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HealthRe: Kidney Failure: It’s Not Only Alcohol. Let’s Focus On Our Food - Lady (video) by Cousin9999: 8:15am On Sep 01, 2024
descarado:
Which fruit will he frow in his house as a tenant in the city.

Mcheew.
He can grow stuff in a pot or bag on the balcony.

https://www.nairaland.com/6060136/growing-raising-small-home
Foreign AffairsRe: Musk's X Banned In Brazil After Disinformation Row by Cousin9999: 4:23pm On Aug 31, 2024
Interesting...
PoliticsRe: FCCPC Gives Traders 1-Month Deadline To Crash Prices Of Goods by Cousin9999: 11:53pm On Aug 29, 2024
Scatterscatter:
I feel like giving this man a “big konk” on his head.
FG keeps increasing Custom duty + all the shenanigans that happens at the Port, yet you want the price of imported commodities to be cheap.

This people go just smoke Igbo finish start to dey talk anyhow.🙄
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/b9/f3/a9/b9f3a9db0d21191503dcfc1e2c15f7bd.gif
EducationRe: Thousands Of International Students In Canada Face Deportation, Sparking Protes by Cousin9999: 10:51pm On Aug 28, 2024
People are tired of Indians.
RomanceRe: Finland Girls Are So Pretty by Cousin9999: 7:59am On Aug 28, 2024
I wouldn't smash them with someone else's body parts. They're sociopaths and they look like this:

CrimeRe: World's Police In Technological Arms Race With Nigerian Mafia by Cousin9999:
.
CrimeRe: World's Police In Technological Arms Race With Nigerian Mafia by Cousin9999:
Meanwhile:

Cosa Nostra and the three other main Italian mafia groups - the Camorra, 'Ndrangheta and Sacra Corona Unita - have an estimated 25,000 members in total, with 250,000 affiliates worldwide, the FBI says.
The head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Anne Milgram, told Congress in July that Mexico’s two most powerful criminal organizations — the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation cartel — had almost 45,000 members, associates, facilitators and brokers in more than 100 countries.
Smith, author of the 2021 book “The Dope: The Real History of the Mexican Drug Trade,” pointed out that the model fails to capture the number of police officers, military personnel, politicians and other officials on cartel payrolls.
In 2021, the paper said, Mexico recorded 34,000 intentional homicides, more than quadruple the total in 2007, when the government launched a futile crackdown on cartels.

Fentanyl — churned out in clandestine Mexican laboratories — has flooded into the United States in recent years, causing tens of thousands of deaths
Human trafficking-fueled fraud is exploding in Southeast Asia with organized crime rings raking in close to $3 trillion in illicit revenue annually, the head of Interpol has said in comments that reveal the huge profits being earned by cartels.
Victims from across Asia are often duped into seemingly legitimate jobs around the region and are then trafficked into scam compounds where they face serious abuse, including forced labor, arbitrary detention, degrading treatment or torture – often with minimal or no help from local authorities.
ETA:
As South American production surged over the past decade, Balkan traffickers were perfectly positioned to stoke European demand, authorities say. They now dominate the complex logistics of moving coke from Andean production labs to street sellers in Paris, London and Berlin, helping to transform Europe into the world’s No. 1 cocaine market, Reuters reporting shows.

They’ve done it by tapping criminal contacts in Balkan diaspora communities on both sides of the Atlantic, and by infiltrating the maritime shipping system that moves an estimated 90% of the world’s trade in goods, according to U.S., European and Latin American counter-narcotics officials.
FoodRe: Cook In Your Kitchen, Take Pictures And Post It Here. SIMPLE! by Cousin9999: 7:07am On Aug 28, 2024
Maeve7:
I think I would have liked it better with the noodles they used in the video and fresh spinach but I was improvising. I didn’t have all the ingredients or not enough. I was also thinking of adding chili flakes at first but then decided to go for the original taste. Your idea with the chili oil is what I will try next time though. smiley


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAjcvw2OdnY&pp=ygUTd2hpdGUgbGFzYWduYSBzb3VwIA%3D%3D
You could also simplify it and make a basic cream and mushroom sauce with pappardelle. But be warned, it's a rich sauce.
TravelRe: Lagos Red Line Begins Partial Invitational Passenger Operations by Cousin9999: 2:58am On Aug 28, 2024
RomanceRe: "I Had Sex With Everybody I Wanted To Now It’s Time To Get Married" - Girl by Cousin9999: 1:59am On Aug 27, 2024
smh lol

