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Gifts Tied to Opioid Sales Invite a Question : Should Museums Vet Donors ? - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/arts/design/sackler-museum-donations-oxycontin-purdue-pharma.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/02/arts/02sackler-2/09sackler2-facebookJumbo-v2.jpg

The New York Times surveyed 21 cultural organizations listed on tax forms as having received significant sums from foundations run by two Sackler brothers who led Purdue. Several, including the Guggenheim, declined to comment; others, like the Brooklyn Museum, ignored questions. None indicated that they would return donations or refuse them in the future.

“We regularly assess our funding activities to ensure best practice,” wrote Zoë Franklin, a spokeswoman for the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was listed as receiving about $13.1 million from the Dr. Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation in 2012. “The Sackler family continue to be an important and valuable donor to the V & A and we are grateful for their ongoing support.”

De l’usage de la philanthropie comme écran de fumée

Robert Josephson, a spokesman for the company, pointed to its efforts to stem the opioid epidemic — distributing prescription guidelines, developing abuse-deterrent painkillers and ensuring access to overdose-reversal medication — and noted that OxyContin has never had a large share of total opioid prescriptions. In an email, he added, “Many leading medical, scientific, cultural and educational institutions throughout the world have been beneficiaries of Sackler family philanthropy.”

#Sackler #Philanthropie #Opioides #Musées

Google Play Store : plus de 250 applications armées à l’ « Alphonso », un logiciel qui analyse les contenus TV pour les annonceurs
▻https://www.developpez.com/actu/181863/Google-Play-Store-plus-de-250-applications-armees-a-l-Alphonso-un-logici

Il s’agit d’un module destiné à collecter des données à l’intention des annonceurs TV, ce, en enregistrant les sons ambiants desquels il extrait l’empreinte qui correspond à une publicité. L’outil permet ainsi aux annonceurs, auxquels ces data sont revendues, de garder un œil sur leur audience. Ils savent quelles sont les publicités auxquelles les possesseurs d’ordinophones sont exposés chez eux, chez des amis ou dans la rue. Le stratagème permet également de savoir lesquelles ont poussé les utilisateurs à se rendre dans une boutique physique ou à une vente aux enchères pour effectuer un achat. Pour couronner le tout, ces informations sont, dans certains cas, combinées à des données de géolocalisation.

#vie_privée #smartphone #Alphonso #publicité #tracking

Et ça continue...
Facebook Removes Chechen Strongman’s Accounts, Raising Policy Questions, Megan Specia, The New York Times, le 28 décembre 2017

▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/world/europe/chechnya-kadyrov-facebook.html

Facebook did not respond to questions about [...] discrepancy in removals.

That Game on Your Phone May Be Tracking What You’re Watching on TV - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/business/media/alphonso-app-tracking.html?_r=0

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/29/business/29ALPHONSO/29ALPHONSO-facebookJumbo.jpg

At first glance, the gaming apps — with names like “Pool 3D,” “Beer Pong: Trickshot” and “Real Bowling Strike 10 Pin” — seem innocuous. One called “Honey Quest” features Jumbo, an animated bear.

Yet these apps, once downloaded onto a smartphone, have the ability to keep tabs on the viewing habits of their users — some of whom may be children — even when the games aren’t being played.

It is yet another example of how companies, using devices that many people feel they can’t do without, are documenting how audiences in a rapidly changing entertainment landscape are viewing television and commercials.

More than 250 games that use Alphonso software are available in the Google Play store; some are also available in Apple’s app store.

“A lot of the folks will go and turn off their phone, but a small portion of people don’t and put it in their pocket,” Mr. Chordia said. “In those cases, we are able to pick up in a small sample who is watching the show or the movie.” Mr. Chordia said that Alphonso has a deal with the music-listening app Shazam, which has microphone access on many phones. Alphonso is able to provide the snippets it picks up to Shazam, he said, which can use its own content-recognition technology to identify users and then sell that information to Alphonso.

Shazam, which Apple recently agreed to buy, declined to comment about Alphonso.

#Vie_privée #Jeux #Publicité #Microphone

Erica Garner, Activist and Daughter of Eric Garner, Dies at 27 - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/nyregion/erica-garner-dead.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/31/nyregion/31xp-garner/31xp-garner-facebookJumbo-v2.jpg

Black Lives Matter vient de perdre une figure de proue. La fille de Eric Garner, assassiné par la police newyorkaise, vient de décéder suite à une crise d’asthme sévère.

Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner who became an outspoken activist against police brutality after her father’s death at the hands of a New York police officer, died on Saturday, according to her mother. She was 27.

Ms. Garner became a central figure in the charged conversation about race and the use of force by the police after a New York Police Department officer placed her father into an unauthorized chokehold on Staten Island in 2014 while responding to complaints he was selling untaxed cigarettes.

As Mr. Garner, who also suffered from asthma, was being choked by the officer, Daniel Pantaleo, he repeated the words “I can’t breathe” 11 times — a phrase that became a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement and other activists.

“Erica took the truth with her everywhere she went, even if that truth made people uncomfortable,” he said, recalling her willingness to confront President Barack Obama and demand that he take a stand against racially charged policing tactics.

Civil rights activists and celebrities flooded social media with tributes to Ms. Garner.

Even as Ms. Garner pressed politicians and law enforcement officials to hold the police accountable for her father’s death, she was emphatic that her personal tragedy was also a public one.

“Even with my own heartbreak, when I demand justice, it’s never just for Eric Garner,” she wrote in The Washington Post in 2016. “It’s for my daughter; it’s for the next generation of African-Americans.”

#Racisme #USA #Garner

Unfiltered Fervor : The Rush to Get Off the Water Grid - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/dining/raw-water-unfiltered.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2018/01/03/dining/03Water4-Sub/03Water4-Sub-facebookJumbo.jpg

La méfiance de certains Etats-uniens envers l’#eau du robinet et l’eau de source mise en bouteille rapportée au seul #complotisme, sans jamais aborder la réelle #pollution de ladite eau.

▻https://seenthis.net/messages/650539
▻https://seenthis.net/messages/624783

Par ailleurs l’intérêt de la Silicon Valley pour l’"eau naturelle non traitée", abordée ici comme une des explications de l’engouement croissant pour cette eau, ne pourrait-il pas expliquer en partie la négligence des autorités quant à l’état de l’eau théoriquement potable ?
#Etats-Unis

U.S. to Roll Back Safety Rules Created After Deepwater Horizon Spill - The New York Times
►https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/us/trump-offshore-drilling.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/04/15/us/15drilling-web/15drilling-web-facebookJumbo.jpg

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is poised to roll back offshore drilling safety regulations that were put in place after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people and caused the worst oil spill in American history.

A proposal by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which was established after the spill and regulates offshore oil and gas drilling, calls for reversing the Obama-era regulations as part of President Trump’s efforts to ease restrictions on fossil fuel companies and generate more domestic energy production.

Doing so, the agency asserted, will reduce “unnecessary burdens” on the energy industry and save the industry $228 million over 10 years.

Il faudra boire la coupe jusqu’à la lie.

Environmental groups warned that reversing the safety measures would make the United States vulnerable to another such disaster.

“Rolling back drilling safety standards while expanding offshore leasing is a recipe for disaster,” Miyoko Sakashita, director of the oceans program at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “By tossing aside the lessons from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Trump is putting our coasts and wildlife at risk of more deadly oil spills. Reversing offshore safety rules isn’t just deregulation, it’s willful ignorance.”

#Forage #Pétrole #Régulation #Environnement

U.S. to Roll Back Safety Rules Created After #Deepwater_Horizon Spill - The New York Times
►https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/us/trump-offshore-drilling.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2016/04/15/us/15drilling-web/15drilling-web-facebookJumbo.jpg

The Trump administration is poised to roll back offshore drilling safety regulations that were put in place after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people and caused the worst oil spill in American history.

A proposal by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which was established after the spill and regulates offshore oil and gas drilling, calls for reversing the Obama-era regulations as part of President Trump’s efforts to ease restrictions on fossil fuel companies and generate more domestic energy production.

Doing so, the agency asserted, will reduce “unnecessary burdens” on the energy industry and save the industry $228 million over 10 years.

“This proposed rule would fortify the Administration’s objective of facilitating energy dominance” by encouraging increased domestic oil and gas production, even as it strengthens safety and environmental protection, the proposal says.

In April Mr. Trump signed an executive order directing the Interior Department to “reconsider” several oil rig safety regulations. Ryan Zinke, the interior secretary, at the time did not specify which specific equipment regulations would be reviewed, saying only the review would apply “from bow to stern.”

