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Swine flu- this is horrendous.

Jesus.

"Fears of getting a killer bug are sweeping across the Mexican capital as reports erupted about an epidemic of swine influenza that is said to have killed dozens in recent weeks. The government ordered all schools and universities in Mexico City shut and advised people to pull their children out of nurseries and avoid busy places such as restaurants, bars and cinemas. Pharmacies rapidly sold out of hygienic masks and vitamin supplements. Many clinics stuck signs on their doors advising they had run out of influenza vaccines.
...News of the flu had been lingering for several days but surged to national attention late Thursday after a televised announcement from Federal Health Minister José Angel Córdova. "With the information obtained this afternoon, we have before us the threat of a new type of influenza," Cordova said, announcing the first total school closures over the urban area of 20 million since the 1985 earthquake. Mexican authorities said there had been 20 deaths confirmed from the virus in recent weeks, mostly healthy adult men and women, who were in groups not normally considered vulnerable. Then panic increased to fever pitch on Friday when the World Health Organization upstaged the Mexican government by saying that 60 deaths may have been caused by the virus."
LINK

Really interesting!



Great article about planned urban shrinkage and creation of city land banks in Flint, MI.


"Instead of waiting for houses to become abandoned and then pulling them down, local leaders are talking about demolishing entire blocks and even whole neighborhoods.


The population would be condensed into a few viable areas. So would stores and services. A city built to manufacture cars would be returned in large measure to the forest primeval.


“Decline in Flint is like gravity, a fact of life,” said Dan Kildee, the Genesee County treasurer and chief spokesman for the movement to shrink Flint. “We need to control it instead of letting it control us.”"


Hell is other people.

I know there are a million and fifty other terrible things that happened today, but, and I know it's my own damn sin for it, but this is the one that made me cry.

"First it was Quack, then Mack, followed by brother Jack. Now add Pack to the list of mallard ducklings purloined from the Robert McCloskey.
Boston Park rangers discovered the foul act yesterday at 10 a.m. They noticed the bronze sculpture was missing and had been sawed from its mount, said parks spokeswoman Mary Hines.
The duckling, number seven of eight, is part of a beloved tribute to Robert McCloskey’s prize-winning 1941 children’s book “Make Way for Ducklings.”

Detroit...



Unreal.

"People are leaving Michigan at a staggering rate. About 109,000 more people left Michigan last year than moved in. It is one of the worst rates in the nation, quadruple the loss of just eight years ago. The state loses a family every 12 minutes, and the families who are leaving -- young, well-educated high-income earners -- are the people the state desperately needs to rebuild.

...Since 2001, migration has cost Michigan 465,000 people, the equivalent of the combined populations of Grand Rapids, Warren and Sterling Heights -- the state's second-, third- and fourth-largest cities.
Population loss of that magnitude is so rare that its impact has never been studied.

..."These numbers -- my God," said Kurt Metzger, a demographer who heads a local nonprofit. "It's like a perfect storm -- the education, the income, the young people, everything is going in the wrong direction." "



But, if you stay, there's meat to be had:


"When I arrived in the office one morning, I eagerly told my co-workers about my run-in (almost, but not literally) with a pheasant that crossed my path as I cut through a Highland Park neighborhood. Turns out, such sightings are not all that uncommon.
One guy I work with says locals hunt pheasants and other small game at an east side neighborhood park and they've seen coyotes at the nearby cemetery.
Today, Detroit News writer Charlie LeDuff writes about the Coon Man, a 69-year-old licensed hunter and furrier and retired truck driver who supplements his Social Security check with the sale of raccoon carcasses that go for as much $12 and can serve up to four. The pelts, too, are good for coats and hats and fetch up to $10 a hide.
Charlie writes that a beaver was spotted recently in the Detroit River, fox skulk at the Palmer Park golf course, wild turkey roam vacant fields and bald eagle, hawk and falcon dot the city skies.
Mind you, hunting is prohibited within Detroit city limits. But with things being what they are, "Starvation is cheap," Glemie Dean Beasley says."

And now someone has died at the protests, I'm going to take a minute to think about someone who TRIED to do something.

Fuck. It's all too awful for words. What the hell.

"A man died last night during theG20 protests in central London as a day that began peacefully ended with police saying bottles were thrown at police medics trying to help him.
The man had collapsed within a police cordon set up to contain the crowds who had assembled in central London and the City to protest over the G20 summit. There were 63 arrests on the day."
LINK
Really, I don't know. I only know that this is the kind of story that breaks my fucking heart .