First up, via Reuters, the latest grim numbers:
EU pledges 140 million euros in Ebola aid as West Africa toll tops 2,100
The European Union on Friday pledged 140 million euros ($180 million) to boost the fight against Ebola in West Africa, where the death toll in the worst outbreak on record has passed 2,100 people.
More than six months into the crisis, the disease is spreading faster than ever and organizations across the world are scrambling cash and supplies to the region. But the World Health Organization (WHO) said the lack of trained staff was hobbling the response.
“The situation is going from bad to worse,” said Kristalina Georgieva, the EU commissioner responsible for humanitarian aid. “We are helping make a difference on the ground but the needs are outpacing the international community’s capacity to react.”
From Reuters, a campaign:
U.N. to set up Ebola crisis center, aims to stop spread in six to nine months
The United Nations plans to set up an Ebola crisis center to coordinate the response to the deadly virus and to strive to halt its spread in West African countries in six to nine months, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced on Friday.
Ban called on the international community to provide $600 million needed for supplies in West Africa, where more than 3,500 confirmed or probable cases of the hemorrhagic fever have been reported and more than 1,900 people have died since March.
“The number of cases is rising exponentially. The disease is spreading far faster than the response. People are increasingly frustrated that it is not being controlled,” Ban told reporters.
StarAfrica liberates:
Ebola: Cameroon quarantines, releases 60 migrants
The Minister of Public Health, André Mama Fouda in Yaounde has authorized the return home from Nigeria of 60 Cameroonian migrants who were quarantined earlier this week due to Ebola, the ministry announced Friday.The migrants had been placed in isolation in Ekok and Ekondo Titi (South-west) and put under observation for 21 days, the incubation period for the virus.
Cameroon shares a 1,500km land border with Nigeria, a country where cases of Ebola have been reported in recent months.
As part of its prevention and response plan, the Cameroonian authorities have prohibited any movement of people and goods from or into Ebola-hit countries.
The Associated Press diagnoses:
US doctor infected with Ebola in stable condition
A doctor who became infected with Ebola while working in Liberia is sick but in stable condition and communicating with his caregivers at the Nebraska Medical Center, officials said Friday.
Dr. Rick Sacra, 51, is being treated at a 10-bed special isolation unit, the largest of the United States’ four. It was built to handle patients with highly infectious and deadly diseases, according to Dr. Mark Rupp, chief of the infectious diseases division at the center.
Sacra— the third American aid worker sickened with the virus — arrived at 6:38 a.m. Friday at the Omaha hospital. Sacra was wheeled on a gurney off the plane at Offutt Air Force Base, transferred to an ambulance and then wheeled into the hospital, said Rosanna Morris, chief nursing officer for the medical center.
More from USA Today:
U.S. doctor will be treated without experimental drug
With all supplies of an experimental drug exhausted, doctors and nurses caring for the third Ebola patient to return to the USA will rely on conventional methods of treating symptoms and preventing complications.
Physician Richard Sacra, 51, arrived Friday at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha’s special Biocontainment Unit, one of only four such specialized units in the USA, which is designed for patients with dangerous and highly infectious diseases. Although Sacra works as a family physician in Worcester, Mass., he is also an experienced medical missionary, and he returned to Liberia to replace staff who had fallen ill with Ebola.
Smith and several other doctors with the unit repeatedly said Sacra’s transfer to Omaha posed no threat to the public, noting Ebola is transmitted through close contact with an infected person.
From TheLocal.at, an alarm in Austria:
Suspected case of Ebola in Linz
A 15-year-old boy with Ebola-like symptoms is being treated in an isolation ward in Upper Austria. The young man was admitted to Linz General Hospital on Friday morning, suffering from a high fever.
He has recently returned from a trip to West Africa, where there have been more than 3,000 cases of the disease since it was first identified in Guinea in February.
Blood samples from the patient have been sent to Vienna for analysis. A result is expected by Saturday morning.
From Reuters, another quarantine:
Sierra Leone to impose 4-day, countrywide anti-Ebola ‘lockdown’
Sierra Leone will impose a four-day, countrywide “lockdown” starting Sept. 18, an escalation of efforts to halt the spread of Ebola across the West African nation, a senior official in the president’s office said on Friday.
