A Melbourne family who claim they were slugged an extra $55 “carbon tax charge” when burying a relative were told “even the dead don’t escape the carbon tax”.
Erica Maliki and her family were burying her father-in-law at Springvale Cemetery when she was told the price per burial plot had increased because of the carbon tax.
Her father-in-law died on June 30, the day before the carbon tax was introduced, and was buried early last week.
“I thought to myself, ‘What carbon could possibly be used by putting a man in a grave?’” Ms Maliki said.
“All they did was put the dirt back in. How can they charge us a carbon tax for burying someone?”
Ms Maliki’s son Zaid said the cemetery’s receptionist told his sister-in-law “even the dead don’t escape the carbon tax”.
“We are pretty upset… that comment was a kick in the guts,” he said.
Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said it would be “reprehensible” if any cemetery was taking advantage of grieving families by overcharging them for funerals.
The ACCC, which is investigating three companies accused of blaming the tax for price hikes, said it would be willing to investigate the claims.
It is the horrific moment an Afghan man is blown apart by a US missile. But in a moment of twisted inspiration an American helicopter pilot decided to give it a impromptu soundtrack – by singing ‘Bye, bye Miss American pie.’
He belted out the most famous line of the Don McLean classic at the moment of impact when a fireball consumed at least one man.
The video on LiveLeak.com appears to be from an on-board camera of a pilot from the 101st Airborne Division in an AH64 Apache helicopter. According to the caption the victims were ‘innocent farms planting poppy seeds in the middle of the road,’ although that has not been verified.
The weapon used on them was supposedly a one kilogram Hellfire missile. The caption reads: ‘At the 01:39 mark you can hear the pilot singing ‘Bye Bye Ms. American Pie’ right before impact then BOOM….the rest is history.’ Another pilot can also be heard saying, ‘Nice’ moments after the impact.
Two other men can then be seen running for their lives as the pilots shoot at them but miss.
The reaction on LiveLeak was one of disgust and Ozzieabroad wrote: ‘It’s disturbing and bordering on sanctioned psychopathy to enjoy killing so much’. Based at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the 101st Airborne Division became famous for their courage in World War II, the Vietnam War and the first Gulf War. Its pilots are among the most dedicated and decorated in the US military.
The footage is the latest clip to emerge on LiveLeak which will prove embarrassing to top brass. In January footage emerged on the website which showed four American soldiers urinating on dead bodies in what appeared to be Afghanistan.
The Marine Corps began an official investigation over the clip in which one of the men can be heard saying: ‘Have a great day, buddy’ to laughter from his colleagues. Another of them joked, ‘Golden like a shower’ and said ‘Yeahhhh!’ as they groaned with relief whilst urinating.
The reputation of America’s military has also still not fully recovered from the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal in Baghdad. Then there was the ‘Thrill Kill’ squad which murdered three Afghan civilians for sport and took their body parts as trophies. MailOnline has reached out to the US military for comment.
Who needs a ‘conspiracy theory’ when the government is run by psychopaths?
Users Whose Computers Infected With DNSChanger Won’t Be Able To Access Web
Having trouble getting online? Some may find their smartphones working overtime because the family computer couldn’t seem to connect to the Internet Monday morning. You may be one of thousands across the United States who waited too long or simply didn’t believe the warnings, and your Internet may have shut down just after midnight because of malware that took over computers around the world more than a year ago.
At 12:01 a.m. EDT, the FBI turned off the Internet servers that were functioning as a temporary safety net to keep infected computers online for the past eight months. The court order the agency had gotten to keep the servers running expired, and it was not renewed. Now, if your computer is infected, your only hope is your Internet service provider’s help desk.
In South Korea, there were no reports from affected computers Monday. As many as 80 computers there are believed to be infected with the malware that may cause problems in Web surfing, down from 1,798 computers in February, according to the government.
“The impact will be limited,” said Lee Sang-hun, head of network security at the Korea Communications Commission, a government body. The government and private broadband providers opened helplines and issued warnings. They also asked users to check if their computers were infected and to download antivirus software. South Korea is one of the most wired countries in the world, with more than 90 percent of households connected to broadband Internet.
The problem began when international hackers ran an online advertising scam to take control of more than 570,000 infected computers around the world. When the FBI went in to take down the hackers late last year, agents realized that if they turned off the malicious servers being used to control the computers, all the victims would lose their Internet service.
In a highly unusual move, the FBI set up the safety net. They brought in a private company to install two clean Internet servers to take over for the malicious servers so that people would not suddenly lose their Internet.
And they arranged for a private company to run a website (www.dcwg.org), to help computer users determine whether their computer was infected and find links to other computer security business sites where they could find fixes for the problem.
From the onset, most victims didn’t even know their computers had been infected, although the malicious software probably slowed their web surfing and disabled their antivirus software, making their machines more vulnerable to other problems.
Efforts to solve the issue have been hindered a bit by a few factors: Many computer users don’t fully understand the technologically complex machines they use every day to send e-mail, shop, and surf for information. The cyber world of viruses, malware, bank fraud and Internet scams is often distant and confusing, and warning messages may go unseen or unheeded.
And other people simply don’t trust the government, and believe that federal authorities are only trying to spy on them, or take over the Internet, by pushing solutions to the infection. Blogs and other Internet forums are riddled with postings warning of the government using the malware as a ploy to breach American citizens’ computers — a charge that the FBI and other cybersecurity experts familiar with the malware quickly denounced as ridiculous.
Still, the Internet is flooded with conspiracy theories:
“I think the FBI just wants everyone to go to that website to check our computers so they can check our computers as well. Just a way to steal data for their own research,” one computer user said in a posting on the Internet.
Another observed: “Yet another ploy to get everyone freaked out … remember Y2K.”
There is an underlying sense that this has been much ado about nothing — like the hoopla over Y2K — when the transition to the year 2000 presented technical problems and fears that some computers would stop working because they were not set up for the date change. In the end there were very few problems.
Considering that there are millions of Internet users across the country, several thousand losing access isn’t a big deal — unless you are one of them.
Rep. Jim Langevin, D-R.I., who co-founded the cybersecurity caucus in Congress, said computer users have a responsibility to practice good cyber hygiene and make sure their computers have not been infected or hijacked by criminals. “These types of issues are only going to increase as our society relies more and more on the Internet, so it is a reminder that everyone can do their part,” he said.
FBI officials have been tracking the number of computers they believe still may be infected by the malware. As of July 4, there were about 45,600 in the U.S. — nearly 20,000 less than a week earlier. Worldwide, the total is roughly 250,000 infected. The numbers have been steadily declining, and recent efforts by Internet service providers may limit the problems Monday.
Tom Grasso, an FBI supervisory special agent, said many Internet providers have plans to try to help their customers. And some may put technical solutions in place Monday that will correct the server problem. It they do that, the Internet will work, but the malware will remain on victims’ computers and could pose future problems.
Other Internet providers have simply braced for the calls to their help lines.
More facts are continually emerging demonstrating the links between the German domestic intelligence service (Office for the Protection of the Constitution – VS) and neo-Nazi terrorists. Yet under conditions where broad layers of the population fear the emergence of a new version of the Gestapo, the German Left Party is explicitly defending the secret service and calling for structural changes aimed at optimizing its activities.
Late last year media reports revealed that a neo-fascist organization called the National Socialist Underground (NSU) had been operating in Germany since 2000 and was responsible for at least nine racially motivated murders as well as the killing of a policewoman.
The investigation showed that the VS had been informed about the activities of the NSU from the start and indicated that the intelligence service was deliberately protecting NSU members from prosecution. The VS had installed undercover agents in the periphery of the organization, yet it ignored evidence linking NSU members to bomb-making operations and helped at least one NSU terrorist obtain a new passport.
Despite these revelations, no serious probe was carried out. Rather than launch a comprehensive investigation, the German parliament (Bundestag) decided to expand the powers of the agency. The VS is now entitled to access crucial files of the police and state intelligence forces – a linkup of the police and secret service that had been officially banned in Germany since World War II as a result of the crimes of Hitler’s Gestapo.
At the end of June it emerged that one day after the initial revelations about the NSU last November, a VS officer destroyed seven personnel files of undercover agents operating in the environment of the NSU. This willful destruction of evidence was covered up until a week ago.
Earlier this week, Heinz Fromm, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), resigned from his post as director of the VS. A few days later the head of the VS in the state of Thuringia also resigned. These steps were aimed at silencing internal critics rather than throwing any light on what had gone on.
It remains unclear whether members of the NSU were on the payroll of the secret police. There are many indications, however, that the VS played a central and active role in building up the NSU. The latest facts also suggest that the collaboration with the neo-Nazis was not the initiative of just one or two agents, but was coordinated at the highest levels of the VS.
All attempts to uncover these relations, however, have been hampered not only by the VS, but also by all of the political parties represented in parliament. All of these parties have representatives in the parliamentary monitoring body PKGr, which is empowered to investigate every unit of German intelligence and gain access to any of their files. But none of the members of the PKGr have made public any substantive information.
Instead, all of the parties are defending the intelligence agency and downplaying what has taken place as mere “failures” and “mistakes”. They are not calling for a full investigation and the disbanding of the service, but rather for “structural reform”, in the words of the Green Party’s Claudia Roth, or “fundamental reform”, as proposed by the SPD’s Thomas Oppermann.
