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An Eastern Cape bus operator has been served with a suspension letter.
Screen grab
Eastern Cape Department of Education has suspended a bus operator who allowed a pupil to drive a bus full of scholars while he stood next to her drinking alcohol.
The Moshesh Agricultural High School scholar transport operator was suspended shortly after a video of him drinking while the pupil was driving went viral on social media on 16 October.
“The department learnt of the matter through social media and the operator has since been served with a suspension letter, while alternative measures are being implemented to ensure learners are not left stranded,” department spokesperson Malibonge Mtima said.
In the video, the operator can be seen dancing and sipping from the bottle, while the pupil steers the bus.
“[The] Lives of all learners, who were travelling in the bus, were put in danger and such cannot be allowed to happen ever again,” Education MEC Fundile Gade said.
Moshoeshoe Agriculture high school learner in Matatiele had to take the wheel of a bus ferrying learners because the driver was drunk. He continued to drink as she drivers. pic.twitter.com/zVW0hgmvJd
— K U L A N I (@kulanicool) October 21, 2020
The Eastern Cape’s transport department spokesperson, Unathi Binqose, said it was not a criminal matter because the operator was not caught drinking while driving.
“However, we are grateful to the learners who caught the act on camera, so that we can investigate the matter and also find out if there have been previous incidents,” said Binqose.
Meanwhile, a principal from Mount Fletcher is under investigation for alleged sexual misconduct.
Mtima said the department learnt about the matter on Tuesday through social media platforms, where it was reported by citizens and pupils.
ALSO READ | DA lays another police complaint against Eastern Cape education head over R530m contract
“This morning, a team consisting of labour relations officers and members of the management and governance have been dispatched to investigate the matter and submit a preliminary report,” he added.
According to the department, both incidents show carelessness and disregard for the rule of law.
“In addition, the Educator’s Act states that should an educator be found guilty of sexual misconduct with a learner, that is punishable with a dismissal,” added Gade.
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FF Plus leader Pieter Groenewald. (Lulama Zenzile)
Corruption is even worse than the Covid-19 pandemic, FF Plus leader Pieter Groenewald said during Wednesday’s debate on President Cyril Ramaphosa’s economic recovery plan.
Ramaphosa announced the plan in the aftermath of the pandemic’s economic devastation.
Several opposition speakers said the government is good with making plans, but fails to implement it.
In the estimation of DA interim leader John Steenhuisen, “systemic corruption” is one of the reasons for this.
Some opposition speakers pointed to the Special Investigating Unit’s (SIU) presentation to Parliament the previous day, which stated that two thirds of contracts for Covid-19 related procurement were under investigation.
Groenewald said he doesn’t think there is any level or sphere of government untainted by corruption.
“The corruption pandemic is even worse than the Covid-19 pandemic,” Groenewald said.
With another round of Covid-19 corruption arrests expected this week, the Hawks have seen an influx of cases with about 80 000 identified illegal payments the elite crime busting unit needs to investigate. | @JasonFelix https://t.co/MeiTsgmOjr
— News24 (@News24) October 20, 2020
ACDP leader Kenneth Meshoe said the government is very good with new ideas on paper, but weak on implementation.
“I wonder whether corruption, which is endemic in our country, will derail the plan,” mused Meshoe.
He said all the “fake millionaires” must pay back their “ill-gotten gains”.
He mentioned that Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, Khusela Diko, is also alleged to be involved.
He suggested tender systems must be looked at.
UDM leader Bantu Holomisa said it is “immoral that this money is used to make instant millionaires”.
He also said it is unacceptable that the Public Investment Corporation continues investing pension money, while those investments don’t bring much-needed economic development and job creation.
‘Corruption must unite the country’
EFF deputy leader Floyd Shivambu said Ramaphosa’s economic recovery plan will only “serve a neo-colonial agenda”.
Responding to Steenhuisen, ANC MP Judith Tshabalala said the DA interim leader cried about corruption, but maybe he should look at the DA-governed Western Cape’s procurement.
“Corruption must unite the country,” she said, adding that it doesn’t only occur in the public sector.
She said it is a “system inherited from apartheid”, which the ANC is “morally bound to eradicate”.
Members of the government speaking during the debate were mum on corruption. This included David Makhura, the premier of Gauteng – ground zero for PPE-procurement corruption – and Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Patricia de Lille, whose department is responsible for the Beitbridge fence fiasco.
