07/December/21

 

The Swiss-based multinational Syngenta has already set aside $187.5 million (CHF 171 million) to settle legal cases filed by farmers exposed to paraquat. But the total bill could run into billions as lawsuits pile up. A study sponsored by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences published in 2011 found that users of the herbicide developed the neurodegenerative disease 2.5 times more often than non-users. Swissinfo.ch

 

 

The last-minute amendments crowbarred by the UK government into the police, crime, sentencing and courts bill are a blatant attempt to stifle protest, of the kind you might expect in Russia or Egypt, writes George Monbiot. Priti Patel, the home secretary, shoved 18 extra pages into the bill after it had passed through the Commons, and after the second reading in the House of Lords. It looks like a deliberate ploy to avoid effective parliamentary scrutiny. Yet in most of the media there’s a resounding silence. Among the new amendments are measures that would ban protesters from attaching themselves to another person, to an object, or to land. Not only would they make locking on – a crucial tool of protest the world over – illegal, but they are so loosely drafted that they could apply to anyone holding on to anything, on pain of up to 51 weeks’ imprisonment. The Guardian