The aim of any such reform is to increase the powers of the intelligence service. The Christian Democratic interior minister for Lower Saxony, Uwe Schünemann, has already announced steps in this direction. It is necessary “that the [VS] be involved even more in concrete security and law enforcement”, he declared last Wednesday.
The most vehement defense of the secret service, however, has come from the Left Party faction in the Bundestag. Their representative in the PKGr, Wolfgang Neskovic, declared on German radio that Germany needed the intelligence agency. “I understand the criticism, it is justified”, he said, “but we can’t just abolish the fire brigade because it fails to extinguish a fire”.
Neskovic and the Left Party thereby line up behind the cross-party attempt to present the VS’ collaboration with the NSU as a regrettable mistake by an otherwise efficient and legitimate authority.
The reality is that from the start of its existence, the VS played the role of arsonist rather than fire fighter. It was built up after 1955 by Hubert Schrübbers, who had served the Nazi regime as a member of the SA storm troopers and as attorney general. According to Wikipedia, he filled a huge number of posts in the secret service with former members of the SS and its intelligence service, the SD.
Since the early 1990s there have been numerous reports of VS operatives, mostly undercover agents, playing a leading role in the neo-Nazi scene in Germany. They have included convicted criminals and their associates. It was revealed that one in seven functionaries of the extreme-right National Democratic Party (NPD) was on the payroll of the VS.
From its inception, this reactionary institution was directed exclusively against left-wing organizations and any independent movement of the working class. Following the introduction of the 1972 Radical Decree by SPD Chancellor Willy Brandt, the agents of the VS raked through the files of 1.4 million mostly young aspirants for public service in order to prevent those with links to left-wing organizations from obtaining jobs. The ban was justified with the claim that left-wingers were enemies of the Constitution, i.e., guilty of treason.
The same argument has now been taken up by Neskovic to silence opponents of the secret service. He justifies his rejection of calls for the disbandment of the intelligence agency by stating that infringement on the “duty to protect the Constitution [would itself] be a constitutional violation”. This choice of words is very important in Germany, where in the name of protecting the Constitution, the state is empowered not only to ban individuals from certain jobs, but to ban entire political organizations.
The stance adopted by the Left Party clearly illustrates its role as a party of bourgeois law and order. The Left Party was born from a merger of the union bureaucrat-dominated Labour and Social Justice – Electoral Alternative (WASG) and the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the successor party to the East German Stalinist ruling party. As such, it embodies a long history of police-state measures to suppress the working class.
Emerging from the Stalinist party that created the notorious Stasi secret police, the PDS played a crucial role in suppressing independent strikes, factory occupations and demonstrations during the period of the capitalist reunification of Germany. The chairman of the Council of Elders of the party, Hans Modrow, has often boasted that the most important role of the party was “to maintain law and order” during those volatile months.
The fact that the Left Party has now so clearly returned to its roots in the VS affair and committed itself to the struggle against “enemies of the Constitution” is bound up with the growth of social inequality and the escalating assault on the working class. Throughout Europe workers are been driven into poverty while the banks receive hundreds of billions in public funds.
This will inevitably lead to social convulsions and an explosive growth of the class struggle. The ruling class in Germany, as throughout Europe, in the US and internationally, is preparing for this eventuality by building up the repressive powers of the state.
Basic democratic rights are being eroded under the auspices of bourgeois governments of all political stripes, and, where necessary, as in Greece and Italy, elected governments are being replaced by unelected technocrats, while far-right parties are groomed by the state to step in. The role of the intelligence service in Germany in cultivating and protecting fascist terrorists and killers provides a glimpse of how far the ruling elite is prepared to go.
The polarization of class forces compels every political tendency to display its true colors and reveal its class character. It has clearly exposed the right-wing bourgeois character of the Left Party.
A Palestinian prisoner says Israel sent him to poison the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in his Ramallah compound in 2004.
Video released by Lebanese media apparently shows Palestinian prisoner in Ketziot prison saying he was recruited by Israeli security forces to infiltrate Yasser Arafat’s compound in 2004 and put poison in his food – Israeli expert denies allegations that Arafat died from polonium poisoning.
Recent speculation that the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned to death continued over the weekend when Lebanese television released a video apparently showing a Palestinian prisoner in Israel confessing that he was recruited by Israeli security forces to poison Arafat.
In the video released Friday, which appears to have been filmed in 2006, a Palestinian prisoner in the Ketziot prison is seen “interrogating” another Palestinian inmate who confesses that he was sent by Israel to kill the late Palestinian leader.
The prisoner claims in the video that, together with a group of Palestinian collaborators, he poisoned Arafat by putting toxic substances in his food while the Palestinian leader was barricaded in his Ramallah compound in 2004.
According to the video, the prisoner was apparently recruited by Israeli security forces in 2002. After a series of training sessions at an Israel Defense Forces base, he said he and the other Palestinians were instructed to infiltrate the Mukataa, Arafat’s compound, where with the help of collaborators who were in charge of securing the building, they managed to convince one of the cooks to insert poison into the rice and soup served to Arafat.
The prisoner said the Israeli security forces paid him and the others a generous amount for poisoning Arafat, but also made clear that if they did not perform the task, they would be killed.
Meanwhile, during a press conference in Paris on Friday, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said Ramallah would not object to having Arafat’s body dug up from his grave to see if he was poisoned, if Arafat’s family submitted an official request for it.
Abbas noted, however, that the Palestinian Authority had not yet received any formal request to open Arafat’s grave.
The Palestinian Authority president said the Palestinians would launch an investigation into the circumstances of Arafat’s death after a Swiss lab said last week it had found elevated levels of a lethal radioactive isotope on Arafat’s belongings.
Abbas said he even raised the issue with French President Francois Hollande, as Arafat died at the Percy Military Hospital near Paris in 2004.
An Israeli counter-terrorism expert on Thursday discarded the recent allegations that Arafat died by poisoning and claimed that traces of polonium-210 found on the his personal belongings were planted long after Arafat’s death.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Dr. Eli Karmon of the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center’s Institute for Counter-Terrorism said that recent allegations that Arafat was poisoned with highly radioactive polonium are not based on facts.
According to a recent report on the Qatari based news network Al-Jazeera, abnormally high levels of polonium were found on organic remains on the deceased Arab leader’s personal belongings.
The polonium traces were analyzed by Swiss specialists after Arafat’s widow, Suha, agreed to provide Al-Jazeera with a few personal items that belonged to the former Palestinian president.
However, Karmon said that it was impossible that after eight years there were still high levels of polonium, if Arafat had indeed been poisoned with the substance.
“If it had been used for poisoning, minimal levels should be seen now. Yet much higher levels were found. We suspect that someone had planted the high level of polonium-210 recently into the clothes of Arafat,” said Karmon in an exclusive interview with CCTV on Saturday.
Karmon also added that if it were true that Arafat’s belonging had traces of polonium, the places where those items were kept would also retain traces of the radioactive substance.
“Did Al-Jazeera check the home of Suha Arafat in Paris and Malta where she kept the items for traces of polonium?” asked Karmon, since Al-Jazeera’s report did not include those analysis.
“If Suha Arafat safeguarded these contaminated materials, why, after seven years, was she not poisoned too? She touched these things and Arafat in the hospital,” he added.
“The Palestinian side has also made investigation since Arafat died in 2004, finding that people around Arafat, including those who had dined with him, have no signs of intoxication,” he said.
Since the TV network released the report, the mystery and speculations surrounding Arafat’s death were revived once again, after suspicions of poisoning during Arafat’s illness and subsequent death led the Palestinian National Authority to point a finger to Israel.
“We know that the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would issue a nuclear smuggling report saying that the nuclear smuggling activities were quite rampant recently. So the ordinary people can get the radioactive elements from the black market of nuclear smuggling,” said Karmon.
When meat is outlawed — in this case fatty livers of geese or ducks — only outlaws will eat meat.
Foodies are hoarding all the fatty geese or duck livers they can find, while new foie gras farmers may be setting up right across the border.
Chefs are flaunting the ban on the fatty livers by serving the very French dish known as foie gras.
And California’s restaurant industry is in federal court, asking to have the ban on serving the fatty livers struck down for a long list of reasons.
All of this stems from a 2004 bird feeding law with a rather long trigger for a ban on serving foie gras, the French delicacy made from fatty livers of geese or ducks. The ban went into effect one week ago, on July 1, 2012.
The law bans the production and sale of both foie gras and its byproducts like down for jackets and comforters.
The nearly eight year delay before it took effect was intended to give producers, using the gavage process involving the use of feeding tubes inserted in the throats of the poultry, time to get out of the business.
In the week since the ban went into effect, California restaurants could be subjected to fines up to $1,000 for serving foie gras. The limited supply of product remaining may be why none have apparently cited.
Former State Sen. John Burton, now chairman of the California Democratic Party, was the sponsor of the 2004 bill. Burton told the Free Republic the law has “nothing to do with meat. It has to do with animal cruelty.”
