Category Archives: Fail!

Organised crime threatens Brazil’s Amazon

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Organised crime responsible for rising Brazil deforestation

via Organised crime threatens Brazil’s Amazon.

Vomiting virus that emerged in southern China now spreading around the world: Shanghaiist

Cases of GII.17 have already emerged in the US, South America, Europe and Africa, scientists wrote in a paper which accompanied new Japanese research.

While there’s no medicine available yet to treat or prevent GII.17, a pharmaceutical company based in Osaka, Japan “has the most advanced vaccine in development”.

Hope.

Norovirus symptoms, including fever, vomiting and diarrhea, typically last only a couple of days and infected food workers are usually the source of the outbreak, the report said.

via Vomiting virus that emerged in southern China now spreading around the world: Shanghaiist.

Forgetting 1945-1949 forgiveness of their debts: France, Germany demand ‘serious’ proposals from Greece

Both France and Germany have urged Greece to put forward serious proposals that would allow financial aid talks to resume. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has said there is an urgent need to lift capital controls.

via France, Germany demand ‘serious’ proposals from Greece.

Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.” — Medium

After the war ended in 1945, Germany’s debt amounted to over 200% of its GDP. Ten years later, little of that remained: public debt was less than 20% of GDP. Around the same time, France managed a similarly artful turnaround. We never would have managed this unbelievably fast reduction in debt through the fiscal discipline that we today recommend to Greece. Instead, both of our states employed the second method with the three components that I mentioned, including debt relief. Think about the London Debt Agreement of 1953, where 60% of German foreign debt was cancelled and its internal debts were restructured.

via Thomas Piketty: “Germany has never repaid.” — Medium.

Greek debt crisis: Photograph of elderly man collapsed outside bank reveals pensioner’s despair – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Recounting how he had gone from bank to bank in a futile attempt to collect his wife’s pension, Mr Chatzifotiadis said when he was told at the fourth “that I could not get the money, I just collapsed”.

Both he and his wife, like many Greeks in the north of the country, had spent several years in Germany where he “worked very hard” in a coal mine and later a foundry.

And it is from Berlin, which has been blamed by many in Greece for its hardline stance in demanding the government impose more austerity measures for fresh international aid, that Mr Chatzifotiadis is receiving his wife’s pension.

“I see my fellow citizens begging for a few cents to buy bread,” he said.

“I see more and more suicides.

“I am a sensitive person. I cannot stand to see my country in this situation.

“Europe and Greece have made mistakes. We must find a solution.”

via Greek debt crisis: Photograph of elderly man collapsed outside bank reveals pensioner’s despair – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

CDC: Salmonella cases in 40 states tied to live poultry

Boy with chick
Robert Roos | News Editor | CIDRAP News
Jul 02, 2015

The outbreak with links to chicks and ducklings involves four different strains.

via CDC: Salmonella cases in 40 states tied to live poultry.

VDU’s blog: Ebola virus: wild and domestic animals, plants and insects…

VDU’s blog: Ebola virus: wild and domestic animals, plants and insects….

Mega-important when one considers how intensive agriculture of fruits increases population of carriers and transmitters, which then may become more vulnerable due to population pressures/stresses. May also be tied to lands recently deforested for intensive agriculture.

Greece and Spain helped postwar Germany recover. Spot the difference | Nick Dearden | Comment is free | The Guardian

the country’s creditors came together in London and showed that they understood how you help a country that you want to recover from devastation. It showed they also understood that debt can never be seen as the responsibility of the debtor alone. Countries such as Greece willingly took part in a deal to help create a stable and prosperous western Europe, despite the war crimes that German occupiers had inflicted just a few years before.

via Greece and Spain helped postwar Germany recover. Spot the difference | Nick Dearden | Comment is free | The Guardian.