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The Guardian
2 days ago
- Health
- The Guardian
Mothers fight to protect children from drugs as ‘hotspotting' takes hold in Lesotho
Pontso Tumisi remembers seeing crystal meth for the first time in her daughter's bedroom several years ago. When her daughter said the crystals were bath salts, she believed her. Now, she regrets that naivety. Tumisi says a lack of knowledge about drugs among parents and guardians has allowed many children's use of dangerous substances to go undetected. Amplifying the risks inherent in drug-taking is 'bluetoothing' or 'hotspotting', which involves drawing the blood of an intoxicated person and injecting into others to share the high – a trend that's been seen in several countries over the past few years, including Zimbabwe and South Africa. In Lesotho, hotspotting usually involves crystal meth, which has become one of the most common drugs in urban areas. Lesotho has one of the highest HIV rates in the world, and as Tumisi points out, bluetoothing increases the risk of spreading the virus as well as other blood-borne diseases. Tumisi, 45, is now a public relations officer for Mokhosi oa Mangoana (A Mother's Cry), a women's organisation spearheading the fight against substance abuse in Lesotho, a landlocked country surrounded by South Africa, where half the population live below the poverty line. 'You would be shocked what parents are doing for their children out of love but unknowingly aiding substance abuse. Some are made to purchase different items and substances under the pretext of learning materials,' Tumisi says. 'Young children are using drugs in plain sight because parents and guardians have no information about harmful substances. Parents are buying their children things like meth pipes thinking they are for school, and hookahs and vapes, which are all harmful, thinking they're fashionable. 'When they think of drugs, they think of the smell of marijuana, but the bulk of substances used nowadays don't have such distinct smells. Some are edibles and they look just like sweets.' While there are no official statistics on drug abuse in Lesotho, Mphonyane Mofokeng, founder of the Anti-Drug Abuse Association of Lesotho (Adaal), says a recent study by the Heal Our Land Organisation showed that 68% of high school pupils had used illicit substances. The study was carried out in the northern region of the country, which includes the capital, Maseru. 'This is proof enough of the high magnitude of substance use among young people in Lesotho,' says Mofokeng. One parent told Adaal that her child started 'hotspotting' during the school holidays. 'Due to the shocking statistics and the harm that children are exposing themselves to through hotspotting, we are stepping up efforts to come up with preventive interventions as well as rehabilitation,' Mofokeng says. Maj Gen Khomo Mohobo, who is part of an army-run youth development initiative at the Lesotho Defence Force (LDF), says bluetoothing is a serious concern. 'Young people, who sometimes do not have enough money to buy the drugs they want, are exposing themselves to all kinds of dangers by injecting themselves with the blood of others,' he says. 'A fix may cost R300 [about £12] and they contribute money and only one person takes the drugs. Once that person gets intoxicated, their friends then draw his or her blood and inject it into their own veins to get high. 'They call it hotspotting, but there are lot of terms that we hear the youths using when we do our youth development initiatives,' he adds. When Tumisi realised her daughter was taking drugs, she contacted another woman, Mamphana Molosti, who lived in a neighbouring village and had been attacked by her drug addicted son. They decided to form an association of women in similar situations. Mokhosi oa Mangoana provides information, counselling and training for mothers whose children are taking drugs and offers advice on detecting signs of substance abuse. The group has also been lobbying parliament to enact stricter laws and establish a working committee to monitor the situation, as well as building a rehabilitation centre. But that has not been easy, she says. There is little political will to implement their ideas and they face frequent resistance from lower-ranking law enforcement officers, says Tumisi. Sign up to Global Dispatch Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features and pictures, curated by our global development team after newsletter promotion 'We have reported dealers to different police stations multiple times and even tried to effect citizens' arrests but that has not worked. In fact, we have realised that in some cases, officers are involved [in the drugs trade],' she says. Molotsi, 47, survived a brutal attack in 2023 when her then 23-year-old son stabbed her after she questioned him about some money he had stolen. 'I only had 50 maloti [£2]in the house and my son took it and bought drugs. When I asked him, he became angry and he attacked me. He used everything that he could lay his hands on until he took a knife and stabbed me multiple times. 'The doctors said I was saved by one stab wound, which punctured my chest and allowed blood to flow out. Had it not been for that, my lungs would have filled up and I would have died.' By the time she regained consciousness, her son was in custody. Molotsi does not see her son as a monster but as someone who needed help. She visits him every week and is hoping he will be paroled soon from Maseru's squalid Central Correctional Institute. She fears that if he serves all of his six-year term, he could come back more addicted. The prison featured in a Netflix documentary on the world's toughest prisons. Earlier this month, Mokhosi oa Mangoana hosted trainers from the drug advisory programme (DAP) of the Colombo Plan, a Sri Lankan-based intergovernmental development organisation. The DAP, which operates in 80 countries, helps teach community leaders, counsellors, health professionals and police officers about the prevention and treatment of drug use. The team was led by Colombo Plan's Africa manager, George Murimi, who said cases of drug abuse had increased exponentially in the past decade. 'We are receiving a lot of calls, mainly from women. That is an indicator that cases are more rampant,' says Tumisi. But she and Molotsi say they have not lost hope. 'We are prepared to continue fighting,' says Tumisi. Yet they worry about the prevalence of dangerous methods of drug-taking such as bluetoothing. 'The work that has been done in fighting HIV and Aids is being reversed,' says Tumisi. Mokhosi oa Mangoana, which now has 150 members, is working to educate ordinary citizens as well as health workers to curb stigmatisation in healthcare centres and communities. Its members are all women as they are the worst affected, while men seldom open up about such matters, says Tumisi. 'As women, we are at risk. We are threatened daily. I have been attacked multiple times and my daughter has been assaulted and drugged in an attempt to deter me from fighting, but I'm not fazed. All hope will be lost if we buckle under pressure.'