While animal cruelty was the reason for the ban, questions have been raised about the food safety of foie gras. The argument–which is rejected by USDA–is that force-fed birds develop bacteria or toxins in their blood resulting in a disease that can prove fatal before slaughter. USDA, however, declined a request to put a notice on the label saying: “Foie gras products are derived from diseased birds.”
Chefs and many high-end restaurants in California are not taking the ban lying down. Chicago overturned its ban on foie gras — it appears that how fatty livers are made is less of a concern to policy makers than is the ecological impact of shark fin soup, which is banned.
California groups asked the federal court to strike down the fatty liver ban, mainly because it impacts interstate commerce and may overstep the state’s authority to do so. California has seen other laws struck down for the same reason, most recently on its total exclusion of so-called “downer” animals from federally regulated slaughter facilities.
In the court challenge, the law is also challenged for being too vague to enforce. It includes language to prevent over-feeding, but there are no standards in terms of weight, volume or caloric values.
Sonoma Foie Gras was the only producer operating in California when the 2004 bill was passed. Chefs and restaurants sought unsuccessfully earlier this year to get the California Legislature to withdraw the ban before it was implemented.
As for eating foie gras, L.A. Time food critic Jonathan Gold described the first time he ran across it in France. “It was glorious,” he wrote. “It was not an experience from which I wanted to be saved.”
A 5.6 magnitude earthquake recorded in the coastal area west of the Greek island Rhodes jolted people in Cyprus right out of their afternoon siesta today.
The director of Cyprus’ Geological Survey Department told the CyBC that initial readings put the quake which hit at 5 minutes to five this afternoon, at a depth of approximately 50 km.
The quake, which lasted for just a few seconds, was felt in Nicosia and in the towns of Larnaca and Paphos.
The quake was also felt on the south coast of Turkey, namely in the Mugla and Antalya regions.
Turkey’s Kandilli Observatory gave a stronger preliminary magnitude of 6 on the Richter scale.
There were no initial reports of any damage. (source: famagusta-gazette)
The BBC’s Rajesh Mirchandani says people have been enduring triple-digit temperatures
At least 42 people have died in a heatwave that has brought soaring temperatures to a dozen US states from the Midwest to the East Coast.
Crops shrivelled and roads and railway lines buckled in the heat.
Hundreds of records fell across the affected area on Friday and Saturday, but the heat was expected to ease slightly on Sunday.
Severe storms are expected to follow. Many homes in the region are still without power after storms a week ago.
Media reports say many of the deaths were of elderly people stuck in homes without air conditioning because of the outages.
Ten deaths in Chicago were blamed on the heat, and at least 10 each in the eastern states of Virginia and Maryland.
Three each died in Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and two in Tennessee.
A four-month-old girl died after being left in a car for “an extended period” outside her home in Greenfield, Indiana.
On Saturday temperatures reached 105F (41C) in Washington DC – just short of the hottest ever recorded in the city – and 107F (42C) in St Louis, Missouri, which also extended its record for consecutive days over 100F to 10.
“It’s hotter than hell,” tourist John Ghio, visiting the White House, told Reuters news agency.
“Too hot,” said Chinese tourist Xiao Duan, 30, who was also visiting Washington.
“My father says it’s like we’re being burned by flames.”
High temperatures have also hit parts of Canada, with temperatures on Friday breaking 11 daily records in Ontario.
Storms to follow
A command centre in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park helped visitors after the deadly storm
Hundreds of thousands of people in West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey, Maryland and Indiana are still enduring power outages caused by storms that swept through the area one week ago.
A number of cities have opened cooling centres and extended opening hours for public swimming pools.
Some communities are offering meals to residents whose food has spoiled after their refrigerators stopped working.
Officials in Chicago cancelled summer schools classes in 21 buildings without air conditioning because of the heat.
The heat there buckled a major road, cracking and bulging part of Columbus Drive by 5in (12cm).
Cooler weather is said to be on the way for northern parts of the Midwest, although strong storms could accompany the lower temperatures.
09.07.2012
Heat Wave
USA
MultiStates, [States of Pennsylvania, Washington DC, Missouri, Indiana, New York, Illinois, Michigan, Maryland, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Tennessee, Ohio, Virginia, South Dakota and Kentucky]
The Cook County medical examiner’s today determined eight more people died from heat-related causes following the heat wave that ended Saturday. That brings the total number of confirmed heat-related deaths to 18 in Cook County. Lucille Griffith, 100, of the 7300 block of South Peoria, Street, died from heart disease, with heat stress as a secondary cause. Griffith was declared dead a little before 10 a.m. at St. Bernard Hospital, after being found and home with a body temperature of more than 107 degrees, according to the medical examiner’s office. Irene Moriarty, 89, of West 60th Place in Summit died from heart disease, with heat stress as a secondardy cause. Moriary was found Saturday in her apartment, where investigators measured the temperature at 100 degrees. Mary Williams, 56, of East 122nd Place, was declared dead at 1:07 p.m. Saturday at Roseland Community Hospital. Williams died from heart disease, with secondary causes of obesity and heat stress. Sherry Garrett, 53, of the 1400 block of South Hamlin Avenue, was declared dead at 4:28 p.m. Saturday at her home. She also died from heart disease, with secondary causes of diabets, obesity and heat stress. Investigators measured the temperature in her apartment at 110 degrees when she was found. Ann Narcisse, 78, of the 9200 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue, was found dead Saturday. She died of heart disease, with heat stress a secondary cause.John Stacey, 81, of the 1800 block of South Cuyler, was declared dead on the scene at 5:45 p.m. Saturday. He died from heart disease, with heat stress and obesity secondary causes. Levon Calhoun, 54, of the 8100 block of South Saginaw Avenue, was found dead at home Saturday. He died from heart disease, with obesity and heat stress as secondary causes. Anthony Thomas, 48, also died from heart disease, with heat stress as a secondary cause. Details about where and when he was declared dead were not immediately available. Those confirmed to have died from heat-related causes were among at least seven people whose deaths the medical examiner’s office was investigating as possibly heat-related. In one case, that of a 43-year-old man found dead Saturday at his home in the 2800 block of North Maplewood Avenue, the medical examiner’s office did not determine a cause of death, pending further studies. In another case, that of a 67-year-old woman who lvied in the 6200 block of South St. Louis Avenue, the medical examiner’s office determined the woman died solely from heart disease and not from any heat-related causes.
Four water companies in Britain which imposed hosepipe bans earlier this year have lifted the restrictions after months of unseasonable heavy rain.
The move comes after a week of torrential downpours triggered floods across large swathes of the country in the wettest June on record in Britain.
In a joint statement, water suppliers said “abnormally heavy rainfall” meant groundwater supplies had recovered sufficiently to allow them to lift the ban.
South East Water, Sutton and East Surrey Water, Veolia Water Central and Veolia Water Southeast imposed restrictions in early April after two unusually dry winters led to a drought in parts of Britain.
Three other companies which also had bans in place lifted them last month.
Mike Hegarty, operations director for Sutton and East Surrey Water, said the recovery of underground water sources at this time of year was unexpected but “most welcome”.
“The recharge (of aquifers) is unprecedented and is the highest increase in water levels ever recorded in our area at this time of year,” he said.
Figures from Britain’s Met Office national weather service show that double the average rain fell in June — the wettest since records began in 1910 — while April was also the wettest on record.
Forecasters have warned that the wet weather could continue further into the British summer, and warned that sunny weather in London is “very unlikely” during the London Olympics.
Forecasters said below average sunshine and temperatures were expected during the Games which run from July 27 to August 12, with very wet conditions more probable than dry ones.
Last month heavy rains drenched revellers celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee, while on Saturday spectators were turned away from the British Grand Prix at Silverstone due to flooded car parks.
The Environment Agency has 14 flood warnings, meaning flooding is expected, and 84 flood alerts signalling possible flooding, in place across the country.
A tornado hit a building in Fredericksburg this evening as severe thunderstorms rolled through the area. The roof of one building reportedly flew off and hit a home about 40 yards away on Fleming Street. “It started hailing golfball-sized hail and then the lights went out,” said Mandy Spina, the director of Cheer Fusion gym at 86 Fleming St. “It was torrential downpour, and I told the kids to get into the dance room because it is steel re-inforced. Bricks started flying and the walls caved in.”
The Free-Lance Star reported that Spotsylvania fire and rescue authorities said “what appeared to be a tornado touched down off Lafayette Boulevard in Spotsylvania County this afternoon, collapsing two buildings …” Asst. Chief Mark Kuechler with the Spotsylvania Fire Department told the Free-Lance Star that the most significant damage was on Lafayette Boulevard and Route 1. Cheer Fusion, which Kuechler said was made of mostly concrete blocks, collapsed and suffered some of the most significant damage in the area. Kuechler said that there was a cheerleading practice hosted inside when the building collapsed and that “miraculously they all made it out.” There were seven minor injuries. Four were transported to the Mary Washington hospital with non-life threatening injuries and there were three refusals for medical help. A private residence collapsed from the blown debris of Cheer Fusion. There was a gentlemen in the home who was uninjured said Kuechler. Kuechler said that most of the buildings nearby were affected by straight-line wind damage.Mandy Spina, the director of Cheer Fusion said that golf-ball sized hail fell, and that there was no visibility due to heavy rain. Spina said that the kids were practicing on the main dance floor room when the storm hit. She told the Free-Lance Star that there were 14 cheerleaders, ages 11 to 18, in the facility for a practice when the storm hit. She said that a coach and about 10 parents also were there. She said that one of the father’s suggested they move to a separate steel-reinforced room just off of the main dance room. She said that after the storm passed they opened the door of the dance studio to find nothing left. Jared Klein, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Sterling office, told the Free-Lance Star that based on a description of the damage, he said it sounded more like a microburst than a tornado. He said that official won’t confirm if it was a tornado until they can inspect the damaged area or scrutinize photographs of the event. The storms drastically reduced weather temperatures, by about 32 degrees. The weather station at the University of Mary Washington reported a high of 100 degrees at 3:16 p.m. After the storm, the thermometer dropped 32 degrees to 68 just before 6 p.m.
