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cnbc.com - by Matt Clinch - January 20, 2015

CLICK HERE - 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer

A rash of unforeseen events in 2014 has left trust in global institutions at six-year lows, according to a new survey released on Tuesday.

The 2015 Edelman Trust Barometer - released to coincide with the beginning of the 2015 World Economic Forum in Davos - surveyed 27,000 people from 27 countries using 20-minute online interviews.

The results of the annual survey - which is now in its 15th year - revealed an "alarming evaporation" of trust across governments, businesses, media outlets and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

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cnn.com - January 20th 2015 - Holly Yan

A Montana pipeline burst sent as much as 50,400 gallons of oil gushing into the Yellowstone River, prompting the governor to declare a state of emergency.

Residents in nearby cities were told not to drink the tap water, which some said smelled like diesel.

The massive oil spill happened when the 12-inch pipeline, which crosses the Yellowstone River, ruptured Saturday about 5 miles upstream from Glendive, Montana's Department of Environmental Quality said.

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Image: Workers install solar paneling.

fortune.com - January 16th, 2015 - Kirsten Korosec

SolarCity, the largest installer of residential solar systems in the U.S., nearly doubled its workforce last year, hiring 4,000 people to do everything from system design and site surveys to installation and engineering.

The hiring spree at SolarCity isn’t slowing; it’s picking up speed as the company attempts to install twice as many rooftop solar systems than last year and readies its 1.2 million-square foot factory in New York, which is scheduled to reach full production in 2017.

SolarCity SCTY plans to eclipse 2014’s hiring numbers, CEO Lyndon Rive tells Fortune.

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BBC                                                                       Jan.19, 2015
Schools have been reopening in Guinea after a five-month closure because of the deadly Ebola outbreak.

Correspondents said the atmosphere at schools was subdued and many pupils had not returned.

                                 Returning pupils had their temperature taken as a precaution

They said parents had been taken by surprise by the government's decision to reopen schools with only four days' notice and many were not prepared.

More than 8,400 people have died in West Africa in the world's worst outbreak of the Ebola virus.

The reopening of schools in Guinea comes four days after the UN said the number of confirmed Ebola cases in the country had fallen to its lowest weekly total since August.

Read complete story.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-30879937

AFP                                                                Jan. 18, 2015

BAMAKO - The Malian government and the United Nations on Sunday declared the country free of Ebola after 42 days without any new cases of the deadly virus.

A man washes his hand in the village of Kouremale, Mali, to help prevent the spread of Ebola.

Health Minister Ousmane Kone said no confirmed cases had been registered since December 6 when the last Ebola patient had tested negative.

The west African country "had come out" of the epidemic, Ibrahima Soce Fall, the head of the Malian office of the United Nations Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), confirmed.

Health Minister Ousmane Kone said no confirmed cases had been registered since December 6 when the last Ebola patient had tested negative.

Read complete story.

http://news.yahoo.com/mali-government-un-declare-country-ebola-free-221318115.html

Workers at an Ebola treatment center relax Jan. 10, 2015 in Tubmanburg, Liberia. The facility was built by the U.S. military. (Whitney Leaming/The Washington Post)

WASHINGTON POST  by Kevin Sieff                                                          Jan. 19, 2015

UBMANBURG, Liberia — Near the hillside shelter where dozens of men and women died of Ebola, a row of green U.S. military tents sit atop a vast expanse of imported gravel. The generators hum; chlorinated water churns in brand-new containers; surveillance cameras send a live feed to a large-screen television.

There’s only one thing missing from this state-of-the-art Ebola treatment center: Ebola patients.

cbsnews.com - by Jessica Firger - January 8, 2015

Although it's largely dropped out of the headlines in this country, the Ebola outbreak continues to ravage West Africa. . . . Six out of 10 patients currently hospitalized with the virus will die, and a huge number of victims still aren't receiving medical care, which has allowed this public health crisis to continue to escalate at an alarming pace.

Yet many Americans may be under the impression that the Ebola crisis is winding down.

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cdc.gov - January 14, 2015

One of the difficulties faced by teams responding to the current Ebola outbreak in West Africa is identifying individuals and communities residing in remote areas. Existing maps of these regions either do not exist or are inadequate or outdated. This means that basic data like location of houses, buildings, villages, and roads are not easily accessible, and case finding and contact tracing can be extremely difficult.

To help aid the outbreak response effort, volunteers from around the world are using an open-source online mapping platform called OpenStreetMap (OSM) to create detailed maps and map data of Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and parts of Mali.

