Stories about United Kingdom from October, 2005
Indonesia, South Korea, Turkey: Inside Nobel Information
Kotaji claims to have inside information on the Nobel Prize for Literature discussions, which he says came down to Indonesia's Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Turkey's Orham Pamuk and South Korea's Hwang Sok-yong as finalists. But Britain's Harold Pinter emerged as the compromise choice.
Effect Measure on Facing the Global Bird Flu Threat
With recent reports of avian flu in Western Europe, the disease is clearly no longer East Asia's problem. It's a dilemma for the world. Last week I emailed Revere, the pseudonymous leader of Effect Measure, a public health group blog. Since its inception in late 2004, Effect Measure has been covering the global response to avian flu. My goal was to discuss the pandemic fears and what the world -- and ordinary people -- can do to prepare for it.
Revere, an environmental epidemiologist in a senior faculty position at a major research university, has 40 years of experience in medicine and public health. He is also one of the individuals behind the Flu Wiki, an Internet-based experiment in community mobilization and knowledge-pooling to face the feared epidemic. He paints an alarming picture. "If a pandemic is going to happen (and we don't know how to predict if it will or not with certainty), it will happen whatever we do," he writes. "There will be no "outside" for help to come from, so each community needs to prepare to cope on its own." In previous flu pandemics, hundreds of thousands of people went sick or died, leading to massive disruptions as workers failed to show up to work and instead surged into ill-equipped and ill-prepared hospitals ill-prepared.
Revere sees two big tasks ahead: managing the consequences of a potential pandemic, and building (or rebuilding) the world's rotting public health infrastructure.
Race on the streets of London
Nigerian blogger in UK, Confessions of the Mind has a racist experience on the streets of London – not your usual in your face racial abuse, racial innuendos, being reminded you that you are different because of the colour of your skin but an outright vile shocking one…
Zimbabwe: Just say no
Sokwanele blogs about a petition entitled “No Shaking Hands With Mugabe” to be presented to Britain's Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street Wednesday, urging Tony Blair to bring up the problems in Zimbabwe at the United Nations Security Council.
