tal

Scrap metal was commonly used as a raw material by PMT, according to the Indonesian outlet Antara News. It’s unclear how it may have become contaminated with cesium-137. Biegalski, whose area of expertise includes nuclear forensics, told CR that the “easiest explanation” is that a medical or industrial device containing cesium-137 was inadvertently reprocessed as scrap metal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident

The Goiânia accident [ɡoˈjɐ̃njə] was a radioactive contamination accident that occurred on September 13, 1987, in Goiânia, Goiás, Brazil, after an unsecured radiotherapy source was stolen from an abandoned hospital site in the city. It was subsequently handled by many people, resulting in four deaths. About 112,000 people were examined for radioactive contamination and 249 of them were found to have been contaminated.[1][2]

The radiation source in the Goiânia accident was a small capsule containing about 93 grams (3.3 oz) of highly radioactive caesium chloride (a caesium salt) made with the radioactive isotope caesium-137, and encased in a shielding canister made of lead and steel.

On September 13, 1987, the guard tasked with protecting the site did not show up for work. Roberto dos Santos Alves and Wagner Mota Pereira illegally entered the partially demolished IGR site.[7] They partially disassembled the teletherapy unit and placed the source assembly in a wheelbarrow to later take to Roberto’s home. They thought they might get some scrap value for the unit.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciudad_Juárez_cobalt-60_contamination_incident

A radioactive contamination incident occurred in 1984 in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, originating from a radiation therapy unit purchased by a private medical company and subsequently dismantled for lack of personnel to operate it. The radioactive material, cobalt-60, ended up in a junkyard, where it was sold to foundries that inadvertently melted it with other metals and produced about 6,000 tons of contaminated rebar.[1] These were distributed in 17 Mexican states and several cities in the United States. It is estimated that 4,000 people were exposed to radiation as a result of this incident.[1]

Detection of radioactive material

On January 16, 1984, a radiation detector at Los Alamos National Laboratory in the U.S. state of New Mexico detected the presence of radioactivity in the vicinity. The detector went on because a truck carrying rebar produced by Achisa had taken an accidental detour and passed through the entrance and exit gate of the laboratory’s LAMPF technical area.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samut_Prakan_radiation_accident

A radiation accident occurred in Samut Prakan Province, Thailand in January–February 2000. The accident happened when an insecurely stored unlicensed cobalt-60 radiation source was recovered by scrap metal collectors who, together with a scrapyard worker, subsequently dismantled the container, unknowingly exposing themselves and others nearby to ionizing radiation. Over the following weeks, those exposed developed symptoms of radiation sickness and eventually sought medical attention. The Office of Atomic Energy for Peace (OAEP), Thailand’s nuclear regulatory agency, was notified when doctors came to suspect radiation injury, some 17 days after the initial exposure. The OAEP sent an emergency response team to locate and contain the radiation source, which was estimated to have an activity of 15.7 terabecquerels (420 Ci), and was eventually traced to its owner. Investigations found failure to ensure secure storage of the radiation source to be the root cause of the accident, which resulted in ten people being hospitalized for radiation injury, three of whom died, as well as the potentially significant exposure of 1,872 people.[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft_of_radioactive_material_in_Tammiku

The theft of radioactive material in Tammiku, often called the Tammiku nuclear accident, took place in 1994. Three brothers in Tammiku, Männiku, Saku Parish (Harju County), Estonia, who were scrap metal scavengers, entered a fenced area in the woods and broke into a small shed that was seemingly abandoned (after having had no success with entering a larger building inside the area), with stairs leading to an underground hall. The brothers did not know that the buildings were nuclear waste storage facilities (although there were signs at the gate, they did not see them because they had climbed over the fence elsewhere). One of the brothers, Ivan, suffered a crush injury when a drum fell onto him. The brothers placed some pieces of metal into their pockets and went home, planning to return later. Ivan placed a metal cylinder in his pocket, not knowing that it was a strong caesium-137 radioactive source that was released from a container broken by the falling drum.[1] He received a 4,000 rad whole-body dose and died 12 days later.[2] Only after Ivan’s family’s dog died, and Ivan’s stepson showed radiation burn of his hands (as a result of briefly touching the cylinder), was the cause of Ivan’s death identified. The delay in information was due to the brothers’ reluctance to admitting to the break-in.[3]

While we’ve often — not always — managed to label radiation sources, in general, people scrapping metal stuff, often stealing it, haven’t done the best job of understanding or following related rules.

