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Working in the United States puts your life in danger more than it did in the past, according to a February 2024 report for Truthout by Tyler Walicek. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), obtained as part of the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), there was a  “5.7 percent increase in workplace deaths in the U.S. during the relevant 2021-2022 census period,” Truthout reported.

In 2022, “Nearly 6,000 U.S. workers died on the job,” Walicek wrote, and “a startling total of 2.8 million were injured or sickened.” On average, a US worker was killed at work every 96 minutes in 2022, Truthout reported.

The BLS data also reveal “marked racial disparities,” with the average rates of workplace deaths for Black workers (4.2 per 100,000 full-time workers) and Latiné workers (4.6 per 100,000) “distinctly higher” than the average rate of 3.7 workplace deaths per 100,000 full-time workers.

Immigrant employees are especially vulnerable. Truthout quoted Tracey Cekada, chair of the Department of Safety Sciences at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP), “Fatalities among foreign-born Hispanic or Latiné workers need to be addressed, as we are seeing a growing number of Spanish-speaking employees enter the workforce. These communication barriers put workers at risk.”

Walicek reported that IUP’s Safety Sciences Department “offers a Spanish language certificate to help safety professionals communicate with a diverse workforce,” and a “unique, and free” Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Consultation program. But programs such as these may not be sufficient to counteract the erosion of labor organizations and regulations.

The United States underperforms in providing worker safety when compared with other developed countries. According to the article, this a consequence of “the diminution of worker power and regulatory oversight” in the United States. A 2021 assessment by Arinite Health and Safety, a consulting firm, found that US worker safety rates fall below those in the UK, Canada, Australia, and much of Europe, Walicek reported.

Surprisingly, there has been almost no coverage of the BLS findings by corporate news media. The BLS released its Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries report in December 2023, and yet, as of March 2024, no major US daily newspaper appears to have covered the report. In December 2023, FOX 9, the Minneapolis-St. Paul FOX News affiliate, ran a story focused on the census’s findings for Minnesota, which found that 81 state residents were fatally injured on the job in 2022. But this local coverage focused on Minnesota and did not address the national trends detailed in the full BLS report. A lack of corporate news coverage not only hides the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries findings from the public but also diminishes the urgency to address workplace safety at a national level.

Source: Tyler Walicek, “1 US Worker Dies on the Job Every 96 Minutes, Latest Data Shows,” Truthout, February 17, 2024.

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Andrej Babiš is eyeing a return to power in the Czech Republic next year, as the Eurosceptic former premier counts on voters to punish the ruling coalition parties for their infighting.

In an interview with the Financial Times, the billionaire businessman-turned-politician, who has sparred with Brussels and questioned the EU’s continued support for Kyiv, predicted that feuding within the current government coalition in Prague would ease his comeback. 

“I would say that the ruling parties have another full year to prove to the citizens of the Czech Republic that they are completely incompetent and unqualified to govern the country, as they have been demonstrating these past three years,” Babiš said. 

A Babiš comeback could cement the illiberal flank in central Europe led by Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Robert Fico in Slovakia, raising alarm bells in the EU and Nato about maintaining unity in helping Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.

In regional elections last week, Babiš and his ANO party won in 10 of the country’s 13 regions. ANO is also expected to consolidate its advance following a second round of voting for the Senate on Friday and Saturday.

Although the national parliamentary elections are still one year away, “Babiš is riding the wave and we might become a second Slovakia,” said Pavel Havlíček, research fellow at the Czech Association for International Affairs, a think-tank. Slovakia’s premier Fico returned to power last October for a fourth term in office after campaigning to stop migration and halt military aid to Ukraine.

In Prague, Babiš would face an uneasy cohabitation with Petr Pavel, a former Nato general who defeated Babiš in presidential elections last year. The two men sparred during that campaign, with Pavel accusing Babiš of doing Russia’s bidding and the billionaire claiming Pavel was warmongering.

