The UAE has pardoned 57 locally based Bangladeshis who were jailed for protesting against the now-toppled government in their home country, state media said Tuesday.
UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan “ordered a pardon for the Bangladeshi nationals involved in… protests and disturbances across several emirates”, the official Emirati news agency WAM reported.
“The decision includes cancelling the sentences of those convicted and arranging for their deportation,” it added.
The oil-rich Gulf state bans unauthorised protests and prohibits criticism of rulers or speech that is deemed to create or encourage social unrest.
The Bangladeshis were convicted for participating in protests supporting student-led demonstrations in Bangladesh that toppled long-time leader Sheikh Hasina.
More than 450 people were killed in Bangladesh – many by police fire – during the weeks leading up to Hasina’s ousting last month, as crowds stormed her official residence in Dhaka.
In July, an Emirati court sentenced three Bangladeshis to life in prison, 53 others to 10 years in prison and one to 11 years. At the time of the trial, New York-based Human Rights Watch said the “abusively fast” process raised “serious concerns about fairness and due process”.
The UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms, is populated mostly by expatriates, many of them South Asians who work as labourers.
Bangladeshis form the third largest group of foreigners in the country after Pakistanis and Indians, according to the UAE foreign ministry.
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The official app which allows illegal immigrants to schedule appointments with the agency at U.S. ports of entry is plagued with technical issues and security vulnerabilities, according to a new report by the Homeland Security watchdog.
The report into the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) phone appointment app known as CBP One was published on Aug. 19 and sent to Congress.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) report examined whether or not CBP adequately planned and implemented the phone app to process migrants who arrive at the southwest border seeking entry into the United States.
The OIG found that while CBP initially addressed weaknesses in the app after its implementation, the agency failed to formally assess and mitigate the “technological risks involved with expanding the application” to allow immigrants to schedule appointments to present themselves for processing at the Southwest Border.”
“We found that CBP did not initially consider critical factors such as the design of the CBP One Genuine Presence functionality, adequacy of supporting application infrastructure, sufficiency of language translations, and equity of appointment distribution,” the report states.
“As a result, noncitizens initially using the new feature experienced application crashes, received frequent error messages, faced language barriers, and may not have always had an equal opportunity to secure an appointment,” it continues.
CBP’s One phone app was created in 2020 to serve as a single portal for various CBP services.
However, it was expanded in January 2023 under President Joe Biden’s administration to allow immigrants seeking to enter the United States to submit information and schedule appointments before arriving at one of eight points of entry along the southwest border.
The expansion was part of the administration’s efforts to discourage illegal border crossings by providing legal pathways.
According to a July press release from CBP, the app has “increased CBP’s capacity to process immigrants more efficiently and orderly while cutting out unscrupulous smugglers who endanger and profit from vulnerable migrants.”
In July alone, the federal agency processed over 38,000 individuals with appointments at ports of entry through the app.
Since the app’s appointment-scheduling function was introduced in January 2023 through the end of July 2024, more than 765,000 individuals have “successfully scheduled appointments to present at ports of entry instead of risking their lives in the hands of smugglers,” CBP said.
However, the OIG said it found CBP may also be failing to use information submitted to the app by immigrants before they arrive at the border to improve pre-arrival vetting procedures.
While the agency uses biographic and biometric information submitted into the app in advance to determine whether arriving migrants have “derogatory records,” it “does not leverage the information to identify suspicious trends as part of its pre-arrival vetting procedures,” according to the report.
Elsewhere, the OIG said it had identified potentially unrelated immigrants who repeatedly claimed identical intended U.S. residences.
“CBP currently does not have a mechanism to routinely analyze CBP One data submitted across the eligible POEs [points of entry] for trends, which may be useful intelligence to help guide front-line CBP officers when interviewing noncitizens during appointment processing,” the report said.
Meanwhile, the OIG report found security vulnerabilities within the application and its supporting infrastructure operating systems.
