NEW YORK: Masses of children skipped school on Friday (Sep 20) to join a global strike against climate change that teen activist Greta Thunberg hopes will mark a turning point in persuading leaders to act against environmental disaster.About four million people filled city streets around the world, organisers said, in what was expected to be the biggest ever protest against the threat posed to the planet by rising temperatures.Youngsters and adults chanted slogans and waved placards in demonstrations that started in Asia and the Pacific, spread across Africa, Europe and Latin America, before culminating in the United States where Thunberg rallied."I hope this will be another social tipping point that we show how many people are engaged, how many people are putting pressure on leaders," the 16-year-old told AFP in New York, where she claimed 250,000 protested.Although there was no official turnout, organisers 350.org wrote on Twitter that four million people participated … [Read more...] about ‘Millions’ protest in youth-led global climate strike
New york garbage collection days
Bad water supply noted since 1903 (who cares?)
Bad water supply noted since 1903 (who cares?) Not much has changed judging by information from a hundred years ago,” historian Dr. Augusto de Viana says. He points to the 1903 Philippine Commission report on unsanitary conditions in Manila at the start of American occupation. The old findings are startling in that the wrongs go on to this day nationwide: garbage dumping into rivers and seas, untreated sewage, and dirty water supply. Toilets are crude, if there are at all. People spit and defecate in public like their work animals. “A catastrophe waiting to happen,” de Viana says of the serious threats to public health and environment, in “Night Soil and Other Unmentionables”. That chapter, from de Viana’s book “Stories Rarely Told, Volume I” (New Day Publishers, 2013), condenses the Commission’s report. City planners, local government officials, and Manila Bay rehabilitators would do well to … [Read more...] about Bad water supply noted since 1903 (who cares?)