Pavel has used his military credentials to spearhead western help to Kyiv, notably by announcing in February a Prague-led initiative to deliver extra ammunition to the Ukrainian army.

Asked for his latest position on Ukraine, Babiš replied that “even the EU and Nato countries are not united on how to proceed in Ukraine”, adding that Europe’s main goal should be peace. “But let us be realistic: the US elections will decide the war in Ukraine,” he said in reference to the November vote in which former president Donald Trump faces vice-president Kamala Harris.

Babiš said that “a Trump win would be good for Europe because he promised to end the war immediately”.

Following elections to the European parliament in June, Babiš teamed up with Orbán and France’s far-right leader Marine Le Pen to form the third-largest group in the EU assembly, called Patriots for Europe.

Babiš, 70, said ANO “shared priorities rather than complete ideological alignment” with its Patriots partners, such as devolving powers from Brussels to national governments.

At home and abroad, he remains a polarising politician.

After building up his Agrofert food and chemicals business into one of the biggest Czech conglomerates, Babiš entered politics in 2011, founding ANO, which was initially part of the European liberals. He first became prime minister in 2017 and adopted a defiant stance towards Brussels, particularly after the European Commission demanded the reimbursement of EU funds received by Agrofert. He was acquitted of fraud charges in a Czech retrial in February.

“There’s a lot of speculation about whether I would return as prime minister, even if ANO wins next year, but for me it’s not about personal victory,” Babiš said. Voters want the next government to focus on issues like lowering energy bills and securing pensions, he said, and “not on individual political wins”.

Tensions within the current five-party coalition boiled over after Prime Minister Petr Fiala fired his deputy and regional development minister, Ivan Bartoš, who also leads the Pirate party. Bartoš called his dismissal “a dirty trick” and his Pirates announced a day later that they would quit the coalition, thereby reducing Fiala’s parliamentary majority.

Babiš accused Fiala of mishandling his coalition partner like “a scheming and lying back-stabber”.

“This soap opera is not only weakening our coalition but also opening the door for Babiš,” said Danuše Nerudová, an EU lawmaker with the Mayors and Independents, another party within Fiala’s coalition.

This was the month of January in 2006. I, with my team members, had gone to Strait Island, where some Great Andamanese people were staying distributed in eight households. There were more children than adults and it seemed no one had any work to do, as food supply was given to the community as a subsidy. The men used to spend time either fishing at the jetty or roaming in the jungle, which was neither very dense nor very large. Women sat under a tree, gossiping, and children either played cricket with a make-belief bat or just surrounded the chatting women. The whole atmosphere was very relaxed and time seemed to pass very slowly. Despite the small adult population, the ones who were in Strait were those who had some competency in their heritage language that kindled hope of finding some folk tales. I had found out that out of all the adult folks, only Nao Jr claimed to remember one story. Only one! Well, I decided something is better than nothing. Thus, I approached his hut with expectations and hope.

Nao Jr was seemingly always busy, either ‘on duty’ in the only medical unit that Strait Island had, distributing medicines in case there was a need for anyone on the island, or fishing in the early morning or late evening, or just sleeping, which was his favourite pass-time. He agreed to help me record the folk tale only after 9 at night and I agreed to his terms, as I was excited to find at least one person in the entire habitat of eight households who claimed to remember a tale. He promised to visit me in the guesthouse. I was very anxious to receive him at the stipulated time.

I remember distinctly that it was 21 January 2006. Nao came to the guesthouse, thinking that he would finish the job in one evening. Little did he know that linguists have the bad habit of checking each and every word and phrase that is uttered. In the first sitting, he tried to narrate the story in Andamanese Hindi. He would halt in between, groping for the right words or phrases. When he was not satisfied with the Hindi version, he would suddenly revert to the appropriate Andamanese word. This was rather exciting and educational for me. The long-lost language was getting revived gradually in an ancient tale. I never expected this!

