RE: Heavy Haze in China, Harbin

 

News on the CNN , Asia:

As you have read or not at all..China is in  worst situation. The haze in their country is everywhere in their city. Suffocate all of them and some even had to wear a mask on whenever they had an outdoor activities. This ever happen to Indonesia and even in Singapore for this case. Where building been cover up by the haze , when some even delay their activities or even cancel their appointment on that day. As we know this type of haze can make human breathing real worst, such if we ever inhale the bad air condition surrounding us.  As some of them have a health problem related like their lungs and other medical issue. It can be a forest burning , accident or even the factory. To avoid such worst cases like this we need to wear a mask whenever we go outdoor or just stay at home.  So that our health won’t be affected by it. Well That’s about the news today, Thank you for reading! 

RE: Regarding To financial Issue in The U.S.

 

News on the Bloomberg webpage. As what the news told that there will be some crisis for people doing business in all company around the U.S. sales might just turn out bad. As some may either resigned their jobs, or even some they been kick out from jobs. As you know thousand or billion of them out there across the globe. Are jobless and having a financial issue related such as credit and more debts related. I’m very sure some of you have encounter a problem situation like this where some of you feel the need of cash for living and also to pay your debt but it’s hard for you it’s because of not enough cash in your bank due to you been spending on yourself or family or even paying credit or more bills. It happens to my mum who also have to work hard just to earn money just to pay up any amount from the debt and bill related. It’s not quite a good   convenience because everybody had to wait for their salary just to pay a small amount of money just for a clear up slowly. Nowadays some retail shops been selling their product prices are quite high, we use to have those cheaper and affordable price to purchase certain items. If i was a president or a government people, i would kindly offer a good cheap price for especially the poor ones, because i know how they feel. As they couldn’t effort much to support their love ones or family. Due to high prices in all retail stores. But what i notice some certain country do have like those auction shop or those 2nd hand shops which i guess only those poor ones can manage to get their items there. Whether is food , clothes , and so on.. as some are those single parents who need to support and responsible due to their school fees , food and ETC. I hope government and president would be so kind to decrease the retail prices. That show that they are really concern for the poor. I really hope they could give a 2nd thoughts and wise when it comes to this situation. Remember not all could effort to buy a food, home and clothes.. only about 50/50% of people across the globe can manage and some may not. That’s all for today news. Thank you for reading! 

RE: US shutdown slows or halts health, safety efforts

 WASHINGTON — The government shutdown has slowed or halted federal efforts to protect Americans’ health and safety, from probes into the cause of transportation and workplace accidents to tracking foodborne illness. The latest example: An outbreak of salmonella in chicken that has sickened people in 18 states.

The federal Centres for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention said yesterday (Oct 8) that it was recalling some of its furloughed staff to deal with the outbreak, which has sickened more than 270 people. Before then, the CDC had only a handful of scientists working on outbreak detection, severely hampering its ability to track potentially deadly illnesses.

 

With federal workers on leave, the states have had to pick up much of the slack.

In the case of food safety, state labs are investigating foodborne illnesses and communicating with each other — without the help of federal authorities, in many cases — to figure out whether outbreaks have spread.

Dr Christopher Braden, head of the CDC division that investigates foodborne illness, said the agency will be able to better monitor the salmonella outbreak with the recalled federal staff. But the agency is monitoring more than 30 outbreaks, and gaps still exist as the federal bureaucracy limps through a shutdown beginning its second week.

With staff furloughed last week, the CDC stopped monitoring for some foodborne pathogens, including shigella and campylobacter. The agency is now watching for those again, but Dr Braden said some investigations are still on the back burner, including an ongoing outbreak of salmonella from handling live poultry that has sickened more than 300.

CDC isn’t the only agency protecting health and safety that’s strained. The shutdown has forced the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) to halt its regular mine safety inspections, which it normally conducts at each of the nation’s underground mines every three months.

The lack of inspections is coming under scrutiny after three mine workers died in separate accidents on three consecutive days during the past week. The coal mining industry has not had three consecutive days of fatal accidents in more than a decade. MSHA has said it’s premature to draw any conclusions about the link between the shutdown and the accidents, but the nation’s largest mine workers union has raised alarms.

Federal occupational safety and health inspectors also have stopped most workplace checks, and the National Transportation Safety Board is only investigating accidents if officials believe lives or property are in danger.

The Food and Drug Administration also has stopped routine inspections of food facilities in the United States and abroad, and border controls could be delayed. Food imports are still being inspected at borders, but any samples that need to be analysed could be stalled because there are fewer scientists to analyse them.

The CDC also has had to halt its surveillance of flu, an infectious disease that kills about 24,000 Americans in an average year.

This early in the flu season there is little illness, meaning little to test yet. But to fill in the gap, some state health departments have been receiving and testing samples that otherwise would have gone to CDC, said Ms Kelly Wroblewski of the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

CDC also is slashing its staffing on quarantine stations at 20 airports and entry points. When airline pilots or customs workers become aware of a sick traveler, they flag quarantine officers who can detain, examine and isolate those who might be an infectious threat to the US public.

