Category Archives: planetkillers

Florida governor criticizes Washington for lagging in Zika fight | Reuters – This after his people refused to work with CDC two weeks ago – Scott is just CYA for being a dummy!

Scott said he asked U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Thomas Frieden earlier this week for 10,000 additional Zika preparedness kits.

Source: Florida governor criticizes Washington for lagging in Zika fight | Reuters

ISIS Affiliate in Egypt Warns of Attack Against Israel in Rare Direct Threat — Egyptian Streets

In a rare direct threat, the Egyptian affiliate of the Islamic State (ISIS) released a video warning Israel that it will soon “pay a high price.” “Oh Jews, wait for us. The punishment [we’ve prepared for you] is severe,” the narrator of the video reportedly says, adding that “this is only the beginning.” The video,…

via ISIS Affiliate in Egypt Warns of Attack Against Israel in Rare Direct Threat — Egyptian Streets

Under-reporting of catches threatens Caribbean marine life — Repeating Islands

When factoring in tourist and resident consumption of locally sourced seafood, the number of fish removed from waters is almost three times as high as previously thought, Stephen Fellers reports for UPI. In order to prevent the destruction of fisheries, regulations limit the amount of fish that can be caught in Caribbean islands, but researchers […]

via Under-reporting of catches threatens Caribbean marine life — Repeating Islands

Nuclear accident: British Navy unloading weapons from nuclear submarine in Gibraltar | In English | EL PAÍS “Uh, ummm, nuke Brit sub crashes into merchant ship – and it is not front page news around the world?”

A British nuclear-powered submarine that sustained damage after colliding with a merchant vessel off Gibraltar a week ago is being stripped of its weapons.HMS Ambush will leave the British overseas territory “as soon as the ongoing work is completed,” said a spokesman for the Royal Navy, without specifying a date or the nature of the operation.But on Wednesday, a jib crane could be seen removing the Tomahawk cruise missiles, the Spearfish torpedoes and the Harpoon anti-ship missiles from the attack vessel, which returned to Gibraltar for examination after the collision on July 20.

Source: Nuclear accident: British Navy unloading weapons from nuclear submarine in Gibraltar | In English | EL PAÍS

Trump the Traitor by Bernard-Henri Lévy – Project Syndicate

The implications of Trump’s election would be truly terrifying. The problem would not only be his vulgarity, sexism, racism, and defiant ignorance. It would be his possible infidelity to America itself. The party of Eisenhower and Reagan has been commandeered by a corrupt demagogue who betrays not only his country’s ideals, but also its fundamental national interest.

Source: Trump the Traitor by Bernard-Henri Lévy – Project Syndicate

Trump invites Russia to meddle in the U.S. presidential race with Clinton’s emails – The Washington Post

The candidate and several of his top advisers have business connections to Russia. Campaign chairman Paul Manafort has made millions of dollars in business deals with pro-Russia oligarchs as well as advised the Putin-aligned president of Ukraine whose 2014 ouster triggered Russia’s intervention there.

Source: Trump invites Russia to meddle in the U.S. presidential race with Clinton’s emails – The Washington Post

Artificial intelligence reveals undiscovered bat carriers of Ebola and other filoviruses | Science Codex

David Hayman of Massey University notes, “The model allows us to move beyond our own biases and find patterns in the data that only a machine can. Instead of predicting where Ebola and other filovirus outbreaks will occur by looking at the last spillover event, it forecasts risk based on the intrinsic traits of filovirus-positive bat species.”Those traits include: early maturity, having more than one pup per year (most bats only have one), offspring that are large at birth, and a tendency to live in large groups. Compared to other bats, filovirus-positive species also have broader geographic ranges that overlap with a higher diversity of mammal species per square kilometer.When data on the world’s 1116 bat species were searched using this filovirus-positive bat profile, machine learning identified new potential hosts based on their traits. Once mapped, these bats were more widely distributed than the team expected. While many potential bat hosts are found in sub-Saharan Africa, they also range across Southeast Asia and Central and South America.Han explains, “Our results corroborate studies in Africa that have predicted the environmental niche of Ebola spans the primary tropical rainforest. But in a departure from past research, we identified several hotspots in Southeast Asia where up to 26 potential reservoir species overlap, notably in Thailand, Burma, Malaysia, Vietnam, and northeast India.”John Drake of the University of Georgia concludes, “Maps generated by the algorithm can help guide targeted surveillance and virus discovery projects. We suspect there may be other filoviruses waiting to be found. An outstanding question for future work is to investigate why there are so few filovirus spillover events reported for humans and wildlife in Southeast Asia compared to equatorial Africa.”