The loud choruses of the crickets and frogs had begun in the tsunami-created marshes and swamps behind our guesthouse; the power had been switched off and we were all sitting in the dark. We knew it was past 11 pm. We used to get electricity only for two hours. Nao wanted to retire. I extracted a promise from him to visit us the next day, at his convenience, but with the Andamanese version and not the Hindi one. He said he had forgotten it all. When I insisted that he could attempt to remember it at night while going to bed, he agreed to try but was sure that his memory would fail him. ‘Chaaliis saal se sunaa nahiin, kaun bolega? (It has been 40 years since I have heard it; who can narrate it?)’ He was sure he would disappoint me.

Then came the next day. I was making some grammar notes sitting on the wooden bed in the afternoon. I saw Nao standing at my door with an expectant look on his face. The moment I looked up, he said in Hindi, ‘Kuch kuch yaad aataa hai (I can remember a little).’ I invited him in and then we sat around the bed, turning it into a makeshift table. He started narrating the same story in short Great Andamanese phrases, not very fluently, but mixed with Hindi. Narayan, my student, assisted me in recording and transcribing the story. This is how our long journey of the Great Andamanese narration started, a journey into the past. I would interrupt him to get Hindi equivalents and he could, with a 90 percent success rate, render them. It took us several days, to get the full version of the narration of ‘Phertajido’ and the subsequent word-for-word translation. Sometimes, we would have our sessions in the afternoon and sometimes after 9 pm, as he was always busy fishing by the Strait Island jetty after sunset. This was a great story and I could see he loved narrating it.

The translated version of this story had some gaps, which I realized only after coming back to Delhi. I decided to go through the entire process again during the next trip. I was lucky enough as Nao obliged me during my next trip to Port Blair in December 2006, almost 11 months after our previous visit.

On reaching Port Blair in December 2006, I discovered that Nao was in Strait Island and not in Port Blair as I was informed by a tribal friend on the phone before I left Delhi. The AAJVS officials not only failed to honour my already sanctioned permit to visit Strait Island but were also on the lookout to catch and arrest me if I pursued my research. No one in the mainland would believe that a researcher could be arrested for hearing a story from the Great Andamanese tribes for work. Under the pretext of safeguarding the protected tribes, the concerned official would disregard the sanction given to us by the Home Ministry and would expect us to grease his palms. I neither had the means nor the inclinations to oblige him.

There was no way of informing Nao of my arrival in Port Blair. Unfortunately, Strait Island had no phone connections. The only wireless communication that the island had, was in the hands of the government officials. I had no option but to visit the Port Blair jetty and take a chance and see if I could run into any of my tribal friends on the ship. Ships for Strait Island leave very early in the morning at about 5:45 am. It was 19 December 2006; I reached the jetty much before the stipulated time. A crew member from one of the ships recognized me. By then, many local officials, especially those who worked on ships and boats, had started recognizing me as a friend of the Great Andamanese tribes. As soon as this man, a ticket checker at the departure gate saw me, he indicated towards the next ship moored in the distance and said, ‘Go and see Reya. She is going to Strait Island.’ This was a girl from the Great Andamanese tribe, whom I knew very well and who had married a Bengali man. I ran towards her, lest I lose her. She immediately recognized me and greeted me with a namaste. She introduced me to her husband. She asked me in Hindi, ‘Kab aayaa (when did you come)?’ Reya is one of those Great Andamanese tribal girls, who loves to amalgamate herself into our society and is happy to forget her heritage language. I told her that I desperately wanted to see Nili (the pet name of Nao). She informed me that Nao was on Strait Island and had no plans of visiting Port Blair. My world was falling to pieces.

I knew requesting the administration to transport Nao Jr to Port Blair would not help. I knew that getting permission to travel to Strait Island will be equally difficult, as some officers-in-charge were against any research on these tribes. It is a shame that the members of these tribes are kept as captives in their own land and are restricted from meeting other Indian citizens. Had it not been for the initiative of the Great Andamanese themselves, they would have never befriended locals and visitors like us. I immediately fished out a piece of paper from my purse, wrote a note in Hindi in bold letters, and gave it to Reya to pass it on to Nao. I told her to ask him to have it read out to him by one of the school-going children. I also told her that the sole purpose of my trip to the Andamans was to meet Nao and my other tribal friends, but Nao in particular. She promised to deliver the message.