More than 20 houses were completely damaged while fields and orchards spread over hundreds of kanals of land in Ghizer were destroyed by flood after a thunderstorm struck Sosot Nullah of Tehsil Gopis. The bridge connecting Gilgit district to Chitral was also washed away in the flood in the nullah. The Gilgit-Chitral Road was also partially damaged. As the flood of Sosot Nullah entered the Ghizer River, it overflowed to the surrounding areas giving it lake-like look. The residents of the area saved their lives by taking shelter at the mountains, but several houses and standing crops were damaged. People of the area near the nullah and river shifted to the safer places. The poor and hapless villagers were still awaiting the rescue teams and the whole area was presenting a gloomy picture. Hundreds of people on their way to attend the Shandoor Festival had to go back in despair due to closure of the road. On the other hand, the upper areas of Tehsil Yasin were also affected due to flood and people started moving towards the safer places.
Investigators have launched a probe into possible negligence after devastating flash floods in southern Russia killed at least 171 people and President Vladimir Putin demanded officials explain the disaster. As emergency workers pulled more bodies from the flood waters around Krymsk, the worst-hit district in the southern Krasnodar region, angry survivors insisted they had not received any warning from the authorities. Putin demanded that officials explain the massive death toll and personally inspected the worst-hit areas on Saturday evening. The Russian strongman compared the force of the water – which trapped people in their homes at night, ripped up pavements and traffic lights and flooded rail tracks – to a ‘tsunami’ and said the top investigator would probe ‘who acted how’. He also quickly moved to address concerns that the deluge might have been caused by an emergency opening of sluice gates at a local reservoir, with the Kremlin issuing a statement that Putin had been told it was not the cause of the flooding. Flash floods frequently batter towns along the picturesque Black Sea coast during seasonal rains in the Caucasus mountains, but authorities say the current disaster is unprecedented.Officials have been unable to explain the massive death toll, saying only the floods were caused by torrential rains over the past few days. The force of the water was so ferocious that many residents said they suspected the floods were caused by a release of water at a local reservoir on the Neberdzhai River. Investigators have acknowledged that repeated releases of water did happen but it remained unclear whether it might have contributed to the disaster. ‘Over the course of 13 hours portioned releases of water were repeatedly conducted in an automated mode,’ spokesman for regional investigators Sengerov said in televised remarks. ‘But there were not some large-scale water releases. We have yet to establish how much they could have affected the development of events.’ Investigators also opened a criminal investigation into possible negligence but did not provide further details. Some residents bluntly accused authorities of a cover-up. ‘It always rains here but we’ve never had this before. A seven-metre tall wave crushed everything,’ Irina Morgunova told AFP in Krymsk. ‘That is not rain. But no one will ever say it out loud.’
MOSCOW (AP) — The death toll rose to at least 150 on Sunday from severe flooding in the Black Sea region of southern Russia that turned streets into rivers, swept away bridges and inundated thousands of homes as many residents were sleeping.
President Vladimir Putin flew to the region and ordered investigators to determine whether more could have been done to prevent the deaths.
Torrential rains dropped up to a foot of water in less than 24 hours, which the state meteorological service said was five times the monthly average.
The water rushed into the hard-hit town of Krymsk with such speed and volume early Saturday that residents said they suspected that water had been released from a reservoir in the mountains above. Local officials denied this, saying it was not technically possible to open the sluices.
Federal investigators, however, acknowledged Sunday that water had been released from the reservoir, but they insisted it did not cause the flooding and the dam had not been breached.
Heavy rain also fell in Gelendzhik, a popular seaside vacation spot about 200 kilometers (120 miles) up the coast from Sochi, where preparations are under way for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Novorossiisk, a major Black Sea port, also was affected.
The Interior Ministry said Sunday that 150 bodies had been recovered, 139 of them in Krymsk and nine in Gelendzhik. The majority of the dead were elderly who were unable to escape the sudden deluge.
Krymsk residents described a wave of water that washed over the hoods of cars and inundated one-story homes. Some sought refuge on roofs and in trees.
Putin arrived Saturday evening and viewed the damage from the air. Television footage of Krymsk shot from Putin’s helicopter showed the city of 57,000 people partially submerged in muddy water. The city stadium looked more like a lake.
Across the region, more than 5,000 homes were flooded.
Putin ordered the head of Russia’s investigative agency to determine whether enough had been done to warn people about the floods. Federal prosecutors also said they were investigating whether the population had been properly protected from “natural and technological catastrophes.”
As an indication of the lingering concern over the condition of the water reservoir, Putin sent Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov to inspect the dam. Puchkov reported Sunday that he had flown over the dam in a helicopter and saw no evidence of any damage.
View GalleryA priest conducts a funeral ceremony, while acquaintances of Pyotr Ostapenko, 35, …
A photo released by Russia’s Interior …
People in a flood-ravaged southern Russian town on Saturday charged that authorities offered no help as masses of water tore through their homes overnight.
“Nobody came to our street to help. We need help,” pensioner Lidiya Polinina told AFP by phone from Krymsk, the worst-hit town, recounting how she managed to survive the flood that has claimed over 100 lives.
TV footage showed brown water rushing down the town’s streets, where bodies lay on the curbs, covered with dirty blankets. Trees were torn out, homes destroyed and giant slabs of asphalt thrown on top of cars.
“Our house was flooded to the ceiling,” said Polinina.
“We could not open the door because of the water, so we broke the window to climb out,” she said, seething with anger at what she said was the lack of help from the authorities.
“I put my five-year-old grandson on the roof of our submerged car, and then we somehow climbed up into the attic. I don’t know how we managed to survive.”
The floods left her house full of silt and debris, but did not knock it down, so she was turned away from the local emergency shelter with only two loaves of bread and a bottle of water, she said.
There had been no emergency warning about the flood, she said.
Flash floods frequently batter towns along the Black Sea coast during seasonal rains in the Caucasus mountains, but officials say the current disaster is unprecedented.
The floods and a landslide in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region over the past two days have killed at least 103 people and affected nearly 13,000.
Krymsk has been worst hit, with officials recovering at least 92 bodies there. Authorities have been unable to explain the massive toll, saying the floods were caused by torrential rains.
The town of 57,000 lies about 200 kilometres northwest of the Black Sea resort town of Sochi where Russia will host the 2014 Summer Olympic Games.
Police have beefed up patrols to guard against looting. Electricity and cell phone networks have not been restored, officials said.
“Patrols are everywhere,” Krymsk resident Alexander Natarov said by phone.
Natarov said he had to seek shelter on the second floor of his apartment building and spent the night in a stairwell.
“The market has been completely wiped out,” he added.
A rumour has swept through town that the overnight flood might have been caused by an opening of floodgates at a local dam.
“The water rose very quickly, it flooded people’s ground floors in five to 10 minutes,” said Krymsk resident Tatyana, who declined to give her surname. “That cannot be just rain.”
Krasnodar governor Alexander Tkachev called the reports “nonsense” and said on Twitter: “Enough! Stop spreading stupid rumors. The region has received five months’ worth of rain.”
Heavy rains in Cape Town on Sunday flooded roads and houses and caused the Liesbeek River to burst its banks, and there were “extreme weather” warnings of bitter cold over much of the country. The M3 was flooded where the road dips near UCT, and traffic was backed up as motorists slowed down to plough through the muddy waters. Many shacks on the Cape Flats were flooded and the city council and charity organizations provided hot meals, blankets and plastic sheeting to about 350 families. The SA Weather Service said on Sunday’s cold front had been particularly strong, adding that the cold, wet weather was here to stay for the next few days. The weather office said westerly winds at Cape Point reached near gale force of 55km/h on Sunday morning, while there were rough seas with heavy swells between 4m and 5m from Lamberts Bay to the southern Cape coast. The city council’s disaster risk management centre ordered about 60 people to evacuate the River Club premises for their safety on Sunday after rising flood waters from the Liesbeek had inundated the club’s parking lot and courtyard. Wilfred Solomons-Johannes, head of the city’s disaster management, said there had been 43 incidents of flooded roads in the metropole on Sunday, but none had caused road closures. Fifteen vehicles had been removed from the flooded River Club grounds. Bernie Maxwell, who works in the River Club’s golf shop, said on Sunday: “We’re trapped and the bus is taking us out from this area. The golf shop and the restaurant are closing up, but there are SA’s Got Talent auditions here too, and they’re carrying on. “The water is up to the car doors in the car park. Right now we’re preparing to store all the stuff in the shop above ground level just in case the water comes higher.” -Iol
The death toll from heavy monsoon rains which have caused massive flooding in India’s northeast has risen to more than 120, with six million forced to flee their homes, officials said Saturday.
