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Adrian Carton de Wiart: The unkillable soldier - BBC News - 0 views

  • Sir Adrian Carton de Wiart was a one-eyed, one-handed war hero who fought in three major conflicts across six decades, surviving plane crashes and PoW camps.
  • Carton de Wiart served in the Boer War, World War One and World War Two.
  • In the process he was shot in the face, losing his left eye, and was also shot through the skull, hip, leg, ankle and ear.
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  • In WW1 he was severely wounded on eight occasions and mentioned in despatches six times.
  • "His story serves to remind us that not all British generals of WW1 were 'Chateau Generals' as portrayed in Blackadder. He exhibited heroism of the highest order.
  • "Frankly, I had enjoyed the war."
  • "I honestly believe that he regarded the loss of an eye as a blessing as it allowed him to get out of Somaliland to Europe where he thought the real action was."
Javier E

Exposés of China's Elite a Big Lure in Hong Kong - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • “You don’t have to read the People’s Daily, because that won’t tell you what’s really going on, but you have to read these,” said Ho Pin, an exiled Chinese journalist who runs Mirror Books, a company based in New York that publishes muckraking books and magazines in Chinese. Chinese officials visiting Hong Kong often buy them as gifts for fellow officials, he said. “In the past, you’d give a mayor a bottle of liquor. But that’s nothing these days, and so is a carton of cigarettes,” Mr. Ho said. “But if you give him one of our books or magazines, he’ll be very happy.”
Javier E

Misunderstanding Orange Juice as a Health Drink - Adee Braun - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • In the 1990’s “not from concentrate” orange juice hit the shelves and blew everything else away. Rather than vitamins in a can, we now had freshness and purity in a carton.
  • there is practically nothing fresh or pure about it. Most commercial orange juice is so heavily processed that it would be undrinkable if not for the addition of something called flavor packs. This is the latest technological innovation in the industry’s perpetual quest to mimic the simplicity of fresh juice. Oils and essences are extracted from the oranges and then sold to a flavor manufacturer who concocts a carefully composed flavor pack customized to the company’s flavor specifications. The juice, which has been patiently sitting in storage sometimes for more than a year, is then pumped with these packs to restore its aroma and taste, which by this point have been thoroughly annihilated. You’re welcome.
  • “Not only is orange juice heavily processed, but it’s straight sugar which today people recognize as contributing to obesity and diabetes.”
Maria Delzi

Afghanistan's Worsening, and Baffling, Hunger Crisis - NYTimes.com - 0 views

  • Nonetheless, the numbers are still worrisome. Dr. Mohammad Dawood, a pediatrician at Bost Hospital, said there were seven or eight deaths a month there because of acute malnutrition from June through August, and five in September. Doctors around the country have reported similar rates.
  • In January 2012, for instance, Unicef and the Afghan government’s Central Statistics Organization released a survey of more than 13,000 households showing that some provinces had reached or exceeded emergency levels, with more than 10 percent acute severe child malnutrition.
  • While acute malnutrition can be fatal, chronic malnutrition can cause multiple health and developmental problems.
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  • Unlike malnutrition crises elsewhere in the world, this one has not been connected to specific food shortages or crop failures. In addition, parents are not showing up malnourished, even when their children are.
  • His colleague Dr. Khan blamed another problem. “The main cause of malnutrition in Afghanistan is lack of breast feeding,” he said. “They see beautiful pictures of milk cartons, and they think it’s better.”
  • In addition, where women commonly have many children, often with less than a year between them, it is difficult for mothers to provide enough nourishment, by breast or bottle. Ahmed Wali, the 2-year-old Bost Hospital patient with kwashiorkor, is the ninth of 10 children of his mother, Baka Bebi, who is in her mid-30s. She weaned him onto powdered milk mixed with stream water as soon as she could.
  • Poverty is another factor. In Afghanistan, the poverty line is defined as a total income sufficient to provide 2,100 calories a day to each family member. Some 36 percent of Afghans are below that threshold, according to the Health Ministry.
  • In 2013, Unicef raised its target for providing therapeutic foods to severe acutely malnourished Afghan children, to 52,144 from 35,181. Therapeutic foods are specially made for the severely malnourished, who have difficulty digesting normal food.
  • “Managing a feeding system is difficult; there is a long way for Afghanistan to go,” he added. “But even countries like Sri Lanka, with an outstanding health system, are still struggling to manage therapeutic feeding supplies.”
  • Cases of acute severe malnutrition are running at more than 100 a month, including five to 10 deaths, at Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul, and such cases have doubled since 2012, said Dr. Aqa Mohammad Shirzad, who is in charge of pediatric malnutrition programs there.
  • Each of the hospital’s 17 beds for severely malnourished patients has at least two patients, and some have three. The malnutrition intensive care ward there has an incubator that does not work, one suction pump and oxygen bottles, for respiratory masks, propped up without stands or proper connection
  • A 5-year-old boy who weighs less than 20 pounds was being treated recently on a bench because the infusion line would not stretch to a bed. Two window panes nearby were missing glass.
Javier E

