Canada is attacking its expanding opioid crisis with an unusual measure: It’s giving addicts a safe place to shoot up.

The government has allowed seven “safe injection sites” to open and a score of others are being considered across the country.

The storefront sites give addicts clean syringes, medical supervision and freedom from arrest. They don’t get help in kicking their problem unless they ask for it, but the program dramatically reduces the chance of a fatal overdose or the transmission of blood-borne diseases such as hepatitis or HIV. 

The effort, inspired by some in Europe, is being closely watched in the U.S., where officials are struggling to cope with a surge in overdose deaths from opioid use. Several cities say they are considering similar measures despite fears that they may encourage drug use.

First center in Vancouver

Dozens of people a day have been coming to three new centers in Montreal, where users are given a small kit to safely inject drugs they bring with them and then an opportunity to relax for a half hour on couches listening to music, according to a 30-year-old addict who would only give his first name, Francois. The center operators denied access to the media once the center opened.

“They give you everything you need,” Francois said as he left a center in the gentrifying downtown neighborhood around Sainte-Catherine Street after injecting heroin. “Everyone is pretty relaxed.”

A single injection site opened in 2003, run by a Vancouver nonprofit organization under authorization by Health Canada. It received 214,898 visits by 8,040 individuals last year, with nurses intervening in 1,781 overdoses. It said it’s never had an overdose death.

Another center also has opened in that West Coast city, and in recent weeks, two more have opened in British Columbia and three in Montreal. Another is scheduled to open in Montreal soon and three in Toronto. More than a dozen other potential sites are being considered across Canada federal officials say. 

More overdoses prompt more centers

Health Minister Jane Philpott said the government felt compelled to add sites because of the escalating number of overdose deaths, which topped 2,400 last year. 

“They are absolutely known to save lives and reduce infections,” Philpott said. “We have a very significant public health issue in our country.”

She acknowledged they are not a complete answer to the drug problem: “This is only one in a very broad range of tools. A comprehensive approach is necessary.”

Seattle to open centers

U.S. drug overdose deaths have tripled in 15 years, reaching at least 52,000 in 2015, making it the leading cause of death for people under 50. Seattle and King County in Washington are moving forward with plans for safe injection centers and a city task force in Philadelphia has proposed some, though such measures have faced opposition.

John Walters, who directed the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy under President George W. Bush, said safe-injection sites merely prolong addiction and eventually lead to deaths.

He noted that overdose deaths have risen sharply in British Columbia despite the presence of the first safe-injection site in North America. The province had 136 deaths in April, a 97 percent increase over the same month a year earlier. There were 967 overdose deaths in British Columbia in 2016, up from 517 in 2015. And there have been 640 this year through May. 

“Government-sanctioned injection sites are now said by advocates to prevent overdose deaths. That clearly has not happened in British Columbia,” Walters said. 

Jonathan Caulkins, a drug policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, isn’t convinced they work either but said he understands their appeal. 

“The opioid crisis is so horrible that you are desperate and willing to try anything,” he said. “There’s a part of me that says, ‘Sure, give it a shot.”’ 

​Neighbors not pleased

Gilles Beauregard, executive director of a Montreal safe injection site opening in September, argued that the service will help neighborhoods.

“At street level, we’re going to see a decrease in the number of needles lying around, and less people shooting up in parks and alleys and public toilets,” he said.

Not everybody living nearby agrees. Angry residents met Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre and other officials when they inaugurated the Sainte-Catherine Ease facility in late June. Chantal Beauregard, who lives in the area, said it has attracted junkies at all hours and needles now litter the ground. 

“It’s been one week and we’re already fed up,” she said. 

A new safe injection facility scheduled to open a mile east in Montreal in September is also drawing criticism 

“Having a supervised injection site in a school zone doesn’t make sense,” says Christelle Perrine, who has two children in a school about 200 yards (meters) from the facility.

A tall, broad-shouldered and extensively tattooed man who gave his name only as Benjamin was among about a dozen drug users who made their way to the Sainte-Catherine East injection site over an hour one midweek day.