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Virgin Media O2 mobile users' locations exposed for two years in security flaw
The locations of millions of Virgin Media O2 mobile customers were exposed for up to two years until a network security flaw was corrected, it has emerged. Before the fix was implemented on 18 May, anyone with a Virgin Media O2 sim card could use their phone to obtain sensitive information about the network's other customers using a 4G-enabled device, including their location to the nearest mobile mast. The flaw has now been patched and reported to the UK's communications and data protection regulators. Virgin Media O2 said there was no evidence that its network security systems had been externally breached. The locations of customers could be tracked most precisely in urban areas, where mobile masts cover areas as small as 100 square metres. Dan Williams, an IT specialist who discovered the defect, wrote that he was 'extremely disappointed' not to receive a response when he flagged the issue, which was resolved only after he blogged about it two months later, on 17 May. He said there had been no explanation for the delay. He wrote: 'I don't want to be the enemy, I simply want to feel comfortable using my phone.' Williams noticed Virgin Media O2's failure to configure its 4G calling software correctly when he was looking at messaging between his device and the network to work out call quality between himself and another O2 customer. 'I noticed that the responses from the network were extremely long, and upon inspection noticed that extra information from the recipient of the call was sent to the call initiator,' he told the Guardian. This included normally private information, such as the cell ID, which is the current cell tower a caller is connected to; information about sim card, which could be used for a cyber-attack; and the phone model, which can be used to work out how to access it. He believed that it was 'possible this was used in the wild and not reported against' though there was no way to quantify that. If it had been that would be 'quite a large problem', as 'there are situations where this data is extremely, extremely sensitive', for example domestic abuse survivors or government workers, he added. 'I came across it by accident. Someone purposefully trying to find these kinds of vulnerabilities would have probably come across it,' he said. 'There are white papers detailing this exact scenario and warning networks against doing this.' The FT, which first reported Williams's findings, said he had tested the problem with another O2 customer, successfully tracking them to Copenhagen, Denmark. Disabling the 4G calling feature on devices would have prevented them from being tracked, though this is not possible on some handsets, such as iPhones. The issue may have also affected some customers of Giffgaff and Tesco Mobile, which use Virgin Media O2's network. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion Alan Woodward, cybersecurity professor at Surrey University, said location data 'could be valuable for scams such as social engineering, or even blackmail' and for phishing attempts referencing a recent location, though they would need other information about the person for this to work. He said this was unlikely to happen for normal people who were not criminal targets, but nevertheless fixing the vulnerability should have been a 'matter of urgency'. A Virgin Media O2 spokesperson said: 'Our engineering teams had been working on and testing a fix for this configuration issue over a number of weeks, and we can confirm this fix was fully implemented on 18 May. 'Our customers do not need to take any action, and we have no evidence of this issue being exploited beyond the two illustrative examples given by a network engineer in his blog which we reported to the ICO [Information Commissioner's Office] and Ofcom. There has been no external compromise of our network security at any time.' An Ofcom spokesperson said it was 'aware that O2 has experienced a network security issue', and is in contact with the provider to establish the scale and cause of the problem. An ICO spokesperson said that after assessing the information provided by Telefonica and remedial steps taken, 'we will not be taking further action at this stage'.