“Without a process to ensure all corrective security patches are timely implemented and assets are properly configured, data on the app may be susceptible to exploitation or cyber-attacks,” the report found.
“This process is especially important as CBP continues to update the application,” it added.
In concluding its report, the OIG recommended that CBP develop and implement a formalized risk assessment process when developing, expanding, or modifying mobile applications.
It also recommended that it introduce a mechanism to analyze the app’s advanced information for trends and patterns of fraudulent behaviors by users and communicate those results to the eight ports of entry that process appointments booked through the app.
The OIG further recommended that CBP introduce a mechanism to routinely assess CBP applications and supporting infrastructure operating systems for vulnerabilities and ensure corrective actions are undertaken in a timely manner.
CBP concurred with all three recommendations and promised to take corrective actions, according to the report.
S&P Futures are falling ahead of this morning Non-Farm Payrolls release. Yesterday’s ADP employment report was considered soft which is creating nervousness ahead of this morning’s release. Overall, the recent bearish sentiment can be best described as markets anxiety on economic growth concerns. On the earnings front, Broadcom delivered a beat last night, but their forward guidance as light. This is a continuing theme being seen on AI related stocks. Salesforce announced a 1.8B takeover of Own Company. Costco reported August sales slightly below expectations. Looking ahead to next week, On Monday, AAPL to release its lates iPhone and ORCL is releasing earnings. Tuesday is the presidential debate. Wednesday the CPI data is set to be released. On Thursday there is an ECB announcement where a rate cut is being anticipated. In Europe, markets remain lower as economic data came in below expectations, Oil prices are flat to higher this morning.
Erythritol is a popular choice for those looking to cut down on sugar without losing flavor, but its health effects are often debated. New Cleveland Clinic research reveals a concerning finding: Erythritol makes platelets—blood cells involved in clotting—more active, leading them to react more strongly and increasing the risk of blood clots, heart attack, and stroke.
Cleveland Clinic researchers say this discovery, part of a series exploring the physiological effects of common sugar substitutes, may prompt a reassessment of how we use this sweetener.
The new findings build on the research team’s prior erythritol study. The previous study was limited because some of the participants had poor health, with over 70 percent having cardiovascular issues. The new study addresses these limitations by recruiting healthy adults.
“This research adds to increasing evidence that erythritol raises cardiovascular risk. In a small group of healthy volunteers, we show ingesting erythritol made platelets more hyper-responsive … which can raise the risk of blood clots,” senior and corresponding author Dr. Stanley Hazen, chair of Cardiovascular and Metabolic Sciences in Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute and co-section head of Preventive Cardiology, told The Epoch Times in an email.
Unlike Sugar, Erythritol Can Promote Excess Blood Clotting
Erythritol is a popular sugar substitute used in many “low-carb” and “keto” foods. It is about 70 percent as sweet as sugar and is produced by fermenting corn or wheat starch. Health and weight-loss professionals often recommend it as a safer alternative to sugar for individuals with high cardiovascular risk factors, such as obesity, diabetes, or metabolic syndrome.
Although erythritol is classified as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) by both the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Food Safety Authority and is naturally found in fruits and vegetables, recent studies by Hazen’s group indicate that consuming typical amounts of erythritol may pose an increased cardiovascular risk.
“This paper builds on our earlier studies with erythritol [published in 2023 in Nature Medicine],” said Hazen, in which large-scale clinical observation studies in the United States and Europe showed that cardiac patients with higher levels of erythritol in their blood were twice as likely to suffer a major cardiac event—such as heart attack, stroke, or death—within the next three years compared to those with lower levels. The study also showed that adding erythritol to blood or platelets increased clot formation. Preclinical studies confirmed these findings.
The previous study had some limitations. Dr. Jayne Morgan, a cardiologist and clinical director of the COVID-19 Task Force at Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta, told The Epoch Times that it was a clinical observation study, which means it could show correlations but not establish causation. Additionally, the study’s participants were in poor health; they were overweight, had high blood pressure, diabetes, smoking habits, and existing cardiovascular issues. So it was unknown if their elevated risks were due to their poor health or due to erythritol consumption.
