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Joly heads to UN to mobilize action on food crisis sparked by invasion of Ukraine

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OTTAWA — Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly kicked off two days of meetings Wednesday at the United Nations to help mobilize a global response to the food security crisis resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Joly met with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Rosemary DiCarlo, the undersecretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs, before taking part in a ministerial “call to action” on the growing problem of food insecurity around the world.

The meeting, convened by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, was dominated by the escalating humanitarian crisis triggered by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion, which is about to enter its 13th week.

Prior to the start of the war in late February, the number of people around the world facing a crippling food crisis reached more than 161 million people in 2021, up from 108 million in 2016, Blinken said in his introductory remarks.

The World Bank has estimated the invasion could well drive an additional 40 million more people around the planet into extreme poverty, he added.

“Every driver of the crisis that we’ll discuss today has been made worse by President Putin’s war of choice,” Blinken said. “It’s a crisis that demands a global response.”

Russia has blockaded Ukraine’s ports, stopping exports of wheat and sunflower oil to countries that rely on them in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.

“Canada’s approach will be bold: from providing funding at the multilateral level to logistical supply chain support to food inspectors and cargo shipments, we will get involved,” Joly told her fellow delegates.

“We will free Ukrainian grains, and countries will receive their shipments. To the secretary-general, of course, we will support his efforts to find peaceful and lasting solutions to get those grains out.”

Canada will be sending cargo ships to ports in Romania and other European countries neighbouring Ukraine to help it export its wheat — what Joly described in her speech Wednesday as “freedom wheat.”

The UN World Food Program has warned that the conflict has not only driven up the price of grain, making it more expensive to feed the hungry, but could push nations that rely on Ukrainian wheat toward starvation.

Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest exporters of wheat, with some countries, including Lebanon and Bangladesh, relying on it as a staple food.

“Let me be very clear and to the point: failure to open the ports will be a declaration of war on global food security, resulting in famine, destabilization of nations, as well as mass migration by necessity,” said David Beasley, the former South Carolina governor who now serves as the program’s executive director.

“This is not just about Ukraine. This is about the poorest of the poor around the world who are on the brink of starvation as we speak. So I ask President Putin, if you have any heart at all, to please open these ports.”

Julie Marshall, Canadian spokeswoman for the World Food Program, said Ukraine produces enough to feed about 400 million people around the world. But millions of tons of wheat, much of it bound for developing nations, is sitting in silos and stranded on ships because of the conflict.

Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada, Yulia Kovaliv, told a committee of MPs that not only is Russia blockading Ukraine’s ports, it is stealing its grain stores and attempting to ship them to Russian-held Crimea.

Agriculture Minister Marie-Claude Bibeau has warned that the Russians are also targeting farm machinery and equipment needed to gather and distribute Ukraine’s harvest.

Canada is one of the world’s biggest wheat exporters and has said it will do what it can to help with the shortfall. But Bibeau has said that Canada and the U.S. had a weak harvest last year because of a drought so stocks of grain are lower than usual.

“Our farmers are in the field; planting season has started,” Joly said, describing herself as the granddaughter of a wheat grower and miller. “Let’s hope Mother Nature is on our side.”

She acknowledged that Canada — one of the world’s largest producers of potash, a key ingredient in fertilizer that is also in short supply — has not imposed sanctions on Russian and Belarusian exports the same way that other G7 countries have done.

The government is working on ways to get its own potash to ports around the world, Joly said, and will “chart a path for a long-lasting solution” to the question of sanctions.

On Thursday, Joly will take part in an open debate at the UN Security Council, which the U.S. currently heads, on the links between conflict and food security.

During that debate, Joly will “highlight the need to find long-term solutions to break the cycle of poverty, hunger, and conflict, and to increase resilience, especially in the least-developed countries,” Global Affairs Canada said in a release.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 18, 2022.

 

Marie Woolf, The Canadian Press

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Teen smoking and other tobacco use drop to lowest level in 25 years, CDC reports

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NEW YORK (AP) — Teen smoking hit an all-time low in the U.S. this year, part of a big drop in the youth use of tobacco overall, the government reported Thursday.

There was a 20% drop in the estimated number of middle and high school students who recently used at least one tobacco product, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes, nicotine pouches and hookahs. The number went from 2.8 million last year to 2.25 million this year — the lowest since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s key survey began in 1999.

“Reaching a 25-year low for youth tobacco product use is an extraordinary milestone for public health,” said Deirdre Lawrence Kittner, director of CDC’s Office on Smoking and Health, in a statement. However, “our mission is far from complete.”

A previously reported drop in vaping largely explains the overall decline in tobacco use from 10% to about 8% of students, health officials said.

The youth e-cigarette rate fell to under 6% this year, down from 7.7% last year — the lowest at any point in the last decade. E-cigarettes are the most commonly used tobacco products among teens, followed by nicotine pouches.

Use of other products has been dropping, too.

Twenty-five years ago, nearly 30% of high school students smoked. This year, it was just 1.7%, down from the 1.9%. That one-year decline is so small it is not considered statistically significant, but marks the lowest since the survey began 25 years ago. The middle school rate also is at its lowest mark.

Recent use of hookahs also dropped, from 1.1% to 0.7%.

The results come from an annual CDC survey, which included nearly 30,000 middle and high school students at 283 schools. The response rate this year was about 33%.

Officials attribute the declines to a number of measures, ranging from price increases and public health education campaigns to age restrictions and more aggressive enforcement against retailers and manufacturers selling products to kids.

