Guns, wages and pot: the new laws taking effect across the US this year

In 2017, new laws across the US will go into effect. Here are some of the new, noteworthy, and impactful policies:

Guns: there may be more armed teenagers in Tennessee

A range of new gun legislation will go into effect, and while places such as California are working to restrict guns, Tennessee is opening up its gun laws. Starting in 2017, 18-year-olds who are on active duty in the military, are retired veterans or were honorably discharged will be able to receive handgun carry permits. The age remains 21 for everyone else. The bill passed unanimously in the state senate.

Other laws:

• More assault weapons are off limits in California, including semiautomatic rifles
  


• Californians will have to go through a background check to purchase not just guns but also ammunition


• Babysitters and other guests will be permitted to use deadly force against intruders, as part of Missouri’s new concealed carry law

Minimum wage: many states to see minimum wage rise in 2017

Minimum wage increases remain a contentious political issue but in 2017, a record 20 states and the District of Columbia will see increased pay for low-wage workers. The fight for $ 15 is on in New York and California. New York is working toward a statewide $ 15-per-hour minimum wage but Governor Andrew Cuomo has different timelines, depending on each industry and location in the state. California’s minimum wage will go up to $ 10.50, with the hopes of reaching $ 15 by 2022. Ohio’s state legislature took steps to block Cleveland’s efforts to reach a $ 15 minimum wage by passing a law that forces local jurisdictions to maintain the same wage as the state rate, which will go up to $ 8.15 in 2017.

The following minimum wage increases go into effect 1 January:

• Massachusetts: $ 10 to $ 11


• Connecticut: $ 9.60 to $ 10.10


• Arizona: $ 8.05 to $ 10


• Colorado: $ 8.31 to $ 9.30


• Arkansas: $ 8 to $ 8.50


• Michigan: $ 8.50 to $ 8.90


• Vermont: $ 9.60 to $ 10


• Maine: $ 7.50 to $ 9


• Hawaii: $ 8.50 to $ 9.25


• Washington state: $ 9.47 to $ 11

Several other states will raise their minimum wages later in the year. The Economic Policy Institute tracks all the changes here.

Domestic violence and sexual assault: hairdressers to provide support to victims

Starting 1 January, cosmetologists, hairdressers and nail technicians in Illinois will be required to undergo one hour of training on how to provide support to victims of domestic violence or sexual assault. It will also be mandatory for establishments to hang posters with helpline details.

Several California laws passed this year will also go into effect, addressing the prosecution of sexual assault crimes:

Alcohol and pot: Californians can get tipsy at beauty parlors

A new law allows beauty parlors and salons to serve up to 12 ounces of complimentary alcohol without violating state liquor law requirements.

In other substance-related developments, on election day in 2016, four states approved ballot initiatives legalizing recreational marijuana. Recreational pot will become legal in Nevada on 1 January. Maine’s law should go partially into effect in late January.

In Connecticut, advanced practice registered nurses will now be allowed to certify a patient for medical marijuana use (except for glaucoma). New York announced a similar regulation in November.

Health: doctors with religious objections will have to refer patients elsewhere

A new law amends Illinois’s Health Care Right of Conscience Act to require that providers, including doctors and clinics,who refuse services for moral or religious reasons ensure their choice does not endanger patient health. That means doctors must either refer patients elsewhere or at least provide information on alternatives.

The measure has proved controversial – a small number of clinics sued because they objected to giving referrals or information related to abortion. A judge recently issued a preliminary injunction temporarily preventing the state from enforcing the law against the clinics that sued, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Other new health-related laws:

More foam bans, more civics lessons

San Francisco will implement the country’s widest ban on plastic foam, which environmentalists say can take hundreds of years to degrade. The new law will ban the substance in food products such as meat trays, packing peanuts, ice chests, dock floats and mooring buoys, and even coffee cups.

In Tennessee, students will now be required to take a civics test before they graduate from high school. The questions will be similar to those on the US citizenship test, part of a movement to improve Americans’ engagement and understanding of the country’s democratic process.

Guns, wages and pot: the new laws taking effect across the US this year

No more excuses. It"s time to change abortion laws in NSW and Queensland | Anna Livsey

Abortion laws in Queensland and New South Wales suck and right now is the time to change them. A survey this week found that Australians overwhelmingly believe that women should have unqualified access to abortion.

The Australian Electoral Study has been taken each election since 1969 by the Australian National University and this year found, among other things, that 65% of Australians believe women should be able to obtain an abortion readily when they want one, 26% believe women should be able to obtain an abortion only in special circumstances and 4% believe that a woman should not be able obtain an abortion under any circumstances.

This is the highest level of support ever.

But despite that, access to the procedure is severely restricted for women in Queensland and New South Wales, particularly poor women and those living in rural areas.

Say you live in Queensland, but outside the south-east corner. Your options for a surgical abortion look like this (the clinics that provide surgical abortions are marked in red).

Map based on Children by Choice’s list of Queensland abortion providers

As you can see, outside of the south-east corner of the state there are only two clinics that provide them. And to make matters worse, these clinics will close in February due to a lack of funding. This leaves women in central, far north or western Queensland having to travel hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometres to obtain an abortion, which can end up costing more than $ 1,000.

The situation is so dire in Queensland that one of the state’s leading pro-choice groups, Children by Choice, crowdfunds abortions. Last year the organisation raised more than $ 90,000 via grants, donations, and no-interest loans for clients who needed financial assistance. They also seek funds for individual cases via their Facebook page.

In New South Wales, women face a similar lack of options, with abortion providers concentrated in coastal areas and procedures almost exclusively performed in private clinics.

This situation exists in large part because of both states’ antiquated, regressive and now patently out of touch abortion laws, which criminalise the procedure except under certain circumstances.

These laws do not prevent abortions from happening though. It is widely accepted that between 10,000 and 14,000 take place in Queensland every year. The laws merely make life more difficult for women, particularly for those who already face disadvantage due to where they live, their socio-economic status and what kind of relationship they are in.

However, the wheels are in motion for things to change.

Currently there are bills before both the Queensland and NSW parliaments that seek to decriminalise the procedure, and in the case of New South Wales, enforce exclusion zones around abortion clinics so that anti-choice protesters cannot accost people at their entrances.

There has been a lot of pushback against the two proposals. See the submissions to the inquiry into MP Rob Pyne’s abortion law reform bill in Queensland for a taste. But the proposed changes are not extreme. They would put Queensland and New South Wales abortion law in line with the rest of Australia and with most European countries.

And change is possible. In the past two decades abortion has been decriminalised in Tasmania, Victoria and the ACT and just this year in Poland a popular protest prevented regressive abortion laws from being enacted by the country’s conservative government.

Changing the current laws is a step towards affording women in Queensland and New South Wales the same dignity, respect and access to safe options that many women around Australia, and the world, already enjoy.

And if the wishes, health, safety and bodily autonomy of women seeking abortions are not enough, the changes would now also reflect the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Australians.

No more excuses. It"s time to change abortion laws in NSW and Queensland | Anna Livsey

Texas measure requiring burial of fetal remains may herald wave of similar laws

A controversial new rule requiring Texas abortion clinics to bury or cremate fetal tissue won’t go into effect Monday as planned, after a judge temporarily blocked the rule Thursday.

But abortion advocates warn the lawsuit has teed up a battle that could open up a brand-new front in the abortion wars.

“This is Texas once again trying to decrease women’s access to abortion care,” said Vicki Saporta, the president of the National Abortion Federation, a member organization for independent abortion clinics. “And Texas, in recent memory, has been leading the way on anti-abortion restrictions.” She predicted that a wave of states with anti-abortion legislatures would soon follow suit. “They don’t do anything one at a time.”

The rules, which Texas’ health department quietly introduced this summer, require healthcare facilities to dispose of fetal remains from abortions and miscarriages through burial or cremation, with the only exceptions for miscarriages and abortions that take place in the home.

Whole Woman’s Health, a group of abortion clinics with several locations in Texas, filed suit, claiming the logistics of following the new rules could force clinics to close or drive up the cost of the procedure.

“It imposes a funeral ritual on women,” the suit claims. “It also forces healthcare providers to work with an extremely limited number of third-party vendors for burial or scattering ashes, threatening abortion clinics’ provision of care and their long-term ability to remain open.”

The rule was slated to take effect on 19 December. But on Thursday, a federal judge temporarily blocked the rule until a hearing on the Whole Woman’s Health lawsuit could be held in January.

