Apple iPhone Shipments In China Jump 40% After Big Discounts
The latest iPhone data from China suggests that Apple is experiencing a recovery in sales in the world’s largest smartphone market after a sluggish start to the year.
Shipments of foreign-branded smartphones in China increased by 1.425 million units in May to 5.028 million units. This is up from 3.603 million units a year prior, according to Bloomberg, citing new data published Friday from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), a government body.
In other words, shipments of foreign-branded phones in China jumped nearly 40% in May from a year earlier.
⚡APPLE’S MAY #CHINA IPHONE SHIPMENTS GREW 40% Y/Y, CAICT DATA SHOWED.
Domestic Chinese brands shipped 25.30 million phones in May (83.4% of the total), while foreign brands shipped 5.03 million units(+44.1% m/m or +40.1% y/y), with Apple dominating.$AAPL#iPhone
*Corrected… pic.twitter.com/9jm9o8CDEK
Discounting by the world’s most valuable company drove the increased sales.
IPhone shipments began bouncing back around March, and leapt more than 50% in April. That’s partly because Apple and its Chinese resellers have been cutting prices since the start of 2024, in deals extending into the pivotal June 18 shopping festival. Before that, Apple had endured double-digit declines in sales after losing market share to Huawei Technologies Co. -Bloomberg
CAICT data does not mention Apple iPhones directly, though the company is the dominant foreign phone maker in the world’s second-largest economy.
In March, Dan Ives, a technology analyst at Wedbush Securities, told clients, “This has been a very difficult period for Apple in China.”
The slowdown in iPhone sales was caused by weak economic growth in China and Huawei, a local telecom giant competing with the iPhone with its new phone lineups.
CEO Tim Cook must innovate and offer discounts if Apple wants to compete against Huawei.
Carmen Alvarez looks down at a five-year-old coffee plant and frowns. She points to the wide brown spots afflicting some of the leaves and says “Ashes are good for [dealing with] the plagues.”
Mrs. Alvarez and her husband Francisco Mamani have been working with coffee plants near Bolivia’s Amboro National Park for 30 years.
In that time, they’ve had their fair share of environmental setbacks.
Coffee has always been a fragile plant that requires specific microclimates to thrive. Controlling fungal diseases and pests are just part of the job.
Most growers within the world’s “coffee belt” nations are well-versed in dealing with these problems—every season brings a different challenge.
As one of the most traded commodities in the world, the global coffee market was valued at $138 billion last year, according to Expert Market Research. FairTrade says the industry employs roughly 125 million people in at least 70 countries.
In the United States, coffee represents 2.2 million jobs and creates more than $100 billion in wage revenue, according to the National Coffee Association.
Mrs. Alvarez said both the wet and dry seasons are becoming less predictable, most noticeably since a few years ago. Consequently, infestations and diseases affecting coffee are now becoming harder to predict and more difficult to mitigate.
The Alvarez family, which runs both a plantation and the coffee roasting company Buenavisteno, isn’t alone.
The increasing struggle to bring in a healthy crop of coffee “cherries” is part of a larger pattern affecting the world’s producers.
As weather and seasons become more erratic, diseases have become more widespread, threatening the future of growers everywhere.
The fungal disease known in the industry as coffee leaf rust is one of the primary blights that affects coffee—particularly the Arabica strains—and spreads like a pathogen.
The dreaded coffee leaf rust was detected for the first time in Saudi Arabia, a country that had harbored one of the few remaining coffee regions free of the disease, according to a study published in January.
The presence of coffee leaf rust was observed for the first time in August 2023 on plantations in the mountainous Fyfa district.
The area lies within the heart of Saudi Arabia’s coffee production region in Jazan.
The United States imports 200,000 60-kilogram (132-pound) bags of roast and ground coffee per year from the Middle Eastern nation, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Due to the compounding effect of increased disease and insects, along with shifting weather patterns, one study in the journal “Science” estimates that 60 percent of all coffee species are at risk of extinction.
However, this isn’t the first time scientists have identified coffee as being at risk of extinction due to evolving and shifting climates.
