One of the world's most common artificial sweeteners is set to be declared a possible carcinogen next month by a leading global health body, according to two sources with knowledge of the process, pitting it against the food industry and regulators.
Aspartame, used in products from Coca-Cola diet sodas to Mars' Extra chewing gum and some Snapple drinks, will be listed in July as "possibly carcinogenic to humans" for the first time by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the World Health Organisation's (WHO) cancer research arm, the sources said.
The IARC ruling, finalised earlier this month after a meeting of the group's external experts, is intended to assess whether something is a potential hazard or not, based on all the published evidence.
It does not take into account how much of a product a person can safely consume. This advice for individuals comes from a separate WHO expert committee on food additives, known as JECFA (the Joint WHO and Food and Agriculture Organization's Expert Committee on Food Additives), alongside determinations from national regulators.
However, similar IARC rulings in the past for different substances have raised concerns among consumers about their use, led to lawsuits, and pressured manufacturers to recreate recipes and swap to alternatives. That has led to criticism that the IARC's assessments can be confusing to the public.
JECFA, the WHO committee on additives, is also reviewing aspartame use this year. Its meeting began at the end of June and it is due to announce its findings on the same day that the IARC makes its decision public - on 14 July.
It does not take into account how much of a product a person can safely consume.
So I'm getting the sense this is about as meaningful as "Known to the state of California to possibly cause cancer".
I'm really not a fan of this extreme level of caution when it comes to public health warnings. There comes a point when people will simply stop listening to you entirely if you constantly tell them that everything they do has some 0.00001% chance of harming them. Then, when you try to warn people about genuinely concerning risks, people will simply ignore you.
A few years back there seemed to be a plethora of studies which were "Consuning <insert hot liquid> increases chance of throat cancer".
You would have to go to the source report (if lucky the bottom of the article) to find out it increased the risk by 0.1% - 0.5%.
When you factor in only 2,300 people in the UK (70 million) get throat cancer each year and the biggest risk factor was smoking and non smokers are pretty much within statistical error bars.
It makes the report uninteresting and only useful in a "someone already looked into this" way and yet a month would go buy and there would be a new article .. who knew chicken soup causes cancer...
Doesn’t it depend if the musicians are the rights holder or not? And if the venue or event organizers have a license to use the music. You can’t play music during a public event without the proper license for that music.
40 percent of the 33 seats in parliament have changed hands as a result of the November 20 national election.
Among high-profile incumbents losing re-election bids were fisheries and climate Minister John Silk, a 24-year parliament veteran who has been in the cabinet of multiple administrations, and Speaker Kenneth Kedi, who has been an outspoken advocate for justice for nuclear test-affected people of Rongelap, his home atoll, and the entire Marshall Islands.
Voting data provided by the electoral office shows extremely low voter turnout, based on the number of registered voters.
There is no way to determine if the number of voters listed on the Electoral Administrations eligible list of voters is accurate. But based on the available data, only 33 percent - 17,998 - turned out to vote of the 55,167 registered voters.
The postal absentee ballots were particularly problematic. With nearly half the Marshall Islands population now residing in the United States, postal absentee voters could have a major impact on the outcome of national elections. As a result of only a few ballots arriving in time to be counted, only one parliament race was changed by offshore voters.
The Electoral Administration mailed out 3,752 postal ballots to voters - over 1,600 less than one week before the deadline for voters to mail them back to the Marshall Islands - and only 1,469 returned before the December 4 deadline. But only 1,117 postal absentee ballots - 30 percent of those mailed out - were ultimately accepted and counted.
A rule known as the touchback provision requires foreign workers to leave the country before their work visas could be renewed for a third consecutive time.
The departure requirement means that these workers will have to stay away from the CNMI until a new permit is approved, which could take months.
As this developed, Delegate Gregorio Sablan last week testified before the US House of Representatives' Committee on Education and Workforce in support of including the Northern Marianas and American Samoa in the Federal Employment Service by amending the Wagner-Peyser Act.
Sablan said the CNMI and American Samoa have a reliance on non-US workers which has contributed to ongoing workforce disruptions.
He said they have a bipartisan agreement and that now is the time to upgrade America's economic support to CNMI by making sure job seekers and employers in the Marianas or throughout the United States get the same high-quality services as other Americans everywhere else in the United States does.
The CNMI and American Samoa are the only two remaining US jurisdictions ineligible to participate in the critical programs under Wagner-Peyser Act.
"The way in which the government got around the need to have compensation agreements in place before the issue of a special mining lease was to pass a piece of legislation, which basically said, 'look, the existing compensation agreements before the closure of the mine will allow us to continue in the interim, while New compensation agreements are relocated'."
A Papua New Guinea academic, who grew up in Porgera in the early years of the mine, Andrew Anton Mako, has called for structures to be put in place to ensure returns from the re-opened mine are not wasted.
The Australian National University staffer has written about what he calls the blessings and the curse the mine brought back in the 1990s.
He said with a bigger stake he hopes the community doesn't squander the money. "In the past it was only 2.5 percent of the mine equity stake," Mako said.
