Category Archives: planetkillers

Migrant workers should avoid live bird markets: WHO official – ANTARA News

Jakarta (ANTARA News) – An Official from the World Health Organization (WHO) said Indonesian migrant workers should avoid live bird markets in foreign countries, particularly in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

“I think it is important for tourists or migrant workers to avoid live bird markets. I think it is particularly important currently in China, but also in live bird markets in general that have avian influenza scattered around,” the chief of the WHO Collaborating Centre for Reference and Research on Influenza, Professor Anne Kelso, told ANTARA here on Tuesday.

Anne said it is better for people who are in foreign countries to avoid live bird markets, especially when a dangerous virus arises. Anne added that the location can be the source of the greatest risk for a virus infection.

The latest virus of avian influenza that had infected several birds and people in the area are of the H7N9 type, Anne said.

via Migrant workers should avoid live bird markets: WHO official – ANTARA News.

Retired Army Colonel Plans Militia-Backed ‘Operation American Spring’ to Force Obama Out of Office | Hatewatch

(Sedition, terrorism and rebellion are the words that come to mind, after extreme self-delusion and self-hatred!)

“The militia groups and the others stood up for Bundy and the government thugs stood down,” Riley said.  “I hope people feel the same way about Operation American Spring.”

In fact, Riley said he hopes members of Congress will “come to their senses,” leave their offices and join in the demonstration set to begin in two weeks.

“It’s a sacrificial effort by patriots who believe our nation is in jeopardy,” Riley told Hatewatch today from his home in Crestview, Fla.   “Our government at the federal level is totally lawless.  Our nation is in grave danger right now of internal implosion.”

While the event is attracting interest from various antigovernment and militia groups, those who join Riley will have to leave their guns behind or face arrest in the District of Columbia.

The group will not apply for a U.S. Park Service demonstration permit “because we are just a bunch of individual patriots who plan on visiting Washington, D.C., exercising our constitutional rights, all at the same time,” Riley told Hatewatch.

Operation American Spring already has delivered its “declaration of revision” demand packets to all 535 members of Congress, Riley said.  The packets call for the impeachment or resignations of President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., the Senate majority leader; Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., the Senate minority leader; House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., the House minority leader, and Attorney General Eric Holder.

via Retired Army Colonel Plans Militia-Backed ‘Operation American Spring’ to Force Obama Out of Office | Hatewatch.

Antimicrobial edible films inhibit pathogens in meat — ScienceDaily

Frankenfood

(Impact of eating zinc oxide nanoparticles or silver nanoparticles – your guess is as good as theirs since they did not research that) 

In the study, which was published online in the April issue of the Journal of Food Science, researchers determined survivability of bacterial pathogens after treatment with 2 percent oregano essential oil, 2 percent rosemary essential oil, zinc oxide nanoparticles or silver nanoparticles.

The compounds then were incorporated into edible films made from pullulan, and the researchers determined the antimicrobial activity of these films against bacterial pathogens inoculated onto petri dishes.

Finally, the researchers experimentally inoculated fresh and ready-to-eat meat and poultry products with bacterial pathogens, treated them with the pullulan films containing the essential oils and nanoparticles, vacuum packaged, and then evaluated for bacterial growth following refrigerated storage for up to three weeks.

“The results from this study demonstrated that edible films made from pullulan and incorporated with essential oils or nanoparticles have the potential to improve the safety of refrigerated, fresh or further-processed meat and poultry products,” said Cutter. “The research shows that we can apply these food-grade films and have them do double duty — releasing antimicrobials and imparting characteristics to protect and improve food we eat.”

via Antimicrobial edible films inhibit pathogens in meat — ScienceDaily.

Live poultry markets to be closed in S China – Headlines, features, photo and videos from ecns.cn|china|news|chinanews|ecns|cns

{They do not all need to be frozen – poultry is cold shipped all over the US and not frozen – they could do the same and “lose” little flavor and gain less flu and deaths from flu} According to the food safety administration, all poultry in the three districts will be slaughtered at appointed slaughterhouses and frozen before going to markets.

