All posts by nedhamson

Activist, writer, researcher, addicted to sharing information and facts.

France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen endorses Trump

French far-right patriarch Jean-Marie Le Pen, kicked out of his own party for xenophobic and anti-Semitic comments, has given controversial US Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump the thumbs up, just a day after Trump was endorsed by Ku Klux Klan.

Avian Flu Diary: Not Without Warning – The Return Of Mosquito Disease Threats

Zika, Dengue, and Chikungunya – at least outside of Africa and Asia – have no known non-human animal reservoirs, which means they have a harder time becoming endemic. But when enough people become infected, these viruses are  able to sustain themselves in an Urban Cycle, where transmission is strictly human-to-mosquito-to human. In the middle of the last decade we saw Chikungunya made a break from Africa, and jump to Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean where it reportedly infected about 1/3rd of that island’s population (266,000 case out of  pop.770,000) in a matter of a few months, before moving on to Southeast Asia. About the same time, Dengue began to turn up again in the United States after decades of absence. In January of 2009, in Outnumbered By A Competent Vector, we looked at reports of Dengue’s incursions into Texas and Queensland, Australia. In 2009, Dengue Resurfaced In Key West  after a 70 year absence, but even months before that, we saw a cautionary report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (see NRDC Report: Climate Change and Health Threats) warning that Dengue and other vector borne diseases could one day reestablish themselves in the United States.

Source: Avian Flu Diary: Not Without Warning – The Return Of Mosquito Disease Threats