The weather office forecast that more rains during the next 24 hours would lash the region, which is suffering from its worst flooding in recent years.
Assam state has been hardest hit by the annual rains with the mighty Brahmaputra river overflowing its banks, while flooding has also struck the nearby states of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Meghalaya.
“So far a total of 121 people have died in separate incidents in which 105 were drowned while trying to escape the gushing waters and 16 more were killed in landslides caused by heavy rains,” an Assam government statement said.
An estimated six million people have been forced to leave their homes to escape the floodwaters and find higher ground, a separate Central Water Commission bulletin said.
The monsoon, which sweeps across the subcontinent from June to September, is crucial for India’s farmers but also claims many casualties from flooding every year.
Assam state officials were struggling to cope with the huge number of people displaced by the flooding, with makeshift relief camps sheltering some of those forced to leave their homes.
Twenty-six of the 27 districts in the tea-and-oil-rich state have been hit by flash floods since June 24 as a result of the torrential rains while the Brahmaputra river has breached its banks in at least nine places.
The flooding has also devastated the Kaziranga National Park, famous for its tigers, one-horned rhinos and elephants.
The Press Trust of India quoted officials as saying more than 540 of the park’s animals, including 13 rhinos, had died.
In the adjoining states of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur and Meghalaya, monsoon rains have caused widespread flooding but there have been no reported deaths.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh toured the Assam region by helicopter earlier in the week to view the effects of the rains.
“The people of Assam are facing one of the worst floods in recent times that has inflicted considerable damage,” Singh said afterwards.
While India’s northeast has received too much rain, the monsoon has been late arriving in other parts of the country.
The monsoon is dubbed the “economic lifeline” of India, which has a population of 1.2 billion and is one of the world’s leading producers of rice, sugar, wheat and cotton.
Millions of Indian farmers still rely on monsoon rains to water around 60 percent of the country’s farmland.
This year, the monsoon rainfall is running at 31 percent below the normal annual average. But the weather office has forecast heavy rains in the key planting months of July and August to make up for the shortfall.
The BBC has learned that a patient has been diagnosed with cholera in the Cuban capital, Havana, days after three people died in a rare outbreak in the south-eastern town of Manzanillo.
More than 50 people were infected and about 1,000 have received medical attention.
The authorities say the outbreak is under control but four hospitals are prepared to isolate patients.
They say people became ill after drinking water from contaminated wells.
But it is not clear what the source of the cholera is.
Haiti link
Most of the cases were in Cuba’s south-eastern Granma province, more than 750km (470 miles) from Havana.
Hundreds of medical professionals from that area, including nurses, have worked and continue to work with patients in Haiti, where tens of thousands of people were infected after a devastating earthquake in 2010.
But the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford says that for over a week doctors in Havana have been doing the rounds of their patients, checking for symptoms of cholera.
The infirm, elderly and pregnant have been prioritised.
Now tests on a 60-year-old woman, admitted to hospital on Wednesday, have confirmed that she has the disease.
As she was diagnosed early, doctors say she is in a stable condition.
Health officials said they had “all the necessary resources to provide adequate attention to patients.”
They said they had taken a series of measures, including taking samples of water and adding chlorine to purify it, to combat the outbreak.
Cholera is a bacterial infection that can cause severe diarrhoea and dehydration.
The Health Ministry said the last reported cholera outbreak on the island was soon after the 1959 Revolution.
Postal worker at the mail sorting machines at the Brentwood postal facility. He is wearing a face mask and gloves as a precaution against anthrax exposure.
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Danish authorities say an intravenous drug user who injected heroin and died has tested positive for anthrax.
The Health Ministry suspects the drug was contaminated with the bacillus anthracis strain of anthrax. The 55-year-old addict died Sunday.
Terrorism is not suspected, and the health ministry says there is no risk of contagion because the bacteria cannot be passed from person to person.
Anthrax is a deadly disease that can be treated with antibiotics if caught early.
Officials said Monday they will compare the case to two similar deaths in Germany in June.
Last week, German officials said there may be a link between contaminated heroin found in Germany and an anthrax outbreak in Scotland in 2009 and 2010, which left 10 people dead.
Researchers are closer to identifying a mysterious disease that’s killed nearly 60 children in Cambodia over the past three months. Though experts have been unsure whether the condition is a mixture of known diseases or something new, lab tests this weekend detected the presence of a deadly strain of hand, foot and mouth disease that can cause paralysis, brain swelling, and death. Still, experts stressed that they’re continuing to investigate the causes behind the deaths—and other illnesses, such as mosquito-borne dengue fever, are also associated with some of the cases. Infected kids suffer from a high fever, severe respiratory problems, and neurological symptoms. There’s no vaccine or specific treatment for hand, foot and mouth disease, which is spread by sneezing, coughing, and contact with fluid from blisters or infected feces. “Further investigation is ongoing and this includes the matching of the laboratory and epidemiological information,” Cambodian Health Minister Mam Bunheng said in a press statement, according to the Wall Street Journal. “We hope to be able to conclude our investigation in the coming days.”
Angela Haupt is a health reporter for U.S. News & World Report. You can follow her on Twitter or reach her at ahaupt@usnews.com.
Shellfish harvesting on a Lewis loch has been halted after Food Standards Agency inspectors found potentially harmful levels of toxic algae. The ban on Loch Leurbost comes after tests showed eating shellfish such as cockles,mussels or razor fish may pose a risk to human health. Notices to warn the public and casual gatherers have been posted at various locations on the shore. Commercial shellfish harvesters have been contacted by the comhairle and steps taken to postpone harvesting until algae levels subside. A council spokesperson said:‘It is a sensible precaution to avoid eating shellfish from these areas until further notice. ‘The council is monitoring the situation and will remove warning notices when it improves.’ A warning has also been issued for locations in the Kilbrannan Sound after Argyll and Bute Council carried out monitoring work which revealed raised levels of naturally occurring algal toxins in Campbeltown Loch,Kildalloig Bay,Carradale Bay,Saddell Bay and Machrie Bay,Pirnmill. These areas were closed on July 3 and signs posted to warn gatherers and members of the public of the danger. Commercial shellfish harvesters in these areas have also been contacted by the council and steps taken to postpone harvesting until algae levels subside. Eating shellfish such as cockles,mussels or razor fish from these areas may cause food poisoning. The algal toxins do not affect the taste of the shellfish and are not destroyed by freezing or cooking.
Biohazard name:
Toxic Algae Bloom
Biohazard level:
0/4 —
Biohazard desc.:
This does not included biological hazard category.
Devastating floods in northeast India have killed around 600 animals in the region’s largest wildlife park, including more than a dozen threatened one-horned rhinos, officials said Monday.
“Most of the animals either drowned or were mown down by speeding vehicles when they tried to flee the heavy flooding,” said S.K. Bora, director of 430-square-kilometre (165-square-mile) Kaziranga National Park in Assam state.
“The water level is now receding, but the vast majority of animals that fled the park are yet to return,” he told AFP by telephone.
According to Bora, various species of deer accounted for more than 500 of the animal victims, which also included 14 rhinos and two elephant calves.
Assam has been the focus of severe regional flooding in recent weeks, triggered by heavy monsoon rains that caused the Brahmaputra river to burst its banks, inundating large areas of the state.
Nearly 130 people have been killed and six million displaced by the floodwaters, according to official figures.
Kaziranga is home to the world’s single largest population of one-horned rhinos. A 2012 census in the park counted 2,290 of the rhinos, out of a global population of 3,300.
The species declined to near extinction in the early 1900s, and is currently listed as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
Kaziranga has fought a sustained battle against rhino poachers, who kill the animals for their horns, which fetch huge prices in some Asian countries where they are deemed to have aphrodisiac qualities.
Assam Forests Minister Rockybul Hussain voiced concerns that poachers would prey on those rhinos that had been forced out of the protective ring of the park by the flooding.
Two workers were hospitalized and at least 120 people were evacuated from a factory fish- processing ship that leaked up to 5,000 pounds of anhydrous ammonia in port at Dutch Harbor Saturday afternoon. The two were flown to Anchorage for medical treatment. The ship, the 367-foot-long M/V Excellence, was relocated to a moorage in Wide Bay, about 7.5 miles from the Kloosterboer North Dock in Dutch Harbor, where it leaked. Workers cannot enter the engineering space where the ammonia is leaking because of the danger, said Steven Russel of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation. Anhydrous ammonia is used as a coolant in the vessel’s refrigeration system. When compressed, the ammonia is a liquid, but upon release it turns into a gas. The gas displaces the oxygen in the body, causing nausea, shortness of breath, irritation to the eyes and headaches. Ammonia is leaking at a fairly low pressure of less than 4 pounds per square inch. Russell said up to 4,000 pounds of the 22,000 pounds of ammonia aboard the vessel has been released. But Russel did not anticipate much more leakage due to the leak’s location in the refrigeration system. Once the leak was detected, nearby areas were cleared and the workers were evacuated. One of the workers flown to Anchorage has been released from the hospital. The Unalaska fire department has been combating ammonia vapors from the vessel using a high-pressure water fog. DEC plans to monitor the vessel until it’s safe for Hazmat teams to board and gather air data. Select members of the crew with Hazmat training are working alongside the Unalaska Fire Department and the U.S. Coast Guard. The M/V Excellence was built as a factory trawler in 1973 and refitted in 1990 for use as a factory processor.
