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Six in 10 people worldwide lack access to flush toilets or other adequate sanitation

Toilet
© Ingram Publishing/Thinkstock
It may be the 21st century, with all its technological marvels, but 6 out of every 10 people on Earth still do not have access to flush toilets or other adequate sanitation that protects the user and the surrounding community from harmful health effects, a new study has found.The research, published in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology, says the number of people without access to improved sanitation is almost double the previous estimate.

Jamie Bartram and colleagues explain that the current definition of "improved sanitation" focuses on separating humans from human excrement, but does not include treating that sewage or other measures to prevent it from contaminating rivers, lakes and oceans. Using that definition, 2010 United Nations estimates concluded that 4.3 billion people had access to improved sanitation and 2.6 billion did not.

The new estimates used what the authors regarded as a more realistic definition from the standpoint of global health, since untreated sewage is a major cause of disease.
They refined the definition of "improved sanitation" by discounting sewage systems lacking access to sewage treatment.

They concluded that about 60 percent of the world's population does not have access to improved sanitation, up from the previous estimate of 38 percent.

Heart - Black

Three young Indian sisters raped and murdered

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Demonstrators take part in a One Billion Rising rally in New Delhi, on February 14, 2013.
Three sisters aged between six and 11 were raped and murdered before their bodies were dumped down a village well in rural western India, police said on Wednesday.

The bodies of the three schoolgirls were found last week, two days after they went missing on February 14 from their home in the Bhandara district of Maharashtra state, police superintendent Aarti Singh told AFP.

"The bodies of the three young girls were found in a well, with their schoolbags and footwear," Singh told AFP by phone from Nagpur, adding they were aged six, nine and 11.

"The post-mortem has confirmed that the girls were raped and then murdered."

No arrests have been made but Singh said four people had been detained for questioning and investigations were still under way.

Family members said the girls had gone out to look for their mother who was out of the house and no one heard from them again.

Light Saber

Journalist rips 'pro-life' Republicans for seeking to cut infant nutrition program

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While discussing the looming sequestration on MSNBC, journalist David Cay Boyle Johnston slammed Republicans for supporting cuts to a federal program that provides food to the infants of poor mothers.

"Six hundred thousand pregnant women and mothers of small children will be cut from the [Women, Infants and Children (WIC) nutrition program]," he said. "The Republicans are always telling us about their reverence for life. Really? They are going to have 600,000 poor women and children not have proper food."

"There is a lifetime effect on development, especially mental development, if you don't have proper nutrition in the womb and when you're an infant, but they are determined to cut those poor children - who are helpless - out of good nutrition."

Heart

Breast milk collection center opens in Miami

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Florida's first breast milk collection center opened in Miami on Tuesday.

Dozens of parents and their children attended the ribbon cutting ceremony at The Gathering Place, a pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting resource center located at 5810 Biscayne Boulevard in Miami's Morningside neighborhood.

Organizers showed off a freezer holding 500 ounces of breast milk provided by Ana Rodriguez, the first donor to the non-profit center.

"I produce more than my baby can consume," said Rodriguez. "This is milk that I've pumped, basically, at work. It's a lot of work pumping so it's good that it's going to a good cause."

Info

Colorado college advises vomiting or urinating to stop rapists after lawmakers pass gun control bills

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Colorado State Rep. Joe Salazar apologized for rape comment
The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs Department of Public Safety has updated an online statement advising female students to consider a variety of unusual actions if they are attacked, including vomiting, urinating and claiming that they are menstruating.

The advisory was updated Monday evening, just hours after the Colorado state House of Representatives passed a package of gun control bills that includes one that would make it illegal for people with concealed weapons permits to carry guns on the campuses of public universities. The bills still have to go to the state Senate and governor.

Some of the pieces of advice which were updated Monday evening on the university's public safety website are ones that many would find familiar, from running away without looking back to "yelling, hitting or biting" your attacker.

But the following two suggestions are a little stranger and are already causing quite the outcry on social media: "Tell your attacker that you have a disease or are menstruating," and "Vomiting or urinating may also convince the attacker to leave you alone."

These less-conventional methods for fighting off a would-be rapist are apparently part of Rape Aggression Defense Systems, a class that the school's public safety department promotes as a means for female students to boost their self-defense skills.

But the fact that the site providing the pointers was updated at 6:30 p.m. Monday suggests that the move may have been motivated by the Colorado House's passage on Monday of HB 1226, which would ban all people -- including concealed-weapons permit holders -- from carrying guns on the campuses of the state's public universities.

The House passed the bill on Monday by a vote of 34-31, but not before it became the center of a major controversy when Democratic state Rep. Joe Salazar made comments during Friday's debate arguing that students should not have access to guns to protect themselves from being raped.

Blue Planet

Anti-austerity strike to bring Greece to a standstill

Greek workers walk off the job on Wednesday in a nationwide anti-austerity strike that will disrupt transport, shut public schools and tax offices and leave hospitals working with emergency staff.