One study from 2012 noted that wild Arabica strains—known for having the best taste—could be extinct “well before” the end of this century.
Currently, the United States consumes 1.62 billion pounds of coffee per year, according to data compiled by Cafely.
Some in the industry predict a significant loss in coming years.
“Research shows that the number of regions best suited for growing coffee will be cut in half over the course of the next 25 years or so,” Amanda Archila, executive director of Fairtrade America, told The Epoch Times.
The organization says it works with more than 2 million farmers worldwide, giving it a finger on the pulse of coffee producers’ struggles.
Ms. Archila said countries such as Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Colombia are especially affected by changing temperatures.
“For coffee farmers, that means a dramatic change in how they farm—or whether they farm at all,” she said.
“Some may choose to grow crops better suited to the new environment. Some may relocate. Some may abandon farming altogether in search of more stable, profitable jobs.
“What we certainly know is that already unstable livelihoods are at stake, with families and communities all around the world on the line,” she said.
Ms. Archila said Fairtrade-certified farmers in Colombia have reported serious problems with irregular rainfall.
“They are waiting months for rainfall. The sun is so hot that it is drying out their wells and there isn’t enough water to irrigate crops quickly,” she said.
“Plants are smaller and thinner than they used to be, and pests and diseases are spreading more easily.”
Thriving in humid, tropical climates, coffee plants naturally require a lot of water. However, too much can be just as damaging.
Heavy rains, especially during the dry season, can lead to erosion, and soil nutrient loss, and leave saturated root systems prone to disease and rot.
Challenges aside, some have no intention of giving up on their multi-generational farms.
Mrs. Alvarez said her family is getting creative with solutions for the plagues afflicting their coffee production.
“We prepare different products to cure and protect from the diseases,” she said.
One type of insect Mrs. Alvarez described is what she called a “miner.”
The bug burrows into the coffee plants, killing it as efficiently as coffee leaf rust.
When the wet and dry seasons around her farm were stable, it was easy to predict and control the “miners.” They were part of the seasons, just like the rains.
However, with the drastic swings in rainfall and temperatures around Amboro National Park, she said the insect attacks have become a daily battle.
Then there’s what she called the “damping.”
“Damping is a plague. It’s not like a beetle that we can see and kill. It’s just crazy weather. It rains when it’s not supposed to or it’s cold when it’s supposed to be warm. It’s very difficult to protect the plants,” Mrs. Alvarez said.
The term “damping” is used throughout the region of Buena Vista to describe the effect of sudden, erratic weather changes on coffee plants.
Mrs. Alvarez said it takes a heavy toll on saplings younger than one year, but noticed that longer periods of extreme weather are starting to affect well-established plants five years and older.
“It affects the neck [stem] of the coffee. It makes the plant dry out faster,” she said.
When asked how she handles the “damping,” she said they’re still trying different methods. So far, she observed that wood ashes work well for plants that get sick from wild weather changes.
Beyond ashes, Mrs. Alvarez explained her family also uses laundry soap, lime, and sulfur to battle fungal diseases and pests. “That’s also why we plant Castillo [coffee], it’s more resistant.”
Finland plans to offer avian influenza vaccinations as soon as the week of June 30 to some workers with exposure to animals, health authorities said on June 25. That would make it the first country in the world to do so.
The Nordic country has bought vaccines for 10,000 people, each consisting of two injections, as part of a joint European procurement of up to 40 million doses for 15 nations from manufacturer CSL Seqirus.
“The vaccine will be offered to those aged 18 or over who are at increased risk of contracting avian influenza due to their work or other circumstances,” the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare said in a statement.
The H5N1 strain of avian influenza, or bird flu, has circulated for decades in birds but has recently jumped to other species, including cattle in the United States.
Three humans in the United States have had confirmed infections this year, while Finland has none.
However, Finnish authorities are rolling out the vaccine to try to curb the transmission of the virus.
“The conditions in Finland are very different in that we have fur farms where the animals can end up in contact with wildlife,” Dr. Hanna Nohynek, chief physician at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, said.
The mostly open-air fur farms saw widespread outbreaks of bird flu among mink and foxes, leading to the culling of about 485,000 animals in 2023 to cut down on transmission risk.