Texas is not the first state to pass requirements for how abortion clinics deal with fetal remains. But because the state often sets the agenda for others seeking to curtail abortion rights, its court fight could signal that a wave of similar laws is coming.

Louisiana passed a similar measure which has been blocked pending the outcome of a lawsuit. And in March of this year, Indiana governor Mike Pence, the vice-president elect, signed a bill requiring individual women to seek funerary services for fetal tissue – regardless of whether they have had a miscarriage or an abortion. A federal judge blocked that law from taking effect.

Clinics typically dispose of the contents of a pregnancy through medical waste companies. The new rules, say Texas abortion providers, would force clinics to do business with funeral homes and pass on steep costs to abortion patients. According to one estimate, the rules would double the cost of the procedure.

“For women who are already struggling to pay, it could be a barrier and a burden that they can’t overcome,” said Saporta.

Saporta also pointed out that funeral homes would have the power to prevent abortion clinics from offering the procedure by refusing to handle their fetal tissue.

Anti-abortion protesters have been known to harass companies that do business with clinics as a way to interrupt the clinics’ operations. As a consequence, many companies are reluctant to work with abortion clinics.

The recent wave of proposals to regulate clinics’ medical waste may have been touched off by Americans United for Life, an anti-abortion group that provides lawmakers around the country with legal advice and model legislation.

In 2015, it introduced a new model bill called the Unborn Infants Protection Act, requiring all fetal tissue from abortions to be buried or cremated. Under the bill, either the woman must make the arrangements herself, or she or an “authorized representative” must decide which method the clinics use. It prohibits the donation of the tissue to medical research – an endeavor that has produced vaccines for deadly viruses such as polio.

“The momentum for creating a culture that respects life in the law increases each year,” Charmaine Yoest, the group’s president, said in a statement accompanying the draft legislation. The bill, she said, “ensures that mothers are given the opportunity to ensure that their deceased infants receive respectful treatment, and that the bodies of aborted infants are not exploited”.

AUL circulated the draft bill to state legislators late last year. At the time, many anti-abortion lawmakers were seeking to build on the outrage over a series of sting videos that falsely accused Planned Parenthood officials of illegally selling fetal tissue from abortions for profit.

One state where legislators seem to have embraced the model is Ohio. Following on the heels of the sting videos, the state’s attorney general accused Planned Parenthood of disposing of fetal remains in a general landfill – a charge Planned Parenthood denied.

Lawmakers responded by introducing a bill that

requires women who have had an abortion or a miscarriage to decide whether the clinic or hospital uses cremation or burial to dispose of the remains. “The idea of respectfully treating the remains of an infant who has been aborted, I think, is critical,” said one of the bill’s sponsors. So far, it has failed to pass the legislature.

Bills such as these may be an attempt to exploit uneasy feelings about fetal tissue. Even Planned Parenthood, in the wake of the sting videos, acknowledged that the topic was an emotional one. While denying that Planned Parenthood broke the law, Cecile Richards, the group’s president, apologized for the clinical tone used by Planned Parenthood officials when discussing fetal remains.

Saporta acknowledged that some women might find it helpful to have the remains buried or cremated. But forcing a woman to deal with funerary options, she said, is cruel. “This doesn’t take into account women’s preferences, their wishes, their religious beliefs – it tramples on all of that,” she said.

Speaking to the Guardian earlier this year, other skeptics of the model legislation warned of its potential adverse impact.

“They intend to demean and shame a woman needing abortion,” said Kelly Baden, the policy director of the the Center for Reproductive Rights.

Elizabeth Nash, who tracks state restrictions on abortion for the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion rights thinktank, said: “The language being used is all about trying to elevate the status of the fetus while questioning the women’s decision-making. It seems to me that the purpose of this legislation is to make accessing services as unpleasant as possible.”

What stands out to critics about Texas’ rule is its timing. The Texas health commission proposed the rule on 1 July, just days after the US supreme court struck down a health restriction that would have shuttered half of the state’s abortion clinics.

“They didn’t like the fact that they lost, and now they’re looking for new ways to limit women’s access to abortion care,” said Saporta.

In a fundraising email, Greg Abbott, Texas’ Republican governor, said the rules would “help make Texas the strongest pro-life state in the nation”.

Texas says its critics are blowing the impact of the rules out of proportion. The annual cost to each clinic probably won’t exceed $ 500, the state claims, because it will be offset by a reduction in medical waste disposal costs.

But a spokesperson for the Texas Funeral Directors Association said each burial could cost clinics and hospitals more than $ 1,000. (The way the rule is written, some believe that even remains that are cremated would have to then be interred.) He also worried that the rules could prove burdensome to funeral homes, which usually offer their services for free to parents who are grieving for a miscarriage and want to hold a funeral. If every miscarriage in the state were subject to these rules, he said, that practice could become unsustainable.

Saporta said she was confident that Whole Woman’s Health would prevail in court. The June supreme court ruling that struck down several Texas restrictions held that states regulating abortion for health reasons had to show evidence that its regulations were medically necessary.

“There’s no health reason whatsoever for these requirements,” she said. “All the state health department wants to do is increase costs for women and make abortion care less accessible. It’s not even disguised as anything else.

“I think the courts will strike these laws down,” she continued. “But that doesn’t preclude other states from passing the same legislation, and wasting a lot of money and effort.”

Texas measure requiring burial of fetal remains may herald wave of similar laws

Petrol cars allowed to exceed pollution limits by 50% under draft EU laws

New European cars with petrol engines will be allowed to overshoot a limit on toxic particulates emissions by 50% under a draft EU regulation backed by the UK and most other EU states.

Campaigners say that a simple €25 (£22) filter could drastically cut the pollution, but the Guardian has learned that car-makers have instead mounted a successful push for loopholes and legislative delay.

Bas Eickhout, a Green MEP on the European parliament’s environment committee and dieselgate inquiry panel, promised action to ensure that the lessons of the VW scandal were learned.

“With this ridiculous proposal, the EU’s member states are again trying to dilute EU laws at a terrible cost to human health. We will call on the European commission to come to the European parliament and explain themselves on this issue,” he said.

Particulate matter (PM) is the largest single contributor to the estimated 600,000 premature deaths across Europe from pollution-related heart and lung diseases each year. Children and the elderly are worst affected, and the associated health costs could be as high as €1.6tn a year in Europe, according to the World Health Organisation.

Although exhaust fumes from diesel and petrol engines are one of the largest sources of particulates emissions, most EU member states support raising the EU’s pollution standard 50% above the legal limit set down in the Euro 6 regulation. Behind the scenes, vehicle makers have pushed strongly for a staggering 300% over, according to material seen by the Guardian.

The draft regulation is still being discussed by EU member states and the auto industry has not given up hopes of wrenching further concessions on particulate emissions ahead of a final decision on 7 December.

One Powerpoint slide shown to EU expert groups by the European automobile manufacturers association (Acea) says that a 300% latitude in meeting the letter of the law would be “realistic” because of “measurement uncertainty” in emissions tests.

Florent Grelier, a clean vehicles engineer at the Transport and Environment (T&E) campaign group, told the Guardian she feared that EU attempts to improve air quality were being “bent to the will of the automotive industry”.

“This is a petrolgate scandal in the making,” she said. “Unless the European commission and governments establish strict test procedures to protect the industry from its own short-sightedness, within a few years we will see continuing high levels of particles killing hundreds of thousands of citizens prematurely.”

Under EU law, car-manufacturers are already obliged to use filters for diesel engines, but not for the rapidly-growing 40% of the petrol engine market which is made up by uncontrolled gasoline direct injection engines. These release more particulate matter than modern diesel cars.

Gasoline particulate filters could reduce these emissions by a factor of around 100, and would cost manufacturers just €25 per car, according to research by T&E. But car manufacturers have argued this would violate the principle of technology neutrality.

A spokesman for Acea declined to comment on the issue.

Calls by the auto industry for a delay in implementing the new regulation have been well received by several car-producing EU countries. Spain and Sweden argued for a one-year legislative delay that would push its introduction back to 2019, in minutes of a technical committee meeting earlier this month seen by the Guardian.

The UK took no formal position on when the new regulation should enter into force but warned of “unintended adverse effects” if PM limits were given a separate starting date to standards for another pollutant, nitriogen oxide (NOx) , which will now begin in 2019.

An EU group of national experts – the technical committee on motor vehicles – is now expected to sign off on the final proposal to amend the Euro 6 regulation for real world driving emissions, in December.

