Pismestrovic, Petar. "Migrants in Europe from Bad and Worse." The Moderate Voice. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Sept. 2015. http://themoderatevoice.com/208513/cartoon-migrants-in-europe-from-bad-and-worse/
Migrants in Europe from Bad and Worse
Last week, the European Union held an emergency summit to decide on the fate of the millions of migrants that are relying on the generosity of European nations to save them. As this cartoon illustrates, that leaving the terror of living under IS is not that different than being absolutely destitute on the borders of European nations. The symbol of the IS knife and the hand of the European Union are the same size in the cartoon. The cartoonist want us to see that the way the migrants are being treated in Europe is not any better than what they faced living under IS. In any normal situation we wold never associate the terror associate IS and the peace dedicated EU, but under these conditions they are both treating the migrants badly. They are pushed on both sides and have nowhere else to go. The fate of millions of migrants relies on every little decision made by the European Union in the summit this week. The migrants are risking their live to find a peace in Europe but Europe is not what they expected it to be. The cartoonist is obviously unhappy with the way both IS and the EU are treating the migrants.
UK scientists seek permission to genetically modify human embryos
The embryos would be used for basic research only. and cannot legally be studied for more than two weeks or implanted into women to achieve a pregnancy. Photograph: Alamy
Scientists in Britain have applied for permission to genetically modify human embryos as part of a research project into the earliest stages of human development.
The work marks a controversial first for the UK and comes only months after Chinese researchers became the only team in the world to announce they hadaltered the DNA of human embryos.
Kathy Niakan, a stem cell scientist at the Francis Crick Institute in London, has asked the government’s fertility regulator for a licence to perform so-called genome editing on human embryos. The research could see the first genetically modified embryos in Britain created within months.
Donated by couples with a surplus after IVF treatment, the embryos would be used for basic research only. They cannot legally be studied for more than two weeks or implanted into women to achieve a pregnancy.
Though the modified embryos will never become children, the move will concern some who have called for a global moratorium on the genetic manipulation of embryos, even for research purposes. They fear a public backlash could derail less controversial uses of genome editing, which could lead to radical new treatments for disease.
Niakan wants to use the procedure to find genes at play in the first few days of human fertilisation, when an embryo develops a coating of cells that later form the placenta. The basic research could help scientists understand why some women lose their babies before term.
“The knowledge we acquire will be very important for understanding how a healthy human embryo develops, and this will inform our understanding of the causes of miscarriage. It is not a slippery slope [towards designer babies] because the UK has very tight regulation in this area,” she told the Guardian.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has yet to review her application, but is expected to grant a licence under existing laws that permit experiments on embryos provided they are destroyed within 14 days. In Britain, research on embryos can only go ahead under a licence from an HFEA panel that deems the experiments to be justified.
“If we receive a licence, I would hope to start work as soon as possible,” Niakan said. “However, it is difficult to know how long it will take to carry out the project. In particular, we need to obtain sufficient embryos.” Those will come from a number of IVF clinics whose identities are kept confidential.
Niakan is one of a growing band of scientists working with a powerful new genome editing procedure called Crispr-Cas9. Invented three years ago, it has revolutionised biomedical research. It allows scientists to make precise changes to DNA, and has the potential to transform the treatment of genetic disorders by correcting faulty genes.
Niakan will use Crispr-Cas9 to switch genes on and off in early stage human embryos. She will then look for the effects the modifications have on the development of the cells that go on to form the placenta. “It is essential to study the function of these human genes in the context of the embryo in order to fully understand their roles,” she said.
Genome editing is cheap, easy and effective and has been adopted by scientists at breakneck speed. But the pace of change has made some researchers uneasy. They warn that the field is moving too fast for its ethical implications to be fully considered. Some fear that the procedure could be used to modify human sperm, eggs and embryos for clinical uses before it is safe to do so.
Earlier this year, two groups of scientists called for a voluntary ban on genome editing of human embryos, sperm and eggs. One urged scientists to rule out the procedure for clinical treatments because it is not safe. The other, led by Edward Lanphier, chairman of the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine in Washington DC, took a harder line, and pushed for a global moratorium on modifying human embryos, sperm and eggs, even if it was only for research.