C’est vrai quoi #l'environnement_ça_commence_à_bien_faire …

#Recy_Taylor, Who Fought for Justice After a 1944 Rape, Dies at 97

Recy Taylor, a 24-year-old African-American sharecropper, was walking home from church in Abbeville, Ala., on the night of Sept. 3, 1944, when she was abducted and raped by six white men.

The crime was extensively covered in the black press and an early catalyst for the civil rights movement. The N.A.A.C.P. sent a young activist from its Montgomery, Ala., chapter named Rosa Parks to investigate. African-Americans around the country demanded that the men be prosecuted.
But the attack, like many involving black victims during the Jim Crow era in the South, never went to trial. Two all-white, all-male grand juries refused to indict the men, even though one of them had confessed.

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/30/us/30Taylor-obit-2/29Taylor-obit-2-master768.jpg

#France Fails to Face Up to Racism - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/opinion/france-racism-rokhaya-diallo.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/29/world/29editorial2-inyt/29editorial2-inyt-facebookJumbo.jpg

The term institutional racism, which in French is called state racism, is seen by many as an affront to the colorblind ideal of a universalist French republic. In France, it is illegal to classify people by their race or ethnicity.

Incredibly, the French education minister, Jean-Michel Blanquer, said last month that he would sue a teachers union for using the words “institutional racism” during education workshops in ethnically diverse Seine-St.-Denis northeast of Paris. Mr. Blanquer has also threatened to sue Ms. Diallo. She has invited him to go ahead.

#racisme

The Opioid Plague’s Youngest Victims : Children in Foster Care - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/28/opinion/opioid-crisis-children-foster-care.html?_r=0

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/29/opinion/29Lachman/29Lachman-facebookJumbo.jpg

Les conséquences de la crise des opioides vont bien au delà des overdoses, mais touchent les enfants délaissés par leurs parents. Merci la Sackler family.

As more Americans struggle with opioid addiction and find themselves unable to perform their duties as parents, children are pouring into state and county foster care systems. In Montana, the number of children in foster care has doubled since 2010. In Georgia, it has increased by 80 percent, and in West Virginia, by 45 percent. Altogether, nearly 440,000 kids are spending this holiday season in foster care, compared with 400,000 in 2011.

The data points to drug abuse as a primary reason, and experts have identified opioids in particular. Neglect remains the main reason children enter foster care. But from 2015 to 2016, the increase in the number of children who came into foster care as a result of parental drug abuse was far greater than the increases in the 14 other categories, like housing instability, according to data from the federal Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System.

Child welfare agencies across the country are doing heroic work, but they simply cannot find enough foster families to meet the growing demand. In some places, kids in foster care are sleeping in social workers’ offices. Many children are shipped off to prisonlike institutions where they languish for months, even years, without loving families. And many more bounce among multiple foster homes, deepening their feelings of abandonment, disrupting their education and severing their relationships with relatives, teachers and friends just when they need them most.

The consequences for these kids, and our country, are alarming. Children who have been in foster care are five times more likely to abuse drugs. As many as 70 percent of youths in the juvenile justice system have spent time in the child welfare system. One-third of homeless young adults were previously in foster care. Black children are twice as likely as white children to wind up in foster care and face its devastating effects, a symptom of our country’s disparate treatment of black and white families who experience similar challenges..

#Opioides #Enfants #USA

Homeland Security Goes Abroad. Not Everyone Is Grateful. - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/world/americas/homeland-security-customs-border-patrol.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/27/us/27DC-BORDER-01/26DC-BORDER-01-facebookJumbo.jpg

An estimated 2,000 Homeland Security employees — from Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agents to Transportation Security Administration officials — now are deployed to more than 70 countries around the world.

Hundreds more are either at sea for weeks at a time aboard Coast Guard ships, or patrolling the skies in surveillance planes above the eastern Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

The expansion has created tensions with some European countries who say that the United States is trying to export its immigration laws to their territory. But other allies agree with the United States’ argument that its longer reach strengthens international security while preventing a terrorist attack, drug shipment, or human smuggling ring from reaching American soil.

“Many threats to the homeland begin overseas, and that’s where we need to be,” said James Nealon, the department’s assistant secretary for international engagement.

#Etats-unis

Thousands Once Spoke His Language in the Amazon. Now, He’s the Only One. - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/26/world/americas/peru-amazon-the-end.html

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INTUTO, Peru — Amadeo García García rushed upriver in his canoe, slipping into the hidden, booby-trapped camp where his brother Juan lay dying.

