Month: January 2015

The African Union plans to launch an Ebola fund and disease control centre, officials said Wednesday, as aid agency Oxfam warned leaders needed to keep their promises to boost healthcare systems on the continent. Oxfam called for a "massive post-Ebola Marshall Plan", referring to the United States aid package to rebuild Europe after World War II. "This disaster might have been avoided if African governments had made free public health care and spent more on their health systems, under the commitment they made 14 years ago in the Abuja Declaration," Oxfam said in a statement. "It's clear that Africa's existing architecture for early disease detection, response and control is wholly inadequate," the aid agency added.

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Six Bulgarians working with the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) were detained by Sudanese rebels after their helicopter made an emergency landing in Sudan’s war-torn South Kordofan province, the Bulgarian foreign ministry said. The three-member crew of the helicopter and three officers of Sofia-based Heli Air, the carrier that operated it, were being detained, a ministry spokeswoman told Reuters on Wednesday. The flight was scheduled from South Sudan to Khartoum. Fighting between the government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), which the ministry said was holding the Bulgarians, has increased in South Kordofan and Blue Nile provinces since peace talks collapsed in December.
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HMR was compared to 34 other diets in such categories as easiness to follow, ability to result in short- and- long-term weight loss, nutritional …
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China has appointed Chen Jining, the president of Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University, as party chief of its environment ministry, since the controversial current incumbent is retiring, the ministry said on its website on Wednesday. Chen, 51, an environmental specialist and a member of the National Environmental Advisory Commission with no previous government experience, replaces environment minister Zhou Shengxian. Zhou’s decade as China’s top environment official has coincided with the massive degradation of the nation’s environment, with surging industrial and energy output putting huge pressure on air, rivers and soil. Zhou replaced Xie Zhenhua, who resigned after a benzene plant explosion contaminated the water supplies of several million people in northeast China.
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By Barbara Lewis BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union president Latvia will push ahead with a law to clamp down on air pollution after the European Commission’s plan to withdraw the proposals was rejected by many lawmakers. Air pollution from traffic and industry is responsible for about 400,000 premature deaths per year in the European Union, according to Commission data. An angry backlash from some member states and many in the European Parliament forced the issue back onto the agenda. “We are glad the Commission has decided to keep the NEC (National Emissions Ceiling) directive on the table,” said Alda Ozola, a deputy state secretary in the environment ministry of Latvia, which holds the rotating EU presidency until end-June.
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A doctor in Saudi Arabia was astounded to find cartoon icon “SpongeBob SquarePants” in a child’s x-ray.
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