A United Nations mandate on the shipping industry to remove up to 85% of the sulfur content from its fuel to cut 3% of global carbon dioxide emissions could throw the industry into massive disruption.
Some analysts argue it could lead to fuel supply and demand imbalances and arbitrage opportunities that could extend crude oil price volatility.
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In 2016, the United Nations’ International Maritime Organization (IMO) gave the global shipping industry four years to make sure the 90,000 vessels at sea burn 85% less sulfur by Jan. 1, 2020.
The IMO standard requires ships to produce a maximum of 0.5% in sulfur emissions rather than the present 3.5% limit.
“Implications go beyond shipping and refining. Changes will be felt in the entire commodity landscape, including petrochemicals, road fuels, and airlines,” said Aftab Saleem, KPMG’s director of its risk analytics advisory, which helps a large swath of the global shipping industry comply with the standard. “Costs are going to go up. This has huge, huge implications across the supply chain, all the way back to producers.”
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Oceana says if global shipping were a country, only the U.S., China, Russia, India and Japan would emit more carbon into the atmosphere than the global shipping industry.
KPMG Global says 15 of the biggest ships emit more sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide than all of the world’s cars combined, and one million cars emit as much particulate matter as one cruise ship produces.
A paper currently being promoted by a New York university calls on society to consider the rampant “sexual exploitation” of dairy cows by the milk industry in order to “fully fight gendered oppression.”
Specifically, the author compares cattle insemination to "rape" and the milking of cows to "sexual abuse."
Titled “Readying the Rape Rack: Feminism and the Exploitation of Non-Human Reproductive Systems,” the paper was published Friday in a journal called Dissenting Voices, which is published and edited by the Women’s and Gender Studies program at the College at Brockport State University of New York.
The published piece aims at discussing the “sexual exploitation of non-human bodies, specifically dairy cows.” The author notes that “as a vegan and animal rights activist,” she feels compelled to reveal the “feminist aspects of animal agriculture,” a topic she says is unfortunately “under-researched,” but is nonetheless important because “the same way women’s health has been at stake for years, a dairy cow’s reproductive system has been poked and prodded.”
According to the publication, “the dairy industry is a host for sex-based discrimination,” and a “site where sexual assault and objectification based on biological makeup are highly prevalent but ignored as we choose to neglect non- humans with whom we share a planet.”
The paper argues that “in order to fully fight gendered oppression,” society must also address the plight of dairy cows, which it asserts are “still subjects to sex-based discrimination and violence,” despite their voices being “not always lifted or comprehensible.”
The race to develop treatments for Ebola has accelerated since the largest epidemic in history devastated West Africa between 2014 and 2016. Scientists responding to the ongoing outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) have enrolled more than 500 participants in an unprecedented study of experimental drugs, vaccinated nearly 170,000 people, and sequenced the genomes of more than 270 Ebola samples collected from the sick.
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Working in a conflict zone has forced researchers to adapt and persevere to an extraordinary degree. They have learnt how to conduct rigorous studies in areas where killings, abductions and arson are commonplace, and where Ebola responders have come under repeated attack.
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Every aspect of the outbreak is affected by the area’s long history of conflict and trauma. Residents have endured more than two decades of terror from armed groups, along with resource exploitation, political instability and neglect from the world at large. That has bred distrust of authorities — including foreign health workers — and conspiracy theories about why Ebola is thriving. One popular rumour alleges that Ebola responders inject people with deadly substances at treatment centres and vaccination sites.
These false ideas have fostered nearly 200 attacks on Ebola responders and treatment centres so far this year, according to the WHO. Seven people have been killed and 58 injured.
To adapt to the conflict, clinical researchers at an Ebola centre in Beni operated by the French medical charity ALIMA give mobile phones to patients who check out of the clinic. This allows them to stay in touch about lingering symptoms, even if violence makes it impossible to keep follow-up appointments. Many people use the service as an emergency helpline, says Émilie Gaudin, a support officer at ALIMA. “Sometimes a patient calls us and says, ‘People want to kill me,’ or ‘I want to kill myself.’”
Despite this difficult environment, the drug trial is nearing completion. Researchers are 14 people shy of their goal of enrolling 545 participants, a threshold that should allow them to draw strong conclusions about the drugs’ efficacy. But there are already hints that the treatments are working. The mortality rate at Ebola treatment centres, where all patients receive one of the experimental drugs, is 35–40% — compared with 67% overall in this outbreak. The latter figure reflects the large number of people who have died at home or in facilities that aren’t equipped to treat Ebola.
Violence has also hampered vaccination efforts. A few months ago, Diallo Abdourahamane, the WHO’s Ebola vaccine coordinator, heard about a man in the town of Katwa who his team had immunized with an experimental Ebola vaccine made by the pharmaceutical company Merck. The man had told sceptical onlookers that the vaccine would protect against the disease. “But after the team left,” Abdourahamane says, “the neighbours came and surrounded him at night. They said ‘You are the one helping to bring Ebola to our area’ — and they killed him.”
The survival rate for people who received either drug shortly after infection, when levels of the virus in their blood were low, was 90%.
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One of the drugs, REGN-EB3, is a cocktail of three monoclonal antibodies against Ebola made by Regeneron Pharmaceuticals of Tarrytown, New York. The second, mAB114, is derived from a single antibody recovered from the blood of a person who survived Ebola in the DRC in 1995 , and was developed by the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).