The issue of “conformity factors” – or compensating for uncertainties in emissions tests – last year led the committee to impose a NOx limit 110% higher than the one written into the Euro 6 regulations last year.

Petrol cars allowed to exceed pollution limits by 50% under draft EU laws

Irish women need your help to change our abortion laws | Una Mullally

Amid all the talk of separation between the UK and its EU neighbours there is an opportunity to build a solidarity movement, at least between people in Britain and Ireland. Draconian laws that force women from both parts of Ireland to travel to Britain to access abortion have never received so much public attention as recently, and growing awareness in Britain is giving Irish women new hope.

The stories are heartbreaking: couples bringing the remains of foetuses with fatal abnormalities home through British airports in freezer bags because they couldn’t have a termination in an Irish hospital; the depravity of forcing a raped asylum seeker on hunger strike to continue a pregnancy she didn’t want; the brain-dead woman kept alive because she was pregnant; the young Northern Irish woman given a suspended sentence because she took abortion pills to end a pregnancy and her housemates told the police. There is no abortion in Ireland for rape, for incest, for fatal foetal abnormalities. Let’s be clear though, thousands of Irish women have abortions every year – they just don’t have them in Ireland. An Irish problem washes up on Britain’s shores.

Many things led to the ban on abortion in Ireland. But those factors – Catholicism, misogyny, an obsession with controlling women’s bodies – sound more archaic with each passing year. Within Ireland, consistent polling shows there is now a desire for women not to be criminalised for abortions and for the constitutional ban on abortion to be repealed. The tangible obstacle is the eighth amendment to the constitution, which was inserted after a referendum in 1983. This clause states: “The state acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and, with due regard to the equal right to life of the mother, guarantees in its laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by its laws to defend and vindicate that right.”

Before any abortion legislation can be enacted, this amendment (which effectively puts the life of the unborn on a par with the life of the mother) needs to be overturned by referendum. But Irish women are no longer waiting for change to come. We are demanding it, and asking our allies to help.

The movement to repeal the 8th is growing, especially since the equal marriage referendum last year inspired a generation of young Irish people. In the days after that referendum, the question that Irish people hear repeatedly from abroad was raised: how can Ireland have gay marriage and not abortion? It’s one that can only be answered by acknowledging that misogyny in Ireland runs even deeper than homophobia.

British people need to stomp on the streets and on the floors of parliament to help shame our government

What the equal marriage referendum taught us was that change comes from the bottom up. And we don’t just need one voice advocating for change, but many. The recent March for Choice in Dublin was replicated in cities around the world, with tens of thousands of people turning out to demand reproductive rights.

Sweeping things under the carpet is a national sport in Ireland, but at last, women’s personal stories are informing a movement in a way that was impossible in the past because of social taboos. We have a torrid history of oppressing women, thanks to the power the Catholic church once wielded in collusion with the state. Women are now telling their abortion stories in great numbers for the first time, and as we learned during the equal marriage referendum campaign, you can’t beat real-life experiences with abstract arguments.

Successive Irish governments haven’t listened to their female citizens. But what Irish governments really dislike is being embarrassed from abroad. As a nation, we are insecure, obsessed with our identity and what people think of us. So if politicians don’t have the guts to tackle this issue then they need to be shamed into action.

Solidarity matters because the extended hand often feels so much warmer than your own. The idea that people you don’t even know care about you is important. It bolsters you. And while solidarity from outside Ireland exists in pockets, we now need it from Britain en masse.

British people need to stomp on the streets and on the floors of parliament to help shame our government. British people should especially demand that women in Northern Ireland have the same reproductive rights as in England, Scotland, and Wales, and that those rights be extended to women on the Isle of Man too. A strip of sea separates us, but we are just like you. We watch EastEnders, shop in Topshop, cry at Bake Off and drink gin. Your football teams are our football teams. We don’t earn enough and are sick of the rain. We are not “other”.

Many women and groups in Britain are already helping. The Abortion Support Network, which was established in 2009, assists women financially and logistically to access abortion in Britain. In London, protesters have marched with wheelie suitcases, symbolising the dozen women who travel each day from Ireland to access abortion in Britain. Volunteers give Irish women who are travelling for abortions a bed to sleep in. The British Pregnancy Advisory Service clinics sometimes offer reduced fees for Irish women who can’t afford the price of an abortion.

But there is still no other medical procedure that has to be undergone in such a clandestine manner, and that is why we need Britain to do more. We are so intertwined; by language, by history, by culture, by geography. Our lives and lifestyles are to an outside eye so similar. So imagine if what we’re dealing with was your reality? It is as unfair and heartbreaking to us as it would be if it were you. We need your help.

Irish women need your help to change our abortion laws | Una Mullally

Why Cosmetic Surgical procedure Laws Require a Facelift

The Web is packed with surprising ‘Plastic surgical treatment gone incorrect!’ articles meant to baffle as nicely as horrify. Why would any individual go underneath the knife when the benefits are so variable? Well, here’s the answer – plastic surgical treatment is not meant to be like that. The issue, unfortunately, is broad-ranging and goes a whole lot deeper than ‘funny’ photos of horribly mangled faces.

Cosmetic surgery is at present dangerously unregulated – it takes only a extremely fundamental degree to be allowed to perform cosmetic surgical treatment. An infographic regarding the large big difference among a plastic surgeon and a cosmetic surgeon can be located here, and it is downright surprising. But yet individuals carry on to risk their health and even their lives undergoing cosmetic surgical procedure.

One of the most substantial-profile examples of cosmetic surgical treatment gone incorrect comes from America and entails no smaller a title than Kanye West. His mother Donda West went to a cosmetic surgeon for “routine” liposuction and breast reduction, but shortly afterwards died of, in accordance to the coroner’s report, “coronary artery disease and several post-operative aspects due to or as a consequence of liposuction and mammoplasty.” It was unveiled that West had overall health concerns and medical professionals suggested her against undergoing cosmetic surgery she went to a diverse surgeon (with a dubious popularity) to have it carried out as an alternative. The end result, of course, was her death – and elevated scrutiny of the American plastic surgical treatment business. Two years later, Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed in a bill requiring any person in the state undergoing plastic surgical treatment to get a bodily examination initial.

Sadly, you could argue that this stage was taken only since of the fame of the individuals concerned. Outdoors of the celebrity world, there is a great deal of concern about the men and women practising cosmetic surgical procedure. In the United kingdom in 2015, the Royal University of Surgeons spoke out about the issues inherent in allowed non-professionals to perform plastic surgical treatment. “Operating outdoors of speciality is a large difficulty in private practice as money is concerned, so we hope to rectify that,” said Stephen Cannon, vice-president of the RSC. “There will be no worries if you are already an established surgeon doing very well. But it’ll stop the basic practitioner doing the nose work, it’ll quit the dermatologist lifting someone’s breasts, it’ll quit all that cowboy behaviour which goes on.”

But change is slow in coming, due to the fact the fact of the matter stays that men and women typically really badly want plastic surgical treatment, and (like Donda West) will go to excellent lengths to get it. Entire body dysmorphic disorder at times plays a part – but even then, patients will frequently undergo procedures and nevertheless discover their BDD not bettering at all. The mental overall health of the patient is an additional factor that needs to be thoroughly checked out before a patient undergoes cosmetic surgery, and yet at the moment, it is not. Stories of ‘plastic surgery addicts’ run rife in the media, but it also rarely seems to question what type of physicians would allow their patients to ruin their lives with surgical procedure and not lift a finger.

Physicians who are paid a lot – but who are also permitted to get away with a lot – is the response there. Cosmetic surgical treatment, rather than currently being observed as a main operation, is now noticed as one thing informal and commonplace that can be fitted in among dropping the youngsters off at college and choosing them up yet again. In 2013, in the middle of the recession, cosmetic surgical procedure was still booming.

Generally, cosmetic surgeons are handled like youth and elegance dispensing machines rather than genuine physicians, and it is turn into critically damaging. The marketing behind the sector does nothing at all to dispel the belief that cosmetic surgical treatment is effortless, swift, painless and non-problematic – some clinics that offer Botox have get-1-get-one particular-totally free and loyalty stage schemes. The British Promoting Standards Authority started cracking down on adverts in 2015, banning an advert for plastic surgical procedure in Malaysia which announced “Malaysia is proud to be amid one particular of the only nations inside of the region exactly where health-related tourism is promoted by the government.”

