MADRID, Feb 10 2023 (IPS)* – The food industry continues to intensively use toxic chemicals in their products, some of them provoking heart diseases and death. Trans fat is just one of them, adding to contaminating fertilisers, pesticides, microplastics and a long etcetera.
Industrially produced trans fat is responsible for up to 500,000 premature deaths from coronary heart disease each year, according to WHO. Credit: Shutterstock.
“Trans fat is a toxic chemical that kills, and should have no place in food,” warns Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), informing that trans fat has no known benefits, and substantial health risks that incur enormous costs for health systems. “Put simply, trans fat is a toxic chemical that kills, and should have no place in food.”
Humans are capable of great compassion and unselfishness. Mothers and fathers make many sacrifices for the sake of their families. Kind teachers help us through childhood, and show us the right path. Doctors and nurses devote themselves to the welfare of their patients.
Sadly there is another, side to human nature, a darker side. Human history is stained with the blood of wars and genocides. Today, this dark, aggressive side of human nature threatens to plunge our civilization into an all-destroying thermonuclear war.
Humans often exhibit kindness to those who are closest to themselves, to their families and friends, to their own social group or nation. By contrast, the terrible aggression seen in wars and genocides is directed towards outsiders.
Human nature seems to exhibit what might be called “tribalism”: altruism towards one’s own group; aggression towards outsiders. Today this tendency towards tribalism threatens both human civilization and the biosphere.
(UN NEWS)* — Acts of armed violence targeting schools in Haiti have spiked nine-fold in one year amid rising insecurity and widespread unrest, UNICEF warned on Thursday [].
“Violence continues to take a heavy toll on children’s lives in and around Port-au-Prince, and schools are no longer spared,” said Bruno Maes, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) representative in Haiti. “As children reel from the effects of armed violence, insecurity in Haiti shows no sign of abating.”
‘Huge impact’ on children
“The targeting of schools by armed groups is having an enormous impact on children’s safety, wellbeing and ability to learn,” Mr. Maes said.
(UN News)* — Activists working with sea-rescue charities in Italy should not be criminalized, a UN independent human rights expert said on Thursday [], ahead of a trial against crew members from several non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
IOM/Francesco Malavolta (file) | Migrants from the Mediterranean are rescued in the Channel of Sicily, Italy (file).
Preliminary criminal proceedings opened last May in Sicily against 21 people charged with aiding and abetting illegal immigration in connection with several search-and-rescue missions conducted between 2016 and 2017.
Those accused include four crew members of the Iuventa, a former fishing trawler credited with saving some 14,000 migrant lives in the Mediterranean Sea, and human rights activists from other civilian vessels.
(UN News)* — Africa is currently experiencing an exponential rise in cholera cases, amid a global surge in the disease, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported on Thursday [].
Unicef Malawi | Daina Denja takes the cholera vaccine during UNICEF’ cholera vaccine campaign at Misili village in Chikwawa district, Malawi.
Across the continent, cases in January were 30 per cent higher than for the whole of last year.
Most new infections and deaths have occurred in Malawi, which is facing its worst outbreak in 20 years.
10 countries affected
Overall, 10 African countries are affected by cholera. The waterborne disease causes acute watery diarrhoea and can kill within hours but is easily treatable.
Besides Malawi, cases have been reported in neighbouring Mozambique and Zambia, as well as in Burundi, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Nigeria.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 