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Anthrax kills 83 hippos in Ugandan national park

EU Times — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 10:20:40 +0000

Queen Elizabeth National Park is one of Uganda's most popular safari destinations.

Anthrax has killed at least 83 hippopotamuses in a popular Ugandan game park that saw a similar outbreak six years ago, an official said.

Tom Okello, area conservation manager at Queen Elizabeth National Park in south-west Uganda, says 83 hippos are dead.

The park, one of Uganda’s most popular safari destinations, was hit by anthrax poisoning in 2004 when more than 300 hippos died from exposure to the lethal spore-forming bacteria.

Mr Okello was alerted to the current outbreak in June, when 10 of the hulking semi-aquatic animals were found dead over one half-day period.

While the death toll continues to rise, Mr Okello says his staff have learnt from the 2004 experience and are close to containing the problem.

“We really have improved,” he said. “The situation is under control.”

The anthrax poison emanates from bacteria that live in soil that surrounds a small lake in the Queen Elizabeth park.

It can be contracted by wildlife through open wounds and flesh-eating vultures and big cats in the park can also spread the illness.

Mr Okello says the poison has stayed well clear of areas visited by tourists.

Source

Toxic smoke from wildfires returns to Moscow

EU Times — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 21:50:22 +0000

A couple embrace, with buildings shrouded in smog in the background, in central Moscow, August 15, 2010.

Acrid smoke from forest and peat bog fires which blanketed Moscow until early last week returned to the Russian capital Sunday as wildfires are still burning around the city.

The concentration of carbon monoxide in Moscow air on Sunday morning was more than five times higher than the usual level as shifting winds brought the suffocating smog back from central Russia where three major peat bogs were burning, local media reported, citing officials.

City authorities once again called on residents to close windows and wear respiratory masks due to the return of the poisonous smog, which has been blamed for the mortality rate rise in Moscow.

Tens of thousands of Muscovites were forced to leave the city, while others complained about headaches and nausea. Health experts say even healthy people may feel sick in these unfriendly conditions.

The Civil Defense Ministry said Sunday that across Russia there were now 498 out-of-control fires covering an area of 53,000 hectares of land, down from over 80,000 hectares on Friday.

But blazes still rage in a wildlife reserve near Russia’s top nuclear research facilities in Sarov, a small town 300 km east of Moscow, officials warned.

“The fire threatens Sarov as long as the Mordovsky (wildlife reserve) is burning,” said Sergei Kiriyenko, head of Russian state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom.

However, 3,000 firefighters operating in Sarov made sure that the peril is no longer critical, he was cited by RIA Novosti news agency as saying.

A week ago, amid abnormal high temperatures toxic smoke crept into every corner of Moscow, even underground into the metro, forcing Muscovites to flee en masse.

On Aug. 9, a statement published on the Meteonovosti weather forecast website said “people who suffer from heart or lung problems, diabetes, thyroid gland conditions or metabolic disease are dealing with (the ecological situation) extremely hard due to lack of oxygen in the air.”

A record number of more than 100,000 passengers have departed Moscow in one day, local media reported on Aug. 9, adding that the mortality rate in Russia’s capital has doubled with the record-breaking heat and toxic smoke smothering the city.

“In common days, some 360 to 380 people die daily. Now, the number of deaths has increased to about 700. The mortality rate has doubled,” Andrei Seltsovsky, head of the city’s Health Protection Department, was quoted by RIA Novosti news agency as saying.

Amid the worst heatwave in 1,000 years of its recorded history, Russia has been battling the wildfires over the past month, which had killed over 50 people and left thousands homeless.

The unprecedented high summer temperatures have also destroyed at least 10 million hectares of crops, or 20 percent of Russia’s cultivated land in total, leading to a ban on its grain export until the end of the year.

Source

South Asian ‘superbug’ spreads to Australia

EU Times — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 06:58:01 +0000

Australian experts say 3 locally discovered "superbug" cases might be just the "tip of the iceberg"

Indian doctors warned earlier this year about the threat from a new multi-drug resistant “superbug” — months before a British study that New Delhi has condemned for scaremongering.

A team of researchers from a leading private hospital in Mumbai came to similar conclusions as the British study, which warned that foreigners coming to India for cut-price treatment could pick up NDM-1 and spread it worldwide.

India’s health ministry angrily dismissed the claim in the medical journal The Lancet as exaggerated and unfair, while some politicians saw it as a conspiracy designed to scupper the country’s booming health tourism industry.

But Indian researchers themselves had said in March that they found 22 incidences of “New Delhi metallo-lactamase-1″ producing bacteria in 24 infection cases between August and November last year.

“This high number in a relatively short span is a worrisome trend,” the team from the Hinduja hospital said in the Journal of the Association of Physicians of India.

Equally worrying is the fact that NDM-1-carrying bacteria are resistant even to carbapenems, a group of antibiotics often reserved as a last resort for emergency treatment for multi-drug resistant bugs.

“The growing incidence and also the diversity of carbapenemase-producing strains is therefore of major concern,” the researchers added, warning that the superbug “has the potential for further dissemination in the community”.

The Indian team said they did not know the exact prevalence of NDM-1 but added that its spread “may endanger patients undergoing major treatment at centres in India and this may have adverse implications for medical tourism”.

