Category Archives: planetkillers

Robert Reich: Trans Pacific Trickle-Down Economics – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

What we should have learned by now about trickle-down economics is that nothing trickles down.

If the Trans Pacific Partnership is enacted, big corporations, Wall Street, and their top executives and shareholders will make out like bandits. Who will the bandits be stealing from? The rest of us.

via Robert Reich: Trans Pacific Trickle-Down Economics – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics.

Human pneumonic plague outbreak has multiple transmission routes | Vaccine News Daily

Specimens taken from the dog and the three ill people showed acute Yersinia pestis. Experts state that one of the cases of pneumonia could have been transmitted from the dog owner to the individual. This is the first U.S. transmission of the plague since 1924.

Experts state this is an opportunity for health professionals to consider diagnosing the plague in animals, as well as potential to study relatively mild plague illnesses among patients who already take antimicrobial agents.

An automated system located in the hospital lab previously misdiagnosed the bacterium as Pseudomonas luteola. This outbreak shows that there are limits to current diagnostic systems when they test for rare bacteria, like Yersinia pestis, and they are always in need of improvement.

via Human pneumonic plague outbreak has multiple transmission routes | Vaccine News Daily.

Oklahoma Recognizes Role of Drilling in Earthquakes – NYTimes.com

Abandoning years of official skepticism, Oklahoma’s government on Tuesday embraced a scientific consensus that earthquakes rocking the state are largely caused by the underground disposal of billions of barrels of wastewater from oil and gas wells.

The state’s energy and environment cabinet introduced a website detailing the evidence behind that conclusion Tuesday, including links to expert studies of Oklahoma’s quakes. The site includes an interactive map that plots not only earthquake locations, but also the sites of more than 3,000 active wastewater-injection wells.

The website coincided with a statement by the state-run Oklahoma Geological Survey that it “considers it very likely” that wastewater wells are causing the majority of the state’s earthquakes.

via Oklahoma Recognizes Role of Drilling in Earthquakes – NYTimes.com.

Study of isolated Amazonian tribe shows how modern life is changing human bodily bacteria – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

A microbiota diversity decline may be linked to the increase in the past several decades of immunological and metabolic diseases such as asthma, allergies, diabetes and obesity, said Maria Dominguez-Bello, a professor of medicine at New York University’s Langone Medical Centre.

The researchers analysed microbial samples from 34 of the 54 Yanomami villagers.

They were compared to a United States group, another Venezuelan Amazonian indigenous people, the Guahibo, and residents of rural Malawi in southern Africa.

Yanomami were found to have twice the number of microbe varieties of the US subjects and 30 to 40 per cent more diversity than the Malawians and Guahibo.

Some of the bacteria found in the Yanomami, but not in the others, offer beneficial effects like protecting against kidney stones.

The Yanomami are semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers in their remote mountainous region.

“It really is a unique opportunity to contact communities with this ancient lifestyle,” said Oscar Noya, a researcher with the Amazonic Centre for Research and Control of Tropical Diseases in Venezuela who visited the villagers.

via Study of isolated Amazonian tribe shows how modern life is changing human bodily bacteria – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Germans deny signing GOP letter on Iran – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

Reps. Doug Lamborn, R-Col., and Randy Weber, R-Tx., circulated a letter to world leaders last month that they claimed had been signed by four European lawmakers. Since then, two of the alleged supporters, German parliamentarians Johann Wadephul and Roderich Kiesewetter, have informed Al-Monitor that they were not involved.

“This letter never came to the attention of Dr. Wadephul nor Mr. Kiesewetter and therefore has not been signed by them,” a Wadephul spokeswoman told Al-Monitor via email. The parliamentarian followed up with a formal letter stating he had “at no time signed nor agreed to support” the letter.

via Germans deny signing GOP letter on Iran – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.

World Health Organisation ‘intentionally delayed declaring Ebola emergency’ | World news | The Guardian

{Even newspapers have short memories. The governments of the impacted countries pushed back hard internally within the UN and in the press to not declare an emergency for fear of losing trade and tourist business. WHO gave in to the pressure and that’s their bad but governments who think of money before people in situations like this one and this one, share much of the blame.}

Dr Sylvie Briand, head of the pandemic and epidemic diseases department at WHO, acknowledged that her agency made wrong decisions, but said postponing the alert made sense at the time because it could have had catastrophic economic consequences. “What I’ve seen in general is that for developing countries, it’s sort of a death warrant you’re signing,” she told AP.

On 10 June, Briand, her boss, Dr Keiji Fukuda, and others sent a memo to WHO chief Dr Margaret Chan, noting that cases might soon pop up in Mali, Ivory Coast and Guinea-Bissau. But the memo went on to say that declaring an international emergency or even convening an emergency committee to discuss the issue “could be seen as a hostile act”.

