YCLOAK

As teacher Tanya Mathiason flicked through a slideshow to display diagrams of male and female genitalia to primary school children in northwest London, no one flinched or giggled.

Instead, the students eagerly discussed the meaning of the words: female, genital and mutilation.

“Break those words down: What does female mean? What does genital mean? What does mutilation mean?” said Mathiason, the head of pastoral care at Norbury School in the culturally and ethnically diverse neighborhood of Harrow.

“It means when someone cuts off stuff?” replied one student.

“Harm?” said another.

By the time they leave Norbury School, all 640 students — both boys and girls — will have learned about female genital mutilation (FGM), a ritual that usually involves the partial or total removal of the external genitalia including the clitoris.

An estimated 137,000 women and girls in England and Wales have undergone FGM, according to the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).

FGM can cause chronic pain, menstrual problems, recurrent urinary tract infections, cysts and infertility. Some girls hemorrhage to death or die from infections. It can also cause fatal childbirth complications in later life.

Young age

As FGM is mostly carried out between infancy and age 15, school principal Louise Browning said she wanted the students to start learning about it in the third year, at about seven years old.

“I became more aware that FGM was happening to girls at a much younger age than I thought,” Browning told Reuters.

“Who’s to say that we don’t have survivors in our school? I felt I was letting down my girls by not raising this. Our end goal is for this practice to stop.”

Browning and her team worked with the National FGM Centre, run by children’s charity Barnado’s and the Local Government Association, to devise age-appropriate lessons, which they began teaching in Norbury School in 2015.

It is one of only a handful of primary schools in the country that teaches students about FGM, but raising awareness among parents and children was necessary, she said.

FGM mostly affects immigrant communities from various countries including Somalia, Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Sudan, Nigeria and Egypt — a demographic that is well-represented in the Harrow school.

“Many of our families, our children, come from FGM-practicing communities so it is really important that they have this knowledge, that they leave here at 11 [years old] knowing what this practice is about,” said pastoral manager Mathiason.

Shocking

FGM is performed by Muslims and Christians and by followers of some indigenous religions. People often believe FGM is required by religion, but it is not mentioned in the Koran or the Bible.

“Most people who do it think it’s in their religion … but no religion actually tells you to do that,” said 11-year-old Khadija, who has learned about FGM since she was seven.

“It’s just shocking because it’s most likely to be parents who would do it. They’re the ones who love you and care about you, but instead they want to harm you,” she added.

In March, a London solicitor accused of forcing his daughter to be circumcised was acquitted, increasing pressure on police and prosecutors who have yet to secure a conviction for FGM more than 30 years after it was outlawed.

The prosecution was only the second to be brought under FGM legislation introduced in 1985.

FGM is underpinned by the desire to control female sexuality, but beliefs around the practice vary enormously. Many believe it purifies the girl, brings her status in the community and prevents promiscuity. Uncut girls risk being ostracized.

Sonita Pobi, head of training at the National FGM Center, said the lessons helped children make sense of the practice and know who to turn to for help, regardless of their cultural background or religion.

“It’s about giving children the vocabulary to speak up when something is wrong. It’s about making children aware about the hidden form of abuse that may happen to them,” Pobi said.

After learning about FGM at Norbury School, 11-year-old Oliver said he felt empowered to help classmates and friends.

“When I first learnt about it, I was quite scared because it was happening. But once I knew quite a bit about it, I knew that I couldn’t really sort out the situation, but I would know who to speak to,” he said.

His classmate Naylen, also 11, agreed.

“I think the FGM lessons are good for children to learn because … we could make a change to all of these harmful activities,” he said.
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A U.S. federal court has given tobacco companies until June 18 to post a corrective statement on their websites about the dangers of their products and their efforts to mislead the public about those risks.

The companies were also ordered to include the statement on cigarette packages by November, according to the order issued Tuesday. It will also apply to any social media campaigns aimed at promoting cigarettes.

The corrective statements will state, among other things, that cigarette smoking causes on average 1,200 American deaths per day; that cigarettes are designed to create and sustain nicotine addiction; that low-tar, light, and natural cigarettes are no less harmful that regular ones; and that secondhand smoke causes disease and death in non-smokers.   

The statements are part of a 2006 injunction against major U.S. cigarette makers to “prevent and restrain” further deception of the American people regarding tobacco use, a Justice Department statement said.

