Category Archives: Fail!

Fear and Silence in Bangladesh as Militants Target Intellectuals – The New York Times {Whole Nation is Hostage!}

Ms. Farzana, 37, cannot shake the feeling that, as she puts it, “there is a blueprint,” and that someone, somewhere has added her name to a list.“I am really scared this time,” she said. “I have something in mind that maybe they would like to open up a new chapter and kill a woman. These days, you may not have a single idea how you are related to the whole thing. But maybe you are the target. You never know.”So far this year, four bloggers and one publisher have been hacked to death in Bangladesh — a tiny number for a country with a population of around 160 million. But anonymous threats are common, and the cumulative psychological effect has been profound, prompting public figures to steer away from discussing the terrorist threat openly.Salil Tripathi, chairman of PEN International’s Writers in Prison Committee, approached a long list of Bangladeshi writers for a commentary after a blogger was killed in May. All refused, saying that attaching their name to the subject would be too dangerous. He was reduced to publishing a column written by an expatriate, under a pen name.By threatening intellectuals, “you’re trying to silence opinion, and shape opinion, and I think that’s happening,” said Mr. Tripathi, the author of “The Colonel Who Would Not Repent,” a book about Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence from Pakistan and its legacy.

Source: Fear and Silence in Bangladesh as Militants Target Intellectuals – The New York Times

Report shows countless birds dying from West Nile virus | Vaccine News “Uh oh!”

The study demonstrated that millions of birds die in just one year when they are exposed to the virus. “These populations are getting hammered — over five years, they’re losing a third of their population,” Harrigan said. “They’re getting infected every year. In some species, this has gone on five or six years after the disease hit, so the idea that the populations have not recovered since then is a bit scary.”

Source: Report shows countless birds dying from West Nile virus | Vaccine News

Dear Black Children: Everyone Can Beat You! | Dame Magazine

The South Carolina student’s reported refusal to give up her cell phone is understandable to me. Children in foster care don’t have much property or many lifelines. There is so little that you can call your own, much less control. You’ve already been abused, abandoned, violated and made to feel like a number rather than a child. Rather than a human. You have to deal with the shame and embarrassment of the violation and circumstances that landed you in the system. Your trauma is likely to be misdiagnosed and rather than receiving adequate counseling, too many children in foster care are given psychotropic meds, with no caring adults to monitor their response to the drugs, potential side effects or even if they’re helping at all.

Source: Dear Black Children: Everyone Can Beat You! | Dame Magazine

Baby dies in West Bank after inhaling teargas, says Palestinian ministry

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Eight-month-old baby suffocates inside family home in village south of Bethlehem after Israeli forces fire teargas

An eight-month-old Palestinian baby has died after inhaling teargas in a village near Bethlehem, the Palestinian ministry of health has said, on another day of killings and clashes in the West Bank.

The baby, named as Ramadan Mohammad Faisal Thawabta, suffocated inside his family home in Beit Fajjar, a village south of Bethlehem.

Continue reading…

Deforestation ‘may have started west Africa’s Ebola outbreak’

Environment ministers from all over the world attend one-day conference on deforestation and climate change in London

Source: Deforestation ‘may have started west Africa’s Ebola outbreak’

Deforestation may have triggered the recent Ebola outbreak in west Africa, France’s environment minister Ségolène Royal told a London summit hosted by the Prince of Wales ahead of next month’s Cop21 conference.

Royal said researchers believe the destruction of forest habitat brought bats, known to carry the virus, into greater contact with humans.

“They had to clear the forest to begin subsistence agriculture and the deforestation has also been caused by mining activity and large-scale logging for export,” she told the high-level meeting at Lancaster House.

“This destruction of the natural habitat of fruit-eating bats drove the animals to approach human settlements to find food and the virus may have been transmitted during this increased contact resulting from deforestation,” she said.

{I have thought this had to have been the cause of many outbreaks in the past, or we would have heard about it for more than 100 years but it took generations before too much of the forest was cut and drove bats into closer contact with humans and other primates.}