They were proper to, but regardless of this, medical tourism remains enormous – and hugely harmful. In 2014 the CDC issued an alert following four women died and nineteen developed infections whilst looking for plastic surgery in the Dominican Republic. And yet folks continue to risk their lives, and typically drop them, in pursuit of perfection. In 2015, Britain’s ‘most nipped and tucked woman’, Alicia Douvall, appeared on Television to advertise the notion of raising the minimum age to undergo plastic surgery to 21 – and also mentioning that due to her surgical treatment “addiction”, “I cannot smile effectively and cannot breathe through my nose.”

Who can be blamed for all this? However, the finger can’t be pointed at any one individual. Some have blamed celebrity surgeons like Dr. Fredric Brant, the “Baron of Botox” whose own suicide in early 2015 ended up currently being blamed partly on bodily dysmorphic disorder. Other individuals have blamed a culture obsessed with seems to be that drives folks (particularly girls) to plastic surgery in the initial location – celebrity magazine covers and razor-thin models on billboards lead young ladies and older ladies to feel inadequate, creating them get desperate measures to really feel eye-catching. And of course, the cosmetic surgeons the two abroad and at house who deliberately exploit their sufferers deserve to be hit with the total force of the law any time a patient dies under their care.

It is a complex problem, but it’s also important to note that cosmetic and plastic surgical treatment have useful and even essential makes use of, too. People in search of gender reassignment surgical procedure frequently find that cosmetic surgical procedure can make them come to feel much more relaxed with their gender. Ladies who have had to undergo mastectomies can be helped tremendously by plastic surgical treatment that reconstructs their breasts. And men and women who have been badly injured by fire or acid attacks turn to plastic surgical procedure to aid cover up the injuries they’ve sustained and come to feel confident once more.

Sadly, there might be a extended way to go prior to the grimy elements of the market are fixed or removed. Till more laws are signed into result, there will most probably be a excellent quantity more Donda Wests and Alicia Douvalls. But understanding is half the battle – when undergoing plastic surgical treatment, you ought to know your rights as a patient, know your medical doctor is licensed, know that your psychological and physical well being has been checked more than 1st, and (perhaps most importantly) know what you want and why you want it.

Why Cosmetic Surgical procedure Laws Require a Facelift

Meet the 23-12 months-previous TB survivor taking on South Africa"s patent laws

Soon after currently being cured of TB, Phumeza has now written a manifesto to boost the treatment of the disease. Photograph: Sydelle WIllow Smith

My name is Phumeza Tisile, I am 23-years-old and dwell in Cape Town. In 2010, I was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was forced to cease my research at Cape Peninsula University of Engineering to go for therapy. Despite this my situation did not increase, and following about five months of remedy, initial for “standard” TB and then for multi-drug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), I was finally diagnosed with extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB), the deadliest type of the disease.

Getting misdiagnosed twice meant I acquired the wrong medicine for many months, an oversight that value me my hearing. Hearing reduction is a known side-impact of the agonizing every day kanamycin injections that I took as component of my MDR-TB therapy.

The XDR-TB treatment method was very hard too – I had several setbacks and was in and out of the hospital. The medicines created me truly feel even sicker than I currently was and I would dread seeing the medication trolly coming down the hospital aisle. I even had surgical treatment to take away TB from my lung, resulting in a broken rib and a collapsed lung.

By mid-2011, my XDR-TB therapy was not working. I met Jennifer Hughes, a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) TB medical professional, who commenced me on an individually tailored XDR-TB routine. For the up coming two years, I took a lot more than twenty tablets each and every day, many of which have been so foul I often vomited. At 1 stage, I was informed that the TB had spread too far and I was likely to die. But I carried on with my remedy. In August 2013, I was ultimately cured of XDR-TB.

Dr Hughes had included a drug named linezolid in my treatment. The drug was not created to deal with TB, but it saved my life. I am a single of the fortunate ones – many people who need to have linezolid can not get it simply because it is incredibly pricey in South Africa. At €48 (£38) per pill, it charges around €35,000 (£27,760) per patient for the two-yr treatment method – and it is just 1 drug out of the handful of tablets to be taken every single day. The reason it is so expensive is that linezolid is patented in South Africa, and only 1 organization can promote the drug. There is a less costly generic model of linezolid that could be utilized, but it is not available here.

Though I survived, a lot of the men and women I met along the way did not.That is why I determined to create the Test Me, Treat Me DR-TB manifesto with my medical professional.

The DR-TB Manifesto tends to make 3 demands: initial, everybody ought to have accessibility to testing and treatment method for drug-resistant TB. Even though new quick diagnostics are turning into much more offered, much less than twenty% of men and women with DR-TB are diagnosed – and in a lot of nations, like South Africa, fewer than half of these diagnosed begin remedy. Second, we need to have greater treatment options that have greater cure charges and are simpler on patients. And lastly, we need the international neighborhood to totally fund the battle against DR-TB. Correct now, if we hope to have ample sources for TB, we are brief an estimated $ one.6bn per 12 months.

Last October, I marched with health activists to the division of trade and industry in Pretoria to hand more than suggestions on a new draft policy to correct South Africa’s patent laws. If South Africa stopped granting so several patents on medicines, or could get generics when patented medicines are too pricey, it would conserve money and permit much more sufferers accessibility to essential medicines like linezolid. If we did not grant organizations patents on the use of their medication in blend with other TB therapies, it could also make it simpler to create new TB treatment method regimens – but the reforms maintain currently being delayed. South Africa’s new government wants to act now to finalise this policy.

In May possibly my campaigning went international when I attended the Planet Overall health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, exactly where ministers of overall health from close to the globe set the following global twenty-12 months method for TB. Supported by more than fifty five,000 signatures of patients, physicians and other individuals from across the globe, I delivered the DR-TB Manifesto to the delegates.

Drug resistant TB needs to be recognised as a public well being emergency. We have demanded that governments consider action, but there is considerably more perform to be accomplished. Until the scenario improves, I will preserve speaking out about the problems that DR-TB sufferers face.

Phumeza Tisile co-writer of the DR-TB Manifesto and XDR-TB survivor. Follow @Ptisile on Twitter.

Read far more stories like this:

• ‘Five of our individuals have attempted to take their personal lives’

• Drug-resistant tuberculosis: we can stop this epidemic in its tracks

• seven factors why Sierra Leone is winning against neglected tropical diseases

Join the neighborhood of global growth pros and specialists. Become a GDPN member to get a lot more stories like this direct to your inbox

Meet the 23-12 months-previous TB survivor taking on South Africa"s patent laws

Uganda"s tobacco laws could see farmers" livelihoods go up in smoke | Alon Mwesigwa

Fred Okippi, a lifelong tobacco grower, prunes his backyard in Kiryandongo, northern Uganda. Photograph: Alon Mwesigwa for the Guardian

Fred Okippi’s 5-acre backyard is a lush emerald area of tobacco. Dressed in a black T-shirt and red hat, he delicately bends stems as he weaves his way by way of the plants, carefully pruning undesirable leaves. “This [tobacco] is my future,” he says from his house in Uganda’s western district of Kiryandongo.

But that future is under risk. The government desires to pass a bill that will restrict the manufacture and sale of tobacco and inspire folks to give up smoking.

“If the government desires to ban tobacco use, then we are going to suffer,” Okippi says. “Exactly where are we going to get income to educate our youngsters?”

All Okippi’s neighbours in Lamuorungur village grow tobacco. “Our mother and father grew tobacco and we took on the trade after their death, says Onen Can, Okippi’s neighbour, who has about seven acres.

Can, 56, and Okippi, fifty five, have grown tobacco all their lives. They do not realize how their government can contemplate enacting a law that could threaten farming the crop. Other crops such as maize are not as worthwhile as tobacco, they say.

Last yr, Okippi says, a kilogramme of tobacco was purchased for four,000 Ugandan shillings (UShs), or $ 1.60, even though that of maize went for just UShs750 ($ .thirty).

There are an estimated 75,000 tobacco farmers in Uganda. The crop, a massive earner for Uganda, is widely grown in Arua, Kanungu, Koboko, Kiryandongo, and Masindi districts. In 2011, the government earned Shs87.5bn ($ 37.7m) in taxes from tobacco, producing it 1 of the country’s leading ten income sources.

The tobacco management bill was tabled in March by Chris Baryomunsi MP. The bill will restrict the growing, promoting, and marketing of the crop. Baryomunsi explained farmers, who quickly denounced the bill, had benefited tiny from decades of tobacco farming and a lot of still live in excessive poverty.