Three major U.S. tobacco companies, R.J. Reynolds, Phillip Morris and ITG Brands, have been fighting to weaken and delay the statements since 2006.
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India should follow China’s example and clean up the air in its cities, which are among the world’s worst for outdoor pollution, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

The WHO’s database of more than 4,300 cities showed Indian cities such as New Delhi, Varanasi and Patna were among the most polluted, based on the amount of particulate matter under 2.5 micrograms found in every cubic meter of air.

Chinese cities such as Xingtai and Shijiazhuang and the Saudi refining hub at Jubail were also highly polluted, but the data for those places was 4 to 5 years old, and Maria Neira, WHO’s head of public health, said China had made big improvements that India should follow.

“There is a big step at the government level [in China] declaring war on air pollution,” Neira said. “One of the reasons for that is that the health argument was very strongly presented, and the fact that the citizens were really breathing air that was totally unacceptable.”

“We would be very happy if we would see a similar movement now in India which is one of the countries for which we are particularly concerned, although there are good initiatives which can be put in place quickly, still the levels are very high and we would like to see a similar decision and leadership.”

The WHO says nine out of 10 people on the planet breathe polluted air, and it kills 7 million people each year, almost all of them in poor countries in Asia and Africa. About a quarter of deaths from heart disease, stroke and lung cancer can be attributed to air pollution, the WHO says.

Globally, outdoor air pollution has remained high and largely unchanged in the past six years, while household air pollution has got worse in many poorer countries, as people continue to cook with solid fuel or kerosene, instead of cleaner fuels such as gas and electricity.

“The transition to clean fuels and technology in the home, clean household energy, is too slow. It’s been three decades and we still have three billion people primarily relying on [polluting] fuels and technologies, and that’s for cooking alone,” said WHO technical officer Heather Adair-Rohani.

WHO’s global assessment is based on satellite data and modeling overlaid on the database of cities, which is self-selecting because it is based on voluntary reporting, with numbers that have been hugely revised since the previous report.

The most polluted city in 2016’s report, Zabol in Iran, has had its pollution level cut fourfold in the latest version of the database, and now appears to be cleaner than Australia’s capital Canberra.

“The data we are presenting today is, I think, the most accurate you can expect at the moment,” Neira said.
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The number of Americans sickened each year by bites from infected mosquitoes, ticks or fleas tripled from 2004 through 2016, with infection rates spiking sharply in 2016 as a result of a Zika outbreak, U.S. health officials said Tuesday.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that some 96,075 diseases caused by bites by mosquitoes, ticks and fleas were reported in 2016, up from 27,388 in 2004, in an analysis of data from the CDC’s National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System.

Infections in 2016 went up 73 percent from 2015, reflecting the emergence of Zika, which is transmitted by mosquitoes and can cause severe birth defects. Zika was the most common disease borne by ticks, mosquitoes and fleas reported in 2016, with 41,680 cases reported, followed by Lyme disease, with 36,429 cases, almost double the number in 2004.

The increases may be a result of climate change, with increased temperatures and shorter winters boosting populations of ticks, mosquitoes and other disease-carrying creatures known as “vectors.”

“It enables these ticks to expand to new areas. Where there are ticks, there comes diseases,” said Lyle Petersen, director of the CDC’s Division of Vector-Borne Diseases.

Warmer summer temperatures also tend to bring outbreaks of mosquito-borne illnesses, Petersen said.

While Zika stood out as the latest emerging threat in the report, it also showed a long-term increase in cases of tick-borne Lyme disease, which can attack the heart and nervous system if left untreated.

Researchers warned that their numbers likely do not include every case, as many infections are not reported.

These increases are due to many factors, including growing populations of the insects that transmit them and increased exposure outside of the United States by travelers who unknowingly transport diseases back home.

The CDC said more than 80 percent of vector-control organizations across the United States lack the capacity to prevent and control these fast-spreading, demanding illnesses.

Petersen said that federal programs are increasing funding for those organizations.
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U.S. regulators on Tuesday issued warnings to 13 companies selling e-cigarette liquids for using child-friendly images in their packaging, in the latest crackdown aimed at preventing tobacco sales to minors.

The packaging resembles that of juice boxes, candy or cookies, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission said, noting a recent increase in the number of reports to poison control centers.

“No tobacco products should be marketed in a way that endangers kids — especially by using imagery that misleads them into thinking the products are things they’d eat or drink,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement.