The pharmaceutical variant has a strictly controlled presence of DEG, if any, unlike the cheaper commercial kind, which has far higher levels of the compound, making it unfit for human consumption. Manufacturers, knowingly or unknowingly, use commercial-grade PG when making cough syrups to cut costs.

Known as the “pharmacy of the world”, India accounted for 3 per cent of the world’s total pharmaceutical exports in 2023. It is particularly known for exporting affordable drugs, especially to Africa and other developing regions.

In May 2023, following the scandals abroad, the CDSCO mandated a testing protocol for cough syrups in designated Indian laboratories before export.

But no such testing was mandated for the domestic market, which has many small manufacturers producing low-cost medicines. It has now asked all state governments to submit a list of cough syrup manufacturers, while initiating a joint audit of these companies.

The failure to prevent repeated cough syrup scandals has also brought up a whiff of alleged corruption. Mr Sukesh Khajuria, a public health activist who has been helping families of the 2019-20 victims in and around Jammu seek justice, alleged that the Indian government had failed to rein in corruption within the country’s drug regulatory set-up.

“Pharma companies have hidden partnerships with the party in power,” he claimed.

A 2024 report published on Scroll, an Indian online news website, said that 35 pharmaceutical companies in India had contributed nearly 10 billion rupees (S$146.4 million) to political parties. Of these, at least seven companies were being investigated for poor-quality drugs when they made their contributions.

Well. If the state doesn’t fix it from a licensing side, I guess it’d be possible for a company to fill the gap. Like, certify drug manufacturers.

The difference between certification and licensing is that a certifier can’t prohibit a company from doing business if it isn’t certified. But…it does mean that a purchaser, at least as long as they know what certification to look for, can look for a given certification.

You can make a certification company that places any restrictions it wants to certify a product or company, so that eliminates roadblocks to getting that side of things moving. 'course, the certifier has to build reputation for the certification to mean much.

The apps don’t do anything useful if the government blocks connectivity to the servers that the software needs to talk to at the national network infrastructure level.

Could be. Liz Truss said something similar, and she’s also very much on the “loose” side of things

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/liz-truss-margaret-thatcher-similarities-b2159085.html

When Liz Truss was asked at the very first Conservative leadership hustings in Leeds which of the party’s past prime ministers she most admired, she had a very definite answer: Margaret Thatcher.

As Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointed out just last week, her plans to increase the national debt in order to lower taxes “could not be further from Thatcher who…took the very unpopular decision to raise taxes in 1981 to manage deficit and inflation”.

Rather, the economics expert said, such a policy had “clear echoes of Ted Heath in 1973”.

Conservative MP Robert Jenrick expressed a similar concern. “It is antithesis of Thatcherism,” he said, “to be going around making unfunded tax pledges merely to win a leadership contest.”

Takaichi, who says her hero is Margaret Thatcher, Britain’s first female prime minister, offers a starker vision for change than Koizumi and is potentially more disruptive.

An advocate of late premier Shinzo Abe’s “Abenomics” strategy to boost the economy with aggressive spending and easy monetary policy, she has previously criticised the Bank of Japan’s interest rate increases.

I mean, I guess there’s nothing necessarily wrong with both having Thatcher as your hero and adopting said policy, but Thatcher was a deficit hawk and advocated for tight fiscal policy, which is kind of the opposite of this.

“Net worth”, not “wages”.

Yeah, that’s it. That’d make more sense if people were selling stuff on boats. I was just saying that there isn’t really, like, industry on the island to be selling anything.

If they were selling them stuff, this probably wasn’t Macchias Seal Island, though it might be some other border area. There’s not much there.

kagis

Oh, apparently someone is raising it this term, though.

https://www.restore.org/maineenvironews/2025/6/3/a-fight-may-loom-over-tiny-machias-seal-island

The Republican leader of the state House, Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham of Winter Harbor, last week urged President Donald Trump to defend “sovereignty over our waters,” referring to the little island in the Gulf of Maine.

I don’t really care that much one way or another, but this would be a prime post for cross-posting to !EnoughMuskSpam@lemmy.world.

