World News

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/17490349

Dozens of Melbourne Airport staff have been accused of working for organised criminals attempting to smuggle drugs into the state.

Aviation workers were the subject of a Border Force investigation aiming to bust crimes within airport supply chains.

The probe discovered 70 staff at Melbourne Airport had breached security checks over the past 12 months, including some suspected of working within organised crime.

Airline crew engaged in illicit drug use as well as distributing illegal drugs in Australia, according to Border Force.

International airline crew members were also found to have hidden illegal cigarettes and tobacco products in false bottom suitcases. This was allegedly done in an attempt to avoid paying significant amounts of customs tax.

Two international crew members were found to be under the influence of illegal substances while on duty which led to the cancellation of at least one visa to Australia.

The putrid smell of burning garbage wafts for miles from the landfill on the outskirts of Jammu in a potentially toxic miasma fed by the plastics, industrial, medical and other waste generated by a city of some 740,000 people. But a handful of waste pickers ignore both the fumes and suffocating heat to sort through the rubbish, seeking anything they can sell to earn at best the equivalent of $4 a day.

“If we don’t do this, we don’t get any food to eat,” said 65-year-old Usmaan Shekh. “We try to take a break for a few minutes when it gets too hot, but mostly we just continue till we can’t.”

Shekh and his family are among the estimated 1.5 to 4 million people who scratch out a living searching through India’s waste — and climate change is making a hazardous job more dangerous than ever. In Jammu, a northern Indian city in the Himalayan foothills, temperatures this summer have regularly topped 43 degrees Celsius (about 110 Fahrenheit).

At least one person who died in northern India’s recent heat wave was identified as a garbage picker.

The landfills themselves seethe internally as garbage decomposes, and the rising heat of summer speeds and intensifies the process. That increases emissions of gases such as methane and carbon dioxide that are dangerous to breathe. And almost all landfill fires come in summer, experts say, and can burn for days.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/24147473

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/17489670

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/17489886

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/17485661

https://archive.is/x8L2N

It’s a Tuesday morning, the infinite blue sky of Byron Bay has opened up and the six naturists – four men, two women – have stripped down to their birthday suits for a quick dip in the buff.

This section of beach – an 800-metre stretch along the vast coastline – forms the only legal clothing-optional beach in the shire. Among those taking advantage of the opportunity to be out in the open is Duncan James, vice-president of Northern Rivers Naturists, who is something of an evangelist for “embracing the beach as Mother Nature intended.”

“Many of the beach users have described the clothing-optional beach as their happy place, a place where they can disconnect from modern day stresses, a place they can feel at one with nature,” he says.

There is, however, a metaphorical cloud on the horizon. On Sunday, Tyagarah is set to be stripped of its status as an official clothing-optional beach.

“I guess these values aren’t shared by New South Wales National Parks and Wildlife Service [NPWS], who are hell-bent on closing one of Byron’s last alternative community hubs and experiences,” James says.

Sorry, my teenage daughter has already claimed the wombat walker job, but you guys can have any of the others.

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/309474

Archived link

Addition for clarification: The "South China Morning Post"(SCMP) is a state-controlled Chinese media outlet. Sometimes they appear to publish articles like this one that are, at least to some degree, critical of the CCP, although the article increasingly reiterates the CCP's stance as you read along. The post provides a rare glimpse into the Chinese propaganda machinery, however, which is why I posted it here. In general, however, one should be very careful using this source.

• “Narrative construction and discourse building are essential if we are to effectively defend our rights and interests in the South China Sea – both in the present and in future,” Wu Shicun, founder of the National Institute for South China Sea Studies, told a seminar held in Hainan province last week.

• Without naming any country, Wu said China faced “an increasingly arduous battle over public perception and opinion”, adding that “rival claimants” were “stepping up cooperation with extraterritorial forces in the study of historical and legal issues” concerning the South China Sea.

• Beijing lays claim to much of the South China Sea, citing historic activities and records in support.

• Its claims were rejected by the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague in 2016 in a case filed by the Philippines.

• Beijing has dismissed the Hague ruling as “null and void” and continued to build up its infrastructure and troop presence in the South China Sea. But the Philippines and other claimants – which include Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei – along with the United States and its allies have repeatedly urged China to abide by international law.

• Yi Xianliang, a former ambassador to Norway who previously served as deputy director of the foreign ministry’s boundary and ocean affairs department, also spoke at Tuesday’s seminar and dismissed the 2016 ruling as a “bad joke”.

• But Yi warned “we have to ask why the ruling is flawed” and ask if it “will happen again and how we can prevent it from happening again”.

A judge has acquitted 28 people accused of money laundering in an international case known as the Panama Papers, including the co-founder of a law firm that authorities say was at the center of a conspiracy to hide money linked to illegal activities.

Jürgen Mossack founded Mossack & Fonseca with then associate Ramón Fonseca, who died in May. Mossack was acquitted on Friday along with others after a Panamanian judge found that the evidence against Mossack didn’t comply with the chain of custody after authorities raided the office of the now defunct firm.

Prosecutors had accused Mossack, Fonseca and others of creating offshore companies and using complex transactions to hide money from illegal activities related to the so-called car wash corruption scandal involving Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, which pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court to a charge related to using shell companies to hide millions of dollars in bribes paid worldwide to win public contracts.

The judge noted that other evidence in the Panama Papers case “was not sufficient and conclusive to determine the criminal responsibility of the accused.”