[Listen to a song included in the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuqMVBnNoWs.]

[Niyogi Books has given Fair Observer permission to publish this excerpt from Voices from the Lost Horizon: Stories and Songs of the Great Andamanese, Anvita Abbi, Niyogi Books, 2021.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

A wave of killings and kidnappings in a northern Mexican city has left residents scared to leave their houses during an internal cartel war set off by the US arrests of two high-level drug traffickers.

Hundreds of heavily armed special forces have been deployed in and around Culiacán, Sinaloa, over the past three weeks in which more than 90 people have been killed and another 90 kidnapped, according to local media.

Last week soldiers swept through an upmarket shopping centre on a Saturday afternoon, sending diners in a ramen restaurant to the floor, videos on social media show. Customers in a café dived behind the counter before a fierce, hours-long gun and grenade battle erupted one block away.

The latest wave of violence has been unleashed in the aftermath of the US arrest of two of Mexico’s most notorious drug traffickers, both leaders in the largest factions of the Sinaloa Cartel. One of the men, Ismael “El Mayo” Zamabada, alleges he was kidnapped, illegally taken out of Mexico and handed to the US by the other, Joaquín Guzmán, a son of notorious jailed kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.

Initially, the confusing and conflicting stories about the arrests told by the US and Mexican governments and the criminal groups themselves resulted in several weeks of “tense calm” in the city, locals suggested.

Then in early September battles kicked off between the two factions, and there is little sign they are abating.

Hardened Culichis, as residents of the city are known, have lived through violence before, but say they have never experienced anything as terrifying and prolonged as this.

They check daily reports of metal spikes set up on roads to puncture tyres, masked civilians grabbing young men off the street and bodies being dumped around the metropolitan area. Shops are shutting early, workers are scared to turn up and public concerts and celebrations are cancelled.

“It’s like a narco pandemic,” one 35-year-old resident said. “The city is being held hostage.”

The army commander overseeing the response in Culiacán told reporters that it was not in the military’s control to stop the violence. “It doesn’t depend on us,” he said. “It depends on the antagonistic groups stopping fighting between themselves and leaving society in peace.”

Mexico’s outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has been reluctant to confront the drug-trafficking groups, with his catchphrase “hugs not bullets”.

The flare-up underscores the security challenge facing López Obrador’s successor, president-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office next week. It also underlines the high cost Mexicans pay for the US strategy of extracting kingpins to try them for their crimes.

“They knew this would lead to a very big conflict, and a big conflict between the two groups of the Sinaloa Cartel was always going to be disastrous, very tragic and deadly,” said Juan Carlos Ayala, professor at the University of Sinaloa. “The United States government has a lot of the blame because they did things unilaterally.”

The US ambassador to Mexico, Ken Salazar, has said what was happening in Sinaloa was not the fault of the US, and the unrest would have to be solved via deep collaboration.

Consolidated in the 1990s moving drugs such as marijuana and cocaine, the Sinaloa Cartel today is made up of factions. Today’s violence is the result of a rupture between the two strongest: the Chapitos, aligned with the sons of “El Chapo”, and the Mayitos, aligned with Zambada.

“It’s like fighting with your brother,” said Adrián López, publisher of Culiacán-based newspaper Noroeste. “They are related in many ways and that’s what makes this different . . . they are fighting in territory where we are too, regular citizens.”

The image of the cartel locally has changed with the succession from founders such as El Chapo, who grew up poor working in the fields and was a hero-like figure to some. His sons, the Chapitos, have pushed the group into synthetic drugs including fentanyl and citizens say they feel the violence more directly.

Ayala said: “Most of the comments now [from society] are of being fed up, tremendous anger.”

