A neglected tropical disease that has afflicted people since ancient times could be eradicated soon, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. In early March, 12 more countries were declared free from guinea-worm disease, or dracunculiasis. If progress continues at this rate, in less than two years guinea worm could become the second disease after smallpox to be pushed into oblivion, the UN agency said in a statement. In the early 1980s, an estimated 3 million people in more than 20 countries were affected by guinea-worm disease. Today, that number has significantly dropped to about 25,000 cases in nine African countries, WHO said. ‘This is the culmination of years of effort by local and international groups to see this disease eradicated,’ said Dr Lorenzo Savioli, director of neglected tropical diseases at WHO. The Commission for the Certification of Dracunculiasis Eradication, a WHO-affiliated body of experts, has declared 180 countries as guinea worm-free since 1995 and now it is moving closer to its 2009 target for eradication of the disease worldwide, WHO said. For countless generations, people have suffered from guinea- worm disease, which is now still endemic in some villages of sub- Saharan Africa. […]
RIYADH — The ‘lords of war’ will decide Israel’s future if it rejects a blueprint for peace crafted by the entire Arab world, Saudi Arabia’s veteran foreign minister warned yesterday. As leaders began gathering in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, for today’s summit of the Arab League, Prince Saud al-Faisal told The Daily Telegraph that the Middle East risks perpetual conflict if the peace plan fails. Saudi foreign minister Prince Saudi al-Faisal, right, and Amr Moussa, Secretary General of the Arab League, accept the peace plan or face war, Saudis tell Israel Saudi foreign minister Prince Saudi al-Faisal, right, and Amr Moussa, Secretary General of the Arab League Under this Saudi-drafted proposal, every Arab country would formally recognise Israel in return for a withdrawal from all the land captured in the war of 1967. This would entail a Palestinian state embracing the entire West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as its capital. Every Arab country will almost certainly endorse this blueprint when the Riyadh summit concludes tomorrow. Prince Saud said Israel should accept or reject this final offer. ‘What we have the power to do in the Arab world, we think we have done,’ […]
Scientists have identified a new type of twins that sits somewhere between fraternal twins and identical ones on the scale of similarity. The discovery of the so-called ‘semi-identical twins’ came during an investigation into the genetic make-up of a pair of young twins in the US. The twins are thought to have formed as a result of a previously unknown method, where two sperm cells fuse with a single egg, before becoming two embryos. Each sperm has contributed genes to each child, so while the twins are identical on their mother’s side, they share only half their genes on their father’s side. ‘This probably represents a rare event, but it demonstrates that not all twins conform to the traditionally accepted classifications,’ the researchers said. Study co-author Dr Grant Montgomery, from the Queensland Institute of Medical Research, described it as ‘a rare but interesting finding’. ‘It appears to be an unusual case of twins, and it’s the first to our knowledge,’ he said. ‘It does alert us to the fact that sometimes these rare events occur.’
WASHINGTON — Teams assigned to make sure foreigners ordered out of the United States actually leave have a backlog of more than 600,000 cases and can’t accurately account for the fugitives’ whereabouts, the government reported Monday. The report by the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general found that the effectiveness of teams assigned to find the fugitives was hampered by ‘insufficient detention capacity, limitations of an immigration database and inadequate working space.’ Even though more than $204 million was allocated for 52 fugitive operations teams since 2003, a backlog of 623,292 cases existed as of August of 2006, the report said. The number of illegal immigrants in the United States has been estimated at between 11.5 million and 12 million. About 5.4 percent of them are believed to be ‘fugitive aliens,’ those who have failed to leave the country after being ordered out. The inspector general found there is not enough bed space available to detain such fugitives and that agents are hampered by an inaccurate database. Other factors that limit the teams’ effectiveness are insufficient staffing, the report said. Until the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, attempts to catch such fugitives were mostly carried out […]
Many of the world’s climate zones will vanish entirely by 2100, or be replaced by new, previously unseen ones, if global warming continues as expected, a study released Monday said. Rising temperatures will force existing climate zones toward higher latitudes and higher elevations, squeezing out climates at the colder extremes, and leaving room for unfamiliar climes around the equator, the study predicted. The sweeping climatic changes will likely affect huge swaths of land from the Indonesian rainforest to the Peruvian Andes, including many known hotspots of diversity, disrupting local ecological systems and populations. ‘Our findings are a logical outcome of global warming scenarios that are driven by continued emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases,’ said Jack Williams, a professor of geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and author of the paper. ‘The warmest areas get warmer and move outside our current range of experience and the colder areas also get warmer and so those climates disappear.’ Williams and colleagues from the University of Wyoming based their predictions on computer models that translate carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions into climate change. The emissions’ estimates were taken from a report issued by the UN’s […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
