reuters.com - by Paulo Prada - January 30, 2016

. . . "We knew this was something else," says Carlos Brito, a doctor from Recife who told state and federal health authorities in January-February last year that they were wrong to classify all the cases as dengue. "But the authorities were slow to believe,” he said.

Kleber Luz, a physician in Natal, a city 300 km up the Atlantic coast, says he gave similar feedback but got the same response.

. . . "You have to gather the data," says Marcos Espinal, director of the department of communicable diseases at PAHO, dismissing criticism that the regional body or headquarters could have moved any sooner.

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CLICK HERE - WHO: More than 48 Ebola contacts missing in Sierra Leone

CLICK HERE - IOM - Guinea Revives Border Health Screening to Mitigate Risk of Spread of Ebola

CLICK HERE - Reuters - Fear, doubts obstruct efforts to contain Ebola in Sierra Leone

CLICK HERE - eNews Channel Africa - Second new Ebola case in Sierra Leone

CLICK HERE - Reuters - Sierra Leone confirms new Ebola case, second in less than a week

CLICK HERE - WHO - Ebola Situation Report - 20 January 2016 (13 page .PDF report)

ZIKA, THE MOSQUITO-BORNE DISEASE LINKED TO A WORRISOME BIRTH DEFECT CALLED MICROCEPHALY AND ANOTHER AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE, HAS BEEN BROUGHT BACK TO THE U.S. IN THE BLOODSTREAMS OF SOME 20-PLUS TRAVELERS SINCE 2007. THEY PICKED IT UP IN MORE THAN A DOZEN COUNTRIES, MOSTLY ACROSS SOUTH AND CENTRAL AMERICA. ALTHOUGH THE TWO TYPES OF MOSQUITOES CAPABLE OF TRANSMITTING THE VIRUS ARE ALREADY IN THE U.S., SO FAR, THE VIRUS HAS NOT YET BEEN LOCALLY SPREAD HERE.  GRAPHIC BY AMANDA MONTAÑEZ

scientificamerican.com - by Dina Fine Maron - January 26, 2016

submitted by George Hurlburt

dw.com - by Helena Schwar - January 26, 2016

Bird flu, Ebola and now Zika - there seems to be news on a new dangerous virus almost every day. But so far, experts are saying that Zika itself isn't as bad as HIV, Ebola and these other eight viruses.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

submitted by Albert Gomez

ellenmacarthurfoundation.org - January 19, 2016

Applying circular economy principles to global plastic packaging flows could transform the plastics economy and drastically reduce negative externalities such as leakage into oceans, according to this new report.

The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of plastics provides, for the first time, a vision of a global economy in which plastics never become waste, and outlines concrete steps towards achieving the systemic shift needed.

The report was produced by the World Economic Forum and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, with analytical support from McKinsey & Company, as part of Project MainStream, a global, multi-industry initiative that aims to accelerate business-driven innovations to help scale the circular economy. It was financially supported by the MAVA Foundation.

Wind turbines provide energy for the residents of Samso Island, a Danish island that gets all its power from renewable sources. PHOTOGRAPH BY ANDREW HENDERSON, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

Low oil prices are rattling stock markets, but investors remain bullish on solar, wind, and other clean energy. Here are three reasons why.

nationalgeographic.com - by Wendy Koch - January 22, 2016

The prolonged plunge in fossil fuel prices is rippling across the globe. Yet it’s barely put a dent in the booming market for clean energy, heralding perhaps a new era for wind and solar.

Oil prices of less than $30 a barrel—the lowest in 12 years—have shaken stock markets and ravaged the budgets of major producers such as Russia and Saudi Arabia. Along with falling gas prices, they’ve slashed the profits of fossil fuel companies, which are delaying dozens of billion-dollar projects and laying off thousands of workers. . . .

. . . But solar, wind, and other clean energy? They’re expanding.

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Pilanesburg National Park, three hours from Johannesburg in South Africa, has been ravaged by drought. Zebras roam the game reserve on November 12, 2015.  PHOTOGRAPH BY WENDY KOCH, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

The UN meeting will focus on developed countries’ plans to curb global warming, but it could give Africa money to embrace clean energy.

nationalgeographic.com - by Wendy Koch - November 23, 2015

A landmark UN report says rising temperatures will “amplify existing stress on water availability” in Africa—a continent that’s contributed little to climate change but is reeling from its impacts. . . .

. . . Countries have pledged to cut their planet-warming emissions of greenhouse gases. Richer nations have also pledged $100 billion a year to help poorer ones adapt to climate change and adopt clean sources of energy.

“Africa could be one of the biggest beneficiaries of COP21,” UN’s Vincent Kitio said at National Geographic’s Great Energy Challenge forum this month in Johannesburg on sub-Saharan Africa’s future.

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submitted by George Hurlburt

Smog in central London in 2011. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

care2.com - by Lizabeth Paulat - January 24, 2016

New figures to be released from the World Health Organization show some incredibly alarming statistics on global pollution. The impact it has on health cannot be understated. According to the data it kills more people annually than HIV and Malaria combined. Yet the misery doesn’t stop at death. It also causes millions to suffer from chronic illnesses such as asthma and lung inflammation.

