LONDON, Sept. 13 (Xinhua) — Whoever remains open will succeed, and whoever closes off will pay the price, Chris Pereira, chief executive officer (CEO) of New York-based consultancy iMpact, has told Xinhua at his London office.
Pereira, a British-Canadian entrepreneur who has lived in China for over two decades and is fluent in Mandarin, has once worked for Huawei as its executive of public relations and has witnessed China’s rapid transformation.
“The Yellow River is the birthplace of Chinese civilization. I wanted to learn at the source,” he said on Friday. In 2004, Pereira entered Zhengzhou University in central China’s Henan Province to study Chinese language and literature.
“When I first arrived, I couldn’t even find coffee without added sugar. I took buses without air conditioning,” he recalled. However, he said he has seen young students studying under streetlights and it made clear to him the dedication and determination of the Chinese people, and the idea that effort can lead to change.
“Today, every street corner has cafes. Now I can ride high-speed trains at 300 kilometers per hour,” Pereira said. “These details show the rise in living standards, and China has moved from a stage of speed to one of quality. We entrepreneurs must balance fast growth with sustainability,” Pereira noted.
“China looks at problems with a long-term view. It doesn’t panic, it doesn’t rush. With 5,000 years of history, there’s wisdom in patience. For business too, you need a long-term plan, or you won’t survive,” he told Xinhua.
In addition, he highlights the importance of building trust in overseas markets. “In overseas markets, the product is not the main issue. The biggest challenge is trust,” he said. “I know Chinese brands making excellent products — smart toothbrushes, for example — but they cannot break into the North American market because sales channels don’t trust them.”
“Knowing how to make quality friends is magical,” he said. “If your local partner likes you and trusts you, they will choose you even if your product is more expensive.”
Voicing his disagreement to U.S. tariffs, Pereira said “Tariffs are a form of self-isolation. In the long term, they will hurt the United States more than China. Every time the U.S. closes a door, China should open one wider.”
He also said that restrictions can actually strengthen Chinese firms. “Look at Huawei. U.S. sanctions forced it to innovate. Now it’s stronger than ever. Whoever remains open will thrive.”
Pereira pointed out that in the past two years, the British government has been expressing the willingness to maintain and even deepen economic ties with China. “Sectors such as new energy vehicles, consumer electronics, and tourism are areas where Britain is actively looking for Chinese participation,” he said.
“China isn’t perfect. Britain isn’t perfect. But in an imperfect world, we can still find ways to make it better,” Pereira added. ■
Pakistan’s Zardari praises President Xi’s vision, vows deeper ties on China visit
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari on Friday hailed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “visionary” global security initiative and pledged to deepen cultural, educational and diplomatic ties with Beijing.
The president said this while addressing the 2025 Golden Panda International Cultural Forum awards ceremony, which saw the awards given in film, television drama, animation and documentary categories.
Zardari arrived in Chengdu on Friday on a ten-day China visit, which comes on the heels of an official trip to China by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif last week, during which Islamabad signed investment agreements and joint ventures worth $8.5 billion with Beijing.
Speaking at the ceremony, the Pakistan president said the forum reminded them how cultures unite people and how art and television can connect different civilizations.
“We share China’s vision for uniting civilizations. Education and people-to-people ties have deepened the brotherhood between Pakistan and China,” he said.
“The world today is undergoing radical changes. In the times of dramatic changes, China, under President Xi, has shown us the path of a win-win solution. I wish to commend the President for his visionary Global Security Initiative.”
Presented at the Boao Forum in April 2022, President Xi’s Global Security Initiative (GSI) aims to uphold the principle of indivisible security, build a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture, and oppose the building of national security on the basis of “insecurity in other countries.”
“This initiative reflects a deep commitment to peace, stability, and cooperation in an increasingly complex world,” Zardari said. “We are ready to work with China, with all other nations, to promote understanding and culture and tolerance.”
Pakistan views China as an important strategic ally and investment partner, which has funneled billions of dollars into the country under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) energy and infrastructure project for over a decade.
Beijing is Pakistan’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade topping $25 billion in recent years, while Chinese firms have also invested heavily in Pakistan’s power, transport, infrastructure and telecom projects.
During his ten-day visit, President Zardari will be visiting Chengdu and Shanghai cities, and the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region till Sept. 21 to meet Chinese leaders, according to the Pakistani foreign office.
“The discussions will encompass Pakistan-China bilateral relations, with a particular focus on economic and trade cooperation, CPEC and future connectivity initiatives,” it said this week.