The FDA has made several sweeping moves in the past few months, including setting a maximum nicotine level for tobacco products as the regulator attempts to combat tobacco and nicotine addiction.

E-cigarettes are handheld electronic devices that vaporize an “e-liquid” fluid typically including nicotine and a flavor component. They have been grabbing market share away from traditional tobacco companies, and are available in different flavors.

“It takes a very small amount of these e-liquids, in some cases less than half a teaspoon … to [have] a fatal effect for a kid and even less than that to make them very, very sick,” an agency executive said on a call with reporters.

The FDA cited examples including “One Mad Hit Juice Box,” which resembles children’s apple juice boxes and “Twirly Pop,” which not only resembles a Unicorn Pop lollipop, but comes with one.

Six of the letters issued were for dual violations where the products were illegally sold to minors online as well as packaged inappropriately.

“We don’t have to wait until there’s been an actual injury of a child we can take action if it’s likely to cause substantial injury,” Acting Federal Trade Commission Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen said.

The latest warnings come a week after the FDA sent 40 warning letters to companies on the sale of tobacco products to minors, particularly those made by Juul Labs Inc.

Twelve of the vendors issued warning letters on Tuesday did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

Nick Warrender of Lifted Liquids and E-Liquid Retail, which makes Vape Heads Sour Smurf Sauce, said the product had been pulled from the market and repackaged six months ago.

“We … took a lot of money and steps to change the product to something that wouldn’t be [as] child-appealing as the original packaging,” Warrender said. “It seems to be a false narrative that they [regulators] are pushing.”
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For decades America’s air was getting cleaner as levels of a key smog ingredient steadily dropped. That changed about seven years ago when pollution reductions leveled off, a new study found.

This means when tighter federal air quality standards go into effect later this year, many more cities may find themselves on the dirty air list. 

There are several reasons for the flattening of nitrogen oxide levels including hard-to-reduce industrial and truck pollution, said study co-author Helen Worden, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

The study, in Monday’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, used satellite and ground measurements to track nitrogen oxides, a major ingredient in smog. Levels fell 7 percent from 2005 to 2009, but only dropped 1.7 percent from 2011 to 2015. 

“We can’t say anymore it’s going down,” Worden said. 

The results also show the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s computer models overestimate how clean the air really is, said University of North Carolina’s Jason West, who wasn’t part of the study. 

Smog is created when nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds cook in sunlight. Those chemicals come from cars, trucks, power and industrial plants.

In 2015, the EPA proposed new air quality standards limiting smog levels to 70 parts per billion, down from the current 75 parts per billion. Those rules are slated to go into effect this fall, but that has been delayed once already. More than 170 counties in the United States are already exceeding the older clean air standard for smog, according to the EPA.

Worden and colleagues tried to figure out what was happening, ruling out the flow of the smog ingredient from China since levels in that country went down since it tightened its air quality rules. 

While the 2008 recession may have played a role in the slowdown, Worden said there were other bigger factors at play. 

The biggest and easiest pollution reductions have already been achieved, leaving smaller, more difficult cuts, Worden said.

University of Maryland air scientist Ross Salawitch said exposure to elevated ozone can lead to coughing and difficulty breathing, and make respiratory diseases such as asthma worse. 

For Worden, who lived in Los Angeles in the early 2000s when it was smoggier than it is now, she would bicycle to work and check ozone levels daily.

If smog levels were high, “it would really make my lungs burn,” she said.

 
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Pakistan’s environmental protection agency is installing air quality monitors and warning factories to add pollution filters after a panel of the country’s top judges ordered the government to detail its efforts to control worsening air pollution.

The court ruling earlier this month followed a lawsuit by a Karachi man challenging the government’s failure to control air pollution in that port city.

Chief Justice Mian Saqib Nisar, head of a three-member high court panel, ruled that the government must provide details of what it is doing to curb air pollution across the country.

He said he was shocked at how dirty the air had become, particularly in Pakistan’s cities.

The ruling has spurred government authorities to action to try to reduce pollution levels, fearing they could face court orders or sanctions.

Venu G. Advani, the Karachi lawyer who filed the court petition, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation he was seeking to have air quality regulations in the country enforced.

He said he hoped the court would ensure “provision of the constitutional right to a clean environment, for which clean air is key.”

