For anyone looking into getting a fuller picture, I'd recommend reading Churchill's Secret War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churchill%27s_Secret_War). Where this differs from some of the other works's on Churchill's life is that it tracks the accounts of those affected by the Bengal famine of 1943 (how it is related to Churchill is covered in the book) written in native languages—which are, by far, inaccessible to English authors.
Some of the secret names of sugar I came across when I was sleuthing in the supermarkets—agave nectar, corn sweetener, corn syrup, or corn syrup solids, dehydrated cane juice, dextrin, dextrose, fructose, fruit juice concentrate, glucose, high fructose corn syrup, honey (probably heated and not raw, thereby losing all its nutrients), invert sugar, lactose, maltodextrin, malt syrup, molasses, raw sugar, rice syrup, saccharose, sorghum or sorghum syrop, sucrose, syrup, treacle, turbinado sugar, xylose, etc.
I did something similar last year and quitting sugar cold turkey was probably the most difficult thing I've ever done in my life. I documented my experiences over each of the four weeks: http://avadhutp.github.io/no-sugar-challenge-week-1-update/
In some cases, yes. You've to realize that each country in the WTO picks which battles to fight and which one's to let go.
For example, when Novartis lost the case, in Indian supreme courts, to ban the production of Gleevec (a Cancer drug) by Indian generic makers, they could've taken the arbitration to the WTO. However, this would mean terrible PR for both Novartis and US. Instead, PhRMA (a trade group for big pharma) and Novartis decided to let this one lie.
However, the US did recently challenge India's decision to force LCR (local content requirement) in it's push to use more solar energy in the country. USA, which is one of the biggest exporters of solar panels to India, successfully fought this decision.
I feel, in the end, the WTO is like any other court where two big conglomerates go head-to-head. Each one does not want to piss off the other to a great extent. And settlements are preferred over outright fights.
People wer exporting them from Canada, but big pharma lobbied for bans (http://news.healingwell.com/index.php?p=news1&id=526618). Anywhere close to US mainland, especially Mexico, I am afraid, will meet with the same fate.
Cuba's a different story as they just tell US lawmakers to fuck off.
Might be unrelated to the topic but I don't understand how you came up with the summation "India is creating a drug resistant bacteria because antibiotics are overused" from that nytimes article. The same article also mentions that the overuse of antibiotics in US factory farms has also lead to outbreaks of drug-resistant diseases in recent years. Yes it mentions that there's been a clampdown from 2000 to 2010, but I am skeptical of accepting this fact without numbers. Can I go ahead and say that US will be responsible for creating drug resistant bacteria?
You may not know this, but one of the major outbreaks of drug-resistant superbugs is because of Indian drug manufacturers exploiting lax environmental laws to dump anti-bacterial refuse into village waterways. A large number of these manufacturers are contracted by US big pharma because it is much cheaper to produce (even patent-protected) drugs in India. If you're interested, here's the bad medicine report on it https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.sumofus.org/images/BAD_MEDICINE_....
My point is no one country or entity can be blamed for the rise of superbugs. The problem is systemic and it needs us to step out of our reductionist paradigm to solve it.
Sorry for your experience. But this is the problem with US visa process—it is not at all objective. It is very subjective and depends on the person interviewing you. Chances are that if you were allowed to speak to a completely different person in the embassy you would've had had a different outcome. A point-based VISA system, like that of UKs, allows you, to some extent, determine the outcome of the application process even before you step into the embassy.
I've had a similar experience, not in terms of the outcome (I got my visa) but in terms of the questions when I applied for a USA visa a couple of years back. And I am an Indian, and embassy was in India. But the questions were pretty similar. The only difference was I was applying for a tourist visa.
Take the extreme programming approach. Don't try to familiarize yourself with a new codebase all at once. Start small. Work on a small ticket. It will, organically, help you assimilate what's happening.