Vaccinations are likely to start as early as next week, according to a spokesperson for the institute. People deemed at risk, including workers at the fur farms and lab technicians who handle bird flu samples, are eligible for the shots.
If any human infections are confirmed, people in close contact with the patients would also be offered the vaccine.
US Orders Vaccines
The U.S. government has ordered nearly 5 million doses of the influenza vaccine made by CSL, and manufacturing is slated to be completed by the end of the summer.
However, the U.S. government has no concrete plans yet to start vaccinating farm workers or others.
Dawn O’Connell, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the U.S. Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), said in May that government officials were “looking closely” at moving forward with vaccinations. Still, the government has made no formal announcements on the front since then.
Robert Johnson, director of ASPR’s medical countermeasures program, was asked during a call with reporters on June 25 about Finland’s choice to start vaccinating some people. He said that ASPR and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are in agreement that H5N1 is currently a low public health risk.
“Further sort of deliberations or decisions around vaccine really will require further conversations around the U.S. government,” Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, a CDC official, told reporters.
In a strategy document released on June 25 aimed at a pandemic caused by influenza, U.S. officials said that vaccines “could be deployed before an outbreak begins and provide immune responses to a broad range of influenza viruses [and] could enable the population to have some level of protection against H5Nx viruses prior to a pandemic.”
Officials are backing the testing of multiple experimental vaccines against influenza, including two self-amplifying RNA vaccines targeting H5N1.
Pfizer and Moderna are also in talks with U.S. officials about messenger RNA vaccines against H5N1, after developing two widely used COVID-19 vaccines.
Although three farm workers in the United States have tested positive for H5N1 recently, officials have stressed that the illnesses are believed to have come from cows and that there are no signs as of yet of person-to-person transmission.
The latter made headlines in the fall of 2023 due to a report released by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) claiming that the area used for coca crop in 2022 grew to 230,000 hectares, a 13 percent increase compared to 2021, according to Reuters reporting.
As Statista’s Florian Zandt shows in the chart below shows, this further cements Colombia’s spot as the top coca producer in the world.
According to figures by UNODC, Colombia was responsible for almost two thirds of the total coca cultivation area in 2022. Peru came in second with 95,000 hectares, while Bolivia ranked third with 30,000 hectares. To combat the increase of land dedicated to coca plantations, Colombian President Gustavo Petro advocated for the recognition of drugs as a “health problem for society” instead of it being viewed as a “military problem” at the Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Drugs this past September.
Following the conference, Petro presented a new national anti-drug plan in October 2023. Reuters summarized the underlying policies of the ten-year plan as aiming to “reduce the size of coca crops, cut potential cocaine output and prevent deforestation linked to drug trafficking, while helping transition small farmers to the legal economy.”
When looking at the cocaine market from the users’ perspective, North America had the estimated share of people claiming to have consumed cocaine in 2022, with 6.5 million or 28 percent of total global users of the drug.
Overall, the Americas made up around half of estimated cocaine users worldwide according to the UNODC’s World Drug Report, while in Europe and Asia, the estimated number of cocaine users stood at 5.7 million and 2.9 million, respectively.
A CDU politician in Germany is under investigation for hate crimes after he reacted to a knife attack by an Afghan migrant by calling for the expulsion of foreign criminals from the country.
On the opening day of the Euro 2024 football tournament, a knife-wielding Afghan migrant went on a stabbing spree in Wolmirstedt which left one person dead and multiple others injured.
Detlef Gürth, a state lawmaker for the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Saxony-Anhalt, reacted by posting on X, “This pack has to get out of Germany.”
And that was literally it.
That’s all he said before subsequently deleting the tweet.
“Dieses Pack muss raus” – Linken-Politikerin verklagt CDU-Kollegen wegen Volksverhetzung
Der sachsen-anhaltinische CDU-Abgeordnete Detlef Gürth äußerte sich provokativ abwertend im Rahmen eines X-Postings zu dem Messerangriff in der Stadt Wolmirstedt bei Magdeburg. Die… pic.twitter.com/rlKPJRRKeR
However, it was enough for left-wing state politician Henriette Quade to file a criminal complaint against Gürth for allegedly committing a hate crime, which is now being investigated by the Halle public prosecutor’s office
“The description of Afghans as a ‘pack’ who are denied the right to live in Germany is an insult to parts of the population,” Quade ludicrously claimed.