When you think of barnacles, you likely picture shell-like creatures stuck to the sides of boats or docks, or even whales. However, did you know that some of the barnacles that attach to other animals are not just hitching a ride — they actually hijack their host?
“Instead of gluing themselves to a rock or something, they glue themselves to a host, often a crab, and they inject themselves into that host, and live their entire life as a root network growing through their host. It’s almost like a fungal network or plant root system. They have no real body in the way that we think of animal bodies,” says UConn Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Assistant Professor James Bernot.
Bernot and his colleagues – including lead author Niklas Dreyer from the Natural History Museum of Denmark and Biodiversity Research Center Academia Sinica, Taiwan; Jørgen Olesen at the Natural History Museum of Denmark; Gregory Kolbasov at Moscow University; Jens Høeg at the University of Copenhagen; and Ryuji Machida and Benny Chan at the Biodiversity Research Center Academia Sinica, Taiwan – published their research on a mysterious group of crustaceans in Current Biology to hopefully solve an enduring puzzle about these strange creatures.
Bernot explains that barnacles are crustaceans, like crabs or shrimp, and they have evolved unique strategies for survival. For example, they go from a free-swimming larval form to live the rest of their lives permanently attached to their substrate of choice.
A particularly enigmatic group called “y-larvae,” also known as Facetotecta, resembles young barnacles. Y-larvae have been studied in plankton samples since the 1800s, but Bernot says the real mystery is figuring out what they grow up to be — so far, the adult stage has never been seen. Though that element remains unanswered, in this new paper, the researchers are getting closer to finding out.
To look for clues on how y-larvae fit into the tree of life, the researchers collected more than 3,000 of the tiny crustaceans and analyzed their genes. They did this by sequencing the transcriptome, which is similar to a genome but represents the RNA that is expressed.
“We were finally able to confirm, in the realm of big data science, that they are, in fact, related to barnacles, but they aren’t closely related to any of the other parasitic barnacles. This was interesting to test by building a giant tree of life for all the crustaceans, then adding this little branch of y-larvae , this very unknown group, to that bigger tree, and we saw that they are related to barnacles, but more as distant cousins,” says Bernot.
Though not closely related to parasitic barnacles, these crustaceans are also likely parasitic because they have some structures in common with their parasitic cousins, says Bernot, including antennae with claws that may be used to hook onto their host.
“One of the best pieces of evidence we have that y-larvae become parasitic is that if we expose them to crustacean growth hormone, they will hatch out of their little swimming larval shape into a small slug-like body, which is similar to what parasitic barnacles do when they enter a host,” says Bernot. “The fact that if we give them hormones, they also molt into a slug-like thing, suggests they go on to be parasitic somewhere, but we still don’t know what host they end up in. Being hidden inside another animal’s body could explain why we haven’t found the adult stage of y-larvae yet.”
Although these crustaceans are unusual and largely unknown with only 17 species described so far, Bernot says some of his co-authors found more than 100 new and different species from a single harbor in Japan. There is more to learn about these enigmatic animals.
“We know the other parasitic barnacles do weird things. The ones that grow like roots inside of crabs castrate their hosts, so their hosts are no longer able to reproduce. They trick their hosts into thinking that the host is pregnant, so it starts taking care of this mass that grows outside of its body, but that mass is part of the barnacle and not actually the eggs of the host, and even if they infect a male crab, the male crab becomes feminized and starts behaving like a pregnant female crab. Y-larvae could be having similarly impactful roles in ecosystems, but we won’t know until we find what hosts they are living in and what they are doing there,” says Bernot.
Since the y-larvae transcriptome sequencing showed they were not closely related to parasitic barnacles, Bernot says that it is likely that y-larvae and parasitic barnacles evolved in a process called convergent evolution.
“Because they’re probably both parasitic and doing similar things, they’ve evolved similar strategies to attach to a host and to become this slug-like larva. It’s amazing to think that that really weird, unique lifestyle evolved multiple times.”
Different species of barnacles use different strategies when they become sessile adults. Besides living on inanimate objects, those that live on animals like whales are not considered parasitic because they are essentially hitching a ride and do not feed on their host. Others attach to the host and have structures that they use to feed on the host. Understanding the evolution of these different strategies is important, and Bernot says that a project they are currently working on involves building the evolutionary tree of all barnacles to observe and understand some of the evolutionary patterns.
“A big question is, what is it about barnacles that has given them so much variability over evolutionary time to take on so many different shapes and forms and lifestyles? They have come up with incredibly ingenious strategies for making their ways of life, and often their ways of life seem very bizarre to us, but they have clearly been very successful,” says Bernot. “These animals have been around for hundreds of millions of years and there are several thousand species of them, so they have come up with some really amazing solutions to complex problems.”