An Australian infectious diseases specialist on Friday said three people who had travelled to India for treatment had contracted the infection and the cases could be just the “tip of the iceberg”, amid concern about its global spread.

Dr K. Abdul Gharfur, a consultant on infectious diseases in the southern city of Chennai, has said that the Indian medical authorities are in denial about the extent of multi-drug resistant infections.

He told AFP on Friday that no country was immune to the problem but it was likely to be more acute in places like India because of a lack of effective controls on the prescription of antibiotics.

“This bacteria, NDM-1, is increasing. It’s true it’s spreading in India. I’m sure it exists in almost every major hospital in India. But we have limited data,” he said.

Few hospitals, including in the private sector, have specialist infection control departments and there was a general lack of awareness among doctors about the spread of drug-resistant infections, he added.

“The responsible authorities should only allow the use of antibiotics by qualified people” and proper monitoring of infections be carried out, as antibiotic-resistant infections are increasing, he said.

Source

Grim Warning On Fluoride Issued In Australia

EU Times — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:35:09 +0000

Is your water safe and healthy to drink? The truth finally hits the TV in Australia.

Oil found in Gulf crabs raises new food chain fears

EU Times — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 19:33:05 +0000

Workers clean oil and tar balls Wednesday from Biloxi Beach, Miss.

University scientists have spotted the first indications oil is entering the Gulf seafood chain — in crab larvae — and one expert warns the effect on fisheries could last “years, probably not a matter of months” and affect many species.

Scientists with the University of Southern Mississippi and Tulane University in New Orleans have found droplets of oil in the larvae of blue crabs and fiddler crabs sampled from Louisiana to Pensacola, Fla. The news comes as blobs of oil and tar continue to wash ashore in Mississippi in patches, with crews in chartreuse vests out cleaning beaches all along the coast on Thursday, and as state and federal fisheries from Louisiana to Florida are closed by the BP oil disaster.

“I think we will see this enter the food chain in a lot of ways — for plankton feeders, like menhaden, they are going to just actively take it in,” said Harriet Perry, director of the Center for Fisheries Research and Development at the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory. “Fish are going to feed on (crab larvae). We have also just started seeing it on the fins of small, larval fish — their fins were encased in oil. That limits their mobility, so that makes them easy prey for other species. The oil’s going to get into the food chain in a lot of ways.”

Perry said researchers have not yet linked the hydrocarbons found in the crab larvae to the BP disaster, but she has little doubt it’s the source. She said she has never seen such contamination in her 42 years of studying blue crab.

Richard Gollott is Mississippi’s Department of Marine Resources commissioner for the commercial seafood industry and a seafood processing-plant owner from a family that’s been in the business for generations. He said closure of Gulf fisheries “appears to have been the right thing to do.”

“We are taking a beating with this,” Gollott said. “But we would rather have our industry have a season closed down for a year or even two years rather than get a bad name. We have to take the long-term view. The worst thing in the world would be to take a short-term look at this and not be worried about the public, the consumers.”

Gollott said he is still hopeful Gulf seafood can make a quick recovery, in “months instead of years,” and be safe and plentiful. He said right now the only Gulf seafood he’s supplying is coming from Texas, where fisheries are still clear and open.

“You’ve got to be optimistic to be a fisherman,” Gollott said. “As quick as we can get our scientific facts and ducks in order, get FDA to check everything from Florida to Texas and make sure it’s OK, I think we will get our market share back. But that will take some marketing and some work.”

DMR Director Bill Walker said Thursday he was unaware of the USM–Tulane findings. He said DMR biologists continue to test the meat of shrimp and other edible species and have “not gotten any positive hits” for oil.

“But we are just testing the edible tissue, for public health,” Walker said. “The more-academic research is looking at other parts of these critters. Sometimes materials will concentrate in the more oily tissue, but not make its way to the edible tissue.”

Perry said the oil found in the crab larvae appears to be trapped between the hard outer shell and the inner skin. Perry said, “Shrimp, crab and oysters have a tough time with hydrocarbon metabolism.” She said fish that eat these smaller species can metabolize the oil, but their bodies also accumulate it with continued exposure and they can suffer reproductive problems “added to a long list of other problems.”

BP-contracted crews cleaned tar balls and patches from mainland beaches on Thursday. Walker said there are reports of oil or tar on or near all the barrier islands, although still in relatively small, isolated patches — “small in the sense of up to several hundred yards at a stretch,” Walker said.

Harrison County Emergency Manager Rupert Lacy said storms the last few days “shook (tar pieces) up, shifted them around,” but cleanup workers “are doing what they need to do,” and getting beaches cleaned.

“Until they can get that well capped off and they get those big skimmers out there and really get into the skimming operations, we’re going to see the remnants of this,” Lacy said. “This is not a sprint; it’s a marathon.”

Perry said scientists are having to learn as they go along with the BP oil disaster.

“We can go to literature and get information on other spills,” Perry said. “But this is not the same oil, this is not the same spill, this is not the same area and these are not the same species. Plus, the use of dispersant in the amounts they’ve used is totally unprecedented. So this is taking scientists a while to get up to speed and realize the enormity of it.”

