Texto- The UK Keeps Sending Plastic Waste to Poor Countries, Defying Past Pledge - UK citizens produce more plastic waste than nearly any other country

Parte I

The UK is sending plastic waste to low-and middle-income countries despite a partial ban on the practice that went into effect across the EU on Jan. 1, 2021, according to the Guardian.

The EU-wide ban, which prevents shipments of plastic waste to countries outside of the Organization of Economic Cooperations and Development, was developed while the UK was still a part of the political bloc. The UK government had said that it wouldn’t backslide on environmental commitments after its departure from the EU, but the ongoing shipment of plastic waste shows that it’s already falling behind its peers.

The country says that it will keep sending shipments of plastic waste to countries that had previously agreed to take it, claiming that countries can reject the arrangement at any time. Environmental advocates told the Guardian that the continuation of the practice shows that the UK isn’t yet serious about curbing its plastic waste.

The UK has the second-highest per capita rate of plastic consumption in the world, but the country has failed to develop sufficient infrastructure for recycling and disposing of all this plastic.

As plastic waste accumulates, particularly the hard-to-recycle kind, the country simply puts it into shipping containers and pays other countries to take it and figure out how to recycle or dispose of it.

In September 2020 alone, the UK sent more than 7,000 metric tons of plastic waste to countries such as Malaysia, Pakistan, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Turkey, according to the nonprofit Last Beach Clean Up. This plastic waste often ends up going to landfills or getting burned in ways that contaminate sources of air, water, and food. In Malaysia, for example, illegal plastic-burning factories have become a menace to communities.

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COVID-19 Live Updates: U.S. Cases Drop by 22 Percent, Sydney Reopens to Fully Vaccinated After Months of Lockdown

BY EWAN QUAYLE ON 10/12/21 AT 4:13 AM EDT

COVID cases in the U.S. have started to fall significantly after months of sustained pressure on hospitals across the country. Healthcare facilities were forced, and continue to, only offer emergency medical services as the number of patients in intensive care remains extraordinarily high.

Elsewhere, a damning report has condemned the U.K. government’s response to the pandemic, describing failures by ministers and scientific advisers as “costing thousands of lives”. In Sydney, business and life are beginning to return to relative normality for the fully vaccinated after over 100 days of lockdown in the city

Meanwhile, arguments about vaccine and mask mandates continue to rage in the U.S. after Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order to prohibit businesses from enforcing such restrictions on workers.

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Parte II

China used to be the largest recipient of excess plastic waste, but the country cracked down on the practice in 2018. Since then, countries like the UK, the US, and Canada have scrambled to find other dumping grounds.

Many of these countries have since restricted the practice as well after getting inundated with junk plastic. Both the Philippines and Malaysia have sent shipping containers full of plastic waste back to where they came from.

"Malaysia will not be the dumping ground of the world", Yeo Bee Yin, Malaysia’s environment minister, said at the time. "We will fight back. Even though we are a small country, we can’t be bullied by developed countries."

"What the citizens of the UK [and other countries] think they have sent for recycling are actually being dumped in our country," she added. "Malaysians have a right to clean air, clean water, and a clean environment to live in, just like citizens of developed nations."

Low-income countries such as Bangladesh, Laos, Senegal, and Ethiopia have emerged as the new dumping grounds due to lax environmental laws, according to the Guardian.

Environmental groups have long warned that the plastic pollution crisis has been spiraling out of control. Many countries have vowed to reduce plastic production, and global conventions have been convened to improve international recycling and waste management. But plastic production is expected to increase by 40% over the next decade.

While the EU will seek to take responsibility for the amount of waste it generates, countries such as the UK will continue to pass the responsibility elsewhere.

"We had assumed the UK would at least follow the EU, and so it is a shock to find out now that instead they choose to have a far weaker control procedure, which can still permit exports of contaminated and difficultto-recycle plastics to developing countries," Jim Puckett, director of the Basel Action Network, told the Guardian. He added: "They are talking the talk, but they have failed to walk the walk."

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Bolsa Família - a decade of social inclusion in Brazil A decade debunking myths and exceeding expectations

In 2003, the Bolsa Família Program (BFP) was taking its first steps, with a broad set of challenges still ahead. Its objectives were to contribute to the social inclusion of families constrained by extreme poverty by providing immediate relief to their situation, and to stimulate improvements to their education and health, in order to cease the intergenerational cycle of poverty reproduction. It was necessary to unify existing sectoral programs of cash transfer, consolidate the Unified Registry for Social Programs (Cadastro Único para Programas Sociais – CadÚnico), create a federal strategy for its management, monitor the conditionalities and ensure supply and access to basic services. Ten years later, the objectives were fully achieved and, in most cases, surpassed. Based on its wide coverage, excellent focus and significant impacts on the living conditions of the population, the success of the BFP is evident.

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Sometimes with One I Love

Sometimes with one I love, I fill myself with rage,
for fear I effuse unreturn’d love;
But now I think there is no unreturn’d love—the pay is
certain, one way or another;
(I loved a certain person ardently, and my love was not
return’d;
Yet out of that, I have written these songs.)

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TEXTO

The Oscars’ new diversity rules are sweeping but safe

(…) Given that, will anything truly change? Yes, but
it’s something far harder to measure: perception. Even
if the new guidelines allow ample workarounds, they
will probably spur filmmakers, financiers and studio
[05] executives to take the issue of diversity more seriously,
and could especially be a boon to department heads
of color.

And now that the issue is on the table, Oscar voters
may be interested to learn just how specifically a
[10] contender’s diversity standards were met, and which
films skated by with a handful of interns.

A Teen's View of Social Media

Instagram is made up of all photos and videos. There is the home page that showcases the posts from people you follow, an explore tab which offers posts from accounts all over the world, and your own page, with a notification tab to show who likes and comments on your posts.

It has some downsides though. It is known to make many people feel insecure or down about themselves because the platform showcases the highlights of everyone's lives, while rarely showing the negatives. This can make one feel like their life is not going as well as others, contributing to the growing rates of anxiety or depression in many teens today. There is an underlying desire for acceptance through the number of likes or followers one has.

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Researchers in the US have developed a technological aid: a chest-mounted video camera — linked to a processing unit involving a computer-vision algorithm — and a pair of vibrating wristbands. When the system detects a hazard that the wearer is set to collide with, the wristband on the same side as the hazard vibrates. If the obstacle is straight ahead, both wristbands vibrate. The researchers said the device was not designed to replace canes or guide dogs but rather to provide additional benefits, including helping wearers to avoid hazards above ground level.

Writing in the journal Jama Ophthalmology, the researchers reported that a study of 368 hours of walking video data from 31 blind or partially sighted participants indicates that the approach could be helpful.

After a period of training, each participant used the system for about four weeks, in addition to their cane or guide dog. During this time the system switched unannounced between “active” mode — during which the wristbands vibrated when a hazard was detected — and “silent” mode, where they did not. The researchers then analysed the data to see whether the rate of contacts between the user’s body or cane and the objects identified by the system differed between the two scenarios.

When they looked at a random sample of collision warnings for each participant, they found that such contacts were reduced by 37% when the system was in active mode, taking into account factors including participants’ level of visual acuity.