Some of those solutions could also help humans. For example, Bernot says, there is a lot of interest in trying to better understand barnacle glues.
“They glue themselves to docks, they glue themselves to boats, and that is a problem. The Navy spends millions of dollars on additional fuel because barnacles on their ships cause additional drag. Also having more powerful glues that can dry underwater would be very useful for mechanical reasons, but maybe also for dentistry and things like that,” says Bernot. “There could be a lot of applications if we can better understand some of these amazing solutions that barnacles have evolved.”
A large new study followed 407,618 adults in six European countries for about 11 years and tracked the incidence of cancer, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.
The researchers examined how closely people stuck to a healthful, plant-based diet and how that related to developing more than one of the health conditions.
Why this study matters
The project was led by Reynalda Córdova, a nutritional epidemiologist at the University of Vienna, working with colleagues across Europe.
Their team centered the analysis on real-world eating patterns and combined two major datasets to see long term effects.
Chronic diseases often show up in pairs or more. When someone has two or more at the same time, clinicians call it multimorbidity. Reducing the odds of multiple serious conditions can ease pressure on families and health systems.
In public health, preventing even a modest share of new cases matters because risk compounds when illnesses cluster.
The analysis used the term “cardiometabolic” to group heart and metabolic problems that often intersect with cancer risk.
By treating the co-occurrence of conditions as the outcome, the study focused on how disease accumulates over time rather than on single diagnoses.
Plant-based diets were rewarded
Participants came from the EPIC study, and the U.K. Biobank (a national research resource that invites adults to share health data for science). These two large cohort projects collect data that connects lifestyle and health records.
Diet quality was scored using a healthful, plant-based diet index that rewards vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts, and coffee.
Dietary intake of refined grains, sweets, and animal products, on the other hand, reversed the points.
A companion unhealthful, plant-based diet index scores higher for refined plant foods and sugary drinks, reflecting differences in plant food quality.
The models estimated hazard ratio, which expresses how much risk changes with each 10-point rise in the score. This was calculated after accounting for age, sex, smoking, activity, and alcohol use.
Events were counted and sequenced to see whether a first diagnosis was followed by another, which mirrors how disease accumulates in life.
Plant-based diet and multimorbitity
Across the combined cohorts, 6,604 people developed two of the three illnesses during follow up.
A 10-point increase on the healthy plant diet score was linked to 11 percent lower risk in EPIC and 19 percent lower risk in UK Biobank data.
In adults younger than 60, the hazard ratio was 0.71, and in those of 60 or older it was 0.86. This shows a stronger association in midlife.
The pattern for the unhealthful plant score was positive in UK Biobank data, and null in EPIC, underscoring that not all plant-rich eating is the same.
“A healthy plant-based diet might reduce the burden of multimorbidity of cancer and cardiometabolic diseases among middle-aged and older adults,” concluded Córdova.
Healthful plant-based diet defined
Scores for the healthy pattern rise with vegetables, fruit, whole grains, beans, nuts, and coffee. Less reliance on refined carbs, sweets, and red or processed meat helps keep the score high.
The unhealthful score climbs with sodas, sweets, white bread, and other refined items. Those choices can crowd out fiber-rich foods that support steady energy and metabolic health.
Separating the healthful and unhealthful versions explains why a plant-based diet can help or harm, depending on the mix. Quality matters more than labels, and the scale captures that difference.
Why diet quality might matter
A Lancet review linked higher fiber intake with lower risk of several noncommunicable diseases and better glycemic control.
Fiber also feeds gut microbes that produce short chain fatty acids. These organic substances support metabolic and immune balance.
Other prospective evidence ties plant-based eating patterns to lower type 2 diabetes risk across populations.
A comprehensive meta-analysis reported that greater adherence to plant-based diets, especially those rich in healthful plant foods, was associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes.
These mechanisms align with the new results, where lower weight, lower inflammation, and better insulin sensitivity likely explain part of the link. Diet is not a cure, but quality changes can tilt the odds toward healthier aging.
How to interpret this safely
Self-reported diet is imperfect, and people may change how they eat after a diagnosis, which can blunt associations.
Differences that are not measured can also shift estimates, so the authors tested many scenarios to check robustness.
The inconsistency for the unhealthful score between EPIC and UK Biobank suggests that context and measurement matter. Food culture, recall frequency, and how outcomes are captured can all influence results.