WIRED
6 days ago
- Health
- WIRED
Hummingbirds Are Evolving to Adapt to Life With Humans
May 29, 2025 5:00 AM Anna's hummingbirds have evolved to have longer, larger beaks to access backyard feeders in urban areas. It could be a step toward becoming a 'commensal' species that lives alongside humans, like pigeons. A hummingbird drinking nectar from a feeder. Photograph: LAP/GETTY IAMGES Some species of hummingbird are adapting to urban life by undergoing evolutionary changes in their anatomy, influenced by the proliferation of artificial drinking fountains. According to some biologists, this might show that these birds are on their way to becoming commensal with humans—benefiting from living closely alongside them—like pigeons have in urban areas. A recent study found that the size and shape of the beaks of Anna's hummingbirds ( Calypte anna ), a species native to North America, have changed. A hummingbird's beak is naturally long and slender in order to access nectar located in deep inside flowers. However, in recent decades, the beaks of urban Anna's hummingbirds have evolved to be significantly longer and larger to better access sugar-laced drinking fountains installed outside of homes, which have proliferated in urban areas. This adaptation suggests that these feeders offer hummingbirds more food than nectar-filled flowers. The study, which looked at reported sightings of the birds as well museum specimens from the past 160 years, also found that males are developing sharper, more pointed beaks, possibly to compete with other hummingbirds for access to these sugar-filled fountains. Populations of these hummingbirds expanded northward in California at the same time as the establishment of urban centers where feeding could take place. The researchers discovered that the population density of Calypte anna has also increased over time, and found that this appears to be linked to the proliferation of feeding fountains and nectar-producing eucalyptus trees, both of which were introduced to the region by humans. These morphological changes to the hummingbirds have occurred rapidly. According to the study, Calypte anna populations in 1930 were very different from those in 1950, when the birds' bills had already begun to grow. In just 20 years, equivalent to about 10 generations of these birds, evolution left its mark, the authors note. To conduct the research, the team used sighting data for the species in all 58 Californian counties between 1938 and 2019, in addition to analyzing specimens preserved in museums. They also turned to old newspaper advertisements to estimate the number of feeders in use during the last century. Finally, they developed a computational model to predict hummingbird expansion, taking into account assisted feeding and the presence of eucalyptus trees. An Anna's hummingbird in flight.'They seem to be moving where we are going and changing quite rapidly to succeed in their new environments. We can think of the Anna's hummingbird as a commensal species, similar to pigeons,' says Nicolas Alexandre, coauthor of the study and a geneticist at Colossal Biosciences, a biotechnology and de-extinction company based in Dallas, Texas. Hummingbird feeders or drinkers use sugar water to attract hummingbirds and provide food during seasons when flower nectar is scarce. According to the journal Science, one of the oldest records of these devices dates back to 1928, although they were probably in use much earlier. In general, they do not pose a risk to the species, as long as they are cleaned regularly to avoid the proliferation of bacteria and fungi that can affect hummingbirds. Another species of bird, the common pigeon ( Columba livia ) has also adapted to living in cities. Pigeons can be found in urban spaces around the world, taking advantage of the plentiful nesting sites and food that cities have to offer. They exist in urban environments without having a significant impact on human activities, this being a clear example of commensalism, where one species gains advantages by linking with another without directly harming it. Columba livia originally inhabited rocky areas of Europe, Asia, and North Africa. However, it was domesticated more than 5,000 years ago as a source of food and due to its excellent sense of direction, which meant the birds could be used for carrying written messages. As a result, many were released into new habitats, with some choosing to live in cities, becoming part of the urban fauna. Today, they are one of the most common birds in the world. This story originally appeared on WIRED en Español and has been translated from Spanish.