Antonis Samaras
© Reuters/John KolesidisGreece's Prime Minister Antonis Samaras (2nd L) attends the ''Initiative Against the Crisis'' news conference by Stavros Niarchos foundation at Zappeion hall in Athens February 18, 2013.
Greece's two biggest labor unions plan to bring much of the near-bankrupt country to a standstill during a 24-hour strike over the cuts, which they say only deepen the plight of a people struggling to get through the country's worst peacetime downturn.

Representing about 2.5 million workers, the unions have gone on strike repeatedly since Europe's debt crisis erupted in late 2009, testing the government's will to implement necessary reforms in the face of growing public anger.

"The (strike) is our answer to the dead-end policies that have squeezed the life out of workers, impoverished society and plunged the economy into recession and crisis," said the private sector union GSEE, which is organizing the walkout with its public sector sister union ADEDY.

"Our struggle will continue for as long as these policies are implemented," it said.

Prime Minister Antonis Samaras's eight-month-old coalition government has been eager to show it will implement reforms it promised the European Union and International Monetary Fund, which have bailed Athens out twice with over 200 billion euros.

It has taken a tough line on striking workers, invoking emergency law twice this year to order seamen and subway workers back to the job after week-long walkouts that paralyzed public transport in Athens and led to food shortages on islands.

But in a sign it is buckling under pressure, it announced on Monday it would not fire almost 1,900 civil servants earmarked for possible dismissal, despite promising foreign lenders it would seek to cut the public payroll.

Health

Nurse 'banned' from caring for newborn because of skin color, lawsuit claims

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© WNEMTonya Battle is suing her employers at Hurley Medical Center.
A Michigan nurse claims she was banned from caring for a newborn child because of her skin color.

Tonya Battle is suing her employers at Hurley Medical Center, in Flint, after they ordered her not to look after the baby in the neonatal intensive care unit following a request from its father, WNEM reports.

The lawsuit states: "The father told the [nurse in charge] that he did not want an African Americans taking care of his baby."

It adds that, during the conversation with Battle's supervisor, the father rolled up his sleeve to reveal a tattoo of a Swastika.

Phoenix

More than a dozen injured in Kansas City gas blast, fire, official says

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© The Associated Press/KCTVFeb. 19, 2013: In this image taken from video from KCTV, firefighters battle a massive fire at Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, Mo.
Kansas City, Missouri - A massive fire triggered by a gas explosion engulfed an entire block of an upscale Kansas City shopping district and injured more than a dozen people, a city official said Tuesday evening.

City Manager Troy Schulte said he did not know of anyone being reported missing and had not heard of any fatalities.

The cause of the explosion was not immediately known, but Schulte said it is believed that an accident involving a utility contractor may have caused the blast.

Fox4KC.com reports that witnesses said the explosion was like an earthquake. The station said there were reports of blown-out windows and minor damage inside apartments near the blast.

Kansas City Fire Chief Paul Berardi said late Tuesday that cadaver dogs were searching the smoldering remains of a restaurant that burned to the ground following the explosion and blaze.

Berardi said the search for possible victims could take hours and that he expected his crews to be at the scene through the night.

While officials have said they have no reports of fatalities, Berardi noted, "I would always fear there are fatalities in a scene like this."

Pistol

At least four dead, two wounded in California shooting and carjacking spree

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© Laszlo Halasi / Shutterstock.com
A shooting rampage left four people dead and at least two people wounded in California on Monday.

Orange County Sheriff's Department Jim Amormino told the Orange Country Register that a man went on a shooting spree that began with the death of a person at a home in Red Leaf at about 5:20 a.m.

The suspect then fled in a SUV and shot a person, who was not fatally wounded, while trying to steal a car the area Red Hill Avenue in Tustin. Reports indicated that a driver was shot and killed near Village Way and the 55 freeway during a second carjacking.

In the process of stealing another car in near Edinger and Newport Avenue, the shooter killed a person and a second person was injured.

Police eventually located the suspected shooter driving on the 55 freeway.

That's when "the suspect shot and killed himself," according to Tustin Police Department Lt. Paul Garaven said.

Sherlock

Body found in Los Angeles hotel water tank may be missing Canadian tourist

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© Reuters/Los Angeles Police Department/Handout Elisa Lam of Vancouver, British Columbia, is seen in this undated handout photo provided by the Los Angeles Police Department.
Los Angeles - A body was found in a large water tank on top of a downtown Los Angeles hotel on Tuesday which may be a 21-year-old Canadian woman who went missing under suspicious circumstances while staying there late last month, police said.

Elisa Lam, a student from Vancouver, British Columbia, who was visiting southern California on her own, was last seen at the Cecil Hotel on January 31. Local authorities had characterized her disappearance as suspicious.

A security video taken in an elevator at the hotel and released by the Los Angeles Police Department last week showed Lam acting strangely, hiding in a corner and repeatedly peering around the elevator doors into the hallway.

A Los Angeles police spokeswoman confirmed that a body had been found in one of four large water tanks on top of the Cecil Hotel early on Tuesday after a maintenance worker went up to investigate reports of low water pressure.

The spokeswoman said police detectives were on the scene, but had not yet determined whether the remains were those of the missing woman.

Source: Reuters