As not only a marine scientist but a longtime Coast resident, Perry said the enormity of the disaster gets to her personally sometimes.

“I had a sort of breakdown last week,” Perry said. “I’ve driven down the same road on East Beach in Ocean Springs for 42 years. As I was going to work, I saw the shrimp fleet going out, all going to try to work on the oil, and I realized the utter futility of that, and I just lost it for a minute and had to gather myself.

“When you think about it all, how this has changed everybody’s life and how life here revolves around the water and the beach and the seafood — just even going to get a shrimp po-boy — it’s just overwhelming. I think a hurricane is easy compared to this.

“Let’s just hope and pray first that they get the well capped, then secondly that they keep it from getting inshore into our marshes.”

Source

U.S. government panel now pushing “vaccinations for all!” No exceptions

EU Times — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 16:21:35 +0000

An advisory panel to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has recommended that every person be vaccinated for the seasonal flu yearly, except in a few cases where the vaccine is known to be unsafe.

“Now no one should say ‘Should I or shouldn’t I?’” said CDC flu specialist Anthony Fiore.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 11-0 with one abstention to recommend yearly flu vaccination for everyone except for children under the age of six months, whose immune systems have not yet developed enough for vaccination to be safe, and people with egg allergies or other health conditions that are known to make flu vaccines hazardous. If accepted by the CDC, this recommendation will then be publicized to doctors and other health workers.

The CDC nearly always accepts the advisory committee’s recommendations.

Current CDC recommendations call for the yearly vaccination of all children over the age of six months, all adults over the age of 49, health care workers, people with chronic health problems and anyone who cares for a person in one of these groups. These recommendations cover 85 percent of the US population.

Excluded are adults between the ages of 19 and 49 who do not come into close contact with people in high-risk groups. The new recommendation, if adopted, would close that gap, bringing an end to a 10-year campaign by supporters of universal vaccination. In the past, the advisory committee has been reluctant to recommend universal vaccination for fear that it might produce vaccine shortages that place members of higher risk groups in danger. Yet even with current recommendations, only 33 percent of the public gets vaccinated every year, leaving millions of doses to be disposed of.

The H1N1 swine flu scare of the past year played a major role in the committee’s about face, both because the disease killed many people falling outside the current recommended vaccine demographic and because it raised public awareness of and demand for vaccines.

Source

Choosing healthy foods now called a mental disorder

EU Times — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 11:21:52 +0000

Eating junk foods keeps you dumbed down and easy to control

In its never-ending attempt to fabricate “mental disorders” out of every human activity, the psychiatric industry is now pushing the most ridiculous disease they’ve invented yet: Healthy eating disorder.

This is no joke: If you focus on eating healthy foods, you’re “mentally diseased” and probably need some sort of chemical treatment involving powerful psychotropic drugs. The Guardian newspaper reports, “Fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder” and goes on to claim this “disease” is called orthorexia nervosa — which is basically just Latin for “nervous about correct eating.”

But they can’t just called it “nervous healthy eating disorder” because that doesn’t sound like they know what they’re talking about. So they translate it into Latin where it sounds smart (even though it isn’t). That’s where most disease names come from: Doctors just describe the symptoms they see with a name like osteoporosis (which means “bones with holes in them”).

Getting back to this fabricated “orthorexia” disease, the Guardian goes on to report, “Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out.”

Wait a second. So attempting to avoid chemicals, dairy, soy and sugar now makes you a mental health patient? Yep. According to these experts. If you actually take special care to avoid pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified ingredients like soy and sugar, there’s something wrong with you.

But did you notice that eating junk food is assumed to be “normal?” If you eat processed junk foods laced with synthetic chemicals, that’s okay with them. The mental patients are the ones who choose organic, natural foods, apparently.

What is “normal” when it comes to foods?

I told you this was coming. Years ago, I warned NaturalNews readers that an attempt might soon be under way to outlaw broccoli because of its anti-cancer phytonutrients. This mental health assault on health-conscious consumers is part of that agenda. It’s an effort to marginalize healthy eaters by declaring them to be mentally unstable and therefore justify carting them off to mental institutions where they will be injected with psychiatric drugs and fed institutional food that’s all processed, dead and full of toxic chemicals.

The Guardian even goes to the ridiculous extreme of saying, “The obsession about which foods are “good” and which are “bad” means orthorexics can end up malnourished.”

Follow the non-logic on this, if you can: Eating “good” foods will cause malnutrition! Eating bad foods, I suppose, is assumed to provide all the nutrients you need. That’s about as crazy a statement on nutrition as I’ve ever read. No wonder people are so diseased today: The mainstream media is telling them that eating health food is a mental disorder that will cause malnutrition!

Shut up and swallow your Soylent Green

It’s just like I reported years ago: You’re not supposed to question your food, folks. Sit down, shut up, dig in and chow down. Stop thinking about what you’re eating and just do what you’re told by the mainstream media and its processed food advertisers. Questioning the health properties of your junk food is a mental disorder, didn’t you know? And if you “obsess” over foods (by doing such things as reading the ingredients labels, for example), then you’re weird. Maybe even sick.

That’s the message they’re broadcasting now. Junk food eaters are “normal” and “sane” and “nourished.” But health food eaters are diseased, abnormal and malnourished.