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ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLES AND RESEARCH WITHIN THE LINKS BELOW:

CLICK HERE - The Guardian - Shock figures to reveal deadly toll of global air pollution

CLICK HERE - Nature - The contribution of outdoor air pollution sources to premature mortality on a global scale

Fabrice Coffrini via Getty Images

huffingtonpost.com - by Ben Hirschler

DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan 21 (Reuters) - United Nations agencies need a final $1 billion to fight West Africa's deadly Ebola epidemic as experts move to a new phase involving a massive detective operation to trace remaining cases, the U.N. Ebola chief said on Wednesday.

David Nabarro estimated that an overall total of $4 billion in new money, equivalent to all the aid committed so far, was needed by relief agencies and the worst affected countries themselves to end the epidemic and "help these countries to get back to the economic trajectory they had." 

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2015 was the warmest year since modern record-keeping began in 1880, according to a new analysis by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The record-breaking year continues a long-term warming trend — 15 of the 16 warmest years on record have now occurred since 2001. Credits: Scientific Visualization Studio/Goddard Space Flight Center

nasa.gov - January 20, 2016

Earth’s 2015 surface temperatures were the warmest since modern record keeping began in 1880, according to independent analyses by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Globally-averaged temperatures in 2015 shattered the previous mark set in 2014 by 0.23 degrees Fahrenheit (0.13 Celsius). Only once before, in 1998, has the new record been greater than the old record by this much.

communityresiliencecenter.org

Community Resilience Center is a community-based organization in Sri Lanka with the aim of promoting community level resilience to disasters.

Vision

A safe world where people will live in love, dignity and opportunities for growth.

Mission

To engage, enlighten and empower communities to promote resilience.

Objectives

1.To promote continuous professional development of membership towards enhancing resilience.

2.To engage communities and all relevant stakeholders in an inclusive manner towards promotion of community resilience.

3.To promote the understanding and application of community resilience.

4.To develop, disseminate and evaluate tools and techniques to assess and enhance community resilience.

5.To innovate, implement and evaluate methods to improve community resilience.

(SEE ATTACHMENT BELOW FOR A REPORT ON COMMUNITY RESILIENCE CENTER ACTIVITIES)

insidebayarea.com - by Seth Borenstein - January 18, 2016

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Nature Climate Change - Industrial-era global ocean heat uptake doubles in recent decades

WASHINGTON -- The amount of man-made heat energy absorbed by the seas has doubled since 1997, a study released Monday showed.

Scientists have long known that more than 90 percent of the heat energy from man-made global warming goes into the world's oceans instead of the ground.

And they've seen ocean heat content rise in recent years. But the new study, using ocean-observing data that goes back to the British research ship Challenger in the 1870s and including high-tech modern underwater monitors and computer models, tracked how much man-made heat has been buried in the oceans in the past 150 years.

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A September 2008 photo released by the Ocean Conservancy on March 10, 2009, shows a trash-covered beach in Manilla, Philippines. (Tamara Thoreson Pierce/Ocean Conservancy/AP)

CLICK HERE - REPORT - World Economic Forum - The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of plastics

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Independent study tallies 'true catch' of global fishing

washingtonpost.com - by Sarah Kaplan - January 20, 2016

There is a lot of plastic in the world’s oceans.

It coagulates into great floating “garbage patches” that cover large swaths of the Pacific. It washes up on urban beaches and remote islands, tossed about in the waves and transported across incredible distances before arriving, unwanted, back on land. It has wound up in the stomachs of more than half the world’s sea turtles and nearly all of its marine birds, studies say . . .

. . . But that quantity pales in comparison with the amount that the World Economic Forum expects will be floating into the oceans by the middle of the century.

Aral Kakl (right), a Kurdish Iraqi journalist, his Syrian wife Shevin, his brother Rewan and some other refugees who have applied for the relocation programme, kill time in the cafeteria of their Athens hotel.  Photo: Nicola Zolin/IRIN

irinnews.org - by Andrew Connelly

ATHENS, 18 January 2016 (IRIN) - “Relocation does not work.”

With these words on Thursday, EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos finally admitted that the bloc’s September agreement to relocate 160,000 asylum seekers from the frontline states of Greece and Italy to other EU states over two years has been a dismal failure. After the Commission revealed recently that only 272 asylum seekers had been relocated in the past four months, few could deny it.

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Aedes aegypti mosquitoes at a lab of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences of the Sao Paulo University. The species is known to carry Zika virus, which has been connected to birth defects. Credit Nelson Almeida/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

reuters.com - by Dan Whitcomb - January 16, 2016

A baby born with brain damage at a hospital in Oahu, Hawaii, was infected by the Zika virus, U.S. health officials confirmed on Saturday, apparently the first case of the mosquito-borne virus in a birth on U.S. soil.

The mother became ill with the Zika virus while living in Brazil in May 2015 and the baby was likely infected in the womb, Hawaiian state health officials and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said.

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ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLES WITHIN THE LINKS BELOW:

CLICK HERE - The New York Times - Hawaii Baby With Brain Damage Is First U.S. Case Tied to Zika Virus