“There is no hope without the Supreme Court’s intervention to awaken government officials from their deep slumber” on air quality, he said in a telephone interview from Karachi.

Air pollution deaths

According to a 2015 report published by the medical journal Lancet, nearly 22 percent of annual deaths in Pakistan — or more than 310,000 each year — are caused by pollution, the majority of them due to air pollution.

A 2014 World Bank study on Pakistan’s air quality recommended the country set aside funding to “install and operate a reliable air quality monitoring network,” and set other standards and frameworks to cut pollution.

Since the court ruling, officials at the Pakistan Environmental Protection agency have said they are moving rapidly to comply.

“We are now installing air quality monitoring instruments with the help of federal government funding and punishing the polluters,” said Ziauddin Khattak, director of the agency.

“We have now told dozens of industrial units and brick kilns through warning notices to install air cleaning filters on smoke-emitting chimneys and have started monitoring vehicles on various thoroughfares and issuing fines to the polluting vehicle owners,” he said.

Nearly 50 brick kilns have been issued notices, Khattak said, and more than 130 buses and other vehicles fined over the last two months.

He said seven fixed and three mobile ambient air quality monitoring stations have been set up in Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Peshawar and Quetta, all cities that have suffered particular problems with air pollution.

Saif Anjum, Punjab provincial environment secretary, said his agency also had installed six air quality monitoring units in Lahore, with 30 more being put in place.

The units, along with an air quality action plan, “will help cut 50 percent of air pollution in the next couple of years,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Other keys to improving air quality include planting more urban trees, replacing aging city buses and increasing parking fees to encourage the use of public transport, Anjum said.

Left out?

A 2016 study by the World Health Organisation ranked Rawalpindi, located near the capital Islamabad, as the second most polluted city of the country after the northwest city of Peshawar.

So far no air quality monitors are being installed in Rawalpindi, however, because of a lack of funds, officials said. 

With few trees and an abundance of traffic, as well as brick kilns spewing black smoke and open incineration of waste, Rawalpindi has air pollution levels more than 10 times above levels considered safe by the World Health Organization, said Asif Shuja Khan, a former director general of the Pakistan Environmental Protection agency.

Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad stand as 3rd, 4th and 5th most polluted cities in the country in terms of air quality, Khan said.

Over 90 percent of Rawalpindi’s population of over 2 million inhales contaminated air regularly, exposing them to a higher risk of health problems such as cardiovascular disease and lung cancer, he said, with children particularly vulnerable.

Pakistan’s Constitution says a clean environment is a fundamental right of all citizens, under provisions that guarantee a “right to life” and “right to dignity,” said Ahmad Rafay Alam, vice president of the Pakistan Environmental Law Association.
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Britain and the United States launched a $25 million project on Monday to study the risks of a collapse of a giant glacier in Antarctica that is already shrinking and nudging up global sea levels.

The five-year research, involving 100 scientists, would be the two nations’ biggest joint scientific project in Antarctica since the 1940s. Ice is thawing from Greenland to Antarctica and man-made global warming is accelerating the trend.

The scientists would study the Thwaites Glacier, which is roughly the size of Florida or Britain, in West Antarctica, the U.K. Natural Environment Research Council and U.S. National Science Foundation said in a joint statement.

“Rising sea levels are a globally important issue which cannot be tackled by one country alone,” U.K. science minister Sam Gyimah said.

Thwaites and the nearby Pine Island Glacier are two of the biggest and fastest-retreating glaciers in Antarctica.

If both abruptly collapsed, allowing ice far inland to flow faster into the oceans, world sea levels could rise by more than a metre (3 feet), threatening cities from Shanghai to San Francisco and low-lying coastal regions.

The scientists would deploy planes, hot water drills, satellite measurements, ships and robot submarines to one of the remotest parts of the planet to see “whether the glacier’s collapse could begin in the next few decades or centuries,” the statement said.

Despite satellites, “there are still many aspects of the ice and ocean that cannot be determined from space,” said Ted Scambos, of the National Snow and Ice Data Center and the lead U.S. scientific coordinator.

Other scientists from South Korea, Germany, Sweden, New Zealand and Finland would also contribute.

The United States is keeping up research even though U.S. President Donald Trump doubts mainstream scientific findings that human activities, led by the burning of fossil fuels, are the main cause of global warming.
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The U.N. agency that fights AIDS says that it’s reopening a sexual harassment investigation against a top official, saying additional allegations have emerged against him.

