A vendor sells Donald Trump t-shirts before a rally for Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Carmel, Ind., Monday, May 2, 2016.
Credit: Michael Conroy/AP
It’s been extremely common for news accounts to portray Donald Trump’s candidacy as a “working-class” rebellion against Republican elites. There are elements of truth in this perspective: Republican voters, especially Trump supporters, are unhappy about the direction of the economy. Trump voters have lower incomes than supporters of John Kasich or Marco Rubio. And things have gone so badly for the Republican “establishment” that the party may be facing an existential crisis.
But the definition of “working class” and similar terms is fuzzy, and narratives like these risk obscuring an important and perhaps counterintuitive fact about Trump’s voters: As compared with most Americans, Trump’s voters are better off. The median household income of a Trump voter so far in […]
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Many of us plant trees, shrubs, and other plants around our homes to beautify our surroundings. A study published earlier this month in Environmental Health Perspectives reveals that this attractive greenery has another significant benefit as well — people living in greener neighborhoods may live longer.
Scientists from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts assessed the greenness surrounding the homes of 108,630 women. They then tracked changes in both the vegetation and participants’ deaths from 2000 to 2008. The scientists discovered that women with the most vegetation around their homes experienced a 12 percent lower death rate than those living in the least green areas.
The biggest differences were observed in death rates from kidney disease, respiratory disease, and cancer. Women residing in the top 20 percent of green areas were 41 percent less likely to die from kidney disease than those living in the lowest 20 percent. They had a 34 percent lower death rate for respiratory disease and 13 percent lower death rate for cancer. No significant relationship appeared to exist between greenness and […]
France’s National Assembly just narrowly approved a bill that would ban neonicotinoid pesticides, which are largely criticized for possibly causing the decrease in bee populations. The European Union already limited the use of neonicotinoid chemicals, known as neonics, two years ago after studies showed that the pesticides harmed bees, and now France wants to do away with them completely.
The bill, which is a biodiversity bill that is supported by France’s Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy, Ségolène Royal, would completely ban all use of neonics on crops by September 2018. Other environmental proposals, such as increasing the taxes on palm oil.
Critics of the bill, including the producers of the pesticides, Bayer CropScience and Syngenta, have been quick to say that the studies of the neonics’ effects on bee populations are inconclusive and some have offered alternatives to the total ban.
Bayer instilled fear in farmers who regularly use the pesticides by stating, “Some farmers are going to find themselves in a dead-end regarding crop protection … and could see their harvests fall by 15 […]
Ridyah, Saudi Arabia
Saudi construction giant Binladin group has laid off tens of thousands of workers, leading to rare protests, as workers torch seven buses demanding compensation as low oil prices begin to bite in earnest.
The numbers of layoffs range from 50,000 to 77,000, many of who say they were not paid for several months.
Binladin group, which last year had all of its contracts frozen after a crane fell over the Grand Mosque in Mecca, killing 107, denied that it owed its workers any compensation. The company said the layoffs were a “routine” adjustment to a slowdown in construction activity in the country.
It certainly is routine to cut your workforce when times are bad, and the times seem to be especially bad in Saudi Arabia, and not because of a “slowdown” in construction per se. The country is increasingly feeling the pinch of low oil prices, and despite deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman’s bold reform plan, chances are that things will get worse before they get better.
Last year, when bin Salman […]
An investigation by the Los Angeles Times has revealed that the pharmaceutical company that sells the opiate painkiller OxyContin knew the drug was highly addictive — but pushed it anyway.
Purdue Pharma began producing the pills two decades ago, claiming that it relieved severe, chronic pain for 12 continuous hours — more twice the time of generic drugs. Representatives of the drug’s maker promised doctors that patients would only have to take two pills a day for 24-hour pain relief.
But it wasn’t true, and Purdue knew it, the Times reveals.
The results were excruciating and devastating. OxyContin wears off hours early in many patients, and along with their underlying pain returning, they also suffer the additional complication of drug withdrawal symptoms.
OxyContin is described by the Times as a “chemical cousin” of heroin, and patients who depend on it also experience an intense craving for the drug when it wears off early.
The Times obtained thousands of pages of confidential Purdue documents and learned company executives have known about the problem for decades.
“Even before OxyContin went on the market, clinical trials […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
