LONDON (AP) — Britain, the United States and Canada accused Russia on Thursday of trying to steal information from researchers seeking a COVID-19 vaccine.
The escalating crisis in Texas shows how the chronic underfunding of public health has put America on track for the worst coronavirus response in the developed world.
President Donald Trump at a Monday news conference on the Covid-19 pandemic. Doug Mills / The New York Times
nytimes.com - by Sheri Fink - March 17, 2020
Sweeping new federal recommendations announced on Monday for Americans to sharply limit their activities appeared to draw on a dire scientific report warning that, without action by the government and individuals to slow the spread of coronavirus and suppress new cases, 2.2 million people in the United States could die.
To curb the epidemic, there would need to be dramatic restrictions on work, school and social gatherings for periods of time until a vaccine was available, which could take 18 months, according to the report, compiled by British researchers. They cautioned that such steps carried enormous costs that could also affect people’s health, but concluded they were “the only viable strategy at the current time.”
A manatee swims in blue-green algae, which has invaded Florida's waterways and put freshwater species at risk. PHOTOGRAPH BY PAUL NICKLEN, NAT GEO IMAGE COLLECTION
nationalgeographic.com - by Stefan Lovgren - August 8, 2019
SOME HAVE SURVIVED for hundreds of millions of years, but many of the world’s freshwater megafauna—including sumo-sized stingrays, colossal catfish, giant turtles, and gargantuan salamanders—may soon find themselves on the brink of extinction, according to a new study published.
For the first time, researchers have quantified the global decline of freshwater megafauna—including fish, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals—and the results paint a grim picture. In four decades since 1970, the global populations of these freshwater giants have declined by almost 90 percent—twice as much as the loss of vertebrate populations on land or in the oceans.
Richard Oswald stands in a frozen puddle surrounded by unharvested corn. Wet conditions have made harvesting difficult for Oswald and other farmers. Photograph: Amy Kontras for the Guardian
The changes have become more radical’: farmers are spending more time and money trying to grow crops in new climates
theguardian.com - by Chris McGreal - December 12, 2018
. . . Climate change is likely to make it harder to grow crops, and to make those that do grow more vulnerable to diseases and pests because of rising humidity. The report said heat and diminishing air quality will take its toll on livestock. Farmers will collectively have to spend billions of dollars to adapt. The effects are already seen from prolonged drought in Kansas and torrential rains in Iowa.
"There cannot be a healthy, happy and prosperous future for people" without biodiversity, the report warns.
nbcnews.com - by Rachel Elbaum - October 30, 2018
The population of the planet's vertebrates has dropped an average of 60 percent since 1970, according to a report by the WWF conservation organization.
The most striking decline in vertebrate population was in the tropics in South and Central America, with an 89 percent loss compared to 1970. Freshwater species have also significantly fallen — down 83 percent in that period.
The Living Planet Index, provided by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and included in the WWF Living Planet 2018 report, tracked the population of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians around the world between 1970 and 2014, the latest year for which data was available.
Is chronic wasting disease in deer making the jump to humans?
medpagetoday.com - by MedPage Today Staff - July 10, 2017
Cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the fatal prion disease that's closely related to "mad cow" disease, have risen in Wisconsin and nationally in recent years, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
In Wisconsin, there were six cases in 2002, but in two of the last four years, 13 cases have been reported -- which could be attributed to better surveillance, local officials said. Yet the increase tracks with data on chronic wasting disease among deer in the state, raising concerns about whether the illness is jumping from animals to humans.
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