INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS TIMES                 Oct. 25, 2014

By Charles Poladian

U.S. President Barack Obama again encouraged Americans to be “guided by the facts, not fear” in their assessments of Ebola virus disease as he discussed the first confirmed case in New York and the national response by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in his weekly address Saturday. Obama also mentioned the recoveries of Ashoka Mukpo and Nina Pham, who both tested negative for Ebola this week, and stressed the difficulty of contracting the virus.

 New York City Council District 7 Community Liason Fidel Malena hands out flyers about Ebola risk near the apartment building of Ebola patient Dr. Craig Spencer, in New York, Friday, Oct. 24, 2014. Spencer remained in stable condition while isolated in a hospital, talking by cellphone to his family and assisting disease detectives who are accounting for his every movement since arriving in New York from Guinea via Europe on Oct. 17. (AP Photo/Richard Drew) | ASSOCIATED PRESS

THE HUFFINGTON POST                                                          Oct. 24, 2014
 By Carly Schwartz, Saki Knafo, Roque Planas & Sebastian Murdock

NEW YORK -- As news of New York City's first confirmed Ebola case spreads through the city, New Yorkers -- even those at the hospital where the patient is being treated, who rode the same subway lines he traveled on and who live in his building -- are remaining markedly calm....

Zachary Hasselbring, a New York University student riding the A train, ...said  "I think everybody's overreacting a bit," he said. "It's blown out of proportion."

NEW YORK TIMES               Oct. 25, 2014
by David W. Shin and Liz Robbins

The surprise decision by the governors of New York and New Jersey yesterday to impose a mandatory quarantine on persons who arrived at area airports and had contact with Ebola infected persons has touched off concern that it will deter people from volunteering to work in West Africa.

"Among medical professionals who have been fighting Ebola in West Africa, the restrictions only intensified the debate. While a few of those interviewed said an overabundance of caution was welcome, the vast majority said that restrictions like those adopted by New York and New Jersey could cripple volunteers’ efforts at the front lines of the epidemic."

" Dr. Rick Sacra, who contracted Ebola in Liberia and was flown back to the United States to be treated in September, said...many doctors and nurses who volunteered would spend about three weeks in Africa and then return to their regular jobs. The requirement that they be quarantined at home upon their return “will effectively double the burden on those people, on the loss of productive time,” Dr. Sacra said.

UPDATE 2      U.S. nurse quarantined over Ebola criticizes her treatment and  airport temperaure reading

REUTERS    

By Jonathan Allen                                                                        Oct. 25, 2014

NEW YORK --Kaci Hickox, a nurse, returned on Friday from working with medical charity Doctors Without Borders in Sierra Leone and was placed in quarantine after arriving at Newark.

Hickox, who was transferred from the airport to a hospital where she was placed in isolation, described a confusing and upsetting experience at the airport and was worried the same treatment was in store for other American health workers trying to help.

"I ... thought of many colleagues who will return home to America and face the same ordeal," Hickox wrote in an article published on Saturday by The Dallas Morning News with the help of one of the newspaper's reporters. "Will they be made to feel like criminals and prisoners?"

In her article, Hickox ...said her temperature was normal when tested orally at the hospital, but had shown a fever when she was tested using a non-contact forehead scanner, which reflected the fact she was flustered and anxious.

Read full article

NEW YORK TIMES                    Oct. 24, 2014

by MARC SANTORA  

NEW YORK --The governors of New York and New Jersey announced Friday afternoon that they were ordering all people entering the country through two area airports who had direct contact with Ebola patients in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea to be quarantined.

The announcement comes one day after an American doctor, who had worked in Guinea and returned to New York City earlier in October, tested positive for Ebola and became the first New York patient of the deadly virus.

“A voluntary Ebola quarantine is not enough,” said Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York. “This is too serious a public health situation.”

NEW YORK TIMES                 OCT. 5 2014

by MANNY FERNANDEZ and ROBERT PEAR 

But increased attention about the virus has jangled nerves around the country, particularly among West African immigrant communities and recent travelers to that region, and placed health care workers on a kind of high alert. “We expect that we will see more rumors, or concerns, or possibilities of cases,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, director of the federal C.D.C., said Saturday. “Until there is a positive laboratory test, that is what they are — rumors and concerns.”

