Global

Sara MacKinnon of Westville took this picture as she fled Fort McMurray.

cnn.com - by Ralph Ellis, Steve Almasy and Ray Sanchez - May 8, 2016

The massive wildfire that forced almost 90,000 people to evacuate in Alberta is growing and approaching the neighboring province of Saskatchewan, Canadian officials said Saturday.

Dry and extremely windy conditions are fueling the blaze, which has already scorched more than 1,560 square kilometers (602 square miles) and ravaged the city of Fort McMurray, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said Saturday.

"The situation remains unpredictable and dangerous," he told reporters.

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By Dr. Kolleh A Bangura

To assist Sierra Leone protected areas in building their resilience to climate change, the PARCC (Protected Areas Resilience to Climate Change) project has assessed future climate impacts of land use change on ecosystem services in Sierra Leone. This includes applying five spatially detailed regional climate model projections developed for the project and scenarios of future land use change.

This article summarizes the main features of projected climate impacts on ecosystem services and their implications for focus project areas in Sierra Leone and future national planning. Findings from the latest annual assessment report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are referred to in order to provide guidance on the way to interpret these results.

Climate Projections

The projections for mean annual temperature in Sierra Leone for the end of the 21st century are for significant increases (with very high confidence):

The first-ever World Humanitarian Summit, set to take place in Istanbul on 23-24 May 2016, is a global call to action by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

An Aedes Aegypti mosquito photographed on human skin. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Cell Host & Microbe - Wolbachia Blocks Currently Circulating Zika Virus Isolates in Brazilian Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes

Presence of Wolbachia bacterium in the insects seen limiting their ability to transmit the rapidly spreading virus

wsj.com - by REED JOHNSON, ROGERIO JELMAYER, and BETSY MCKAY - May 4, 2016

Introducing a common bacterium into a species of mosquitoes drastically limits the insects’ ability to transmit the dangerous Zika virus that has been spreading rapidly, according to researchers at Brazil’s leading medical-research institute.

In a new study published on Wednesday in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, researchers at the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), in Rio de Janeiro, said their experiments have shown that injecting Aedes aegypti mosquito eggs with the Wolbachia bacterium makes the eventual adult mosquitoes highly resistant to the Zika virus, thereby limiting their ability to spread it.