The new human intervention study, published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology, was designed to closely monitor how erythritol ingestion affects platelets at a dose typically contained “in commercial products,” such as an erythritol-sweetened soda or muffin, explained Hazen.
In 20 healthy volunteers—nonsmokers with no cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, or diabetes—blood samples were taken after an overnight fast. Participants then consumed a solution with either 30 grams of glucose or erythritol. Blood samples taken 30 minutes later showed that erythritol levels increased over 1,000 times in those who ingested erythritol.
Results also “revealed participants showed a significant increase in the susceptibility for blood clot formation after consuming erythritol,” according to Hazen. “In stark contrast, no change was observed in participants after consuming a comparable amount of glucose. A significant new finding in these studies was the direct comparison of results with sugar (glucose), which did not have this effect.”
Hazen explained that erythritol makes platelets more responsive, meaning they become more reactive and prone to forming clots. Consequently, even a minor trigger can cause a more robust activation of platelets, increasing the likelihood of blood clots. This heightened responsiveness can lead to excessive clotting.
“This was seen [in the previous paper] in whole blood, with platelet rich plasma, with isolated platelets, in animal models of disease,” he added. “The results of these mechanistic studies are all aligned with the prior large scale clinical observation data showing higher erythritol levels track with higher risk of major adverse cardiac events.”
1 Serving of Erythritol May Trigger Clot Formation
“This research raises some concerns that a standard serving of an erythritol-sweetened food or beverage may acutely stimulate a direct clot-forming effect,” study co-author Dr. W. H. Wilson Tang, research director for Heart Failure and Cardiac Transplantation Medicine at Cleveland Clinic, said in a press release. “Erythritol and other sugar alcohols that are commonly used as sugar substitutes should be evaluated for potential long-term health effects especially when such effects are not seen with glucose itself.”
He added that these findings are particularly significant because they follow a recent study by the same research group, which found that xylitol, another common sweetener, also increased blood levels and affected how blood cells clump together in healthy volunteers.
Like erythritol, Hazen noted in the email, “the investigations with xylitol also included large-scale clinical observation studies showing that elevation in plasma xylitol levels is associated with increased risk for heart attack, stroke or death over three years of follow-up.”
These findings underscore the importance of further long-term clinical studies to reassess the safety of erythritol and other sugar substitutes, according to both researchers.
The Rise of Erythritol: A ‘Natural’ Alternative to Synthetic Sweeteners
Concerns about the long-term effects of synthetic sweeteners have led many to seek “natural” alternatives like erythritol, a widely used substitute for artificial sweeteners like sucralose (Splenda), saccharin (Sweet’N Low), and aspartame (Equal, Nutrasweet).
While these artificial sweeteners were once favored for their calorie-free sweetness, they now face increasing scrutiny. For instance, aspartame has been linked to potential cancer risks, while saccharin has been associated with obesity and diabetes in animal studies.
In May 2023, the World Health Organization (WHO) advised against using nonsugar sweeteners, citing evidence that they do not support long-term weight loss and come with other health risks. The recommendations apply to everyone except those with preexisting diabetes.
Erythritol, on the other hand, is often recommended for diabetics because it doesn’t raise blood sugar levels and reduces dental plaque and tooth decay.
Reconsidering Erythritol: What the Latest Research Means for Your Diet
Based on the evidence, Hazen said, “Choosing sugar-sweetened treats occasionally and in small amounts would be preferable to consuming drinks and foods sweetened with these sugar alcohols, especially for people at elevated risk of thrombosis such as those with heart disease, diabetes or metabolic syndrome.”
He added that future research will “explore how broadly the pro-thrombotic effect is in alternative sugar substitutes. Including both alternative sugar alcohols and common artificial sweeteners.”