Ruth Thalía’s truth would cost her everything. On national television in Peru, the nineteen-year-old revealed her darkest secrets for a prize, only to be found dead just two months later. A game show called ‘The Value of the Truth’ launched in South America in 2012. In it, contestants must reveal the most shocking and intimate details about their own lives in front of their loved ones in exchange for a prize jackpot.
Tác giả: Đào Thu Hằng
I'm from Hanoi, Viet Nam.
I'm an author of Dot Chuoi Non (dotchuoinon.com/author/hangbelu/), a blog on Positive thinking, founded by Dr. Tran Dinh Hoanh, an attorney in Washington DC.
I'm a co-founder of Conversations on Vietnam Development - cvdvn.net, a virtual think tank. I am a co-founder of two companies in Viet Nam working on children education services. I advise companies on STEAM education, English language education for children and students in Vietnam.
I'm studying the Buddha's teaching and the teaching of Jesus. I practice mindful living including meditation.
I hold a PhD on Sustainable Energy Systems from University of Lisbon and Aalto University.
I graduated from Hanoi University of Technology on Environmental Engineering. I obtained a Master degree of the same major from Stanford University and Nanyang Technological University.
My English-language blog at: hangbelu.wordpress/.
I play table tennis as a hobby.
UNCTAD16: Countries to meet in Viet Nam to propel development in a multipolar world
17 January 2025
UN Trade and Development’s 16th quadrennial conference is set for October with a focus on driving economic transformation for a more sustainable future.
Default image copyright and description© UNCTAD Photo | The Trade and Development Board meets for its 33rd special session in Geneva on 17 January.
The 16th session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD16) will take place Viet Nam in October 2025 under the theme “Shaping the future: Driving economic transformation for equitable, inclusive and sustainable development”.
Tiếp tục đọc “UNCTAD16: Countries to meet in Viet Nam to propel development in a multipolar world”Sex Inequalities in Medical Research: A Systematic Scoping Review of the Literature
Lea Merone 1,*, Komla Tsey 1, Darren Russell 1,2, Cate Nagle 1
Abstract
Background: Historically, medical studies have excluded female participants and research data have been collected from males and generalized to females. The gender gap in medical research, alongside overarching misogyny, results in real-life disadvantages for female patients. This systematic scoping review of the literature aims to determine the extent of research into the medical research sex and gender gap and to assess the extent of misogyny, if any, in modern medical research.
Methods: Initial literature searches were conducted using PubMed, Science Direct, PsychINFO and Google Scholar. Articles published between January 01, 2009, and December 31, 2019, were included. An article was deemed to display misogyny if it discussed the female aesthetic in terms of health, but did not measure health or could not be utilized to improve clinical practice.
Results: Of the 17 included articles, 12 examined the gender gap in medical research and 5 demonstrated misogyny, assessing female attractiveness for alleged medical reasons. Females remain broadly under-represented in the medical literature, sex and gender are poorly reported and inadequately analyzed in research, and misogynistic perceptions continue to permeate the narrative.
Conclusion: The gender gap and misogynistic studies remain present in the contemporary medical literature. Reasons and implications for practice are discussed.
Tiếp tục đọc “Sex Inequalities in Medical Research: A Systematic Scoping Review of the Literature”
Only 0.5% of neuroscience studies look at women’s health
Neuroscience has Underserved Women. That’s Changing
Neuroscientists are making strides in mapping and understanding the human brain, but like many other scientific fields, neuroscientific research has suffered from gender bias: men have been studied far more than women.
Since it came on the scene, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), where a magnetic camera looks through the skull and captures pictures of a living brain, mountains of neuroimaging studies have been made by scientists eagerly delving into the most complex organ we have. It’s led to amazing discoveries and insights, and revolutionised our understanding of how we function.
But the neuroscientific investigation into brain health in relation to conditions only affecting women, girls, and people who have or have had menstrual periods, has been comparably pitifully small.
My name’s Livia. I’m a freelance science writer and journalism student, and I found myself diving into this as I wondered why hormonal birth control, several decades after its invention, still causes negative effects on many users’ moods and well-being. Shouldn’t somebody have looked into how our brains get affected when we go on the pill — and created something better?
