In the world of people, planet, and their interactions, we begin with the leading story of the recent days, first from the International Business Times:
Liberian Rioters Shut Down Highway To Protest Government Delays In Collecting Ebola Victims’ Bodies
Rioters in central Liberia blocked the country’s busiest highway Saturday to protest the government’s delay in collecting the bodies of Ebola victims. Police raced to the scene to quell the demonstrations before they reached a violent pitch, the Associated Press reported.
“There are reports of dead bodies lying in streets and houses,” Lindis Hurum, the emergency coordinator for the Doctors Without Borders charity group, told the AP. In the central town of Weala, about 50 miles from the capital of Monrovia, several bodies had by lying by the side of the road for two days.
The World Health Organization, or WHO, on Friday declared the Ebola pandemic in West Africa an international public health emergency. The outbreak — the deadliest on record — has so far killed at least 961 people in the region, including nearly 300 in Liberia. Many people have contracted the virus after touching or handling corpses of Ebola victims, the AP noted. Liberia’s government has ordered bodies to be cremated to stem fears the virus would spread via neighborhood burials.
More on the crisis from Deutsche Welle:
Lagos overwhelmed, Nigeria asks for Ebola outbreak help
Nigeria has appealed for volunteers to stop Ebola’s spreading. On Friday, President Goodluck Jonathan declared a national emergency over Ebola, which has so far claimed two lives there
Authorities in Lagos, home to 20 million and the largest city in Africa’s most populous country, have said they are facing a shortage of medical personnel. Lagos has nine confirmed Ebola cases, including two deaths.
“I won’t lie about that,” Lagos health commissioner Jide Idris said about the staff shortage Saturday.
Declaring Ebola a national emergency on Friday, President Goodluck Jonathan called on Nigerians to avoid gatherings to prevent the spread of the virus. In addition, he warned against moving the corpses of people who had died from Ebola.
BBC News takes action:
Ebola virus: Guinea shuts Liberia and S Leone borders
Guinea has closed its borders with Liberia and Sierra Leone to contain the spread of Ebola, which has killed 959 people in the three countries. The latest outbreak is thought to have begun in Guinea, but Liberia and Sierra Leone are currently facing the highest frequency of new cases.
Guinea said it was closing its borders in order to stop people from entering the country.
“We have provisionally closed the frontier between Guinea and Sierra Leone because of all the news that we have received from there recently,” Health Minister Remy Lamah told a news conference. He added that Guinea had also closed its border with Liberia.
The Guardian has more from on the ground:
Ebola crisis in Liberia brings rumours, hygiene lessons and hunger
As aid workers offer health advice on the streets, residents fear emergency measures are starving the capital of supplies
Another day has just broken in Liberia’s capital, Monrovia. Outside a block of humble flats on Centre Street, two women in long overcoats jump out of a taxi, avoiding the torrents of rainwater pouring along the gutter as they carry a large plastic bucket. On the porch, a crowd of young homeless men take shelter. They are about to receive a lesson in handwashing, non-contact and recognising symptoms of the deadly Ebola virus. It has killed 249 of their countrymen so far since March, 961 worldwide, and prompted 1,779 reported cases internationally.
The fact that Ebola is spread through bodily fluids such as sweat and saliva means that reducing physical contact has become a national obsession. At any time of day, outside banks, shops and homes, people disinfect their hands with chlorinated water. Shaking hands is forbidden and some have donned latex gloves.
Last week the government ramped up anti-Ebola measures. On Wednesday, Liberia’s president, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, declared a state of emergency for 90 days. Her televised statement sent a new wave of fear through communities following two weeks of alarming announcements.
And from the Independent, fears coming closer:
Ebola outbreak: Fears strike Canadian hospital as patient isolated following ‘flu-like symptoms’
A hospital in Ontario, Canada, has isolated a patient with flu-like symptoms after the person was revealed to have recently travelled from Nigeria – one of the Ebola-hit areas.
The measure is just a precautionary one and the patient has not yet been diagnosed with the deadly disease – a virus with a mortality rate as high as 90 per cent and which has swept through west Africa killing 961.
The unnamed patient has been admitted to Brampton Civic Hospital, with a diagnosis yet to come.
Dr Eileen de Villa from, Associated Medical Officer at Peel Public Health said: “Measures that are being taken are indeed precautionary. I mean, there are health concerns ongoing in West Africa at this stage of the game,” reports the Toronto Star.
