021, just after Androulakis had been elected to the leadership of his party, said Mitsotakis.

The decision by the EYP, Greece’s intelligence service, to launch the surveillance was “politically unacceptable”.

Referring to “endemic faults” in the agency, he promised a series of reforms to the EYP.

In response, Androulakis said the prime minister’s statement still had not explained why he had been put under surveillance in the first place.

He repeated his argument that “this is not a personal matter but a question of democracy”. Androulakis has already called for a special parliamentary investigation into the affair.

The main opposition leftwing Syriza party also argued Mitsotakis had still not explained why the EYP had thought it was okay to take “such an unprecedented action”.

“How many other politicians, journalists or citizens have been placed under surveillance under his administration?” asked the former Syriza prime minister Alexis Tsipras.

– Concern over media freedom –

Mitsotakis raised eyebrows when in July 2019 one of his first acts on assuming power was to attach the national intelligence service to his office.

On Friday, the head of the EYP, Panagiotis Kontoleon, and the secretary general of the prime minister’s office, Grigoris Dimitriadis — Mitsotakis’s nephew — both resigned over the affair.

Dimitriadis had been named by the investigative website Reporters United as being linked to the alleged spying scandals involving both Androulakis and Greek financial journalist Thanasis Koukakis.

In April Koukakis, a journalist specialising in financial affairs, went to the courts to denounce an attempt to hack his phone using the Predator malware.

In February, a suspected case of EYP surveillance of journalist Stavros Malichudis, a specialist on migration issues, was brought before the supreme court.

Journalists’ unions have denounced what they say is a deterioration in media rights in Greece.

Until Friday’s resignations, the government had denied any state involvement in such surveillance.

Predator, originally developed in North Macedonia and subsequently in Israel, can access both messages and conversations, experts say.

Androulakis has said he learned of the surveillance of his phone after using a special service for MEPs to check their phones for illegal surveillance software following hacks using a spyware similar to Predator called Pegasus.

Study shows environmental impact of 57,000 products sold in supermarkets

Mon, August 8, 2022

Eating fruits and vegetables is better for the planet than eating meat and cheese, but a new study by scientists released Monday showed chips and sugary drinks also have a very low environmental impact.

Scientists analyzed some 57,000 products sold in supermarkets in Britain and Ireland, in a large study published by the scientific journal PNAS.

The researchers, who hope that their study may allow consumers to shop more sustainably without sacrificing anything to their health, also compared the results with the nutritional qualities of these foods.

They found that juice concentrates, sodas or other fruit juices are among the products sold with the lowest environmental impact -- because they are mostly composed of water -- but their nutritional quality is poor.

Researchers believe that in general, the more sustainable a food is, the better it is from a nutritional point of view.

The study confirms what other previous reports had already advanced by analyzing single ingredients, such as fruits or red meat.

The novelty of the latest report is that its analysis relates to products made up of multiple ingredients, such as sauces, prepared meals, and others.

That task was complicated by the fact that the quantity of each ingredient is considered a trade secret, and therefore no real details are disclosed: Only about three percent of the more than 57,000 products sold by eight food retailers had their composition fully disclosed.

Scientists responded by developing an algorithm based on the few known pieces of information to evaluate the missing products -- in Britain and Ireland, ingredients are notably listed in order of quantity used.

To assess the environmental impact, four factors were considered: greenhouse gas emissions, use of limited water resources, land use, and eutrophication, which is when waterways are enriched with minerals and nutrients, mostly from fertilizers.

Bread, but also certain cereals and prepared meals or desserts, have a relatively low or intermediate environmental impact.

On the other hand, fish, cheese and meat -- especially red meat -- have a high impact.

"Replacing meat, dairy, and eggs with plant-based alternatives could have large environmental and health benefits," the study notes.

But "smaller" transitions can also help. For example, beef lasagna, with a high environmental impact, could be replaced by chicken or pork lasagna, or vegetarian.

In the future, better knowing the proportions and origin of different ingredients would help to determine more precisely their impact on the environment, the researchers said.

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