“Those designated in this way are denied their basic right to life as equal individuals in the community and their human dignity is thus attacked. Furthermore, the post cannot be interpreted with any understanding other than that all Afghans living in the country are (potential) murderers. The post also incites hatred against parts of the population,” she added.
Gürth was clearly referring to migrants who engage in violence, not all Afghans, but his relatively tame comment was reported to authorities anyway in another stunning example of how many in the German political establishment are more concerned about not hurting the feelings of migrants than they are stopping the wave of migrant-driven violence that has plagued the country for years.
Statistics released by the German government revealed that around 6 in 10 violent crimes recorded in Germany are committed by migrants.
“According to some criminal statistics, Afghans are five times more likely to commit a criminal act than native Germans,” reports Remix News.
“However, in some categories, such as sexual assaults, they are 12.5 times more likely to commit an offense than the rest of society. However, this is only a fraction of the problem that Germany has been forced to endure with regard to migrant crimes, many of which are committed by repeat offenders.”
As we document in the video below, German authorities are now handing out prison time to people who insulted a bunch of convicted gang rapists, in at least one case giving a woman more prison time than almost all of the gang rapists themselves.
Yesterday we highlighted another case of migrant violence where a 20-year-old man in the North Rhine-Westphalia town of Bad Oeynhausen was beaten into a coma by a migrant gang and later died from his injuries.
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Japan Fires Its Top Currency Diplomat As Yen Disintegrates, Another Intervention Looms
It is hardly a coincidence that literally minutes after the USDJPY hit 161 for the first time in almost two generations…
… that Japan’s Nikkei reported the man who had been tasked to explain away Japan’s absolutely catastrophic currency policy, one which has made the yen the worst performing currency of the world and the envy of banana republics everywhere…
Dear @Bank_of_Japan_e congratulations, your toilet paper of a currency is now the worst performing in the world, with the lira, peso and real all stronger.
And the best part is once you finally contain it, you have a bond market crash to look forward to. pic.twitter.com/UKmKWuDq6c
… i.e., Japan’s top currency “diplomat”. Masato Kanda, has been fired.
Kanda will be replaced with Atsushi Mimura, a director-general of the Finance Ministry’s international bureau, who will take over as vice finance minister for international affairs on July 31.
Incumbent Kanda has been the main figure in handling the government’s catastrophic interventions in the foreign exchange market, which have been meant to arrest the yen’s slide against the dollar, yet despite spending a record $60+ billion two months ago on halting the yen’s implosion, the yen is now at the lowest level since the Plaza Accord.
And while no amount of intervention will prevent the yen from imploding further – to do that the BOJ will have to raise rates to 4% or higher, setting of a cataclysmic collapse of the entire Japanese bond market – the outrage among the populace at the runaway inflation in Japan in large part due to the plunging currency, is finally being addressed now that Japan is facing election in a few months, and scapegoat time has arrived.
We fully expect another intervention round in the coming days, one which sends USDJPY back to the low 150s before the pair resumes it trek higher until such time as Japan finally loses control over both its currency and bond markets. That will be the beginning of the end of the current doomed experiment in neoliberalism.
The Five Eyes (FVEY) alliance announced steps earlier in June to prevent Western military aviators from training Beijing’s military and naval aviators, capabilities that military experts say are key for Beijing to be able to attack Taiwan.
On June 5, the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC), representing the FVEY (the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), issued a joint bulletin warning evolving the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) efforts to recruit current and retired Western service members to train its military.
“To overcome their shortcomings, China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has been aggressively recruiting Western military talent to train their aviators, using private firms around the globe that conceal their PLA ties and offer recruits exorbitant salaries,” said NCSC Director Michael C. Casey.