Even with caveats, the direction and size of the associations fit prior literature on plant-rich patterns and long term health. That consistency adds confidence without assuming what a single study proves in every setting.
Small shifts in everyday choices
The findings do not require strict rules or total exclusion of animal products. They point to a pattern where plants take the lead while animal products and refined items take a back seat.
Small shifts that raise the healthful plant score are realistic and sustainable. Those shifts also track with widely recommended approaches to lifelong health.
The study is published in The Lancet Healthy Longevity.
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One of our favorite magnetic power banks is on sale for 42 percent off right now. The Anker 622 Magnetic Battery is down 42 percent to $28, which is almost as low as we’ve ever seen it. This steep discount is also available at Anker’s online store with a coupon code that the company provides. This 5,000mAh MagSafe-compatible charger with a foldable stand is a slim and portable battery that can keep your devices going on long days away from a charger.
Anker
Close to a record low price for this slim and portable MagSafe compatible charger.
$28 at Amazon
Anker says the 622 Magnetic Battery can recharge a dead iPhone 16 or 16 Pro to just over 80 percent, and an iPhone 16 Pro Max to just over 60 percent. In our hands-on review of the portable charger, we liked the magnetic stand that folds out into a 30-degree angle. Users can rotate their phone to either portrait mode or landscape mode while charging.
The Anker 622 is an older charger, so it outputs a maximum of 7.5W when charging wirelessly. If you need to refill your battery faster than that, you might want to pick up one of the newer Qi2 power banks. Though a Qi2 power bank will, of course, cost more, some of our favorites are having great sales right now.
The Anker Ultra-Slim 10,000mAh battery pack can charge an iPhone 16 Pro to 50 percent in just 26 minutes, thanks to its Qi2-certified 15W of wireless charging. Right now it’s 25 percent off, priced at $60 down from $80. It’s got a bare-bones design, opting for a slim profile instead of a stand.
If you prefer one with a stand and you like the idea of a display that tells you how much charge your power bank has left, then check out the Anker 10,000mAh battery pack with smart display and foldable stand. In our rundown of the best power banks, this was our top pick for iPhones. Not only does this battery pack offer Qi2 wireless charging at 15W, it also offers 27W when using USB-C for fast charging.
Follow @EngadgetDeals on X for the latest tech deals and buying advice.
How Masai Russell is “still able to be a kid” as she succeeds in the senior ranks of track & field
While it’s business as usual on the track, away from the stadiums, Russell is a social media phenomenon.
The Washington, D.C. native has accrued over800,000 followers on TikTok and is also active on Facebook, where she showcases her fun-loving personality.
As well as connecting with fans, Russell sees her social media activities as a way of sharing her journey in her own voice — and she’s not one to shy away from the camera.
“I think I do appreciate being able to tell people about my story, and I like to tell people about who I am, and the journey, the goal, where I’m going and where I’ve come from,” she said.
“I’ve always gravitated to the camera. I have videos on my Facebook where I’m calling myself out, videos of me on Facebook, just like dancing, singing, doing whatever, like I just always loved the camera.”
Even as an Olympic gold medallist and the second-fastest 100m hurdler in history, Russell is determined to keep the childlike joy she felt on her journey to the top.
“I don’t think I’ll ever grow up. I’m like, ‘I just turned 25, am I ever gonna grow up? Am I ever gonna stop having sleepovers with my friends? Am I ever gonna stop these things?’ But I’m like, ‘no, it’s just who I am.’”
“I wanted to step out into adult life while still being able to be a kid at the end of the day, you know? You have to have a good balance of both.”
On Thursday, we launched a fundraiser to help 29 vetted Palestinian journalists who are either evacuating from Gaza to another country, or being violently displaced from Gaza City to elsewhere in Gaza. In just two days, readers have kicked in more than $120,000 of our $150,000 goal. And technically, we’re already hit the goal because one reader reached out directly yesterday to make a $30,000 gift. A huge thank you to him and everybody else who has given so far. Let’s pretend that big contribution doesn’t exist and see if we can hit the goal without it. All the money goes directly to these journalists and their families and if we raise more than we tried to, they can certainly use every penny of it.
GIVE TO THE GAZA JOURNALIST FUND
Election results on a television at a shop, a day after Pakistan’s national elections in Lahore on February 9, 2024. Photo by ARIF ALI/AFP via Getty Images.
By Murtaza Hussain, Ryan Grim, and Waqas Ahmed
An international body tasked with monitoring elections and democratic institutions quietly suppressed a report critical of Pakistan’s election in February of last year. Drop Site News has obtained a leaked copy of the Commonwealth of Nations report and is publishing it in full. The election, which kept Pakistan’s current military-backed government in power, was marred by widespread fraud that flagrantly overturned the clear will of voters, who came out in droves for the party of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan.
