Problem

Image: Senate minority leader Harry Reid, one of the senators who has demanded Republicans reconvene Congress for Zika funding. Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

theguardian.com - July 31st 2016 - Joanna Walters

Senate Democrats have called for Congress to end its recess and immediately approve emergency funds for combating the Zika virus in America, after Florida reported its first cases of mosquito-borne infections on the mainland, and funding for mosquito nets for pregnant women started running low.

Near downtown Miami, teams of doctors were going door to door on Saturday to alert an estimated 30,000 residents, particularly pregnant women, of the risks of being bitten by local mosquitoes believed to be carrying the virus.

On Friday, Florida governor Rick Scott and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that four new cases of the disease in the Miami area were almost certainly contracted through local insect bites.

CLICK HERE - World Bank - Connect 4 Climate - Global Material Flows and Resource Productivity

CLICK HERE - Summary for Policymakers - Global Material Flows and Resource Productivity (44 page .PDF file)

CLICK HERE - REPORT - Global Material Flows and Resource Productivity (200 page .PDF file)

ecowatch.com - July 25, 2016

A report produced by the International Resource Panel (IRP), part of the UN Environment Programme, says rising consumption driven by a growing middle class has seen resources extraction increase from 22 billion tons in 1970 to 70 billon tons in 2010.

It refers to natural resources as primary materials and includes under this heading biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores and non-metallic minerals.

submitted by Albert Gomez

cnn.com - by Debra Goldschmidt - July 29, 2016

(CNN) Four individuals in Miami-Dade and Broward counties have been infected with the Zika virus by local mosquitoes, Florida health officials said Friday.

These are the first known cases of the virus being transmitted by mosquitoes in the continental United States.

The unidentified individuals had not traveled to a Zika-affected area, had not had sexual contact with someone who had traveled to a place where the virus is circulating and had no other known exposure to the virus.

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thenextsystem.org

CLICK HERE - REPORT - The Next System Project: NEW POLITICAL-ECONOMIC POSSIBILITIES FOR THE 21ST CENTURY (22 page .PDF report)

The Next System Project is an ambitious multi-year initiative aimed at thinking boldly about what is required to deal with the systemic challenges the United States faces now and in coming decades. Responding to real hunger for a new way forward, and building on innovative thinking and practical experience with new economic institutions and approaches being developed in communities across the country and around the world, the goal is to put the central idea of system change, and that there can be a “next system,” on the map.