Nation

Transplant Shortage Hits Minorities

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Doctors all over the world are having difficulty finding matching donors for bone marrow transplants – a lifesaving operation for certain very serious illnesses. And patients from ethnic minorities are the most at risk. Because the transplants are much more likely to succeed when they are between people of similar genetic backgrounds, physicians try to find donors from the same ethnicity as the patients. But, even in advanced nations, the pool of registered donors is relatively small, and ethnic minorities make up a small percentage of that small number. In New Zealand, this means that patients who belong to the indigenous Maori population are much less likely to find a matching donor and receive a transplant than are the descendents of European settlers.

Featured

Pesticide Fears Along California's Central Coast

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Activists claim that hundreds of people became sick after officials sprayed a type of pesticide along parts of California’s Central Coast. In a pair of studies released last week, a group calling itself California Alliance to Stop the Spray says that 643 residents of Monterey and Santa Cruz counties became ill last fall after state agriculture officials sprayed the area with a synthetic pheromone known as CheckMate LBAM-F. Symptoms listed include eye and throat irritation, shortness of breath, skin rashes, asthma attacks and interruptions in menstrual cycles, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel. “The spray affected people in different ways,” said the reports’ compiler, Pacific Grove resident Mike Lynberg, according to the Sentinel. “But they all had one thing in common.

Democracy & Civics

Trouble at the Roof of the World

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Water rights and free speech are the latest sparks that have inflamed protests in Tibet against the Chinese government. Hundreds of nomads — yak herders and others whose way of life seems to exist outside of politics and time — fought with police last month after a disagreement involving three teenage Tibetan monks and Chinese shopkeepers. The incident, in Baikar (in Chinese, Baiga Shang), Nagchu Prefecture (China’s Naqu Prefecture), ended with the monks being detained, and one severely beaten by police, witnesses told Radio Free Asia. Afterward, nomads gathered outside to demand the monks’ release. The mob’s numbers rose to almost 1,000 a day later, witnesses said, and soon began to grow violent, attacking government offices.

Environment

Fur Flies in Tiger Photo Fight

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When Chinese officials declared this fall that a rare South China tiger had been photographed in the wild, it appeared at first to be a story of nature’s powers of survival. But now the officials are defending the photos against claims that they are obvious fakes. The controversy began in October, when China’s official Xinhua news agency reported that a farmer had handed in photos he took of a tiger in a forest near his house in Shaanxi province. The South China tiger is critically endangered, and has not been spotted in the wild since 1964. Experts believe that if there are any of the animals left in their natural habitat, they number fewer than 30.

Democracy & Civics

A Man, a Dam and a Salmon Plan

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A federal judge has rebuked the government for its latest plan to restore salmon runs along the Columbia and Snake rivers. According to The Oregonian, U.S. District Judge James A. Redden has declared that the government plan, like two previous plans he also rejected, won’t live up to the Endangered Species Act because it does not provide reasonable options for improving salmon habitat. The newspaper also writes that the judge has expressed doubts about the government’s “salmon science” — a view shared by Oregon state officials — and may convene his own panel of experts on the topic. By calling for officials to including the removal of several dams in their plan, Redden has positioned himself squarely against the Bush administration, which has “flatly refused” to consider any dam removals. If no plan is approved, Redden could declare all dam operations illegal, which would affect everything from irrigation to hydropower throughout the Pacific Northwest.

Economy

Oil Industry's Amazon Frontier

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Economic development and ecological conservation are once again at odds in the Amazon, where a remote region thick with rare species — and indigenous peoples in “voluntary isolation” — has been opened to extensive oil and gas development. Environment News Service reports that Brazil’s Petrobras, the U.S. firm Barrett Resources and Spain’s Repsol have all been approved to develop vast territories in the Upper Amazon Basin, in the border regions of Peru and Ecuador. Activists say that 73 percent of the Peruvian Amazon “is now or soon will be” open to oil development, up from 13 percent in 2004. Source:
“Oil Developers Permitted to Penetrate Pristine Upper Amazon”
Environment News Service, December 4, 2007

Nation

Here Comes the Flood

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Heavy weather the world over is raising concerns about the potential of a flood-prone future, and what that means for vulnerable populations. In the U.S. Pacific Northwest, 24-foot waves closed shipping channels, and 13 inches of rain in one 30-hour period shut down commerce, damaged streets and highways, and brought down trees and power lines, reports Bloomberg.com. Five days of continuous rain have had a catastrophic effect in Algeria, causing a house and a bridge to collapse as rivers burst their banks and floodwaters surged through suburban Algiers. At least eleven lives were lost, reports Agence France-Presse. Meanwhile, a report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that 40 million people worldwide are vulnerable to similar catastrophes, as storms and rising oceans threaten 136 port cities around the world.

World

The Plagues of Uganda

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Concurrent outbreaks of several diseases in Uganda have health officials there on the defensive, reports The Monitor in Kampala. Even as the country struggles to contain an ebola outbreak, new cases of meningitis, cholera, bubonic plague and yellow fever are turning up in different parts of the country. Suspected cases of hepatitis have also been reported. Some of the diseases have claimed dozens of lives so far, and thousands have been infected. According to the newspaper, simple behavior changes among individuals and authorities can help prevent disease transmission.

Democracy & Civics

Cracks at the Seams? China Bolsters Three Gorges

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Everything about the Three Gorges Dam seems larger than life. It was built at a cost of $15.6 billion, caused the relocation of 1.2 million people, and has 19 hydropower generators that are expected by 2009 to produce 84.7 million megawatt-hours of electricity each year. And now, with increasing reports of landslides and environmental problems around the dam, thoughts of a larger-than-life disaster have come to the fore. China’s project director for the dam, Wang Xiaofeng, said in a press conference that the current environmental problems caused by the dam have been anticipated and planned for. But concerns persist about a variety of issues, including water pollution, and the safety of the surrounding landscape
According to the International Herald Tribune, the latest press conference contrasts with a forum in the city of Wuhan in September in which state officials warned of “catastrophe” if environmental issues were not addressed.

World

The Twin Horns of a Co-Epidemic: AIDS and TB

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Tuberculosis rates in South Africa’s Western Cape villages are among the highest in the world, due to a burgeoning co-epidemic of HIV and TB. According to a new report by international health experts, the paired diseases, which first emerged 23 years ago, now afflict nearly one-third of the 40 million people infected with HIV worldwide, and without proper treatment kill 90 percent of patients within months. In South Africa, overcrowded clinics are increasingly unable to diagnose or treat victims, a situation exacerbated by a spike in drug-resistant tuberculosis. Source:
“HIV-TB combo to shake Cape townships”
Independent Online (South Africa), November 2, 2007