In February 2024, the Commonwealth Secretariat sent a 13-member Elections Observer Group (EOG) to Pakistan to monitor its elections, which is standard practice for the organization. While the EOG, headed by the former Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, gave a generally positive statement in the immediate aftermath of the elections, its official report was highly critical of the elections, accusing the government of actions that violated “fundamental political rights, including freedom of association, assembly and expression.”
The Secretariat informally shared the damning report with the Pakistani government soon after it was submitted to the Secretary General, after which Pakistan asked the Commonwealth to suppress it, according to the source. Astonishingly, the then-Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, Patricia Scotland, complied, burying one of the most detailed reports highlighting the widespread electoral fraud that the Pakistani military used to hang onto power. The full report is here.
The report by the Commonwealth Secretariat should have been published just days after the February 2024 election under typical circumstances. Yet to this day it is absent from the Commonwealth’s website—the only time in its 70-year history it has failed to publish an elections observer report on any country.
The report was leaked to Drop Site News by a source frustrated that the Commonwealth had not released it despite promising to do so over a year ago. The source hoped that leaking the report would cause the Commonwealth Secretariat to reflect on whether the organization’s complicity in the government of Pakistan’s cover-up is consistent with the organization’s commitment tothe democratic process.
Following multiple requests for comment, the Commonwealth told Drop Site in a statement that, “The Pakistan COG Report, as well as other reports, are scheduled for release by the end of this month.” The organization did not respond to questions about why the report had not been published in the year and a half since the election, or about its correspondence with the Pakistani government. Delaying release of the report until the end of this month would serve to keep it hidden until after the upcoming United Nations General Assembly meeting. The Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Pakistani Embassy in D.C. did not respond to requests for comment.
In the weeks following the election, the Pakistani military regime lobbied the organization not to highlight election monitoring results that would prove embarrassing to the new government and erode their legitimacy, suggesting it would cause political unrest. The Commonwealth’s decision to comply shielded an unpopular and undemocratic government from international embarrassment and further erosion of legitimacy.
The Pakistani military came to power after former Prime Minister Imran Khan was removed in a no-confidence vote organized by the military in 2022. His removal from power came amid private pressure from U.S. diplomats, who, leaked documents later revealed, threatened that bilateral ties between the two countries would be seriously damaged if Khan were to remain in power. Just prior to his removal, Khan had also publicly called out UK and EU diplomats for pressuring him to take a side on the Ukraine war. Khan’s stance on the Ukraine war had made him disliked by the EU, the UK, and the U.S.—all of whom eventually played a role in ensuring that Khan did not stay in power. Khan was later imprisoned on corruption charges widely viewed as political. His supporters have faced violence, official bans from political participation, and even, following the vote, extradition from foreign countries at the request of the military-backed regime.
Heading into the February 2024 election, Khan’s party was under heavy pressure, but managed to generate a massive public turnout despite this suppression. Yet the integrity of the 2024 count was called into question almost immediately after images and videos showing widespread manipulation at polling sites began circulating on Pakistan social media on election night. Compounding the problem for the military, television broadcasts reported massive leads for Khan’s party before going dark, only to return many hours later with an inexplicable and unexplained reversal of fortunes for the military-backed parties. Despite the fact that early vote counts indicated a landslide victory for candidates aligned with Khan, the banned Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party saw their polling leads rapidly reversed in favor of pro-military candidates, who went on to form a government.
While the outcome of the vote has long been challenged by Khan’s supporters, and even some of his critics, the unpublished Commonwealth report is the most extensive on-the-ground documentation of what actually took place during the vote. While couched in diplomatic language, the report raises serious questions about the conduct and integrity of the 2024 election. The report notes that limitations enacted by the government and the judiciary before, during, and after the vote were “felt most acutely by PTI and its supporters,” adding that these decisions “consistently limited” the party’s ability to fairly contest the election.
“When looked at in isolation, some—though not all—of the arguments advanced by key institutions in support of their actions appear somewhat justifiable. Yet, collectively, it could not go unnoticed that these decisions consistently limited one party’s ability to contest the election on a level playing field,” noted the EOG head Goodluck Jonathan in the suppressed report.
In addition to throttling Pakistan’s once-vibrant media, the military regime placed severe limitations on PTI’s ability to campaign before the election, including a formal ban on the party itself that forced its members to run as independent candidates, and even banned the use of its electoral symbols. PTI candidates also faced violence and frequent threats.
