Brazil's Mudslides

In one twenty-four hour interval, a months average amount of rain fell in the the mountains north of the Rio de Janeiro.  This region in Brazil got drowned in over ten inches of rain over the course of one day.  At around 3 a.m. Wednesday morning, tons of earth slid through Brazilian mountain towns.  The hardest hit city was Teresopolis, totaling around 150 deaths alone, but the the total death toll stand at about 407.  13,500 people have now been declared homeless and Brazil has assembled an 800-men search and rescue team  to find over 50 missing souls.  Heavy rains are expected to continue as the weekend progresses and mudslides and flooding are still an imminent danger for this region.

Tucson Shooting

This past Saturday, a tragic event occurred in Tucson, Arizona.  Congress member, Gabrielle Giffords, was fired upon while hosting a meeting in the parking lot of a shopping center.  The man behind the gun was just a 22 year old named Jared Lee Loughner.  He had a total of 31 rounds in his gun and police claim that he fired every single one of those bullets into the crowd.   His attempt on Giffords' life proved unsuccessful, but she did get shot in the head and is still in critical condition at the University Medical Center at Tucson.  Doctors can't predict her condition even if she does survive, but they are saying she could have problems with common tasks like speech.  The gunman took away the lives of 6 individuals and injured 13 others, including Giffords.  The six people killed range from a judge to a 9-year-old school girl.  Loughner won't cooperate with authorities and the reasons behind the attack are still somewhat unknown.  

What Would You Do With $380 Million?

This past week the second largest lottery in the United States was held.  The prize was a whopping $380 million.  Just imagine if one day you woke up and were suddenly titled as a multi-millionaire.  This feeling came true for two Pacific Northwest citizens.  The chances for winning a lottery of this size is extremely low, pretty much facing 0%.  One person out of 176,000,000 people has the opportunity to win it.  This lottery brought out crowds of people who waited patiently in lines lasting hours and hours.  Watch this video to get a visual of these lines.  

Some people claim that winning a lottery can be be more harmful to an individual then beneficial, cause them to become greedy, selfish, and conceded.  So now I ask, what would you honestly do if you had $380 million to spend?

A Cure For HIV?

One of the most difficult enigma's for medical researches has been the idea of curing HIV.  This strain of viral infection is very unexplored and profoundly difficult to control, yet alone cure.   In fact, until recently, no one has ever been titled as being cured of HIV.  This all changed thanks to one patient in Berlin and his brilliant doctor.  He was suffering from both leukemia and HIV, but cancer was actually a gift rather than a curse.  Both HIV and cancer consist of viral characteristic, making cancer treatments, like chemotherapy, effect both illnesses.   The patient's doctor, Gero Hutter, came up with the remarkable idea of trying to cure his patient of both illnesses at the same time.  Normally with chemotherapy, one must receive donor stem cells to replace the killed ones.  Hutter decided, instead of replacing the killed off cancer-infected stem cells with regular donor cells, why not replace them with a mutated stem cell called CCR5delta32?  This strand of cell is mutated from original stem cells and is incapable of being affected by HIV.  It lacks the door way for the disease to enter.  So thats what Hutter did.  He found a donor with this rare mutation and implanted it into his patient to repopulate his immune system.  This method worked and Hutters patient was the first person to ever be cured of HIV in the whole entire world.  

So you ask, why did this method work? There are three reasons that all equally caused the outcome.  First was that chemotherapy killed most of the HIV infected cells.  By intself, this would not have been enough to cure HIV.  Next, the donors cells repopulated his immune system.  These cells killed off all of the patients remaining white blood cells after chemotherapy.  Third  was their capability to withstand HIV.  As HIV emerged from resting cells, the virus helped kill off all the remaining susceptible.  When the new donor cells expanded to take their place, the HIV had no place to go and withered away.

This event has caused researchers to look at HIV in a completely different way.  Originally thought to be not capable of being cured, the virus has proven to be stoppable.  "In the future there will be a mild method of making space for these new HIV-resistant stem cells, so that they grow out and repopulate the immune system," one researcher says, "that is the goal. It may take a long time to get to that, but it will happen."  So yes, there is hope for HIV victims.  A cure is just waiting to emerge.

Riot In Athens

Athens, Greece has been the site of rioting for the past year.  Greece is currently experiencing a financial crisis and with economic catastrophe comes unemployment and with unemployment comes angry citizens. This crisis caused a huge jump in unemployment and high wage cuts.  The  Greek government have attempted to cope with this problem by enforcing many labor reforms over the year, but these solutions don't go over well with the public.  Today, 20,000 protestors marched to parliament in Athens, armed with masks, goggles, and sledgehammers.  They continued on while destroying almost everything in their path, breaking up sidewalks and even throwing the rubble at police.  Police fired tear gas and flash grenades in attempt to control the riot, but these people are unwilling to give up.  The strike has grounded flights, closed factories, hit cars, buses, and trains, and disrupted hospitals.  Do you feel that these strike are an adequate solution to the problem or are there other ways to solve controversies?

Athens Riots

China Digusted By Nobel Commitee

The Nobel Commitee anounced its Peace Prize winner on October 8, but now, a day before the Nobel Commitee planned to honor this recognition, Liu Xiaobo remains behind bars.  He is currently serving an 11-year sentence after being found guility for the crime of inciting subversion.  The Chinese government says he has broke Article 105, which is a crime of instigating the subversion of state power.  Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu stated, "this is not an issue of human rights; it is an issue of interference of internal affaris."  The Chinese will keep Xiaobo locked up during the ceremony and currently 19 countries have declined the Nobel Commitees invitations to the event, including: China, Russia, Saudi Arabi, Pakistan, Iraq, and Iran.

Prison Riot Gone Wrong

This morning, rioting took place in San Miguel's Prison located in Santiago, Chile.  A few inmates deliberately sparked a fire inside the building that ended up flaming out of control.  The prison is completely overcrowded and even the Chilean President started, "the conditions that exist inside this prison are absolutely inhumane."  These conditions that President Sebastian Pinera referred to allowed for this fire to cause a maximum amount of casualties, totaling to 83.  It also severely burned an additional 14 victims.  Camera shots show black smoke billowing from within the building and inmates attempting to crowd the jail's walls in hope of escape.  The truly horrific part of this story is the way that the jail guards reacted to the fatal blaze.  Some guards laughed and took pictures of the inmates vomiting from smoke inhalation.  Then the guards proceeded in evacuating the safe floors rather than the inmates who were in imminent danger and dying. This story showcases how some jails are in complete disarray and need to be reformed.