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Garden
IPS – Female Garment Workers Bear Brunt of Tragedy | Inter Press Service
Eighteen-year-old Shapla, a garment worker who survived the Apr. 24 factory collapse, lies on a hospital bed in Dhaka. Credit: Nari Uddung Kendra (the Centre for Women’s Initiative)
DHAKA, May 10 2013 (IPS) – Last month, 18-year-old Shapla was just another one of thousands of garment workers employed in a factory in Savar, a suburb of Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka.
Today she is a handicapped survivor of one of the worst industrial accidents in history: the collapse on Apr. 24 of the massive Rana Plaza, a building housing five factories, that buried scores of workers under a wave of cement and glass.
The death toll reached 996 on Friday, though officials and families are still counting the bodies and searching for others beneath the rubble.
“I am desperate about the future,” Shapla said, echoing the sentiments of hundreds of female apparel workers like her who lost their limbs on that fateful day.
via IPS – Female Garment Workers Bear Brunt of Tragedy | Inter Press Service.
Garden
Hezbollah and the Golan
Good analysis – hope that everyone takes a step back and thinks again – but those in the game so long find it hard to see or want an end that results in peace that everyone can live with.
(Photo of Hasssan Nasrallah, via Kabobfest.com)
In his first televised speech after the Israeli strikes on Syria, Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, made two interesting remarks. First that Syria will supply Israeli arch enemy, Hezbollah, with “game changing arms.” Second, “the resistance is ready to assist and cooperate to liberate Golan Heights.”
Nasrallah’s speech met with mixed response; some dismissed it as far-fetched, implausible rhetoric while others urge caution, and recommend taking Nasrallah’s word seriously.
Followers of Lebanon and Hezbollah leaders know that Nasrallah is known for his loud rhetoric; however, he is also known to be precise, calibrating his speeches carefully, and is usually accurate in his threats. Hence, a legitimate question is: What Nasrallah is truly after? Although it is not easy to read the true intentions of Hezbollah’s leaders, however, we can read in-between the lines, and draw some conclusions, and potential possibilties:
First, Nasrallah had to…
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Listen
@SenJohnMcCain & @JeffFlake: Release Immigrants from Eloy Detention Center & Close it Down!
Shut it down – now!
Disney kills ‘Dia de los Muertos’ trademark bid – L.A. Biz
Can you trademark a holiday? Disney learned the hard way this week it’s best not to try, as the studio’s attempt to register “Dia de los Muertos” with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office was met with vociferous criticism. The company has since withdrawn its applications.
On May 1, the Walt Disney Company quietly filed 10 applications for “Dia de los Muertos” toys, cereal, jewelry and more, reported the Los Angeles Times, in anticipation of merchandising opportunities associated with its upcoming animated Pixar movie about the Mexican holiday. The public was quick to condemn the move, however, and a Change.org petition that went up on Tuesday has more than 20,000 signatures as of this writing.
via Disney kills ‘Dia de los Muertos’ trademark bid – L.A. Biz.
AFP: Flu infections rising among Chinese pigs: study
Scientists said Wednesday that flu infections were rising among pigs raised for slaughter on farms in south and southeastern China, also plagued by bird flu.
And the risk of spillover to humans was “constant or growing”, according to one of the authors of a study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
Pigs are an important source of new human strains of influenza A, such as the 2009-10 H1N1 pandemic that emerged in Mexico and infected an estimated fifth of the world’s population.
Pigs can act as a “mixing vessel” in a process known as reassortment, brewing new flu strains from swine, poultry and human viruses in areas where they live in close proximity.
Such new hybrids can be deadly — tens of millions of people died in flu pandemics in 1918, 1957 and 1968.
Basic disinfectant could halt bird flu spread — Study – BorneoPost Online | Borneo , Malaysia, Sarawak Daily News | Largest English Daily In Borneo
“Instead, disconnecting the market network should be achieved through the daily disinfection of live bird markets and of the vehicles leaving them,” said the study.
“Implementing this intervention in only a few hubs would be effective in fragmenting the entire network.”
Daily disinfection was shown to reduce the median epidemic size, or the fraction of contaminated markets, by 80 to 89 per cent, said the study.
Disinfection every two days was less effective, reducing the media epidemic size by about 30 per cent.
The benefits of such a system include low costs and easily collected data about traders’ movements, said the study led by Guillaume Fournie of the University of London.



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