Actions by the United States and its Western partners to counter this threat include commercial restrictions on the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA), Beijing China Aviation Technology Co. (BCAT), Stratos, and other PLA providers exploiting Western and NATO personnel, as well as legal and regulatory changes to prohibit former military members from engaging in post-service employment with China.
Tony Xia, a military expert and commentator, noted that pilots with real combat experience are rare in China.
“It takes at least five years to train a fighter pilot. In fact, the pilot is required to fly for the rest of his or her service life,” he told The Epoch Times.
He added that the main reason for the CCP to hire experienced aviators from Western militaries is to plagiarise Western training systems, methods, and experience.
“In the past few decades, China’s fourth-generation fighters have hardly experienced any real-world combat experience,” he said.
CCP Preparation to Attack Taiwan
Zhang Yanting, the former deputy commander of Taiwan’s Air Force and currently a professor at the Political Warfare College of Taiwan’s National Defense University, believes that these CCP actions are preparation for a real war in the Taiwan Strait.
Retired pilots bring combat experience, which the PLA lacks. They can pass on to the CCP military their valuable experience of the whole real-world combat scenario, threats, and how to give full play to their combat power, he told The Epoch Times.
Moreover, each of them has different expertise: some of them fly fighter planes, some fly anti-submarine warfare aircraft, and some fly carrier planes.
Qi Leyi, a senior media figure and military commentator in Taiwan, noted that the CCP values practical operational experience from recruited retired Western officers.
The people on the front line are especially needed. Apart from acquiring skills, they can also get some intelligence and information, he told The Epoch Times.
CCP’s History of Recruiting Western Military
The CCP’s recruitment of Western retired pilots has been known since 2022, including cases such as the TFASA in South Africa, which was sanctioned by the U.S. Department of Commerce in June 2023.
While TFASA denied involvement in confidential military training and employing American and British citizens, Daniel Duggan, a former pilot for the U.S. Marine Corps and Australian citizen who would be extradited to the United States, was indeed a trainer for TFASA and trained Chinese pilots in the art of landing on aircraft carriers.
Mr. Duggan moved to Australia after more than 10 years of service in the U.S. military and founded a company called Top Gun Tasmania, which employs former U.S. and British military pilots to provide tourists with jets for joyriding.
Mr. Duggan, with an Airline Transport Pilot’s Licence issued by the United States and Australia, has flown the AV-8B Harrier, T2C Buckeye, and A4J Skyhawk. In May, he admitted to working with Chinese spy Su Bin, who stole U.S. military secrets but denied knowing he was a spy.
In the United Kingdom, it was exposed in 2022 that as many as 30 retired British pilots have been recruited by the Chinese military with high salaries (up to about $270,000 a year). The recruitment has been carried out through third parties, including a flying academy based in South Africa, and the pilots had served across the British military, not just in the Royal Air Force.
France is also targeted by the CCP, which actively seeks skilled French instructors to guide Chinese pilots in carrier landings and learn NATO air force strategies. Other than the United States and China, France is among the few nations with catapult-equipped aircraft carriers.
The CCP recruits retired Western carrier-based aircraft pilots to train its own carrier pilots and absorb the experience of carrier combat tactics from Western countries, Ou Si-Fu, who heads the Division of Chinese Politics, Military, and Warfighting Concepts at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taiwan, told The Epoch Times.
Landing a fighter jet on a narrow carrier deck is a highly challenging task. The CCP is starting from scratch in terms of combat operations, necessitating training from Western nations, he said. Carrier combat strategies are national secrets that no country is willing to teach Beijing directly, prompting the regime to entice retired Western pilots with hefty salaries.
Mr. Xia said that in their pursuit of developing aircraft carriers, the CCP aims to realize its “Deep Blue Dream,” which is “a way to compete for regional and world hegemony.”
“For the CCP, the training of carrier pilots is basically blank. Western experience is of course very important for it,” he said. “The U.S. Navy, when observing the take-off and landing of Chinese carrier aircraft, exclaimed about their dangerous [amateurish] maneuvers.”
Mr. Ou believes that the CCP penetrates Taiwanese society with a similar approach, absorbing retired military personnel to steal Taiwan’s military secrets and enticing semiconductor professionals for advanced industrial secrets.
