Murdered Maltese journalist’s final written words: “The situation is desperate”

By Luke Harding, David Pegg, and Juliette Garside 17 October 201 (The Guardian) – In her last blogpost, published the day she died, Daphne Caruana Galizia signed off with a sentence that seems particularly chilling now.“There are crooks everywhere you look. The situation is desperate.”Caruana Galizia, 53, felt she had good reason to feel pessimistic […]

Tenfold increase in childhood and adolescent obesity in four decades – World will have more obese children and adolescents than underweight by 2022

LONDON, 11 October 2017 (WHO) – The number of obese children and adolescents (aged five to 19 years) worldwide has risen tenfold in the past four decades. If current trends continue, more children and adolescents will be obese than moderately or severely underweight by 2022, according to a new study led by Imperial College London […]

Latin America and Caribbean falling off “zero hunger” path toward 2030 – “The region faces a double burden of malnutrition”

12 October 2017 (United Nations) – The total number of persons that suffer from hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean has increased, reversing decades of progress, even as overweight and obesity emerged as a major problem in all countries in the region of the Americas, a United Nations-backed report shows.“The region has taken a […]

New approach to measuring forest carbon density shows tropics now emit more carbon than they capture

28 September 2017 (WHRC) – A revolutionary new approach to measuring changes in forest carbon density has helped WHRC scientists determine that the tropics now emit more carbon than they capture, countering their role as a net carbon “sink.” The shift from carbon sink to carbon “source” was caused by widespread deforestation, degradation and disturbance, […]

Super-heatwaves of 55°C to emerge if global warming continues – “Humid-heat waves with these conditions were never exceeded in the present climate, but are expected to occur every other year at 4°C global warming”

8 August 2017 (JRC) – Heatwaves amplified by high humidity can reach above 40°C and may occur as often as every two years, leading to serious risks for human health. If global temperatures rise with 4°C, a new super heatwave of 55°C can hit regularly many parts of the world, including Europe.A recently published study […]

Tallying fewer crossings, UN agency reports rise in migrant deaths at US-Mexico border

4 August 2017 (United Nations) – Even as the flow appears to have thinned, migrants crossing the United States-Mexico border are dying at a faster rate in 2017 than in past years, according to a new United Nations agency study.“Some 232 migrant fatalities have been recorded in the first seven months of 2017, an increase […]

2016 saw a record 200 killings of people defending their land, forests, and rivers against destructive industries

13 July 2017 (Global Witness) – It has never been deadlier to take a stand against companies that steal land and destroy the environment. Our new report Defenders of the Earth found that nearly four people were murdered every week in 2016 protecting their land and the natural world from industries like mining, logging and […]

Industrial farming disrupts burn-regrowth cycle in grasslands, study finds – “Humans are interrupting the ancient, natural cycle of burning and recovery”

Irvine, California, 29 June 2017 (UCI) – The world’s open grasslands and the beneficial fires that sustain them have shrunk rapidly over the past two decades, thanks to a massive increase in agriculture, according to a new study led by University of California, Irvine and NASA researchers published today in Science.Analyzing 1998 to 2015 data […]

Climate change-induced migration from Central America

By Stephanie Leutert 21 June 2017 (Lawfare) – Last Thursday and Friday, the United States and Mexico co-hosted top officials from Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and other countries for the “Conference on Prosperity and Security in Central America.” As the name suggests, the gathering aimed to spur a wide-ranging conversation for improving the region’s economic […]

Global narcotics market “thriving” – range of available drugs diversifying at alarming pace – UN

22 June 2017 (United Nations) – Of the quarter of a billion people who used drugs in 2015, about 29.5 million – or 0.6 per cent of the global adult population – were engaged in “problematic use” and suffered from drug use disorders, including dependence, according to report out today from the United Nations drugs […]

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