Citizens will not be allowed to leave their homes between Sept. 18-21 in a bid to prevent the disease from spreading further and allow health workers to identify cases in the early stages of the illness, said Ibrahim Ben Kargbo, a presidential advisor on the country’s Ebola task force.
“The aggressive approach is necessary to deal with the spread of Ebola once and for all,” he told Reuters. As of Friday, Sierra Leone has recorded 491 of the total of 2,097 deaths blamed on Ebola in West Africa since March, U.N. figures showed.
The San Francisco Chronicle allocates:
White House asks for $30M for CDC’s Ebola efforts
The White House on Friday sent Congress a request for $30 million to pay for the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s efforts to help contain the Ebola outbreak in western Africa.
The administration wants the money added to a spending bill to keep government agencies running until mid-December and comes on top of $58 million it requested above current levels to speed the production of promising drugs to fight the deadly disease.
The White House is also seeking additional flexibility for the Homeland Security Department to cope with the thousands of unaccompanied Central American children still arriving at the southern border.
More from Homeland Security News Wire:
HHS awards $24.9 million contract to accelerate development of Ebola drug
The development of a medication to treat illness from Ebola will be accelerated under a contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR). HHS says that this contract supports the government-wide response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. The $24.9 million, 18-month contract with Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc., of San Diego, California, may be extended up to a total of $42.3 million. HHS notes that it is seeking additional proposals for the advanced development of antibody treatments, antiviral drugs, and vaccines against the Ebola and Marburg viruses.
The development of a medication to treat illness from Ebola will be accelerated under a contract with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR). HHS says that this contract supports the government-wide response to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
Xinhua gets defensive:
China imposes stricter port inspection for precaution against Ebola
Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever has been listed as a quarantinable disease as the country’s health authorities pass harsher port inspections for people and goods entering from affected areas.
All Chinese ports of entry will carry out stricter quarantine measures, said the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) in a statement published on its website on Friday.
People, vehicles, goods and mail from infected areas will be thoroughly inspected, said the NHFPC.
The New York Times reckons:
Ebola Is Taking a Second Toll, on Economies
Airlines have canceled their flights to the countries most affected. Prices of staple goods are going up, and food supplies are dwindling. Border posts are being closed, foreign workers are going home and national growth rates are projected to plummet.
Ebola — the reality and the hysteria over it — is having a serious economic impact on Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, three West African nations already at the bottom of global economic and social indicators. Aggravating both the financial and social consequences, these countries and their frightened neighbors are imposing concentric circles of quarantines, cutting off neighborhoods, regions and even whole nations.
International medical authorities have warned against such practices, arguing that they will worsen suffering and deprivation, and do little to stop the spread of the disease. But many African nations have gone ahead anyway, sealing borders, barring entry to residents of the affected countries and barring their airlines from flying to those countries. Senegal has even refused to allow humanitarian flights with urgently needed supplies and medical personnel to take off from Dakar, the West African hub for international aid agencies. South Africa and Kenya, two of the continent’s economic heavyweights, have restricted entry to people coming from the Ebola zone.
But Ebola isn’t the only disease Africans fear, as revealed in this report from the Daily Monitor in Kampala, Uganda, covering a little known but very serious disease:
28 put under nodding disease surveillance
At least 28 children suspected of having the nodding syndrome have been placed under close surveillance in Amida and Akwanga sub-counties in Kitgum District.
According to the nodding syndrome focal person in Kitgum District, Dr Geoffrey Akena, 20 cases were reported in Okidi Parish and eight in Akwang Sub-county.
“We are not committing ourselves that these cases are nodding syndrome, but 60 per cent of the signs and symptoms the children present are those of nodding syndrome,” Dr Akena said.
And from the Daily Monitor again, yet another concern:
Medics jailed over fake HIV results
A magistrate’s court in Luweero District has remanded two medical staff on charges of conspiring with a patient to falsify HIV/Aids status results.
Ms Teopista Nansubuga and Mr Muhamad Walubiri attached to Penny Clinic in Kasana Town, were sent to jail on Wednesday.
They were charged with doing an act likely to spread disease contrary to provisions of the Penal Code Act. Ms Nansubuga pleaded guilty but Mr Walubiri denied the charges.
Grade One Magistrate Harriet Namata remanded them until September 8 when they will reappear in court. Ms Nansubuga will be coming to know her sentence after she pleaded guilty to the offence while Mr Walubiri will find out when his trial will start.