The potential applications of genome editing can be broken down into three broad categories. The first, and by far the largest, is widely supported by scientists. It aims to treat blood disorders, lung diseases, muscle wastage and so on. The second category, into which Niakan’s work falls, involves genetic changes to human eggs, sperm and embryos for basic research. The third and most controversial category would see genome editing used in IVF clinics to correct faulty genes that cause devastating diseases.
For now, the idea of editing embryos to treat diseases is futuristic, and no scientists have proposed to do such work. The procedure is simply not safe enough to use in clinics yet. One major concern is that changes to an embryo’s DNA could have unknown harmful consequences throughout a person’s body. Worse, that genetic damage would be passed on for generations to come, through the affected person’s sperm or eggs. Another concern is the prospect of designer babies, where a child’s DNA is modified to suit their parents’ wishes.
Earlier this month, leading UK funders called for a national debate on whether editing human embryos could ever be justified in the clinic. Weeks later, international experts belonging to the Hinxton Group said it did not yet approve of GM babies being born, but added that “when all safety, efficacy and governance needs are met, there may be morally acceptable uses of this technology in human reproduction.”
Robin Lovell-Badge, head of stem cell biology at the Francis Crick Institute and a member of the Hinxton Group, said: “There is clearly lots of interesting and important research you can do with these techniques which has nothing to do with clinical applications.” But, he added: “We are absolutely not ready for clinical applications yet.”
The US National Institutes of Health will not fund any genome editing research on human embryos, and its head, Francis Collins, has said that altering the DNA of embryos for clinical purposes was “viewed almost universally as a line that should not be crossed.” But if the procedure is made safe enough in coming years, IVF embryos could, in principle, be modified to boost public health, by reducing people’s risk of Alzheimer’s disease, or to make them resistant to HIV, malaria or influenza.
“There are suggestions that the methods could be used to correct genetic defects, to provide disease resistance, or even to introduce novel traits that are not found in humans,” said Niakan. “However, it is up to society to decide what is acceptable: science will merely inform what may be possible.”
An HFEA spokesperson said: “Genome editing of embryos for use in treatment is illegal. It has been permissible in research since 2009, as long as the research project meets the criteria in the legislation and it is done under an HFEA licence. We have recently received an application to use Crispr-Cas9 in one of our licensed research projects, and it will be considered in due course.”
Response:
This article was very fascinating and very challenging for the reader. I think that the author appropriately presented both sides of the argument over this ethical debate. A lot of the time I come away from reading articles with a feeling of almost being manipulated. Because the author did such a good job of presenting both sides, I think that he is for further research in the field of genetically modified human as long as the experiments do not violate the laws set by HFEA.
As I stated earlier the author gives adequate information concerning both sides in the article. In the following statement, the scientist Kathy Niakan is explaining what the benefit of the research is.
“'The knowledge we acquire will be very important for understanding how a healthy human embryo develops, and this will inform our understanding of the causes of miscarriage. It is not a slippery slope [towards designer babies] because the UK has very tight regulation in this area,'”
The author also includes this statement addressing the same point but from a different view point.
"The procedure is simply not safe enough to use in clinics yet. One major concern is that changes to an embryo’s DNA could have unknown harmful consequences throughout a person’s body. Worse, that genetic damage would be passed on for generations to come, through the affected person’s sperm or eggs. Another concern is the prospect of designer babies, where a child’s DNA is modified to suit their parents’ wishes." I think that the author wants research into the area of human embryos to continue but not to develop in a way for babies to be edited to suit societies wishes. There is nothing ethical about that.
I agree with the author, I think that there is a lot of amazing discoveries to be found by studying human embryos. But as the article states there is a very thin line to be crossed where this sort of research could be ethically disastrous. It is good that there are such strict regulations in place to keep control over what scientist research so that we can make sure that all research does not cross any ethical boundaries.
I'm Sarah! I am 17
years old. I am currently in 12th grade at Rift Valley Academy, Kenya. I was
born in New Zealand. When I was 5 years old my parents were called to work as missionaries in Malawi, Africa. I am a Christian. I have two brothers and
want to study nursing in New Zealand when I graduate!
Al Jazeera and
agencies. "Millions at risk as severe drought hits Ethiopia." 05 Sept
2015 Al Jazeera. O7 Sept 2015
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/ethiopia-drought-150905084538285.html
Millions at risk as severe drought hits Ethiopia
Ethiopia says it is managing crisis though UN says number in need has increased by more than 55 percent this year.