National Post covers another phase of the crisis:
International response to Ebola outbreak that’s killed almost 1,000 has been slow and inadequate, aid groups say
The international response to the Ebola outbreak that has killed almost 1,000 Africans has been slow and inadequate, and the World Health Organization is at least partly to blame, said spokesmen for two key aid groups.
The WHO on Friday designated the outbreak as an international public health emergency, eight months after it began. On May 18, when the situation seemed to be stabilizing, the Geneva-based organization said the outbreak “could be declared over on May 22.”
The WHO’s leaders “need to do a reality check and step up,” Koen Henckaerts, a health expert at the European Commission’s humanitarian aid division, said in a telephone interview from the Liberian capitol of Monrovia. “There is a lack of coordination among all the different partners.”
From the Associated Press, an interesting aside:
US bots flagged Ebola before outbreak announced
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa is focusing a spotlight on an online tool run by experts in Boston that flagged a “mystery hemorrhagic fever” in forested areas of southeastern Guinea nine days before the World Health Organization formally announced the epidemic.
HealthMap uses algorithms to scour tens of thousands of social media sites, local news, government websites, infectious-disease physicians’ social networks and other sources to detect and track disease outbreaks. Sophisticated software filters irrelevant data, classifies the relevant information, identifies diseases and maps their locations with the help of experts.
“It shows some of these informal sources are helping paint a picture of what’s happening that’s useful to these public health agencies,” HealthMap co-founder John Brownstein said.
The Economic Times covers another front:
Ebola vaccine to go on trial next month, may be ready by 2015: UN
Clinical trials of a preventative vaccine for the Ebola virus made by British pharma company GlaxoSmithKline may begin next month and made available by 2015, the World Health Organization said on Saturday.
“We are targeting September for the start of clinical trials, first in the United States and certainly in African countries, since that’s where we have the cases,” Jean-Marie Okwo Bele, the WHO’s head of vaccines and immunisation, told French radio.
He said he was optimistic about making the vaccine commercially available. “We think that if we start in September, we could already have results by the end of the year.
Homeland Security News Wire rationalizes:
Quantities of experimental Ebola drug used in U.S. too small to be shipped to West Africa
Nigerian health authorities said yesterday that West African patients infected with the Ebola virus will not have access to experimental drugs being used to treat American cases of the disease for several months, if at all. Health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told a press conference he had asked the U.S. health authorities about the unproven medicines used on two American doctors who became infected while treating patients in Liberia, but was told such small quantities of the drug existed that West Africa would have to wait for months for supplies, even if they were proved safe and effective. The two Americans were given the drug ZMapp after being flown to the United States, and appear to be recovering.
Nigerian health authorities said yesterday that West African patients infected with the Ebola virus will not have access to experimental drugs being used to treat American cases of the disease for several months, if at all.
Health minister Onyebuchi Chukwu told a press conference he had asked the U.S. health authorities about the unproven medicines used on two American doctors who became infected while treating patients in Liberia, but was told such small quantities of the drug existed that West Africa would have to wait for months for supplies, even if they were proved safe and effective.
And from the Los Angeles Times, the more mundane:
Ebola outbreak causes postponement of taekwondo tournament
The Ebola outbreak in West Africa has prompted organizers to postpone a large taekwondo tournament in the Nigerian capital of Abuja.
The Chika Chukwumerije Sports Foundation event was expected to draw more than 400 athletes from 11 countries in the region.
Taekwondo’s close contact “provides an ideal environment for a highly unlikely spread of the Ebola virus if only one infected person comes to the venue,” Chukwumerije said in a statement.
From the Hindu, Indian precautions:
No Ebola case has been reported in India: Harsh Vardhan
The Indian government is maintaining intense surveillance to prevent the spread of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) in the country. A control room with helpline numbers 23063205, 23061469 and 23061302 got operational on Saturday morning at the Health Ministry and it dealt with 30 calls during the day, according to an official statement.
Union Minister for Health Dr. Harsh Vardhan has clarified that India does not have any confirmed or even suspected Ebola virus affected person. The World Health Organisation (WHO) had informed that one Indian passenger had travelled on the same flight in which an Ebola virus patient (a foreign national) was travelling from Monrovia to Lagos. This Indian passenger is back in India. He has been tracked and his health is being regularly monitored. The Health Minister said, “We are happy to share that the person is healthy, fit and fine.”
