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New Strategy To Wipe Out Polio May Be Last Shot To Eradicate It Before Money Runs Out

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GENEVA (AP) - For years, the world has been on the brink of wiping out polio, the deadly disease that can paralyze and kill children. At the World Health Organization's annual meeting of health ministers this week, experts are unveiling what they describe as a new strategy to get rid of the feared disease. But others say there is little new and that if this effort fails, there are serious questions about whether to continue the campaign should be raised. Some experts say eradicating polio is impossible and should be abandoned.

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Climate Change Hits The Oceans

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By Michael D. Lemonick

When scientists say the planet is warming, they usually point to rising air temperatures as proof. That's reasonable enough, especially since the warmth of the air temperature affects us directly so we feel the change the scientists are measuring. But it's also misleading: while the lower atmosphere has been gradually warming over the past 50 years, it happens unevenly, rising sharply for a year or two or even ten, then flattening out.

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Oceans' Fish Could Disappear In 40 Years: UN

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By Sebastian Smith (AFP) NEW YORK — The world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 unless fishing fleets are slashed and stocks allowed to recover, UN experts warned Monday. "If the various estimates we have received... come true, then we are in the situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish," Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program's green economy initiative, told journalists in New York.

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Wiring The Oceans

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A new state-of-the-art global observatory currently under construction is about to launch ocean science light years ahead

May/June 2010

By Annie Reisewitz Imagine an underwater world with flying androids whizzing thousands of feet below and robotic creatures crawling along vast stretches of ocean floor.

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Salt Killing Crops, Driving Migration In Storm-Hit Southern Bangladesh

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Written by: AlertNet correspondentBangladeshi farmers plant rice in a field at Keraniganj on January 16, 2008. Worsening soil and water salinity is killing crops and driving migration in southern Bangladesh. REUTERS/Rafiqur Rahman 

By Syful Islam DHAKA, Bangladesh (AlertNet) - Worsening sea water storm surges and overuse of irrigation have left fields, wells and ponds in parts of southern Bangladesh too salty to grow crops, leading to a growing exodus of farmers from the region.

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Almost Half Of Deaths In Kids Under 5 Occur In 5 Countries

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Two-thirds of cases due to infectious diseases, researchers report

TUESDAY, May 11 (HealthDay News) -- Infectious diseases such as pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria and blood poisoning account for more than two-thirds of the 8.8 million annual deaths in kids under 5 years of age worldwide, a new report shows. Other leading causes of death for children include birth complications, lack of oxygen during birth and congenital defects. The authors of the report found that infectious diseases caused 5.97 million deaths among kids under age 5 in 2008.

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