Juan writhed in pain and shook uncontrollably as his fever rose, battling malaria. As Amadeo consoled him, the sick man muttered back in words that no one else on Earth still understood.

Je’intavea’, he said that sweltering day in 1999. I am so ill.

The words were Taushiro. A mystery to linguists and anthropologists alike, the language was spoken by a tribe that vanished into the jungles of the Amazon basin in Peru generations ago, hoping to save itself from the invaders whose weapons and diseases had brought it to the brink of extinction.

#Language #Disparition #Net.lang

A Federal Ban on Making Lethal Viruses Is Lifted - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/health/lethal-viruses-nih.html

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In October 2014, all federal funding was halted on efforts to make three viruses more dangerous: the flu virus, and those causing Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

But the new regulations apply to any pathogen that could potentially cause a pandemic. For example, they would apply to a request to create an Ebola virus transmissible through the air, said Dr. Collins.

#ogm

L’aspect le plus choquant de l’article du NY Times qui revient sur l’affaire Saad Hariri, que je vois assez allègrement présenté comme un scoop sur Twitter, c’est qu’il s’agit essentiellement d’une reprise des infos qu’Al Akhbar avait sorties au moment même des événements :
►https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/24/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-saad-hariri-mohammed-bin-salman-lebanon.html

But instead he was stripped of his cellphones, separated from all but one of his usual cluster of bodyguards, and shoved and insulted by Saudi security officers. Then came the ultimate indignity: He was handed a prewritten resignation speech and forced to read it on Saudi television.

Dans le Akhbar :
►http://al-akhbar.com/node/286011

وبحسب المصادر، فان الجهات الامنية السعودية صادرت الهواتف الموجودة في حوزة الحريري وفريقه الامني. وتم تخيير أعضاء الفريق الامني إن كانوا يريدون المغادرة الى بيروت، وانه في هذه الحالة لن يكون بمقدور من يغادر المجمع ان يعود اليه مجدداً. وبناء على طلب الحريري، انتقل اربعة من مرافقيه بقيادة الضابط محمد دياب الى منزله للبقاء مع زوجته وأولاده، فيما بقي مع الحريري، في الفيلا نفسها، رئيس حرسه عبد العرب وأحد مساعديه الشخصيين. وأُبلغ الجميع بقواعد الاقامة لناحية عدم التحرك داخل الفندق وعدم التواصل مع الامنيين والموظفين، وتم ربطهم بضابط أمن سعودي في مكتب قريب، حيث يمكنهم التوجه مرات عدة في اليوم لتفقد هواتفهم، على ان ينحصر استعمالها في الرد على الرسائل التي تردهم عبر تطبيقات كـ«واتساب» وخلافه، وسمح لهم باجراء اتصالات هاتفية على ألا تشمل اي نقاش حول مكان اقامتهم وظروفها، تحت طائلة الحرمان من التواصل مرة جديدة.

Que j’avais cité ici (7 novembre dernier) :
►https://seenthis.net/messages/642902

Selon Ibrahim al-Amine du Akhbar, la « réception » de Saad Hariri à Riyad n’a pas ressemblé à l’accueil d’un Premiere ministre libanais, mais bien plutôt à l’arrestation d’un ressortitant séoudien. Retenu, téléphone confisqué, séparé de sa famille, interrogé comme « témoin » sur des histoires de corruption…

Et bien entendu, le NY Times ne cite à aucun moment le Akbar, ce qui me semble assez emblématique de la façon de travailler des grands médias concernant la région.

Why Saad Hariri Had That Strange Sojourn in Saudi Arabia - The New York Times
►https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/24/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-saad-hariri-mohammed-bin-salman-lebanon.html

Pas de trève des confiseurs aux USA ! Etrange offensive médiatique contre MbS, le tout daté du 24 décembre.

Dans cet article du NYT (pas fracassant) qui relate la détention de Hariri en Arabie saoudite :

As bizarre as the episode was, it was just one chapter in the story of Prince Mohammed, the ambitious young heir apparent determined to shake up the power structure not just of his own country but of the entire region.