Policymakers and even security experts struggle to articulate clear strategies to dismantle Mexico’s powerful criminal groups. Co-operation with the US is at a low point after Zambada’s arrest.

Sheinbaum, the former mayor of Mexico City, has touted her police-led strategy in the capital and wants to focus on better coordinating investigations and responses between different levels of government.

Her choice of security secretary, Omar Garcia Harfuch, a former senior police officer whom a drug cartel tried to kill in 2020, has raised some hopes the situation may improve.

But overcoming the corruption and complex local dynamics is a gigantic task. Winning the trust of citizens back is harder, as authorities in Sinaloa have found trying to get parents to take their children to school.

“Those 15 minutes on the journey will be complete terror,” the 35-year-old resident said of the school run. “There’s been violence before, but we’ve never lived anything like this.”

A CRUISE veteran has revealed the one item he always packs that most people forget to take with them.

Bradley Jones has gone on every trip from a weekend jaunt to a nine-month round-the-world expedition and has found a gadget that saves him money and effort wherever he goes.

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Bradley, from Wales, has gone on so many cruises that many operators have awarded him “elite” status, granting him a range of extra perks.

But for all the luxuries he can enjoy on his travels, his one must-have is much simpler.

When packing for a trip, his top priority is to make sure a particular gizmo is always in his bag.

He told LadBible: “My biggest tip for cruisers is when it comes to cruising as a couple of family is always take a universal plug adapter.

“In a cabin you’ve quite limited some times, especially on an inside cabin.

“And you’ve got to charge the phones, the kid’s iPads, my hair dryer, straighteners.

“Some of these companies, such as Princess or Cunard, some of them are American.

“When people catch these ships in Southampton they automatically think they’re British so they take British plugs.

“Last time we cruised there was a British couple who said ‘I didn’t even think, I thought there would be normal British plugs‘.

“That little thing is huge, people need that.”

The adapters can be found with UK three-prong or USB input ports connecting to an adjustable set of plugs that can match multiple sockets.

Some can be used on all 15 sockets across the world, while others offer 3-in-1, 4-in-1 or 5-in-1 options.

They can be picked up online, in electronics shops or in supermarkets.

On Amazon, the most popular example is on offer for £14.999 with £4.49 delivery.

It comes after another experienced holidaymaker shared seven must-have items for trips to holiday parks.

After negotiating for most of the year, U.S. and Iraqi officials finally reached a deal on Friday over the U.S. presence in Iraq—one that is frankly long overdue.

Although U.S. officials insist that Washington won’t be pulling all 2,500 troops out of the country and are hesitant to use the term “withdrawal,” the U.S. will be thinning out its deployment over the next two years. According to the two-phase plan presented on Sept. 27, the U.S.-backed counter-Islamic State (IS) mission in Iraq will formally end by September 2025 and remove U.S. troops from certain bases in the country. In the second phase, Iraq has agreed to allow the U.S. military to continue using Iraq to support ongoing operations against IS in neighboring Syria, where some 900 American troops are based, through 2026, the Associated Press reported.

The announcement is likely to calm those in the national security establishment—lawmakers, commentators, and former generals alike—who are forever petrified about a full U.S. withdrawal and quick to argue it would be dangerous to U.S. interests. Earlier this month, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers wrote on X, “Withdrawing from Iraq in this way would benefit and embolden Iran and ISIS. I am deeply concerned about the impacts such a decision would have on our national security.” Retired Gen. Joseph Votel, a former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, also claimed that a U.S. departure would inevitably cause IS to resurge as it seeks to fill the vacuum left behind.

But these critiques don’t hold up to scrutiny. The U.S. needs a clean break, not a conditions-based transition that could extend its mission for years to come. (The Biden Administration has refused to provide details on how many U.S. troops will remain in Iraq.)