From the Washington Post, other bugs, other woes:
Six more deadly microbes found improperly stored in NIH and FDA labs
Workers searching government laboratories in the wake of the July discovery of smallpox have found six more improperly stored, dangerous microbes — including ricin and the bacteria that cause plague.
On Friday, officials at the National Institutes of Health said the search on its sprawling Bethesda campus had turned up five different misplaced substances in recent weeks. All of the microbes are considered so dangerous- they are known as select agents– that the federal government requires them to be stored in special high secure facilities. Instead, these vials were in regular labs, often part of collections of samples that date back decades.
Simultaneously, the Food and Drug Administration said it had found vials of staphylococcus enterotoxin, a frequent cause of foodborne illness, at a lab within the agency’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition that was not registered to handle it.
And from Japan, another piece of bad news about a growing outbreak from Jiji Press:
Japan Confirms 1st Dengue Case Away from Yoyogi Park
Japan’s health ministry said Friday it has confirmed the first dengue fever infection that is believed to have taken place in a central Tokyo park away from Yoyogi Park, where most of the recent cases seem to have originated.
A resident of Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo, in his 30s developed symptoms on Saturday. He went to hospital in the eastern Japan prefecture Monday and was confirmed positive Friday from a test by the National Institute of Infectious Diseases.
The man, who is in stable condition, has not traveled abroad or visited Yoyogi Park recently.
More from the Wall Street Journal:
Japan Steps Up Efforts to Contain Dengue
Japanese authorities stepped up their efforts Friday to deal with an outbreak of dengue fever, sealing off Yoyogi Park in central Tokyo and closing a seaside park in the neighboring city of Yokohama as the number of people infected reached at least 66.
While most of the affected people appear to have contracted the disease from mosquitoes in Yoyogi Park, at least one of the 66 picked up dengue in Shinjuku Central Park about a kilometer away, suggesting that mosquitoes carrying the disease have spread to another location.
Health ministry figures indicate that 24 of those infected after visiting Yoyogi are in other parts of the country, including Osaka prefecture in western Japan and the northern island of Hokkaido. That suggests the possibility that dengue fever could spread elsewhere in the country if those infected people outside the capital were bitten by mosquitoes during the weeklong period before symptoms of the illness emerge.
From the Guardian, news about another epidemic:
EU under pressure to allow GM food imports from US and Canada
Large businesses lobbying intensely to undermine safety regime in new trade deal, campaigners warn
Britain and other European Union member states are under increasing pressure from North American business groups to open their borders to imports of genetically modified food as part of negotiations for a new Transatlantic trade deal, environmental campaigners have warned.
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) is being negotiated among European governments, the US and Canada, with the active participation of dozens of large businesses. It has already attracted strong criticism from democracy campaigners, who say it could mean the UK could have to open the National Health Service further to private companies, and complaints against large companies could be treated in secret without proper legal recourse.
The potential impacts on food safety are less apparent as the negotiations are being conducted without public consultation. Progress on signing the partnership is expected to be hastened later this year when new EU commissioners are appointed.
After jump, sea levels already rising and threatening cities, California drought relief hopes dim, a whale of a recovery, water tragedies in Mexico, drought grief in Brazil, palm oil threats, Aussie environmental danger, lava losses, free weed in Berkeley, a tar sands appeal, a Chinese land grab in Africa, a rampaging beaver, and the latest chapter of Fukushimapocalyse Now!. . .
Next up, water woes, first with Reuters:
As the seas rise, a slow-motion disaster gnaws at America’s shores
A Reuters analysis finds that flooding is increasing along much of the nation’s coastline, forcing many communities into costly, controversial struggles with a relentless foe.
All along the ragged shore of Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic coast of the Delmarva Peninsula, north into New England and south into Florida, along the Gulf Coast and parts of the West Coast, people, businesses and governments are confronting rising seas not as a future possibility. For them, the ocean’s rise is a troubling everyday reality.
This is the first in a series of articles examining the phenomenon of rising seas, its effects on the United States, and the country’s response to an increasingly watery world. Other stories will show how other nations are coping.
In cities like Norfolk, Virginia, and Annapolis, Maryland, coastal flooding has become more frequent. Beyond the cities, seawater and tidal marsh have consumed farmland and several once-inhabited islands. Here in Accomack County alone, encroaching seawater is converting an estimated 50 acres (20 hectares) of farmland into wetlands each year, according to a 2009 Environmental Protection Agency study.