Dans le Washington Post (où il est décrit comme “le prince de l’hypocrisie” ▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/saudi-arabias-crown-prince-of-hypocrisy/2017/12/24/b331025a-dc3f-11e7-b1a8-62589434a581_story.html:
If he is truly interested in demonstrating enlightened and modern leadership, he should unlock the prison doors behind which he and his predecessors have unjustly jailed people of creativity, especially writers critical of the regime and intolerant religious hard-liners. Recently, he oversaw a crackdown that swept up influential clerics, activists, journalists and writers on vague charges of endangering national security. Allowing these voices to thrive and exist in the open would be a real contribution to the kind of society he says he wants. In particular, he should arrange an immediate pardon for blogger Raif Badawi, serving a 10-year jail sentence in the kingdom for the crime of free expression. Mr. Badawi offended hard-liners when he wrote that he longed for a more liberal Saudi society, saying, “Liberalism simply means, live and let live.”

Opening Mr. Badawi’s cell door would do more to change Saudi Arabia than purchasing a fancy yacht and a villa in France.

Et, Newsweek en remet une couche sur le Yémen notamment : But by far the biggest warning sign that Saudi Arabia is not ready to take human rights seriously is what it is doing in neighboring Yemen.

“Earlier in November the U.N. warned that Yemen is on the brink of famine on a scale that the world has not seen in decades. This has been caused in no small part by the actions of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting in the country.

Since early November, Saudi Arabia has tightened a blockade preventing nearly all food and life-saving aid from reaching an already starving and battered nation. An estimated 130 Yemeni children are dying every day, according to Save the Children.

Though key access routes have since been reopened, there is little evidence that enough critically needed aid is being allowed in or guarantees that it will not be tightened again following the Huthis’ control of Sana’a. There certainly has been an uptick in air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition in December.

All parties to the conflict have crimes to answer for, but in its fight against Huthi rebels in Yemen, Saudi Arabia has decided that the collective punishment of Yemeni civilians is an acceptable tactic in war. It is not.

The Saudi Arabian authorities are not keen for the outside world to see how they are waging this war. Yet the pictures are starting to trickle out. It is these images, as well as those of the real reformers in Saudi Arabia who are languishing behind bars, that we should keep in mind next time we think about casually endorsing the new Crown Prince’s efforts to bring about reform.”

Et Newsweek en remet une couche sur le Yémen notamment, sous le titre “Les nouveaux habits de l’emperuer” ▻http://www.newsweek.com/saudi-arabia-and-emperors-new-clothes-758219 :
But by far the biggest warning sign that Saudi Arabia is not ready to take human rights seriously is what it is doing in neighboring Yemen.

Earlier in November the U.N. warned that Yemen is on the brink of famine on a scale that the world has not seen in decades. This has been caused in no small part by the actions of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting in the country.

Since early November, Saudi Arabia has tightened a blockade preventing nearly all food and life-saving aid from reaching an already starving and battered nation. An estimated 130 Yemeni children are dying every day, according to Save the Children.

Though key access routes have since been reopened, there is little evidence that enough critically needed aid is being allowed in or guarantees that it will not be tightened again following the Huthis’ control of Sana’a. There certainly has been an uptick in air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition in December.

All parties to the conflict have crimes to answer for, but in its fight against Huthi rebels in Yemen, Saudi Arabia has decided that the collective punishment of Yemeni civilians is an acceptable tactic in war. It is not.

The Saudi Arabian authorities are not keen for the outside world to see how they are waging this war. Yet the pictures are starting to trickle out. It is these images, as well as those of the real reformers in Saudi Arabia who are languishing behind bars, that we should keep in mind next time we think about casually endorsing the new Crown Prince’s efforts to bring about reform."

#arabie_saoudite

At #Vice, Cutting-Edge #Media and Allegations of Old-School Sexual Harassment - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/23/business/media/vice-sexual-harassment.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/23/business/00VICE-9-promo/00VICE-9-facebookJumbo.jpg

A media company built on subversion and outlandishness was unable to create “a safe and inclusive workplace” for women, two of its founders acknowledge.

#femmes #harcèlement

#Trump Administration Considers Separating Families to Combat Illegal Immigration - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/21/us/trump-immigrant-families-separate.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/22/us/22separate2_xp/22separate2_xp-facebookJumbo.jpg

One of those parents, José Fuentes, presented himself to immigration officers at the border, along with his 1-year-old son Mateo, to claim asylum in November. The family had fled El Salvador with a caravan of asylum seekers because of gang violence, said Mr. Fuentes’s wife, Olivia Acevedo.