A 2012 survey by Platform for Labour Action (PLA), a Kampala-based mostly NGO, identified that most young children in houses expanding tobacco missed half of their schooling for the duration of planting and harvesting seasons.

Neither Okippi nor Can has managed to create a long lasting home – both reside in grass-thatched huts. Sometimes, they struggle to afford a single meal a day. But, they say their kids are ready to go to school due to the fact of the cash earned from tobacco.

Baryomunsi, a qualified medical professional, says the bill seeks to protect Ugandans from conditions such as cancer. It has acquired huge help from the healthcare fraternity.

The bill, expected to be passed into law this year, seeks to prohibit smoking within a hundred metres of any public spot, workplace, and on public transport. It bans tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship.

Dr Sheila Ndyanabangi, a tobacco control focal particular person at Uganda’s wellness ministry, explained tobacco had no benefit other than straining the well being technique.

“Tobacco kills,” she mentioned. “We want to make it incredibly hard for 1 to locate or smoke a cigarette. “At the Uganda Cancer Institute, we followed the history of most sufferers diagnosed with lung cancer, cancer of the mouth, throat and oesophagus and located they had been smoking.”

The well being minister, Ruhakana Rugunda, has called for larger taxes on tobacco merchandise to put the value of cigarettes out of reach for a lot of people. He explained it would also decrease the uptake and use of tobacco products by young folks.

Okippi is aware of the link in between tobacco and cancer, but is among the 15% of Ugandans who smoke. “I hear that tobacco causes cancer, but I have not acquired any dilemma,” says Okippi, his smile revealing a mouthful of discoloured teeth.

Uganda’s Mulago nationwide referral hospital in Kampala says 75% of the oral cancer patients it has taken care of had a background of tobacco use, with the variety of many years they had invested smoking ranging from two to 33, in accordance to a 2008 review by Fredrick Musoke, an academic at Makerere University, Kampala.

The Centre for Tobacco Management Africa says 13,500 Ugandans die yearly as a end result of tobacco use. The World Well being Organisation estimates 5 million men and women die globally every single year.

Although Kenya and Tanzania, Uganda’s neighbours, have tobacco laws, Ugandan traders remain unconvinced about equivalent strategies for their nation. Many describe the bill as draconian. If passed, they say, it would not only hamper their profits, but also harm the economy.

Everest Kayondo, chairman of Kampala City Traders’ Association, explained: “If individuals have invested their funds, then they should be given a favourable surroundings to promote it.”

In a statement, tobacco-generating companies in the country – which involves British American Tobacco, Ugandan Tobacco Solutions Ltd, and Continental Tobacco, stated: “The law need to make a distinction in between the goods sought to be regulated and the person corporate entity that enjoys fundamental rights and freedoms. The law need to not seek out to ban legitimate trade activities.”

To farmers Okippi and Can, the law is practically nothing but a way to deny them daily revenue.

Uganda"s tobacco laws could see farmers" livelihoods go up in smoke | Alon Mwesigwa

Ideas to chill out licensing laws lambasted by medical professionals and alcohol groups

The proposals would allow local community groups offer ‘small’ amounts of alcohol for sale at fundraising events they run and allow B&ampB owners offer visitors an alcoholic drink on arrival. Photograph: Nigel R Barklie/Rex Characteristics

Ministers are underneath fire because of programs to let the Women’s Institute, bed and breakfasts and charities start off promoting alcohol, which medical doctors and local councils warn could worsen Britain’s drink issue.

The British Health care Association stated relaxing the licensing laws was wrong, given the enormous damage alcohol currently brings about and its heavy burden on the NHS.

“There is nothing at all incorrect with moderate alcohol consumption, but we do not need to have to be comforting the laws on the promoting of alcohol. We want a properly-managed licensing program that assures alcohol is offered in suitable conditions,” said Dr Andrew Thomson, a member of the BMA’s board of science.

The House of Lords is due to debate the plan, which is contained in a clause in the deregulation bill, on Monday. If passed it will allow neighborhood groups offer you “tiny” amounts of alcohol for sale at fundraising occasions they run and allow B&ampB owners provide visitors an alcoholic drink on arrival.

Norman Baker, the House Office minister responsible for alcohol, told MPs last month it would make it less complicated and more affordable for designated groups and organizations to get a new “community and ancillary sellers observe” – a license to sell drink. Church choirs wanting to provide a glass of wine to audience members in the interval of a efficiency or regional groups putting on events could stay away from having to pay up to £1,900 for an annual alcohol licence beneath the new scheme, Baker additional.

“Groups such as the Women’s Institute, thriving church organisations and other local charities are not just about ‘jam and Jerusalem’. Often they may also be about a glass of warm beer or chilled chardonnay,” he stated.

But the Neighborhood Government Association, which represents nearby authorities, has warned that the prepare “could be explained to boost the availability and accessibility of alcohol, contributing to the high amounts of alcohol-relevant harm that exist”.

A new survey by Stability, an alcohol group in the north-east, located that an overpowering vast majority of folks in the location are against extending further the number and sort of places that promote alcohol. It is worried that much more tiny organizations could apply for the new licences.

Colin Shevills, Balance’s director, stated the proposed licensing law changes could see a lot more youngsters ending up in hospital right after drinking too a lot. “Ancillary licences will only make matters worse. It will take away barriers specified organizations at the moment encounter when obtaining licences, generating it tougher for regional licensing officers to object.

“If this legislation is implemented it will efficiently indicate that the government is encouraging much more alcohol consumption rather than much less,” Shevills additional.

Katherine Brown, director of the Institute of Alcohol Scientific studies, an independent thinktank, said that, coming soon after some motorway service stations had been permitted to consist of a pub, the move would be a further unwelcome widening of the kind of premises permitted to promote drink.

“At a time when alcohol-related hospital admissions and deaths are on the rise, we need to ask: is it sensible to inspire individuals to drink more?

“Maybe even far more essential is the affect this legislation could have on normalising alcohol as need to-have for each occasion.”

Baker denies consumption will rise as a result of the move, which he says is “a radical new licensing authorisation that will help to obtain the government’s aims of assisting community groups and certain small businesses even though at the very same time sustaining important public health and public security safeguards”.

Kelvin Hopkins, one of a amount of Labour MPs who are concerned, advised MPs final month: “It is all very effectively to say, ‘Have a drink when you arrive at your B&ampB – a tiny tincture to warm you up for the evening and get you started prior to to have your bottle of wine with dinner later on,’ but it encourages a a lot more relaxed culture of alcohol consumption when we should rather be raising concerns about it.”

Ideas to chill out licensing laws lambasted by medical professionals and alcohol groups

Laws to shield elderly from abuse left out of Queen"s Speech

Labour has stated that soon after a lot more than four years in office, the Coalition has run out of tips for reform, a charge minsters reject.

Charities and regulators had hoped that the Speech would announce that the Government is adopting a bill meant to overhaul the regulation of healthcare pros.

The draft bill was drawn up for ministers earlier this yr by the Law Commission, the Government physique responsible for replacing outdated or unfair rules.

The proposed law would unify 9 diverse disciplinary codes covering far more than 30 well being and care professions, making certain that wrongdoing by diverse sorts of worker are dealt with in the very same way.

It would also enable the creation of a public “barred list” of care staff discovered to have mistreated older and vulnerable folks.

Supporters say that a much better barring system is required to avert abusive care staff taking up employment elsewhere right after being found to have mistreated the outdated.

An official Whitehall evaluation of the draft bill concluded that passing it would deliver advantages like a “reduced danger to the public” and “increased public trust and confidence” in the well being and care techniques.

In accordance to the commission, recent rules are “out-dated and inflexible”. The new law would “introduce a clear and consistent legal framework which is needed to allow the regulators to uphold their duty to defend the public.”

Baroness Cumberlege, a Conservative peer and professional on social care, explained that ministers are reluctant to help the bill.

“The Conservative element of the Government is not a excellent fan of regulation, and they do not seem keen to introduce some thing that appears like new regulation. But what the bill would do is simplify the regulations and make the program considerably a lot more clear for the public, which is really wise,” she mentioned.

Parliament is expected to rise for the standard election as early as March, and extended breaks for summer, the part conferences in the autumn and Christmas indicate there is comparatively tiny time to debate new laws ahead of then.

Lady Cumberlege stated that failing to consist of the draft bill in the Queens’ Speech would imply the timing was “too tight” to get the new law passed ahead of the election.