Opinion | Trump Tries to Destroy, and Justice Roberts Tries to Save, What Makes America... - 0 views

  • For me, the most disturbing thing about the Trump presidency is the way each week, like a steady drip of acid, Donald Trump tries to erode the thing that truly makes us great as a country and the envy of so many around the world — the independence and nonpartisan character of our courts, our military, our F.B.I., our Border Patrol and our whole federal bureaucracy.
  • Why is this so important? Because America’s core governing institutions were not built to be “conservative” or “liberal.” They were built to take our deepest values and our highest ideals and animate them, promote them and protect them — to bring them to life and to scale them.
  • They are the continuity that binds one generation of Americans to the next and the beacon for how we work together to build an ever more perfect union.
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  • At their best, these institutions have created the regulatory foundations and legal and security frameworks that have made America great — that have enabled innovation to be sparked, commerce to flourish and ideas to freely blossom
  • The independent, nonpartisan quality of our institutions is one of the biggest reasons so many people want to immigrate to America and why some people are even ready to build rafts out of milk cartons to get here.
  • I’ve spent four decades reporting from countries with weak institutions — like Russia, China, every Arab state, Turkey, Iran, Venezuela — where the arbitrary whims of the leader or his party are the basis of all decision-making, not the rule of law, built on independent institutions.
  • You cannot exaggerate how unusual it is for our chief justice and retired senior military officers to challenge Trump’s excesses the way they have. They were bred to keep themselves and their institutions out of politics at all costs. But they understand the greater costs of what Trump is doing.
  • biggest national security threat to our country today is from within (and it is only going to get worse in the next two years).
  • That threat is from a president without any shame or respect for the impartiality of our core institutions, who is backed by a party without any spine and by a network, Fox, without any integrity.This is not a test. This is a real, live emergency for our democracy.
Javier E