The Minister expressed satisfaction with the reaction of the general public to the awareness campaign launched by the government. “Most of the callers to the helpline reflected a mature understanding of the collective responsibility in times like this. They wanted to know details about the symptoms and preventive measures,” Dr. Harsh Vardhan said in the statement.
South China Morning Post covers another Asian response:
Hong Kong installs detection systems as WHO declares Ebola a global problem
Detection systems installed at Hong Kong’s borders as epidemic that has killed nearly 1,000 in Africa is declared international emergency
Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection (CHP) said the risk of the city being affected remained low, but it has stepped up precautions, such as installing detection systems at hospitals and border crossings.
Beijing announced a donation of 30 million yuan (HK$37 million) worth of medical equipment, such as protective clothing, monitoring devices and drugs, to the Ebola-hit areas.
“This is the largest, most severe and the most complex outbreak in the nearly four-decade history of this disease,” said the WHO chief Dr Margaret Chan Fung Fu-chun.
For our final Ebola item, Nikkei Asian Review covers the economic front:
Spreading Ebola epidemic has widening economic ramifications
The International Monetary Fund predicts GDP growth in Guinea will be 3.5% instead of 4.5%, as canceled flights hamper business and some farmers leave their fields to escape the virus.
Infectious diseases and disasters are the archenemies of the tourism industry. Japan’s tour companies suffered blows from the SARS and H1N1 epidemics, so they know what could be in store.
Business people in the energy and infrastructure sectors from Japan, China and South Korea make frequent trips to Africa. If the Ebola epidemic spreads to the West and Asia, it could impact a broad range of industries and financial markets.
From the Guardian, a dismal dietary dispatch:
Salmonella trial reveals US food safety relies on self-reporting
Three ‘knowingly shipped’ contaminated peanut products
Company allegedly failed to act on positive tests
Jurors in the first US federal criminal trial stemming from a deadly outbreak of food-borne illness are learning a disconcerting fact: America’s food safety largely depends on the honour system.
Witnesses say Stewart Parnell and others at Peanut Corporation of America knowingly shipped salmonella-tainted products, and that they sent customers lab results from other clean batches rather than wait for tests to confirm if their products were free of deadly bacteria.
Defence lawyers correctly noted for the jurors that salmonella tests are not even required by federal law.
After the jump, water woes hit critical levels at home and abroad, planning for the inevitable, a Superfund’s Silent Spring, China’s soil pollution crisis, the latest chapter of Fukushimapocalypse Now!, and Chinese fracking anxieties. . .
On to water woes, starting with an offering from Al Jazeera America:
In dry California, water goes to those who drill the deepest
In one of the most regulated states in the nation, no laws apply to groundwater pumping, which means some people go dry
The only sign of life sprouting out of a vast expanse of land in this unincorporated corner of Tulare County is a large drilling rig and two trucks laden with 1,000-foot-long drill pipes.
Men in hard hats work round the clock in sweltering 100-plus degree temperatures and in the still of the night, under the glare of construction night lights. They’re boring down 40 feet an hour to reach their ultimate goal of 2,000 feet into the Tulare Basin aquifer. Once dug and built, the well could eventually pump up to 1,000 gallons of water a minute and turn the arid ground above into the fertile soil that California’s Central Valley is renowned for.
Large agricultural company J Poonan Limited Partnership owns the land and has invested more than $500,000 to drill the well. That doesn’t count the cost of building reservoirs to store the water, testing and environmental studies that could bring the final costs well above $1 million.
It’s an expensive quest. But when 80% of California is in an extreme drought, surface water runoff from the mountains stops flowing and reservoirs are depleted, farmers see the only way to go is down – way down.
From the Associated Press, a consequence of drought:
8 firefighters burned battling California wildfire
Officials say eight firefighters who suffered burns while battling a wildfire in Northern California have been taken to the hospital.
California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Capt. Carlos Guerrero said Saturday that the injured firefighters are in stable condition after being airlifted to the burn center at the University of California, Davis for treatment.
Officials say three firefighters from Santa Clara County and five inmate firefighters were burned fighting a blaze in Mendocino County late Friday night.
