Sunday, August 26, 2018

Six In The Morning Sunday August 26

John McCain: Vietnam veteran and six-term senator dies at 81

Senator John McCain, the Vietnam war hero turned senator and presidential candidate, has died aged 81.
Mr McCain died on Saturday in Arizona surrounded by his family, a statement from his office said.
He was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumour in July 2017 and had been undergoing medical treatment.
His family announced on Friday that Mr McCain, who left Washington in December, had decided to stop treatment.

His widow, Cindy, tweeted: "My heart is broken. I am so lucky to have lived the adventure of loving this incredible man for 38 years. He passed the way he lived, on his own terms, surrounded by the people he loved, in the place he loved best."



'No choice': jailed Iranian lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh goes on hunger strike

Human rights activist, who was jailed in June, is protesting against judicial arrests and pressure against family and friends



Prominent Iranian human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh has begun another hunger strike in prison.
Sotoudeh announced her hunger strike on Saturday in a note posted on her husband’s Facebook page.
She was launching her protest over the recent arrest of a prominent civil rights activist and the harassment of his and her families by security forces.




Vietnam demands Monsanto pays compensation for Agent Orange victims

Toxic defoliant has been linked to birth defects, cancers and other deadly diseases from which millions suffer to this day

Vietnam has demanded Monsanto pay compensation to the victims of Agent Orange, which the company supplied to the US military during the Vietnam War.
It came in response to the firm being ordered to pay $289m (£226m) to a school groundsman who claims his use of its Roundup weedkiller contributed to his terminal cancer.
“The verdict serves as a legal precedent which refutes previous claims that the herbicides made by Monsanto and other chemical corporations in the US and provided for the US army in the war are harmless,” a spokesman for Vietnam’s foreign ministry, Nguyen Phuong Tra said.

Going GlobalNewspaper Could Help Rebrand China Abroad

The South China Morning Post has been reporting from Hong Kong for 115 years. Internet giant Alibaba bought the newspaper in 2015 in what appears to be an effort to turn it into a global media brand.

By 

They say money can't buy you happiness. Though really, the atmosphere on that spring evening in 2017 was already quite good. First, there was a drinking contest, like there always was at the annual South China Morning Post staff dinner. But this time, it really was about the money. The table with the hard-drinking journalists won the equivalent of 150 euros, someone who was in attendance would later say.

A raffle followed. And parent company Alibaba gave away not one, but two, main prizes during the course of the evening. And it did so simply because the raffle was so popular with its employees.


Protesters to greet Pope in Dublin amid sex abuse scandal


Updated 0408 GMT (1208 HKT) August 26, 2018


As Pope Francis prepares to celebrate Mass with half a million faithful in Dublin on Sunday afternoon, thousands are expected to take to the streets in protest over clerical sexual abuse amid an intensifying outcry over Church-related scandals spanning the globe.
It's a very different reception -- and a very different Ireland -- to the last papal visit in 1979, when Pope John Paul II was greeted like a rock star in Phoenix Park by nearly one-third of the country's population.
"The church's hold on public life in Ireland has fundamentally changed since '79," John Allen, who has written multiple books on the Vatican, told CNN.


HOW A DUPONT SPINOFF LOBBIED THE EPA TO STAVE OFF THE USE OF ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY COOLANTS





WHEN EXECUTIVES FROM the Chemours Company met with top officials of the Environmental Protection Agency last year, they were seeking the Trump administration’s help to launch a new generation of chemicals and steer the nation through an important juncture. The U.S. — indeed the entire world — is in the process of phasing out chemicals used for cooling that, in a bitter twist, contribute significantly to climate change. Chemours wanted the EPA’s help not just to promote its next generation of coolants to replace the chemicals now used in refrigerators and air conditioners (among other products), but to stave off the use of more environmentally friendly options.
According to records released by the EPA in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Sierra Club, the chief executive of Chemours, Mark Vergnano, along with two of his company’s government affairs staff and an outside lobbyist, met with then-head of the EPA Scott Pruitt and several EPA staffers in May 2017 to talk about its new refrigerants, known as HFOs. Chemours, which had spun off from DuPont in 2015, had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in these chemicals, which are designed for use in supermarket chillers, ice rinks, air conditioning, freezers, and refrigerators, as it wrote in a May 2017 letter requesting the meeting with the EPA. Beyond wanting swift approval for its new products, the company was seeking help to stave off competition, asking the EPA to “help protect U.S. leadership in [the refrigerant] space and protect significant new U.S. investments the company has made.”





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