We begin with another outbreak, via the Los Angeles Times:
Disneyland measles may have spread, Orange County officials warn
A measles outbreak that began at Disneyland may have spread to others in Orange County, where health officials warned the public Thursday about possible exposure.
Orange County health officials confirmed two more unvaccinated children — who were all old enough to be vaccinated — contracted measles between Dec. 15 and Dec. 20 at the amusement park.
On Wednesday, California’s Department of Health reported nine confirmed cases of measles, of which one case was in Orange County.
But others could have been exposed to measles at health facilities in the area while the three children were infectious, said Orange County Health Care Agency spokeswoman Nicole Stanfield.
From Outbreak News Today, the latest bird flu outbreak:
Taiwan culls 120,000 birds after detection of H5N2 avian influenza
Some 120,000 chickens on a Pingtung County farm will be culled due to the detection of highly-pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) H5N2, according to a Focus Taiwan report today.
The report suggests that the outbreak on the farm started in December with sporadic cases, confirmation of the avian flu virus was reported today. This is the first time this farm has experienced a bird flu outbreak.
Yao Chih-wang, head of the Pingtung Agriculture Department, said his department and the Animal Disease Control Center have put a ban on the movement of chickens and begun to disinfect the farm and will continue monitoring the situation.
CNBC covers a hopeful development:
Common as Dirt: New Antibiotic May Conquer Superbugs
A handful of dirt from a field has yielded what may be the first of a new family of antibiotics. Early tests suggest this one has the potential to be especially powerful, providing a new weapon against the growing threat of drug-resistant superbugs.
Scientists at Northeastern University in Boston and a small company called NovoBiotic Pharmaceuticals used a new method to find the compound, which appears to bypass the many different tricks that germs have for getting around the effects of antibiotics.
Tests in mice suggest it works to kill a wide range of bacteria, from staphylococcus to drug-resistant tuberculosis.
They’ve named it teixobactin. It comes from a soil-dwelling bacteria that usually doesn’t thrive in the lab, so it hadn’t been developed as a source of antibiotics.
“The compound is highly potent against a broad range of Gram-positive microbes, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE),” the company said in a statement.
And the New York Times cover Big Pharma’s dubious doings:
The Drugs That Companies Promote to Doctors Are Rarely Breakthroughs
For more than five decades, the blood thinner Coumadin was the only option for millions of patients at risk for life-threatening blood clots. But now, a furious battle is underway among the makers of three newer competitors for the prescription pads of doctors across the country.
The manufacturers of these drugs — Pradaxa, Xarelto and Eliquis — have been wooing physicians in part by paying for meals, promotional speeches, consulting gigs and educational gifts. In the last five months of 2013, the companies spent nearly $19.4 million on doctors and teaching hospitals, according to ProPublica’s analysis of federal data released last fall.
The information, from a database known as Open Payments, gives the first comprehensive look at how much money drug and device companies have spent working with doctors. What it shows is that the drugs most aggressively promoted to doctors typically aren’t cures or even big medical breakthroughs. Some are top sellers, but most are not.
Instead, they are newer drugs that manufacturers hope will gain a foothold, sometimes after failing to meet Wall Street’s early expectations.
Another kind of outbreak from BBC News:
‘Major consequences’ if olive disease spreads across EU
A virulent pathogen that starves olive trees poses a serious threat to EU olive production, experts have warned.
“Major consequences”, such as reduced yields and costly control measures, would be the outcome if it spreads to other olive producing regions.
It is already affecting a vast area in southern Italy and, as it has numerous hosts and vectors, the bacterium is expected to spread further.
The dire warning was made in a report by the European Food Safety Authority.
From the San Jose Mercury News, temperatures rising:
Climate change: 2014 warmest year ever recorded in California
Driven by climate change and a persistent ridge of high pressure over the Pacific Ocean that caused California’s drought, 2014 was the state’s hottest year ever recorded.
Temperatures last year averaged 61.5 degrees Fahrenheit in California — 4.1 degrees hotter than the 20th century average, according to a new report Thursday by federal scientists.
Three other Western states — Alaska, Arizona and Nevada — also experienced their hottest years since 1895, when modern instruments were first used. And Anchorage, Alaska, didn’t have a single day in 2014 in which the temperature dropped below zero, the first time in 101 years of record keeping.
The Fresno Bee covers Golden State water woes:
UC Davis study: Drought will cost state’s farmers $1.5b
A new study estimates the drought will cost California’s agriculture industry $1.5 billion and untold wages for thousands of farmworkers.
With an estimated 420,000 to 700,000 acres of irrigated cropland removed from production this summer, the state expects losses of $810 million in crop revenue and $203 million in dairy and livestock value, and $453 million in added costs due to additional well-pumping, based on NASA space satellite imagery and an economic analysis by Josue Medellin-Azuara and colleagues at the University of California at Davis Center for Watershed Sciences.