It turns out that this large neuroscience knowledge gap leaves billions of people in the dark about the organ that creates their lived experiences, affects drug development, and is bad for science, generally.
It’s time for neuroscience to catch up.
Tiếp tục đọc “Only 0.5% of neuroscience studies look at women’s health”
Why women are much more likely to be hurt or killed in car crashes
The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes
Crash-test dummies based on the ‘average’ male are just one example of design that forgets about women – and puts lives at risk
Caroline Criado PerezSat 23 Feb 2019 08.59 GMTShare822
When broadcaster Sandi Toksvig was studying anthropology at university, one of her female professors held up a photograph of an antler bone with 28 markings on it. “This,” said the professor, “is alleged to be man’s first attempt at a calendar.” Toksvig and her fellow students looked at the bone in admiration. “Tell me,” the professor continued, “what man needs to know when 28 days have passed? I suspect that this is woman’s first attempt at a calendar.”
Women have always tracked their periods. We’ve had to. Since 2015, I’ve been reliant on a period tracker app, which reassures me that there’s a reason I’m welling up just thinking about Andy Murray’s “casual feminism”. And then there’s the issue of the period itself: when you will be bleeding for up to seven days every month, it’s useful to know more or less when those seven days are going to take place. Every woman knows this, and Toksvig’s experience is a neat example of the difference a female perspective can make, even to issues that seem entirely unrelated to gender.
For most of human history, though, that perspective has not been recorded. Going back to the theory of Man the Hunter, the lives of men have been taken to represent those of humans overall. When it comes to the other half of humanity, there is often nothing but silence. And these silences are everywhere. Films, news, literature, science, city planning, economics, the stories we tell ourselves about our past, present and future, are all marked – disfigured – by a female-shaped “absent presence”. This is the gender data gap.
These silences, these gaps, have consequences. They impact on women’s lives, every day. The impact can be relatively minor – struggling to reach a top shelf set at a male height norm, for example. Irritating, certainly. But not life-threatening. Not like crashing in a car whose safety tests don’t account for women’s measurements. Not like dying from a stab wound because your police body armour doesn’t fit you properly. For these women, the consequences of living in a world built around male data can be deadly.
The gender data gap is both a cause and a consequence of the type of unthinking that conceives of humanity as almost exclusively male. In the 1956 musical My Fair Lady, phoneticist Henry Higgins is baffled when, after enduring months of his hectoring put-downs, his protege-cum-victim Eliza Doolittle finally bites back. “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” he grumbles.
Tiếp tục đọc “The deadly truth about a world built for men – from stab vests to car crashes”Gaza Doctor Corrects CNN Anchor: ‘This Is Not a Humanitarian Crisis… This Is Genocide’
“History books will be written on this and countries will have to reckon—media agencies will have to reckon—with their major role in the genocide,” said Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan.
Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan (left) pushes back on CNN anchor Kate Bolduan’s (center) description of the Gaza genocide as a “humanitarian crisis” during an October 7, 2024 interview.
(Photo: CNN screen grab)
Oct 11, 2024
Human rights advocates on Friday highlighted a rare instance in which a U.S. corporate media outlet allowed a pro-Palestinian voice to set the record straight about Israel’s crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Earlier this week, CNN “News Central” aired a panel segment on the anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel and Israel’s retaliatory war. Anchor Kate Bolduan noted that around 1,200 people were killed during the Hamas attack—although she did not say that at least some of them were slain by Israeli forces in “friendly fire” incidents and under the Hannibal Directive—and that 250 others were kidnapped.
Tiếp tục đọc “Gaza Doctor Corrects CNN Anchor: ‘This Is Not a Humanitarian Crisis… This Is Genocide’”Atomic Bomb Survivors Win Nobel Peace Prize, Say Gaza Today Is Like Japan 80 Years Ago
Nobel Peace Prize Winner Toshiyuki Mimaki: “I thought the prize would go to those working hard in Gaza. In Gaza, bleeding children are being held by their parents. It’s like Japan 80 years ago.” 36,000 tons of explosives were dropped on Hiroshima/Nagasaki 82,000 tons have been dropped on Gaza
A Japanese group of atomic bomb survivors, Nihon Hidankyo, has won the Nobel Peace Prize as fears grow of a new nuclear arms race. The head of the group has compared Gaza today to Japan 80 years ago when the U.S. bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We feature a Democracy Now! interview with Setsuko Thurlow, a survivor of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima and an anti-nuclear activist, and get response from Joseph Gerson, president of the Campaign for Peace, Disarmament and Common Security, a U.S. nuclear disarmament activist who has spent decades working closely with the group.
