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Category: Humanity (Page 4 of 8)

Big Brother » France set to allow police to spy through phones

2023-07-09 /

» Security and privacy. You cannot have a functioning democracy without both.

Le Monde »

French police should be able to spy on suspects by remotely activating the camera, microphone and GPS of their phones and other devices, lawmakers agreed late on Wednesday, July 5. Part of a wider justice reform bill, the spying provision has been attacked by both the left and rights defenders as an authoritarian snoopers’ charter, though Justice Minister Éric Dupond-Moretti insists it would affect only “dozens of cases a year.”

Covering laptops, cars and other connected objects as well as phones, the measure would allow the geolocation of suspects in crimes punishable by at least five years’ jail. Devices could also be remotely activated to record sound and images of people suspected of terror offenses, as well as delinquency and organized crime.

The provisions “raise serious concerns over infringements of fundamental liberties,” digital rights group La Quadrature du Net wrote in a May statement. It cited the “right to security, right to a private life and to private correspondence” and “the right to come and go freely”, calling the proposal part of a “slide into heavy-handed security”.

 

America’s drive to compete with China requires lots more skilled workers. Tennessee’s free technical education, and its partnerships with Volkswagen and Nissan, offer a glimpse of the future

2023-07-07 /

Bloomberg »

Federal incentives are driving investments in the electric-car industry worth more than $100 billion. Every state wants a piece of the action, and Tennessee is getting plenty. It’s a lynchpin of the new Battery Belt that stretches from Michigan to Georgia. More than $16 billion in EV capital has poured into the state since 2017. Last year, Ford Motor Co. broke ground on a giant new plant near Memphis that’s slated to open in 2025 and churn out half a million electric trucks per year.

But the drive to reboot manufacturing and claim national leadership in strategic technologies is about to crunch up against a shortfall in trained workers — and impose new demands on technical education all across America.

US federal government approves largest-ever offshores wind project, expected to generate around 1,100 megawatts of clean energy

2023-07-06 /

Quartz »

Biden’s wind power goals, by the digits

  • 380,000: Homes the Ocean Wind 1 project can power with its energy, according to the interior department
  • 3,000: “Good-paying” jobs the New Jersey project will generate “through development and a three-year construction cycle,” the federal agency said
  • 98: The number of wind turbine generators the Ocean Wind 1 project has permission to construct, according to the Record of Decision (ROD) documents. Additionally, it can build three offshore substations within its lease area
  • $695 million: How much Ørsted expects to spend on the Ocean Wind 1 project in New Jersey. It has some federal help—the New Jersey legislature narrowly approved a bill last week to let Ørsted keep federal tax credits to insulate it from rising costs due to inflation and the covid-19 pandemic hangover
  • 30 gigawatts (GW): President Biden’s offshore wind power generation goal by 2030, which will power 10 million homes, and create 77,000 jobs

You have a roughly 50% chance of drinking cancer-causing ‘forever chemicals’ from any U.S. faucet

2023-07-06 /

U.S. Geological Survey researchers said it was the first nationwide study to test for PFAS, or per- and polyfluorinated substances.

Fortune »

Drinking water from nearly half of U.S. faucets likely contains “forever chemicals” that may cause cancer and other health problems, according to a government study released Wednesday.

The synthetic compounds known collectively as PFAS are contaminating drinking water to varying extents in large cities and small towns — and in private wells and public systems, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

Researchers described the study as the first nationwide effort to test for PFAS in tap water from private sources in addition to regulated ones. It builds on previous scientific findings that the chemicals are widespread, showing up in consumer products as diverse as nonstick pans, food packaging and water-resistant clothing and making their way into water supplies.

Earth is getting ‘hotter, drier and more flammable’ due to climate change

2023-07-06 /

Euronews »

“Projections indicate that if Spain does not cut severely the emissions that cause global warming, the country will become hotter, drier, more arid and flammable,” says Maria José Caballero, Unit Head of Rapid Response at Greenpeace Spain.

