'Jack of all trades' Netanyahu quits as foreign minister, retains 3 other posts

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has tapped an ally to lead the foreign ministry after a petition to the High Court argued it was impossible for him to juggle posts of PM, health, defense and foreign minister at once.

With less than two months left before the Israeli general election, Netanyahu relinquished his duties as the country's foreign minister, which he assumed in 2015, after a petition filed by the Movement for Quality Government, a non-government organization, to the High Court questioned his ability to handle the responsibility arising from his numerous ministerial posts.

The petition was launched back in December, when Netanyahu, who has been serving as the Israeli Prime Minister since 2009, still held four ministerial portfolios in addition to being the head of state.

https://www.rt.com/news/451693-netanyahu-foreign-minister-resigns/

Study: Radiation From Smartphones May Impair Memory In Teens

BASEL, Switzerland — Don’t want your child to have a cellphone? One recent study gives you good reason to make kids wait as long as possible for their first mobile device: it appears that radiation from phones can hurt a teenager’s memory.

A research team at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute says that radio frequency electromagnetic fields (RF-EMF) may negatively affect an adolescent’s brain from cellphone exposure, causing potentially harmful effects on his or her memory performance. The authors say having the device close to one’s head lead to the greatest amount of radiation exposure.

The researchers studied nearly 700 public school students in Switzerland between ages 12 and 17. They examined how RF-EMF exposure from mobile phones over a year’s time affected memory in the adolescents, and found that memory processed and stored in the right brain hemisphere was particularly worsened. It’s believed that participants primarily held the phone up to the right side of their heads when talking, which likely led to the right hemisphere impairment.

“This may suggest that indeed RF-EMF absorbed by the brain is responsible for the observed associations.” says Martin Röösli, Head of Environmental Exposures and Health at Swiss TPH, in a statement. “A unique feature of this study is the use of objectively collected mobile phone user data from mobile phone operators.”

But Röösli couldn’t rule out that puberty and other external factors may also have played a role in memory development among the children. Further research is needed to rule out such factors, as well as to determine what, if any, long-term risks come with radiation exposure from phones.

The authors note that handheld smartphone usage, such as browsing the web, texting, or playing games led to notably less exposure to the radiation and was not believed to impair the participants’ memory.

““Potential risks to the brain can be minimized by using headphones or the loud speaker while calling, in particular when network quality is low and the mobile phone is functioning at maximum power,” says Röösli.

The study is a follow-up to a report published in 2015 with twice the sample size and more recent information about how the adolescent body absorbs RF-EMF while using different types of mobile devices. The 2015 study showed negative affects of RF-EMF exposure to the parts of the brain exposed while using a mobile cellular device. The new study confirmed these findings. Both of these studies are the first epidemiological studies to estimate the cumulative RF-EMF brain dose in teenagers.

https://www.studyfinds.org/study-radiation-smartphones-impairs-memory-teens/

Pure Evil

You might imagine that a report by a multinational observer force documenting a 20-year reign of terror by Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers against Palestinians, in a city under occupation, would provoke condemnation from European and US politicians.

But you would be wrong. The leaking in December of the report on conditions in the city of Hebron, home to 200,000 Palestinians, barely caused a ripple.

About 40,000 separate cases of abuse had been quietly recorded since 1997 by dozens of monitors from Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Italy and Turkey. Some incidents constituted war crimes.

Exposure of the confidential report has now provided the pretext for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to expel the international observers. He shuttered their mission in Hebron this month, in apparent violation of Israel’s obligations under the 25-year-old Oslo peace accords.

Israel hopes once again to draw a veil over its violent colonisation of the heart of the West Bank’s largest Palestinian city. The process of clearing tens of thousands of inhabitants from central Hebron is already well advanced.

https://friendsofsyria.wordpress.com/2019/02/18/pure-evil-3/

In Hebron, Israel removes the last restraint on its settlers’ reign of terror

https://www.redressonline.com/2019/02/in-hebron-israel-removes-the-last-restraint-on-its-settlers-reign-of-terror/?fbclid=IwAR1o3p_EcQMjjvgBVGSaf6sXHDqyrOFBo4ZrZMTOjBywOCDP_KKZy

Trump EPA OKs ‘Emergency’ to Dump Bee-killing Pesticide on 16 Million Acres

The Environmental Protection Agency reported this week that in 2018 it issued so-called “emergency” approvals to spray sulfoxaflor — an insecticide the agency considers “very highly toxic” to bees — on more than 16 million acres of crops known to attract bees.

Of the 18 states where the approvals were granted for sorghum and cotton crops, 12 have been given the approvals for at least four consecutive years for the same “emergency.”

Last year the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General released a report finding that the agency’s practice of routinely granting “emergency” approval for pesticides across millions of acres does not effectively measure risks to human health or the environment.

“Spraying 16 million acres of bee-attractive crops with a bee-killing pesticide in a time of global insect decline is beyond the pale, even for the Trump administration,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity. “The EPA is routinely misusing the ‘emergency’ process to get sulfoxaflor approved because it’s too toxic to make it through normal pesticide reviews.”

Under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act, the EPA has the authority to approve temporary emergency uses of pesticides, even those not officially approved, if the agency determines it is needed to prevent the spread of an unexpected outbreak of crop-damaging insects, for example. But the provision has been widely abused.

That widespread abuse was chronicled in the Center’s recent report, Poisonous Process: How the EPA’s Chronic Misuse of ‘Emergency’ Pesticide Exemptions Increases Risks to Wildlife. The report concludes that emergency exemptions for sulfoxaflor are essentially a backdoor authorization allowing for its ongoing use on millions of acres of crops where exposure to pollinators through contaminated pollen is high. In fact, the so-called “emergencies” cited are routine and foreseeable occurrences.

Previously, in response to a lawsuit by beekeepers, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the EPA’s original registration of sulfoxaflor in 2015. The EPA’s new 2016 registration for sulfoxaflor — purportedly designed to ensure essentially no exposure to bees — excluded crops like cotton and sorghum that are attractive to bees.

A compilation of federal register notices indicates that sulfoxaflor was approved on 16.2 million acres of cotton and sorghum crops in 2018 on an emergency basis. Emergency approvals were granted in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

“The EPA is far too eager to find loopholes to approve harmful pesticides when it should be focusing on keeping people and wildlife safe from those pesticides,” said Donley. “The routine abuse of emergency exemptions has to stop.”

A recent study published in Nature found that sulfoxaflor exposure at low doses had severe consequences for bumblebee reproductive success. The authors cautioned against the EPA’s current trajectory of replacing older neonicotinoids with nearly identical insecticides like sulfoxaflor.

A major study published earlier this month found that more than 41 percent of the world’s insect species are on the fast track to extinction, and that a “serious reduction in pesticide usage” is key to preventing their extinction.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-epa-oks-emergency-to-dump-bee-killing-pesticide-on-16-million-acres/5668859