Link to Accuweather
Up to 90,000 expected to die from H1N1 this fall. Yeah, we're doomed.
"The H1N1 flu virus could cause up to 90,000 U.S. deaths, mainly among children and young adults, if it resurges this fall as expected, according to a report released Monday by a presidential advisory panel.The H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu virus, could infect between 30 percent and 50 percent of the American population during the fall and winter and lead to as many as 1.8 million U.S. hospital admissions, the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology reported.
The report says 30,000 to 90,000 deaths are projected as part of a "plausible scenario" involving large outbreaks at schools, inadequate antiviral supplies and the virus peaking before vaccinations have time to be effective."
LINK to CNN
Go go Rhode Island, Island.
In further fabulous economic news out of Rhode Island, the state government is broke, and will close for 12 days." Rhode Island will shut down its state government for 12 days and hopes to trim millions of dollars in funding for local governments under a plan Gov. Don Carcieri outlined Monday to balance a budget hammered by surging unemployment and plummeting tax revenue.
The shutdown will force 81 percent of the roughly 13,550-member state work force, excluding its college system, to stay home a dozen days without pay before the start of the new fiscal year in July.
The closures come as the worst recession in decades has eliminated hundreds of millions of dollars in tax collections and pushed unemployment to 12.7 percent, the second-highest jobless rate in the nation behind Michigan.
Carcieri predicted the state's fiscal future could grow even bleaker."
Link to AP story
Rivers drying, wildebeests dying.
"The drying-up of the river, which should be at its highest point at the end East Africa's long rainy season, is one of a series of ominous signs that conservationists believe could add up to an ecological disaster.
The sun-scorched boulders that ring the shore of Kenya's Lake Baringo are cut by a sharp brown line, running horizontally, that shows the watermark of the past. Beneath the dark divide is an expanse of white stone freshly bared to the elements as the lake has receded dramatically.
A report released last week by Kenya's Water Resource Management Authority has dismissed any hopes that these phenomena could be unrelated.
In the report, Simon Mwangi, the authority's Rift Valley regional technical manager, said that the River Perkerra, which feeds Lake Baringo, and the Malewa which drains into Lake Naivasha, were at their lowest levels on record.
The picture was similarly bleak, he reported, with the Ewaso Nyiro and Mara rivers. The country's great lakes from Turkana in the north to Nakuru, and the economically vital Naivasha, home to Kenya's flower industry, were also alarmingly low.
The answer to the riddle of the Mara's dwindling waters, and the general drought conditions, lies upstream, in the Mau forest.
The Mara river originates on the Mau escarpment, eventually draining into Lake Victoria. The largest remaining forest in Kenya, Mau functions as a water tower for the East African country, feeding rivers and helping to regulate rainfall.
However shocking reports this year have a revealed that the eco-system is under siege from illegal loggers and land-grabbing farmers, as well as large and small recipients of political patronage. Many of those are smallholders receiving parcels of the forest as "land for votes", while Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper named two of the children of former president Daniel arap Moi as among the bigger owners.
There effect is a devastating fragmentation of what environmentalists call an ecological utility whose services stretch from watering Kenya's tea estates to feeding the rivers powering its hydroelectric plants, and regulating temperature and rainfall throughout an often arid land. Despite being home to the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme, Kenya has systematically ignored warnings over the importance of conserving the Mau forest. While the troubled coalition government in Nairobi has belatedly begun to recognise the problem, it has so far done next to nothing about it."
LINK
The sun-scorched boulders that ring the shore of Kenya's Lake Baringo are cut by a sharp brown line, running horizontally, that shows the watermark of the past. Beneath the dark divide is an expanse of white stone freshly bared to the elements as the lake has receded dramatically.
A report released last week by Kenya's Water Resource Management Authority has dismissed any hopes that these phenomena could be unrelated.
