In The News

Polio Outbreak in Northeast Syria Risks Spreading, WHO Says

Stephanie Nebehay October 30, 2013
The World Health Organization reports a polio outbreak among young children in northeast Syria. The disease “is endemic in just three countries – Nigeria, Pakistan and Afghanistan – raising the possibility that foreign fighters have imported the virus into Syria, where Islamist militant groups are part of the splintered array battling Assad's forces,” reports Stephanie Nebehay for Reuters....

India Seeks to Regulate Booming “Rent-a-Womb” Industry

Nita Bhalla, Mansi Thapliyal October 2, 2013
India legalized commercial surrogacy in 2002 and is one of the few countries where women can be paid for carrying another’s child. Women’s rights groups criticize the $400 million industry for exploiting poor women and endangering their health to produce babies for rich clients, mostly from other nations: “The low-cost technology, skilled doctors, scant bureaucracy and a plentiful supply of...

Botanical Bandits: Rampant Poaching Threatens Ginseng’s Survival

Jake Frankel September 9, 2013
The delicate plant with tiny red berries has drawn thousands of scavengers to Appalachia forests, digging up roots of the ginseng plant, wiping out entire groves, for sale to Asian markets. “[W]ith wild ginseng root fetching upward of $800 a pound, untold numbers of poachers have taken to local forests, overwhelming meager law enforcement resources and leaving the plant’s survival in doubt,”...

Africa and Pakistan Face Polio Outbreaks

Donald G. McNeil, Jr. September 4, 2013
New polio cases are emerging in some of the world’s most unstable places – North Waziristan, Somalia and a Kenya refugee camp. The world had about 350,000 cases in 1988 and 223 cases in 2012, a 99 percent decrease, but polio can spread quickly, especially among children under the age of five, reports the World Health Organization. Poverty and rumors add to the challenges of health care workers....

Japan Says Fukushima Leak Worse Than Thought, Government Joins Clean-Up

Mari Saito, Antoni Slodkowski August 9, 2013
More than two years after the Fukushima nuclear plant was destroyed by an earthquake and tsunami, the utility company in charge still struggles to contain the radiation. Groundwater flowing through the plant’s basement is radioactive, with about 300 tons assumed to be escaping each day and heading for the Pacific Ocean. “The revelation amounted to an acknowledgement that plant operator Tokyo...

Bird Flu Strain in China “Passed Between Humans”

August 9, 2013
The viruses that cause flu can mutate quickly, and researchers have detected a probable human-to-human transmission of an emerging form of bird flu in China. “Until now there had been no evidence of anyone catching the H7N9 virus other than after direct contact with birds,” reports BBC News. “But experts stressed it does not mean the virus has developed the ability to spread easily between humans...

Indian Farmer Promotes “Magic Farming”

Amarnath Tewary July 29, 2013
The notion of harvesting tons of crops from soil, water, a handful of seeds and fertilizer has a magic quality to it – and an Indian farmer in Bihar has used magic shows to convince other farmers to turn to organic methods. An NGO program on organic farming in 2001 convinced Shreekant Kushwaha that organic farming produced higher yields more quickly, and he credits the methods for changing his...