But why, you ask, would they attack healthy eaters? People like Dr. Gabriel Cousens can tell you why: Because increased mental and spiritual awareness is only possible while on a diet of living, natural foods.

Eating junk foods keeps you dumbed down and easy to control, you see. It literally messes with your mind, numbing your senses with MSG, aspartame and yeast extract. People who subsist on junk foods are docile and quickly lose the ability to think for themselves. They go along with whatever they’re told by the TV or those in apparent positions of authority, never questioning their actions or what’s really happening in the world around them.

In contrast to that, people who eat health-enhancing natural foods — with all the medicinal nutrients still intact — begin to awaken their minds and spirits. Over time, they begin to question the reality around them and they pursue more enlightened explorations of topics like community, nature, ethics, philosophy and the big picture of things that are happening in the world. They become “aware” and can start to see the very fabric of the Matrix, so to speak.

This, of course, is a huge danger to those who run our consumption-based society because consumption depends on ignorance combined with suggestibility. For people to keep blindly buying foods, medicines, health insurance and consumer goods, they need to have their higher brain functions switched off. Processed junk foods laced with toxic chemicals just happens to achieve that rather nicely. Why do you think dead, processed foods remain the default meals in public schools, hospitals and prisons? It’s because dead foods turn off higher levels of awareness and keep people focused on whatever distractions you can feed their brains: Television, violence, fear, sports, sex and so on.

But living as a zombie is, in one way quite “normal” in society today because so many people are doing it. But that doesn’t make it normal in my book: The real “normal” is an empowered, healthy, awakened person nourished with living foods and operating as a sovereign citizen in a free world. Eating living foods is like taking the red pill because over time it opens up a whole new perspective on the fabric of reality. It sets you free to think for yourself.

But eating processed junk foods is like taking the blue pill because it keeps you trapped in a fabricated reality where your life experiences are fabricated by consumer product companies who hijack your senses with designer chemicals (like MSG) that fool your brain into thinking you’re eating real food.

If you want to be alive, aware and in control of your own life, eat more healthy living foods. But don’t expect to be popular with mainstream mental health “experts” or dieticians — they’re all being programmed to consider you to be “crazy” because you don’t follow their mainstream diets of dead foods laced with synthetic chemicals.

But you and I know the truth here: We are the normal ones. The junk food eaters are the real mental patients, and the only way to wake them up to the real world is to start feeding them living foods.

Some people are ready to take the red pill, and others aren’t. All you can do is show them the door. They must open it themselves.

In the mean time, try to avoid the mental health agents who are trying to label you as having a mental disorder just because you pay attention to what you put in your body. There’s nothing wrong with avoiding sugar, soy, MSG, aspartame, HFCS and other toxic chemicals in the food supply. In fact, your very life depends on it.

Oh, and by the way, if you want to join the health experts who keep inventing new fictitious diseases and disorders, check out my popular Disease Mongering Engine web page where you can invent your own new diseases at the click of a button! You’ll find it at: http://www.naturalnews.com/disease-mongering-engine.asp

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Grim Warning On Fluoride Issued In Australia

CDC issues warning to avoid Gulf oil spill, contains some of the most toxic chemicals that we know

EU Times — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 21:29:53 +0000

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, working with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has issued health warnings…

While they suggest there is no threat, the CDC simultaneously advised “everyone, including pregnant women” to avoid spill-affected areas. …

Shira Kramer, an epidemiologist who has conducted research for the petroleum industry on the health consequences of exposure to petroleum, said she is concerned that the risks are being downplayed.

“It’s completely scientifically dishonest to pooh-pooh the potential here when you are talking about some of the most toxic chemicals that we know,” said Kramer, who is founder and president of consulting firm Epidemiology International in Hunt Valley, Maryland. She isn’t involved with the Institute panels.

“When you talk about community exposure, you are talking about exposures in unpredictable ways and to subpopulations that may be more highly susceptible than others, such as those of reproductive age, people who are immuno-compromised, children or fetuses. …

“[W]e have a soup of chemicals from the crude, chemicals from the dispersants and pollutants that were already in the water. Who can say how they will interact?”

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-22/health-data-gaps-bp-suspicions-worry-u-s-panelists.html

From the CDC’s website:
People, including pregnant women, can be exposed to these chemicals by breathing them (air), by swallowing them (water, food), or by touching them (skin). If possible, everyone, including pregnant women, should avoid the oil and spill-affected areas.

Young white mother obsessed with tanning, faces death due to skin cancer

EU Times — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 19:15:56 +0000

'Tanorexic': Mrs Cobb with, from left, Alfie, Jack, Harry and Archie

She once used sunbeds up to five times a week because she thought her tan ‘made her look healthy’.

But Joanne Cobb’s obsession with having a golden glow has left her facing a possible death sentence.

She has found herself battling nodular melanoma, an aggressive form of skin cancer, and has had to accept that her four young boys could be left without a mother.

The disease spread through her blood into her groin and pelvis and she had to have glands all over her body removed.

Doctors have given her the all-clear for now but say there is a 50 per cent chance the disease will return within five years – and if it does, it will be fatal.