When these measures failed to prevent massive turnout by PTI supporters on election day, more direct means were allegedly used to alter the vote. The Commonwealth report points to both deliberate communication disruptions and outright rigging by the military to undermine the vote, including internet and cellphone disruptions and potential manipulation of vote counts to undermine support for Khan’s party.
“On election day, the failure of the digital results transmission due to the shutdown of cellular services significantly reduced the transparency of the process,” the report noted. “The Group noted a number of discrepancies between polling station results forms and tabulated results forms at the constituency level, which may have resulted in some candidates being unlawfully returned.” (“Returned” means “declared a winner” in context of the language used in the report.)
While generally using language that congratulated Pakistani election monitors over their conduct during the vote, the Commonwealth election observers simultaneously pointed to extreme suppression of PTI members and supporters, including detentions and raids aimed at restricting their participation in the election and even harming them personally.
“The Group received multiple reports of PTI members and supporters being arrested, detained and undergoing unexplained periods of disappearance, and of PTI offices and PTI members’ homes being closed or raided. These occurrences affected the ability of parties and candidates to exercise their fundamental constitutional rights of freedom of association and assembly.”
The report added that the widespread internet disruptions that took place during the campaign, and which PTI supporters viewed as deliberate attempts to prevent their campaign from operating, did appear to “coincide with one political party’s online campaign and fundraising events.”
While raising grave concerns over the fairness of the 2024 election, the report did praise increased youth and female turnout, despite evidently finding that their votes were not counted with accuracy.
Since the election, Pakistan has devolved into a state of accelerating authoritarianism, with crackdowns on the press and civil society institutions. Since the vote, physical violence, arbitrary detention, and harassment has targeted not just members of the PTI, but Khan himself while in custody, and even members of his extended family.
The Commonwealth elections observer group report was one of the two major reports compiled by ostensibly neutral international observers, with the other being an EU Experts Mission report. That report was also never published. This is the first time in the history of foreign observation of Pakistani democracy that both the Commonwealth and the EU have refused to publish their reports. (That report has not yet been leaked to Drop Site, but if you work at the EU group group and have access to it, send it to tips@dropsitenews.com.)
Just like the Commonwealth, the EU also sent an Election Expert Mission to Pakistan to monitor the 2024 elections. In 2018, when the EU sent a similar but larger mission to Pakistan, it published an election report critical of Khan’s government. However, this time the EU sent a much smaller mission at the end of which no report was published.
There were multiple attempts by EU citizens to get ahold of the report under freedom of information laws but the EU’s diplomatic body—the European External Action Service (EEAS)—has firmly resisted all attempts to make the report public. The case eventually ended up in the European Ombudsman’s office, where the EU argued that “disclosure of the report would undermine the public interest as regards international relations.” During the hearing the EEAS also argued that “even partial access would be negatively perceived by Pakistan and therefore undermine the EU’s international relations,” and therefore the report must not be released.
The EU Ombudsman did not respond to request for comment about their report.
Dr. Hussain Nadim, who is affiliated with George Washington University, said European unease with Khan dates back to the start of the Ukraine war, when he rejected calls from Western envoys to supply weapons and publicly rebuked them at a rally after they pressed him in writing.
“Since then, both the EU and the UK have been comfortable with Pakistan Army’s onslaught against democracy and Imran Khan’s illegal incarceration as long as the military regime was compliant on the Ukraine war front,” Nadim said. “That is the most likely reason they have not rushed to release their election reports and believe publishing them now could destabilize Pakistan’s politics in a way that might facilitate Khan’s comeback.” However, he said that “with the Ukraine war at its tail end, there would be less incentive to turn a blind eye on the state of democracy and human rights abuses in Pakistan.”
The suppression of the Commonwealth report comes as the organization continues to embrace a ruling Pakistani regime that its own observers accused of engaging in actions that “impinged on the credibility, transparency, and inclusiveness of the electoral process,” in that country. Pakistani foreign minister Ishaq Dar has made it a point to engage with, and even present gifts to, both the outgoing Commonwealth Secretary General Patricia Scotland as well as the incoming Shirly Botchway, with a frequency that many observers noted is unusual for a Pakistani foreign minister.
While praising Pakistan as a country with “enormous” democratic potential, the unpublished EOG report took aim at the military control of Pakistani politics—a third rail in the country’s political system that has undermined democracy nearly since its founding.