“I’ve been waiting for something like this for years. It’s great. You don’t have junkies shooting up everywhere, leaving their needles all over the place,” the 46-year-old said after injecting cocaine. “It’s clean, the staff is great.”

“I understand why people who live around here aren’t happy. I have a heart and I have a brain,” he said. “My life’s ambition wasn’t to do this, but at least with this, we’re safe.” 
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From: MeNeedIt

A team of Afghan teenage girls who were denied a visa to participate in a robotics contest in Washington say they will not be deterred and have sent their home-made robot to the contest. While disappointed, the girls are glad their robot will be part of the competition. Bezhan Hamdard narrates this report by Khalil Noorzai and Mohammad Ahmadi of VOA’s Afghan service.
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From: MeNeedIt

Countless visitors to Santa Catalina Island off the coast of California take a rough, bumpy ride into the island’s interior in hopes of finding a piece of Hollywood history.

“In 1924, approximately 14 bison were brought to the island for the filming of a movie, and they did not end up being in the movie, but when the film crew left, the bison were left behind and have been on the landscape ever since,” said Julie King, director of conservation and wildlife management at the Catalina Island Conservancy. 

Currently, 120 bison remain on the island, but they were not native to the island. 

Nearly extinct

In prehistoric times, millions of bison roamed the North American mainland, but by the late 1800s, they were nearly extinct. Through conservation efforts, they can now be found in all 50 states, including national parks, private lands and on one of the Channel Islands off the coast of southern California. 

While five of the eight Channel Islands are part of the National Park Service, Catalina Island is not. Most of the island is now owned by the Catalina Island Conservancy, which manages the bison there.

“They’re very challenged healthwise when they’re on this island because they don’t have the adequate nutrition during the right time of year,” King said. “So, our bison are in fact a little smaller than the mainland, and it’s not a genetic difference. It’s due to not having the right nutrients at the right time.”

The bison do not have predators that are native to the island, and they live in a mild climate in contrast to their counterparts on the mainland, which often have to survive harsh winters. Eventually, the bison on Catalina Island had grown to numbers that the island could not sustain. According to the conservancy, the herd’s numbers were rumored to have reached up to 600 at their peak.

Watch: History of Catalina Bison: Hollywood, Tourism and Ecology

Bison relocated to new homes 

“In 2002, 2003 and 2004, we had relocated or repatriated [Catalina] bison to native American reservations in North and South Dakota, to the Lakota Sioux and Standing Rock reservations.” King said. “They were trying to re-establish bison on their lands. They hadn’t had bison in 100 years.”

Over the years, nearly 500 bison found a new home on Native American reservations, renewing a historical relationship between the people and the animals. 

“They provided food for the Native Americans. They provided shelter. They made their homes out of their skins. They used every part of it. It was like so ecologically perfect,” said Debbie Rosen, who fell in love with the island and its bison. She co-wrote a children’s book, The Amazing Adventures of Beebee the Bison, with her husband, Howie Rosen.

As for the ecological balance between the bison and the island, King said, “Ideally, as a wildlife biologist, I would say one is too many on this island. They did not evolve on an island. Our largest native herbivore is a squirrel … not an 1,800 herbivore.”

This island and the bison

The identity of the island, however, has become deeply tied to the herd.

“They belong here. They’re part of the fabric. People come to Catalina to see the bison,” Howie Rosen said.

Debbie Rosen said the Catalina Island bison are also symbolic of why the American bison officially became the national mammal of the United States in 2016.

“They were left behind to survive and this is a far cry from the America Plains … so they were forced to adapt. So that’s an example of their resilience and why they’re such a fitting symbol for our country, because the American people are resilient people.” Rosen continued, “Personally I think we should keep them here (on Catalina Island).”

To keep the bison herd at a sustainable size, biologists on the island have been managing them through a contraception program since 2009.

“However, we haven’t been administering any of the doses the last two years. We’re evaluating reversibility,” King said.

This is one way the conservationists and the community are finding a compromise on the island bison, she said.

“The bison have been here for many, many years and are a part of the community that people come to see, and they very much appreciate the bison on the island, and so we’re trying to find a balance between their ecological impacts and tourism and cultural context.” 
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From: MeNeedIt

Singapore has a near-perfect approach to cybersecurity, but many other rich countries have holes in their defenses and some poorer countries are showing them how it should be done, a U.N. survey showed on Wednesday.