That would imply the reforms would have to wait until the new government formed following summer time found time for them.

A Department of Health spokesman stated ministers will change the law in due course, but gave no timetable.

He stated: “We require to make positive that our expert regulation system is match for the future. We are committed to legislate on this important situation when Parliamentary time makes it possible for. We welcome the Law Commission’s report and will respond to their proposals in due program.”

Laws to shield elderly from abuse left out of Queen"s Speech

Chanel and Dior forced to reformulate perfumes below new EU laws

The scent combines jasmine, rose, sandalwood and vanilla with other background notes.

It is said that and it is stated that when Gabrielle ‘Coco’ Chanel sprayed the perfume around her table in an upmarket Paris restaurant in 1921, females passing by practically stopped in their tracks to ask her what the fragrance was and where it came from.

But under new rules the well-known fragrance could be altered forever.

Chanel and Dior have been functioning on utilizing altered versions, stripped of the molecules atranol and chloroatranol, regarded as prospective allergens by the EU.

“Adapting is a challenge but it is exactly the talent of our “nose” to be able to preserve the qualities and olfactive (scent) identity of our perfumes even though also taking into account new regulatory constraints,” a spokesman for Chanel mentioned.

Floris, the Queen’s parfumiere also explained they were checking their scents to see if any necessary to be reformulated.

“Floris is up to date with the current recommendations and awaits potential amendments at which stage it will adhere to the necessary changes in a timely trend to keep in line if and exactly where this applies to any of our merchandise,” a spokesman stated.

New labelling demands will also need products to be entirely labelled and include allergy warnings in the same way as prescription drugs, which could push up the expense of perfume.

In 2012, an advisory report recommended severely limiting the use of 12 ingredients, regarded as the pillars of the luxury perfume market – this kind of as citral, identified in lemon and tangerine oils coumarin, located in tropical tonka beans and eugenol, found in rose oil.

Even so just three, citral, atranol and chloroatranol, are now likely to be banned with an investigation taking area into the remaining 9 to see if tiny quantities could be tolerated.

“We realize that drastic reductions in the authorised concentrations of these components would have produced main disruptions to the industry,” stated David Hudson, spokesman for buyer policy at the European Commission.

However the perfume sector has complained that even modest changes could radically result scents and revenue.

“If we ban citral from perfumes, of which specified factors are allergens, we must ban orange juice. It is absurd. We must not ban nature, only learn how to dwell with it,” explained Frederic Malle, who founded the French luxury perfume firm Editions de Parfums Frederic Malle.

Malle mentioned he was forced to reformulate about a quarter of his scents due to the forthcoming EU laws, major to additional charges – but expenses which he identified challenging to quantify as they also represented time invested to rework the formulas.

“It can get far more than six months to reformulate a perfume, and a minimum of some thirty exams … and this is valuable time that can not be invested on making new perfumes. So to defend a tiny portion of the population, we are generating the rest endure,” he explained.

The EU is also organizing on banning HICC, a well-liked synthetic molecule which replicates the lily of the valley smell.

Hermes, Dior and Guerlain – each owned by LVMH – have also been getting ready themselves for the new principles by progressively modifying their formulas.

“The European Commission technique ensures the security of buyers and preserves Europe’s olfactive heritage,” explained a spokesman for LVMH.

A draft proposal could be given to EU member states by August and by the following month a final version sent for scrutiny by the European Council and Parliament, which have 3 months to oppose it.

The regulations will also demand perfume makers to inform shoppers about prospective allergens contained in their items but it has not but determined how this will perform in practice and how numerous of them need to be labelled.

It has raised the variety of substances that should be labelled from 26 to more than 80 and is looking at ways to allow perfume makers to offer information about them on the Internet or via smartphone scans to avoid getting to cram them on the package deal.

Chanel and Dior forced to reformulate perfumes below new EU laws

Want to curb binge consuming? Finish the emphasis on laws and search at culture | Sadhbh Walshe

The summer just before I went to university in Dublin, I was in a state of large anxiety – not about the prospect of leaving house or the coming course perform so much as my capability to drink alcohol in any amount. To my young mind, becoming ready to drink a whole lot was as important a portion of college daily life as getting able to compose a very good paper. So I put in a good deal of work – to consuming – until I was in a position to knock back pints with the very best of my new classmates.

This type of blind obligation to binge drink is specifically the type of probably unsafe boozing that is led to a surge of new warnings from health specialists. According to a report launched this week by the Planet Overall health Organization (WHO), entirely 16% of drinkers around the world engage in hefty episodic (or binge) consuming – the most hazardous form.

WHO is urging governments to take aggressive methods to tackle the issue by raising taxes on alcohol product sales, raising minimal drinking ages, regulating income and so on. But if rules alone were enough to lessen binge consuming, then countries with stricter rules would have better drinking habits. Except that is not constantly the case.

As Western nations go, the United States is reasonably puritanical about boozing – the legal drinking age is 21, liquor taxes are higher, product sales are regulated and public drinking is a no-no in most places. Nevertheless binge drinking is a common sport in the US, even amongst teens. The WHO report says 24.5% of American drinkers engage in bouts of heavy episodic drinking.

In spite of early pub closing instances and large taxes on alcohol sales, Britain’s binge drinking rate is even worse, at 33.four%. In Ireland, the place the laws are even stricter than in the Uk, I am embarrassed to say that a whopping 48.two% of drinkers binge.

Then we have the virtuous Italians, who love their vino, their apertivos and their digestivos but report a heavy episodic consuming rate of just 6.2%. In contrast to the US, Britain and Ireland, alcohol is super-inexpensive in Italy and, till last year, the legal consuming age was just 16. Obviously the Italian model is the 1 to emulate – but it really is the country’s drinking culture and not its consuming laws that make the model function.

Malcolm Gladwell examined the influence of culture on the way men and women drink in a 2010 New Yorker piece. In it, he referenced the operate of Yale researchers from the 1950s who looked into drinking routines of first- and 2nd-generation Irish and Italian immigrants in New Haven, Connecticut, exactly where the university is based mostly. Each communities liked to drink, but it is not difficult to guess which group suffered the a lot more damaging consequences from performing so. The Yale clinic admitted one,200 alcoholics from the community into its clinic – the bulk of whom had been Irish. Only a fraction were Italian. As Gladwell wrote:

Right here had been two groups who practiced the very same religion, who have been topic to the exact same laws and constraints, and who, it appeared affordable to suppose, ought to have the very same assortment inside their local community of individuals genetically predisposed to alcoholism. Yet the heavy drinking Italians had nothing at all of the issues of their Irish counterparts.

Obviously the drinking laws of their adopted land had less influence on these immigrants than the cultural influences they brought with them from their residence countries. The Italians had absorbed the strong cultural message that consuming was something you did in moderation, with meals, although the Irish immigrants had absorbed the identical mistaken cultural message I heard at the age of 17: you drink to get drunk.

I’m not suggesting that laws perform no part in regulating behavior it really is just that, by themselves, they will not do practically enough. The predicament with American university college students is a situation in level. Scientific studies have proven that a higher minimum-age drinking law has helped to prevent alcohol-relevant deaths in this demographic – and that is not nothing. But drinking (and binge drinking) is nonetheless so common among underage students that universities may well as properly hand out fake-ID cards along with their prospectuses to conserve the children time. The powerful cultural message that drinking to excess is a standard rite of passage, I feel, has a lot more bearing on pupil conduct than any rules imposed by the government. So, if we genuinely want to see a reduction in binge drinking, the message demands to modify along with the law and its enforcement.

It is possible to do greater on the two fronts – and Ireland could truly be leading the way. Despite individuals embarrassingly higher binge consuming statistics, alcohol consumption in my house country has actually decreased by almost twenty% more than the last decade. Some of this decline can be attributed to the 2007 Intoxicating Liquor Act, which launched random breathalyzer tests for drivers and limited hours for liquor revenue, but cultural factors could have played an even bigger role.

Schooling campaigns like DrinkAware.ie have been credited with shifting perceptions about alcohol use and promoting responsible drinking – and, far more importantly, most pubs in Ireland now serve foods as properly as drink. This might not seem like a big deal to outsiders, but it has been a large shift in Irish daily life. The regional pub has always been an critical social center, except now, rather of knocking back drinks at the bar, Irish men and women can get pleasure from consuming and consuming – just like the Italians.