During the shutdown, quarantine station staff has been cut by 80 per cent, meaning there’s essentially only one person working at each station, said Dr Martin Cetron, who leads CDC’s division of global migration and quarantine. The lack of staff could heighten the possibility that some diseases could slip into the country at a time when measles is raging in Turkey and cholera is breaking out in Mexico.

Still, many federal workers who protect safety and health are still working, from air traffic controllers to airport screeners to the majority of federal law enforcement. Active duty military personnel are on duty. USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service, the agency responsible for investigating the poultry farm in California that is linked to the salmonella outbreak, is also mostly staffed.

But the absence of so-called nonessential workers who are furloughed can have a dangerous ripple effect, said Ms Caroline Smith De Waal, director of food safety advocacy at the Washington-based Centre for Science in the Public Interest.

She noted that the CDC website has limited information and the USDA website is shut down, preventing concerned members of the public from finding out more information on the salmonella outbreak and other food-borne illnesses. The agencies aren’t tweeting or disseminating health safety information except for a few releases to the media. 

From my point of view from the above news. They are obviously doing their best effort just to save their hometown from being shutdown. If the government had given them a chance to change for the better , thereby they don’t have to go through some difficult situation such as shutting down company, fire staff, ETC;..i believe that if they do some little changes such like take care of things and environment issue. Like re-do where the mistake happens. Such like clear up unwanted items or things. Things like this if wanted to avoid disappointment they really need to start from now, OR they might just regret later in near future where they will loose those dear to them. So if i were in their shoes, i would make a biggest change even how little items or things might be. As i know that health is important to almost everybody across the globe. But if we just ignored important issue..things like this will just happen over and over again. Each every year people die of some cancer and illness related. And almost 99% of most people all send to the hospital, whether from work , school , public or even at home. As you can see our Earth , has a biggest problem in “Global Warming” issue, where there is some changes around us where the disaster happen such like “Tsunami , Tornado , Earthquakes , Country/Places Collapse..ETC;” and if the government around the world didn’t start any new ideas such like creating new things into this Earth, disaster wouldn’t start or happen too fast. What they need to keep in mind is that, they need to decressed what they trying to create and more nature if possible. World Peace People! That would be all for today! Thank you for reading! 

RE: US cutting hundreds of millions in aid to Egypt

WASHINGTON — The United States yesterday (Oct 9) cut hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to its Mideast ally Egypt, responding to the military ouster last summer of the nation’s first democratically elected president and the crackdown on protesters that has sunk the country into violent turmoil.

While the State Department did not provide a dollar amount of what was being withheld, most of it is linked to military aid. In all, the US provides US$1.5 billion (S$1.9 billion) in aid each year to Egypt.

Officials said the aid being withheld included 10 Apache helicopters at a cost of about US$500 million, F-16 fighter jets, M1A1 tank kits and Harpoon anti-ship missiles. The US also is withholding US$260 million in cash assistance to the government until “credible progress” is made toward an inclusive government set up through free and fair elections.

Washington had already suspended the delivery of four F-16 fighter jets and cancelled biennial US-Egyptian military exercises.

In Cairo, military spokesman Colonel Ahmed Mohammed Ali declined immediate comment. Before the announcement, General Abdel Fattah El Sissi, the Egyptian military leader, described his country’s relations with the United States as “strategic” and founded on mutual interests. But he told the Cairo daily, Al Masry Al Youm, in an interview published yesterday that Egypt would not tolerate pressure, “whether through actions or hints”.

Neighbouring Israel also has indicated concern. The Israelis consider the US aid to Egypt to be important support for the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel.

The State Department stressed that the long-standing US partnership with Egypt would continue and that it sees the aid decision as temporary. Still, the decision puts ties between the US and Egypt at their rockiest point in more than three decades.

The US will continue to provide support for health and education and counterterrorism, spare military parts, military training and education, border security and security assistance in the Sinai Peninsula where near-daily attacks against security forces and soldiers have increasingly resembled a full-fledged insurgency.

The US officials providing the details did so only on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to comment by name.

Other details about what military assistance is being cut were not immediately known, and the State Department declined to give an indication of how severe the impact of the cuts in assistance might be in Egypt.

Senator Patrick Leahy, who chairs the Senate Appropriations panel that funds US assistance to Egypt, criticised the Obama administration’s action as too little.

Others, including some sharp political opponents of Mr Obama on other subjects, supported the president’s decision.

Sen Rand Paul, whose bill to halt aid to Egypt was roundly defeated in the Senate in July, said he was happy to see the administration “finally thinking about following the law”.

Administration officials, on a conference call to brief reporters on the decision, said Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel talked on the phone yesterday with Gen El Sissi, who led the military effort that ousted Mr Morsi. They said the conversation was cordial, professional and ended on a positive tone.