First, it’s important to note that the U.S. has already achieved its counter-IS objectives in Iraq. From the moment the Obama Administration cobbled together a large coalition and began striking IS positions in September 2014, the U.S. mission was clear and measurable: eliminate IS’ territorial caliphate, which at its height was as large as Britain, encompassed approximately 8 million people, and earned around $1 million a day from oil sales on the black market. IS was a highly committed opponent at the time and one of the richest terrorist organizations in history, boasting tens of thousands of fighters from more than 80 countries.

IS, however, always had a fundamental weakness: it had no friends, let alone allies, and alienated everybody in its path. The group’s utter depravity toward local populations as well as its desire to supplant governments was ultimately its undoing. The West, with the U.S. in the lead, viewed IS as a magnet for jihadists who sought to attack its people. Minorities like the Kurds and Yezidis saw IS as a bunch of messianic, bloodthirsty brutes who sought to wipe out their communities. And states that otherwise had intense geopolitical rivalries with each other—Iran, Russia, Iraq, Syria, Turkey, and the Gulf states to name but a few—all agreed that destroying IS was in their collective interest.

The results speak for themselves. Courtesy of an intense three-year U.S. bombing operation, combined with a hard-fought ground campaign that included everybody from U.S. special operations forces and the Iraqi army to the Kurdish peshmerga and Iranian-backed Shia militias, IS advances were stopped and rolled back. By December 2017, the Iraqi government declared that IS’ territorial caliphate was in the ash heap of history (a similar declaration was made in Syria about 15 months later). The caliphate remains eliminated to this day, so much so that a senior U.S. official participated in a think-tank event earlier this year marking the 5th anniversary of its defeat.

Many in the Beltway argue that just because IS’ territorial caliphate is no longer around, that doesn’t mean the threat is over. This is a legitimate concern; IS is reportedly on track to more than double the number of attacks in Iraq and Syria compared to last year.

Yet to think that the entire counter-IS effort will unravel absent U.S. troops is to leave all the other local actors without agency. The Iraqi government, the Turks, the Russians, and even the loathed Assad regime continue to have a self-interest in ensuring that IS doesn’t rebuild its caliphate. Their military capabilities against IS are also better today than when the mission began a decade ago. The Iraqi army is as proficient at planning, organizing, and conducting independent operations against IS holdouts along the country’s periphery than it has ever been. The same thing can be said about the peshmerga, which according to the Defense Department’s Inspector General for the counter-IS mission, has improved mission planning and counterinsurgency operations in their area of responsibility.

The U.S. would still have options even in the event of a full troop withdrawal. The U.S. intelligence community would surely remain laser-focused on the group and won’t hesitate to take action in the event an imminent plot is detected or a high-profile terrorist rears his head. The U.S. has proven it can do both without a ground presence. In August 2022, a year after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, Washington killed Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike. This January, the U.S. warned Iran about a pending IS attack that eventually came to fruition. In March, the U.S. did the same with Russia, sharing highly specific intelligence on an IS-orchestrated plot in Moscow the Russians unfortunately failed to stop.

Is IS completely down and out? No, but that’s the wrong question. The right question is whether U.S. interests are best served by staying put in Iraq in perpetuity, particularly when doing so presents even more security problems.

The U.S. ground presence is a gift to Iran and its allied militias in the Middle East. That’s because the presence of U.S. bases on foreign lands give them a rallying call and a nearby target; U.S. troops have been targeted more than 200 times since October in large part over Washington’s support for Israel. One of those attacks, in late January, killed three U.S. personnel at a small outpost in Jordan, near its border with Iraq and Syria.

President Biden retaliated by striking dozens of militia and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps positions in Iraq and Syria. Yet rocket attacks resumed in July, and in August, five U.S. troops were wounded as two rockets slammed into the al-Asad air base. The U.S., in other words, is taking unnecessary risk on behalf of a mission that was achieved years prior.

The Biden Administration has set the stage for a more normal, business-like relationship with the Iraqi government. The outstanding question, which is still to be determined, is whether the next President will finally realize that the U.S. has achieved all it can in Iraq. And if so, when?