🌎  7 THINGS TO KNOW RIGHT NOW

• Ukraine shopping mall bombed with more than 1,000 inside: The death toll is at 18, and is expected to climb, after two Russian missiles hit the Armstor shopping center in the central Ukrainian city of Kramenchuk. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, more than 1,000 people were inside the mall Monday at the time of the attack. At least 36 people are still missing, as rescue workers dig through the rubble. G7 leaders condemned the attack and suggested that it was a war crime in a joint statement.

• NATO and UN summits: More than 2,000 people are protesting against European militarization in Spain’s capital ahead of a NATO summit which begins today. As war wages in Ukraine, more NATO members are expected to increase their defense expenditures. Meanwhile at a UN summit in Lisbon, Portugal, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres declared an “ocean emergency” and urged policymakers to make drastic changes to protect the oceans.

• 46 migrants found dead in Texas truck: 46 people were found dead inside a semi-truck abandoned on the outskirts of San Antonio, Texas, a major transit route for smuggling migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. Another 16 people have been taken to the hospital.

• Iran applies to join BRICS ahead of U.S. nuclear talks: Iran has submitted an application to join the BRICS group, which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Iran’s bid to join the group of emerging economies comes alongside news that an Iranian negotiator is set to go to Doha, Qatar on Tuesday to revive nuclear talks with the U.S. after they were abandoned in 2018 by the U.S. government.

• Chlorine gas leak kills 12 in Jordan: At least 12 are dead and over 250 more are injured after an accident in Jordan’s Aqaba port led to a chlorine gas leak.

• Fuel sales banned in Sri Lanka: After months of food, fuel, and electricity shortages, Sri Lanka has announced a two-week ban on fuel sales. The country is currently unable to purchase imported oil and will only be allowing the sale of fuel for essential services such as airports, food distribution, agriculture, and health services.

🗞️  FRONT PAGE

Portuguese daily newspaper Publico’s front page features fish-costumed protesters, a day after the UN Ocean Conference opened in Lisbon, with a focus on how to restore the health of the world's oceans.

#️⃣  BY THE NUMBERS

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📰  STORY OF THE DAY

Taking a position: a call to regulate yoga in India

Trained practitioners warn that unregulated yoga can be detrimental to people's health. The government in India, where the ancient practice was invented, knows this very well — yet continues to postpone regulation, writes Banjot Kaur in Indian news website The Wire.

🧘 Yoga is one of the five kinds of alternative Indian medicine listed under India’s AYUSH efforts — standing for "Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and naturopathy, and Homeopathy." Yoga and naturopathy are taught at the undergraduate level in 70 medical colleges across 14 Indian states. The Mangalore University in Karnataka first launched this course in 1989; today, these subjects are also taught at the postgraduate level. Yet, despite this history of formal training, yoga and naturopathy practitioners aren’t required by any national Act to register before they start practicing.

💊 It is not difficult to understand why yoga needs to be regulated, the president of Indian Naturopathy and Yoga Graduates’ Medical Association (INYGMA) Naveen Visweswaraiah says, comparing yoga to a drug. Just as a drug has contraindications and dose limits, so does the practice of yoga. "More is better" doesn’t work and is often harmful. But in the absence of registration — let alone a law governing the practice of yoga — discussing dosage, indications and side-effects is off the table right now.

⚖️ The AYUSH ministry said that yoga and naturopathy were not fit to be considered Indian “systems of medicine” because, once again, they don't involve drugs. This is a strange argument, especially since Prime Minister Modi has made yoga a staple of his message of national pride. This said, the ministry created a "Yoga Certification Board" through a simple communiqué in 2018. This board introduced multiple certificate courses ranging from a few hours to a couple weeks. The courses have no prerequisite qualifications, except having graduated from high school. “This is like certifying quacks even if they don’t become doctors,” Visweswaraiah said.

📣 VERBATIM

It is what’s right and of course it would have been what was right 70 years ago.

— Thomas Will, who heads Germany’s office in charge of investigating Nazi-era crimes, reacted to the conviction of a 101-year-old former concentration camp guard for being an accessory to more than 3,500 murders and sentenced to five years in prison by a German court Tuesday. The man, identified as Josef S., has denied working at the Sachsenhausen camp just north of Berlin, and it is unclear if he will serve any prison time. “We go by the simple principle that murder does not have a statute of limitations,” Will said.