Category World News

Just after its sponsors began to pressure the company to change its name, the move was made public on Monday.

The team, which is based in Israel and is owned by the Israeli-Canadian billionaire Sylvan Adams, has received a lot of negative press due to Israel’s war against Gaza, which has resulted in the killing of more than 67, 000 Palestinians by Israel, and which international experts have labeled as a genocide.

Despite the destruction of the Palestinian enclave, where famine has spread, Adams has previously claimed that Israel has “miracled” in its fighting in Gaza and elsewhere.

Due to the organization’s involvement in the prestigious three-week cycling competition, protesters last month disrupted several Vuelta stages in Spain.

Midway through the race, the team removed its full name from its jerseys due to public pressure. Later, when pro-Palestinian demonstrators broke into a portion of the course in Madrid, the Vuelta had to be abandoned.

Israel-Premier Tech was then forbaded from Saturday’s Giro dell’Emilia race because of concerns for the safety of the crowd. Following the protests in Spain, Israel-Premier Tech was then expelled from the competition.

The team stated on Monday that it was changing its name in response to a “steadfast commitment to our riders, staff, and valued partners” when it explained its decision to rebrand.

This step is crucial to ensuring the team’s future, according to the statement, which states that “progress frequently necessitates sacrifice.”

Additionally, the statement stated that the team’s owner, Adams, would no longer be speaking up. He will instead concentrate on running for president of Israel’s World Jewish Congress, according to the statement.

The multinational corporation with which Premier Tech co-sponsors the team from Canada had last month expressed its desire for change.

The situation on the global stage, which has significantly changed since our entry on the World Tour in 2017, is something that “we are sensitive and attentive to,” it said.

The team will adopt a new identity and brand image, and we anticipate that the name will change to something else, excluding the word “Israel.”

The equipment provider, Factor, also warned that its involvement would end unless there was “a change of flag.”

According to data from the International Trade Commission, the US issued approximately 313, 138 student visas in August, which is a 19.1% decrease from August 2024, when studies typically begin at US universities.

The decline was 44.5 percent during that time for Indian students, who account for the majority of foreign students studying in the US. Students from China received fewer visas, though at a lower rate.

Iran’s student visas for Iranians dropped by 86 percent in a number of Muslim-majority nations. The proportion of foreign students who are currently enrolled in US universities is not representative of the overall number, many of whom are still on visas.

The Trump administration is using funding to put mounting political pressure on US universities as it pursues a restrictive immigration policy.

In response to US law violations, participation in protests, or in some cases, criticism of Israel, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has revoked thousands of student visas. The targeting has occurred in conjunction with pro-Israel organizations that monitor and monitor university students engaged in pro-Palestine activism.

In order to pass stricter control over student social media profiles, Rubio also imposed a temporary suspension on all student visa processing in June.

Those vetting applications were instructed to look for “any indications of hostility toward the citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles of the United States.”

However, the administration’s message to some nations hasn’t always been consistent.

Trump announced to reporters in August that he planned to accept 600, 000 Chinese students as his plan to study there after initially vowing to restrict access to a sizable portion of Chinese students.

The number of Chinese students studying in the US is now twice that high.

According to researchers in a significant new study, the inhalers that people breathe also contribute to warming the planet, producing annual emissions equivalent to that of more than half a million cars in the United States alone.

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Harvard University conducted an analysis of global warming pollution from three different inhalers used to treat asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) between 2014 and 2024 using a national drug database.

According to the study, which was published on Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), US patients who had commercial insurance and were covered by Medicaid and Medicare generated 24.9 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent over the course of ten years.

With 98 percent of emissions coming from metered-dose puffers, puffers were by far the most harmful. To deliver medication, they use pressurized canisters filled with potent greenhouse gases, such as hydrofluoroalkane (HFA) propellants.

In contrast, propellants are not used in dry powder and soft mist inhalers. Both use a patient’s breath to release the medication, and the latter create fine spray, making both far less toxic to the planet.

Lead author William Feldman, a pulmonologist and researcher at UCLA, told AFP: “I think this is a really important topic because it’s fixable. There are easy ways to reduce emissions.

Only a small percentage of patients in medicine require metered-dose inhalers.

Spacers, valved chambers that open the lungs to deliver medicine to the lungs, are something that only metered-dose devices can handle, but they are necessary for very young children. Because they can’t breathe in insufficiently, older, weakly able adults may also require puffers.

However, Feldman noted that countries like Sweden and Japan use alternative inhalers without losing any health outcomes, noting that “the vast majority of people could use dry powder or soft mist inhalers.”

Barriers to insurance

He added that market and insurance barriers are causing the slower US adoption of greener inhalers.

The most popular inhaler drug, albuterol, is available in a dry-powder version, but it is frequently not covered by insurance, increasing the cost. In Europe, budesonide-formoterol, a different drug, is widely available in dry-powder form, which is not available in the US.

Feldman emphasized that the research’s goal is to highlight the need for policy and pricing reform rather than to blame people for their behavior.

He said, “We utterly don’t want to stigmatize patients who have asthma and COPD.”

“I believe that as a society, we must provide those medications to the patients in a responsible manner, and that ultimately falls to the highest levels.”

According to another JAMA commentary, policymakers and insurers must make lower-emission inhalers affordable and accessible for everyone, according to Alexander Rabin of the University of Michigan and others.