And right here at Casa esnl, this from the San Francisco Chronicle:
California drought: El Niño chances fall again
Hopes of an almighty El Niño bringing rain to a drought-stricken California – with its fallow fields, depleted streams and parched lawns – were further dashed Thursday. The National Weather Service, in its monthly El Niño report, again downgraded the chances of the influential weather pattern occurring in the fall or winter.
The odds were 80 percent in May, but were placed between 60 and 65 percent this week.
Meanwhile, the agency also announced that the much-needed weather event is likely to be weak instead of moderate in strength – another retreat from the more robust projections made earlier this year that fueled speculation that California’s three-year dry spell might be snapped.
Newswise covers a water win:
California blue whales rebound from whaling; first of their kin to do so
The number of California blue whales has rebounded to near historical levels, according to new research by the University of Washington, and while the number of blue whales struck by ships is likely above allowable U.S. limits, such strikes do not immediately threaten that recovery.
This is the only population of blue whales known to have recovered from whaling – blue whales as a species having been hunted nearly to extinction.
Blue whales – nearly 100 feet in length and weighing 190 tons as adults – are the largest animals on earth. And they are the heaviest ever, weighing more than twice as much as the largest known dinosaur, the Argentinosaurus. They are an icon of the conservation movement and many people want to minimize harm to them, according to Trevor Branch, UW assistant professor of aquatic and fishery sciences.
“The recovery of California blue whales from whaling demonstrates the ability of blue whale populations to rebuild under careful management and conservation measures,” said Cole Monnahan, a UW doctoral student in quantitative ecology and resource management and lead author of a paper on the subject posted online Sept. 5 by the journal Marine Mammal Science. Branch and André Punt, a UW professor of aquatic and fisheries sciences, are co-authors.
Back to water woes with Frontera NorteSur:
Ecocides Ravage Mexican Waters
Toxic soups seeping into rivers and groundwater. Millions of dead fish stinking up a large lake. A marine mammal on the verge of extinction. Such are the scenes that ravage the waters of the Mexican Republic.
For starters, an August 16 oil spill from a pipeline located about 20 miles east of the northern industrial city of Monterrey contaminated the San Juan River and local acequias, or irrigation ditches, killing aquatic and other species and threatening human health. The disaster fouled about four miles of the San Juan River and seven miles of acequias in the rural municipality of Cadereyta. At least one water well was reported contaminated by oil.
Cadereyta Mayor Emeterio Arizpe estimated that 97 agricultural producers could lose more than three million dollars from the loss of irrigation water because of the contamination. Within the affected zone, more than 2,500 acres of citrus crops are cultivated.
The national oil company Pemex, which operates the pipeline, declared that 90 percent of the pollution from the spill was cleaned up by August 28. But a Nuevo Leon state legislator criticized the clean-up while cautioning about the short-term and long-term health impacts of the spill.
Another Latin American water woe with the Guardian:
Brazil drought crisis leads to rationing and tensions
Water rationed in 19 cities in southeast and central regions after usually abundant supplies run dry
From his front door to the banks of the Cantareira reservoir, José Christiano da Silva used to stroll only a hundred metres when he first moved to the area in 2009. Today, amid the worst drought in São Paulo’s history, he must now trek a kilometre across the dried-up bed before he reaches what’s left of the most important water supply for South America’s biggest city.
“It’s frightening to look at,” says the retiree, standing on cracked mud. “In the past, we’d already be under water here.” After the driest six months since records began 84 years ago, the volume of the Cantareira system has fallen to 10.7% of its capacity, raising alarms for the nearby urban population of 20 million people and the most important economic hub on the continent.
The drought, affecting Brazil’s southeast and central regions, has prompted rationing in 19 cities, undermined hydropower generation, pushed up greenhouse gas emissions and led to squabbles between states vying for dwindling water resources.
Nikkei Asian Review covers a potential woe for another landscape-raper:
Cargill warns on Indonesian palm oil curbs
One of the world’s largest agribusinesses has warned that Indonesia’s proposal to lower the cap on foreign ownership of oil palm plantations from 95% to 30% will deter foreign investment in the industry. Indonesia is the world’s biggest producer and exporter of palm oil, which is a major part of its resource-driven economy.