What? You would rather she didn't and cheat on you with random dudes?
RomanceRe: Why is Flavour Gay?...Never again goin to his useless Gay Concert! by Cousin9999: 1:56am On Aug 27, 2024
Wow. His father needs to come and get his son. lol
TravelRe: David Solomo Becomes 1st Black Man To Hike All 282 Munros In Scotland (pics/vid) by Cousin9999: 1:53am On Aug 27, 2024
Yankee101:
Not superlative
We have women in Africa that travel miles to fetch water daily and children that walk for hours just to attend school

I really don’t consider this an achivement
Fair point.
SportsRe: Israel Adesanya: Lagos Women Are Runs Girls, Ashawo Kobo Kobo (Video) by Cousin9999: 11:44pm On Aug 26, 2024
This is another example of why I stopped watching UFC, besides the fact that it's awful to make a "sport" out of doing that to someone's body.

Please understand that the UFC is full of loser sellouts like this.
Foreign AffairsRe: Russian Drones Enter Germany's Nuclear Power Plant, NATO On Alert (Photos) by Cousin9999: 5:51am On Aug 26, 2024
This is...a lot.
Foreign AffairsRe: The Guardian View On Kamala Harris’s Speech: The Democrats Have Liftoff by Cousin9999: 5:49am On Aug 26, 2024
DaddyCoool:
Beats me why a Nigerian will support Trump
They're getting paid. Some of it is digital blackface.
Foreign AffairsRe: “this Will Finish Us.” by Cousin9999(op): 5:21am On Aug 25, 2024
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Foreign AffairsRe: Luxury Hunting Firm Linked To Decades Of Poaching In Tanzania by Cousin9999(op): 5:20am On Aug 25, 2024
https://www.nairaland.com/8067840/finish-us

The old life: He’d had all the things that made a person such as him rich and respected. Three wives, 14 children, a large compound with 75 cows and enough land to graze them—“such sweet land,” he would say when he could bear to think of it—and that was how things had been going until recently.
The new life: no cows, because the Tanzanian government had seized every single one of them. No compound, because the government had bulldozed it, along with hundreds of others. No land, because more and more of the finest, lushest land in northern Tanzania was being set aside for conservation, which turned out to mean for trophy hunters, and tourists on “bespoke expeditions,” and cappuccino trucks in proximity to buffalo viewing—anything and anyone except the people who had lived there since the 17th century, the pastoralists known as the Maasai.
This was his plan: one cow, because that was the starting point of what it meant to be a Maasai man, which was what he still wanted to be.
Foreign AffairsRe: Luxury Hunting Firm Linked To Decades Of Poaching In Tanzania by Cousin9999(op): 5:16am On Aug 25, 2024
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/world/article-tanzanias-maasai-protest-eviction-in-the-name-of-conservation/

“We have been intimidated, assaulted, arrested, fined, beaten by military and conservation officers,” Maasai lawyer Denis Oleshangay told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from his office in the northern Tanzanian city of Arusha.
The Tanzanian Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but the government has previously said that relocation was voluntary and done to protect Ngorongoro from overpopulation and cattle grazing.

Oleshangay said luxury hotels, safari campsites and lodges in and around the conservation areas were more harmful to the environment than the Maasai who strive to protect it.
While some 70,000 Maasai were evicted in 2022 to make way for trophy hunting lodges in the Loliondo ancestral lands, Oleshangay said a further 100,000 in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area now face intimidation and abuse from authorities to relocate in the name of conservation.
Foreign AffairsLuxury Hunting Firm Linked To Decades Of Poaching In Tanzania by Cousin9999(op): 5:08am On Aug 25, 2024
Whistleblowers speaking to Mongabay have reported instances of poaching over decades in Tanzania linked to a luxury hunting firm catering to the United Arab Emirates’ elites and royals.

The insiders are from Ortello — sometimes spelled Otterlo — Business Corporation (OBC), which operates shoots in Loliondo, part of Tanzania’s northern Ngorongoro district.

Interviews with the sources, who requested pseudonyms due to safety concerns, provide a rare insight into OBC-organized hunting expeditions, which attracted members of UAE royalty and their associates at least once or twice a year from the 1990s until as late as 2016. They report that some of these trips culminated in live animals being flown abroad.