The centralized slaughter of poultry will be implemented over the entire city in October.

He Jianfeng, chief expert at Guangdong’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said the centralized system will reduce the number of people who have contact with live poultry and will help lower the risk of being infected with bird flu.

“Many business owners mix their poultry, including chickens, ducks, geese, quails and doves in the coops in markets,” he said, which raises the risk of infection.

“Banning live poultry in local markets is of great significance in preventing bird flu from spreading, which has a high annual incidence of flu in winter and spring,” he added.

via Live poultry markets to be closed in S China – Headlines, features, photo and videos from ecns.cn|china|news|chinanews|ecns|cns.

Avian Flu Diary: MERS: The Limitations Of Airport Screening

As the graphic above illustrates, airline traffic is a very effective conduit for infectious disease, able to transport someone to nearly anyplace in the world in less than 24 hours.  The world’s airlines carry 2.6 billion passengers each year, on more than 17 million flights.

 

In 2003, we saw the SARS virus hop the Pacific on a flight taken by a 78-year-old woman who fell ill in Toronto after visiting Hong Kong, and before that outbreak was contained, 251 people in Canada had been infected, and 44 died (see SARS And Remembrance).

via Avian Flu Diary: MERS: The Limitations Of Airport Screening.

Holocaust survivors feel abandoned by Netanyahu – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

Everything that Netanyahu did in those years implied that he was acting out of a conscious need to become the one to prevent a second Holocaust. Yet, those same years were also the period in which the economic, medical and emotional state of Holocaust survivors living in Israel kept declining because of their advanced age alongside their physical and emotional scars from the war. Their medical costs have increased, and their ability to pay for treatments, medication, food and heating in winter has been reduced significantly. Social Security payments they receive are absorbed by the steep cost of living and cuts to pensions, implemented by none other than Netanyahu, as part of the economic decrees he devised as finance minister in 2003.

via Holocaust survivors feel abandoned by Netanyahu – Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.

Hero Rancher’s Family Has Been On Nevada Land Since Forever Or At Least 1948 -lol

So you remember how Cow Freedom Hero Nevada Rancher Cliven Bundy’s family has been on the land that they stole fair and square from the Indians since the 1870s and therefore all of his rights to graze his cattle predate any dumb “Bureau of Land Management” or “grazing fees” or “federal interference in Our Freedom”? Some bright smartasses at Las Vegas Teevee Station KLAS decided, very unfairly we should add, to go and look in the Clark County records, just to be communist troublemakers, and they discovered that in reality,

Clark County property records show Cliven Bundy’s parents moved from Bundyville, Arizona and bought the 160 acre ranch in 1948 from Raoul and Ruth Leavitt.

Water rights were transferred too, but only to the ranch, not the federally managed land surrounding it. Court records show Bundy family cattle didn’t start grazing on that land until 1954.

There is almost certainly a very good logical explanation for those records that doesn’t involve Cliven Bundy being a goddamned liar, and we can hardly wait for Fox News and Sean Hannity to find it.

Mr. Bundy just happens to know a hell of a lot more about his family’s history than some dumb piece of paper in a file in the Clark County Assessor’s Office, tell you what:

“I’ve lived my lifetime here. My forefathers have been up and down the Virgin Valley here ever since 1877. All these rights that I claim, have been created through pre-emptive rights and beneficial use of the forage and the water and the access and range improvements,” Bundy said …

“My rights are before the BLM even existed, but my rights are created by beneficial use. Beneficial use means we created the forage and the water from the time the very first pioneers come here,” Bundy said.

The snotty little government-teat-suckling liars at KLAS claim that Bundy has his chronology maybe a teensy bit off, seeing as how his family bought the land in 1948 and began grazing it in 1954, while “The Bureau of Land Management was created 1946, the same year Cliven was born.”

Now who are you going to trust, an American Patriot who denies that the U.S. government has any legitimacy, or some lying land records in a government office that say something different?