...

reuters.com - By Ryan McNeill, Deborah J. Nelson and Duff Wilson - September 4, 2014

As the seas rise, a slow-motion disaster gnaws at America’s shores

Part 1: A Reuters analysis finds that flooding is increasing along much of the nation’s coastline, forcing many communities into costly, controversial struggles with a relentless foe.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

submitted by John Patten

rockinst.org - by James W. Fossett - July 2013

“We can surge troops and equipment, but you can’t surge trust.” - General Carter Ham

The American intergovernmental system needs to stop improvising the way it manages long-term recovery from major disasters such as Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy and the terrorist attacks of 9/11. From financing to decisions about the proper response to long-term climate change, the American system for disaster recovery is ad hoc, uncoordinated, and reinvented from scratch after every major disaster. As a result, recoveries have been lengthy and conflictual, imposed considerable welfare costs on families and businesses, and have resulted in only marginal improvement in the vulnerability of areas afflicted by these disasters.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

URI professor of oceanography Isaac Ginis. (Tim Faulkner/ecoRI News)

submitted by Sarah Slaughter

ecori.org - by Tim Faulkner - July 26, 2014

NARRAGANSETT — Hurricanes bound for New England will get about 10 percent more powerful by 2100, but the state lacks the tools to access their impacts, according to University of Rhode Island professor Isaac Ginis.

Hurricanes are powered by warm water, and the predicted increase in ocean temperatures caused by climate change is expected to make hurricane season longer and the storms stronger in the years ahead. .

. . . Numerous studies and models suggest the frequency of category 4 and 5 hurricanes are expected to increase by 81 percent, while the volume of rainfall is expected to increase 20 percent by 2100, Ginis said.

However, a key current modeling method used to measure the impacts of hurricanes and set flood insurance maps is outdated, he said.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

usresilienceproject.org - October 31, 2011

U.S. Resilience Project (USRP) reports are designed to showcase how public policy can benefit from private-sector best practices in security, business continuity, risk management, and disaster preparedness.

Harness the Power of Intelligent Networks and Social Media

The focus for national preparedness should be on creating situational awareness, enhanced decision-making and rapid response; Platforms like the U.S. Resilience System, that are based upon distributed intelligent social networks and crowd-sourcing, can enable far more agility and adaptability than a highly structured, hierarchical capability with significantly better outcomes at far less cost. Exploiting U.S. leadership in this area has the potential to create significant engagement in preparedness, disaster response, and regional resilience building.

Prepared by the Homeland Security Studies and Analysis Institute (HSSAI) for the Department of Homeland Security Science & Technology Directorate, September 30, 2013
homelandsecurity.org

CLICK HERE - The Resilient Social Network: @OccupySandy #SuperstormSandy (103 page .PDF report)

Acknowledgements

The Homeland Security Studies and Analysis Institute (HSSAI) would like to acknowledge the numerous individuals from government, the private sector, the not-for-profit sector, and the Occupy Sandy volunteers who generously granted time for interviews.

Particularly, HSSAI would like to thank Dr. Michael McDonald, Megan Fliegelman, Meghan Dunn, and Jill Cornell for providing points of contact and documentation. They greatly assisted the task team in the development of its research and analysis.

HSSAI would further like to acknowledge COL Terry Ebbert, USMC (Ret.), the former director of homeland security for the City of New Orleans and currently a distinguished visiting fellow at HSSAI, for providing a critical review of this case study.

Growing Economy, Falling Emissions

Economic growth has been stronger in nine Northeast states that have a current cap-and-trade program. Carbon emissions in those states have fallen much more quickly than in the rest of the country.

The New York Times
Sources: ENE; Energy Information Administration

nytimes.com - by Hannah Fairfield - June 6, 2014

Some critics of the Environmental Protection Agency’s new requirements for power plants argue that forcing emissions reduction will curtail economic growth. But the recent experience of states that already cap carbon emissions reveals that emissions and economic growth are no longer tightly tied together. . .

. . . The nine states already in the program — Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont — have substantially reduced their carbon emissions in recent years. At the same time, those states have had stronger economic growth than the rest of the country.

Cutting Emissions
At least 10 states cut emissions from power plants by 30 percent or more between 2005 and 2012.

By The New York Times
Source: Georgetown Climate Center

nytimes.com - by JUSTIN GILLIS and MICHAEL WINES - June 6, 2014

The cries of protest have been fierce, warning that President Obama’s plan to cut greenhouse gases from power plants will bring soaring electricity bills and even plunge the nation into blackouts. . .

. . . Yet cuts on the scale Mr. Obama is calling for — a 30 percent reduction in emissions from the nation’s electricity industry by 2030 — have already been accomplished in parts of the country.

At least 10 states cut their emissions by that amount or more between 2005 and 2012, and several other states were well on their way, almost two decades before Mr. Obama’s clock for the nation runs out.

Homeless encampments known as "tent cities" are popping up across the country.

money.cnn.com - by Blake Ellis - May 16, 2014

Formed as an alternative to shelters and street-living, these makeshift communities are often set up off of highways, under bridges and in the woods. Some have "mayors" who determine the rules of the camp and who can and can't join, others are a free-for-all. Some are overflowing with trash, old food, human waste and drug paraphernalia, others are relatively clean and drug-free.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)