Pakistan moves to ban single-use plastic bags - The Washington Post - 0 views

  • Each time someone in Pakistan runs out to the store for a carton of milk, a half-pound of loose sugar or an after-school snack, it comes in a flimsy plastic bag that usually gets thrown away
  • If all those bags are added up, officials estimate, they total 55 billion a year. Easily torn and too weak to use again, they end up clogging city drains and sewers, piled up in vacant lots and parks, ingested by grazing goats and dogs foraging for food, and polluting canals and streams.
  • all single-use polyethylene bags will be banned in the capital region of about 1.5 million people. Anyone who uses, sells or manufactures them will face a fine.
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  • The ban is the latest project in Prime Minister Imran Khan’s green initiative, which began last year with a campaign to plant 10 billion trees to fight deforestation.
  • Today, more than 40 countries have either banned or taxed single-use plastic bags
  • “The Kenyans told us a sudden ban is easier to enforce than trying to collect a tax or fee, because there is no incentive to bribe,”
  • The fines in Pakistan will also be steep — $31 for using a single bag, $63 for selling one and up to $31,000 for manufacturing them. The national per capita income is $1,200 per year
  • Shoppers are not likely to be aggressively pursued, but companies that make and supply the bags have been warned that they will be inspected to enforce the ban.
  • To encourage customers to obey the law, officials have introduced colorful cloth tote bags, which they have distributed at weekend markets
  • “We cannot bring change through force,” one federal capital commissioner posted on social media. “Our slight change in habits will do miracles for future generations.”
  • “This is a good step and I support it. People don’t realize how dangerous these bags are for our health,” said Ali Muhammad, 27, who runs a small grocery store
  • “I’m already losing money because no one wants to buy plastic now,” said Qasim Khan, 26, a scrap dealer who usually buys bulk plastic for pennies a pound and sells it for a little more. “But I’m happy this new law will get rid of all the filth in the gutters. That will be good for everyone.
Javier E

Shanghai's Omicron Outbreak Corners Chinese Leader - WSJ - 0 views

  • China’s top leaders believe that confining residents to their homes during outbreaks is the most effective way to keep death rates low and avoid overwhelming the country’s healthcare system.
  • Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a public forum in November that China would have had about 260 million Covid-19 cases and more than three million deaths if it had adopted looser restrictions similar to those in the U.S. and U.K.
  • China has reported fewer than 260,000 cases and less than 5,000 deaths, compared with 80 million confirmed cases and nearly a million deaths in the U.S.
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  • The economic and social costs of the Chinese strategy have climbed with the rise of more easily transmitted variants. Retail sales, tourism and manufacturing have suffered from residential lockdowns, business closures and travel bans. A population that largely supported zero-Covid measures early on has tired of tight limits on the routines of daily life.
  • Her food is running low, she said. On Monday, Ms. Wang got her first food delivery from the government: two zucchini, a carton of milk, 10 sausages, noodles and a can of Spam. “As someone who hasn’t been infected by the virus, my biggest question is, ‘How long do we have to endure such lack of freedom?’ ” she said.
  • Before the latest outbreak, Mr. Xi and other top officials saw Shanghai as a model for China’s long-term goal of living with the virus, according to the people close to government decision-making. 
  • Shanghai, run by a close ally of Mr. Xi, never had serious problems. The few cases that had surfaced in the past two years were secured with limited apartment and neighborhood closures. Unlike the rest of China, mask-wearing wasn’t widely adopted by city residents.
  • in undisclosed comments to members of the Politburo Standing Committee, Mr. Xi made clear that China couldn’t back down from its stringent Covid approach, even if it meant slower economic growth, according to a person close to decision-making who was briefed on the remarks.
  • Then an influx of visitors arrived from Hong Kong, hoping to escape an outbreak there. Many stayed at a Shanghai hotel where officials say the virus spread in early March to the staff and beyond. At the time, city authorities said wide-ranging lockdowns wouldn’t be necessary.
  • A few days later, Shanghai initiated a two-stage lockdown. Speaking at a teleconference with other infectious-disease experts around that time, Mr. Wu, China CDC’s chief epidemiologist, said Shanghai didn’t act decisively enough in the latest outbreak and missed its chance to control the outbreak,
  • In Shanghai, people with Covid-19 are confined to home, and access to medical care for those with other illnesses has been limited. Food deliveries, arranged by local authorities, have been delayed in some neighborhoods, according to interviews with more than a dozen residents.
  • Local officials have reported no Covid-related fatalities. The Journal learned that at least two elder-care hospitals have been battling an outbreak, with more than 20 deaths at one of the facilities.
  • Thousands of users of Weibo, China’s Twitter-like social media platform, have shared stories of people with life-threatening illnesses such as cancer unable to get treatment, adding to citywide feelings of helplessness.
  • “Fighting all the previous variants was like putting out a forest fire, it can be done,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. “But Omicron is like the wind. How do you stop the wind?”
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