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Treating malaria makes Ebola care easier

TIME MAGAZINE   by Alexandra Sifferlin                                                                  Jan. 16, 2015
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is launching its second mass distribution of treatments for malaria in Ebola-stricken Sierra Leone, a move that may have the positive side effect of helping ease the burden of Ebola cases.

Malaria... causes many of the same symptoms as Ebola. It’s common for people to come to Ebola treatment centers believing they have Ebola, when in fact they have malaria—which crowds the clinics and causes enormous stress for patients and their families. Treating malaria and preventing infection are ways MSF can ensure that they reduce the number of patients at Ebola treatment centers in addition to saving lives, since more people fall ill and die from malaria than Ebola.

Read complete story.

http://time.com/3671597/doctors-without-borders-malaria-ebola/

Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky's 2,500 soldiers have spent months battling a rampant killer in Liberia. Is the fight over, or has the front line shifted?

FOREIGN POLICY   by Brian Castner                                                        Jan,. 14, 2014

When Maj. Gen. Gary Volesky arrived in Liberia in late October to assume command of the U.S. military effort to help beat back the Ebola epidemic there, he was handed a to-do list by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Liberian government: build 17 temporary treatment facilities across the country, train a mix of international and local Liberian health-care workers to staff them, and use the Pentagon’s high-end medical equipment to test patients’ blood for the deadly virus.

Nearly every item is now checked off, leaving three options: go home, stay and wait in case the outbreak worsens, or move to start on a similar list in Sierra Leone and Guinea, where the number of Ebola cases has eclipsed that of Liberia.

Read complete article.

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION MEDIA CENTRE                   Jan, 15, 2015

One year after the first Ebola cases started to surface in Guinea, WHO is publishing this series of 14 papers that take an in-depth look at West Africa’s first epidemic of Ebola virus disease.

The papers explore reasons why the disease evaded detection for several months and the factors, many specific to West Africa, that fuelled its subsequent spread.

The most extensive papers trace events in each of the 3 most severely affected countries – Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone...

Key events are set out chronologically, starting with the child who is believed to be the index case of this epidemic through to the Director-General’s commitment to steadfastly support affected countries until they reach zero cases.

Read complete news release

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/notes/2015/ebola-one-year-on/en/
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Jeremy Leggett: 'One of the oil companies will break ranks and this time it is going to stick.'
Photograph: Linda Nylind for the Guardian

submitted by Margery Schab

Jeremy Leggett, former industry adviser, warns over plunging commodity prices and soaring costs of risky energy projects

The oil price crash coupled with growing concerns about global warming will encourage at least one of the major oil companies to turn its back on fossil fuels in the near future, predicts an award-winning scientist and former industry adviser.

Dr Jeremy Leggett, who has had consultations on climate change with senior oil company executives over 25 years, says it will not be a rerun of the BP story when the company launched its “beyond petroleum” strategy and then did a U-turn.

“One of the oil companies will break ranks and this time it is going to stick,” he said.

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New EPA standards will aim to significantly cut methane emissions from oil and gas sites in the U.S.

The Obama administration makes its latest move to take on climate change.

usnews.com - by Alan Neuhauser - January 14, 2015

In the Obama administration’s latest use of executive authority to address climate change, the White House announced plans Wednesday to impose new regulations on the oil and gas industry that would nearly halve methane emissions from wells, drill sites and pipelines in 10 years.

The new standards, to be developed by the Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Air Act, would aim by 2025 to cut methane emissions by up to 45 percent from levels recorded in 2012. They would also slash the spread of volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, key components of ground-level smog that have been linked to cancer, neurological conditions and other illnesses.

ASSOCIATED PRESS   By EDITH M. LEDERER                                                         Jan. 15, 2015

UNITED NATIONS --At least 50 Ebola hotspots remain in the three hardest-hit West African countries but new cases are declining and the deadly disease will be defeated, the U.N.'s Ebola chief said Thursday.

The latest report from the World Health Organization showing reductions in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone "is very good news," Dr. David Nabarro said in an interview with The Associated Press.

In the week ending Jan. 11, WHO said Guinea reported its lowest weekly total of new Ebola cases since mid-August. Liberia had its lowest total since the first week of June and no confirmed new cases for the final two days of the week. And new cases in Sierra Leone declined for a second week to the lowest level since the end of August.

But Nabarro cautioned that "there are still numbers of new cases that are alarming, and there are hotspots that are emerging in new places that make me believe there is still quite a lot of the disease that we're not seeing."