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☆ Mexican drug gangs ‘increasingly targeting’ Australia as meth supplies overtake rivals, police say
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-11 | by ( Chris Lau | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —Drug cartels from North America have overtaken rivals in Southeast Asia to become Australia’s top suppliers of methamphetamine, police said, warning that Mexican gangs are “increasingly targeting” the country. Meanwhile, Southeast Asian meth fell to less than 15% of seizures of the drug, a highly addictive and potent stimulant. A wastewater detection program led by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission projected meth to be Australia’s second most used drug. In 2022, authorities stopped 1.8 tons of liquid meth masquerading as coconut water in Hong Kong before it reached Australia. They were bound for New Zealand, Australia and the surrounding Pacific region, police said.

Persons: Jared Taggart, Taggart, ”, Sam Gor, Terry Goldsworthy, Criminologist John Fitzgerald, Masood Karimipour Organizations: CNN —, Australian Federal Police, Police, ”, Australian Institute of Health, Welfare, Australian Criminal Intelligence, AFP, Bond University, Australian Capital Territory, University of Melbourne, Drugs, New Zealand police, Southeast, Pacific, United Nations Office Locations: North America, Southeast Asia, Australia, AFP, Mexico, United States, Canada, ” Australia, Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Japan , New Zealand, Hong Kong, Asia, Pacific, Queensland, American, Europe, Ukraine, New Zealand

☆ This faux-leather jacket is made by bacteria
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-19 | by ( Jacopo Prisco | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

“A yellow leather jacket” might not be your first answer, but it’s exactly what came out of a collaboration between Danish fashion brand Ganni and Mexican biomaterials company Polybion. “We were impressed by the fact that a lot of people love the jacket because the material did not resemble leather,” said Alexis Gómez-Ortigoza, Polybion’s co-founder. “We isolated our first bacteria from that drink.”Kombucha is an increasingly popular fermented tea drink, and the bacterial biomass used to make the jacket, called Celium, comes from that jar. “We feed the bacteria with fruit waste, which is extremely abundant here in central Mexico,” said Gómez-Ortigoza. Although it shares some similarities with leather, Celium is an organic material that's meant to have its own look and feel.

Persons: ”, Alexis Gómez, Polybion’s, “, Axel, Bárbara González, Gómez, Polybion, Ortigoza, Lauren Bartley, Ganni, Michelle Obama, Bartley, Kate Goldsworthy, who’s, Kate Fletcher Organizations: CNN, Ganni’s Sustainability, University of the Arts London, Royal Danish Academy, Copenhagen, Oslo Metropolitan University Locations: Mexican, Mexico, Celium, France, Norway

☆ Do Some Men Love Ancient Rome for the Wrong Reasons?
▼ + stars: | 2023-09-21 | by ( David Potter | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

But while the image of this empire in the modern world is of an immutable military might, in reality the imperial system survived because it was flexible. It was far more adaptable than the flailing democracy it replaced in the first century B.C., or the modern British and French empires, which later claimed Rome as a model. In two new books, Tom Holland and Adrian Goldsworthy, both accomplished novelists as well as historians, offer lucid accounts of the challenges inherent to managing this complex imperial enterprise. Holland’s “Pax” concerns itself with a period of relative imperial tranquillity between the suicide of the Roman emperor Nero in 68 A.D. and the death of the emperor Hadrian in 138. Goldsworthy explores the relations between Rome and its most powerful neighbor, the successive Persian regimes ruling what is now Iran and Iraq, from their first encounters in the first century B.C.

Persons: Adrian Goldsworthy, Tom Holland, Nero, Hadrian, Goldsworthy, ”, Vespasian Organizations: Adrian Goldsworthy PAX Locations: ROME, PERSIA, Roman, Central Europe, North Africa, Rome, Iran, Iraq, Palestine

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