‘Hopeless and broken’: why the world’s top climate scientists are in despair
We asked 380 top climate scientists what they felt about the future…
Hopeless and broken
– Ruth Cerezo-Mota Mexico
We live in an age of fools
– Anonymous South Africa
I worry about the future my children are inheriting
– Lorraine Whitmarsh UK
They are terrified, but determined to keep fighting.Here’s what they said
Exclusive: Survey of hundreds of experts reveals harrowing picture of future, but they warn climate fight must not be abandoned
Damian Carrington Environment editorWed 8 May 2024 10.00 BSTShare
“Sometimes it is almost impossible not to feel hopeless and broken,” says the climate scientist Ruth Cerezo-Mota. “After all the flooding, fires, and droughts of the last three years worldwide, all related to climate change, and after the fury of Hurricane Otis in Mexico, my country, I really thought governments were ready to listen to the science, to act in the people’s best interest.”
Instead, Cerezo-Mota expects the world to heat by a catastrophic 3C this century, soaring past the internationally agreed 1.5C target and delivering enormous suffering to billions of people. This is her optimistic view, she says.
Tiếp tục đọc “‘Hopeless and broken’: why the world’s top climate scientists are in despair”
The world is reducing its reliance on fossil fuels – except for in three key sectors
Dramatic changes in energy industry and EVs reducing fossil fuel use, but shipping, aviation and industry a long way from net zero
@olliemilmanFri 9 Feb 2024 12.00 GMT
Humanity has made some uneven progress in reducing our addiction to fossil fuels – but there remain three areas of our lives in which we are notably not on track to kick the habit over the next 30 years, according to a new analysis.
Record levels of investment in clean energy (solar has been called the cheapest source of electricity in history by the International Energy Agency) and a decline in coal-powered generation means less and less of the world’s power will come from fossil fuels between now and 2050, the analysis from Rhodium shows.
Similarly, the blossoming electric vehicle market is going to drive down emissions from cars and trucks, with global oil consumption for on-road vehicles set to drop by 50% over the next three decades, the forecast finds.
But even with these dramatic changes reshaping two of the world’s hungriest consumers of fossil fuels, emissions are still a long way from hitting net zero by 2050, as scientists say they must if dangerous global heating – spurring worsening heatwaves, floods, droughts and more – is to be avoided.https://interactive.guim.co.uk/uploader/embed/2024/02/archive-zip/giv-13425ZCBwhBxEyLin/
A major reason for this is the stubborn, ongoing carbon pollution from three areas: aviation, shipping and industry.
.https://interactive.guim.co.uk/uploader/embed/2024/02/archive-zip/giv-13425v3zDOTaHHQGz/
There is currently no widespread alternative to jet fuel or ship diesel, meaning steady or even rising fossil fuel use as developing countries’ economies grow. A range of industrial processes – such as cement-making and the production of plastic – will collectively fail to meaningfully cut carbon-intensive fuels by 2050, too.
“We’ve made a lot of progress in the last few years – wind and solar are really poster children of success and electric vehicles are at a turning point now,” said Hannah Pitt, associate director at Rhodium, which made the projections based on anticipated policies until 2050.
“That makes up a good chunk of emissions but there is much less progress in other sectors. With aviation and shipping, there’s just not as much innovation and no clear cost-effective alternatives to fossil fuels.
“And then we have industrial processes that make up a huge fraction of emissions and each require their own tools and innovations to bring that down, and emissions are staying stubbornly high.”
All told, global fossil fuel use will likely flatten or decline by mid-century before starting to grow again due to rising energy demand in various parts of the world, according to the report’s projections. Gas will lead the way, rising significantly in use even as oil and coal decline.https://interactive.guim.co.uk/uploader/embed/2024/02/archive-zip/giv-13425v3zDOTaHHQGz/
Pitt said we are still a long way from breaking our dependence on fossil fuels in everything from switching on a light at home, to driving a car, to getting an Amazon package delivered, to flying to a holiday destination.
