Month: May 2023

For those seeking to live in the most sustainable way, there now is an afterlife too.

A Dutch intrepid inventor is now “growing” coffins by putting mycelium, the root structure of mushrooms, together with hemp fiber in a special mold that, in a week, turns into what could basically be compared to the looks of an unpainted Egyptian sarcophagus.

And while traditional wooden coffins come from trees that can take decades to grow and years to break down in the soil, the mushroom versions biodegrades and delivers the remains to nature in barely a month and a half.

In our 21st century, when the individual spirit can increasingly thrive way beyond the strictures of yore, death and funerals are all so often still hemmed in by tradition that may fall far short of the vision of the deceased or their loved ones.

“We all have different cultures and different ways of wanting to be buried in the world. But I do think there’s a lot of us, a huge percentage of us, that would like it differently. And it’s been very old school the same way for 50 or 100 years,” said Shawn Harris, a U.S. investor in the Loop Biotech company that produces the coffins.

With climate consciousness and a special care of nature a focal point in ever more lives, Loop Biotech says it has the answer for those wanting to live the full circle of life — and then some — as close to what they always believed in.

Bob Hendrikx, the 29-year-old founder bedecked in a “I am compost” T-shirt at a recent presentation, said that he had researched nature a great deal “especially mushrooms. And I learned that they are the biggest recyclers on the planet. So I thought, hey, why can we not be part of the cycle of life? And then decided to grow a mushroom-based coffin.” Moss can be draped within the coffins for the burial ceremonies.

And for those preferring cremation, there is also an urn they grow which can be buried with a sapling sticking out. So when the urn is broken down, the ashes can help give life to the tree.

“Instead of: ‘we die, we end up in the soil and that’s it,’ Now there is a new story : we can enrich life after death and you can continue to thrive as a new plant or tree,” Hendrikx said in an interview. “It brings a new narrative in which we can be part of something bigger than ourselves.”

The coffins cost 995 euros (more than $1,000) each, and the price for an urn is 196.80 euros ($212).

To put nature at the heart of such funerals, Loop Biotech is partnering with Natuurbegraven Nederland — Nature Burials Netherlands — which uses six special habitats were remains can be embedded in protected parks.

Currently, Loop Biotech has a capacity to “grow” 500 coffins or urns a month, and are shipping across Europe. Hendrikx said they have caught on in the Nordics.

“It’s the Northern European countries where there is more consciousness about the environment and also where there’s autumn,” he said. “So they know and understand the mushroom, how it works, how it’s part of the ecosystem.”

Give us 5 minutes, and we’ll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

A year after U.S. President Joe Biden first launched what’s known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework, negotiations have yielded what Washington is calling a landmark agreement. VOA’s Chris Casquejo reports.

The Pentagon says China has declined a request by the U.S. for a meeting between their defense chiefs at an annual security forum in Singapore this weekend.

Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder said the U.S. in early May had offered for Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to meet with the People’s Republic of China Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu, but that invitation was turned down this week.

Both defense leaders are slated to attend the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, with Austin speaking on Saturday and his Chinese counterpart scheduled to speak on Sunday. The annual dialogue is an informal gathering of defense officials and analysts in Singapore that also creates opportunities for side meetings among defense leaders.

“The PRC’s concerning unwillingness to engage in meaningful military-to-military discussions will not diminish DoD’s commitment to seeking open lines of communication with the People’s Liberation Army [PLA] at multiple levels as part of responsibly managing the relationship,” Ryder said.

He added that open lines of communication are important “to ensure that competition does not veer into conflict.”

A senior defense official told VOA on Tuesday that since 2021, the PRC has declined or failed to respond to more than a dozen requests from the Department of Defense for key leader engagements, along with multiple requests for standing dialogues and nearly 10 working-level engagements.

“Frankly, it’s just the latest in a litany of excuses,” the senior defense official said.

China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning confirmed the two defense leaders will not meet this week, saying Tuesday at a news briefing that the U.S. should “earnestly respect China’s sovereignty and security interests and concerns … and create the necessary atmosphere and conditions for dialogue and communication between the two militaries.”

Li, who assumed his current post in March, has been under U.S. sanctions since 2018 over the purchase of combat aircraft and equipment from Russia’s main arms exporter, Rosoboronexport.

‘Unprofessional’ intercept

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said Tuesday a People’s Republic of China J-16 fighter pilot “performed an unnecessarily aggressive maneuver” during an intercept of a U.S. Air Force RC-135 aircraft.

The incident occurred Friday over international airspace above the South China Sea, according to a statement by U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

“The PRC pilot flew directly in front of the nose of the RC-135, forcing the U.S. aircraft to fly through its wake turbulence. The RC-135 was conducting safe and routine operations over the South China Sea in international airspace, in accordance with international law,” Indo-PACOM said.

In the statement, Indo-PACOM called on all countries to use international airspace safely in accordance with international law, adding that the United States “will continue to fly, sail, and operate — safely and responsibly — wherever international law allows.”

Earth has pushed past seven out of eight scientifically established safety limits and into “the danger zone,” not just for an overheating planet that’s losing its natural areas, but for the well-being of people living on it, according to a new study.

The study looks not just at guardrails for the planetary ecosystem but for the first time it includes measures of “justice,” which is mostly about preventing harm for countries, ethnicities and genders.

The study by the international scientist group Earth Commission published Wednesday in the journal Nature looks at climate, air pollution, phosphorus and nitrogen contamination of water from fertilizer overuse, groundwater supplies, fresh surface water, the unbuilt natural environment and the overall natural and human-built environment. Only air pollution wasn’t quite at the danger point globally.

Air pollution is dangerous at local and regional levels, while climate was beyond the harmful levels for humans in groups but not quite past the safety guideline for the planet as a system, the study from the Swedish group said.