Taiwan and democratic Western nations must remain vigilant against these illegal measures by the CCP to steal defense military and advanced industrial secrets, he said.
Two American children who were detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents while trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border to go to school will be awarded over $1 million in compensation, a federal judge in California has ruled.
U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of California Gonzalo Curiel issued the order on June 21.
The order stems from a lawsuit involving Oscar Amparo Medina and his sister Julia Isabel Amparo, who were 14 and nine years old, respectively, in March 2019, when they were detained by border patrol agents at the Tijuana-San Ysidro, California, border crossing.
According to the lawsuit—filed by their parents on their behalf—the two children lived with their parents and siblings in Tijuana, Mexico, and had been on their way to school in San Ysidro when the incident occurred.
Julia was detained by officers for approximately 34 hours, and Oscar for roughly 14 hours, because officers suspected them of lying about their identities, with officers initially believing Oscar may have been attempting to smuggle or traffic his younger sister.
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit had sought to hold the United States liable under the FTCA for false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and negligence.
“Common sense and ordinary human experience indicate that it was not reasonable to detain Julia for 34 hours to determine her identity or to detain Oscar for about 14 hours to determine whether he was smuggling or trafficking his sister when multiple means of investigation were available and officers unreasonably failed to pursue them,” Judge Curiel wrote in his ruling.
In a statement provided to media outlets, a CBP spokesperson said the agency “takes all complaints seriously and makes a good faith effort to resolve all complaints justly and fairly, including complying fully with orders issued by the federal district courts.”
Identification Issues
According to the lawsuit, both children were born in the United States and are U.S. citizens; however, their mother, Thelma, is a Mexican citizen who possesses a valid U.S. Border Crossing Card, and their father does not have the legal status or a visa to enter the United States.
The two children showed their valid U.S. passport cards to agents when attempting to cross the border into the United States via the pedestrian border crossing in March 2019, the complaint states.
However, when presenting their identification cards to border agents, one of the agents noticed a “dot on Julia’s photo that appeared to be a mole on her upper lip, which was not visible on Julia in person.”
Julia also showed agents a school identification from her former elementary school in Mexico, which also “did not resemble Julia,” according to court documents.
During further interrogation, an officer then allegedly “came up with the idea that Julia was her cousin Melany, and then pressured Julia into agreeing,” the lawsuit claims.
Lawyers for the United States vehemently rejected that claim and argued that “Julia and Oscar stated that Julia was Melany unprompted and then continued to say that throughout their interviews.”
The mother of the two children was not contacted when they were detained, according to the lawsuit.
After the children were released by border agents, they suffered mental stress, grief, anxiety, humiliation, and emotional distress, lawyers for the plaintiffs wrote in the lawsuit.
In his ruling, Judge Curiel concluded that the United States’ conduct was “extreme and outrageous” and that it had violated the rights of the two children.
The judge also noted that one of the CBP officers who interviewed Julia in private did so without a witness or a recording of the incident, violating CBP policy. This led to a “false confession,” he said.
“Since the confession was not recorded, witnessed or even recounted in any written detail, it will never be known why a 9-year-old U.S. citizen falsely confessed to being someone she is not,” the judge wrote.
“CBP violated the directive that its officers not interview minors alone,” he added.
“Although reasonable suspicion may have existed initially to believe that Julia was making a false claim of citizenship by fraudulently using the passport card of another, the duration of her and Oscar’s detention was unreasonable and in violation of the Fourth Amendment because officers repeatedly failed to take available steps to investigate their suspicions and failed to follow CBP’s own policies and precautions regarding the treatment of detained minors,” the judge concluded.
Judge Curiel awarded $1.1 million in damages for Julia, $175,000 for Oscar, and $250,000 for Thelma.
A new research project, “Milking it: colonialism, heritage and everyday engagement with dairy,” comes out of the University of Oxford’s History of Science Museum.
Leading the project are JC Niala, head researcher of the museum, and Johanna Zetterström Sharp, associate professor of archaeology at the University College London, according to an announcement on the museum’s Facebook page.