And People’s Daily covers another drought, equally if not more urgent:
China Focus: Severe drought hits breadbaskets
Severe drought in China’s major crop producing regions threatens to halt 11 consecutive years of annual growth in the country’s harvest.
The drought has hit about four million hectares of farm land, reducing agricultural water supply in provinces including Henan, Hubei, Shandong and Lianoning.
The conditions have showed no signs of abating.
And from Yale Environment 360, planning for consequences:
Why Restoring Wetlands Is More Critical Than Ever
Along the Delaware River estuary, efforts are underway to restore wetlands lost due to centuries of human activity. With sea levels rising, coastal communities there and and elsewhere in the U.S. and Europe are realizing the value of wetlands as important buffers against flooding and tidal surges.
The work began at low tide on the Mispillion marsh on Delaware Bay. A field team hauled coconut fiber logs the size and heft of rolled carpets out beyond the tall cordgrass to the gray mud flat that extended from the marsh edge. Ten or so yards out, where the mudflat met the open water, an array of gray stacked blocks made of marine limestone and oyster shell was already set out. Looking like the battlements of a buried castle, this permeable reef was designed to deflect and dissipate the energy of the bay’s water as it flows toward the marsh.
If it works, this project will forestall further erosion of the existing marsh, whose banks are being undercut and washed away. And it will allow new sediment to build up behind the coco-fiber “biologs” that were staked into place to form the new marsh edge, a “living shoreline” that is the latest effort to protect and restore Delaware Bay’s tidal wetlands.
While Defense One reminds us of another dimension of water crisis:
Water Wars in Iraq and Around the World
Water as a weapon of war is not a new phenomenon but it takes on added urgency at a time in the world when clean water is in short supply. According to the United Nations, a billion people lack access to clean water. That’s one out of seven people on the planet. Back in 2012, a U.S. intelligence report commissioned by the State Department warned that over the next decade many countries of importance to the United States will experience water problems from shortages to poor quality—problems that exacerbate regional tensions and risk becoming major sources of instability and conflict.
Water is behind much of the turmoil in the Middle East today. In Gaza, residents complain about lack of safe water for drinking and sanitation. In Egypt, where the Nile River is critical to everything, conflicts over access to water became a factor in the Arab Spring protests as synonymous with wealth and corruption. In Syria, citizens of Aleppo have faced intermittent water shortages since May when armed groups cut off access. Throughout Africa and Asia, water conflicts tear people apart.
As we study the needs for conflict prevention and conflict management in the chaotic world of 2014, we must add water management to the list of issues demanding action. Natural resources are both problems and solutions depending upon who has them. Add to that issues like climate change, and the human need to export? power and control, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Environmental Health News covers the spectre of a Silent Spring:
Health experts question handling of songbird-killing Superfund site
Health experts are questioning the Environmental Protection Agency and Michigan state officials for their decades-long delays in cleanup of a Superfund site that is killing songbirds in yards, possibly leaving people at risk, too.
After years of complaints from residents, researchers recently reported that robins and other birds are dropping dead from DDT poisoning in the mid-Michigan town of St. Louis, which was contaminated by an old chemical plant.
“The more we know about DDT the more dangerous we find out it is for wildlife, yes, but humans, too,” said Dr. David Carpenter, director of the University at Albany – State University of New York’s School of Public Health and an expert in Superfund cleanup
Yale Environment 360 covers an ever greater soil crisis:
The Soil Pollution Crisis in China: A Cleanup Presents Daunting Challenge
Chinese officials are only starting to come to grips with the severity and extent of the soil pollution that has contaminated vast areas of the nation’s farm fields – by one estimate more than 8 percent of China’s arable land. But one thing is already clear: The cost and complexity of any remediation efforts will be enormous.
Hunan Province is an important center for heavy metal production. In 2011 the province’s 1,003 non-ferrous metal companies produced 2.66 million tons of ten different metals — the third highest production in China and worth $60 billion. Several years ago, the government said it hoped to turn Hunan’s Xiang River into the “Rhine of the East”: beautiful, clean and prosperous.
But in a report to an NGO conference in January this year, Chen Chao, an official with the Hunan Non-Ferrous Metals Management Bureau, admitted that the Xiang basin also had nearly 1,000 sludge sites or tailings stores, which contained 440 million tons of solid waste that is contaminated with lead, mercury, and cadmium. Chen Chao’s report revealed that Hunan accounts for 32.1 percent of China’s emissions of cadmium, 20.6 percent of arsenic emissions, 58.7 percent of mercury emissions, and 24.6 percent of the lead, in its wastewater, tailings, and waste gases.