Better living through technology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Didier_Delsalle

Didier Delsalle (born May 6, 1957, in Aix-en-Provence, France) is a former fighter pilot and helicopter test pilot. On May 14, 2005, he became the first (and only) person to land a helicopter, the Eurocopter AS350 Squirrel, on the 8,848 m (29,030 ft) summit of Mount Everest.[1]

Future archeologists will welcome our preserved samples of DNA the same way we did Ötzi the Iceman.

https://www.dairyqueen.com/en-us/menu/treats/blizzard-treats/

I would assume that he just wants friction. If he wants to generate an actual international incident, he should try to get a bunch of wackjobs out of Maine to go sit on Macchias Seal Island. That’s the subject of an actual, unresolved US/Canadian territorial dispute, so from a US federal standpoint, Maine has a right to do whatever it wants there. Canada, in turn, has a history of aiming to establish a precedent of its authority over it and I expect isn’t going to ignore a bunch of right-wingers out of the US setting up camp there.

Canada called me a couple of weeks ago, they want to be part of it

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GirlfriendInCanada

Girlfriend in Canada

A convenient way for a character to disabuse the idea that they’re either gay, too socially inept for a relationship or simply unlucky in love is to claim that they indeed have a girlfriend — but the other characters have never met her because she lives in Canada. She doesn’t visit very often, but when she does they just spend all day in bed. Look, here’s her entry in his phone’s contact list. No, you can’t see a picture.

The idea is that since “she” lives in a different country, and presumably would have to get a passport and go through all that hassle in order to visit her “boyfriend”, it’s particularly tempting to make her Canadian as a way of discouraging others from asking too many questions.

The tactic could be scaled up.

It’s not the first intervention in Haiti.

The reason that both a lot of Haitians and a lot of countries didn’t want another international intervention was because the prior ones tended to wind up with everyone unhappy and complaining about the situation. The most recent one was UN aid after the earthquake. The UN force that was sent included some soldiers out of some country that had cholera, which started a cholera outbreak, which wound up with angry Haitians calling for reparations and countries who felt unappreciated for what they were doing.

kagis

Looks like it was some soldiers from Nepal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010s_Haiti_cholera_outbreak

“If countries see that central bank money can disappear if European politicians see fit, they might decide to withdraw their reserves from the eurozone,” he added.

I mean, the assets were frozen. I imagine that if someone is planning to invade Ukraine a second time around, the freezing alone is probably sufficient to make them not want to store assets there while doing so.

I expect that that means that Israel isn’t too worried about incoming ballistic missiles from Iran at this point, or they’d probably be hanging onto it.

Mali’s leadership tried to sell the French exit as an anti-colonial victory, but it was anything but. As one empire left, another quickly moved in. Russian mercenaries replaced French soldiers, announcing to the world Mali’s intention to move into Russia’s orbit.

Americans watched with worry, and eventually started to use the “counterterrorism” angle to try and befriend a regime they loudly condemned and sanctioned just a few years ago.

For the Malian people, the country’s transfer to team Russia brought no real positives. Sure, the humiliation of France at the heart of Francophone Africa was rejoiced over by some, but the Russians brought with them nothing but more aggression, corruption and chaos.

As the Russians enjoy their newfound influence, Americans appear to be looking for a way back in. They are now courting the regime under the guise of addressing “terror” but clearly with the sole intent of weakening the Russian hand.

Europe and America’s support for many “friendly” dictators across Africa, such as Uganda’s Museveni, and Washington’s ongoing attempts to befriend Mali’s junta despite its insults to democracy, clearly show Africans have no true ally in this proxy war being waged on their lands.

Well, dude, if Africans are going to permit themselves to be led by dictators, I doubt that you’re going to find that there’s going to be an absolute wall built against dealing with them. The US most-likely isn’t going to come in, forcibly eject your leadership, and impose elections, and I suspect that there are people in Mali who wouldn’t like it if they did.

You’ll probably get more support for a democratic government, but there’s going to be a limit as to how much by way of national interest that will be sacrificed for that, true enough.

As to wanting agency — Africans have agency. If the population of Mali collectively told the leadership of Mali that they weren’t going to be running Mali, said leadership wouldn’t be running Mali.

If I liked short-form video, which I have not been very impressed with, I’d probably watch YouTube Shorts rather than either.

Searches on Kagi, a la “googles” -> search on Google.