1.
WHO: H7N9 virus 'one
of the most lethal so far'
CNN April 26, 2013
 |
Hong Kong (CNN) -- On the same day yet another death
was reported in China's bird flu outbreak, the World Health Organization warned
the H7N9 virus was one of the most lethal that doctors and medical
investigators had faced in recent years.
"This is an unusually dangerous virus for
humans," Keiji Fukuda, WHO's assistant director-general for health,
security and the environment told a news conference in Beijing Wednesday.
"We think this virus is more easily transmitted from
poultry to humans than H5N1," he added, referring to the bird flu outbreak
between 2004 and 2007 that claimed 332 lives.
As investigations continue into the possible sources of
infection, Fukuda warned that authorities were still struggling to understand
the virus. The WHO said China must brace for continued infections.
Fukuda's warning came as Taiwanese health authorities
said they've confirmed the first human case of H7N9 in Taiwan -- one they said
was imported from China.
A 53-year-old Taiwanese man who worked in eastern China
was confirmed to have H7N9 on Wednesday, the Taiwanese Centers for Disease
Control said. His condition was described to be severe.
He had been traveling back and forth regularly between
China's Jingsu province and Taiwan, health officials said.
"According to the case, he had not been exposed to
birds and poultry during his stay in Suzhou (in Jingsu province) and had not
consumed undercooked poultry or eggs," the Taiwanese CDC said.
2.
Zao Wou-ki: Painting
beyond words (1920-2013)
CNN April 12, 2013
 |
Editor's note: Julia Grimes is a Ph.D. candidate in
Chinese modern and contemporary art history at the University of California,
Los Angeles (UCLA). Her dissertation examines the early artistic career of Zao
Wou-ki.
(CNN) -- The Chinese-French painter Zao Wou-ki once
told me that painting expresses the thoughts we struggle to put into words.
Faced with this challenge, "It's easier to learn English!" he joked,
his wit shining through, even though Alzheimer's disease had already begun its
slow, relentless onslaught on his mind.
Zao, widely regarded as one of the foremost Chinese
contemporary painters of the 20th century, passed away at his home in
Switzerland on Tuesday at the age of 93.
Born in Beijing in 1920, he formed part of the second
generation of Chinese artists to turn westward in their search for inspiration.
Encouraged by the French-educated Chinese artist Lin Fengmian, his teacher at
the prestigious Hangzhou National College of Art (today the China Academy of
Art), he relocated to Paris in 1948. Although he did not know it at the time,
the move would be permanent, due in part to the rapidly changing political
situation in China.
Apart from brief trips abroad, Zao would remain in France
until the year before his death, one of the few Chinese artists from his
generation to emigrate to Europe. Embraced by France, he was elected to the
prestigious Academie des Beaux Arts society in 2002 and received the Legion of
Honor in 2006 from then-president Jacques Chirac.
For Zao and his contemporaries, Paris represented the
source of modern art. Living there meant direct access to the paintings that he
had until then only encountered as black-and-white reproductions in art
magazines. An oil painter by vocation, he immersed himself in the riches that
surrounded him -- heading directly to the Louvre on the very day he arrived in
the city.
Meanwhile, with the assistance of his friend and mentor,
noted poet and painter Henri Michaux, and blessed with the warm charm and wit
that would impress me decades later, Zao cultivated an extensive circle of
fellow artists and cultural figures. In just a few years, he established
himself as an integral member of the postwar French art world.
3. If Syria Is Using Sarin, Obama Must Act
The Bloomberg 2013.04.25
Well,
Bashar, now you’ve done it. We’ve seen that killing tens of thousands of your
fellow Syrians with conventional weapons is more or less acceptable to the
civilized world, as evidenced by the fact that the civilized world hasn’t
stopped you from killing tens of thousands of your fellow Syrians with
conventional weapons.
But now, if U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is to be
believed -- and Hagel isn’t a man looking for excuses to get entangled in theMiddle
East -- you have
apparently used chemical weapons (the nerve agent sarin, to be specific) on
civilians.