After four days of being held in custody together, Mr. Fuentes was transferred to a detention facility more than 1,000 miles away, in San Diego, Calif., while their son was held in a facility for children in Laredo, Tex.

For six days afterward, Ms. Acevedo said, she, her husband and their lawyers could not confirm where Mateo was. They were terrified. “Can you imagine?” she said in Spanish in a telephone interview from Mexico, where she remains with the couple’s other son, Andrée, who is 4. “It’s inhuman to take a baby from its parents.”

#migrants #Etats-Unis “#nos_valeurs”

In Asia’s Fattest Country, Nutritionists Take Money From Food Giants - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/23/health/obesity-malaysia-nestle.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/18/science/00OBESITY-malaysia-snacks1/00OBESITY-malaysia-snacks1-facebookJumbo.jpg

The research exemplified a practice that began in the West and has moved, along with rising obesity rates, to developing countries: deep financial partnerships between the world’s largest food companies and nutrition scientists, policymakers and academic societies.
Continue reading the main story
Planet Fat
Articles in this series are exploring the causes and the consequences of rising obesity rates around the world.

A Nasty, Nafta-Related Surprise: Mexico’s Soaring Obesity
DEC 11
She Took On Colombia’s Soda Industry. Then She Was Silenced.
NOV 13
The Global Siren Call of Fast Food
OCT 2
Obesity Was Rising as Ghana Embraced Fast Food. Then Came KFC.
OCT 2
As Global Obesity Rises, Teasing Apart Its Causes Grows Harder
SEP 17

See More »
Photo
Dr. Tee E Siong, in front of a restaurant menu at a mall outside Kuala Lumpur, heads the Nutrition Society of Malaysia, which is financed in large part by some of the world’s largest food companies. Credit Rahman Roslan for The New York Times

As they seek to expand their markets, big food companies are spending significant funds in developing countries, from India to Cameroon, in support of local nutrition scientists. The industry funds research projects, pays scholars consulting fees, and sponsors most major nutrition conferences at a time when sales of processed foods are soaring. In Malaysia sales have increased 105 percent over the past five years, according to Euromonitor, a market research company.

Similar relationships have ignited a growing outcry in the United States and Europe, and a veritable civil war in the field between those who take food industry funding and those who argue that the money manipulates science and misleads policymakers and consumers. But in developing countries, where government research funding is scarce and there is less resistance to the practice, companies are doubling down in their efforts.

But some nutritionists say Malaysia’s dietary guidelines, which Dr. Tee helped craft, are not as tough on sugar as they might otherwise be. They tell people to load up on grains and cereals, and to limit fat to less than 20 to 30 percent of daily calories, a recommendation that was removed from dietary guidelines in the United States in 2015 after evidence emerged that low-fat diets don’t curb obesity and may contribute to it.

Corporate funding of nutrition science in Malaysia has weakened the case against sugar and processed foods, said Rohana Abdul Jalil, a Harvard-trained diet expert based in the rural state of Kelantan, where obesity is as high as in the biggest cities.

“There’s never been an explicit, aggressive campaign against sugar,” she said.

#Nutrition #Conflit_intérêt #Malaysie #Nestlé

E.P.A. Officials, Disheartened by Agency’s Direction, Are Leaving in Droves - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/22/climate/epa-buyouts-pruitt.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/12/23/climate/23CLI-EPA/12CLI-EPA-facebookJumbo.jpg

Une bonne stratégie pour imposer un agenda favorable aux entreprises prédatrices : supprimer les agents de la régulation et du contrôle.

WASHINGTON — More than 700 people have left the Environmental Protection Agency since President Trump took office, a wave of departures that puts the administration nearly a quarter of the way toward its goal of shrinking the agency to levels last seen during the Reagan administration.

Of the employees who have quit, retired or taken a buyout package since the beginning of the year, more than 200 are scientists. An additional 96 are environmental protection specialists, a broad category that includes scientists as well as others experienced in investigating and analyzing pollution levels. Nine department directors have departed the agency as well as dozens of attorneys and program managers. Most of the employees who have left are not being replaced.

The departures reflect poor morale and a sense of grievance at the agency, which has been criticized by President Trump and top Republicans in Congress as bloated and guilty of regulatory overreach. That unease is likely to deepen following revelations that Republican campaign operatives were using the Freedom of Information Act to request copies of emails from E.P.A. officials suspected of opposing Mr. Trump and his agenda.

#EPA #USA #Environnement #Capitalisme_prédateur