Yesterday, The United States of America has sign a deal with Indonesia to forgive Indonesia debt to the US ($30mil) in exchange for Sumatra forest conservation.  Under this deal, Indonesia will pay the $30mil into a trust (instead of the US Government), of which the money from the trust will be used for conservation efforts. 

This news come as a breath of fresh air and the idea of debt-for-nature is an innovative solution to this predicament.  The Malaysian citizen has suffer on haze and the problem seams to become an annual event for so many years, one starts to wonder if we will ever get clear sky and fresh air.  The Government’s attempt has been fruitless, and in fact uproot some controversies involving Malaysian companies in Indonesia.  I remember at one point, the Indonesian Foreign Minister was saying why when Indonesia export fresh oxygen to Malaysia, no one appreciate nor care, but when there are some haze, everyone seams to jump on Indonesia on the issue?

This is true, Indonesia forest has been providing oxygen to the entire world, why should Indonesia bare the cost of conserving these forest? The rest of the world should pay too.  And on this line of thinking, debt-for-nature seams to makes sense as the first solution to wider forest conservation.  Not only Indonesia, many tropical countries has forest of their own, and why should they conserve the forest at their expense for the rest of the world, and especially the US and China who is among the top green house gas producers.  One day, the air we breath may not be free anymore, and for now, it seams that the US has started to pay for it. 

It was unfortunate that the Malaysian Media did not pick this up as this conservation efforts will reduce the amount of forest fires in the Island of Sumatera, and in turn reduce the haze floating over to Malaysia.  I for one are looking towards a Haze Free Malaysia in years to come..

Source:

WSJ : Orang Hutan Center : Tree Hugger : Huffington Post

This recipe is simple, Just two Green Apple, 5 Yellow Lemon and 1kg (700ml) of honey.  Keep for 45 days, and you will get a smooth and sweet enzyme.  I was very excited on my first enzyme, which was the Dragon Fruit Enzyme, and waiting for it to mature was really excruciating.  And so, we started to make more enzyme, mainly to ensure we are not short of them since we consume quite a lot on daily basis.  We decided to make the Apple Lemon Enzyme again as the ones that my wife’s mom made was super delicious, and only took us 2 weeks to finish up the entire liter of it. 

Making the Apple Lemon Enzyme was dead simple, just 3 ingredients, and loads of time, and you will have a very smooth and sweet Enzyme.  Before making you will have to ensure that everything is dry, including your hands and utensils.  This is to avoid contamination that would lead to fungus or molds, which I have read to be bad.  Cut the Apples up, my mother inlaw cut them up into 4 pieces per apple, we just slice them up.  Then Slice up the lemons.  Layer the lemons and apples into the bottle and pour in the honey.  I am not sure why honeys are sold in kilograms or grams as they are liquid, nevertheless, a scan across the supermarket counter on all the honey sold there, they are all in grams.  For this batch, we are making two bottles, one with a cheap honey, and another with a more expensive honey.  Both honey taste different, and we are eager to taste the outcome in 45 days time. 

Per WHO update up to 15 May, there are an increase of 1022 cases from May14th.  There were no new cases from Mexico, however, looking at Mexico data reporting trend, they seams to report the number cases on every two days, therefore, if there are new cases from Mexico, we will see it on May 16.  Of the 1022 new cases reported by WHO, 946 of them are from the US, 60 from Canada, 11 from Panama, 3 from Columbia and 2 from Cuba.  Notice that all the new cases reported are from the Americas region.  The number of deaths still stay at 65, which is a good news for now. 

Malaysia also see it’s first A(H1N1) case today, however, it was not reported to or by WHO yet, and so, these number of death and cases being reported by WHO are not the latest and greatest data.  In actual fact, there may be more than 7517 cases as of May 15 and more death that has yet to be reported by WHO. 

Joint FAO/WHO/OIE Statement on influenza A(H1N1) and the safety of pork

Influenza A #H1N1 facts: What is meant by pandemic "severity" and "impact"?

As reported by WHO today, there are a total of 6485 cases to date and out of these, 65 deaths have been reported.  This is about 1% of mortality rate.  Mexico and the US are the biggest gainers to date as they keep on reporting new cases by the hundreds.  Its either these were backlog cases from the laboratory, or the virus is spreading at an accelerated rate there.  Hong Kong sees one new case after more than a 10 days while Columbia and France follow suit with one new case today.  Germany has two more new cases today, so is Spain and the UK has 3 new cases.  Mexico reported another 4 death today, bringing the death tol up to 65.  The good news is that there is no new country reporting A(N1H1) today. 

About A(N1H1) Vaccines

Ever since I found WHO twitter, I have been following the A(N1H1) flu update.  The first problem I have with the daily updates were that the data was presented on a one dimensional basis.  The number of cases and number of death were the latest figure.  When I see, oh 2000 cases world wide, 60 death, with number of cases broken down by country.  It was just data and did not really makes sense. 

So I start to compile the number of cases since WHO started twittering about A(N1H1).  As I go along the dates coming to today’s date, I could see the seriousness of the issue.  The number of cases has exponentially increase since more than 2 weeks ago.  You can see the number of cases on the below chart.  You can see also the number of cases in the US has overtook Mexico (Since May 10th), indicating that the control on the spread of virus is not effective, especially in the US.  Also, on a daily basis, new countries start to report confirm cases, further strengthen the argument. 

The above data is compiled from Who Twitter News daily update.