If you recall, President Barack
Obama drew a “red
line” for you: no use of chemical weapons in your brutal attempt to put down
the uprising against your regime. Any use of such weapons (even any “moving
around” of such weapons) would “change my calculus,” Obama said, “change my
equation.” In other words, welcome to the day in which the calculus might just
be changing.
Hagel, speaking to reporters in Abu
Dhabi, said that U.S. intelligence has come to believe -- like the
Israelis, the French and the Britishbefore them -- that President Bashar al- Assad’s
regime seems to have used sarin “on a small scale.”
I spoke with Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman
of the House Intelligence Committee, who said that he thinks the Obama
administration is hesitant to face the truth that the Assad regime has already
used these sorts of weapons. “Clearly the administration doesn’t want to see
this,” he said. “We have lost the confidence of the Arab
League and the Syrian
opposition because of our inaction.” Rogers said he was convinced at least a
month ago that Syria had used a small quantity of chemical weapons against
civilians.
Before we get to the meaning and potential consequences of this
horrifying news, a brief primer on sarin, which was invented in Nazi-eraGermany for use as a pesticide, and which was
most famously used in the Tokyo subway attack by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in 1995
and against Kurdish Iraqis during Saddam
Hussein’s genocide campaign.
Convulsions, Death
Exposure
to sarin gas, even in small doses, will cause victims to experience vomiting,
diarrhea, an increased heart rate, eye pain and drooling. In larger amounts,
the exposure can cause convulsions, paralysis, breathing difficulty and, within
a short time, death. Sarin stops the body from controlling muscle and gland
functions, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and
this causes muscles to twitch and breathing to become faster and irregular.
Eventually, the body is overwhelmed, and breathing stops. On a single day in
1988, in a single town, Saddam’s forces killed some 5,000 Iraqi Kurds using a
combination of mustard gas, sarin, VX and tabun.
Assad has committed many terrible crimes against his people, but
if these latest reports are confirmed, he will have entered into the pantheon
of the modern era’s worst war criminals, just as Saddam did in 1988. Back then,
Saddam was considered an ally by the U.S. (he was in the midst of a war with Iran).
So, to the everlasting shame of President Ronald Reagan,
the U.S. did nothing to stop his genocide.
4.
The Beauty
Market Resists Recession
The New York
Times 2013.04.26
LONDON
— If you’re of a sensitive disposition, turn away now. Today we’re looking at
the phenomenon of fish pedicures.
For
the benefit of the uninitiated, these are treatments increasingly available at
beauty salons in which clients voluntarily plunge
their feet into tanks of tiny fish to
have them nibble off the dead skin.
The
procedure may be at the yucky end of the eternal quest for youth and beauty,
but it has caught on in Europe in recent years, thanks to celebrity
endorsements and media coverage.
Now,
France’s environmental safety agency, Anses, has issued a warning that, while being chewed by fish might
be good for your feet, it could also be bad for your health.
There
was a potential risk of contamination from the transmission of human or fish
pathogens, according to a report this week, although the agency acknowledged it
had no documented cases of infection.
Noting
that the treatment, banned in a number of U.S. states but offered by several hundred spas in
France, was largely unregulated, it called for more studies to determine the
health risks.
The
French report focused on the toothless garra rufa, the fish of choice in a
procedure imported from Asia. The use of other toothed varieties potentially
posed an even greater threat, the agency warned.
The
boom in the fishy foot fad appears to provide further evidence that, in a
period of much-publicized belt-tightening, European consumers are not prepared
to scrimp on their beauty treatments.
In an
article this week on
the growing popularity of Botox and dermal filler treatments, Fergus Walsh, the
BBC’s medical correspondent, said, “The cosmetic procedures industry is
booming,”
which, he continued, “in the teeth of a recession it is all the more astonishing.”
which, he continued, “in the teeth of a recession it is all the more astonishing.”