But others argue that although declaring an international emergency is no guarantee of ending an outbreak, it functions as a kind of a global distress call.

“It’s important because it gives a clear signal that nobody can ignore the epidemic any more,” said Dr Joanne Liu, MSF’s international president.

In a meeting at WHO headquarters on 30 July, Liu said she told Chan: “You have the legitimacy and the authority to label it an emergency … You need to step up to the plate.”

After WHO declared an international emergency on 8 August, Barack Obama sent 3,000 troops to west Africa and promised to build more than a dozen 100-bed field hospitals. Britain and France also pledged to build Ebola clinics, China sent a 59-person lab team, and Cuba sent more than 400 health workers.

Dr Bruce Aylward, WHO’s top Ebola official, maintains however that labelling the Ebola outbreak a global emergency would have been no magic bullet. “What you would expect is the whole world wakes up and goes: ‘Oh my gosh, this is a terrible problem, we have to deploy additional people and send money,’” he said. “Instead what happened is people thought: ‘Oh my goodness, there’s something really dangerous happening there and we need to restrict travel and the movement of people.’”

via World Health Organisation ‘intentionally delayed declaring Ebola emergency’ | World news | The Guardian.

Shell’s Battle for Seattle | Earthjustice

The Port’s entry into the lease with Foss Maritime to open Terminal 5 to Shell’s Arctic drilling convoy was made in February without public proceedings or an environmental review.  Not only did the rental agreement violate the Port of Seattle’s long-range plans and its shoreline permit, which designate Terminal 5 as a cargo terminal, but it broke state law and the port’s own rules.

That’s where Earthjustice comes in.

Earthjustice is representing Puget Soundkeeper Alliance, the Sierra Club, Washington Environmental Council and Seattle Audubon Society in a legal fight to vacate the lease. The groups and local residents have pressed the port to rescind the lease and to invest in sustainable jobs that reflect the community’s values and air prospective terminal lessees in public.

via Shell’s Battle for Seattle | Earthjustice.

US Neo-Cons – no war against Iran, how about Brazil? Not! You have spilled enough blood for your profits! Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment | World news | The Guardian

“Brazil does not want and will not be a new Venezuela,” read one. “Nation + Liberty = PT (Workers Party) Out!” declared another.

There was a range of voices. While one flag extolled “Peace and Love”, a sizeable contingent of the crowd expressed support for a return to the military dictatorship that ran the country between 1964 and 1985

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“Army, Navy and Air Force. Please save us once again of (sic) communism” read one banner in English. Among those holding it was computer graphic designer Marlon Aymes who said military force was the only way to unseat the Workers Party.

“They are in power for 16 years. That is like a dictatorship,” he said. “In 1964 the military of Brazil took a stand against a president who was close to the Kremlin. Today, the PT is in a group that wants a Bolivarian socialist model across Latin America. Common people are protesting and calling for impeachment, but congress is too corrupt to approve that so we need military intervention.”

via Brazil: hundreds of thousands of protesters call for Rouseff impeachment | World news | The Guardian.

Bird flu mutating in southern China, pandemic threatens: Shanghaiist

The deadly strain of the bird flu virus H7N9, which first infected humans in Shanghai during 2013, is entrenched in flocks of chickens and ducks in the south of China and mutating, posing an even greater threat to humanity, according to the largest-ever genomic survey of the virus.

In an article for Nature, author Guan Yi and colleagues at the University of Hong Kong warn that unless drastic measures are taken to eradicate the virus, it will continue to mutate. “H7N9 viruses have spread from eastern to southern China and become persistent in chickens,” they wrote. Given that the virus can infect humans, it “should be considered as a major candidate to emerge as a pandemic strain.”

via Bird flu mutating in southern China, pandemic threatens: Shanghaiist.

Saudi MERS deaths reach 400 as cases surge | CIDRAP

Saudi Arabia’s surge of MERS-CoV cases and deaths continues into March, with 15 more cases reported over the past 3 days, as well as 6 additional deaths, pushing the country’s fatality count to 400, according to statements from the Saudi Ministry of Health (MOH).

Thirteen of the new cases are from Riyadh, with 2 reported in Buraydah, the capital of Al Qassim region, which is 220 miles northwest of Riyadh. All of the patients are adults, ages 34 to 80, and all but four are men. All 15 of the latest MERS-CoV (Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus) case-patients are symptomatic, with 9 hospitalized in critical condition and 6 listed as stable.

Seven of the patients are from outside of Saudi Arabia, and of four healthcare workers who are infected, three are from foreign countries. All but four of the patients have preexisting health conditions.

via Saudi MERS deaths reach 400 as cases surge | CIDRAP.