“The success with renewables and EVs shows it can be done, but it really will take a lot of different policies and innovations. There’s no one solution,” said Pitt.
“This is a good reminder that climate change touches every piece of our economies, and it needs solutions to each of those areas. There is a lot of work to do.”
International business in Russia risks slipping from compliance to complicity
On 21 September, 2022, an IT specialist with the Austrian Raiffeisen Bank, Timur Izmailov, was leading a normal life in Moscow. Three weeks later Izmailov found himself serving as a soldier in Russia’s 27th motorized rifle brigade near the Ukrainian city of Svatove, when he was eventually killed by mortar fire. How does a 33-year-old techie make his way from his cubicle to the frontline of an unprovoked war in a neighbouring democratic state?
Timur’s journey began on 24 February, 2022, when President Vladimir Putin ordered the all-out military invasion of Ukraine in continuation of a war started in 2014. The response was immediate. The Ukrainian people and their leadership — with the support of the democratic allies — have defended themselves against armed aggression despite gross human rights violations.
Western sanctions imposed on Russia created an extremely hostile commercial environment for companies such as Raiffeisen to continue their operations in the aggressor state. Many international firms pulled out, announcing plans to leave or suspend activity in Russia. But many more international companies continue to operate and pay taxes, thus contributing to the occupation of Ukraine and undermining the financial support provided to Ukraine by their own governments.
On 21 September 2022, President Vladimir Putin issued the mobilization decree that obliged companies to immediately assist in conscripting soldiers and help equip the Russian army. The results of this piece of legislation were immediately felt by many, including Timur Izmailov. Raiffeisen’s attempts to shield their staff from the draft failed.
How do bank employees in other countries feel knowing this is happening to their colleagues in Russia? How does a client of Raiffeisen based in Vienna feel, knowing the employees of his bank might soon become soldiers sent to the battlefield to kill innocent civilians in Ukraine?
An additional stopover on the companies’ journey from compliance to complicity happened last July, when Putin signed a new law allowing the government to impose special economic measures to support “counter-terrorism and other operations outside of Russia”. Once introduced, such measures would require companies to provide goods and services in support of these operations and impose significant penalties for failing to do so. In accordance with the law of 7 October 2022, the Russian subsidiary of Raiffeisen Bank International is now obliged to provide loan payment holidays to the troops fighting in Ukraine. Moreover, the bank is required to write off the entire debt in case of a soldier’s death. This legal requirement concerns other financial institutions that still operate in Russia, namely Intesa Sanpaolo, OTP Bank, ING Bank, Credit Agricole, Citibank, Credit Europe Bank and UniCredit.
This loan relief scheme has already triggered criticism from Ukraine’s central bank, as well as from investors concerned about reputational impact. The requirement for banks to grant payment holidays to soldiers “illustrates the dangers of operating in jurisdictions where companies can…be forced into actions that go directly against their corporate values,” said Eric Christian Pederson of Nordea Asset Management. “We feel that it is right for companies to withdraw from Russia, given its unprovoked attack on Ukraine,” he added.
Tiếp tục đọc “International business in Russia risks slipping from compliance to complicity”First they came…- Martin Niemöller
Friedrich Gustav Emil Martin Niemöller (14 January 1892 – 6 March 1984) was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor. He is best known for his opposition to the Nazi regime during the late 1930s and for his widely quoted 1946 “First they came …“
In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
![Visitors stand in front of the quotation from Martin Niemöller that is on display in the Permanent Exhibition of the United States ... [LCID: img4857]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/6496052e-1383-4c7a-b28b-28286277ced7.jpg)
Museum visitors in front of the Martin Niemöller quotation
Visitors stand in front of the quotation from Martin Niemöller that is on display in the Permanent Exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Niemöller was a Lutheran minister and early Nazi supporter who was later imprisoned for opposing Hitler’s regime.