Wealth breeds cybercrime, but it does not automatically generate cybersecurity, so governments need to make sure they are prepared, the survey by the U.N. International Telecommunication Union (ITU) said.

“There is still an evident gap between countries in terms of awareness, understanding, knowledge and finally capacity to deploy the proper strategies, capabilities and programmes,” the survey said.

The United States came second in the ITU’s Global Cybersecurity Index, but many of the other highly rated countries were small or developing economies.

The rest of the top 10 were Malaysia, Oman, Estonia, Mauritius, Australia, Georgia, France and Canada. Russia ranked 11th. India was 25th, one place ahead of Germany, and China was 34th.

The ranking was based on countries’ legal, technical and organizational institutions, their educational and research capabilities, and their cooperation in information-sharing networks.

“Cybersecurity is an ecosystem where laws, organizations, skills, cooperation and technical implementation need to be in harmony to be most effective,” the survey said.

“The degree of interconnectivity of networks implies that anything and everything can be exposed, and everything from national critical infrastructure to our basic human rights can be compromised.”

The crucial first step was to adopt a national security strategy, but 50 percent of countries have none, the survey said.

Among the countries that ranked higher than their economic development was 57th-placed North Korea, which was let down by its “cooperation” score but still ranked three spots ahead of much-richer Spain.

The smallest rich countries also scored badly – Andorra, Liechtenstein, Monaco and San Marino were all well down the second half of the table. The Vatican ranked 186th out of 195 countries in the survey.

But no country did worse than Equatorial Guinea, which scored zero.
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From: MeNeedIt

The Ukrainian software firm at the center of a cyber attack that spread around the world last week said on Wednesday that computers which use its accounting software are compromised by a so-called “backdoor” installed by hackers during the attack.

The backdoor has been installed in every computer that wasn’t offline during the cyber attack, said Olesya Bilousova, the chief executive of Intellect Service, which developed M.E.Doc, Ukraine’s most popular accounting software.

Last week’s cyber attack spread from Ukraine and knocked out thousands of computers, disrupting shipping and shut down a chocolate factory in Australia as it reached dozens of countries around the world.

Ukrainian politicians were quick to blame Russia for a state-sponsored hack, which Moscow denied, while Ukranian cyber police and some experts say the attack was likely a smokescreen for the hackers to install new malware.

The Ukrainian police have seized M.E.Doc’s servers and taken them offline. On Wednesday morning they advised every computer using M.E.Doc software to be switched off. M.E.Doc is installed in around 1 million computers in Ukraine, Bilousova said.

“… the fact is that this backdoor needs to be closed. There was a hacking of servers,” Bilousova told reporters.

“As of today, every computer which is on the same local network as our product is a threat. We need to pay the most attention to those computers which weren’t affected (by the attack). The virus is on them waiting for a signal. There are fingerprints on computers which didn’t even use our product.”
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From: MeNeedIt

A closely watched survey shows that economic growth across the 19-country eurozone was even higher than previously thought during June, more evidence of growing momentum in the single currency bloc.

Financial information firm IHS Markit says its main purchasing managers’ index, which surveys both the manufacturing and services sectors, was at 56.3 points in June. Though that is slightly down on the previous month’s 56.8, it’s well ahead of the previous estimate of 55.7. Anything above 50 indicates expansion.

The average reading over the second quarter was 56.6, the best outcome since the first quarter of 2011. That, according to the firm, indicates healthy quarterly growth of 0.7 percent.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the survey is that it’s broad-based and not just isolated to Europe’s biggest economy, Germany.
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From: MeNeedIt

A team of teenage Gambian students are upset and mystified at being denied visas to attend a major global robotics contest in Washington later this month.

This comes days after an Afghan girls team was also turned down by the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. Neither team was given any reason.

“It’s very disappointing, knowing that we are the only two countries that aren’t going to take part in the competition,” Gambian student Fatoumata Ceesay said.

