DDT, a pesticide banned in the developed world, should be used to spray houses in all countries where people suffer from malaria, the World Health Organisation said yesterday, 30 years after it phased the practice out. The new push to use DDT to kill the malaria-transmitting mosquito in Africa and other parts of the world with severe death tolls from the disease will dismay many environmentalists. They fear the polluting effects of the chemical will spread, although the WHO says spraying should be limited to the insides of houses and their roofs. Arata Kochi, the new head of the WHO’s malaria programme, has made no secret of his determination to bring back the chemical weapon that helped rid Europe and the former USSR of malaria decades ago. ‘We must take a position based on the science and the data,’ he said in Washington. Article continues ‘One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual house spraying. Of the dozen insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT.’ The WHO called on all development agencies and governments to incorporate the use of DDT in their malaria control programmes and […]
ELEANOR HALL: To the United States now where questions are again being asked about whether the Bush administration is again trying to build the case for the invasion of a Middle East enemy, by distorting the facts about the extent of the threat it poses. The world’s atomic watchdog has labelled a US congressional report on Iran’s nuclear capability as outrageous, dishonest and misleading, saying its claims that Iran is well advanced in enriching nuclear material for weapons are simply wrong. The International Atomic Energy Agency’s Melissa Fleming says the agency felt compelled to raise its objections in an official letter. MELISSA FLEMING: There were inaccuracies in the report and it was important for us to set the record straight to the US Congress on the facts. Also this was a matter of integrity of the IAEA and its inspectors. ELEANOR HALL: That’s the IAEA’s Melissa Fleming. Well a nuclear proliferation analyst in the United States says the release of the flawed congressional report suggests the Bush administration is softening up the public for a war in Iran as early as next year. Joe Cirincione has advised the US House of Representatives on national […]
A drug that has been shown to cut the risk of diabetes by two thirds has been hailed by doctors as giving new hope to thousands of people. The world is in the grip of an epidemic of diabetes, with almost two million people affected in the UK alone and a million more predicted to succumb by 2010. The condition shortens lives by a decade and is the leading cause of blindness and amputations. The accelerating rise in the disease is driven by obesity and inactive lifestyles, and experts have warned that the numbers could overwhelm the NHS and lead to the first reduction in life expectancy in 200 years. An international trial of the drug rosiglitazone, run in 21 countries including the UK, has shown that it reduced the incidence of Type 2 diabetes by over 60 per cent in high-risk individuals. But Diabetes UK warned that the results could raise false expectations and undermine efforts to get sufferers to change their lifestyles. Public health experts said the cost of the drug – £25 a month in the UK – and lack of long-term results meant governments were unlikely to pay. Hertzel Gerstein, of […]
Muslim religious leaders have accused Pope Benedict XVI of quoting anti-Islamic remarks during a speech at a German university this week. Questioning the concept of holy war, he quoted a 14th-Century Christian emperor who said Muhammad had brought the world only ‘evil and inhuman’ things. A senior Pakistani Islamic scholar, Javed Ahmed Gamdi, said jihad was not about spreading Islam with the sword. Turkey’s top religious official asked for an apology for the ‘hostile’ words. In Indian-administered Kashmir, police seized copies of newspapers which reported the Pope’s comments to prevent any tension. A Vatican spokesman, Father Frederico Lombardi, said he did not believe the Pope’s comments were meant as a harsh criticism of Islam. ‘Abhorrent’ In his speech at Regensburg University, the German-born pontiff explored the historical and philosophical differences between Islam and Christianity and the relationship between violence and faith. Stressing that they were not his own words, he quoted Emperor Manual II Paleologos of the Byzantine Empire, the Orthodox Christian empire which had its capital in what is now the Turkish city of Istanbul. The emperors words were, he said: ‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new […]
Former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger warned that Europe and the United States must unite to head off a ‘war of civilizations’ arising from a nuclear-armed Middle East. In an opinion column in the Washington Post, the renowned foreign policy expert said the potential for a ‘global catastrophe’ dwarfed lingering transatlantic mistrust left over from the Iraq war. ‘A common Atlantic policy backed by moderate Arab states must become a top priority, no matter how pessimistic previous experience with such projects leaves one,’ Kissinger wrote. ‘The debate sparked by the Iraq war over American rashness vs. European escapism is dwarfed by what the world now faces. ‘Both sides of the Atlantic should put their best minds together on how to deal with the common danger of a wider war merging into a war of civilizations against the background of a nuclear-armed Middle East.’ Kissinger wrote that the big threat lay in the erosion of nation states and the emergence of transnational groups. Iran was at the centre of the challenge, he said, with its support for Hezbollah, radical Shiite groups in Iraq and its nuclear program. Washington must accept that many European nations […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
