Global hunger continues to rise, new UN report says

World Food Programme

A woman receives food rations at a refugee camp in Kenya. Kate Holt/AusAID

Progress made in the past decade has been reversed, with climate extremes such as droughts and floods identified as a main cause. More here.

A Season of Smoke

Please also read: "Time to Wake up & Smell the Smoke!"

ASF - a deadly hog disease - has now been confirmed on Romania’s largest pig farm: 140,000 pigs culled

PIG PROGRESS

The virus was confirmed on the farm, which consists of 3 adjacent properties in the southern county of Braila, Romania after water samples were sent to the authorities. Story here.
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In Hogs We Trust - a critique of Manitoba's runaway hog industry.
Part 111 - From Malaysia to Manitoba - the global magnitude of livestock diseases.

Wildfires make their own weather, and that matters for fire management

ScienceNews

A wildfire on the Ashcroft reserve in B.C, 2017. Shawn Cahill.

New prediction tools zero in on how blazes throw embers and make weather that fans the flames. Story here.

No record yields for potatoes on the Canadian Prairies this year!

Western Producer

A potato harvester at work in southern Manitoba. A PinP photo.

The hot, dry weather Western Canada experienced this summer, is blamed. Story here.

One of the biggest tsunamis ever recorded was set off three years ago by a melting glacier

The Washington Post

A rare and extreme tsunami ripped across an Alaskan fjord three years ago after 180 million tons of mountain rock fell into the water, driving a devastating wave that stripped shorelines of trees and reached heights greater than 600 feet, a large team of scientists documented on Thursday. The October 2015 cataclysm in Taan Fiord in southeastern Alaska appears to have been the fourth-highest tsunami recorded in the past century, and its origins — linked to the retreat of a glacier — suggest that it’s the kind of event we may see more often because of a warming climate.The new study even bluntly calls it a “hazard occasioned by climate change.” Story here.

Drug-resistant microbes could threaten future global economy, low income countries in particular

Journal Club

A microbiologist examines the growth of a bacterial culture. 
A U.S. Food & Drug Administration photo. 

Antimicrobial resistance is not only a major public health threat, but also an economic one, according to researchers at The World Bank. Their new study, published in the journal World Development, suggests that an increase in drug-resistant microbes could cause millions more people to fall into extreme poverty within the next few decades. “Nobody has estimated the poverty effects before,” says study author Karen Thierfelder, an economics professor at the U.S. Naval Academy and consultant for The World Bank. “We’d like to make more people aware of the problem.” More here.

Also Read: "In Hogs We Trust."  

A critique of Manitoba’s “runaway” hog industry.

Part 1 - Antibiotic Overuse.