The two teams will instead enter the competition via Skype. But the video link is no substitute after the youngsters worked for months perfecting their projects and dreamed of the thrill of visiting Washington.

“It would be an experience to see and discover other robots and ask questions and exchange ideas with others. It’s more than 160 countries, so we’d have the chance to mingle,” Ceesay said.

The Gambian and Afghan students are especially puzzled because teams from Iran and Sudan, and a group of Syrian refugees were given visas. All three Muslim-majority countries are on President Donald Trump’s travel ban. Afghanistan and Gambia are not.

Lida Azizi, a 17-year old from Herat, calls the visa rejection “a clear insult for the people of Afghanistan.”

The U.S. embassies in Afghanistan and Gambia and the State Department say they cannot discuss visa requests.

WATCH: Robotics contest for youth promotes innovation

A group called FIRST Global Challenge holds the yearly robotics competition to build interest in science, technology, engineering and math around the world.

The group says the focus of the competition is finding solutions to problems in such fields as water, energy, medicine and food production.
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From: MeNeedIt

Ahead of the Independence Day celebration, many museums across the country inaugurate special exhibits dedicated to the most important moments in American history. VOA Russian’s Maxim Moskalkov went to a vast display at the  National Museum of American History.
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From: MeNeedIt

Lawyers from around Africa gathered in Cameroon this week to call for tougher legislation against counterfeit medicine.

Sixty tons of counterfeit medicine was burned after being seized by customs officials in Cameroon, who say the stockpile had an estimated value of $80,000.

Customs official Marcel Kamgaing said the imitation medicine was being used to treat everything from diabetes and hypertension to cancer and erectile dysfunction. He said the forged drugs were destined for sale at shops and roadside pharmacies.

He says illicit drugs are very dangerous to the health of consumers and may even kill due to poor packaging and preservation. He says importers should be informed that Cameroon’s customs laws give them the authority to destroy all fake drugs.

Counterfeit drugs conference

The burning was scheduled to coincide with an international conference this week in Yaounde on the problem of phony drugs in Africa.

Jackson Ngnie Kamga, president of the Cameroon Bar Association, says the current penalties are not enough of a deterrent. He said traffickers should face jail time.

He says because of its deadly consequences, it is high time for Cameroon to join African states to start considering the transportation and commercialization of bogus drugs as a major crime, not a simple offense punishable by fines and seizure of the illicit goods. He says the number of people who die because of such drugs makes them consider it another form of homicide, which the international community should help Africa tackle.

The World Health Organization says falsified medical products may contain no active ingredient, the wrong active ingredient or the wrong amount of the correct active ingredient. The WHO says about 100,000 deaths-a-year in Africa are linked to counterfeit drugs.

Asian source

Issouf Baadhio, an attorney from Burkina Faso, represented the International Association of Lawyers as its vice president. He said the counterfeit drugs are primarily manufactured in Asia, especially in China, and so African countries need to focus on stopping importation.

He says besides the fact that this trade is illegal, importing fake drugs has disastrous economic consequences and as such civil society organizations and professional groups like the International Association of Lawyers should join states and make sure that markets are protected and custom controls are set up at entrances to all states to detect and stop the sale of all dangerous drugs.

Identifying counterfeit medicines can be difficult. The WHO urges officials and consumers to look for signs like misspelled words on the packaging and to check that the manufacture and expiration dates inside and outside packaging match.
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From: MeNeedIt

The U.N. children’s fund warns tens of thousands of malnourished children are at great risk in Yemen, Somalia and South Sudan, which are on the brink of famine.

UNICEF reports an estimated 4.7 million children in the three cholera-stricken countries are malnourished. Of these, UNICEF spokesman Christophe Boulierac tells VOA, more than one million are suffering from severe acute malnutrition.

“Let me remind you that a child who is suffering from severe acute malnutrition are nine times more likely to die of disease than a well-nourished child,” he said. “So, having cholera and diarrhea in countries where so many children are so fragile because of malnutrition among other things because of such a bad access to safe water is extremely worrying.”

Sudan outbreak

UNICEF says it also is extremely worried about an outbreak of acute watery diarrhea in Sudan, where the Federal Ministry of Health reports more than 20,000 cases of the disease, including over 400 deaths.

