Tag Archive for: Food

They created a mobile food bank. Now, the family behind NL Eats is leaving the province

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Adib Rahman, Mehnaz Tabassum, Saif Ahmed and Shourov Islam—four founders of the nonprofit NL Eats—visiting Terra Nova National Park last summer. (Submitted by Adib Rahman)

The family behind NL Eats — a nonprofit known for the mobile food bank they began during the COVID-19 pandemic, among other community projects—is saying goodbye to Newfoundland and Labrador … at least for now.

Originally from Bangladesh, siblings Adib Rahman, Mahmudul Islam Shourov, Fabiha Tarannum and Mehnaz Tabassum, along with Tabassum’s fiancé, Saif Ahmed, formed NL Eats in 2019.

“We all recently graduated and we were looking for opportunities,” said Adib Rahman, who is the director of marketing for NL Eats.

“We have looked for opportunities in Newfoundland. But because of the pandemic … it’s very, very scarce right now, the opportunities available for youth.”

The family has now moved to Ottawa for work after living in St. John’s for more than six years. Some family members are permanent residents; some, like Rahman and Shourov, are still considered international students in the eyes of the federal government.

“With that status comes a lot of different restrictions,” Rahman said. “A lot of jobs are not available to us. And while we are in the process of our permanent residency right now, it is a lengthy process.”

While the family is sad to go, they’re vowing to make an annual visit.

They even bought a house before they left—and Tabassum said they definitely hope to return in a couple of years. 

In the meantime, they’re all staying very much involved with NL Eats. Working with their staff and volunteers on the ground in Newfoundland, the family will keep overseeing a wide array of community projects.

A mobile food bank and so much more

The Road to Success program is one of their latest ventures. Aimed at helping youth launch their careers through volunteering, paid internships and professional skills building, the family’s departure from Newfoundland actually sparked the idea for the program.

Shourov Islam and Adib Rahman preparing food hampers in St. John’s as part of Project #FoodForThought in June 2020. (Paul Daly/CBC)

“We love Newfoundland and it was very heartbreaking…

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West African fish meal exports undermine food security: Greenpeace

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Rising exports of fish meal and fish oil from West Africa to Europe and Asia are depriving millions of Africans of food, Greenpeace said Tuesday. 

In a report, the environmental group said that over half a million tonnes of fish used to produce fish meal and fish oil in the poor region could feed some 33 million people instead. 

Fish meal is made in factories dotted along the West African coast and is predominantly sold as feed for fish farms in the developed world. Fish oil serves a similar purpose. 

Much of West Africa’s fishing grounds are already overexploited and illegal fishing is a persistent problem.

Greenpeace said West Africa’s trade in fish meal and fish oil had grown tenfold between 2010 and 2019 — from about 13,000 tonnes to over 170,000 tonnes. 

Most fish oil and meal is exported to Europe and Asia.

The report cited “severe consequences for local populations”, explaining that the industry undermined food security across Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Mali, and Burkina Faso.  

The main species used in the industry are small fish such as sardinella and bonga, which Greenpeace said constitute a vital source of animal protein for many in the region.

The group recommended that governments phase out fish oil and meal production from fish fit for human consumption, among other measures.  

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NASA Data Aid Food Security Assessments in Kenya

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NASA Data Aid Food Security Assessments in Kenya

Nearly 75 percent of Kenya’s people rely on farming for their food and income, so environmental issues like drought, locusts, and climate change can put many lives and livelihoods at risk. Crop insurance programs can help mitigate those risks, but it is not always easy to know where resources are needed. Now NASA-funded scientists are working with colleagues in Kenya to make better assessments of agricultural needs through the use of satellite data.

In the first few years of the country’s crop insurance program, Kenyan agriculture agents collected much of their information through in-person visits, traveling to individual farms to determine how crops were performing and if financial assistance was necessary. It was labor-intensive and time-consuming. Officials urgently needed timely information spanning vast areas of the country—and that is where NASA Earth observations came in.

“We suggested that instead of looking for farmers, we look at fields by using products derived from NASA satellite data,” said Catherine Nakalembe, a geographical scientist at the University of Maryland and a leader of the Africa section of the NASA-funded Harvest program. By adding satellite observations into their models and calculations, managers of Kenya’s agricultural insurance program could more readily assess critical information necessary to help farmers.

Grants from the USAID-NASA SERVIR program allowed the Harvest team and the Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) to incorporate satellite data on rainfall, soil moisture, and land use in ways that can inform Kenya’s agriculture monitoring programs. It also supported efforts to assess crop conditions from afar by using a technique called “cropland masks.” These mapping tools use computer analyses of satellite images and data to build highly localized views of where crops are growing and the health of those fields. The Kenyan ministry and researchers in the RCMRD can then confirm the satellite data by sampling crop…

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Daily Food Diary app dishes malware up to its users

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There’s an app for that. Remember that marketing line? Well, it’s basically true. There’s an app for just about everything, including tracking your food consumption and calories. Daily Food Diary is an app that does exactly that and more. According to Pradeo, Daily Food Diary made it through Play Protect security by deeply obfuscating its malicious code.

Mainly, the app steals users’ contact lists, prevents users from killing it, and seems related to the Joker Malware. Daily Food Diary had already been downloaded over 10,000 times before it was removed from the Play Store.

Daily Food Diary pretends to be a legitimate app to take pictures of your meals and set mealtime alerts. It features a very minimal design and a few basic functionalities with no real purpose. The only real purpose was to steal users’ data.

Report: Daily Food Diary app dishes malware up to its users
A bad screenshot of Daily Food Diary on the Play Store

When users launch it, they are immediately sent to the device settings to enable the app to automatically run at startup (foreground service permission). Besides, the app is set to always run in the background (wake lock permission). When users are on the app interface, attempts to exit are overridden to make it difficult to close it.

Daily Food Diary repeatedly asks for permissions to access the contact list, and when it gets it, it directly exfiltrates contacts’ information to unknown external storage. It also requests to manage phone calls, to potentially refuse incoming calls that would temporarily prevent the app from running in the background.

To hide its true intentions, Daily Food Diary malicious code is hidden in an encrypted file called 0OO00l111l1l. Other files contain the native library that can decrypt the malicious code so it can execute (libshellx-super.2019.so), the encryption key (tosversion), and additional resources (o0oooOO0ooOo.dat).

Besides, to stay undetected from dynamic analysis, the app does not perform its malicious behaviors when running in an emulator.

Pradeo

Users are encouraged to delete this app immediately from their devices.

What do you think of this app? Did you install it? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter or Facebook. You can also comment on our MeWe page by…

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