In the report, Simon Mwangi, the authority's Rift Valley regional technical manager, said that the River Perkerra, which feeds Lake Baringo, and the Malewa which drains into Lake Naivasha, were at their lowest levels on record.
The picture was similarly bleak, he reported, with the Ewaso Nyiro and Mara rivers. The country's great lakes from Turkana in the north to Nakuru, and the economically vital Naivasha, home to Kenya's flower industry, were also alarmingly low.
The answer to the riddle of the Mara's dwindling waters, and the general drought conditions, lies upstream, in the Mau forest.
The Mara river originates on the Mau escarpment, eventually draining into Lake Victoria. The largest remaining forest in Kenya, Mau functions as a water tower for the East African country, feeding rivers and helping to regulate rainfall.
However shocking reports this year have a revealed that the eco-system is under siege from illegal loggers and land-grabbing farmers, as well as large and small recipients of political patronage. Many of those are smallholders receiving parcels of the forest as "land for votes", while Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper named two of the children of former president Daniel arap Moi as among the bigger owners.
There effect is a devastating fragmentation of what environmentalists call an ecological utility whose services stretch from watering Kenya's tea estates to feeding the rivers powering its hydroelectric plants, and regulating temperature and rainfall throughout an often arid land. Despite being home to the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme, Kenya has systematically ignored warnings over the importance of conserving the Mau forest. While the troubled coalition government in Nairobi has belatedly begun to recognise the problem, it has so far done next to nothing about it."
LINK
Severe storms devastate Asia, 600 missing in Taiwan
"Two typhoons in Asia have killed dozens of people, left hundreds missing and forced nearly 1 million people to flee to safety, officials and reports said Monday.A typhoon-spawned mudslide engulfed a mountain village in southern Taiwan, burying up to 600 people, a police official and a rescued villager said Monday.
Typhoon Morakot dumped up to 80 inches of rain on some communities over the weekend before moving on to China, where it forced the evacuation of nearly 1 million people along the east coast and left at least six dead. Earlier it had struck the Philippines, leaving at least 22 dead."
LINK
Climate change leading to political instability? No kidding.
"The changing global climate will pose profound strategic challenges to the United States in coming decades, raising the prospect of military intervention to deal with the effects of violent storms, drought, mass migration and pandemics, military and intelligence analysts say.
Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.
A changing climate presents a range of challenges for the military. Many of its critical installations are vulnerable to rising seas and storm surges. In Florida, Homestead Air Force Base was essentially destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and Hurricane Ivan badly damaged Naval Air Station Pensacola in 2004. Military planners are studying ways to protect the major naval stations in Norfolk, Va., and San Diego from climate-induced rising seas and severe storms.
Another vulnerable installation is Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean that serves as a logistics hub for American and British forces in the Middle East and sits a few feet above sea level.
Arctic melting also presents new problems for the military. The shrinking of the ice cap, which is proceeding faster than anticipated only a few years ago, opens a shipping channel that must be defended and undersea resources that are already the focus of international competition."
LINK to NYT article
Such climate-induced crises could topple governments, feed terrorist movements or destabilize entire regions, say the analysts, experts at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies who for the first time are taking a serious look at the national security implications of climate change.
A changing climate presents a range of challenges for the military. Many of its critical installations are vulnerable to rising seas and storm surges. In Florida, Homestead Air Force Base was essentially destroyed by Hurricane Andrew in 1992, and Hurricane Ivan badly damaged Naval Air Station Pensacola in 2004. Military planners are studying ways to protect the major naval stations in Norfolk, Va., and San Diego from climate-induced rising seas and severe storms.
Another vulnerable installation is Diego Garcia, an atoll in the Indian Ocean that serves as a logistics hub for American and British forces in the Middle East and sits a few feet above sea level.
Arctic melting also presents new problems for the military. The shrinking of the ice cap, which is proceeding faster than anticipated only a few years ago, opens a shipping channel that must be defended and undersea resources that are already the focus of international competition."
LINK to NYT article
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