"Now the landowners have been given ten percent, free carry, by the government. So, it will be a lot of money. It is estimated around 25 billion kina. That's a lot of money for the next 20 years.
"So even though the proceeds will increase, the main issue is in the governance, the use of that money, whether it will be used productively to improve the lives of the people or whether it will be used mostly on consumption."
Mako also wants some focus on what happens when the mine stops producing in 20 years or so.
Lady Moxon said the Crown response "signifies a systematic breakdown of the principles outlined in Te Tiriti o Waitangi across all government levels."
In its response, the Crown acknowledged it had not consulted with its Treaty partner and it currently had no alternative solution to addressing health inequities for Māori.
The Crown said its decision to dismantle Te Aka Whai Ora was "made by the government at the political level following political parties campaigning on this issue ahead of the recent General Election."
A submission responding to the Crowns opposition was filed on behalf of claimants on Wednesday which said the Crown "clearly intended to create backlash against Māori."
It said, the government intentionally created the "false impression of special treatment for Māori" and that "special treatment was presented as a problem politicians could promise to solve if elected, as a means to gain votes."
Or rather, be constantly ravaged by OMORI and his dangerous arsenal of cold, blood-red spaghetti hands.
A human justice unretributed, yet upheld in some way anyway.
Last week, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown told RNZ Pacific that Cook Islands will continue its seabed "exploration phase", despite facing criticism from campaign groups.
The current meeting is a continuation of what was discussed in July, where member states agreed on a non-binding timeline for mining rules to be adopted in 2025.
Deep-Sea Conservation Coalition international lawyer Duncan Currie said there were "opposite currents" within the ISA with the growing list of countries calling for a moratorium.
"There is a crosscurrent going on," Currie said.
Duncan Currie speaking at a nuclear conference in Dunedin, New Zealand, 2022
"You have 23 countries including Aotearoa New Zealand and now the United Kingdom and other significant countries, such as Canada, Switzerland, that are now saying we want a moratorium. "That directly cuts across the regulations, because of course, the regulations will allow seabed mining to start."
Currie said although it is a strange situation, a similar thing happened in the late 1980s when the Convention on the Regulation of Antarctic Mineral Resource Activities was negotiated.
"That was actually finished as a template for mining in Antarctica and then after that, a number of countries said 'no, we don't want mining in Antarctica, we want a moratorium', so they agreed on a 50-year moratorium.The law is different, but the international political dynamic is the same.I think the majority of public opinion gets their way then we'll get a moratorium, but a number of other countries feel differently."
A big discussion point during the July meeting was the two-year rule - a provision under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) that once triggered means if regulations are not adopted within two years, mining licenses could be granted under whatever rules exist.
Nauru triggered the rule in 2021 that lapsed on 9 July of this year.It means The Metals Company can apply to mine under its subsidiary Nauru Ocean Resources and the ISA would have to consider the application.
"Nauru is expected to file this application to go seabed mining after the July meeting in 2024," Currie said.
"There's a lot of countries that do not want to see unregulated seabed mining happen.
"This is a very contentious, very legalistic and very politically contentious area, so that will really come to pass in July of next year."
Currie believes there will be a lot of "legal and political wrangling" around the two-year rule between now and June next year.
It appears it would be classified in the same category as using a cellphone. At this point anything beyond sitting inside and drinking only water will cause cancer.
A woman who was part of a group kidnapped in Papua New Guinea in February has spoken out after the kidnapping and reported rape of 17 schoolgirls in the same area of Southern Highlands earlier this month.
Cathy Alex, the New Zealand-born Australian academic Bryce Barker and two female researchers, were taken in the Bosavi region and held for ransom.
They were all released when the Papua New Guinea government paid the ransom of US$28,000 to the kidnappers to secure their release.
Alex, who heads the Advancing Women's Leaders' Network, said what the 17 abducted girls had gone through prompted her to speak out, after the country, she believed, had done nothing.
A local said family members of the girls negotiated with the captors and were eventually able to secure their release. The villagers reportedly paid an undisclosed amount of cash and a few pigs as the ransom.
Alex said she and the other women in her group had feared they would be raped when they were kidnapped...
The teenage girls from the most recent kidnapping are now safe and being cared for but they cannot return to their village because it is too dangerous.
Those poor girls. Did absolutely nothing wrong, now they're not even able to get comfort from their families and friends. Their lives destroyed for years to come. And I fear some may end up pregnant, to add to their trauma.
Seventeen schools girls taken hostage by armed men in the Mount Bosavi area on the border of the Southern Highlands and Hela provinces in Papua New Guinea have been released by their captors.
A Bosavi local said family members of the girls negotiated with the captors and were eventually able to secure their release last Wednesday (June 7).
The local resident also reported that the 17 girls were later airlifted to the Ridge Camp - a base owned by Oil and Gas Company, Santos, where they received medical treatment.A spokesperson from Santos told RNZ Pacific that Santos "will not comment on a police matter."
Police Commissioner David Manning has confirmed the release of the hostages.
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