, - Thomson Reuters Foundation
Stephan: Because I was so horrified by this research, and saw it as so provocative, I have held on to this report for a year waiting to see whether the data held up upon re-examination. It has. In fact, with the current christofascist drive to let the state take control over women's bodies things have gotten worse. Did you know that the United States is one of the 10 most dangerous nations in the world to be a woman? No. Well, here is the relevant data.
And as you read this report place it in this context. To quote Fortune Magazine, "The U.S.’s poor standing in this survey arrives just a week after a UN report found the U.S. to be
the most unequal country in the developed world, with 40 million people living in poverty."
LONDON — India was named as the world’s most dangerous country for women in a survey of global experts released on Tuesday.
Seven years ago a Thomson Reuters Foundation experts’ survey found the five most dangerous countries for women were seen to be Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, India, and Somalia. This year we set out to see if the situation had changed. We wanted to find out whether more was being done to address the overall risks faced by women, and specifically regarding healthcare, access to economic resources, customary practices, sexual violence, non-sexual violence and human trafficking. We expanded our poll to the 10 most dangerous countries with some surprising results.
The Thomson Reuters Foundation survey of about 550 experts on women’s issues ranked war-torn Afghanistan and Syria in second and third place, with Somalia and Saudi Arabia next.
The survey was a repeat of a similar poll in 2011 which ranked the most dangerous countries for women as Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, India and Somalia.
It asked which five of the 193 United Nations member states were most dangerous for women […]
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TRAVIS GETTYS, - Raw Story
Stephan: Trade wars historically are always a disaster for all the countries involved; I can't think of a single exception. And yet the Trump administration has embroiled America in a series of trade wars even though it is clear Trump doesn't understand who pays for the tariffs he has put in place. Who does pay for his stupidity? Why you do of course. It will be interesting to see whether this breaks the trance-state of his core constituency.
US food prices edged up 0.2 percent last August, while energy prices accelerated their march downward, dropping a hefty 2.6 percent, the Labor Department reported Wednesday
Credit: AFP/Frederic J. Brown
Prices are about to jump for a lot of consumer goods, thanks to President Donald Trump’s trade war with China.
The president has added a 25-percent tariff on another $200 billion worth of Chinese imports, and China responded with 25-percent duties on another $60 billion in American goods — and that will hit U.S. consumers as soon as this summer, reported NBC News.
Trump insists China will bear the brunt, but economic experts say he’s exactly wrong.
“The supply chain will try to absorb as much of the blow as they can, then they will move those costs forward to consumers,” said David French, senior vice president of government relations at the National Retail Federation.
Retailers are stockpiling merchandise in hopes of riding out a trade war, but those supplies will eventually run out — and consumers will pay more.
Consumers are already paying up […]
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Stephan: Trump, and those he has selected to be around him, over and over make it explicitly clear they have nothing but contempt for you, your family, your children, and your parents. This is their latest action to make this point, and this time it is about children.
You would think that the self-inflicted mess we are in would result in there being mass demonstrations going on in the streets of every American town and city. But no. In fact, Trump has a 42.4% approval rating. I am beginning to think that Americans don't deserve the America the Founders created and that generations of Americans have fought to preserve.
As I listen to the news concerning the new law blocking essentially all abortion in Alabama, and consider everything else going on throughout the country I am beginning to think that like the Roman empire America is very quickly abandoning a role of leadership, and that like the Romans it is happening not as a result of outside forces but, rather, from the inside.
Citation: Rauh, V. A. et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 109, 7871-7876 (2012).
Children in New York City are exposed to a wide range of environmental pollutants.
Credit: Brendan McDermid/Reuters
The Columbia Center for Children’s Environmental Health has tracked the lives of hundreds of children in New York City since 1998. Scientists have collected samples of blood, urine and even the air in children’s homes, starting when their subjects were in the womb, to tease out the health effects of chemicals and pollutants. The centre’s findings influenced New York City’s decision in 2018 to phase out diesel buses, and its staff members teach schools and community groups about the harmful chemicals and pollution that kids encounter each day.
Now, the future of the Columbia facility and a dozen like it is in doubt. Their last grants from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has provided half of the centres’ funding for two decades, will expire in July — and the agency has decided that it will not renew its support for the facilities.
The programme’s other government sponsor, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) […]
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Javier Espinoza , - Financial Times (U.K.)
Stephan: Politicians exploiting fear of the "other" and the nativism that arises from it may get a personal short-term benefit, but the long term impact on the country is always negative, and nowhere is this clearer than in the stupidity of BREXIT. Here's where that stands today as seen by one of Great Britain's leading business publications.
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https://www.ft.com/content/7dbefce0-6d92-11e9-80c7-60ee53e6681d
John Sinik wants to remain in the UK but says he could soon have no other choice but to leave. The private equity executive is being courted by other European countries, including Portugal and Italy, to move his firm there and pay substantially less tax than what he pays now in the UK.
The California-born Mr Sinik says he is conflicted. On the one hand, the UK offers good schooling for his children and it has been his home for over two decades. The UK is still the major European financial hub and it makes sense for his private equity group — Metric Capital — to be based there.
Yet, his company’s ties with the UK […]
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Wednesday, May 15th, 2019
Andrew Emett, Staff Writer - Nation of Change
Stephan: Here is some good news. Monsanto, my definition of an evil corporation, is going to pay a pretty severe price for continuing to market Roundup in the face of a growing body of research about the health problems it causes. I hope none of my readers has a plastic bottle of this stuff on the grounds of their property or ever uses it.
Bottles of Roundup herbicide, a product of Monsanto. Findings come as regulators in several countries consider limiting the use of glyphosate-based products in farming.
Credit: Jeff Roberson/AP
A California jury determined Monday that Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide directly caused the same type of cancer in an elderly couple who used the weed killer for decades. Bayer, the company that purchased Monsanto last year, was ordered to pay more than $2 billion in damages to the couple.
After using Roundup for nearly 30 years for residential landscaping, Alva Pilliod was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2011. His wife, Alberta Pilliod, was diagnosed with the same type of cancer in 2015. Both are currently in remission.
On Monday, the jury in the Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland awarded $1 billion in punitive damages and $18 million in compensatory damages to Alva Pilliod. His wife was awarded $1 billion in punitive damages and $37 million in compensatory damages.
“Unlike the first two Monsanto trials, where the judges severely limited the amount of plaintiffs’ evidence,” attorney Michael […]
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