Certainly, the sooner we all commence consuming like Italians, the far better. I frequently believe that if I had not grown up in a nation in which hefty consuming was so culturally acceptable and even glamorized, I would not have felt such intense pressure as an underage teen to commence knocking back booze that I didn’t even like the taste. The good news is for me, I apparently don’t possess the alcoholic gene and ultimately realized to get pleasure from my wine and drink like a regular particular person. But with three.3m alcohol associated deaths in 2012 alone, obviously many men and women are not so fortunate.

We owe it to these millions to get into account the tremendous cultural pressures that can lead people to drink to excess– as an alternative of just moralizing about their conduct and imposing tighter sanctions and laws. These measures surely have their place, but except if the everyday life forces that influence people’s drinking habits are confronted, this dilemma is in no way going away.

Want to curb binge consuming? Finish the emphasis on laws and search at culture | Sadhbh Walshe

Geoff Shaw proposes radical alterations to Victorias abortion laws

Geoff Shaw, the MP who holds the balance of power in the Victorian parliament, will place forward a bill that would radically alter the state’s abortion laws by banning partial-birth and gender variety abortions.

Shaw said he also wished doctors to give discomfort relief to foetuses throughout abortion procedures and for babies to be resuscitated if they survived abortion attempts.

The independent MP has previously voiced his objection to suggestions that demand medical doctors to refer a girl to another healthcare expert if the 1st medical doctor objects to abortion. Shaw says the system is as well onerous on anti-abortion medical professionals.

This bill goes a lot more, and could end result in the largest changes to Victoria’s abortion laws given that 2008, when the practice was decriminalised.

Shaw mentioned Victoria’s abortion laws had been between the worst in the planet, and maintained he was standing up for women’s rights.

“If in society we are saying there need to be a lot more women on boards, there must be a lot more females in parliament, nicely you are killing them,” Shaw informed the Herald Sun.

“Here in Australia we cannot kill snake eggs but we are quite happy to kill an egg in the tummy and it ought to be the safest area for a child to be.

“How can any girls who are professional-women’s rights say that you can destroy girls?”

Shaw resigned from the Liberal celebration in March amid moves for him to be expelled. The Coalition government, which had a one particular-seat majority before his departure from the party, relies on his vote to pass legislation.

Shaw, a committed Christian who has been involved in a series of controversial incidents which includes two physical altercations with taxi drivers, has explained he will use his stability of energy position to drive the greatest deal for his Frankston electorate.

The independent’s new bill will put stress on the premier, Denis Napthine, who has previously ruled out any modifications to the abortion laws.

There is help for change amongst some in the Coalition. In March, upper property Coalition MP Bernie Finn mentioned women who were raped must not have abortions.

Finn stated there was “no acceptable reason for having an abortion”, claiming that “many rapists and particularly paedophiles use abortion as a defence, they use it as a way to ruin the evidence”. Napthine condemned Finn’s comments as “inappropriate”.

Labor has stated it is towards any modifications to abortion laws, even though women’s groups have urged the government not to make the procedure harder for girls in search of an abortion.

Geoff Shaw proposes radical alterations to Victorias abortion laws

Federal Law Proposed To Override States From Passing GMO Label Laws

by Long Island Lawyer Paul A. Lauto, Esq.

Notwithstanding the best efforts of the Biotech Sector to end GMO labeling at the state degree, the GMO label movement in support of the peoples’ correct to know what is in our meals is swiftly growing across the country.  Monsanto and firm have to date, effectively expended millions of bucks to fight towards GMO labeling on a state by state basis.  However, even a blind guy can see that the “tide has changed” and GMO labeling is virtually inevitable.

In that the Biotech Business holds on to revenue like a mother to her newborn, they have now brought out their proverbial ace up their sleeve.  U.S. republican congressman Mike Pompeo from the fantastic state of Kansas, has just launched legislation that seeks to efficiently preclude states from passing a GMO label law.  Ironically, he has dubbed his legislation “The Risk-free And Correct Meals Labeling Act Of 2014,” which would give sole authority to the FDA to enact a GMO label law if foods with genetically modified components “… are ever discovered to be unsafe… .”

According to Pompeo’s press release, “GMO’s are safe and have a amount of critical benefits for people and our planet.  GMO crops use significantly less water and fewer pesticides and minimize the price of crops by 15 – thirty %. ”  The press release continues to state that, “Contrary to claims by activists, there is no scientific evidence that suggests meals that include GMO’s are anything at all but protected.”

Congressmen are elected by the people and are suppose to signify their greatest interests.  One cannot help but query the real agenda behind the proposed legislation, which seems to be much more representative of huge company than the folks.  Whether you believe GMO’s are protected or unsafe, we the folks ought to have the simple right to know what is in the meals we consume.

Lengthy Island Lawyer
Paul A. Lauto, Esq.
www.liattorney.com

Federal Law Proposed To Override States From Passing GMO Label Laws

Second girl challenges Ireland"s abortion laws at the UN

Professional-option supporters hold show outside the Irish parliament creating in Dublin last July ahead of a vote to introducing limited abortion. Photograph: Peter Muhly/AFP/Getty Pictures

An Irish woman who claims to have been demeaned by doctors when she asked for an emergency abortion is to consider her case towards the Republic to the United Nations.

Siobhán Whelan said she was “created truly feel like it was unlawful” to request Irish health care employees if she be provided the alternative of abortion soon after studying in September 2009 that her infant was would die.

Backed by the New York-based mostly Centre For Reproductive Rights, Whelan on Thursday grew to become the second Irish woman to file a challenge at the UN towards the ban on abortions for health care motives.

The centre has filed a petition with the United Nations Human Rights Committee to hold Ireland accountable for subjecting Whelan to inhuman and degrading therapy, interfering with her privacy and discrimination on the basis of her gender.

The committee can not sanction Ireland but the centre hopes to maintain global stress on its legislators.

Although restricted abortion was introduced in the Republic final 12 months, women cannot get terminations in Irish hospitals if they learn they are struggling from fatal foetal abnormalities when pregnant.

Following about 21 weeks into her pregnancy, Whelan was told by medics at Dublin’s National Maternity hospital that her little one had a fatal anomaly called Trisomy 13.

She mentioned a single medical doctor informed her she would be have been supplied a termination in another jurisdiction, but that this was not attainable in Ireland. Whelan stated yet another physician handed her a report of the scan suggesting she would want it if she determined to travel overseas to have a termination.

But she claimed that workers did not do anything at all to enable her to get in touch with with a United kingdom hospital and did not clarify what a termination entails. In addition, the medics by no means mentioned if or what support she could count on post-diagnosis, she mentioned.

Whelan made the decision that ending the pregnancy was the ideal choice for her and her family members. She extra that her husband had to organize for time off work and for childcare, as effectively as find the required money to pay out for travel, accommodations and the process at the Fetal Assessment Centre at Liverpool Women’s hospital.

Johanna Westeson, regional director for Europe at the Centre For Reproductive Rights, stated: “Ireland’s harsh policies manufactured Siobhán fearful to even ask about her possibilities and allowed her healthcare suppliers to give up on her after she made the decision to finish her pregnancy. The United Nations Human Rights Committee need to act swiftly and call on Ireland to broaden woman’s accessibility to abortion care as demanded beneath human rights law.”

Whelan said on Thursday: “The Irish doctors manufactured me come to feel like it was illegal to examine the alternative of termination for dread of getting the door slammed in my encounter or of not getting any help whatsoever.

“I will never comprehend why I had to pack my bags and leave Ireland so I could access the medical care I essential. It is genuinely demeaning and I will never forget it.”

Second girl challenges Ireland"s abortion laws at the UN

The Expense of Violating Nature’s Laws

“When man violates man’s laws, we send him to jail and point the finger of scorn at him. When he violates nature’s laws, we send him to a hospital, give him flowers, and really feel sorry for him.”

-B.J. Palmer

There are natural laws just as there are civil laws. Most people understand how civil laws work and we know that breaking them can consequence in severely unfavorable consequences. Nevertheless, many people do not recognize that breaking nature’s laws causes negative consequences as properly. Understanding the similarities and the distinctions in between the two has the prospective to significantly improve your degree of well being and properly being.

Civil laws govern our conduct in the direction of other folks. Obeying civil laws defend you and and preserve you out of jail. However, breaking these laws may harm you, hurt other men and women and trigger you to finish up in court or even jail. Generally, you only endure these consequences IF you get caught breaking these laws.