‘I feel like I am living on borrowed time,’ said Mrs Cobb, 28. ‘I worry all the time about what will happen if I die. Missing out on my boys growing up is the thing that devastates me most.

‘The thought of them being left without a mother makes me cry.’

Mrs Cobb, a mother to Jack, ten, Harry, three, and twins Alfie and Archie, 21 months, said she was ‘indescribably angry’ with herself for being what she calls a tanorexic.

Possible death sentence: Mrs Cobb has had to accept that her four young boys could be left without a mother

I just wish I could turn back the clock,’ she said. ‘If I hadn’t ignored the risks I would never have found myself in this position.

‘I try not to think about it, but the reality is that my life will be a lot shorter thanks to skin cancer.’

Mrs Cobb, from Gravesend, Kent, was 15 when she first went on a sunbed and she soon became addicted to having a tan.

Between the ages of 21 and 23, she used sunbeds five times a week. On holidays abroad she would spend hours in the sun with little skin protection.

‘I would definitely describe myself as tanorexic,’ she said. ‘It reached the point where I would feel panicked every time my tan started to fade.’ Days after her wedding to Andrew, 33, in July 2009, she discovered a mole on her leg was a malignant melanoma.

‘I immediately made the connection between the condition and all those years I had spent in the sun,’ she said.

‘I vowed there and then never to go on a sunbed again.’

In April this year Mrs Cobb was told the cancer had spread and she had lymph nodes removed. If the cancer returns, doctors say there will be nothing they can do.

Her husband, who is a restaurant manager, said: ‘I try to stay positive and hope.’

Caroline Cerny, from Cancer Research UK, said: ‘Every time you use a sunbed you damage the DNA in your skin, increasing your risk of developing skin cancer and speeding up the ageing process.’

Source

2-year-old Indonesian Child Smokes 40 Cigarettes Per Day

EU Times — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 21:29:30 +0000

JAKARTA, Indonesia – where is the earthly habitats heading to? We have read about child-kidnapping and child-trafficking but 2-year-old smoker. No! Shocking report of 2-year-Old Sumatran kid Ardi Rizal’s an addicted Child-smoker goes berserk if he can’t light up in Southeast Asia nation, Indonesia is the latest shocknig strange trend in the world today.
According to sources following a bizarre twist and never heard of before, reports making international airwaves about cigarette-addicted-toddler puffing-away more than 40 cigarettes per day is unprecedented.
Reports surfaced on Wednesday, spreading to online social networks on 2-year-old addicted toddler is the latest development.
Some commentators are outraged, “the father is an idiot”, another added, “His parents should be jailed …”
In the United States Republicreport gathered that top anti-smoking group hours ago called on the Indonesia government to give the parents of the addicted-smoking 2-year-Old toddler a lesson of their life, including have them go through therapy program/s.
“It’s clear the parents of this kid understand the risk smoking poses to their child” remarked Matthew Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids in Washington D.C.
Philips Morris tobacco multilateral corporation having paid some millions of dollars here in the U.S. have diverted industry’s Tobacco shipments to third world countries like Indonesia and other developing countries that are ubiquitously under-educated or illiterates. According to reports, his father gave him [Arid] his first smoke when he was 18-months old.
Within the intellectual circle and anti-smoking think-tank group reports concluded that, “This reflects a pervasive problems in many low-income countries where tobacco companies market their products to an uneducated public” added Myers.
The father seems to have adjusted to his addicted-baby’s smoking ways.
“I’m not worried about his health, he looks healthy”, the boy’s father Mohammad Rizal was reported saying. According to our sources the father said, “He cries and throws tantrums when we don’t let him smoke. He’s addicted”.
This is indeed a disturbing trend reports say. According to our source, about 25 percent of Indonesian children ages 3-to-15 have tried tobacco-smoking, “with 3.2 percent of those active smokers”.
According to reports generated from United Nations [UN] World Health Organization, anybody can buy cigarettes in Southeast Asia-Nation, Indonesia. WHO said Southeast Asia country, Indonesia refused to ratify [non-poliferation of tobacco-marketing around the world] the World Health Organization’s treaty on Tobacco, leaving its population vulnerable to unregulated marketing of tobacco-products by tobacco-companies like Philip Morris, avoiding regulatory oversight and compliance.
Impeccable sources told RR that the percentage of 5-to-9-year olds smokers has gone up, increasing from 0.4 percent in 2001 to 2.8 percent in 2004 anti-smoking-Watch-Dogs reported.
RR learned that irrespective of Indonesia’s failure to ratify World Health Organization’s Treaty on Tobacco, anti-smoking advocates are speaking out about the danger and health-hazards that children face from secondhand smoking, there is massive growing peer-pressure on these children to pick up smoking habits seeing it as fashionable especially in a Southeast Asia country where reports say one-third of the population uses tobacco and single cigarettes racketeering are bought at cheap prices.
Reports coming out from Southeast Asia nation said that Chairman of Indonesia’s child protection commission, Seto Mulyadi is blaming advertising agencies not government. Government hip blames at aggressive advertising and parents who are smokers.
“A law to protect children and passive smokers should be introduced immediately in this country”, he added.
Indonesia passed a health law in 2009 and formally recognizes that smoking is dangerously addictive. Sources told RR that anti-smoking coalition is aggressively pressuring government for stricter and tighter anti-smoking regulations in public places, including penalizing and banning advertising companies and big tobacco corporations with non-ubiquitous-health Warnings on cigarette packages on bill-boards.
But a bill on tobacco control has been stalled because of opposition from the tobacco industry. The bill would ban cigarette advertising and sponsorship, prohibit smoking in public, and add graphic images to packaging.
Philip Morris and other Tobacco companies have always marketed its products to anybody who can afford it, whether he/she is a toddler or adults it doesn’t matter to these big-corporations, what matters to them is chasing big bucks, experts remarked.
Source told RR that Benny Wahyudi, a senior official at the Industry Ministry, was quoted saying, “government had initiated a plan to try to limit the number of smokers, including dropping production to 240 billion cigarettes this year, from 245 billion in 2009”.
“The government is aware of the impact of smoking on health and has taken efforts, including lowering cigarette production, increasing its tax and limiting smoking areas”.
RR learned that ubiquitous advertising hit a bump last month following a tobacco company was forced to withdraw its sponsorship of so-called pop star Kelly Clarkson’s concert following aggressive demonstrations from fans, friends and families of anti-tobacco groups.
According to Jakarta Globe reports, “The promotion of health has to be integrated down to the smallest units in our society, from public health centers and local health care centers to the family” was quoted on Friday.
There are though some admissions from the government quarters regarding the way forward addressing child-smoking problems.
The Southeast Asia country’s Health Minister Endang Sedyaningsih conceded stopping young people from puffing up and lighting on will be a challenge to tackle in Indonesia where it is generally perceived as positive habit because cigarette companies sponsor everything from scholarships to sporting events.

