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Italy

Italian Police Seize Trove Of Toxic Bubble Soap Toys Shaped Like Gelato

LA REPUBBLICA, CORIERRE DELLA SERA (Italy)

Worldcrunch

LA SPEZIA - Sounds like a classic recipe for summer fun: little kids, bubbles, ice cream cones....Chinese bacteria?

A huge stock of allegedly toxic made-in-China bubble soap toys has been seized by Italian Police, Corriere della Sera and La Repubblica report. Italian children, to whom the products were aimed, risked being exposed to infections from a so-called "opportunistic" bacterium hidden in the liquid, authorities say.

In late June, a container of 35,214 colorful bubble soap packages, for a total value of 100,000 euros, arrived from China in the northern Italian port of La Spezia. Police seized the toys, which are in the shapes of ice cream cones and billy clubs (see video), and sent them for testing to the Italian Environment Protection Agency.

Results show the bubble soap contained 380,000 times the tolerable upper intake level of the bacterium, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which can cause serious infections, Corriere della Sera reports. Other, similar shipments may be in circulation, and Italian authorities recommend anyone who is in possession of objects in these shapes destroy them immediately, or have them tested. The Florentine businessman who'd ordered the toys has been arrested for importing illicit materials.

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Geopolitics

Senegal's Democratic Unrest And The Ghosts Of French Colonialism

The violence that erupted following the sentencing of opposition politician Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison left 16 people dead and 500 arrested. This reveals deep fractures in Senegalese democracy that has traces to France's colonial past.

Image of Senegalese ​Protesters celebrating Sonko being set free by the court, March 2021

Protesters celebrate Sonko being set free by the court, March 2021

Pierre Haski

-Analysis-

PARIS — For a long time, Senegal had the glowing image of one of Africa's rare democracies. The reality was more complicated than that, even in the days of the poet-president Léopold Sedar Senghor, who also had his dark side.

But for years, the country has been moving down what Senegalese intellectual Felwine Sarr describes as the "gentle slope of... the weakening and corrosion of the gains of Senegalese democracy."

This has been demonstrated once again over the last few days, with a wave of violence that has left 16 people dead, 500 arrested, the internet censored, and a tense situation with troubling consequences. The trigger? The sentencing last Thursday of opposition politician Ousmane Sonko to two years in prison, which could exclude him from the 2024 presidential elections.

Young people took to the streets when the verdict was announced, accusing the justice system of having become a political tool. Ousmane Sonko had been accused of rape but was convicted of "corruption of youth," a change that rendered the decision incomprehensible.

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