John Hartmann, CEO of Cargill Tropical Palm Holdings, told the Nikkei Asian Review that a draft bill proposing the curbs came as a surprise and said his company hopes the Indonesian parliament will reconsider the move.
“The bill will literally reduce the level of foreign investment in Indonesia’s plantation sector. This will likely impact Indonesia’s adoption of globally accepted sustainable palm oil practices (and) its attractiveness for foreign investments in general, as well as the advancement of local communities in rural areas,” Hartmann said.
From Down Under, a warning via the Guardian:
States can’t protect threatened species and world heritage sites, says report
Analysis undermines ‘one-stop-shop’ devolution of environmental approvals from federal government to states
There are huge gaps in the capability of state governments to protect threatened species and world heritage sites, severely undermining the case for devolving environmental powers to them, according to a new analysis.
The study of each state and territory government found that none of them is currently up to the job of properly protecting threatened species and ecosystems if they were handed the responsibility by the federal government.
Greg Hunt, the federal environment minister, has signed agreements with each of the states and territories to devolve environmental approvals to them. These ‘one-stop-shops’ would assess major developments such as ports and mines, with Hunt claiming the move would speed up the process and improve business confidence.
BBC News covers another real estate threat:
Hawaii volcano lava threatens homes
Hawaii’s Big Island has declared a state of emergency as a lava flow from Kilauea volcano is less than a mile (1.6km) from a residential community.
The Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said the lava could reach the Kaohe Homesteads in about five to seven days.
Kilaeuea has been continuously erupting since 1983, but lava began flowing from a new vent on 27 June, moving 800ft a day. Lava flows from the volcano previously wiped out neighbourhoods in 1990.
From the London Daily Mail, another king of green win right here in esnl’s hometown:
Welfare weed: Berkeley orders dispensaries to give out FREE marijuana for low-income residents
Berkeley residents with a prescription and annual income of less than $32,000 will be eligible for free pot
Dispensaries have to give out 2 percent of their stash
Low-income residents in a California city will soon be able to get high for free.
The Berkeley City Council has passed a law requiring medical marijuana dispensaries to distribute 2 percent of their stashes to people making less than $32,000 per year or $46,000 per family.
Under the new ordinance, which was approved unanimously this summer, only city residents will be eligible and they must have a prescription.
‘Basically, the city council wants to make sure that low-income, homeless, indigent folks have access to their medical marijuana, their medicine,” Councilman Darryl Moore told CBS San Francisco.
Off to Fukushimapocalypse Now!, first from NHK WORLD:
New environment minister visits Fukushima
Japan’s new environment minister, Yoshio Mochiduki, has told leading politicians of Fukushima that he will work hard to gain local consent for the construction of interim radioactive waste storage facilities in the prefecture.
Mochiduki on Friday visited Fukushima Prefecture for the first time since assuming his post earlier this week.
He met Governor Yuhei Sato at the prefectural office.
The Mainichi reveals:
Radioactive plumes spread cesium a week after Fukushima disaster
A second wave of radioactive material from the Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant disaster spread over the Tohoku and Kanto regions around one week after the outbreak of the disaster, analysis of radiation readings has found.
It was already known that clouds of radioactive material, known as “radioactive plumes,” had spread on March 15 and 16, 2011, but new analysis by the secretariat of the Nuclear Regulation Authority and the Ministry of the Environment shows similar radiation readings for March 20 and 21 as well.
Until now, radiation levels after the disaster have been estimated by comparing observed readings, such as those from aircraft, with computer simulations obtained from the System for Prediction of Environmental Emergency Dose Information (SPEEDI). For the most recent analysis, the Ministry of the Environment used data from constant monitoring devices used to measure vehicle exhaust fumes and other such air pollution. The ministry sought help from institutions including Tokyo Metropolitan University and the Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute at the University of Tokyo. It collected filter paper that catches airborne particles from around 90 monitoring stations in nine prefectures. Researchers analyzed radiation levels from March 12 to March 23, 2011.
The analysis showed that at one monitoring station in the city of Fukushima on the night of March 15, the combined activity of cesium-137 and cesium-134 went as high as 45.5 becquerels per cubic meter of air.
Japan Today concedes defeat:
TEPCO won’t appeal ruling on Fukushima evacuee’s suicide
The operator of the destroyed Fukushima nuclear power plant said on Friday it won’t appeal against a court ruling that it was responsible for the suicide of a woman who became depressed after the 2011 disaster, adding it would pay 49 million yen in compensation.
