Pakistan
lborkowski | August 3, 2015Last week, Nigeria met an important milestone: An entire year without a reported case of polio. If the WHO confirms the absence of the virus in samples taken from people in previously affected areas, Nigeria will no longer be on the list of countries where the disease is endemic. Another two years will have to pass without additional cases before the WHO can certify Nigeria -- and possibly the entire continent of Africa -- as polio-free.
India was in a similar position a few years ago: In 2012, it was removed from the list of polio-endemic countries, and the WHO declared it polio-free in 2014…
gregladen | April 8, 2014From NBC:
... Mohammad Musa Khan appeared in court in the city of Lahore last week, charged with attempted murder along with his father and grandfather after a mob protesting against gas cuts and price increases stoned police and gas company workers trying to collect overdue bills.
"Police are vindictive. Now they are trying to settle the issue on personal grounds, that's why I sent my grandson to Faisalabad for protection," the baby's grandfather, Muhammad Yasin, told Reuters, referring to a central Pakistani city.
The baby is on bail and due to appear at the next hearing on April 12 but…
aardvarchaeology | September 23, 2013My maternal grandpa Ingemar Leander worked as a sales agent of the Swedish Match Company in Punjab in the 30s before he got married. It was the adventure of his lifetime. Here's the story of his that I remember best.
Once when he went crocodile hunting on the river the party was a little clumsy and startled their prey into the water from the sandbank the animals had been basking on. Only one crocodile stayed behind and was shot. This turned out to be because it was in poor health. When they gutted the animal they found that a bone had pierced its stomach from inside.
It was the arm bone of a…
“Enough is enough” – Asian labor rights advocates call for change as death toll mounts in Bangladesh
egrossman | May 10, 2013By Elizabeth Grossman, reporting from Bangkok, Thailand
As bodies of workers continued to be pulled from the wreckage of the collapsed Rana Plaza factory complex outside Dhaka, Bangladesh, pushing the death toll past 900, and news was breaking of at least seven deaths in a garment factory fire in Bangladesh on May 9, labor rights advocates meeting in Bangkok called for changes in the system that has led to disasters that have killed more than 1300 workers in the past eight months. “Events of the last 8 months have clearly demonstrated a complete failure of the CSR [corporate social…
lborkowski | May 9, 2013Earlier this week, a UN official told AFP that a child in North Waziristan, Pakistan had contracted polio -- the first reported case since tribesman in North Waziristan stopped authorities from conducted a vaccination campaign in June last year. AFP explains:
The Taliban alleged that the campaign was a cover for espionage.
Efforts to tackle the highly infectious disease have been hampered over the years by local suspicion about vaccines being a plot to sterilise Muslims, particularly in Pakistan's conservative and poorly educated northwest.
"We are worried because this new case comes as an…
lborkowski | December 20, 2012Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio is still circulating (Afghanistan and Nigeria are the others), and its eradication efforts have just encountered a horrific setback: Over the course of 48 hours, gunmen shot and killed eight vaccination workers in and around Karachi and Peshawar. The United Nations has pulled off the streets all staff involved in the polio vaccination campaign. Jibran Ahmad reports for Reuters that the government is nonetheless determined to continue immunization efforts:
Karachi police spokesman Imran Shaukat said teams were supposed to tell police of their…
esiegel | October 4, 2012“One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.” -Joan of Arc
Regardless of what intrinsic differences any person or group of people have from another, everyone deserves to be treated as an individual, afforded the same opportunities to pursue their passions, goals and dreams, and evaluated on the merits of their performance. Although this is not yet the way the world works, I am confident that many strides are consistently being made in the right direction, and I was…
lborkowski | February 2, 2011Some villages in Pakistan's Sindh province are still underwater following August's floods, and a new UNICEF survey has found that nearly one-fourth of the children under five there are malnourished. The deputy head of UNICEF Pakistan, Karen Allen, calls conditions "shockingly bad" and compares them to "the worst of the famine in Ethiopia, Darfur, and Chad." The Guardian's Declan Walsh notes that other parts of the country are successfully recovering from the floods (the number of people in camps and roadside settlements has dropped from 3.3 million in October to 166,000), but Sindh "has long…
lborkowski | November 16, 2010When severe flooding in Pakistan left millions of people without food, shelter, and water, I wrote a post wondering why that disaster was getting less attention than Haiti's earthquake. I suspected the gradual nature of the disaster was part of the problem, and commenters had additional suggestions, ranging from Haiti's closeness to the US to the US public's overall view of Pakistan as a nation.