UNAIDS says it was reopening the investigation into a case against deputy executive director Luiz Loures that centers on a complaint from a lower-level employee during a stay at a Bangkok hotel in May 2015. Loures has denied the allegations.

 

A UNAIDS statement Monday said that World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus requested that the U.N.’s internal oversight office conduct the new investigation. The WHO office of internal oversight services in September threw out the case, citing “insufficient evidence.” Critics say the review process was flawed.

 

UNAIDS didn’t immediately give specifics about the new allegations against Loures.

 
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It’s another busy day for Tony Price, who has a list of around two dozen restaurants and other seafood businesses to visit, to pick up discarded oyster shells. 

Fast and energetic, he moves barrels of smelly shells from restaurants’ back storage areas to his truck. “We do seven pickups a week, plus events on weekends. I’d say we’re getting somewhere between 500 and even 800 bushels a week,” he says.

That’s the beginning of a recycling process, a journey for the oyster shell to return to the water. 

Price is the operation manager with Shell Recycling Alliance, a program run by the Oyster Recovery Partnership.

Last year, the program collected 33,400 bushels of oyster shells from restaurants all around the Chesapeake Bay area. Every half shell collected becomes a new home for around 10 baby oysters. 

On the menu

Oysters have been a popular item on the menu of Mike’s Crab House since 1958.

The famous seafood restaurant, in Riva, Maryland, is one of more than 330 restaurants in Maryland, Virginia and Washington D.C. that now recycle their oyster shells.

Tony Piera says he and Mike’s other owners joined the program four years ago.

“It’s a win-win for us. It’s a win-win for the environment,” he explains. “Before we did it, the trash would come and get them. Now, the Oyster Recovery comes two days a week, picks them up.”

Mike’s Crab House is one of the top ten contributors to the program this year, with more 822 bushels of recycled oyster shells in 2017.

“I think I’m getting more customers here because they know we recycle here,” Piera says. “They know it’s good for the environment, the Chesapeake Bay.”

Saving oysters, saving the bay

The Oyster Recovery Partnership began in 2010 with 22 restaurants. Spokeswoman Karis King says the program has been well received and is expanding.

“We continue to grow and expand from us basically knocking on doors, trying to get people involved,” she adds. “It’s turned out into getting requests every single day, ‘How do we become part of this program?’ ‘I’m really excited about the program.’ ‘I want to do my part.’ ‘I want to be sustainable.’”

The recycling program offers incentives to encourage more restaurants to join. “In Maryland, tax credits that restaurants can claim based on how many bushels they recycle. We also provide them with support, restaurant training to talk to the servers about what the program is and why it’s important.” 

Multi-step recycling process

Done with his day’s rounds, Tony Price heads to a facility where the first phase of the process – cleaning the shells – begins.

“The shell is taken down here, it’s aged, it sits for about a year. It dries out, sun, wind, rain,” he explains. “(It) kind of decomposes a little all the tissue that’s left. Behind me is the shell washer. There are jets of a high pressure water from a pressure water system tumbles the shells, just give it a nice cleaning. So, it comes out brilliant white as opposed to the stuff on the other side is the raw shell. It’s a little bit grayer.” 

Then, the shells go to the University of Maryland’s Center for Environmental Science Horn Point Oyster Hatchery for further processing. 

Hatchery manager, Stephanie Alexander, says her team gets tiny baby oysters, called spat, ready to be attached to the clean oyster shells. “We get the adult oysters, we spawn them and create the babies. Then, we grow those baby oysters for two to three weeks. Then they mature and we attach them to the shell to become spat on shell.”

Now firmly attached to the recycled natural shells, the spat are put back in the Chesapeake Bay. Here, they will grow and flourish, increasing the oyster population.

Alexander says new generations of oysters are crucially important for the health of the bay. They filter the water.

“That kind of makes them the bay’s kidneys,” she explains. “The cleaner water you have, the more sunlight can penetrate, the more grasses you end up having, which results in nursery area for fish and crabs when they are small and juvenile so they don’t get eaten. They also are spawning and reproducing, adding to the population. They (oyster shells) create habitat for many, many creatures. They are kind of the coral reefs of the bay.”

The success of the Recycling Shell Alliance program encourages more restaurants to join. That’s good for the bay and for people who love to eat oysters.
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