Both drugs outperformed two other experimental treatments in the unprecedented multi-drug clinical trial in the DRC, the World Health Organization, INRB and NIAID said in a joint statement on 12 August. Preliminary data from the first 499 people enrolled in the study show that 29% of people given REGN-EB3 died, compared with 34% of those who received mAb114.
In 2013, researchers published a study in the International Journal of Stress Management, examining the relationship between “critical incidents” and the mental health of police officers. It found that such episodes are associated both with alcohol use and PTSD symptoms. “Critical incidents” include a range of experiences that police officers—among other first responders—might encounter, including “badly beaten child,” “decaying corpse,” “making a death notification,” and personal harm or injury.
According to a study published by The Ruderman Family Foundation, “one survey of 193 police officers from small and midsize police departments” found that the “average number of events witnessed by officers was 188” throughout their careers. Another study found that approximately 80 percent of police-officer participants “reported seeing dead bodies and severely assaulted victims in the past year,” while 63 percent had seen abused children. More than 64 percent reported seeing victims of a serious traffic accident. Almost 40 percent had seen someone die in front of them in the previous year.
Do the public and media appreciate the reality of police work? Police don’t seem to think so: according to a 2016 Pew survey of American cops, only 13 percent believe “that the public understands the risks and challenges that law enforcement officers face on the job.” More than 75 percent of officers believe that the media treats police unfairly. Instances of police misconduct exist, of course, and they justifiably lead to public scrutiny and condemnation; but we should resist the tendency to allow those events to shape how we view police more broadly.
Working in such an environment has an inevitable effect on the staff — not just the Correctional Officers, but all of us. It’s very hard to maintain a cool, professional approach when you know that many of the inmates are out to get you in any way they can. After a while, the constant lies, evasions, attempts at manipulation, lack of co-operation, and just plain nastiness start to wear you down. Stress levels among prison staff are understandably very high, with inevitable negative consequences for their domestic life. The incidence of divorce and suicide amongst all peace officers is considerably above average, and corrections staff aren’t exempt. It’s very hard to leave your work behind at the gates of the prison...
This is very troubling from three perspectives. The first is that of inmates who genuinely want to change, to reform, and seek help in doing so. Their approach will be automatically regarded with suspicion by prison staff. We’ve all been ‘conned’ so many times that it’s all too easy to regard any such approach as more of the same. The inmates, hurt and frustrated, then blame the staff for being unfeeling and inhuman. In a sense, of course, they’re right — but they refuse to acknowledge the inevitability of such a reaction, given the staff’s constant exposure to less-well-motivated inmates. As a result, some convicts who really are sincere, and should receive extra help, aren’t given what they need. Some of them will turn away, frustrated and angry, and decide that if the system is going to treat them like dirt then they’re going to behave that way, just like everybody else behind bars. Others will sink into apathy and disillusionment, perhaps giving up hope of any meaningful life behind bars. Some of them may turn to drugs: others may become suicidal.
The second perspective is that of the staff themselves. They can very easily become hardened to anything any inmate says, and discount even reasonable excuses or explanations. I’ve known cases where a minor infraction by an inmate new to the system (probably committed through ignorance of regulations), has resulted in extremely heavy punishment, most likely because the officer or manager concerned was tired and frustrated from dealing with far too many similar cases, and wasn’t in the mood to make allowances or cut a new inmate some slack. It’s all too easy to say to oneself, “If they’re going to treat me like dirt, then I’m going to dish out dirt to them. Let’s see how they like it!” When I trained at FLETC, an instructor commented to me in private conversation, “During his first year in the BOP, a new officer can’t do enough for the inmate. During his second year, he can’t do enough to the inmate. The third and subsequent years, he just doesn’t give a damn any more.” Sadly, I’ve seen this cynical observation borne out in practice many times — although there are honorable exceptions, thank heaven.
The third perspective is that of the families of prison staff. It’s hard to maintain a normal home environment when one’s spouse is bringing home so much stress and tension. Children feel it too. A disproportionately large percentage of ‘corrections marriages’ fail, and the effects on spouse and children are long-lasting. Second and subsequent marriages often go the same way. It’s extremely difficult for those who haven’t personally experienced the stress of the corrections environment to understand its effect on those who live in it every day. It’s even harder for those who come home from it to share it with their spouses, who consequently feel ‘shut out’ of their partner’s work life. After all, what can a Correctional Officer tell his wife about the reality of his job? If he says, “Honey, today I charged down a man with a knife, while armed only with my bare hands,” her instant (and understandable) reaction will probably be to scream at him for being a fool by exposing himself to such danger. She might understand intellectually that he did something heroic and praiseworthy, but all she can see in her mind’s eye is herself and her children at his funeral.
The prison environment has another unfortunate effect on staff and their families. The staff member is surrounded, all day, every day, by those he cannot and dare not trust. Every time they approach him, he has to wonder about their ulterior motives and hidden purposes, suspecting a trap or an attempt to deceive. When he gets home, it’s sometimes very hard not to let this perspective affect his attitudes towards his loved ones. What might be normal behavior in a child (lies, evasions, excuses, etc.) may attract a much stronger reaction than normal parental disapproval and correction, because he’s too used to exercising discipline (sometimes very physically) over real evildoers who do the same things. This leads to a great deal of stress and tension in families.