Last week’s surprise ruling – and TEPCO’s decision not to appeal against it – could set a precedent for more claims for compensation in connection with the triple nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, which forced more than 150,000 people from their homes. About a third of them are still in temporary housing.
“We are not going to appeal the decision and we will pay compensation in line with what was ordered in court,” said TEPCO spokesman Nobuyuki Kawashima.
The Asahi Shimbun ponders:
Kansai Electric mulling over decommissioning aging Mihama reactors
Kansai Electric Power Co. is considering decommissioning two reactors at its Mihama nuclear power plant in Fukui Prefecture, but is intent on restarting two others at its Takahama plant in the same prefecture, sources said.
More than 40 years have passed since the No. 1 and 2 reactors at the facility in Mihama went into operation. Now, officials at the utility feel the high cost of maintaining the reactors to meet new government safety standards may be too prohibitive.
A final decision on decommissioning the two reactors will be made before the end of the year, whereby the utility will then meet with officials from Fukui Prefecture and the Mihama municipal government to discuss their plans.
Additional details from Kyodo News:
2 operators mulling scrapping aging nuclear reactors
Two Japanese nuclear plant operators are mulling scrapping aging reactors as it may be too costly to upgrade equipment to meet new standards imposed following the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster, sources familiar with the matter said Friday.
Kansai Electric Power Co. is considering decommissioning the Nos. 1 and 2 reactors at its three-reactor Mihama plant located on the Sea of Japan coast in western Japan, both of which are more than 40 years old.
Kyushu Electric Power Co. is considering scrapping the No. 1 reactor at its four-reactor Genkai plant in Saga Prefecture, southwestern Japan, the sources said. That reactor began operating 38 years ago.
And the Mainichi covers a roadblock:
Advocates stumble in quest for nuclear plant reactivation
Advocates for reactivating Japanese nuclear power plants have hit snags in two recent incidents that involved an unruly meeting and error-laden documents, it has been learned.
In the first incident, the secretariat of the Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) disclosed on Sept. 4 that it planned to lodge a protest with Japan Atomic Power Co. over inappropriate and threatening remarks by a speaker affiliated with the company.
The comments occurred during an NRA meeting that was being held to discuss ground faults under the No. 2 reactor at the company’s Tsuruga Nuclear Power Plant in Fukui Prefecture. The secretariat said that the threatening remarks were made by Hiroshima University professor Koji Okumura.
Other fuels, other problems, first from the Guardian:
Nebraska supreme court examines governor’s role in blessing Keystone XL
Debate centers on whether Governor Dave Heineman acted properly when he blessed a route for the oil pipeline
Nebraska’s supreme court heard arguments on Friday about whether Governor Dave Heineman acted properly when he blessed a route for the Keystone XL oil pipeline, and the court’s decision could weigh on the controversial project.
A lawyer for landowners who may be in the pipeline’s path hoped to persuade the seven-member panel that Heineman overreached and that a decision on the route should be left to an independent state agency.
The 30-minute hearing played out in the court’s somber wood-paneled chamber. Keystone opponents who watched the proceedings from an adjacent room, were not so subdued.
From Star Africa, same fuel, different problem:
Sudan: 10,000 farmers lose land to exploration
At least 10.000 Sudanese citizens have lost their lands due to oil exploration activities by Chinese firms operating in the troubled region of South Kordofan.The area witnessed demonstration against the government and oil companies on Friday.
Eyewitnesses told APA that thousands of farmers have protested for the second day against the environmental effects of oil production in their areas and demanded compensation for their lost lands due to exploratory activities.
The protesters brandished slogans against the oil companies and the government policies and called for basic services and employment for local youths.
And to close, a case of Mother Nature strikes back, via The National:
Vicious beaver attacks Halifax snorkeler off Nova Scotia’s coast
Jeremy McNaughton won’t quickly forget his encounter with a rogue beaver that attacked him off the shores of Nova Scotia.
The 23-year-old Halifax man was snorkelling in Spanish Ship Bay, near Sherbrooke, with a couple of friends, when one of them looked down and noticed an animal of generous proportions with reddish-brown fur following them.
“I thought it must be a seal,” said Paul Skerry, who was in the water with McNaughton, due to the sheer size of the creature, which he estimates weighed nearly 50 pounds.