The study found “hot spots” of problem areas throughout Eastern Europe, South Asia, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, parts of Africa and much of Brazil, Mexico, China and some of the U.S. West — much of it from climate change. About two-thirds of Earth don’t meet the criteria for freshwater safety, scientists said as an example.

“We are in a danger zone for most of the Earth system boundaries,” said study co-author Kristie Ebi, a professor of climate and public health at the University of Washington.

If planet Earth just got an annual checkup, similar to a person’s physical, “our doctor would say that the Earth is really quite sick right now, and it is sick in terms of many different areas or systems, and this sickness is also affecting the people living on Earth,” Earth Commission co-chair Joyeeta Gupta, a professor of environment and development at the University of Amsterdam, said at a press conference.

It’s not a terminal diagnosis. The planet can recover if it changes, including its use of coal, oil and natural gas and the way it treats the land and water, the scientists said.

But “we are moving in the wrong direction on basically all of these,” said study lead Johan Rockstrom, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.

“This is a compelling and provocative paper — scientifically sound in methodology and important for identifying the dimensions in which the planet is nearing the edge of boundaries that would launch us into irreversible states,” Indy Burke, dean of the Yale School of the Environment, said in an email. She wasn’t part of the study.

The team of about 40 scientists created quantifiable boundaries for each environmental category, both for what’s safe for the planet and for the point at which it becomes harmful for groups of people, which the researchers termed a justice issue.

Rockstrom said he thinks of those points as setting up “a safety fence,” outside of which the risks become higher, but not necessarily fatal.

Rockstrom and other scientists have attempted in the past this type of holistic measuring of Earth’s various interlocking ecosystems. The big difference in this attempt is that scientists also looked at local and regional levels, and they added the element of justice.

The justice part includes fairness between young and old generations, different nations and even different species. Frequently, it applies to conditions that harm people more than the planet.

An example of that is climate change.

The report uses the same boundary of 1.5 degree Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times that international leaders agreed upon in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. The world has so far warmed about 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit), so it hasn’t crossed that safety fence, Rockstrom and Gupta said, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t being hurt.

“What we are trying to show through our paper is that event at 1 degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) there is a huge amount of damage taking place,” Gupta said, pointing to tens of millions of people exposed to extreme hot temperatures.

The planetary safety guardrail of 1.5 degrees hasn’t been breached, but the “just” boundary where people are hurt of 1 degree has been.

“Sustainability and justice are inseparable,” said Stanford environmental studies chief Chris Field, who wasn’t part of the research. He said he would want even more stringent boundaries. “Unsafe conditions do not need to cover a large fraction of Earth’s area to be unacceptable, especially if the unsafe conditions are concentrated in and near poor and vulnerable communities.”

Another outside expert, Dr. Lynn Goldman, an environmental health professor and dean of The George Washington University’s public health school, said the study was “kind of bold,” but she wasn’t optimistic that it would result in much action.

Give us 5 minutes, and we’ll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Lawmakers in the Philippines are targeting online casino operators and regulators as they try to crack down on the country’s growing network of cryptocurrency scams and the human trafficking connected to them. Dave Grunebaum looks at the issue and one victim’s story.

Camera: Dave Grunebaum

As many as 1.5 million Syrian refugees have fled death and destruction engulfing their homeland by crossing into Lebanon. Their presence has drawn more hostility from Lebanese since the country’s economic crisis came to a head in 2019.   

While observers blame the political elite for years of corruption and mismanagement and for now impoverishing most of the population with its policies, the same political class is scapegoating the refugees to deflect from its own responsibilities, said Lebanese analyst Dania Koleilat Khatib. The governing apparatus includes the Iran-backed Hezbollah political party and its onetime ally, former President Michel Aoun, and his Free Patriotic Movement.

“How can they divert this anger? They divert it to the refugees,” Khatib said. “The narrative that is so populist against the refugees is mainly coming from Hezbollah, the Aoun people: They are costing so much, they are causing trouble, they are a burden on the economy and they have to go. But the U.N. is supporting the education system because they want these refugee kids to go to school. The aid that is coming is also aiding host communities.”

Observers argue there is a false impression that Lebanese must compete with Syrians for resources and that refugees get lots of money from relief organizations.  

Khatib, president of the Research Center for Cooperation and Peace Building in Beirut, told VOA that Lebanese politicians may be using the refugee situation as a pawn. She characterized governing authorities’ position as: “If the international community doesn’t do what we want, if you put sanctions on us, we will create a problem for these people knowing they can’t go to [Syrian President Bashar al-) Assad.”

Observers note that Syrian refugees face dire living conditions in Lebanon and although many would like to leave, they fear returning home because of retribution by Assad’s leadership, which considers them traitors.  

Meanwhile, rights groups reported in recent weeks an increase in anti-refugee rhetoric from Lebanese politicians. They allege such misinformation contributes to violence and discrimination against Syrian refugees.   

Ramzi Kaiss, the Lebanon researcher at Human Rights Watch, told Abu Dhabi’s The National newspaper that an alarming rise in anti-refugee rhetoric has accompanied forced deportations, which he believes is “part of the strategy to create a coercive environment in order to get refugees to leave the country.”  

The Access Center for Human Rights in Beirut says that the military recently conducted many raids to apprehend and deport 336 Syrian refugees who entered the country irregularly. The center is a nongovernmental organization monitoring conditions of Syrian refugees in Lebanon.   

Lebanese analyst Khatib told VOA that international refugee law requires a voluntary, safe and dignified return of all refugees.

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The U.S. will send more military aid to Ukraine as the world works to protect the Zaporzhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Reaction to the drone attack on Moscow and a look at how South African currency is connected to the war. Plus, what’s responsible for the political divide in Moldova?