Nature’s laws govern the relationship in between nature and our bodies and our environment. Obeying nature’s laws protects your well being. Violating them prospects to dis-ease, sickness and even death.

Connected Article: Healthier Attitudes That Motivate Organic Healing

It is against the law to rob banking institutions and penalties for undertaking so are severe. Even so, if you a quite skilled criminal, you may be ready to rob a bank and get away without obtaining caught. You could escape the consequences.

Numerous individuals feel that the identical is real of the laws of nature. Nonetheless, there is no escaping the consequences of nature’s laws. For illustration, there is a law of gravity that applies to everything and everyone on Earth. If you stage off of a 20 story developing, it will not matter what skills you have, you will most certainly fall to your death!

There are laws of nature that apply to your entire body and your wellness as effectively. If you cut oneself, you will bleed. If you lower off your oxygen supply, you will suffocate. If you lower a nerve, the organ in your entire body that it controls will die. These are some of nature’s laws that we are most familiar with because the consequences are knowledgeable instantly.

Nevertheless, we have a tendency to violate other laws of nature daily and do not comprehend it due to the fact the consequences, even though fast, are not felt. For instance, if you place a large amount of a toxic chemical, such as mercury, into your physique, you will die rapidly. However, if you put tiny, trace quantities of mercury into your body (vaccines, fish, etc.), you will be poisoned slowly. You will begin to expertise dis-ease and your entire body will begin to malfunction.

Associated Write-up: five Empowering Tips to Conquer Lies About Your Overall health

This dis-ease and malfunction is often attributed to negative luck, undesirable genes or outdated age. However, this is merely not the situation. The huge bulk of sickness and illness – which includes diabetes, heart illness and cancer – is lifestyle associated.  Far too numerous men and women fail to recognize that they have violated nature’s laws and are suffering the consequences. Far as well many also turn to pharmaceutical medication as the solution. This timeline of celebrities killed by Large Pharma clearly demonstrates that this is not the response!

Sick individuals require to be cared for but they also need to be educated about nature’s laws and how to reside in harmony with them. This is the concentrate of life style medication. Rather than continuing to poison sick folks with a lot more toxic substances (drugs) and radiation, they are taught how to reside an abundantly healthier lifestyle in alignment with normal laws.

Your well being is your responsibility. You really don’t have to be imprisoned by illness and poor wellness. You can be healthier and nicely if you if you basically respect nature’s laws a live a life style of wellness.

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The Expense of Violating Nature’s Laws

America"s Quirkiest Tax Laws

Customer tax season officially kicked off last Friday when the IRS started accepting person returns for processing. Though my posts are typically focused on corporate tax problems, the looming private tax deadline got me pondering about the recent tax scenario for individuals and just how complicated it can be for a single man or woman – let alone a multinational corporation – to file their taxes accurately every single 12 months. A single of the benefits of working in a big company is that I have access to plenty of exciting data and info from our inner teams. With the person tax return deadline in thoughts, I imagined I’d share some of the wacky taxes that the Thomson Reuters indirect tax staff recently shared with me. Some of the “quirkiest” tax laws of 2013:

The Sandwich Tax: Hungry for revenue, two Massachusetts cities improved the tax on meals from 6.25% to seven%. The cities? Sandwich and Salisbury.

One more Explanation to Smile: Straighter teeth just got less expensive in Arizona. Orthodontic products are no longer topic to product sales and use tax.

Ahoy Greenwich: Connecticut did away with its luxury tax on yachts, and tax is exempted all with each other if the boat is docked 60 days or less a year.

Cracked Backs &amp Tax: In North Carolina, chiropractors should gather income tax on nutritional supplements and nutritional vitamins offered as element of a patient’s remedy prepare, and students need to shell out product sales tax on meals obtained on university campuses.

Drink Up in the Ocean State: Rhode Island eradicated sales and use tax on wine and spirits offered at package and liquor merchants from Dec. one, 2013 through March 31, 2015.

Up in Smoke: The legalization of recreational marijuana comes with a hefty tax. Both Washington and Colorado are taxing pot at a whopping 25 %.

Half-Baked: In Washington state, employing a personal chef is a taxable service, and the chef is required to collect product sales tax. Even so, if a meal is prepared with raw or undercooked eggs, fish, meat or poultry and refrigerated or frozen for consumption at a later time, and cooked prior to consumption to avoid meals-borne illness, then the tax is waived.

America"s Quirkiest Tax Laws

Can we - and should we - make laws against cancer? | BERNARD STEWART

Despite extraordinary advances in medical science, we won’t beat cancer with treatments alone. We need new legislation that will force us to ask ourselves many very difficult questions about what aspects of our daily lives we are willing regulate to help turn back the rising tide of cancer diagnoses and deaths worldwide.

In Australia, we have already taken a global lead on plain packaging for cigarettes and, four decades or so after the devastating link to mesothelioma and other cancers was first observed, the world looks set to finally legislate against asbestos. But what about banning supersized soft drinks, as was attempted last year in New York, or taxing sugar in soft drinks, currently on the cards in Brazil?

And, what should we be doing right now about the emissions from diesel fuel? Sales of diesel vehicles in Australia tripled over the last 10 years but the world’s most pre-eminent authority on cancer, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), issued an unequivocal “carcinogenic to humans” classification in 2012 based on internationally verified and accepted scientific evidence that diesel emissions cause lung cancer and increase risks for bladder cancer.

The World Cancer Report published today by the World Health Organisation reveals the global cancer burden is growing alarmingly and threatens to overwhelm healthcare systems in high income countries and developing countries alike.

Although the causes of some cancers – cancers of the brain, of the ovary and of the blood (leukaemia), for example – are largely unknown or poorly understood, the vast knowledge we now have about cancer tells us that most adult cancers are a consequence of personal choice. The risks of some of those choices are now widely understood; like smoking, excessive sun exposure and solariums. Some cancers cannot be identified with particular carcinogens, but still involve personal choice, like the multitude of minor everyday decisions we all make around food, exercise, lifestyle and alcohol that can add up to obesity and poor fitness. Choices around alcohol too are important. Higher risks of breast cancer and excessive drinking are linked. Others risks are out of the hands of most individuals, like exposure to environmental carcinogens, but not out reach of the governments we individuals elect.

It is true that there’s also plenty of good news to be had in the cancer field. Exponential advances in cancer treatment and care are saving lives and reducing suffering in the communities that can afford them. But, given the extent of the cancer challenge – a global US$ 1.16 trillion economic burden alone in 2010 – it is regulations and laws to influence behaviour that will likely prove our most effective weapon.

We already know regulation works because of the success we’ve had – particularly in Australia – against the major known cause of cancer: tobacco smoking. Because cancer occurs years, and often decades after exposure to carcinogens, preventive measures may take years to show an effect. In the case of smoking, those years have passed and the outcome is clear. Decades after “Every cigarette is doing you damage” was first heard, smoking rates and lung cancer rates are successively down. It was not just the slogan that worked. Success in Australia and some other countries came down to a raft of legislation restricting the availability of cigarettes, banning advertising in all its forms and increasing prices.

Legislative and regulatory measures to discourage use of tobacco are now proven to the extent that their adoption worldwide is subject to the first international treaty to be negotiated through World Health Organization, The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Worldwide, there’s still much to be done, but the path forward is clear. That prospect must invite consideration of how legislation could address cancer causes commonly identified with lifestyle.

Beer, wine and spirits are legal products, as are cigarettes. Outright bans are not the subject of credible debate. However, the impact on the community from irresponsible use of alcohol is well known. That burden is already being addressed by legislation, mainly in response to concerns over alcohol fuelled violence, although no-one recognises this as cancer control.

If such legislative measures around alcohol are acceptable, what of, for example, the availability of sugar-sweetened soft drinks? Soft drinks are proven to contribute to overweight/obesity and excessive consumption increases the risk of chronic disease. Are legislative initiatives around advertising, volume size and/or the imposition of tax acceptable, or even essential, when they promise to deliver better general health, reduced diabetes and less cancer?

When the first legislative measures were considered around smoking, the challenge seemed insurmountable. Legislating against less clear cut personal choices seems ever more complicated and, to date, health issues have been sidelined by a louder debate over personal choice and freedom and condemnation of the “nanny state”.

But, the bottom line is can we – and should we – be making laws against cancer? In my opinion, given the clear upwards trajectory of cancer worldwide it is the hallmark of an informed and caring society that we do.

Can we - and should we - make laws against cancer? | BERNARD STEWART