Exports of live wildlife have been outlawed in Tanzania since 2016 to protect rare animals and birds. In 2022, lawmakers swiftly reversed a controversial decision to lift the ban that had been in place for six years.

The sources’ testimony comes as Tanzanian authorities have served waves of eviction notices affecting Maasai pastoralists in and around Loliondo, as part of efforts to lease 1,500 square kilometers (580 square miles) of ancestral land to OBC.

In 2023, an Amnesty International report condemned government forces for violence and mass arrests that left an estimated 70,000 Maasai without access to their traditional grazing areas.

To verify the whistleblowers’ allegations as fully as possible, we observed OBC’s hunting estate, interviewed nearby villagers and obtained court documents, company filings and shipping records.

Based in Dubai, OBC was registered as a foreign company in Tanzania in 1992 under the business name Royal Safaris Conservation Co. LLC. It is also registered in the secrecy jurisdictions of Panama and the British Virgin Islands.

The company has previously been accused of bribery in Tanzania, resulting in a court case that ended in a plea deal. It has also been implicated in forced evictions of local Maasai.

OBC, its directors and Tanzanian authorities did not respond to individual requests for comment.

Hunters’ hideout
Mongabay observed the OBC’s hunting estate in Pololeti Game Reserve, Loliondo, and documented three sites that whistleblowers reported were used by the Emirati VIPs.

The facilities stand out in the vast savanna grasslands where gazelles, zebras and other native animals roam.

Tourists may flock to this landscape each year to witness its great migrating herds of wildebeest. But OBC makes sure those who prefer shooting rifles over cameras have their needs met.

Its structures stretch across three sites: Chali One, a hilltop complex serving as the main base for visiting elites, complete with a telecom tower and permanent security guards; Lima One, a storage facility and vehicle depot; and the Lima Two airstrip and buildings.

‘The guests’
Khalifa (a pseudonym), joined OBC in the 1990s and worked there for more than 15 years. The former employee told Mongabay that the Emirati tourists were known euphemistically as “the guests.”

Read more here:
https://news.mongabay.com/2024/08/luxury-hunting-firm-linked-to-decades-of-poaching-in-tanzania-whistleblowers-say/

Foreign AffairsCopper Exports From DRC To The US Begin Via Lobito Atlantic Railway by Cousin9999(op): 4:57am On Aug 25, 2024
The first US shipment of copper from mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to be transported by the Lobito Atlantic Railway (LAR) has been loaded.

A cargo of copper cathodes is headed to Baltimore after arriving by train at the port of Lobito in Angola on August 19, global commodities trader Trafigura Group, which is part of a consortium with a concession for the line, said in a statement.

The shipment follows several previous shipments of copper to ports in Europe and the Far East since the Lobito Atlantic Railway took over the concession in January of this year.

LAR, a joint venture backed by Trafigura, Portuguese construction group Mota-Engil and railway operator Vecturis, was granted a 30-year concession in 2022 to operate the 1,300-kilometer rail network.

The six-day rail journey demonstrated “the time-efficient western route to market that is now available for minerals and metals produced in the Congolese Copperbelt,” Trafigura said.

The Lobito corridor is seen as a key export route from mines in Congo and Zambia for minerals critical to the energy transition, including copper and cobalt.

The US and EU, under the Group of Seven’s Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, are supporting the project as part of efforts to counter China’s dominance in the Central African Copperbelt.

https://www.mining.com/copper-exports-from-drc-to-the-us-begin-via-lobito-atlantic-railway/
TravelRe: For Sale: The Pervasive Organ Trade In Asia by Cousin9999(op): 4:45am On Aug 25, 2024
Looking Ahead: Bolstering Legal Frameworks and Boosting Awareness
In addition to the Declaration of Istanbul, countries are attempting different measures to address the illegal organ trade. China, another affected country, has taken a series of legal steps in recent years. The government announced a monitoring system in 2014 to counter and prevent the “private” sale of donor organs. While new rules published in December 2023 are powerful, analysts worry that the involvement of institutions such as military hospitals to perform illegal operations could hinder the rules’ efficacy. Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas described the rules as "a big smokescreen” because there is lack of information regarding where the organs are being sourced and which part of the population is benefiting from them.