But the decision certainly creates new friction in Washington’s already uneasy relations with the government that ousted Mr Morsi. And the consequences won’t end there. The move will anger Persian Gulf states, push Egypt to seek assistance from US rivals and upend decades of close ties with the Egyptians that have been a bulwark of stability in the Middle East.

Egypt gives the United States permission to fly over its territory to supply American troops in the Gulf, allows the US to move troops and materiel through the Suez Canal without delay and cooperates with American intelligence agencies. It is unclear if cooperation on these fronts will be affected by the aid decision.

The US has been considering such a move since July, when the Egyptian military ousted Mr Morsi. Ensuing violence between authorities and Mr Morsi supporters has killed hundreds. The scheduled Nov 4 trial of Mr Morsi on charges that he incited the killings of opponents while in office and the US decision to cut its aid to Egypt threaten to add to the turmoil.

The cutoff of some, but not all, US aid also underscores the strategic shifts underway in the region as US allies in the Gulf forge ahead with policies at odds with Washington. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states, including the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, are strong backers of Syrian rebel factions and were openly dismayed when the US set aside possible military strikes against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government. The Gulf states also feel increasingly sidelined as Washington reaches out to their rival, Iran.

Iran had moved quickly to heal long-strained ties with Egypt following Mr Morsi’s election but now is redirecting its policies with Egyptian leaders who don’t share Tehran’s agenda.

US aid to the Egyptians has a long history. Since the late 1970s, the country has been the second-largest recipient — after Israel — of US bilateral foreign assistance, largely as a way to sustain the 1979 Egypt-Israeli peace treaty.

The United States gave Egypt US$71.6 billion in assistance between 1948 and 2011, according to a Congressional Research Service report issued in June. That included US$1.3 billion a year in military aid since 1987. The rest was economic assistance, some going to the government, some to other groups.

Egypt has other allies who may be able to fill the financial void. In fact, Saudi Arabia and some of its Gulf Arab partners have provided a critical financial lifeline for Egypt’s new government, pledging at least US$12 billion so far and aiding in regional crackdowns on Mr Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood.

On Monday, Egypt’s interim president, Mr Adly Mansour, visited Saudi Arabia on his first foreign trip in a sign of the importance of the Gulf aid and political backing. AP

From my point of view from this news. I don’t understand why, must they do such a violence issue to their country. I mean they are some innocent human, trying to live each of their lives. And just over small matter and they make it big and then create a war against them. Can there be some discussion over a video call so that at least there won’t be any misunderstanding and so the war too wouldn’t have to start or just to kill them. I mean it’s very childish war, what all of us hope that we could change for a better life, a life where no misunderstanding. Peace No War Thank You!! We all want a peaceful life no some childish things over small issue.. Well that’s about it for today! Thank you for reading!

RE: UN sued over Haiti cholera epidemic

NEW YORK — Victims of the 2010 cholera outbreak in Haiti are filing a compensation claim against the United Nations in a New York court, demanding that billions of dollars in damages be paid to survivors and the relatives of those killed.

The outbreak has killed more than 8,000 people and made 650,000 ill, according to officials, and scientific studies have shown the cholera strain was likely introduced to the country by UN troops from Nepal, where the disease is endemic, when contaminated sewage was discharged from their barracks into a watercourse. Before that cholera cases had been rare in Haiti.

The UN maintains it has legal immunity from such compensation claims and has formally rejected claims from Haitians affected. The case is being pursued by the Boston-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti and will be filed today (Oct 9) in the Manhattan federal district court, according to the New York Times.

Yesterday, a UN official made a rare case for compensation for the thousands of Haitians involved. The high commissioner for human rights Navi Pillay, did not say who she thought should pay but declared: “I still stand by the call that victims of those who suffered as a result of that cholera be provided with compensation.”

Ms Pillay’s remarks, streamed live on the Internet, were a rare admission by a UN official about the need to provide compensation following a complaint filed by the Boston-based Institute for Justice & Democracy in Haiti and the Haiti-based law firm run by Haitian attorney Mario Joseph, one of the finalists at the Geneva ceremony.

Asked about Ms Pillay’s comments, UN associate spokesman Farhan Haq said it was not the “‘United Nations’ practice to discuss in public claims filed against the organisation”. THE GUARDIAN

From the news about mention, as Haiti had news like their country collapse a few years ago, where all or some of them had to travel to other island to evacuate from the place and lived in a better environment. Where i’m sure where they will get some food , clothes , farm and so on. As the years may goes by things tend to change again , all the economic on money , expanses and more. As Haiti people had to face all this problem they facing in their life. And from i see, some can’t even effort to fork out a sum of money to get a medical check up, due to poor living where parents or family had to depend on their adult children to support them just by working in their country or overseas just to gain some cash in their living lives. I feel that we all too had gone through some hardship in real life before, whether in past or present. We are consider lucky to have some support in life just by working and so on. I really do feel pitiful for Haiti people, i pray that hope GOD can lead their lives to a wonderful life where people across the globe willingly helping them all their heart of sincerity. Well that’s about it for today! Thanks for reading!