Twelve factories in eastern China were closed down after children living nearby were found to have high levels of lead in their blood, state press reported Monday.
While local authorities sought to downplay the significance of the shutdown, it is the latest in a string of incidents to highlight the increasing environmental and health costs of rampant economic development across China.
“All 12 factories, related to metals, chemicals and recycled paper, have been halted for investigation,” the government of Jian city said in a statement carried in the state-run press on Monday.
The controversy surfaced when a boy living near the industrial park containing the factories was found last month to have higher-than-normal levels of lead in his blood, the China Youth Daily reported.
After a further 15 children were discovered to have excess lead levels, worried parents lobbied local authorities to close the factories, according to the report.
Prolonged exposure to lead can cause nausea and pain within the body, and may damage the heart and kidneys and harm fertility, according to the US Center for Disease Control.
While the government bowed to community pressure in closing the factories, the Jian city government said there was no evidence to show lead had leached out of the industrial park.
It added that the factories had only been closed temporarily.
Grassroots environmental activism is growing in China, with protests against polluting industries occurring frequently across the country.
Violent protests last week by thousands of people in the southwestern city of Shifang forced authorities there to cancel plans for a $1.6 billion heavy metals plant.
by Staff Writers
Nairobi, Kenya (SPX) Jul 06, 2012
Intern Daily
Remarkably, some 60 percent of all human diseases and 75 percent of all emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic. Among the high-priority zoonoses studied here are “endemic zoonoses,” such as brucellosis, which cause the vast majority of illness and death in poor countries; “epidemic zoonoses,” which typically occur as outbreaks, such as anthrax and Rift Valley fever; and the relatively rare “emerging zoonoses,” such as bird flu, a few of which, like HIV/AIDS, spread to cause global cataclysms. While zoonoses can be transmitted to people by either wild or domesticated animals, most human infections are acquired from the world’s 24 billion livestock, including pigs, poultry, cattle, goats, sheep and camels.
A new global study mapping human-animal diseases like tuberculosis (TB) and Rift Valley fever finds that an “unlucky” 13 zoonoses are responsible for 2.4 billion cases of human illness and 2.2 million deaths per year. The vast majority occur in low- and middle-income countries. The report, which was conducted by the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI), the Institute of Zoology (UK) and the Hanoi School of Public Health in Vietnam, maps poverty, livestock-keeping and the diseases humans get from animals, and presents a “top 20″ list of geographical hotspots.
“From cyst-causing tapeworms to avian flu, zoonoses present a major threat to human and animal health,” said Delia Grace, a veterinary epidemiologist and food safety expert with ILRI in Kenya and lead author of the study. “Targeting the diseases in the hardest hit countries is crucial to protecting global health as well as to reducing severe levels of poverty and illness among the world’s one billion poor livestock keepers.”
“Exploding global demand for livestock products is likely to fuel the spread of a wide range of human-animal infectious diseases,” Grace added.
According to the study, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Tanzania in Africa, as well as India in Asia, have the highest zoonotic disease burdens, with widespread illness and death. Meanwhile, the northeastern United States, Western Europe (especially the United Kingdom), Brazil and parts of Southeast Asia may be hotspots of “emerging zoonoses”-those that are newly infecting humans, are newly virulent, or have newly become drug resistant.
The study examined the likely impacts of livestock intensification and climate change on the 13 zoonotic diseases currently causing the greatest harm to the world’s poor.
The report, Mapping of Poverty and Likely Zoonoses Hotspots, was developed with support from the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID). The goal of the research was to identify areas where better control of zoonotic diseases would most benefit poor people. It also updates a map of emerging disease events published in the science journal Nature in 2008 by Jones et al.i
Remarkably, some 60 percent of all human diseases and 75 percent of all emerging infectious diseases are zoonotic. Among the high-priority zoonoses studied here are “endemic zoonoses,” such as brucellosis, which cause the vast majority of illness and death in poor countries; “epidemic zoonoses,” which typically occur as outbreaks, such as anthrax and Rift Valley fever; and the relatively rare “emerging zoonoses,” such as bird flu, a few of which, like HIV/AIDS, spread to cause global cataclysms.
While zoonoses can be transmitted to people by either wild or domesticated animals, most human infections are acquired from the world’s 24 billion livestock, including pigs, poultry, cattle, goats, sheep and camels.
Poverty, zoonoses and markets Today, 2.5 billion people live on less than US$2.00 per day. Nearly three-quarters of the rural poor and some one-third of the urban poor depend on livestock for their food, income, traction, manure or other services. Livestock provide poor households with up to half their income and between 6 and 35 percent of their protein consumption. The loss of a single milking animal can be devastating to such households. Worse, of course, is the loss of a family member to zoonotic disease.
Despite the danger of zoonoses, the growing global demand for meat and milk products is a big opportunity for poor livestock keepers.
“Increased demand will continue over the coming decades, driven by rising populations and incomes, urbanization and changing diets in emerging economies,” noted Steve Staal, deputy director general-research at ILRI. “Greater access to global and regional meat markets could move millions of poor livestock keepers out of poverty if they can effectively participate in meeting that rising demand.”
But zoonoses present a major obstacle to their efforts. The study estimates, for example, that about one in eight livestock in poor countries are affected by brucellosis; this reduces milk and meat production in cattle by around 8 percent.
Thus, while the developing world’s booming livestock markets represent a pathway out of poverty for many, the presence of zoonotic diseases can perpetuate rather than reduce poverty and hunger in livestock-keeping communities. The study found a 99 percent correlation between country levels of protein-energy malnutrition and the burden of zoonoses.
“Many poor livestock keepers are not even meeting their own protein and energy needs,” said Staal. “Too often, animal diseases, including zoonotic diseases, confound their greatest efforts to escape poverty and hunger.”
Assessing the burden of zoonoses The researchers initially reviewed 56 zoonoses that together are responsible for around 2.5 billion cases of human illness and 2.7 million human deaths per year. A more detailed study was made of the 13 zoonoses identified as most important, based on analysis of 1,000 surveys covering more than 10 million people, 6 million animals and 6,000 food or environment samples.
The analysis found high levels of infection with these zoonoses among livestock in poor countries. For example, 27 percent of livestock in developing countries showed signs of current or past infection with bacterial food-borne disease-a source of food contamination and widespread illness. The researchers attribute at least one-third of global diarrheal disease to zoonotic causes, and find this disease to be the biggest zoonotic threat to public health.
In the booming livestock sector of developing countries, by far the fastest growing sectors are poultry and pigs. “As production, processing and retail food chains intensify, there are greater risks of food-borne illnesses, especially in poorly managed systems,” said John McDermott, director of the CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health, led by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
“Historically, high-density pig and poultry populations have been important in maintaining and mixing influenza populations. A major concern is that as new livestock systems intensify, particularly small- and medium-sized pig production, that more intensive systems will allow the maintenance and transmission of pathogens. A number of new zoonoses, such as Nipah virus infections, have emerged in that way.”
Intensification and disease spread The most rapid changes in pig and poultry farming are expected in Burkina Faso and Ghana in Africa and India, Myanmar and Pakistan in Asia. Pig and poultry farming is also intensifying more rapidly than other farm commodity sectors, with more animals being raised in more concentrated spaces, which raises the risk of disease spread.
Assessing the likely impacts of livestock intensification on the high-priority zoonoses, the study found that livestock density is associated more with disease “event emergence” than with overall disease burdens.
Both the northeastern United States and Western Europe have high densities of livestock and high levels of disease emergence (e.g., BSE, or “mad cow” disease, and Lyme disease), but low numbers of people falling sick and dying from zoonotic diseases. The latter is almost certainly due to the relatively good disease reporting and health care available in these rich countries.
Bovine tuberculosis is a good example of a zoonotic disease that is now rare in both livestock and human populations in rich countries but continues to plague poor countries, where it infects about 7 percent of cattle, reducing their production by 6 percent. Most infected cattle have the bovine form of TB, but both the human and bovine forms of TB can infect cows and people.
Results of this study suggest that the burden of zoonotic forms of TB may be underestimated, with bovine TB causing up to 10 percent of human TB cases. Human TB remains one of the most important and common human diseases in poor countries; in 2010, 12 million people suffered from active disease, with 80 percent of all new cases occurring in 22 developing countries.
Massive underreporting “We found massive underreporting of zoonoses and animal diseases in general in poor countries,” said Grace. “In sub-Saharan Africa, for example, 99.9 percent of livestock losses do not appear in official disease reports. Surveillance is not fulfilling its purpose.”
The surveillance lacking today will be even more needed in the future, as the climate changes, she added. Previous research by ILRI and others indicates that areas with increased rainfall and flooding will have increased risk of zoonoses, particularly those diseases transmitted by insects or associated with stagnant water or flooding.