“This is the challenge we face in protecting youth from the dangers of smoking” Madam Minister added in a government statement on the ministry’s website.
Tobacco-corporations use enticement, sponsorship to destroy developing countries, prompting an American anti-smoking group to call upon the Indonesian government to take urgent action.
“It’s clear the parents of this baby don’t understand the risk smoking poses to their child” the New York Daily News quoted Matthew Myers of the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids in Washington, D.C.
According to reports Ardi, is from a poor neighborhood in fishing village of Musi Banyuasin, in Indonesia’s South Sumatra, he was misled & initiated by his illiterate father to smoking.
Even his mother, Diana, allowed this to happen leaving Arid father to give his toddler a cigarette, raising children some say takes mother and father and a whole village, but in a society where there is total desensitization of outrage on the dangers of cigarette because of sponsorships and funding from Tobacco industries, these are the fallouts, including Arid’s addiction case. .
Even the mother seems confused and doesn’t know what to do, “He’s totally addicted.
“If he doesn’t get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall. He tells me he feels dizzy and sick”.
Myers added, “I was horrified but not surprised” the president of the Washington, D.C.-based Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids said in a statement. “This video demonstrates how truly tragic the global use of tobacco”.

Reports say kid smoking is not new in Indonesia and majority of third world countries, despite face-saving approach by village officials who have been receiving and living off-of Tobacco-multi-national Corporation.
Reports say village officials from the Indonesian village where the boy hails from reportedly offered to buy the parents a brand new car if they forced the boy to quit, but reports say the father turned down the offer.
Maybe the father wants to make a different statement about inconsequentiality of anti-smoking laws in Indonesia at the expense of his toddler with Tobacco multinationals doing what they do best, taking advantage of uninformed illiterate society and populations. Illiteracy is indeed a disease.

3-year-old Chinese girl Ya Wen is Addicted to Cigarettes & Beer After Van Smash

EU Times — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 10:19:19 +0000

Chinese 3-year-Old Ya Wen Is Addicted To Cigarettes & Beer After Van Smash

New York [RR] Beijing—the shocking Indonesia addicted Kid smoker is not alone these days. China has Ya Wen addicted kid smoker as a competitor. Reports say that she “puts yet another cigarette to her lips and takes a long, hard drag – at just three years old”.

Chinese addicted Kid smoker’s Ya Wen, was reported knocked down by a speeding van and suffered serious head injuries and her world changed RR learned. 3-year-old Ya-Wen’s parents say she is addicted to cigarettes, beer and even prefer dressing like a boy sources told Republicreport.

RR reported the shocking Indonesia 2-year-old Ardi Rizal an addicted smoker who calling to his parents throw tantrums if he can’t light-up record-breaking 40 cigarettes a day. Credible reports say Ardi has cut-down to 15-cigarettes a day after our report a week ago.

“He’s totally addicted”, Ardi’s mother, Diana, 26, was quoted saying last week. “If he doesn’t get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall. He tells me he feels dizzy and sick”.

Our source says the Chinese Ya Wen’s mother Mum Gao Ya Man, make a living trading materials rummaged from garbage-dump in Huizhou, China was quoted saying, “The first time I found her smoking was in the toilet. She also likes drinking. Three glasses of beer is no problem for her”.

Credible reports say the doctor at Huizhou hospital where Ya Wen was treated was quoted as saying, “People can undergo changes to their personalities if they suffer brain injuries”.

The Chinese toddler has nothing to do with Indonesian toddler Ardi simply coincident of two addicted kids. But Gao Wen said her daughter’s personality changed dramatically after he got hit by speeding van; she started acting like an adult shorting after leaving the hospital reports say.

