Why are the lost tribes now emerging from the Amazon?

By Angus Macqueen20 February 2016 (Guardian) – Footage of a man handing bananas to two naked men in the middle of an Amazonian river went viral in late June 2014. At the time, the Brazilians claimed it was a once in a generation event – that the moment of “first contact” was caught on camera. […]

Native Americans press feds to clean up 15,000 water-poisoning uranium mines

By Jessica Swarner4 February 2016 (Cronkite News) – Longtime Sanders, Arizona, resident Wayne Lynch was told in July that the water on his ranch contained dangerously high amounts of uranium, yet he is still using it. “There’s no other water source we have,” Lynch said in late January. “There’s no other well that they could […]

Millions could die as world unprepared for pandemics, says UN – ‘A virulent strain of an airborne influenza virus could kill more than 33 million people within 250 days’

By Sarah Boseley8 February 2016 (Guardian) – A global epidemic far worse than the Ebola outbreak is a real possibility and could kill many millions if the world does not become better prepared to deal with the sudden emergence and transmission of disease, the UN has said in a hard-hitting report. The report has emerged […]

The Rio Olympics are a mess seven months before the opening ceremony

By Emmett Knowlton17 January 2016 (Business Insider) – The 2016 Summer Olympics kicks off on August 5 in Rio de Janeiro — but with less than seven months until the Opening Ceremony, a slew of problems still show no signs of improvement. Will Connors had a good, if troubling, piece in The Wall Street Journal […]

Toxic smog hovers over Beijing on Day 2 of smog alert

BEIJING, 9 December 2015 (AP) – Unhealthy smog hovered over downtown Beijing as limits on cars, factories and construction sites kept pollution from spiking even higher Wednesday, on the second of three days of restrictions triggered by the city’s first red alert for smog. Cars with even-numbered license plates were kept off roads, and schools […]

Beijing issues first pollution red alert as smog engulfs capital – ‘This is extremely important to stop children from being exposed to such a high level of pollution’

By Tom Phillips in Beijing7 December 2015 (The Guardian) – Beijing has issued its first pollution red alert as acrid smog enveloped the Chinese capital for the second time this month. The alert will begin at 7am on Tuesday and should see millions of vehicles forced off the roads, factories and construction sites shut down […]

Graph of the Day: Thyroid cancer incidence in children and adolescents from Belarus after the Chernobyl accident, 1986-2002

21-23 February 2014 (IAEA) – The objective of this workshop was to develop a state-of-the-art scientific understanding of radiation-induced thyroid cancer, and to share knowledge and experience in this area in order to support the efforts of the Japanese government and the Fukushima Prefecture to enhance public health. Experience in holding effective social dialogues, in […]

El Niño may trigger floods, famine, and sickness in much of the world – ‘Some people like to say it has positive aspects, but generally speaking it’s doom and gloom’

By Monte Morin28 November 2015 (Los Angeles Times) – A fog of suffocating smoke settles over the Indonesian countryside, sickening hundreds of thousands of people and triggering an environmental crisis. In Peru, officials abandon plans to host the lucrative Dakar Rally and prepare instead for torrential rains and devastating floods. And in Ethiopia, crops perish […]

CIA director cites global warming as one of the ‘deeper causes of rising instability’

20 November 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – During the opening session of the 2015 Global Security Forum, sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), CIA director John Brennan made some interesting comments: When CIA analysts look for deeper causes of this rising instability, they find nationalistic, sectarian, and technological factors that are eroding […]

U.S. still losing the war on obesity – especially women

By Ed Cara14 November 2015 (Medical Daily) – Americans are still getting fatter, a new CDC report finds. The battle of the bulge is still a losing one, according to a new report released this November by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The report, conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics […]

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