The main finding of the study is that most of the burden of zoonoses and most of the opportunities for alleviating zoonoses lie in just a few countries, notably Ethiopia, Nigeria, and India. These three countries have the highest number of poor livestock keepers, the highest number of malnourished people, and are in the top five countries for both absolute numbers affected with zoonoses and relative intensity of zoonoses infection.
“These findings allow us to focus on the hotspots of zoonoses and poverty, within which we should be able to make a difference,” said Grace.
A satellite passed over growing Daniel on July 4, and saw heavy rainfall near its center. Some of the rain clouds were more than 9 miles tall.
CREDIT: NASA.
Editor’s note: This story was updated at 11:06 a.m. ET to note that Emilia has rapid strengthened into a Category 2 hurricane.
Hurricane Emilia has roared to life in the eastern Pacific Ocean, joining Hurricane Daniel in swirling over the waters off North America’s western coast. The storms are the fourth and third hurricanes of the East Pacific season, respectively.
A rotating gale was declared a tropical storm and christened Daniel in the early hours of July 5, when its winds crossed the required threshold of 39 mph (63 kph). The storm continued to strengthen, and was officially dubbed a hurricane — a storm packing sustained winds of at least 74 mph (119 kph) — late on Friday (July 6).
According to the latest report from the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Fla., Hurricane Daniel is packing maximum sustained winds of 90 mph (150 kph) and is weakening as it moves westward across the ocean and over cooler waters. It is currently about 1,300 miles (2,000 kilometers) west-southwest of the southern tip of Baja California.
Emilia first formed as a tropical storm on Saturday night, and strengthened into a hurricane early this morning (July 9). It has maximum sustained winds of 100 mph (160 kph) and is 700 miles (1,100 kilometers) south of the tip of Baja California.
While Daniel, a Category 1 hurricane, is expected to weaken, Emilia has already rapidly intensified into a Category 2 storm and is expected to become a major hurricane (those of Category 3 or higher) by Tuesday.
Both storms lie far out to sea, several hundred miles west of Mexico’s mainland, and moving farther seaward, posing no threat to land.
Early in Daniel’s lifecycle, satellites spotted giant “hot towers” inside the storm. The massive, heated rain clouds can soar more than 9 miles (14 kilometers) into the atmosphere, and are a telltale sign that a storm will strengthen as Daniel did.
Hurricane Daniel was the fourth named storm and Emilia the fifth of the Eastern Pacific hurricane season. Storms are named only once they achieve tropical storm status. The first three storms of the season were Tropical Storm Aletta, Hurricane Bud and Hurricane Carlotta.
Although the Atlantic basin is now quiet, that ocean basin has so far seen four named storms this season — a record number of storms to appear so early in the year.
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — A man from Juneau, Alaska, contracted a rare infection from flesh-eating bacteria and was in satisfactory condition in a Seattle hospital after being flown in for emergency treatment, hospital officials said on Thursday.
Ruben Pereyra was the latest person in the United States to suffer the flesh-eating disease that has also afflicted a Georgia graduate student who has had to undergo multiple amputations and a South Carolina woman who is a new mother of twins.
Pereyra arrived two weeks ago at Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center from a Juneau hospital, Harborview spokeswoman Clare LeFond said.
Hospital officials did not give details about the extent, severity or circumstances of the case. But in an interview with the Juneau Empire newspaper, Pereyra’s wife, Ana, said her husband apparently got the infection from a splinter in his hand.
She also told the paper that her husband had surgery and that an amputation was possible.
Necrotizing fasciitis, otherwise known as flesh-eating disease, can be caused when a wound is infected with group-A streptococci or by staphylococci, common bacteria that live on people’s skin and in their noses.
Jim Strader, director of community relations for Juneau’s Bartlett Regional Hospital, said he and other hospital officials in the Alaska capital had been assuring the public the disease was not communicable, he said.
“It’s not an epidemic. It’s not a reason to panic,” he said, adding: “It’s fortunately very rare. But it has a really high mortality rate.”
The infection progresses rapidly and can quickly destroy muscles, skin and other tissues. “The wound sometimes looks like it’s healed over, and then it comes back very, very quickly,” Strader said.
Babies With Pets Not Dogged by Colds
Early exposure, especially to dogs, reduced respiratory infections in infants
By Serena Gordon HealthDay Reporter
MONDAY, July 9 (HealthDay News) — Babies who live with dogs and cats during their first year of life may be less susceptible to respiratory infections, such as the common cold, according to new research.
The study of nearly 400 children found that dogs were especially protective, and the babies who lived with dogs during their first year were about one-third more likely to be healthy during their first year, compared to babies who didn’t have a pet in the home. Babies with dogs in the home were 44 percent less likely to develop an ear infection, and 29 percent less likely to need antibiotics than their petless peers.
“Children who had dog contacts at home were healthier and had less frequent ear infections and needed fewer courses of antibiotics than children who had no dog contacts,” said the study’s lead author, Dr. Eija Bergroth, a pediatrician who worked at Kuopio University Hospital, in Finland, at the time of the study.
Bergroth also noted that “cat contacts did not seem to have as strong of an impact on infection frequency in multivariate analysis as the dog contacts.”
Results of the study, released online July 9, will be published in the August print issue of Pediatrics.
Previous research on pets in the home has suggested that animals, and dogs in particular, may provide some protection against the development of asthma and allergies. But, other studies have found that household pets may increase the number of respiratory infections in children, according to background information in the study.
To get a better idea of the impact of pets on a child’s health, Bergroth and her colleagues reviewed data from a study of 208 children whose mothers were recruited during their last trimester of pregnancy. The mothers were from rural areas in Austria, Finland, France, Germany and Switzerland.
The study also included data from 216 mothers living in rural or suburban areas in Finland, who gave birth at Kuopio University Hospital in Finland. After excluding children with incomplete information, researchers looked at data from 397 children overall.
During the first year of life, 72 percent of the children experienced a fever, 40 percent had an ear infection, 97 percent had a runny nose, 84 percent had a cough and 32 percent wheezed at some point. Almost half of the children were given antibiotics at least once during their first year of life, according to the study.
Sixty-two percent of the children had a dog, and 34 percent had a cat at some time during the study. But, at the end of the 11-month study, almost two-thirds of parents said they had no dog in the home, and three-quarters said they had no cat.
Overall, children who had some exposure to dogs or cats in the home were healthier than those who didn’t. They had fewer weeks with cough, ear infections and runny noses, according to the study. They also needed fewer courses of antibiotics.
Washington, July 7 (ANI): A study by an Indian origin researcher has found that an extract from algae could become a key to regulating cardiovascular disease.
Smiti Gupta, Ph.D., assistant professor in the department of nutrition and food science in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has found that dietary intake of ProAlgaZyme increased the level of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) in an animal model.
While medications for the control of high plasma cholesterol levels such as statins and numerous dietary supplements primarily function by lowering levels of low-density lipoproteins (LDL), or “bad cholesterol,” Gupta’s research explores the effects of raising levels of HDL, or “good cholesterol,” which work in part by carrying cholesterol out of the arterial wall.
“The cholesterol mechanism is crucial to heart disease,” Gupta said.
“Very few agents increase good cholesterol, but we found that this algae extract does. The ratio of total to HDL cholesterol improved significantly. This result, if replicated in humans, would be consistent with a decreased risk of heart disease.”
ProAlgaZyme, a clear liquid, was administered as part of the drinking fluid over four weeks. In addition to increasing HDL levels, the group found that it also changed the expression of genes involved in the reverse cholesterol transport mechanism.
And while they don’t know exactly how it will function in humans, Gupta said other research suggests a similar outcome.
“Its biological effect over time and toxic effects, if any, need to be further investigated in a long-term study in an animal model before testing its effects in humans,” she said.
“But this is a step in the right direction, since increased HDL is considered an important therapeutic target for improvement of the lipid profile and thus reduction of the risk for cardiovascular disease,” she added.
The result was recently published in the Journal of Nutrition and Dietary Supplements. (ANI)
Perth, July 7 (ANI): Some neurologists believe that the debilitating forms of multiple sclerosis (MS) could soon come to an end thanks to vitamin D.
A world first clinical trial will investigate the role vitamin D could play in preventing MS.
MSWA chief executive Marcuss Stafford said there was already indicators that vitamin D could play a role in the disease.
“The further you are born from the equator, the greater your likelihood of contracting MS, the second clue that we have is that there is a variation in genes that metabolise vitamin D and the third key clue that has led us down this path is that there is an association between vitamin D deficiency and relapses within MS as well,” WA Today quoted Stafford as saying.
MS, which is an incurable disease, manifests itself differently in individuals but affects the central nervous system and can, to varying degrees, interfere with the transmission of nerve impulses throughout the brain, spinal cord and optic nerves.
There are currently no evidence-based interventions to prevent the development of it.
The trial would not involve people with diagnosed MS, but people in the early stages of showing MS symptoms.
It would look at the progress of those individuals towards MS.
The trial will be overseen by local neurologist Professor Bill Carroll from Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital and will involve 290 patients from across Australia and New Zealand.
“In this prevention trial we’ll be giving patients three different levels of vitamin D while others will be given a placebo,” he said.
“The link between vitamin D and MS appears strong.
