Situation Report

A small girl feeds her parents cows in Kaduna State, where thousands of people displaced by Boko Haram are now shivering through the seasonal Harmattan winds.  Photo: Mohammad Ibrahim/IRIN

irinnews.org - BY Mohammad Ibrahim

KADUNA, 5 January 2016 (IRIN) - The temperature is dropping across northern Nigeria as the seasonal Harmattan winds blow in a haze of dust from the Sahara, blotting out the sun for days on end. It’s miserable at the best of times, worse still if you’ve been made homeless by Boko Haram violence and don’t have decent shelter.

“It has not been easy since we came to this camp 11 months ago,” said Mama Aisha, who fled Maiduguri, the main city in the northeast, and now lives 800 kilometres away in north-central Kaduna State. “We don’t have blankets to keep us warm.”

Aisha is just one of hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) who have set up informal camps throughout the northern region, with little to no protection from the low temperatures.

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Rio de Janeiro, which will be the host of the 2016 Olympic Games, is one of the areas in Brazil where the Zika virus has been found, and local officials have been aggressive about trying to eradicate mosquito breeding grounds. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

washingtonpost.com - by Ariana Eunjung Cha - December 23, 2015

Brazilian health authorities are sounding the alarm about a mosquito-borne virus that they believe may be the cause of thousands of infants being born with damaged brains.

The pathogen, known as Zika and first discovered in forest monkeys in Africa over 70 years ago, is the new West Nile -- a virus that causes mild symptoms in most but can lead to serious neurological complications or even death in others. Brazil's health ministry said on Nov. 28 that it had found the Zika virus in a baby with microcephaly — a rare condition in which infants are born with shrunken skulls — during an autopsy after the child died. The virus was also found in the amniotic fluid of two mothers whose babies had the condition.

"This is an unprecedented situation, unprecedented in world scientific research," the ministry said in a statement on its website, according to CNN.

The index was at the lowest level in nearly three months.  Associated Press

Wall Street has continued the rout on global share markets, with the Dow Jones, S&P 500 closing down more than 1.5% and Nasdaq down 2%.

bbc.com - January 4, 2016

It followed sharp falls in China, where trading on the main stock markets was halted early after indexes tumbled 7%.

A survey indicating China's manufacturing sector contracted again last month was blamed for the falls. . . .

. . . On Wall Street, all 10 major S&P sectors were lower, led by the 2.4% fall in the technology sector. Bank stocks were also hard hit, with JP Morgan down 3.65%.

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CLICK HERE - The Guardian - US stock markets open with worst performance since 2008

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Houses inundated in York, England after torrential rain caused rivers to burst banks. Damages are set to run into the billions of pounds (Flickr/ Alh1)

CLICK HERE - The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) - Facing the new abnormal

After severe flooding and shock tornadoes, now is time get serious about precautionary steps to counter climate impacts says UN disaster chief

climatechangenews.com - by Alex Pashley - December 30, 2015

Governments have been told to face a “new abnormal” of extreme weather after a wave of natural disasters wrought death and economic damage around the world in recent days.

Heavy flooding in Britain and South America, and devastating tornadoes in the US has laid bare the lack of official preventative measures, Margareta Wahlstrom, head of the UN’s disaster risk reduction agency said on Tuesday.

They highlighted how climate change-linked events were becoming harder to predict as the planet overheats, she said.

Implementing an UN-backed framework to protect people against climate impacts agreed by 187 states earlier this year was “critical”, the official at the Geneva-based agency said.