Category Archives: planetkillers

Zika Virus in Central America – Watch – Level 1, Practice Usual Precautions – Travel Health Notices | Travelers’ Health | CDC

What is the current situation?

In November 2015, the first local transmission of Zika virus infection in Central America was reported in El Salvador. Local transmission means that mosquitoes in the area have been infected with Zika virus and are spreading it to people. Zika virus is now being reported in other countries in Central America.As of December 10, 2015, the following Central American countries have reported cases of Zika virus:

  • El Salvador
  • Guatemala
  • Panama

CDC recommends that travelers to Central America protect themselves from mosquito bites. The Ministry of Health of Brazil is concerned about a possible association between the Zika virus outbreak and increased numbers of babies born with birth defects. For this reason, pregnant women should take extra precautions to avoid mosquito bites.

Source: Zika Virus in Central America – Watch – Level 1, Practice Usual Precautions – Travel Health Notices | Travelers’ Health | CDC

ArtLeaks | It is time to break the silence!

Daniel T’Seleie, from the Dene First Nation, Canada, said:“In the Arctic, we are seeing severe impacts from global climate change, simultaneously we are defending our traditional homelands and culture  from aggressive assaults on sacred and important subsistence use areas, such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. How are we to survive if the fossil fuel industry, companies such as ENI and Total continue to impede our rights? They are committing climate genocide on us, there is no way that we can allow corporations continue to generate a social license to operate by sponsoring our cultural institutions such as the Louvre.” . The Italian oil giant, Eni, has been widely criticised by environmentalists over its plans to drill in the Arctic [4] and Total was challenged just last year over its decision to purchase a shipment of Arctic oil, shortly after it had publicly declared it had no interest in Arctic oil extraction [5]. Total also has projects in the Canadian tar sands, one of the most carbon-intensive fossil fuels [6].Ragnhild Freng Dale from Stopp Oljesponsing Av Norsk Kulturliv (Norway) said:“We know that the COP is not on route to give us the deal we need to stay within a safe limit of global warming. Oil companies like Total and Eni have business plans to keep drilling for more fossil fuels in ever riskier places, when the climate science is clear it needs to stay in the ground to protect current and future generations from runaway climate change. We need to separate our cultural institutions and the climate negotiations from oil companies’ influence.”

Source: ArtLeaks | It is time to break the silence!

Exposure to toxic chemicals correlates with limited vaccine response | Vaccine News – Big Oops! C#@p!

Scientists from the University of Rochester (UR) Environmental Health Sciences Center recently conducted a study that suggests having toxic chemical exposure in early life can inhibit a baby’s vaccine response.

Source: Exposure to toxic chemicals correlates with limited vaccine response | Vaccine News

California water nuked – what about crops, as well as people?

FRESNO, Calif. (AP) — In a trailer park tucked among irrigated orchards that help make California’s San Joaquin Valley the richest farm region in the world, 16-year-old Giselle Alvarez, one of the few English-speakers in the community of farmworkers, puzzles over the notices posted on front doors: There’s a danger in their drinking water.Uranium, the notices warn, tests at a level considered unsafe by federal and state standards. The law requires the park’s owners to post the warnings. But they are awkwardly worded and in English, a language few of the park’s dozens of Spanish-speaking families can read.”It says you can drink the water – but if you drink the water over a period of time, you can get cancer,” said Alvarez, whose working-class family has no choice but keep drinking and cooking with the tainted tap water daily, as they have since Alvarez was just learning to walk. “They really don’t explain.”Uranium, the stuff of nuclear fuel for power plants and atom bombs, increasingly is showing in drinking water systems in major farming regions of the U.S. West – a naturally occurring but unexpected byproduct of irrigation, of drought, and of the overpumping of natural underground water reserves.An Associated Press investigation in California’s central farm valleys – along with the U.S. Central Plains, among the areas most affected – found authorities are doing little to inform the public at large of the growing risk.That includes the one out of four families on private wells in this farm valley who, unknowingly, are drinking dangerous amounts of uranium, researchers determined this year and last. Government authorities say long-term exposure to uranium can damage kidneys and raise cancer risks, and scientists say it can have other harmful effects.In this swath of farmland, roughly 250 miles long and encompassing major cities, up to one in 10 public water systems have raw drinking water with uranium levels that exceed federal and state safety standards, the U.S. Geological Survey has found.More broadly, nearly 2 million people in California’s Central Valley and in the U.S. Midwest live within a half-mile of groundwater containing uranium over the safety standards, University of Nebraska researchers said in a study published in September.Everything from state agencies to tiny rural schools are scrambling to deal with hundreds of tainted public wells – more regulated than private wells under safe-drinking-water laws.That includes water wells at the Westport Elementary School, where 450 children from rural families study outside the Central California farm hub of Modesto.At Westport’s playground, schoolchildren take a break from tether ball to sip from fountains marked with Spanish and English placards: “SAFE TO DRINK.”The school, which draws on its own wells for its drinking fountains, sinks and cafeteria, is one of about 10 water systems in the farm region that have installed uranium removal facilities in recent years. Prices range from $65,000 for the smallest system to the millions of dollars.Just off Westport’s playground, a school maintenance chief jangles the keys to the school’s treatment operation, locked in a shed the size of a garage. Inside, a system of tubes, dials and canisters resembling large scuba tanks removes up to a pound a year of uranium from the school’s wells.The uranium gleaned from the school’s well water and other Central California water systems is handled like the nuclear material it is – taken away by workers in masks, gloves and other protective garments, said Ron Dollar, a vice president at Water Remediation Technology, a Colorado-based firm.It is then processed into nuclear fuel for power plants, Dollar said.

