$150 homes revive ancient techniques to fight climate crisis

Masons work with earth bricks to
 construct Nubian vault homes.

Millions of households in the Sahel region of West Africa live under a growing threat.

Deforestation and climate change have decimated the available supply of wood that is used for traditional roof construction, forcing many to use imported sheet metal.

This is both prohibitively expensive and unsuited to the climate, entrenching poverty and making homes that boil in summer and freeze in winter.

One creative enterprise is reaching back over 3,000 years for a solution, borrowing an architectural technique from the ancient Nubian civilization of latter-day Sudan to offer superior homes at minimal cost.

Read the CNN story - “$150 homes revive ancient techniques to fight climate crisis.”

Zika virus forces WHO to declare public health emergency

The World Health Organization declared a "public health emergency of international concern" on Monday morning due to the clusters of microcephaly and other neurological abnormalities that may be caused by Zika virus.

This designation, also known as PHEIC, has only been applied to three other illnesses in the past -- most recently to Ebola during the 2014 to 2015 outbreak in West Africa.

The determination is intended to mobilize an international response to combat mosquito-borne Zika virus, which has spread throughout Central and South America and the Caribbean and is suspected to be the cause of a sharp rise in birth defects in Brazil.

Read the Huffington Post story - “WHO Declares Public Health Emergency Around Zika Virus.”