In his response to the debate, Ramaphosa also didn’t broach the subject, even though he spoke at length about it during his initial address to the joint sitting last week.
He said at the time that he will not interfere in the work of the National Prosecuting Authority, in what appeared to be a counter to the narrative created by ANC secretary-general Ace Magashule and his supporters that his widely-expected prosecution will be politically motivated.
Rugby Australia chairperson Hamish McLennan.
Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images
Rugby Australia chairperson Hamish McLennan says South Africa’s withdrawal from the Rugby Championship is ‘disappointing and surprising”.
The world champions pulled out of the four-nations event last week, citing concerns over player welfare as the main reason.
“We’ll find a way through it,” McLennan told reporters at the launch of Australia’s indigenous jersey.
“We were surprised because South Africa did agree to the tournament and the scheduling so we were disappointed that they pulled out.
“It will cost us quite a lot of money but we’ll find a way through it… we’ve proven so far that we’re a pretty resilient organisation.”
McLennan said they would not claim any sort of compensation from SA Rugby for pulling out but he did find the decision puzzling.
“I think it was obvious that [the competition] was good for everyone,” the rugby boss stressed.
“If you look at South Africa, their top players won’t have played Test rugby for 20 months when the (British and Irish) Lions come through next year.
“We would have given them ample time to prepare for the Tests, we’ve already got the Argentinians out here at the moment and they are quite satisfied with how their preparations are going. So we were a little perplexed but we’ll have to move on …”
Revised Rugby Championship draw:
31 October – Australia v New Zealand at Sydney’s ANZ Stadium
7 November – Australia v New Zealand at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium
14 November – New Zealand v Argentina at Sydney’s Bankwest Stadium
21 November – Australia v Argentina at Newcastle’s McDonald Jones Stadium
28 November – Argentina v New Zealand at Newcastle’s McDonald Jones Stadium
5 December – Argentina v Australia at Sydney’s Bankwest Stadium
– Compiled by Sport24 staff
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The purported link between e-cigarettes and lung damage might be more complicated than first thought, a new study reports.
Teen e-cigarette users are not more likely to have wheezing episodes than non-users, researchers found – but only after taking into account a host of other tobacco-related factors also at play.
“We were surprised to find that use of e-cigarettes alone wasn’t an issue with increased odds of experiencing wheezing,” said lead researcher Alayna Tackett.
“I really think this data shows we need to keep looking to better understand this relationship,” added Tackett, an assistant professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine, in Los Angeles.
Many potential respiratory problems
Household rules about the use of tobacco, secondhand exposure to regular cigarettes, and current use of combustible tobacco products appear to drive the observed link between e-cigarettes and wheezing problems among the young, Tackett said.
Once researchers control for those factors, the association between teen e-cigarette use and wheezing becomes statistically insignificant.
However, Tackett noted that this study only looked at wheezing, one of many potential respiratory problems associated with vaping.
“I don’t want the takeaway to be that vaping is not bad. This study doesn’t answer that question,” Tackett said. “The respiratory system is complex, and wheeze is just one indicator of respiratory health.”
E-cigarettes continue to grow in popularity among teenagers. There was a 75% increase in vaping among US high school students between 2017 and 2018, researchers said in background notes.
Difficult to disentangle symptoms
The concern for lung health is that e-cigarette vapour contains potentially harmful chemicals, researchers said, and some prior studies have linked vaping to bronchitis, coughing and phlegm among teenage users.
For this study, researchers used data on more than 7 000 US teenagers without asthma. The information was gathered as part of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH) study, a long-term study of the effects of tobacco use on kids and adults.
Initially, the data showed that the odds of wheezing in the past year were 74% higher for teens who’d vaped than for those who hadn’t, the study authors said.
But when researchers accounted for other variables related to household and personal tobacco use, the association became insignificant.
“It becomes difficult to disentangle which symptoms are driving this association,” Tackett said.
Still a risk over time
Dr Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist with Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City, is sceptical of these findings because teens were required to report their own symptoms in the PATH study, “so the respondents may minimise their symptoms”.
“Vaping anything is still a risk for lung injury over time,” Horovitz said.
Tackett agreed that future studies on e-cigarette safety need to look at a broader range of lung symptoms, and use scientific equipment to measure lung function.
For example, the study “didn’t include objective measures to assess lung capacity or airway inflammation, because wheeze is an indicator of narrowed or inflamed airways,” Tackett said. “Adding those additional objective measures is really going to be important moving forward so we can better understand this relationship and what’s driving these associations.”