Indonesia has also taken measures to combat organ trafficking. In 2009, Indonesia signed into its national law the Palermo Convention—also known as the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime—a 2000 multilateral treaty encompassing organized crime related to organ trafficking. In 2015, Indonesia also signed the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Convention Against Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, a regional and legally binding agreement that aims to provide action plans and international obligations to its member countries regarding victim protection and the prevention of trafficking. Even with all of these measures, many of which are decades old, Indonesia remains a key player in the illegal organ trade. Different officials are calling for more organized and concentrated task forces that would enforce anti-trafficking laws, rather than relying solely on non-binding international treaties with largely symbolic value.

Other critics have called for informational campaigns to increase awareness—both from governments and humanitarian NGOs—of this overlooked yet pervasive illegal market. Increased awareness would strengthen communication for detecting illegal operations, create mechanisms to increase transparency between organ donors and recipients, and combat the misconceptions that lead many victims to donate their organs (for instance, the fallacy that victims will be paid what they are promised).

There are different possible solutions for solving the crisis of the illegal organ market. A first step would be instituting a better organ distribution system for high-income countries, ensuring equity among organ recipients. Greater research into regulating donations and waiting lists in an equitable, efficient way can ease the lack of organs available. This step would help directly combat organ transplant tourism and shift some of the attention away from poorer countries and their ready supply.

At the same time, there cannot be a fast and hard solution for combating such a debated issue as long as the root causes of the supply of donors exist. The illegal trade will continue to thrive if the underlying economic and educational conditions that catalyze the market are not remedied.

https://hir.harvard.edu/for-sale-the-pervasive-organ-trade-in-asia/
TravelRe: For Sale: The Pervasive Organ Trade In Asia by Cousin9999(op):
Catfishing for Organs and the Surprising Presence of Social Media
To recruit potential organ sellers, recruiters use methods common to other forms of human trafficking. These include false promises of employment abroad, withholding of passports, threats, and physical abuse. Recruiters may also emphasize the desperation of the buyer as a manipulative mechanism and tell donors that they cannot revoke consent once the buyer commits to the transaction.

Organ brokers have also employed social media, thereby escalating the illicit organ trade. Recruiters create numerous Facebook pages under the guise of transplant support groups looking for potential organ donors. Their true identities concealed, buyers also pose as relatives urgently seeking an organ transplant or as foreigners to present themselves as more reliable, since victims often think that foreigners will pay more. Outreach over social media also allows brokers to change identities often to avoid tracking by law enforcement.

Transplant Tourism
Illegal organ trading also exacerbates international inequality. “Transplant tourism” is a term used to describe typically wealthier individuals traveling abroad to obtain organ transplants from poorer destination countries. Foreigners’ participation is motivated by organ shortages in their home countries or heavy domestic restrictions on organ transplantation. In addition to fueling illicit and unethical organ transplantation, transplant tourism negatively impacts areas of social justice, poverty reduction, and equity, enhancing and deepening the economic differences among countries.

Declarations and Failed Solutions
To address these unethical practices, the World Health Assembly held a summit meeting of more than 150 medical professionals, government officials, and social scientists in Istanbul, Türkiye from April 30 to May 2, 2008. The meeting concluded with the creation of the Istanbul Declaration on Organ Trafficking and Transplant Tourism. The Declaration—updated in 2018—seeks to establish international norms, guidelines, and support for organ transplants, in collaboration with other intergovernmental organizations such as the World Health Organization, the UN, and the Council of Europe.

While the Declaration still exists today, it has not deterred organ trafficking and transplant tourism. Dr. Sanjay Nagral, co-chair of the Declaration of Istanbul Custodian Group, said that there is “big money” in organ transplants and a supply of rich individuals who need organs and are willing to pay whatever is needed to get them.

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TravelFor Sale: The Pervasive Organ Trade In Asia by Cousin9999(op): 4:41am On Aug 25, 2024
Have you ever thought about selling your kidney? A piece of your liver? For many people in Asia, these difficult questions are an everyday reality.

The global demand for organs is growing rapidly, with over 100,000 people on the US national organ waiting list in 2023, over 13,000 on the European waiting list in 2023, and thousands more listed in other countries. The limited supply of legal organs does not meet this high demand. Even though over 150,000 transplants took place globally in 2022, noticeable shortages still keep people waiting for years. With organ sale being illegal almost everywhere in the world, a growing black market has emerged to meet the global demand for organs.

Organ trading is a huge industry. Including illegal organ transplants, the trade generates an estimated US$840 million to US$1.7 billion annually. About 10 percent of all transplants—totaling 12 thousand annually—are believed to be illegal.