“It will experience more floods and high-intensity fires and the impacts of sea-level rise. The data in the report shows the urgency of cutting emissions and tackling the climate crisis by taking ambitious measures, to which all political parties must commit.”

First major survey of British doctors with Long Covid reveals debilitating impact on health, life and work

2023-07-05 /

BMJ »

Key findings include:

  • Doctors reported a wide range of symptoms, including fatigue, headaches, muscular pain, nerve damage, joint pain, ongoing respiratory problems and many more.
  • Around 60% of doctors told the BMA that post-acute Covid ill health has impacted on their ability to carry out day-to-day activities on a regular basis;
  • Almost one in five respondents (18%) reported that they were now unable to work due to their post-acute Covid ill-health;
  • Less than one in three (31%) doctors said they were working full-time, compared to more than half (57%) before the onset of their illness;
  • Nearly half (48%) said they have experienced some form of loss of earnings as a result of post-acute Covid;
  • 54% of respondents acquired Covid-19 during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, and 77% of these believed that they contracted Covid -19 in the workplace;
  • A small minority of doctors had access to respiratory protective equipment (RPE) around the time that they contracted Covid-19, with only 11% having access to an FFP2 respirator and 16% an FFP3 respirator;
  • More than 65% of doctors responding said their post-acute Covid symptoms had not been investigated thoroughly and effectively by an NHS long Covid clinic or centre. And almost half of doctors reported not even being referred to an NHS long Covid clinic at all.

Though he lacks Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s showmanship, New Brunswick’s Blaine Higgs has a hard-line conservative record to make right-wing ideologues giddy

2023-07-04 /

The Conversation »

However, Higgs has gone further than his Conservative counterparts in the region. In doing so, he has burned many bridges.

His relationship with the health-care sector is fraught. Emergency rooms have overflowed at times with residents dying in waiting rooms.

When it was reported a woman was unable to get access to a rape kit, Higgs blamed the nurses for “showing a lack of compassion.” He has also limited abortion access within the province.

Higgs has an equally contentious relationship with Indigenous Peoples. In 2021, New Brunswick directed government employees to halt territorial acknowledgements because the province is involved in a series of legal actions and land claims initiated by First Nations.

The province also tore up tax-sharing agreements with the Wolastoqey Nation, which Higgs argued were “unfair.”

Top 10 Freest Countries on Earth

2023-07-01 /

Freedom House rates people’s access to political rights and civil liberties in 210 countries and territories through its annual Freedom in the World report. Individual freedoms—ranging from the right to vote to freedom of expression and equality before the law—can be affected by state or nonstate actors.

  • 🇳🇴 Norway » Global Freedom Score 100
  • 🇫🇮 Finland » 100
  • 🇸🇪 Sweden » 100
  • 🇳🇿 New Zealand » 99
  • 🇨🇦 Canada » 98
  • 🇩🇰 Denmark » 97
  • 🇳🇱 Netherlands » 97
  • 🇺🇾 Uruguay » 97
  • 🇮🇪 Ireland » 97
  • 🇱🇺 Luxembourg » 97

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War » One hundred thousand people lost their lives in Ethiopia last year » Death toll at highest in 21st century

2023-06-29 /

The study by the Institute for Economics and Peace calculated that war and violence cost the world 12.9 percent of GDP, with total conflict deaths at their highest this century.

DW »

Since the 21st century began, war has never cost humanity so much. The number of conflict deaths almost doubled in 2022 compared to the previous year. And war caused a 13% loss of global GDP, according to the Global Peace Index, released on Wednesday by the Institute for Economics and Peace (IEP).

The major new survey by the global think tank said that the average level of “global peacefulness” had sunk for the ninth year in a row, with conflict deaths topping the previous global peak reached in 2014 during the Syrian Civil War.

The dramatic increase in death rates was mostly driven by the war in Ukraine, where 83,000 people were killed in the past year, though the bloodiest conflict was in Ethiopia, where 100,000 people lost their lives.

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