Around 4.5 million Ethiopians could be in need of food aid because of a drought in the country, the UN has said.
Hardest-hit areas are Ethiopia's eastern Afar and southern Somali regions, while pastures and water resources are also unusually low in central and eastern Oromo region, and northern Tigray and Amhara districts.
Reacting to the UN's claims that the number in need had increased by more than 55 percent this year, Alemayew Berhanu, spokesman for Ministry of Agriculture, told Al Jazeera that Ethiopia had "enough surplus food at emergency depots and we're distributing it".
"When we were informed about the problem, the federal government and the regional state authorities started an outreach programme for the affected people," he said.
In August, the Ethiopian government said that it had allocated $35m to deal with the crisis that has been blamed on El Niño, a warm ocean current that develops between Indonesia and Peru. The UN says it needs $230m by the end of the year to attend to the crisis.
"The absence of rains means that the crops don’t grow, the grass doesn’t grow and people can’t feed their animals," David Del Conte, UNOCHA'S chief in Ethiopia, said.
One farmer in the town of Zway told Al Jazeera that he was selling personal belongings to stay alive.
"There is nothing we can do. We don't have enough crops to provide for our families. We are having to sell our cattle to buy food but the cattle are sick because they don't have enough to eat," Balcha, who has a family of nine, and grows corn and wheat, said.
The onset of El Niño means the spatial distribution of rainfall from June to September has being very low. According to the UN children's agency (UNICEF), the El Niño weather pattern in 2015 is being seen as the strongest of the last 20 years.
Experts say it could be a major problem for the country's economy, as agriculture generates about half of the country's income.
Climate shocks are common in Ethiopia and often lead to poor or failed harvests which result in high levels of acute food insecurity.
Approximately 44 percent of children under 5 years of age in Ethiopia are severely chronically malnourished, or stunted, and nearly 28 percent are underweight, according to the CIA World Factbook.
UNICEF says that about 264,515 children will require treatment for acute severe malnutrition in 2015 while 111,076 children were treated for severe acute malnutrition between January and May 2015.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
Response:
Ethiopia
has been strongly affected by a severe drought for a long time. People are having to sell their personal
items to survive. The other effects that the drought has had on Ethiopia this
year are clearly laid out by the author of the article. He also reiterates that
this drought has been going on for a long time. The author appears to have a
biased against the Ethiopian government. He stated that the Ethiopian
government had announced that they would need to allocate $35 million to combat
the drought but the UN said in reality they would need $230 million. There are
evident contradictions between what the Ethiopian government
and the UN estimates the cost will be. Also this statement
"Reacting to the UN's claims that the number in need had increased by 55
percent this year…." shows the reader that UN have taken charge over the
situation despite the government's claims that they have it under control. The
author of this article seems skeptical of the government's efforts to support
their people and highlights that UN Aid is necessary. I then researched the background of Al
Jazeera and Ethiopia's relationship to find out where this bias originated.
This
article was published by a news agency called Al Jazeera which is based out of
Qatar. This year, Qatar announced that it was taking drastic measures within
its own borders to combat desertification and drought. Because Qatar is
interested in combating drought, Al Jazeera may want to make world leaders more
aware of the situation in that part of the world. But the Ethiopian
government and Qatar have had a rocky relationship in the past which was
directly linked to footage that Al Jazeera published of the plight of civilians
in Ogaden, Ethiopia. In 2008, they cut
economic ties because the Ethiopian
government accused Qatar of bringing unrest to
the country. They accused Al Jazeera of publishing propaganda on
Ethiopia because the Qatar government did not like them. Later In 2012, an
article was published by Al Jazeera that highlighted the government's neglect
of this region that was suffering under a severe famine. The same area of
Ogaden has been greatly affected by the recent droughts.
Al
Jazeera may have decided to report on this situation in a less abrupt and
accusing manner in order to not upset the Ethiopian government. But the author
of the article still highlights areas of the governments neglect. I do not
think that the author of the 2012 article also wrote this more recent article
but I think he was aware of the situation. This article is targeted at aid
agencies and people who can make a difference in the situation.
Citation
for Al Jazeera Article written in 2012:
Al
Jazeera and agencies. "Changing Fortunes in Ethiopia's Ogaden" 17
Sept 2012. Al Jazeera. 07 Sept 2015.