Source: Artificial intelligence reveals undiscovered bat carriers of Ebola and other filoviruses | Science Codex

For Whites Sensing Decline, Donald Trump Unleashes Words of Resistance – The New York Times

This year, for the first time in decades, overt white nationalism re-entered national politics. In Iowa, a new “super PAC” paid for pro-Trump robocalls featuring Jared Taylor, a self-described race realist, and William Johnson, a white nationalist and the chairman of the American Freedom Party. (“We don’t need Muslims,” Mr. Taylor urged recipients of the calls. “We need smart, well-educated white people who will assimilate to our culture. Vote Trump.”) David Duke, the Louisiana lawmaker turned anti-Semitic radio host, encouraged listeners to vote for Mr. Trump.Modern political convention dictates that candidates receiving such embraces instantly and publicly spurn them. In 2008, when it was revealed that a minister who endorsed the Republican nominee, Senator John McCain, had made anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim remarks, Mr. McCain forcefully repudiated them.Mr. Trump did something different.Asked about the robocall, Mr. Trump seemed to sympathize with its message while affecting a vague half-distance. “Nothing in this country shocks me; I would disavow it, but nothing in this country shocks me,” Mr. Trump told a CNN anchor. “People are angry.”Pressed, Mr. Trump grew irritable, saying: “How many times you want me to say it? I said, ‘I disavow.’”Asked six weeks later about Mr. Duke’s support, he said he had been unaware of it: “David Duke endorsed me? O.K. All right. I disavow, O.K.?” Later, on Twitter, he repeated the phrase: “I disavow.”Mr. Trump has often used those words when confronted by reporters. The phrase is comfortingly nonspecific, a disavowal of everything and nothing. And whatever Mr. Trump’s intentions, it has been powerfully reassuring to people on the far right.“There’s no direct object there,” Mr. Spencer said. “It’s kind of interesting, isn’t it?”Mr. Trump’s new supporters took his approach as a signal of support. In an interview on a “pro-white” radio show called “The Political Cesspool,” Mr. Johnson, of the American Freedom Party, praised Mr. Trump’s handling of the controversy.“He disavowed us,” Mr. Johnson acknowledged, “but he explained why there is so much anger in America that I couldn’t have asked for a better approach from him.”

Source: For Whites Sensing Decline, Donald Trump Unleashes Words of Resistance – The New York Times

Alarming Antibiotic-Resistant Superbug Discovered In NYer’s Bacteria Sample: Gothamist

The authors of this most recent report say that “it’s not an immediate threat,” but rather a warning sign. But experts told the Huffington Post that it’s likely the bug is “already in the guts of people throughout the United States and will continue to spread” (through fecal contact and poor hygiene, in case you were wondering), and that “within the next two to three years, it’s going to be fairly routine for infections to occur in the United States for which we have no (effective) drugs available.”As for the NYC patient? Not too much is known, other than the fact that the sample with the Colistin-resistant bacteria was gastrointestinal. One of the laboratory’s research directors told National Geographic that the hospital where it was collected is investigating the patient’s clinical history. The city Department of Health didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but we’ll update if they do.In a fact sheet put out last fall, the World Health Organization called antibiotic resistance “one of the biggest threats to global health today,” and noted that it’s “putting the achievements of modern medicine at risk. Without effective antibiotics for the prevention and treatment of infections, organ transplantations, chemotherapy and surgeries such as caesarean sections become much more dangerous.”

Source: Alarming Antibiotic-Resistant Superbug Discovered In NYer’s Bacteria Sample: Gothamist

Fifty Stockholm heart patients hit by superbug – The Local

Four of the 52 patients affected have died, and the hospital believes an antibiotic-resistant strain of the Klebsiella pneumoniae bacteria was the cause of death in at least one case. The outbreak was discovered this spring but is believed to have begun in the autumn. All of the patients affected had undergone open heart surgery at the Thorax Clinic in Solna. “We have put in place a range of measures and hope now to have stopped the spread, since we haven’t seen any new cases for two to three weeks,” chief physician Elda Sparrelid told news agency TT. The hospital has not yet fully ascertained whether the patients died as a result of the outbreak. “It’s not so easy to conclude as these are patients who were very sick for different reasons, but we do have strong suspicions in at least one case,” she said. The strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae at Karolinska contains ESBL, an enzyme that can break down antibiotics. Most of the patients affected have carried the bacteria without suffering unduly, since the bacteria itself does not generally make people sick. If however they need any treatment requiring antibiotics doctors could find that these no longer work.

Source: Fifty Stockholm heart patients hit by superbug – The Local