Compared to labor or sex trafficking, the trafficking of both organs and human beings for organ removal is especially difficult to track due to the involvement of professional medical practitioners. Organ transplant procedures require a high level of technical knowledge, so traffickers use legitimate medical providers, such as certified doctors and hospitals. These medical professionals—including nephrologists (kidney specialists), anesthesiologists, and transplant surgeons—are rarely convicted for their involvement in illegal organ trafficking.

Nowhere is this elusive black market for organs more prolific than in Asia. The world’s largest currently active illegal organ market includes India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Iran. Furthermore, China, India, the Philippines, and Pakistan were the leading destination countries for transplant tourism, in which people travel abroad to obtain organs. This problem is exacerbated by poor economic conditions and inadequate law enforcement.

The “Kidney Valley” of Nepal and Other Illegal Operations in Vietnam and Indonesia
Organ suppliers come predominantly from countries in which a large portion of the population lives below the poverty line. Coming from poor economic and educational backgrounds, these suppliers often see the sale of their organs as a critical way to make money. One Nepali organ seller called the sale of his kidney a “job.” The perceived necessity of illegal organ donations is exacerbated by insufficient law enforcement and surveillance in transplant tourism destination countries to prohibit and track the illegal transactions of organs.

In Nepal, poverty has pushed people for decades to sell their kidneys to traffickers who then profit on the black market. Central Nepal’s Kavre District is specifically known as the “kidney bank of Nepal” or as the “kidney valley.” For the past 20 years, Kavre villagers have been the main source of kidneys for the entire country, and dozens of men from these villages have traveled to India to sell their kidneys both voluntarily and involuntarily—trafficked, coerced, and tricked into undergoing an organ removal procedure. Suppliers are often paid far less than originally promised; other lies include promises of no medical complications and that the removed kidney will grow back.

The volume of transactions in this area is extremely high. In Jamdi village alone—located in the Kavre District—financial need has driven at least one person from every other home to sell a kidney. These cases are also under-reported. According to Nepal’s National Human Rights Commission, at least 150 people from an undisclosed village in the Kavre district sold their kidneys, even though only three total cases were reported. Although reports list 300 individuals from the Kavre district as victims of kidney trafficking in the past five years, the actual count of victims could be much higher.

Nepal is not the only country experiencing this phenomenon; Vietnam faces a similar situation. In April 2023, the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security discovered and disbanded a human organ trafficking ring in Hanoi, Vietnam. Organ recipients who purchased livers through this ring paid around US$50,000. However, sellers were given just under US$20,000. This recent case highlights another tragedy of the illegal organ market: even when individuals illegally sell their organs voluntarily, they rarely receive full payments, with a large share of the money going to the recruiters.

A similar case was reported in July 2023 in another Southeast Asian country: Indonesia. Police and immigration officers collaborated with human traffickers to send 122 Indonesian nationals to Cambodia, where their kidneys were harvested for sale. Following an investigation into the scheme, 12 people were arrested, nine of whom were themselves former organ trafficking victims who became recruiters. The group had been operating since 2019 and generated around US$1.6 billion over the years. Each victim was promised just US$9,000 for a kidney.

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RomanceRe: A Very Good Thing Just Happened To Me Right Now by Cousin9999: 12:34am On Aug 24, 2024
TravelRe: Fully Loaded BRT Bus Tumbles At Iyana Ipaja, Lagos, Many Injured by Cousin9999:
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PoliticsRe: Dangote Refinery Commences Petrol Production Test-Run by Cousin9999: 12:15am On Aug 24, 2024
LiteratureRe: What Book Are You Reading Right Now? by Cousin9999: 12:15am On Aug 24, 2024
FamilyRe: Nigerian Man Reveals What He Will Miss After His Traditional Marriage by Cousin9999:
She would be so much more beautiful if she wasn't a bleacher.
RomanceRe: Lady Crushes On Her Bike Man Gushes Over His ‘cuteness’ by Cousin9999: 12:02am On Aug 24, 2024
Okay, either he's used to the attention and doesn't care, or he...doesn't like women because he should have been all about that.

But yeah, she was doing too much.
Forum GamesRe: You Mistakenly Picked This Wrong Luggage At The Airport, Your Next Step (picx) by Cousin9999: 11:58pm On Aug 23, 2024
If you find this, it's in your best interest to put it down, and get as far away from it as possible. Don't take a single dollar, and don't tell anyone about it.

You do not want to meet whoever that belongs to...

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