Problem

A polar bear walks across the ice in the Arctic near the North Pole

submitted by Albert Gomez

phys.org - by Clément Sabourin - December 31, 2015

Temperatures at the North Pole rose above freezing point Wednesday, 20 degrees Celsius above the mid-winter norm and the latest abnormality in a season of extreme weather events.

Canadian weather authorities blamed the temperature spike on the freak depression which has already brought record Christmas temperatures to North America and lashed Britain with winds and floods.

The deep low pressure area is currently looming over Iceland and churning up hurricane force 75-knot winds and 30-foot waves in the north Atlantic while dragging warm air northwards.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

(ALSO SEE RELATED ARTICLES IN THE LINKS BELOW)

CLICK HERE - CNN - It was warm at the North Pole

submitted by George Hurlburt

Caught off guard in 2014, health care regrouped and reorganized in 2015.  (Photo: Romeo Ranoco/Reuters)

takepart.com - by Hannah Hoag - December 14, 2015

As horrific images of bodies piling up in West Africa and stories of children orphaned by Ebola filled American media over the summer and early fall of 2014, many feared someone with the virus would arrive undetected in the U.S. and spur a major outbreak. But experts considered the risk of that happening to be very low, says Kamran Khan, an infectious disease physician at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto and the founder of BlueDot, a social enterprise that uses big data to mitigate the impacts of global infectious disease. . . .

. . . Yet in October 2014, Thomas Eric Duncan was admitted to a Dallas hospital with Ebola shortly after arriving in the U.S. from Liberia.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

docs.unocha.org - New York, 21 December 2015

Madam President,

Distinguished members of the Security Council,

On behalf of the Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mr. Stephen O’Brien, I thank you for this opportunity to brief you on the latest developments in Syria.

Since the adoption of resolution 2139 in February 2014 and resolution 2165 in July 2014, this Council has been briefed month after month on the suffering of the Syrian people. We have repeatedly described in detail the countless and blatant violations of the basic tenets of international humanitarian and human rights law. For nearly five years, we have watched as Syria sank deeper and deeper into violence and brutality. And yet, no words can do justice to the despair and devastation that millions of Syrians experience every day.

(READ COMPLETE BRIEFING)

CLICK HERE - Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator Kyung-Wha Kang: Security Council briefing on Syria (3 page .PDF file)