“What we don’t know is how important this vitamin D effect might be or what the optimum dose of vitamin D might be. This study will give us those answers,” he added.
The trial will run for four years, and researchers will start to recruit patients who have experienced their first MS-like symptoms this month. (ANI)
Washington, July 8 (ANI): People with fructose malabsorption – a food intolerance that is as complicated as it is common – are turning to low FODMAP diet, which stands for six sugars, to tackle the condition.
The diet restricts most fruits, many vegetables, wheat, some dairy and other everyday foods such as honey.
Usually described as ”fructose intolerance”, but often extending to malabsorption of other sugars, scientists believe the condition could affect almost half of the 15 per cent of Australians with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), and be the prime trigger of symptoms such as diarrhoea, constipation, bloating and pain.
Diagnosis is confirmed by a breath-test, and the number of specialist diagnostic centres in Melbourne has risen since 1999 from one to an estimated 18.
Jackie Love, a 44-year-old French teacher, claimed her painful and socially awkward IBS symptoms have disappeared after following FODMAP diet and she’s not alone.
Love can eat bananas but not apples. Beans but not snow peas. Gluten but not wheat.
”I really have to look at every single thing I put in my mouth,” said Love.
The diet, which was developed in Melbourne by dietitian Dr Sue Shepherd in 1999 and later proved effective by Dr Shepherd and Monash University, has spawned a thriving local industry.
”There are lots of diets being promoted … but this is one where we know why it works,” the Age quoted Dr Shepherd as saying.
Her annual patient list has soared from 100 to 4000 in 13 years (about 80per cent of whom are being treated with the FODMAP diet) and she also publishes cookbooks, consults overseas and conducts supermarket tours and information sessions for chefs.
One of her patients, Natalie Nott, said ”FODMAPs has really changed everything.”
Relieved of her irritable bowel syndrome symptoms, last year she self-published the Low Fodmap Cookbook, which has sold about 600 copies, and has 1000 subscribers to her blog.
She says dining out is still difficult, but restaurants such as Fox in the Box, in Hampton, and The Firehouse, in Ringwood, now cater specifically for FODMAPs.
Food companies Naturally Good and Simply Wise include a ”fructose-friendly” label on relevant products.
Dr Shepherd says better diagnosis of fructose malabsorption has made the condition seem more prevalent, although some speculate that increased fructose in our diets, particularly from high- fructose corn syrup in many processed foods, is also to blame.
But Australian Medical Association president Steve Hambleton said the incorrect perception of food allergies and intolerances was also on the rise, and warned that the FODMAP diet should only be used under professional guidance.
”You need to go to a GP first to make sure you don’t have a serious, treatable medical condition – especially one of the inflammatory bowel diseases,” he said.
”There is an objective increase in recognised food intolerance s, But there’s probably an equal number of people who think they’re intolerant or allergic without robust reason,” he added. (ANI)
Wanna get fat fast? Stay vitamin D deficient!
By J. D. Heyes,
(NaturalNews) You have no doubt heard that excess fat, corn syrup, sugary drinks and high-fructose, high-starch diets will boost your beltline and add pounds to your physique. Well, according to a recent study, if you’re a woman there’s another way to tilt your scales: Just remain vitamin D deficient. Kaiser Permanente, which conducted the study that was published online recently in the Journal of Women’s Health, tracked more than 4,600 women aged 65 and older for about 54 months. Researchers…
By Raw Michelle,
(NaturalNews) The cause and effect relationships between these mechanisms are easier to delineate than the cellular action of either carcinogens or their repellants. Researchers at Oregon State University have been hot on the trail of one particular carcinogen for some time now. Protecting the body with good armor upkeepCarcinogens don’t simply cause cancer. They cause the distortion of genetic blueprints and proliferate transcript errors, a very tiny number of which will result in cancer. Most…
Nutritional supplements prove better than toxic drugs
By Jonathan Landsman,
(NaturalNews) Do you know anyone that believes in poisoning the body to “get well”? The sad truth is that most ill-informed people think that un-natural medicine is the only way to solve health problems. By brainwashing doctors (in medical school); controlling politicians (with lobbying efforts) and “social conditioning” (through T.V. ads) – the pharmaceutical drug cartel has created a system of sick care that profits shareholders and promotes dis-ease. (“insider” proof below – keep reading) Marcia…
By J. D. Heyes,
(NaturalNews) Is it possible that breast milk contains the magic potion which kills the virus that causes AIDS? According to new research, that’s a distinct possibility. A recent study published in PLoS Pathogens, which was conducted by researchers from the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, found that mice did not contract HIV after ingesting virus-tainted breast milk. Moreover, the researchers found, the breast milk actually killed the virus. The mice used in the study had…
Monounsaturated fats are essential to unlock nutrients from vegetables
By John Phillip,
(NaturalNews) Everybody knows that a diet filled with fresh, raw vegetables and greens are essential to vibrant health and prevention of chronic diseases, but few understand how the fats they consume along with these foods help to unlock the nutrient store provided by a healthy diet. At the ill-advised advice of many dieticians and medical professionals, people are encouraged to follow a low fat diet that includes fat-free salad dressings laden with added sugars for flavoring. Researchers from…
Germination and fermentation – The secret to easily digestible grains
By Carolanne Wright,
(NaturalNews) For many, improperly prepared grains can cause a variety of health issues ranging from digestive upset to serious malabsorption and deficiency. The problem is not necessarily the grain itself, but how it is handled before consumption. Through soaking, sprouting, and fermentation, this potentially harmful food is transformed into highly digestible and nutritious fare. All grains contain phytic-acid which binds to minerals such as iron, calcium, and magnesium. In order to liberate…
High protein, low carbohydrate diet increases heart disease risk in women
By John Phillip,
(NaturalNews) Very few topics elicit more controversy and differing points of view than those pertaining to dietary ratios of carbohydrates, proteins and fats and how they pertain to optimal health. Nutrition science indicates that the answer to this dilemma is far from clear, and is most likely determined by individual body metabolism as predicated by evolved genetics and hereditary patterns. Yet, virtually all scientists would agree that highly processed and refined carbohydrates and excessive…
Your Own Health is Ultimately Affected by What You Feed Your Pet
Dr. Michael W. Fox is interviewed by phone by Dr. Becker. They discuss his wonderful new book Healing Animals and a variety of topics centering on the health of animals, humans and the earth.
Dr. Fox created the concept of the One Health Movement to help demonstrate that the health of humans, the health of animals and the health of the earth are not separate entities, but are intimately interconnected. We cannot hope to improve the well-being of humans while decimating the environment and treating animals with callous disregard. The One Health Movement is philosophically based on the global application of bioethics, a subject discussed in depth in Dr. Fox’s earlier book Bringing Life to Ethics: Global Bioethics for a Humane Society (State University of new York Press, Albany NY 2001.)
Dr. Fox’s goal in writing Healing Animals is to inform and inspire people with good, sound, scientific information, so they can make informed choices for themselves and for their companion animals.
Dr. Becker Interviews Dr. Michael W. Fox (Parts 1 – 3)
My Dad was admitted to the hospital for a blood clot (he is fine) and we had to watch “Blue” so I decided to share his story once and for all. He is a Hero plain and simple, and we are blessed to have him in our lives.
Eldon Taylor joins Dr. Rita Louise on Just Energy Radio where he discusses the power of our beliefs and the affect they have on our lives.
About Eldon Taylor
Eldon Taylor is the host of the popular radio show, Provocative Enlightenment. He is an award winning, New York Times best selling author of over 300 books, and audio and video programs. He is the inventor of the patented InnerTalk technology and the founder and President of Progressive Awareness Research, Inc. who has been featured as an expert in films, print, television and radio. He has been called a ³master of the mind² and has appeared as an expert witness on both hypnosis and subliminal communication.
GlaxoSmithKline admits to criminal pharma fraud in 3 billion dollar case
By D Holt,
(NaturalNews) British registered company, GlaxoSmithKline, faces $3 billion in penalties after pleading guilty to the biggest health care fraud case in history. GSK admitted that physicians had been bribed to push potentially dangerous drugs in exchange for Madonna tickets, Hawaiian holidays, cash and lucrative speaking tours. They also admitted distributing misleading information regarding the antidepressant Paxil. The report claimed that it was suitable for children, but failed to acknowledge data…
FDA approves lorcaserin for weight loss; is wave of heart valve damage imminent?
By Chris Martin
(NaturalNews) On June 27, 2012 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved lorcaserin hydrochloride, a weight-loss pill, for sale in the United States. A pharmaceutical drug allegedly designed to curb appetite signals to brain receptors in the hypothalamus that promote satiety. Rejected in 2010 for causing tumors in tested animals, lorcaserin hydrochloride also claims side-effects ranging from memory lapse to depression. The FDA has approved lorcaserin hydrochloride without condition…
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit, for research and/or educational purposes. This constitutes 'FAIR USE' of any such copyrighted material.]
A 5.6 magnitude earthquake recorded in the coastal area west of the Greek island Rhodes jolted people in Cyprus right out of their afternoon siesta today.
A command centre in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park helped visitors after the deadly storm
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Postal worker at the mail sorting machines at the Brentwood postal facility. He is wearing a face mask and gloves as a precaution against anthrax exposure.
