Today’s newsletter covers Mexican flight tickets, France’s carbon budget excess, tuberculosis deaths on the rise, Chile, and the United Kingdom.
Mexico wants to tackle deceitful advertising of low-cost flight tickets
The consumer protection agency blames airlines for hiding costs with their online ticket prices, deeming their communication illegal and misleading. “The pandemic should not be a reason.”
French justice demands the State to compensate for carbon budget excess
The French justice demanded the State to repair its failure in tackling climate change. The year 2020 has yet helped France respect the average carbon budget of the last six years.
Serious errors caused the collapse of Mexico City’s Metro Line 12
The spokesman of the Attorney General’s Office of Mexico City said that serious construction and design errors caused the collapse of Metro Line 12. In May, the collapse of a metro line in Mexico City killed 26 people and injured 98. The investigation found an insufficient and inadequate installation of shear bolts to maintain the structure, inadequate design and poor-quality welds. The Attorney General considers they have enough elements to charge several individuals of homicide.
A state of exception officially declared in some regions of Chile
On October 13, a state of emergency was officially declared in several regions of Chile for a period of two weeks because of recent alteration of public order and a “worrying increase and concentration of acts of violence linked to drug trafficking, terrorism and organized crime” over the past years.
A study says austerity measures killed 50,000 people in the United Kingdom
The University of York found that austerity cuts in the UK’s National Health System were linked to 57,550 more deaths between 2010 and 2014, when David Cameron was Prime Minister. Results were based on the hypothesis that healthcare spending followed the same growing trend as before 2010. In 2019, the University College London estimated the excess deaths at 120,000 between 2010 and 2017, including 45,000 between 2012 and 2014. The rate of improvement in life expectancy in England and Wales since 2010 also slowed down.
7.5% more deaths from tuberculosis in 2020 because of Covid-19 according to the WHO
The World Health Organization published a report saying tuberculosis deaths rose for the first time in a decade. About 1.5 million people died from tuberculosis in 2020 vs. 1.4 million in 2019. The WHO says the reason behind this is the Covid-19 pandemic. Far fewer people were diagnosed and treated because “resources have been reallocated from tackling tuberculosis to the COVID-19 response, limiting the availability of essential services” and access to healthcare services was more difficult with restrictions of movement. With fewer diagnoses, the WHO estimates that 4.1 million people currently suffer from tuberculosis but have not been diagnosed, up from 2.9 million in 2019. The WHO forecasts the situation to be much worse in 2021 and 2022.
