New Yorker: Superbugs

Be scared, very scared. The superbugs are here. These are bacteria that have developed immunity to a wide number of antibiotics and thrive in hospital settings where they gleefully hop from one patient to the other, from one caregiver to the other. A 2004 study showed that of that year’s estimated 90,000 deaths in US hospitals owing to bacterial infection, more than 70 per cent had been caused by organisms that were resistant to drugs commonly used to treat them. The report quotes an expert in antibiotic resistance in Cleveland as saying, “The problem is that any of us could be an ICU patient tomorrow…It’s actually anybody who goes into a hospital. This is scary stuff.”

National Geographic: Target Earth

What if a rock, bigger than a sports arena, were to tumble menacingly close to our planet every few years? Sci-fi gobbledygook? An estimated 10 million rocky asteroids and ice-and-dirt comets pirouette in outer space, and once in a while their paths fatefully intersect our planet’s, says the National Geographic. “Two facts are clear: whether in 10 years or 500, a day of reckoning is inevitable. More heartening, for the first time ever we have the means to prevent a natural disaster of epic proportions,” it says.

The Economist: Obama Fatigue

How many more times can Americans hear the phrase ‘Yes we can’? Not for too long, it now turns out. The big question, says The Economist, is whether “Obamamania is giving way to Obama fatigue”. “For all their energy and professionalism, the Democrats may have made a big strategic error: allowing the election to become a referendum on their candidate rather than a verdict on the Bush years,” it says.

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