Last week, The New York Times' Lydia Polgreen put some numbers on the Haitian earthquake vs. Pakistani floods comparison and delved into reasons for the disparity:
In all, $3.4 billion has been…
tsmith | August 18, 2010The Skepchicks are sponsoring a pertussis vaccination clinic at Dragon*Con over Labor Day weekend. They're teaming up with the Georgia Dept. of Health, who is providing free assistance and vaccines, but they need some assistance raising funds to cover space rental, posters, and other miscellaneous charges. If you're able to assist, you can donate to their "Hug me! I'm vaccinated!" campaign at the links included in the post.
And while I'm nagging about donations, I'll also note that donations to help the flooded in Pakistan have been slow, especially compared to the Haiti earthquake. If you…
lborkowski | August 17, 2010Flooding in Pakistan has killed 1,600 and is affecting an estimated 20 million people. Six million lack access to food, shelter, and water. The report of a single confirmed cholera case (in the Swat valley) is generating some headlines, but the important point is that a lack of clean water makes the spread of any diarrheal disease far more likely.
UNICEF warns that "more than 3 million children are at high risk of deadly water-borne diseases in Pakistan," and cites a WHO projection of up to 1.5 million cases of diarrheal diseases that could occur over the next three months. These aren't just…
eklemetti | February 4, 2010News!
Pakistan is home to the world's tallest mud volcano in the region of Balochistan - and its somewhat near the reports of an "eruption" earlier this week.
Guess what? Since Wednesday evening, seismicity at Yellowstone has dropped precipitously. The last batch of earthquakes on February 3rd were also back to deeper levels - 8-9 km depth - compared to the potential shallowing earlier in the week. I'm sure the caldera will keep us on our toes, but as of now, it seems to have settled down a bit.
Over in Pakistan, there is mounting evidence that the recent "volcanic" eruption reported as, in…
eklemetti | February 2, 2010UPDATE 2/2/2010 7:30PM EST: Another report, this time placing the activity near Wham. This report is still vague about that is actually happening, saying people saw "flames of burning rocks on the top of the mountain over the last couple of days". The article also says the Headquarters of the Geological Survey of Pakistan has not returned any inquires on the event. My guess (and I emphasize guess) is this might be a misconstrued forest fire ... but this is about as strange a report of a volcanic eruption as you can get.
UPDATE 2/2/2010: A little bit more detail - the "volcano" in question is…
razib | February 1, 2010A comment at Secular Right:
Ever since the Revolution the Mullahs have wanted to erase all traces of the pre-Islamic Persian society. They realized they couldn't go and raze Persepolis and other relics without losing the support of the people. I've heard that it is common for people in Iran to complain openly that worst thing to ever happen to them was the Arab invasion.
A similar strain in Egyptian Islamist clerics and leaders exists but again, they cannot destroy the pyramids without losing legitimacy. Too many Egyptians are attached to their history, whether for economic or cultural…
razib | April 30, 2009So claims Ali Eteraz:
Most people in the world, including some Pakistanis, live under the illusion that the country is secular and just happens to have been overrun by extremists. This is false. Pakistan became an Islamic state in 1973 when the new constitution made Islam the state religion. Under the earlier 1956 constitution Islam had been merely the "official" religion. Nineteen-seventy-three, in other words, represents Pakistan's "Iran moment"--when the government made itself beholden to religious law. Most western observers missed the radical change because the leader of Pakistan at the…