Boulierac says the disease has spread to 14 of 18 states and children account for more than 20 percent of the affected population.

“The situation in White Nile State, which is in central Sudan, is deeply worrying, since it is the most affected with 7,200 reported cases and since it has almost 100,000 refugees living in camps,” he said.

UNICEF says it needs access, security and more money to contain cholera and acute watery diarrhea in all four countries. It says aid operations must be scaled up. Malnourished children must receive special life-saving medication, therapeutic feeding and have access to safe drinking water.
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From: MeNeedIt

A U.S. federal appeals court ruled Monday that Environmental  Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt lacks the authority to suspend rules that oil and gas companies monitor and fix methane gas leaks.

Two of the three judges on the panel wrote that an order delaying such a rule is the same thing as revoking it.

Pruitt said in April he wanted to put its enforcement on hold for 90 days, later saying he wanted to extend it for two years.

He argued that oil and gas companies are already monitoring methane leaks and that the federal regulations would make some wells unprofitable.

No comment from EPA

Several environmental groups sued to stop Pruitt.

“This ruling … slams the brakes on the Trump administration’s brazen efforts to put the interests of corporate polluters ahead of protecting the public and the environment,” National Resources Defense Council official David Doniger said. This was one of the groups that sued to stop the EPA.

An EPA spokeswoman said the agency is studying the court decision and had no other comment.

Methane emanating from natural gas production is a major contributor to global warming.

A first for Trump

This is the first court decision to go against Trump administration efforts to overturn or block rules and executive orders it believes are unfair to the fossil fuel industry.

Pruitt has joined the White House in arguing that tough regulations hurt industry and jobs as the U.S. strives to become more energy independent — an effort it says must include oil, gas and coal production, along with renewable resources.

Environmentalists say overturning such rules gives industry a blank check to ignore laws protecting the air and streams from pollution.
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From: MeNeedIt

Strange sea creatures that resemble large pink thimbles are showing up on the coast of southeast Alaska for the first time after making their way north along the West Coast for the last few years.

Scientists say the creatures are pyrosomes, which are tropical, filter-feeding spineless creatures usually found along the equator. They appear to be one long pink tube, but in reality, they’re thousands of multicelled creatures mushed together, generally about 6 inches (15 centimeters) long.

Pyrosomes have been working their way north, Ric Brodeur, a researcher with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told the Associated Press on Monday.

Brodeur, who is based at the agency’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center in Newport, Oregon, said pyrosomes were first seen on the Oregon coast in 2014 and every year since. More recently, the animals have made their way up farther north on the Washington state coast, Canada’s British Columbia and Alaska.

Jim Murphy, a biologist with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said pyrosomes spotted near Alaska this year marked the first documented presence of the animals that far north, and their appearance is cause for concern.

“It means that we are clearly seeing really big changes in the marine ecosystem,” he told The Juneau Empire.

Researchers have speculated that the bloom is tied to warmer ocean temperatures in the Pacific Ocean in recent years. But temperatures have nearly cooled back to normal this year, Murphy said, and these pyrosomes started showed up in the middle of winter.

Leon Shaul, a biologist with Fish and Game, has been tracking the appearance of pyrosomes in southeast Alaska. He said he’s “emailed the whole world” about the issue, but hasn’t heard much back.

Brodeur told the AP that it’s also unusual how close to shore the pyrosomes have come, although they are now being found farther offshore again.

He said the creatures have a low nutritional value, and that raises concerns on how they will affect the fish that eat them.

“They’re not the greatest food for the animals out there, compared to the things they normally have,” he said.

Pyrosomes aren’t harmful to humans, but they have puzzled those who’ve encountered them.

Angler Don Jeske was fishing for king salmon in February when he said he found himself surrounded by “millions” of the tube-shaped creatures and he’d never seen anything like it in his 50 years of trolling around Sitka, a fishing town about 90 miles southwest of Juneau.

“They were all over out there, they were everywhere. … I would say millions, not hundreds of thousands,” he said. “This is a weird organism, man.”
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From: MeNeedIt