Daily roundup: India's neighbourhood and Gulf of Paria oil spill
Current Affairs, Sustainability
What is happening in India’s neighbourhood?
Current Affairs
Bangladesh starts Covid-19 vaccination drive for Rohingya refugees
Bangladesh began vaccinating thousands of Rohingya Muslims on Tuesday in the world’s largest refugee settlement, amid a surge in Covid-19 infections in the country, officials said. Around 48,000 Rohingya, aged 55 and above, will be inoculated between Tuesday and Thursday with the help of the UN agencies, said Mahbubur Rahman, the chief health official in Cox’s Bazar district said.
Source - France24
Evacuees from Kabul airport
Maki Kaji, ‘Godfather of Sudoku’, dies at 69
Maki Kaji, a Japanese publisher who popularised the numbers puzzle Sudoku played daily by millions around the world, has died from cancer aged 69.
A university dropout who worked in a printing company before founding Japan’s first puzzle magazine, Kaji took hints from an existing number puzzle to create what he later named “Sudoku” – a contraction of the Japanese phrase “every number must be single” – sometime in the mid-80s.
Source - The Guardian
Nepalese Gurkhas end hunger strike over UK military pensions
Nepalese Gurkha military veterans have ended a 13-day hunger strike after the United Kingdom’s government agreed to discuss their long-standing grievances over pension rights.
Thousands of Gurkhas, who are renowned as hard and loyal fighters, have served in the British army but until 2007, did not enjoy the same pay and conditions as British soldiers. Those who served before 1997 still receive only a fraction of their British counterparts’ salary as it was assumed they would return to Nepal after leaving the army, where the cost of living is significantly lower.
Source - Al Jazeera
WHO issues call for experts to help with Covid origins probe
The World Health Organization has issued a call for health experts to join a new advisory group it is forming, in part to address the agency’s fraught attempts to investigate how the coronavirus pandemic started.
In a statement on Friday, the United Nations health agency said the new scientific group would provide the WHO with an independent analysis of the work done to date to pinpoint the origins of Covid-19 and to advise the agency on necessary next steps.
Source - Al Jazeera
Two killed in a suicide bombing targeting Chinese nationals in Pakistan
A suicide bomber targeting a vehicle carrying Chinese nationals in southwestern Pakistan killed two children and wounded three on Friday, the police said.
The suicide blast took place at the East Bay Road in the port of Gwadar around 7 p.m. Chinese nationals sustained minor injuries, a police statement said. Gwadar is in the southwestern province of Balochistan where separatist militants have waged a long-running insurgency.
Source - Reuters
Sri Lanka replaces health minister as Covid outbreak worsens
Sri Lanka’s president has demoted his health minister, who publicly endorsed sorcery and magic potions to battle Covid-19, as infections and deaths hit record highs.
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s office on Monday said Pavithra Wanniarachchi’s health portfolio had been given to Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella who is also the government spokesman.
Source - Al Jazeera
More than 1,000 killed in Myanmar since February 1 coup
According to the human rights group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), more than 1,000 civilians have been killed in Myanmar since the February 1 coup. The group records killings by the country’s security forces.
As of August 18, the association said 1,006 people had been killed since the military seized power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi triggering nationwide protests and a mass civil disobedience movement.
Source - Insider
“A Sea of Oil” - Yet another oil spill
Sustainability
There has been yet another oil spill by a corporation - this time in the Gulf of Paria, near Trinidad and Tobago. Rather than cleaning up the oil, the company is chopping down the oil blobs, so it falls down to the ocean bed and looks less offensive.
The Paria Fuel Trading Company Limited has admitted that oil has been leaking from a pipeline near its Pointe-a-Pierre refinery since last weekend, into the Gulf of Paria.
“Breaking up the large globs into smaller globs might be less offensive to the eye but it’s equally offensive to us. When you break the oil up, it sinks and goes to the ocean bed, where it will continue to degrade and get into the food chain.” - Gary Aboud, corporate secretary of the advocacy group Fishermen and Friends of the Sea (FFOS)
According to FFOS, there have actually been 498 reported spills on land and in the sea since 2018. These rarely draw international attention, and no one has ever been charged or prosecuted.
According to the company, absorbent booms have been placed to prevent further migration of oil into the sea, and vacuum trucks are removing oil collected on land while oil streaks at sea were being “mechanically broken up”.
But Lisa Premchand, program director of FFOS, said that there was no evidence over the last three days to show that the company was using booms to contain the spill. “Through our drone imagery, there were no booms in the Gulf of Paria around this spill to contain the oil from spreading even further.”
Effect on wildlife
“It’s painful, it's barbaric. It's flat-out cruel.”
Those were the words of Wildlife and Environmental Protection of Trinidad and Tobago chairman Kristopher Rattansingh, as he pleaded for environmental consciousness towards animals affected by recent oil spills.
The El Socorro Centre for Wildlife Conservation helped rescue over ten oil-covered pelicans from the gulf. Of the many different species of pelicans found around the world, the brown pelican is the only native species found in Trinidad and Tobago. The local pelican population has been declining owing to overhunting and the effect of chemical pollutants from industrial activities.
These oil spills are affecting not just the ocean and the wildlife, but are also wreaking havoc on the fishermen, whose livelihoods depend on the gulf. They are already facing the brunt of the pandemic, increased fuel costs, and a lack of security on the open seas.
Despite regulations in place, the Paria Fuel Trading Company is facing almost no consequences. This oil spill follows closely after the ‘Eye of Fire’ incident in the Gulf of Mexico, which raised hue and outcry, but again - no consequences.
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