Among high school students, use of any tobacco product dropped to 10%, from nearly 13% and e-cigarette use dipped under 8%, from 10%. But there was no change reported for middle school students, who less commonly vape or smoke or use other products,

Current use of tobacco fell among girls and Hispanic students, but rose among American Indian or Alaska Native students. And current use of nicotine pouches increased among white kids.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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Alabama man arrested in SEC social media account hack that led the price of bitcoin to spike

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WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alabama man was arrested Thursday for his alleged role in the January hack of a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission social media account that led the price of bitcoin to spike, the Justice Department said.

Eric Council Jr., 25, of Athens, is accused of helping to break into the SEC’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter, allowing the hackers to prematurely announce the approval of long-awaited bitcoin exchange-traded funds.

The price of bitcoin briefly spiked more than $1,000 after the post claimed “The SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges.”

But soon after the initial post appeared, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler said on his personal account that the SEC’s account was compromised. “The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products,” Gensler wrote, calling the post unauthorized without providing further explanation.

Authorities say Council carried out what’s known as a “SIM swap,” using a fake ID to impersonate someone with access to the SEC’s X account and convince a cellphone store to give him a SIM card linked to the person’s phone. Council was able to take over the person’s cellphone number and get access codes to the SEC’s X account, which he shared with others who broke into the account and sent the post, the Justice Department says.

Prosecutors say after Council returned the iPhone he used for the SIM swap, his online searches included: “What are the signs that you are under investigation by law enforcement or the FBI even if you have not been contacted by them.”

An email seeking comment was sent Thursday to an attorney for Council, who is charged in Washington’s federal court with conspiracy to commit aggravated identity theft and access device fraud.

The price of bitcoin swung from about $46,730 to just below $48,000 after the unauthorized post hit on Jan. 9 and then dropped to around $45,200 after the SEC’s denial. The SEC officially approved the first exchange-traded funds that hold bitcoin the following day.

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Tech firms remove social media accounts of a Russian drone factory after an AP investigation

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Google, Meta and TikTok have removed social media accounts belonging to an industrial plant in Russia’s Tatarstan region aimed at recruiting young foreign women to make drones for Moscow’s war in Ukraine.

Posts on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok were taken down following an investigation by The Associated Press published Oct. 10 that detailed working conditions in the drone factory in the Alabuga Special Economic Zone, which is under U.S. and British sanctions.

Videos and other posts on the social media platforms promised the young women, who are largely from Africa, a free plane ticket to Russia and a salary of more than $500 a month following their recruitment via the program called “Alabuga Start.”

But instead of a work-study program in areas like hospitality and catering, some of them said they learned only arriving in the Tatarstan region that they would be toiling in a factory to make weapons of war, assembling thousands of Iranian-designed attack drones to be launched into Ukraine.

In interviews with AP, some of the women who worked in the complex complained of long hours under constant surveillance, of broken promises about wages and areas of study, and of working with caustic chemicals that left their skin pockmarked and itching. AP did not identify them by name or nationality out of concern for their safety.

The tech companies also removed accounts for Alabuga Polytechnic, a vocational boarding school for Russians aged 16-18 and Central Asians aged 18-22 that bills its graduates as experts in drone production.

The accounts collectively had at least 158,344 followers while one page on TikTok had more than a million likes.

In a statement, YouTube said its parent company Google is committed to sanctions and trade compliance and “after review and consistent with our policies, we terminated channels associated with Alabuga Special Economic Zone.”

Meta said it removed accounts on Facebook and Instagram that “violate our policies.” The company said it was committed to complying with sanctions laws and said it recognized that human exploitation is a serious problem which required a multifaceted approach, including at Meta.

It said it had teams dedicated to anti-trafficking efforts and aimed to remove those seeking to abuse its platforms.

TikTok said it removed videos and accounts which violated its community guidelines, which state it does not allow content that is used for the recruitment of victims, coordination of their transport, and their exploitation using force, fraud, coercion, or deception.

The women aged 18-22 were recruited to fill an urgent labor shortage in wartime Russia. They are from places like Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, South Sudan, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, as well as the South Asian country of Sri Lanka. The drive also is expanding to elsewhere in Asia as well as Latin America.

Accounts affiliated to Alabuga with tens of thousands of followers are still accessible on Telegram, which did not reply to a request for comment. The plant’s management also did not respond to AP.

The Alabuga Start recruiting drive used a robust social media campaign of slickly edited videos with upbeat music that show African women smiling while cleaning floors, wearing hard hats while directing cranes, and donning protective equipment to apply paint or chemicals.

Videos also showed them enjoying Tatarstan’s cultural sites or playing sports. None of the videos made it clear the women would be working in a drone manufacturing complex.

Online, Alabuga promoted visits to the industrial area by foreign dignitaries, including some from Brazil, Sri Lanka and Burkina Faso.

In a since-deleted Instagram post, a Turkish diplomat who visited the plant had compared Alabuga Polytechnic to colleges in Turkey and pronounced it “much more developed and high-tech.”

According to Russian investigative outlets Protokol and Razvorot, some pupils at Alabuga Polytechnic are as young as 15 and have complained of poor working conditions.

Videos previously on the platforms showed the vocational school students in team-building exercises such as “military-patriotic” paintball matches and recreating historic Soviet battles while wearing camouflage.

Last month, Alabuga Start said on Telegram its “audience has grown significantly!”

That could be due to its hiring of influencers, who promoted the site on TikTok and Instagram as an easy way for young women to make money after leaving school.

TikTok removed two videos promoting Alabuga after publication of the AP investigation.

Experts told AP that about 90% of the women recruited via the Alabuga Start program work in drone manufacturing.

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