Source: News from The Associated Press

Islamophobic Organization’s Misleading Poll Used To Justify Donald Trump’s Call To Ban Muslims From America | Research | Media Matters for America

Source: Islamophobic Organization’s Misleading Poll Used To Justify Donald Trump’s Call To Ban Muslims From America | Research | Media Matters for America

Paul Ryan Throws Down G.O.P. Gauntlet for 2016 – The New York Times No interest in serving public or governing just seeking advantage for GOP? Loser/Fail!

“Our No. 1 goal for the next year is to put together a complete alternative to the left’s agenda,” Mr. Ryan said, speaking in the Great Hall at the Library of Congress, a setting designed to highlight the importance he placed on the speech. “Only government that sends power back to the people can make America confident again.”

Source: Paul Ryan Throws Down G.O.P. Gauntlet for 2016 – The New York Times

Robert Reich: Fueling the Fire – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

Perpetrators of hate crimes often take their cues from what they hear in the media.

But this doesn’t absolve politicians who have been fueling such hatefulness.Perpetrators of hate crimes often take their cues from what they hear in the media. And the recent inclination of some politicians to use inflammatory rhetoric is contributing to a climate of hate and fear.Carly Fiorina continues to allege, for example, that Planned Parenthood is selling body parts of fetuses.Although the claim has been proven baseless, it’s been repeated not only by Fiorina but also by other candidates. Mike Huckabee calls it “sickening” that “we give these butchers money to harvest human organs.”Even in the wake of Friday’s Colorado shootings, Donald Trump referred to videos “with some of these people from Planned Parenthood talking about it like you’re selling parts to a car.”Some candidates are also fomenting animus toward Muslims.Huckabee says he’d “like for Barack Obama to resign if he’s not going to protect America and instead protect the image of Islam.”And Trump not only fails to condemn violence he provokes but finds excuses for it.Ben Carson says allowing Syrian refugees into the United States is analogous to exposing a neighborhood to a “rabid dog.” Last September Carson said he “would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation.”Since the attacks that killed 130 people in Paris earlier this month, Trump has advocated registering all Muslims in the United States and putting American mosques under surveillance.

Source: Robert Reich: Fueling the Fire – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

Glyphosate – IARC got it right, EFSA got it from Monsanto | Jennifer Sass’s Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC

The EFSA report is based on findings of the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment – the BfR – which received a first draft of the science directly from the Glyphosate Task Force (GTF), whose members include Monsanto and Syngenta and other agrochemical corporations. EFSA describes its process as standard procedure to have the agrochemical company supply the scientific information to the Member state (Germany and Croatia in this case), whose report then goes to EFSA to make a final evaluation.The Guardian reported on how compromised the process was: “BfR officials explained that due to the quantity of evidence they did not have the time to report the original studies in detail, but instead based their evaluation on descriptions provided by the agrochemical industry. But those descriptions also contained the industry’s assessment of the reliability and interpretation of each study, which involves exactly the kinds of choice-laden decisions described earlier… this falls well short of what most people would understand as an independent review.”So, we know that Monsanto and other companies provided their own assessment of the scientific evidence, much of it industry-sponsored unpublished studies, and then handed that pig off to Germany for some lipstick.

Source: Glyphosate – IARC got it right, EFSA got it from Monsanto | Jennifer Sass’s Blog | Switchboard, from NRDC

Eco-protesters delay German environment minister Hendrick′s train to Paris | News | DW.COM | 28.11.2015

As Hendrick’s train pulled into Frankfurt station on Saturday en route to the French capital, protesters chained themselves to the railway tracks, police said.Others descended by ropes onto the train, which stopped in Europe’s financial capital en route from Berlin where Germany’s environment minister and her 30-strong entourage had boarded.Hendricks and her team were traveling to Paris for the global climate change conference which gets underway on Monday.German journalist Harriett Wolf tweeted that as the demonstrators had refused to come down, officers had no choice but to climb onto the train’s roof.

Source: Eco-protesters delay German environment minister Hendrick′s train to Paris | News | DW.COM | 28.11.2015