Ebola: the race to find a vaccine
Researchers in Canada, Britain, the US and Mali are testing drugs they hope will stop the humanitarian disaster unfolding in west Africa – and prevent Ebola becoming as prolific as HIV
In 1959 the French microbiologist René Dubos gazed into his crystal ball and found reasons to be concerned. In his lifetime Dubos had witnessed the steady decline of diseases such as diphtheria, tuberculosis and polio, but rather than giving him confidence these medical successes filled him with foreboding. Though vaccines and therapeutic drugs had neutralised many of the threats of the past, he warned that humans could not escape the microbes that transmitted infectious diseases, because they were part of the environment and our ecology.
Complete freedom from infectious disease was a mirage, he warned. “At some unpredictable time and in some unforeseeable manner nature will strike back.”
The Ebola outbreak is arguably just such a riposte, shattering western dreams of medical utopias. While the reservoir (the long-term host) of the virus has yet to be identified (fruit bats and apes are the leading contenders) there is little doubt that Ebola is the greatest threat to the world’s health and security since HIV/Aids or that the fault lies with man and his insatiable demand for the world’s natural resources – a demand that puts an intolerable strain on ecosystems and the parasites that inhabit them.
The mystery of the 1,000 greyhounds who retire and then vanish
Every year, one in eight greyhounds “disappears” at the end of its racing career, with some dogs being sold for research and dissection, a leading animal welfare charity claims.
The League Against Cruel Sports (LACS) estimates that around 1,000 of the approximately 8,000 greyhounds retiring from racing annually are not rehomed and are unaccounted for.
Although the industry’s governing body, the Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB), requires owners to register retirements and provide information on the fate of each dog, they are not obliged to provide any supporting evidence that a new home has been found. Some unwanted dogs are known to be returned to Ireland, where the majority were originally bred.
The Zombie System: How Capitalism Has Gone Off the Rails
Six years after the Lehman disaster, the industrialized world is suffering from Japan Syndrome. Growth is minimal, another crash may be brewing and the gulf between rich and poor continues to widen. Can the global economy reinvent itself?
A new buzzword is circulating in the world's convention centers and auditoriums. It can be heard at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and at the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund. Bankers sprinkle it into the presentations; politicians use it leave an impression on discussion panels.
The buzzword is "inclusion" and it refers to a trait that Western industrialized nations seem to be on the verge of losing: the ability to allow as many layers of society as possible to benefit from economic advancement and participate in political life.
THE SOUTH ASIA CHANNEL
Major Indian Airports on High Alert; Nawzad District in Helmand on Verge of Collapse; Pakistan and Iran Exchange Mortar Fire
India
Major Indian airports on high-alert
All major Indian airports were on high-alert on Friday after the Kochi airport, located in the southern state of Kerala, received an anonymous letter warning of terror attacks on two Air India flights (NDTV, Livemint). Bomb disposal squads, anti-hijacking units, and police were keeping constant vigil at the airports. The Bureau of Civil Aviation Security issued a letter to airports in connection with the threat, which read: "Air India flight on the midnight of October 24 (early morning of October 25) from Ahmedabad to Mumbai and early morning flight from Mumbai to Kochi on 25th morning at 0500 hrs. Suicide bomber in each flight separately. Please check thoroughly. Secondary security checks may be carried out at Ahmedabad and Mumbai airports for all flights around the concerned dates" (Zee News).
Terror suspects apprehended on the way to Afghanistan
New York Times: ISIS hostages were tortured before beheadings
October 26, 2014 -- Updated 0628 GMT
In the moments before his death, American James Foley stares into the camera, head held high, after being forced to read a script, in which he blames his death on the United States.
A masked man wielding a knife then decapitates him.
As horrifying as Foley's last moments were, it was not the first time Foley looked death in the face at the hands of ISIS.
A new report from The New York Times states that Foley and other ISIS captives were threatened with execution, tortured and starved ahead of their beheadings.
Foley had been singled out for particularly harsh treatment by the group that calls itself the Islamic State, according to the Times -- he was subject to beatings, waterboarding and "mock executions."
What's the appeal of a caliphate?
In June the leader of Islamic State declared the creation of a caliphate stretching across parts of Syria and Iraq - Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi named himself the caliph or leader. Edward Stourton examines the historical parallels and asks what is a caliphate, and what is its appeal?
When Islamic State (IS) declared itself a caliphate in June this year, and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, claimed the title of caliph, it seemed confirmation of the group's reputation for megalomania and atavistic fantasy. Al-Baghdadi insisted that pledging allegiance to this caliphate is a religious obligation on all Muslims - an appeal which was immediately greeted by a chorus of condemnation across the Middle East.
But is it dangerous to underestimate the appeal of IS? Al-Baghdadi's brutal regime does not, of course, remotely conform to the classical Muslim understanding of what a caliphate should be, but it does evoke an aspiration with a powerful and increasingly urgent resonance in the wider Muslim world.
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