“For democracy to flourish in Pakistan, there must be a much clearer demarcation between military and civilian authority in line with the country’s Constitution and international law,” the report stated, adding, “Political parties and all organs of the state, including the military, must establish new rules of engagement that place the sanctity of independent democratic institutions and processes out of the bounds of political maneuverings.”
One of the ways that per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) earn their “forever chemical” nickname and persist in the environment is their acidity.
Many of these toxic chemicals are highly acidic, meaning they easily give up their protons and become negatively charged. This allows them to dissolve and spread in water more easily.
Now, new research has found that some PFAS are even more acidic than previously thought — an insight critical for predicting their mobility in the environment and potential impacts on human health.
It comes from a University at Buffalo-led team that introduced a new and rigorous experimental method to determine the acidity of 10 types of PFAS and three of their common breakdown products.
Published last month in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, their measurements of these chemicals’ acid dissociation constant, or pKa, were mostly lower, in some cases dramatically, than those reported in experimental studies and predicted by computational chemistry models. In one case, the pKa of GenX, a replacement for perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in the manufacturing of Teflon, was found to be about one thousand times lower than the measurement listed in a previous study.
The lower the pKa, the more likely a chemical is to give up a proton and exist in its charged form.
“These findings suggest that previous measurements have underestimated PFAS’ acidity. This means their ability to persist and spread in the environment has been mischaracterized, too,” says the study’s corresponding author, Alexander Hoepker, PhD, a senior research scientist with the UB RENEW Institute.
More accurate pKa measurements help efforts to understand the behavior of PFAS in the environment. A chemical’s pKa could mean the difference as to whether it remains dissolved in water, sticks to soil or a biological membrane or perhaps volatilizes into the air.
“If we’re going to understand how these concerning chemicals spread, it’s very important we have a reliable method for the accurate determination of their pKa values,” says Diana Aga, PhD, director of RENEW and SUNY Distinguished Professor and Henry M. Woodburn Chair in the UB Department of Chemistry.
The work was supported by the National Science Foundation and done in collaboration with Scott Simpson, PhD, professor and chair of the St. Bonaventure Department of Chemistry, and researchers from Spain’s Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research.
Combining experiments with computations
PFAS are made of a highly fluorinated, water-repelling tail and a more water-loving headgroup. Many of the most scrutinized PFAS have a highly acidic headgroup, making them more likely to give up a proton and exist in its charged form.
Whether a PFAS exists in its neutral or charged form depends on the pH level of their surrounding environment. That’s where pKa comes in. It tells scientists the pH level at which a given PFAS is equal to flip from neutral to charged, or vice versa.
But there has been much disagreement about the pKa measurements of some PFAS, like PFOA, with different teams coming up with widely different values. One of the reasons for this may be the glass used during their experiments.
“PFAS likes to stick to glass. When that happens, it throws off traditional, so-called bulk measurements that quantify how much PFAS is in a solution,” Hoepker says. “In other cases, too much organic solvent is used to get PFAS into solution, which similarly biases the pKa measurement.”
To address this challenge, the UB team used fluorine and proton (hydrogen) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy — think MRI for molecules. NMR places a sample in a strong magnetic field and probes its atomic nuclei with radio waves.
When a PFAS headgroup is negatively charged, nearby fluorine atoms respond at a different (radio) frequency.
Reading these atom-level signatures lets the researchers tell whether a PFAS molecule is charged or neutral — capabilities that other methods that have been used previously cannot provide.
“This unique measurement allows NMR to inherently account for PFAS losses to glass or other adsorption behaviors, so your pKa measurements don’t end up way off the mark,” Hoepker says.
Some PFAS are so acidic (pKa of less than zero) that generating them in their neutral form would require super-acidic conditions (a pH level of less than zero) that are impractical in standard labs. In those cases, the research team paired NMR experiments with electronic-structure calculations using density functional theory to predict the NMR shifts of the neutral and ionized forms.
“We augmented partial NMR datasets with computational predictions to arrive at more accurate pKa values,” Hoepker says. “This NMR-centered hybrid approach — integrating experimental measurements with computational analyses — enhanced our confidence in the results and, to our knowledge, has not previously been applied to PFAS acidity.”
Problem PFAS measured more accurately
The PFAS that has been the most difficult to measure is PFOA, once commonly used in nonstick pans and deemed hazardous by the Environmental Protection Agency last year.
The team found its pKa to be -0.27, meaning it will be negatively charged at practically any realistic pH level. Previous experimental studies had measured its pKa as high as 3.8 and more commonly around 1, while the computational methods COSMO-RS and OPERA had determined its pKa at 0.24 and 0.34, respectively.
Trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) — an emerging PFAS increasingly detected in waters worldwide and likely transported through the atmosphere and deposited by rain — was found to be far more acidic than previously reported, with a pKa of around 0.03. Earlier estimates had anywhere from 0.30 to 1.1.
Notably, the team determined the pKa values for several prominent emerging PFAS that had never been measured, such as 5:3 fluorotelomer carboxylic acid (5:3 FTCA), and PFAS ethers like NFDHA and PFMPA that are newer PFAS but are also likely to pose challenges for regulators due to their health effects.
“This new experimental approach of determining pKa values for PFAS will have wide-ranging applications, from being able to validate computationally derived values, to facilitating the development of machine learning models that can better predict pKa values of newly discovered PFAS contaminants when reference standards are not available,” Aga says. “In turn, knowledge of the pKa values of emerging PFAS will allow researchers to develop appropriate analytical methods, remediation technologies, and risk assessment strategies more efficiently.”
Aside from Simpson, other co-authors include Silvia Lacorte, a senior scientist with the Spanish Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research; Aina Queral Beltran, a University of Barcelona PhD student and former visiting student at UB; and UB Chemistry graduate students Damalka Balasuriya and Tristan Vick.
Our under-18s had to settle for a 1-1 draw at home to Chelsea on Saturday, but remain undefeated so far this campaign.
A first-half headed goal from Callan Hamill brought us level, after Chrizaram Ezenwata had initially put the visitors ahead earlier on.
What happened
The first chance of the affair fell to our under-18s, when a quick throw-in found Ceadach O’Neill in operation down the left flank. The Northern Ireland under-21 international worked well to whip his cross and find Maalik Hashi arriving at the edge of the box, but saw his effort clear Freddy Bernal’s upright.
Moments later, a lively O’Neill looked to have broken free of Onassis Waite to go clear with just Bernal to beat, but as he set to shoot, the defender clawed the ball back and defused the attack.
Against the run of play, it was the visitors who opened the lead inside 25 minutes. Ryan Kavuma-McQueen swung his inswinging corner into Jack Porter’s crowded six-yard box, as the ‘keeper made an initial parry back into the fray, but could not keep out Chrizaram Ezenwata’s follow-up effort.
The Chelsea forward almost doubled his tally shortly after, when he broke through one-on-one with Porter, but Samuel Onyekachukwu recovered well to make a last-ditch tackle and keep his side in the game.
Deservedly, we were back on level terms ten minutes later. O’Neill sent a free-kick deep into Chelsea’s box to cause a scramble between players, and it was Callan Hamill, who donned the armband, to head home a loose ball at the back post.
After the interval, we endured a spell of increased Chelsea pressure. Porter, who made his England under-19 debut during the international break, was called into action to claim Sol Gordon’s searching cross. Gordon looked to cause more problems moments later, having cut inside from his wide position, but struggled to keep his effort down.
Chelsea substitute Eboue, son of former Gunners player Emmanuel, came close to firing our London neighbours ahead on 69 minutes, but had his shot blocked after Hamill had initially cleared the build-up play.
Fresh off the bench, Brando Bailey-Joseph ventured on an impressive solo run through Chelsea’s midfield and back line to find an overlapping O’Neill in a promising area. His curling effort looked sure to nestle its way into Bernal’s top-right corner, but the no.1 stretched well to fingertip wide of his post.
Despite added Chelsea urgency, a professional display at the back ensured we came away with a hard-earned point.
What it means
The result means we remain undefeated in the campaign, with ten points from four games played.
What’s next
Our under-18s return to action on Saturday, September 20, when they host Ipswich Town.
Kick-off at Sobha Realty Training Centre is at 12pm.
Chelsea XI: Bernal, Richards, Waite, Subuloye, Diakite, Holland (Da Silva 66), Gordon, Nicoll-Jazuli, Ezenwata, Walsh (Eboue 66), Kavuma-McQueen (Barbour 66).
Subs not used: Collinson, McGlinchey.
Copyright 2025 The Arsenal Football Club Limited. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit being given to www.arsenal.com as the source.
A city is looking to fill its town crier’s shoes as he prepares to retire after 25 years.
Len Sweales was appointed Wells’ town crier in 2001 and became a “huge figure” in the city, its mayor said, meeting the late Queen and Duke of Edinburgh and winning various awards for his crying, including Best Dressed Crier.
Now 80, Mr Sweales has announced he will ring his bell for the final time in May 2026, with Wells City Council now tasked with finding a replacement.
Louis Agabani, mayor of Wells, said men and women who have respect for tradition and a desire to be part of Wells were invited to apply.