3-year-old Ya-Wen was busted hiding in the toilet smoking her father’s cigarettes sources told RR. Then she began putting her fingers on cigarettes stores—literally stealing them—to a point the owner let her have them on credit, thinking that she was buying them for her father—who is also a smoker.

“The first time I found her smoking was in the toilet” her mother told reporters. “Before that, I often saw cigarette butts in the toilet but thought they were my husband’s until I saw my daughter smoking there”.

Sources told Republicreport that the store owner said that he assumed that 3-year-old addicted smoker was buying for butts for Dear Old Dad, stating that the child would take up to two packs away at a time. 3-year-old Ya-Wen lives with her parents in a shelter in Huizhou, China, where they collect and trade garbage for money.

The good News is that unlike the Indonesia parents who seem undaunted about their 2-year-old addicted smoker, Ya Wen’s father gave up smoking to set a good example for his child even though the daughter still cries for cigarettes daily.

The world is changing rapidly given time and space, with these shocking developments on your face, experts say, “The challenging and difficult times are ahead of us… at the end of the day the buck stops with intelligent parenting, alleviating impoverished developing countries and enlightenment through educational tools”.

Another commentator added: “We live in an interesting time” says a Chinese adage.

Source and Source 2

US tests bio weapons on citizens

EU Times — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 21:24:49 +0000

The United States is using its citizens as guinea pigs to test biological weapons and simulate germ warfare attacks in different locations across the country, reports say.

With the spread of some unknown diseases in the US, speculations started soaring that Washington is engaged in covert biological warfare activities which involve the use of chemical and biological weapons against human beings.

According to Dr. Hanley Watson, a former military scientist, the US Army, “from 1950 to at least mid-1976″ conducted “numerous experiments simulating biological or germ warfare attacks in dozens of locations across the country.”

“Previously these experiments were downplayed by the Pentagon as ‘harmless tests’ occurring in about 8 areas in the US and employing benign substances, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.”

In 1976 the Pentagon revealed in a press conference that the US army had conducted a series of “simulated germ warfare attacks, using non-disease [sic] causing biological substances in 8 areas of the US.”

The biological tests included a 1950 operation off the coast of San Francisco; a 1966 biological warfare experiment in Manhattan in which “the vulnerability of the New York subway system was tested”; and at least three tests conducted in Pennsylvania, Fort McClellan, Alabama, and California with “fungal substances” to “perform field evaluations to determine vulnerability to enemy biological attack.”

Reports in mid-1970s widely indicated that at least one person was perished in the San Francisco biological test.

Moreover, the 1952 Alabama experiments caused a hike in the spread of pneumonia cases in the surrounding neighborhoods.

However, the US army remained defiant, arguing that no clue had been found relating the experiments to the spread of infectious diseases or deaths.

“There is nothing we have that shows any links between these tests and any outbreak of infection or any deaths.”

According to Watson “The experiments conducted from the early 1950s through 1976 were many more in number than officially stated, and they were conducted in many more locations than the reported eight.”

“In the 1950s and 1960s alone there were easily about two dozen experiments conducted in the New England area,” added Watson.

Fat people can get Alzheimer and dementia

EU Times — Thu, 27 May 2010 20:44:24 +0000

Got a pot belly? The risk of dementia and Alzheimer's is higher, say scientists

Having a ‘pot belly’ in middle age raises the risk of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia in later life, warn researchers.

A new study shows people with large stomachs by the time they reach their 50s are significantly more likely to have smaller brains.

Those with the biggest girths had a lower total area of brain tissue than those who kept a waistline, giving them a greater chance of developing dementia.

U.S. scientists measured abdominal obesity in 733 people aged 60 on average and compared them to brain volume on CT scans.

Those with the highest amount of waistline fat had smaller brains than those with the lowest amount.

‘Our data suggests a stronger connection between central obesity . . . and risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease,’ said Sudha Seshadri, from Boston University School of Medicine, leader of the study published in the journal Annals of Neurology.

Dr Susanne Sorensen, of the Alzheimer’s Society, said ‘We have all heard a beer belly can be bad for our heart but this study suggests excess abdominal weight could also increase your risk of getting dementia.’

Abdominal fat is recognised as the most dangerous, hidden type of fat, which is more dangerous than fat on the hips.

This additional fat is packed around the organs in the abdomen and is more ‘metabolically active’, releasing more of the acids that raise heart disease risk, along with factors that increase blood pressure and blood sugar.

Other research has already linked obesity to vascular diseases which play a role in dementia, partly through hardening of the arteries.

The study published today does not detail the healthiest level of waist circumference.

But today, as a rough guide, doctors recommend men have a girth no bigger than 40 inches and women should stick around 35 inches.

Study leader Sudha Seshadri, from Boston University School of Medicine, said it was a disturbing finding given that millions suffer from dementia.

Dr Seshadri said the results confirmed that increasing obesity was linked with lower brain volumes in older and younger, middle-aged adults.

‘More importantly our data suggests a stronger connection between central obesity, particularly the visceral fat component of abdominal obesity, and risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease’ added Dr Seshadri.