A migrant family stands at the border in Roszke, Hungary, after Hungarian police officers closed access between Serbia and Hungary on Monday. Matthias Schrader/AP hide caption
itoggle caption Matthias Schrader/AP
It all started before dawn.
Hungarian police marched into a cornfield where thousands of migrants and refugees were sleeping. With all detention centers full, many people had been camping out here for days after crossing the Hungary-Serbia border.
Police roused people from their tents at 3 a.m. They scrapped the fingerprinting they've been struggling with for days and rushed asylum-seekers onto green military buses, windows blocked out with cardboard and plywood.
"At first, it was difficult to communicate because a lot of the policemen don't even speak English. So we couldn't tell the people here what's going on and where they would be brought," says Victoria Cams, a German volunteer who was working the night shift at an aid station. "They were just, like, really roughly getting everyone out very fast. Just, 'Go, go go! Go to the bus!' "
They boarded buses bound for the Austrian border. Hungary is clearing out its detention camps ahead of emergency laws that take effect Tuesday. Starting then, migrants will be arrested. Crossing borders without a visa will carry a prison sentence.
Hundreds of Hungarian soldiers and police patrol a 13-foot-high fence that stretches along the whole 110-mile border with Serbia. This is where nearly 200,000 people have entered Hungary so far this year, officials say. One of the last openings in the fence was closed Monday.
Among the last to cross through the opening, over railway tracks, was a group of Syrians. They want to reach Germany, and they refer to Chancellor Angela Merkel as "Mama Merkel."
"Because she's like my mother!" says Nader Atasi, from Homs. "We love her. All Syrians love Merkel because she helps Syria."
But now Germany is reinstating passport checks at its borders. The color drains from the face of a frail, older man, Abu Hamza Abazi, when he hears that news.
"Nooo!" he says as he turns away, his shoulders slumped. He's from Daraa, Syria, but has lost his I.D. card, he says. He's been on the road 20 days.
"I am going! I am going to Germany," he vows. But he looks defeated.
Many of the migrants and refugees who crossed into Hungary on Monday left their homes in the Middle East just two or three weeks ago, after seeing television footage of their countrymen streaming into Europe. On arrival, they're surprised to learn they're among the last to be allowed into Hungary — and that other countries are also tightening restrictions.
Most say they don't believe they'll be turned away once they're here.
"We heard about that, but we thought it is just — what can I say? We have a doubt about this news," says Ahsan al-Najar, from Damascus. "A lot of people are following after us, too. I think the United Nations and other organizations will find a solution."
Up to 30,000 more people are reportedly on their way northward from Serbia. They may reroute to Croatia or Romania. They can no longer pass here.
At dusk, Hungarian military vehicles arrive. Police unfurl chain-link fencing across the railroad tracks. They top it with coils of razor wire.
Hungarian police unfurl chain-link fencing across one of the last remaining openings in a barrier that extends 110 miles across the Hungary-Serbia border.Lauren Frayer for NPR hide caption
itoggle caption Lauren Frayer for NPR
This European Union frontier is now sealed.
Among those watching from the Hungarian side of the fence is Amirali Husseini, an Iranian who attends medical school in nearby Szeged. He came to the border as a volunteer translator, to help Hungarian authorities communicate with Farsi- and Dari-speaking migrants from Afghanistan or Iran. But he's held back from the border by police.
"We saw a pregnant lady who was trying to cross the border. They told her she needs to go back to Serbia," Husseini says. "And she could barely walk."
As night falls, Hungarian soldiers and mounted police patrol the fence. On the Serbian side, there's rustling in the high brush as migrants and refugees make their way through a cornfield, searching for another path into the European Union.
Response: This article "As Hungary seals it borders, a rush to get across" is written from the perspective of an author who is wants refugees to have a safe passage into Europe. Although most people want safety for the refugees but this author is for them being relocated in Europe. He almost writes of the Hungarian border patrol with disgust as he tells of them of yelling at refugees in a language they couldn't understand as they shoved them into buses. Also the image of a pregnant women being turned away at the border even though she could barely walk paints an image of brutality. He also writes of Chancellor Merkel of Germany being praised by the refugees for her helping of Syrians as Germany opens its borders to them. I think that the author is speaking to world leaders about the severity of the situation and the necessity of something to be done to assist these people. The last paragraph shows that although one door has closed, the refugees are still looking for a way into the Europe Union and the crisis is not over yet.
