Hi. I’m a bit of a news junkie.

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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • I don’t think so. There are other important parts in the article:

    For the first time, the annual event will also involve troops from the Australian and French military. Fourteen other countries in Asia and Europe will attend as observers. The exercises will run until May 10.

    The 2024 exercises are also the first to take place outside of Philippine territorial waters.

    “Some of the exercises will take place in the South China Sea in an area outside of the Philippines’ territorial sea. It’s a direct challenge to China’s expansive claims” in the region, Philippine political analyst Richard Heydarian told DW.

    He added that some of the exercises this year will also be close to Taiwan.

    This year’s exercises have a “dual orientation pushing against China’s aggressive intentions both in the South China Sea but also in Taiwan,” he added.







  • Agreed. Here’s some more context:

    Korea has the second-lowest number of physicians among members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, leading to some of the highest doctors’ wages among surveyed member nations.

    Doctors in Korea earn the most among 28 member countries that provided related data. Following Korea, the highest earners are in the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland and the UK. The US was among the countries for which data was not provided.

    Measured by PPP, which takes into account local living costs, salaried specialists earned an average of $192,749 annually in 2020, According to the 2023 OECD Health Statistics report. That was 60 percent more than the OECD average. Korean GP salaries ranked sixth.

    … The country also ranked low in the number of medical school graduates – 7.3 per 100,000 people, which is the third-lowest after Israel and Japan, and nearly half the OCED average of 14 graduates for every 100,000 people.

    https://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20230730000088


  • These doctors are not telling the whole story. More context from the article:

    Public surveys show that a majority of South Koreans support the government’s push to create more doctors, and critics say that doctors, one of the highest-paid professions in South Korea, worry about lower incomes due to a rise in the number of doctors.

    Officials say more doctors are required to address a long-standing shortage of physicians in rural areas and in essential but low-paying specialties. But doctors say newly recruited students would also try to work in the capital region and in high-paying fields like plastic surgery and dermatology. They say the government plan would also likely result in doctors performing unnecessary treatments due to increased competition.


  • Your comment seems to suggest that the boat was far away from Taiwan, which was not the case. For context, the boat was touring Taiwan’s Kinmen Islands, which are just a few kilometers/miles from the Chinese mainland (Wikipedia says 10 km/6.2 mi), and had to veer toward the Chinese side of the water to avoid shoals.

    According to the article, this seems like an escalation by the PRC:

    For years, sightseeing boat tours between Kinmen and Xiamen, the closest city on the Chinese mainland, have offered Taiwanese tourists a chance to gaze at China’s dazzling skyline without the hassle of border checks, with China operating similar tour boats for its citizens too.

    Ian Chong, a political scientist at the National University of Singapore, said the latest measures are part of China’s “gray zone” tactics, referring to coercive or aggressive state actions that stop short of open warfare – something Beijing has used increasingly in recent years in the East and South China Seas, as well as toward Taiwan.

    The inspection of a Taiwanese tour boat by China’s coast guard, which Chong said had not happened before, was meant to provoke Taiwan and see if it would either escalate or accept this sort of behavior as given.



  • To be more specific:

    Asbestos is a known carcinogen to humans, meaning it is capable of causing cancer. When asbestos fibres become airborne and are inhaled, they are known to lodge in the lungs and other parts of the airways, where they can cause scarring, inflammation, asbestosis – an inflammatory condition leading to permanent lung damage – and cell damage that lead to cancers, including mesothelioma, an incurable cancer of the lining that covers organs such as the lungs. For decades, however, the risk from swallowing asbestos has been thought of as small as most fibres were assumed to pass through the gut and be expelled in faeces.