Previous research involving autopsies have shown that changes in the brain associated with Alzheimer’s disease may start in young to middle adulthood, and another study showed that high abdominal fat in elderly adults was tied to greater brain atrophy.

Experts believe the dangerous effects of abdominal obesity on the brain may start long before the signs of dementia appear.

Large midlife bellies have already been shown to raise the risk of diabetes, stroke and coronary heart disease.

Source

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Toxic Oil Spill Rains Warned Could Destroy North America

EU Times — Mon, 24 May 2010 22:17:12 +0000

A dire report prepared for President Medvedev by Russia’s Ministry of Natural Resources is warning today that the British Petroleum (BP) oil and gas leak in the Gulf of Mexico is about to become the worst environmental catastrophe in all of human history threatening the entire eastern half of the North American continent with “total destruction”.

Russian scientists are basing their apocalyptic destruction assessment due to BP’s use of millions of gallons of the chemical dispersal agent known as Corexit 9500 which is being pumped directly into the leak of this wellhead over a mile under the Gulf of Mexico waters and designed, this report says, to keep hidden from the American public the full, and tragic, extent of this leak that is now estimated to be over 2.9 million gallons a day.

The dispersal agent Corexit 9500 is a solvent originally developed by Exxon and now manufactured by the Nalco Holding Company of Naperville, Illinois that is four times more toxic than oil (oil is toxic at 11 ppm (parts per million), Corexit 9500 at only 2.61ppm). In a report written by Anita George-Ares and James R. Clark for Exxon Biomedical Sciences, Inc. titled “Acute Aquatic Toxicity of Three Corexit Products: An Overview” Corexit 9500 was found to be one of the most toxic dispersal agents ever developed. Even worse, according to this report, with higher water temperatures, like those now occurring in the Gulf of Mexico, its toxicity grows.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in discovering BP’s use of this dangerous dispersal agent ordered BP to stop using it, but BP refused stating that their only alternative to Corexit 9500 was an even more dangerous dispersal agent known as Sea Brat 4.

The main differences between Corexit 9500 and Sea Brat 4 lie in how long these dangerous chemicals take to degrade into their constituent organic compounds, which for Corexit 9500 is 28 days. Sea Brat 4, on the other hand, degrades into an organic chemical called Nonylphenol that is toxic to aquatic life and can persist in the environment for years.

A greater danger involving Corexit 9500, and as outlined by Russian scientists in this report, is that with its 2.61ppm toxicity level, and when combined with the heating Gulf of Mexico waters, its molecules will be able to “phase transition” from their present liquid to a gaseous state allowing them to be absorbed into clouds and allowing their release as “toxic rain” upon all of Eastern North America.

Even worse, should a Katrina like tropical hurricane form in the Gulf of Mexico while tens of millions of gallons of Corexit 9500 are sitting on, or near, its surface the resulting “toxic rain” falling upon the North American continent could “theoretically” destroy all microbial life to any depth it reaches resulting in an “unimaginable environmental catastrophe” destroying all life forms from the “bottom of the evolutionary chart to the top”.

Note: For molecules of a liquid to evaporate, they must be located near the surface, be moving in the proper direction, and have sufficient kinetic energy to overcome liquid-phase intermolecular forces. Only a small proportion of the molecules meet these criteria, so the rate of evaporation is limited. Since the kinetic energy of a molecule is proportional to its temperature, evaporation proceeds more quickly at higher temperatures.

As over 50 miles of the US State of Louisiana’s coastline has already been destroyed by this spill, American scientists are warning that the damage may be impossible to repair, and as we can read as reported by the Associated Press News Service:

“The gooey oil washing into the maze of marshes along the Gulf Coast could prove impossible to remove, leaving a toxic stew lethal to fish and wildlife, government officials and independent scientists said. Officials are considering some drastic and risky solutions: They could set the wetlands on fire or flood areas in hopes of floating out the oil. They warn an aggressive cleanup could ruin the marshes and do more harm than good.”

And to understand the full import of this catastrophe it must be remembered that this disaster is occurring in what is described as the “biologically richest waters in America” with the greatest amount of oil and toxic Corexit 9500 set to come ashore in the coming days and weeks to destroy it completely for decades to come.

Reports are also coming from the United States that their government is secretly preparing to evacuate tens-of-millions of their citizens from their Gulf of Mexico States should the most dire of these scientific warnings start to come true.

To the greatest lesson to be learned by these Americans is that their government-oil industry cabal has been just as destructive to them as their government-banking one, both of which have done more to destroy the United States these past couple of years than any foreign enemy could dare dream was possible.

But to their greatest enemy the Americans need look no further than their nearest mirror as they are the ones who allowed these monsters to rule over them in the first place.

Source

First ethnic statistics ever published in France reveal 54% of babies born in Paris are Black

EU Times — Sun, 23 May 2010 23:04:38 +0000

In France, ethnic statistics are forbidden.

But they left a flaw in their system: drepanocytosis is a genetic illness that only affects Blacks.

Today, a map showing the “risk population” for drepanocytosis has been published: thus, the “Black population”.

This is the first time ever that we have such ethnic statistics in France.

And the results are… alarming.

This only counts for BLACKS… Arabs are the other half…