Texans hit hard by Hurricane Harvey rethink climate change

By Claire Galofaro 15 October 2017 PORT ARTHUR, Texas (Associated Press) – Jefferson County, Texas, was drowned by more than 60 inches of rain during Hurricane Harvey, which left wide swaths of the county in ruins. Last November, Jefferson flipped from voting Democratic in presidential elections to instead back Donald Trump, who has dismissed the […]

Video: Deadly forest fires sweep across Portugal and northern Spain

16 October 2017 (Protect Mother Earth) – Hurricane Ophelia’s strong winds are blamed for fanning flames of deadly forest fires in Portugal and Spain At least six people have been killed and around 25 others injured – mainly firefighters – during Portugal’s worst day of the year for forest fires. Around 500 blazes were reported […]

Trump has badly undercut his own administration on Puerto Rico

By Paige Winfield Cunningham 16 October 2017 (The Washington Post) – The government’s response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico — and how Americans perceive it — perfectly illustrates how President Trump puts his administration on the defense by failing to tame his tweets.The United States has dispatched to Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin […]

A race against time to evacuate the infirm from Puerto Rico

By Carmen Sesin 15 October 2017 MIAMI (NBC News) – Maribel Casas was in the middle of a dialysis treatment when she got an unexpected text message from her sister saying she had to be at Isla Grande Airport, a small airfield in San Juan, Puerto Rico, by 2 p.m. Her relatives in Miami had […]

UN rights experts urge France to provide safe water, sanitation for migrants in “Calais Jungle”

16 October 2017 (UN News) – United Nations human rights experts are urging the Government of France to devise long-term measures to provide access to safe drinking water and sanitation for migrants in Calais and other areas along the northern French coast.After the so-called ‘Calais Jungle’ camps were dismantled in November 2016, migrants continued to […]

Ireland and Britain brace for unusual European hurricane – Ophelia is the most-eastern Category 3 Atlantic hurricane on record

By Susanne Fowler 15 October 2017 LONDON (The New York Times) — Rain is no stranger to Ireland, but hurricanes?Hurricane Ophelia, the 10th hurricane of the Atlantic season, was spinning toward Ireland on Sunday, bringing with it the potential for structural damage, significant coastal flooding and dangerously high seas.The National Hurricane Center in Miami said […]

New UN-led partnership to help curb unsustainable wildlife hunting, protect biodiversity – 4.6 million metric tons of wildmeat are consumed annually in the Congo Basin

10 October 2017 (UN News) – To help African, Caribbean, and Pacific countries stop unsustainable wildlife hunting, conserve natural heritage and strengthen people’s livelihoods and food security, the United Nations agriculture agency launched on Tuesday a €45 million multi-partner initiative.Funded by the European Commission, the seven-year Sustainable Wildlife Management programme will be led by the […]

Trump’s Puerto Rico poll numbers are worse than Bush’s after Hurricane Katrina

By Aaron Blake 12 October 2017 (The Washington Post) – President Trump seemed to hint early Thursday that the federal government could pull out of helping Puerto Rico before the recovery is finished. And just hours later, a new poll showed what a bad idea that was.Quinnipiac University is providing some of the first full-scale […]

Puerto Rico by the numbers: Three weeks later, the island is still devastated from Hurricane Maria – “What happened in Texas and Florida were disasters. What happened in Puerto Rico was a catastrophe.”

By Alison Durkee 15 October 2017 (Mic) – It has now been more than three weeks since Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico and the island is still reeling from the devastation it caused.Despite an influx of federal and private aid, many on the hurricane-ravaged island are still without such basic necessities as potable […]

Video: Experts fear looming health crisis in Puerto Rico – “People are here for weeks in the rubble and no one comes to do anything about it”

By José A. Iglesias 13 October 2017 (Miami Herald) – Three weeks after Hurricane Maria ransacked Puerto Rico, mounds of soaking, animal-infested garbage still line streets. Public health experts say every day that the debris remains, the risk of an epidemic grows. Kamille Camacho, of Iniciativa Comunitaria, says, “I feel helpless because I want to […]

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