The new study was published online on 13 October in JAMA Network Open.
Image credit: Unsplash
Research has shown that dagga use during pregnancy may increase the risk of stillborn birth, preterm birth and low birth weight.
Now, a new study adds another danger: children whose mothers used marijuana while pregnant could be at greater risk for autism.
And the increased danger wasn’t slight: Using data on every birth in Ontario, Canada, between April 2007 and March 2012, the University of Ottawa researchers found that pregnant women who used cannabis were 1.5 times more likely to have a child with autism than women who didn’t.
Adverse birth outcomes
There were half a million women included in the sample, and around 3 000 of them said they used pot during their pregnancy. The database did not include the particulars of these women’s dagga use – such as how, how often, or how much they were using it.
In a previous study, the same researchers found that pot use during pregnancy was linked to an increased risk of preterm birth and other adverse birth outcomes.
The researchers used this new study to determine if there were more long-term health impacts for children whose mothers used marijuana while pregnant.
They did this by matching two Canadian health databases, one that tracks diagnoses (including autism) and one that tracks birth outcomes in general, said study author Dr Darine El-Chaar, a maternal foetal medicine physician at the Ottawa Hospital.
“There’s been a linkage through these two registries, so we can match the birth data with the outcomes of the babies from that pregnancy later in life,” El-Chaar explained.
To show that dagga use alone was linked to the increased risk of autism, the researchers looked specifically at 2 200 women who used pot but did not use other substances during their pregnancy.
Treating morning sickness
Still, numerous factors could contribute to an increased risk of autism, El-Chaar noted. The study only shows that using pot during pregnancy may be associated with autism – not that it definitively causes it.
The findings were published online in August in the journal Nature Medicine.
Pregnant women who use pot are not only doing so for recreational purposes – some say that they use it to treat pain or morning sickness.
El-Chaar said that many of the patients she works with either use dagga to alleviate nausea or ask her if they should. “I do see women telling me that that’s the only thing that helps,” she said. “I generally do not have good evidence to say, ‘Yes, that’s true,’ yet.”
The mechanism by which pot use during pregnancy may affect birth outcomes and infant health is not fully understood. Still, most experts point to animal studies that have found cannabis receptors in the brains of animal embryos that are only five to six weeks old.
When a pregnant woman consumes pot, these cannabis receptors would be activated, potentially affecting the infant’s brain development.
Legalisation could prompt rise in marijuana use
The number of women who used pot during pregnancy may be much higher than the study reported since some may have denied using it because recreational pot was illegal when the data was collected.
Canada’s nationwide legalisation of recreational cannabis in 2018 was a catalyst for the study, according to El-Chaar.
She said she was concerned that legalisation could prompt a rise in marijuana use among pregnant women, despite the lack of evidence that it is safe.
Marijuana use among pregnant women in the United States is already on the rise, according to the US National Institute on Drug Abuse: 7% of pregnant women reported using the drug in a 2016–2017 survey.
Andrea Roberts, a senior research scientist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, shared similar concerns that women might interpret legalisation as a sign that dagga is “somehow harmless”.
Roberts emphasised that pregnancy is a highly sensitive period, and women “should really not use any substances that they don’t have to use during pregnancy”.
Image credit: iStock
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For those battling debilitating depression, a new study delivers some bad news: Vitamin D supplements won’t make a dent in improving mood.
While the “sunshine vitamin” is often touted as an alternative way to protect against depression, vitamin D’s efficacy has remained unknown, the researchers said.
But “there was no significant benefit from the supplement for this purpose. It did not prevent depression or improve mood,” said study author Dr Olivia Okereke, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
No significant differences in mood
For the study, more than 18 000 men and women aged 50 or older were selected to take vitamin D3 or a placebo, for an average of five years.
Many other studies have found that low levels of vitamin D were tied with a higher risk for depression.
Among the participants, the risk of depression or depressive symptoms was not significantly different between those getting vitamin D supplements and those on the placebo, the researchers found. Also, no significant differences were seen between the groups in mood.
Still, “It’s not time to throw out your vitamin D yet though, at least not without your doctor’s advice,” Okereke said in a hospital news release.
The report was published on 4 August in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“Vitamin D is known to be essential for bone and metabolic health, but randomized trials have cast doubt on many of the other presumed benefits,” said senior study author Dr JoAnn Manson, from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Image credit: Getty Images
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