Forbes
7 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
American Cities Are Sinking
We've taken water for granted, and because of this, our cities are sinking. The overuse of groundwater leads to the depletion of aquifers, the emptied earth leading to compaction. When we add weight to the surface by building sprawling metropolises, the earth's surface will sink. This phenomena, subsidence, is actively happening across every major American city. Of the 28 cities recently studied, on average 20% of each is slowly sinking. There are differences between different cities, and within them, but the consistent finding is that our most populated American urban areas are sinking. This increases the risk of flooding and infrastructure damage, with Houston having the most exposed area and New York having the highest at-risk population. Vertical Land Motion measures the amount of subsidence or uplift. If part of the city sinks or rises a few millimeters each year, it's not just this change in depth that may hurt a building. If one side is sinking and the other doesn't, this will weaken the building and put people in danger. Less than one percent of the buildings surveyed were said to be in danger, which leaves 29,000 buildings as high risk or very high risk. Not all incidences of subsidence or uplift are directly attributable solely to groundwater overextraction, but in confined aquifers there was a significant correlation. If we don't want our cities to sink, or for us to run out of groundwater, we should immediately address the causes of aquifer depletion. Our demand exceeds supply, which is to say that if we continue to use more water, which we will, then we need to do so more efficiently. Irrigation, industry, and power generation account for the majority of water use in America so we'll need high level change. Personally choosing to use less water is a nice start, but grander actions will be needed to effectively address the interrelated issues that drive the overuse of water. Turning off the tap while you brush your teeth is sweet, but ultimately futile. We'll have 10 billion people by 2050 with 55% more water consumption than today. Why is this happening? Populations have increased. More people need more water to drink and food to eat, which requires water to grow. Agriculture, Industry and our need for electricity account for most of our water use, with outdated methods and poor governance that haven't adapted to the changing world. Destroying forests in one part of the world affects other regions. Destroying Forests Destroys the Source of Water The best strategy to save water access is to stop deforestation. If we cut down the forests then we destroy the source of rainfall, destabilize the air currents, and affect the climate of the wider region. Without forests to serve this regulatory function, we'd instead have droughts and floods over hardpack, lifeless earth. In the absence of the tree roots, there is nothing to guide the rainfall down into the aquifers. Destroying forests creates deserts, sandstorms, dry riverbeds and arid croplands. Deforestation isn't a local problem. We live in an interconnected world with a global hydrological cycle; clear-cutting densely canopied forests in one part of the world will affect another. The Tropical Belt is under the most serious threat. Irrigation and Agriculture For growing crops, drip irrigation is the way to go. Flood irrigation is still used in some places, and continues to be proven inefficient when compared with modern techniques. Drip irrigation reduces water use significantly with estimates ranging from 20-60%, as the water goes directly to the plants' root systems rather than saturating a whole field. In California's agricultural regions, policies are such that if a farmer doesn't use all of their allotment, they might lose it next year. This compels unnecessary, wasteful use. Reforming laws like these would save large quantities of water. Given that we live in modern times of remote sensing, and that you can't stop hearing about AI, let's put it to good use. Newer irrigation systems consist of sensors to monitor soil moisture content, and smart controllers to release water as needed. Technology can help us address our modern issues if we embrace innovation. Agrivoltaics and Floatovoltaics The practice of installing solar panels over crops has seen global success. France just announced their era of 'Agrivoltaics 2.0'. They've adopted Agrivoltaics as national policy; with 52% of French land classified as agricultural, they've approved plans to add 2 GW of Agrivoltaic solar per year, by 2026. Goji Berries in China, grape growers in France, and herders in America, have seen at the least comparable results with this method. Floating solar panels on reservoirs or installing them over canals saves land and makes the panels operate more efficiently. The solar panels are cooled by the evaporating water (same as in Agrivoltaics), and the solar panels reduce the water lost to evaporation. For hydropower dams, there are further benefits beyond reducing water loss by up to 90%. On a sunny day we can use the solar panels to generate electricity, which saves the need for hydropower. This saves water while still generating electricity. As they already have the infrastructure to transmit electricity, we can take advantage of the existing transmission wires, and save the cost of building all that out again. (picture) From supplying electricity to fish farms to potentially powering submerged data centers, floating solar has investment potential. Deloitte are among the Westerners to have endorsed Floatovoltaics (floating solar panels), releasing this report in 2021 recognizing the approach as commercially viable. Asia has already been on this, and several nations are currently operating or constructing giga-watt scale floating solar farms. Americans have reservoirs and water that we'd like to conserve, we could do this too. Why wait? Herders in the Sahel are clashing with farmers. The herders follow the changing rain patterns, which brings them into conflict with the sedentary farmers. Mexican farmers seized a dam to protest the water that was being sent to America under outdated treaty obligations. California has set a good example with massive fines for water theft, but our global problem will require broad action. The need to address the problem of water scarcity grows every year, as temperatures and populations increase, and exacerbate societal tensions. Our limited time, and water, are dwindling.
Bloomberg
21-05-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
Republicans Have a SALT Tax Deal. Who Will Benefit?
For as long as Americans have paid federal income taxes, they've been able to subtract some of what they pay to their state and local governments from their taxable income. This federal deduction for state and local taxes — the SALT deduction, for short — has a big influence on how the tax burden is divided. It tends to help taxpayers in wealthier, more urban states, where sales taxes are higher and real estate costs more. President Donald Trump's first-term tax law, approved in 2017, capped the SALT deduction at $10,000 — the first across-the-board cap on the deduction in its history. In the years since, removing or raising the cap has become an important cause for lawmakers representing districts in high-tax states.