- US Holocaust Memorial Museum https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-niemoeller-first-they-came-for-the-socialists
Corn in peril: Viet Nam’s Hmong struggle to save indigenous seeds
By Khang A Tủa and Alex Nguyễn 29 January 2024 at 18:36 (Updated on 30 January 2024 at 10:29)
After decades of pursuing development goals, Hmong people in northern Viet Nam face a battle to preserve disappearing indigenous corn
Cúa bua (in Vietnamese), or quav npua (in Hmong) , an indigenous corn variety in Chế Cu Nha, Mù Cang Chải district, Yên Bái province.
YÊN BÁI & SƠN LA, VIET NAM – Early one winter morning, Khang Chờ Dê of Chế Cu Nha hamlet in Yên Bái province was woken by loud knocking on his door. Sào, his relative, needed some red corn kernels, an indigenous crop used by Hmong people in northern Viet Nam for spiritual offerings to ward off bad luck.
The son of a shaman, Dê understood the importance of red corn in ritual practices. He quickly took some kernels from his kitchen, wrapped them up neatly and handed them to his relative.
Back in bed, the 46-year-old farmer pondered the scarcity of the indigenous cúa bua (in Vietnamese), or quav npua (in Hmong)corn seeds in Chế Cu Nha, his family’s ancestral home. For generations, indigenous corn crops have been essential to Hmong spiritual and cultural traditions, as well as helping to strengthening their autonomy in agricultural cultivation.
Oil firms forced to consider full climate effects of new drilling, following landmark Norwegian court ruling
theconversation.com Published: January 31, 2024 12.02pm GMT
Norway’s district court in Oslo recently made a decision on fossil fuels that deserves the attention of every person concerned about climate change.
This ruling, which compels energy firms to account for the industry’s entire carbon footprint, could change the way oil and gas licenses are awarded in Norway – and inspire similar legal challenges to fossil fuel production in other countries.
The court ruled that three petroleum production licenses, held by energy companies including Equinor and Aker BP, were invalid largely due to the lack of consideration that had been given to so-called “downstream emissions”. That is, emissions from burning the petroleum that these firms would extract from the North Sea (also called scope 3 emissions).
This case is a big win for environmental campaigners who have tried to make oil and gas companies account for the emissions that come from burning their products. Similar efforts have been defeated in legal challenges elsewhere over the last few years.
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Tiếp tục đọc “Oil firms forced to consider full climate effects of new drilling, following landmark Norwegian court ruling”Getting Them On Board: Partners and Avenues for European Engagement in Indo-Pacific Maritime Security
The Hague Centre for Strategic Studies
January 30, 2024 Download PDF
How should Europe strengthen its engagement with the Indo-Pacific? While the continent is highly dependent on trade from the region, it has limited capabilities to protect its interests in the face of growing Sino-American competition. This new HCSS report by Paul van Hooft, Benedetta Girardi and Alisa Hoenig examines how European states can engage in the Indo-Pacific by deepening cooperation with regional powers.
The Indo-Pacific comprises many actors, which are positioned along key chokepoints and share geopolitical and geoeconomic interests in protecting crucial sea lines of communication with Europe. This report does two things to establish pathways for deeper European engagement with Indo-Pacific states:
- Based on relevance for maritime security and political affinity with European countries, it assesses the suitability of regional states as partners. Besides the usual suspects Australia, Japan and South Korea, it identifies an “inbetweener” group of countries, with whom cooperation can be fruitful but is not guaranteed, and states with whom engagement is unlikely to yield beneficial results.
- It then zooms in on the “inbetweeners” to determine pathways for deepening ties. By comparing bilateral relations between different European and Indo-Pacific states along security, trade and investment, and capacity-building and infrastructure, the authors identify relative strengths and weaknesses of European states. Finally, they also contrast Europe’s involvement with that of China and the United States.
Based on the analysis, the report recommends to strengthen European collaboration with more ambivalent Indo-Pacific states, with a focus on trade and investment and capacity-building in the short- to medium-term.
This report is published by the HCSS Europe and the Indo-Pacific Hub (EIPH), and part of the series Guarding the Maritime Commons.
Authors: Benedetta Girardi, Paul van Hooft and Alisa Hoenig. Contributors: Giovanni Cisco.
The research for and production of this report has been conducted within the PROGRESS research framework agreement. Responsibility for the contents and for the opinions expressed, rests solely with the authors and does not constitute, nor should be construed as, an endorsement by the Netherlands Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Defence.
CVD 