And on to Fukushimapocalypse Now!, first with NHK WORLD:
Government to provide $3 bil. for Fukushima
The Japanese government plans to provide a subsidy of about three billion dollars over 30 years for regional development in Fukushima Prefecture. The grant is to be offered when local communities agree to build temporary storage facilities for highly radioactive waste.
Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishihara and Reconstruction Minister Takumi Nemoto will explain on Friday the grant for the local governments to Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato and the mayors of Futaba and Okuma towns.
The government plans to build facilities in the two towns to store highly radioactive waste generated in the prefecture by the decontamination effort following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant disaster. The two towns host the damaged nuclear plant.
The Asahi Shimbun foresees the outcome:
Fukushima towns look set to bite on new offer of more money for storage facilities
In talks Aug. 8 with Fukushima Governor Yuhei Sato and the mayors of Okuma and Futaba towns in the prefectural city of Koriyama, Environment Minister Nobuteru Ishihara and Reconstruction Minister Takumi Nemoto offered to double the grants to 301 billion yen ($3 billion) if they OK the storage facilities.
In previous closed-door negotiations, the government had pledged grants of 150 billion yen. With a new offer on the table, it would appear that the talks are entering the final stages.
“We want to examine the contents of the proposal in detail (before making a decision),” Sato said. Earlier negotiations became entangled and triggered a public uproar after Ishihara implied that local residents could be easily bought.
“In the end, it will come down to money,” Ishihara said June 16, angering the local governments and sending the negotiations into a stall.
An official warning, via the Wall Street Journal:
Fukushima Watch: Regulator Says Tepco Must Focus on Trench Water
The head of Japan’s nuclear regulator said Tokyo Electric Power Co.9501.TO -2.31% needs to get its priorities straight when it comes to work to decommission the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant and that it must place a greater emphasis on solving issues that carry bigger risks.
“The biggest risk is the trench water. Until that matter is addressed, it will be difficult to proceed with other decommissioning work,” Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of the Nuclear Regulation Authority, said on Wednesday at his weekly news conference. “It appears that they are getting off track,” he told reporters.
Tepco has been trying to remove some 11,000 metric tons of water that contains dangerous radioactive materials such as uranium and plutonium from a trench that runs from the Fukushima Daiichi plant’s No.2 reactor building.
The Mainichi covers a protest:
Fukushima Pref. students collect anti-nuke signatures in Nagasaki
As Nagasaki marked the 69th anniversary of the atomic bombing of the city on Aug. 9, two Fukushima Prefecture students chosen as high school peace ambassadors joined other students in the city to collect signatures for a petition against nuclear weapons to be sent to the United Nations.
One of them was 16-year-old Rin Ishii, of Odaka Technical High School in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture. Ishii lives in temporary housing, as her family’s home is only around 15 kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant, in a zone where overnight stays are not allowed. She was still in junior-high when the Great East Japan Earthquake struck on March 11, 2011, triggering a nuclear disaster.
After the meltdowns at the plant, Ishii and her family evacuated to the village of Nishigo near the border with Tochigi Prefecture, where they lived for around eight months before moving into temporary housing.
And for our final item, Bloomberg Businessweek covers harsh realization:
China’s Huge Shale-Gas Hopes Crash Into Mountainous Reality
Tapping China’s vast shale-gas reserves has proved more difficult than government planners in Beijing once hoped. In 2012, China’s National Energy Administration projected that, by 2020, from 60 billion to 80 billion cubic meters (bcm) of domestic shale gas would be pumped annually. Earlier this week the country’s energy chief, Wu Xinxiong, slashed the goal in half, to 30 billion bcm by 2020.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, China’s holds the world’s largest reserves of theoretically recoverable shale gas. But much of it is locked in mountainous regions in western China.
While China’s leaders—concerned about steeply rising energy demand accompanying rapid urbanization—dearly want to emulate the U.S.’s shale-gas boom, it turns out Americans have several practical advantages. For starters, the U.S. shale-gas revolution kicked off in fairly accessible regions: the flatlands of Texas, North Dakota, and Pennsylvania.