For any geneaology geeks out there, KLAS also has a second article detailing Bundy’s claims that his family had been ranching in the area since the 1870s — it looks like his maternal grandparents did have a farm in the area, but there’s no indication that they were cattle ranchers doing useful cattle ranching, and their farm was not on the land that Bundy now owns, nor was it adjacent to the federal land for which he refused to pay grazing fees.

Oh, and the 1998 opinion from a U.S. District Court that determined that Bundy had failed to pay grazing fees, and therefore had no further rights to graze on federal land, also found that Bundy’s family had only been ranching in the area since 1954.

Still, what’s a little embellishment about an extra 75 years of ranching that never happened? The main thing is that the Feds have just totally gotten out of control, right?

via Hero Rancher’s Family Has Been On Nevada Land Since Forever Or At Least 1948.

Urban Foodies and Libertarians Join Forces to Set Raw Milk Free – The Wire

{This has to be the – I’m sorry to have to say this – dumbest exercise of misplaced hipsterism, personal freedom and anti-science. If adults want to risk the illnesses that can come from raw – unPasteurized – milk that’s one thing but to make that same risk for their children or unknowing guests – that’s wrong, goofy, and criminal, or should be.}

Raw milk supporters claim there are boundless health benefits — as long as the milk-producing cows are healthy — including components that strengthen the immune system. But raw milk by definition skips the pasteurization process, meaning the end product could contain E. coli and salmonella bacteria. States are currently allowed to regulate the sale of raw milk within their own borders, but the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have reported that 75 percent of raw milk disease outbreaks have come from the 21 states where its legal to sell non-pasteurized products. Still, despite the health risks, it sounds a little bit safer than the anti-vaccine movement.

via Urban Foodies and Libertarians Join Forces to Set Raw Milk Free – The Wire.

writeaboutwarming: Fungal Forest Fire – food crops under attack

Not just climate warming – if the crops are more non-diversified GMO seeded crops, the fungi would spread even faster and over a larger area.

The following is a list of fungi, pests and diseases that could be potentially exacerbated by climate change.  It is lifted directly from The Independent.

Asian Soybean Rust affects the soya crop in Brazil, the world’s biggest producer.  There are more than 244 confirmed cases this year.  Industry spending on insecticides and fungicides is expected to reach $11 billion.

Cocoa Pod Borer Disease: Cocoa bean production in Indonesia, the world’s third-largest producer, is likely to dip 2 percent to 410,000 metric tons for 2013-2014, according to the International Cocoa Organization.  The fall is in part due to a tiny, mosquito-sized moth which attacks the plant.

Potato Blight is a fungus-like organism that thrives in damp, humid conditions.  The speed with which blight infection occurs and the devastating impact on the crop make it the biggest threat to the six million tons of potatoes produced in the UK each year.

Coffee Leaf Rust is an orange-colored fungus that has swept through coffee fields from Mexico to Panama.  The epidemic is affecting the livelihoods of more than two million people and causing the loss of 500,000 jobs.

Banana Fungus (TR4): This soil-borne disease is threatening banana crops in North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.  The value of traded bananas worldwide totals $8.9 billion.

via writeaboutwarming: Fungal Forest Fire.

Kraft Recalls 96,000 Pounds Of Oscar Mayer Wieners: Gothamist

A labeling mishap could mean an unexpected squirt of cheese filling your mouth when biting into an Oscar Mayer Classic Wiener. Kraft Foods has issued a Class I Recall of 96,000 pounds of the company’s Classic Cheese Dogs that were incorrectly labeled as regular hot dogs. A consumer alerted the company to the mistake on Friday; aside from the unexpected dose of dairy, no adverse reactions have been reported.

Class I recalls are the most urgent category issued by the USDA, meaning there’s a “reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death.” Because the hot dogs contain dairy and are not labeled as such, the risk is high for consumers with a lactose intolerance.

via Kraft Recalls 96,000 Pounds Of Oscar Mayer Wieners: Gothamist.