Although that lost acreage is only 5% of the state’s total agriculture, it hits hard in the towns in Tulare Lake Basin — among the poorest in the state. “There are pockets of real pain and suffering,” said the report’s lead author Richard Howitt, a UC Davis professor emeritus of agricultural and resource economics.
And from Reuters, Latin American water woes:
Brazil water supply, crops still at risk a year after epic drought
Southeastern Brazil is getting some rainfall a year after a record drought started, but not enough to eliminate worries about an energy crisis, water shortages or another season of damaged export crops, meteorologists said.
Record-high temperatures and the most severe drought in at least 80 years punished southeastern Brazil last year, a region accounting for 60 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. Despite rain in recent weeks, the country’s climate challenges could threaten a tepid economic recovery.
Private weather forecaster Somar warned of irregular rainfall in the center-west soy belt as well as the southeast throughout the month as an atmospheric blockage prevents a cold front from advancing over key crop regions in the world’s largest exporter of coffee, sugar, soy and beef.
From CCTV America, global water woes:
Report finds 270,000 tons of plastic waste litter the world’s oceans
Program notes:
A new study of the world’s oceans has found that more plastic waste is getting into the sea and harming plant and animal life. CCTV America’s May Lee reported the story from Los Angeles.
After the jump, court decision and vote spell a Keystone confrontation looming, another fossil fuel alarm sounds, an alarm sounds over Nicaraguan canal plans, renewed debate over threats to coral reefs, World Bank pushes easing of environmental safeguards, a trip aboard India’s cancer train, an illegal logging ring busted in Myanmar, on to Fukushimapocalypse Now! and a push for shelters near reactor complexes and a push for alternative energy. . .
The Guardian covers a judicial ruling:
Nebraska court approves controversial Keystone XL pipeline route
Ruling from state supreme court clears one of the last remaining obstacles before President Obama is forced to make a decision on the pipeline
A Nebraska court has signed off on the proposed route for the Keystone XL, bringing the controversial project a crucial step closer to reality after six years of legal and political fighting.
The Nebraska supreme court said the state’s governor, Dave Heineman, had indeed acted within his authority in January 2013 when he approved the pipeline’s route. Four judges on the seven-member court agreed with the landowners, but a super-majority of five was needed to strike down the plan.
“The legislation must stand by default,” the court said.
A lower court had ruled that Heineman should have consulted Nebraska’s public service commission, an obscure body which regulates grain bins, taxi cabs, and mobile homes among other things.
And the Los Angeles Times has the political front:
Veto showdown over Keystone escalates as House passes legislation
A veto showdown escalated Friday between President Obama and the new Republican-led Congress over the Keystone XL pipeline after a state court ruled in favor of the project and the House approved a bill advancing it.
The international pipeline is a cornerstone of the new GOP agenda in Congress. With Friday’s developments, Republicans all but taunted the president to quit standing in the way of the project and allow it to be approved.
“President Obama is now out of excuses for blocking the Keystone pipeline,” said Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio.) “It’s time to start building.”
“Hallelujah!” said Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), reading about the court’s decision before the House vote. “We’ve got good news for the president.”
Another fossil fuel alarm sounds, via the Japan Times:
Vast fossil fuel reserves ‘must be left in the ground’: study
A third of the world’s oil reserves, half of gas reserves and 80 percent of current coal reserves should not be used in the coming decades if global warming is to stay below an agreed 2 degrees Celsius target, scientists said Wednesday.
In a study published in the journal Nature, researchers said the vast majority of coal reserves in China, Russia and the United States should stay in the ground, as well as more than 260,000 million barrels of oil reserves in the Middle East, equivalent to all of Saudi Arabia’s oil reserves.
The Middle East should also leave more than 60 percent of its gas reserves in the ground, the study found.
“Policymakers must realize that their instincts to completely use the fossil fuels within their countries are wholly incompatible with their commitments to the 2 degrees C goal,” said Christophe McGlade, who led the study at University College London’s Institute for Sustainable Resources.
From SciDev.Net, alarm sounds over Nicaraguan canal plans:
Canal could turn Lake Nicaragua into ‘dead zone’
Dredging could disturb sediments containing contaminants and organic matter
This may reduce water quality and oxygen levels, killing fish and creating a ‘dead zone’
The government has been urged to reroute the canal to the north of the lake
The Interoceanic Canal that will run through Lake Nicaragua could kill life in the vast lake and have other serious effects on the country’s environment and economy unless safeguards are put in place, an independent international panel of experts has warned.
Scientists from the InterAmerican Network of Academies of Science joined biodiversity, engineering and hydrology experts from the Nicaraguan Academy of Sciences (CAN) and the International Council for Science (ICSU) to warn that the project must minimise “unintended adverse consequences” that could do economic, environmental and social harm.
Because of a lack of publicly available information from the Nicaraguan government and HKND, the Chinese firm building the canal, the panel sought to identify “the main technical and scientific questions” in order to “contribute to a public and transparent debate”, Jorge Huete-Pérez, CAN vice-president, tells SciDev.Net.
