Category Archives: News to use

Useful news for all to advance knowledge of the world and how it works

Governors Are Easing Restrictions at Exactly the Wrong Time

Relaxing rules on indoor dining and other activities undermines vaccination efforts and gives a leg up to coronavirus variants.

My daily Life in the Winter with hardships & beauty | Ep. 50

The winter is so beautiful, and yet it can be so hard sometimes that it makes me cry happy-tears thinking about the summer. This winter has been extra hard. Crazy amounts of snow and extreme cold weather for over 3 weeks. It takes a lot of energy to keep up the normal life. But it also gives a lot of energy with all the beauty that the winter brings. It’s a love-hate relationship.

In this video I share glimpses of what I’ve been up to for the past month. Both the struggles, but also all the beautiful moments. I also share some behind the scenes of my previous video, when I went on a road trip to the very North of Sweden to record some footage.

I really hope you will enjoy the video! And thank you for all your comments!!

Much love to all of you ♥

► If you have not seen my previous video, you can find it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zTR4ayDG38

► MY SOCIAL MEDIA AND LINKS!

• My Art & Jewelry Webshop: https://jonnajintonsweden.com

• Instagram: @jonnajinton http://www.instagram.com/jonnajinton

• Wallpaper collection: https://www.photowall.com/designers/jonna-jinton

• Facebook Page – http://www.facebook.com/jonnajinton

• Blog: https://jonnajintonsweden.com/blog/

► MUSIC

You can find most of the songs here:

http://share.epidemicsound.com/pR9G6​ (affiliate link)

Greatest Love – Generdyn (Musicbed)

Meadows in Smaland – Franz Gordon

Eternal Slumber – Yonder Dale

Morning Fields – Adam Bokesch (Musicbed)

Bangerter Way – Cody Francis

We Carry On – Yonder Dale

Clouds brush the prairie – Trevor Kowalski

Secrets of the Earth – Lama House

Passing Souls – Amaranth Cove

Gray – Ever so Blue

Time without end – Spectacles wallet and watch

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Monsanto/Bayer’s self-inflicted problems with the dicamba herbicide

Week killers do their job but also cause problems: illness among people exposed to them (especially farm workers), induction of resistance, and killing weeds in places they are not supposed to be.

Illnesses: The most well known is the non-Hodgkins lymphoma associated with use of glyphosate (Roundup).

Weed resistance: This chart from the University of Minnesota shows the number of species resistant to various kinds of herbicides from 1955 to 2020.  GMO crops resistant to glyphosate were first approved in 1994.

Herbicide drift:  This has been a  particular problem with the weed killer dicamba used with GMO corn and soybeans.  It has a particular problem: it drifts, and does so inconveniently over organically produced crops that are not weed resistant, thereby killing them and making organic farmers extremely unhappy but without recourse, apparently.

Now an investigative report from In These Times demonstrates how Monsanto and BASF, the makers of dicamba, knew perfectly well that it drifted and would cause extensive damage, but sold it anyway.

Exec­u­tives from Mon­san­to and BASF, a Ger­man chem­i­cal com­pa­ny that worked with Mon­san­to to launch the sys­tem, knew their dicam­ba weed killers would cause large-scale dam­age to fields across the Unit­ed States but decid­ed to push them on unsus­pect­ing farm­ers any­way, in a bid to cor­ner the soy­bean and cot­ton markets.

The investigation found:

  • [Mon­san­to’s] own research showed dicam­ba mixed with oth­er her­bi­cides was more like­ly to cause dam­age. The com­pa­ny also pre­vent­ed inde­pen­dent sci­en­tists from con­duct­ing their own tests and declined to pay for stud­ies that would poten­tial­ly give them more infor­ma­tion about dicamba’s real-world impact.
  • Although adver­tised as help­ing out cus­tomers, the com­pa­nies’ inves­ti­ga­tions of drift inci­dents were designed to lim­it their lia­bil­i­ty, find oth­er rea­sons for the dam­age and nev­er end with pay­outs to farm­ers. For exam­ple, BASF told pes­ti­cide appli­ca­tors that some­times it is not safe to spray even if fol­low­ing the label to the let­ter, plac­ing lia­bil­i­ty square­ly on the applicators.

As for recourse:

A fed­er­al court banned the her­bi­cide ear­li­er this year, but the EPA rein­stat­ed dicam­ba for five more years in October.

Ear­li­er this year, a fed­er­al jury sided with a Mis­souri peach farmer who sued the com­pa­nies for dri­ving his orchard out of busi­ness. The jury award­ed Bill Bad­er $15 mil­lion for his loss­es and $250 mil­lion in puni­tive dam­ages designed to pun­ish Bay­er. Bay­er and BASF are appeal­ing the ver­dict. The puni­tive dam­ages were lat­er reduced to $60 mil­lion.

This report is well worth reading for its detailed review of documents.  These demonstrate that Monsanto and BASF could not have cared less about the damage their herbicide might cause.  Monsanto has been purchased by Bayer, which defends its purchase to the hilt.

Bayer’s stock prices declined dramatically after the Monsanto purchase.  It’s hard to feel sorry for either company.

Myanmar protesters return to streets in huge numbers amid police defections

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Protests swell across country, with dozens of police officers choosing to join protesters in call for reversal of coup

Protesters have turned out in huge numbers across Myanmar, a day after police instigated the most violent scenes yet in demonstrations against a military coup that removed civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

An estimated 100,000 people gathered in the commercial capital Yangon on Wednesday, according to witnesses, with many more marching across the country.

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Tokyo governor to boycott Olympics meeting over sexism row

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Yuriko Koike says attending meeting with under-fire Games chief would not send positive message

The governor of Tokyo has said she will not attend a key meeting of Olympic officials next week, as the row over sexist comments made by the head of the 2020 Games’ organising committee intensifies.

Yuriko Koike, who became the city’s first female governor in 2016, said she saw no merit in attending the meeting between the committee head, Yoshiro Mori, the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, and Japan’s Olympics minister, Seiko Hashimoto.

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