Their goal is to “examine the milk-related collections of the History of Science Museum to understand scientific knowledge production and the impact of colonial legacies on contemporary issues,” the announcement states.
“Through milk diaries, archival research, and participatory podcasting, it will investigate historical engagement with milk, building networks with consumers and producers in Britain and Kenya,” it states.
Niala and Sharp “will question both the imagined and real aspects of milk,” including the “political nature of this everyday substance,” according to the announcement.
The research project is new, and it’s taxpayer funded through the British Arts and Humanities Research Council, The Telegraphreports.
But the topic is not new to either scholar.
In 2022, Sharp participated in a panel discussion on the topic of “Milk and Whiteness” hosted by the Wellcome Collection in London. The event “explor[ed] milk’s associations with purity and whiteness and the racialised politics of diet and nutrition,” according to the collection website.
The Telegraph reports more:
In the panel discussion, the professor outlined a “Northern European obsession with milk” which has led to an assumption that it is a “vital part of any human diet”, and should be produced and provided on a vast scale.
Such an assumption, she argued, “may be understood as a white supremacist one”.
She explained: “Northern European needs and the science the technology devised to address them are the needs that pertain and are most important for global majority populations.”
Additionally, Niala lists “milk” as a key subject of her research work in her biography on the museum website.
For their new project, “the ultimate goal is to develop new methodologies for investigating our relationship with milk over time” and to “learn from the histories and global forces shaping milk today to envision more sustainable futures,” according to the museum.
Milk, coffee, and racism were the subject of a student’s hoax research essay in 2021.
As The College Fixreported at the time, the Swedish university student wrote about “how the marketing of the coffee has been characterized by highlighting ‘black and exotic elements’ of the drink. When it comes to milk, it has instead been ‘the local and white’ that has been emphasized.”
Arvid Haag said he wrote the paper as a joke for a class about critical race theory, and was surprised when people took it seriously.
Supreme Court Blocks EPA’s Plan To Limit Ozone Pollution From Power Plants
The Supreme Court blocked the Biden administration “pollution-fighting” plan that would mean crippling new emissions requirements on power plants and pipelines in parts of the country to stem ozone pollution that wanders into downwind states.
It would also mean choking off US power supply at a time when AI data centers are draining the electrical network at record levels with little pushback from the same Biden administration which is oh so very concerned about the environment… but not when ultra liberal corporations are to blame.
The justices, voting 5-4, and which was split men vs women as Trump appointee Barrett voted along with socialists Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson, put the Environmental Protection Agency’s “good neighbor” rule on hold while courts consider challenges pressed by upwind states, industry groups and companies led by Kinder Morgan.
In doing so, they rejected arguments by the Biden administration and Democratic-controlled states that the plan was cutting air pollution and saving lives in 11 blue states where it was being enforced and that the high court’s intervention was unwarranted.
The rule is intended to restrict smokestack emissions from power plants and other industrial sources that burden downwind areas with smog-causing pollution.
It will remain on hold while the federal appeals court in Washington considers a challenge to the plan from industry and Republican-led states.
The delay could be a lengthy one given that litigation over the rule is in its early stages. The focus now shifts to a federal appeals court, which will take the first look at the challenges.
The Supreme Court order halts a rule that would have applied to 11 states, a number that had already been cut from 23 because of separate legal battles. A key issue in the fight was whether the EPA had adequately considered whether its approach was warranted even if it applied to only a subset of upwind states. The rule was originally scheduled to take effect last August.
The challengers — Ohio, Indiana and West Virginia — contended the rule would impose billions of dollars in costs in the first year alone and threaten the reliability of the electricity grid by forcing generators into early retirement.
The Biden administration said the rule would protect the health of people in downwind states suffering from emissions by their neighbors.
The administration was backed by a group of downwind states led by New York.
The rule is part of a two-pronged EPA approach that relies on the rejection of state plans to curb ozone followed by the imposition of a federal alternative.
A number of states have managed to freeze the rejection component of EPA’s plan, reducing the reach of the alternative.
The justices took the unusual step of holding an argument session in the case even though they were considering only a request for an interim order as part of the court’s emergency docket.