Renewed debate over threats to coral reefs, via Science:
Looming coral reef disaster? Scientists divided
Marine biologists are keeping a watchful eye on coral reefs stressed by rising temperatures in the western Pacific—and debating the signals. “The signs are still there that we may see the third global-scale bleaching event in 2015,” says C. Mark Eakin, a coral reef ecologist in charge of the Coral Reef Watch, a service of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), in College Park, Maryland. Others say the prognostication is premature. “I just don’t think we know at this stage,” says David Wachenfeld, director of reef recovery for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in Townsville, Australia.
The debate centers on how much to trust a computer model and how to assess the variability of local weather. There is a wild card as well: the episodic climatic event known as El Niño, which dramatically warms Pacific waters but affects weather worldwide. One point all reef scientists agree on is that rising seawater temperatures due to climate change make the survival of coral reefs increasingly precarious.
Corals harbor colorful symbiotic algae called zooxanthellae, which use photosynthesis to produce nutrients for themselves and their hosts. When the water gets too hot the corals expel the zooxanthellae and turn white, or bleach. If the water cools soon enough, the algae return. But prolonged bleaching can be lethal.
From Environment News Service, World Bank pushes easing of environmental safeguards:
U.S. Congress Blocks World Bank Move to Slash Safeguards
Environmental and social justice groups in the United States and around the world are applauding a provision of the 2015 Omnibus Appropriations Act, passed by the U.S. Congress just before the Christmas recess. The measure requires the U.S. Treasury Department to oppose any World Bank policy that provides less protection for the environment or for human rights than the bank’s current safeguards.
For months, the groups, some members of Congress and even another multilateral bank have criticized the World Bank’s July 2014 proposal known as the Environmental and Social Safeguards Framework and the Safeguards Review Process by which it was developed.
Critics say the proposed policy would weaken the World Bank’s longstanding environmental and social protections from harm caused by Bank-funded projects and allow governments to opt out of safeguarding affected indigenous peoples.
From Al Jazeera English, a trip aboard India’s cancer train:
On the ‘Cancer Train’ of India’s pesticides
Rural cancer patients cram train for city medical treatment of illnesses many link to the use of pesticides in farming
As the digital clock beamed 21:00, the shabby and dimly lit Bathinda train station came to life as frail patients swarmed the platform and jostled for seats on the “Cancer Train”.
Ramkishan, a man of about 50 breathing heavily and coughing, remained seated until the rush died down, then trudged to the train and secured his reserved window seat.
“I am going to Bikaner hospital,” he told Al Jazeera breathlessly. “I have been told I am in the final stages of cancer. I know this could be my final journey, too.”
The 12-coach train has gained its name from a sudden surge in cancer cases in India’s northwest Punjab state that many blame on growing pollution and pesticide use – and an ineffective response by authorities.
Want China Times covers an illegal logging ring busted in Myanmar:
Myanmar arrests 102 Chinese loggers
Over 100 Chinese nationals have reportedly been arrested by the army of Myanmar for unauthorized logging and the smuggling of local resources, reported China’s state-owned Global Times on Jan. 8.
The operation is believed to have taken place in early January. A total of 102 foreign nationals believed to be Chinese and 20 locals have been caught, along with more than 470 vehicles of all sorts carrying timbers and hoists.
Six packets of opium, a large quantity of ephedrine and 12,000 yuan (US$1,930) were also found at camp sites in the logging area, in addition to a logging permit signed by a Kachin Independence Army official, said the report.
The Kachin Independence Army is a rebel militia fighting for autonomy for the northern Kachin region within Myanmar.
On to Fukushimapocalypse Now! and a push for shelters near reactor complexes, via NHK WORLD:
More shelter sites planned near nuclear plants
The Japanese government plans to create shelter facilities in wider areas around nuclear plants. These will be mainly for the infirmed and elderly in preparation for possible nuclear accidents.
During the nuclear disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in 2011, many inpatients and elderly people died after they were evacuated from hospitals or nursing homes. Evacuation proved too strenuous and their health deteriorated.
Guidelines were established after the accident for hospitals and nursing homes to upgrade building equipment. This would enable the elderly and infirmed to remain there during nuclear emergencies.
And to close, TEPCO makes a gesture, via NHK WORLD:
TEPCO to provide more support for renewable energy
Tokyo Electric Power Company says it will support Fukushima Prefecture’s plan to promote renewable energy as a pillar of reconstruction from the 2011 disaster and nuclear accident.
TEPCO President Naomi Hirose met economy minister Yoichi Miyazawa on Friday. Hirose said his utility will make efforts to fulfill its responsibility as the company that caused the accident.
Hirose said the utility will renovate a seldom-used transformer substation near the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant so it can buy electricity generated from renewable energy sources in the prefecture.
