NAIROBI (Reuters) - "Global warming is pushing northwards diseases more commonly found in developing countries, posing a risk to the financial and physical health of rich nations, the head of a livestock herders' charity said.

      Steve Sloan, chief executive of GALVmed, said on Friday insect-borne diseases were increasingly moving north, such as the viral infection bluetongue that has hit cattle and sheep in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Germany.

      H5N1 look out, Malaria's got your No. 1 spot locked!  Well there are plenty of pathogens to worry about.  Check out our Pathogen Protection Page for more info.

      WASHINGTON (CNN) -- "In a landmark legal victory for opponents of gun control, a federal appeals court Friday struck down a District of Columbia ban on keeping handguns in homes as a violation of the Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms.

      In its 2-to-1 decision, the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that the amendment's guarantee belongs to individuals and was not a collective right limited to members of militias -- something gun-control proponents long have contended.

      "The amendment does not protect the right of militiamen to keep and bear arms, but rather the right of the people," the majority opinion said. "If the competent drafters of the Second Amendment had meant the right to be limited to the protection of state militias, it is hard to imagine that they would have chosen the language they did."

      Friday's decision marks the first time a federal appeals court has struck down a gun law on Second Amendment grounds, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Handgun Violence.

      The gun-control group blasted the ruling as "judicial activism at its worst."

     NEW YORK  (Fox) —  "The chief executive of the nation's largest homebuilder by volume said Wednesday that 2007 would "suck" for his company, providing the clearest signal yet that a recovery in the battered sector is farther off than many thought.

      Speaking at an investor conference in New York, D.R. Horton CEO Donald J. Tomnitz said he expects to get more pricing power in 2008 but not before home prices continue their decline this year as builders try to sell the glut of houses currently on the market.

      "I don't want to be too sophisticated here, but '07 is going to suck, all 12 months of the calendar year," Tomnitz said.

      He said excess inventory, built up during a five-year boom cycle that saw land purchases and housing construction reach all-time highs, is the biggest problem facing the sector.

      After months of declining prices and home sales, there were signs late last year that the market had reached bottom, prompting many to predict a recovery by midyear. But builders have had to keep curbing construction volumes and offering price discounts.

      Tomnitz said Horton is currently building 26,000 houses, down 35 percent from its peak of 40,000, but further cuts are coming..."

      That's pretty much confirming what anyone who's head isn't stuck in a hole in the ground already knows.

     HANOI, Vietnam (International Herald Tribune)  - "Bird flu has hit Vietnam's southern city of Can Tho, the second in the Mekong Delta area to be struck in just over one week, an official said Friday.

      About 100 ducks were found dead on a farm in Can Tho City on Wednesday, forcing authorities to slaughter the remaining 500 ducklings, said Nguyen Ba Thanh, director of the Mekong regional animal health center.

      Tests showed they were infected with the H5N1 virus, Thanh said.

      The two-month-old ducks, which had not been vaccinated, had been released on the farm to forage for leftover grain, he said..."

     BISMARCK, N.D. (Cincinnati Enquirer) – "Dry, hot weather soured honey production in the nation’s top two beekeeping states last year, leading to one of the smallest U.S. honey crops in at least 35 years.

      North Dakota and California typically vie for the honor of top honey state. In North Dakota, production in 2006 fell 23 percent from the previous year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said. The state held onto its top ranking, however, because production in California plummeted 34 percent.

      Bees are an indicator species.  They navigate by chemical signals and also by the Earth's Magnetic field.  The Earth's Magnetic field is becoming more and more chaotic as it weakens towards some uncertain culminating event.  The bees, unable to navigate themselves back to their hive to replenish their energy, get lost and die; literally burning themselves out with their hyper-active motabolisms.

     I hypothesize that this magnetic "weakness" in the Gaussian readings can also account for the more unstable weather patterns around the globe.  Maybe it is caused by the Solar flares, maybe by other sources.

     NEW YORK (Reuters) - "Stocks slipped on Wednesday following a negative assessment of the housing market from a large home builder and a Federal Reserve report indicated some U.S. regions were seeing slowing economic growth.

      Stocks gave up gains in the last hour of trading after the chief executive of D.R. Horton Inc. (DHI.N: Quote, Profile, Research) delivered an unusually blunt evaluation of the residential real estate market.

     NEW YORK (Reuters) - "The rapid rise in subprime mortgage delinquencies is having a knock-on effect on the rest of the housing industry and the U.S. economy as lenders rush to staunch their bleeding.

      The rise, a byproduct of loose lending standards and the softening housing market, has hurt the ability of the riskiest borrowers to obtain loans.

      The problem for lenders, however, is now so out of control that they must begin to choke off credit to the growing segment of "Alt-A" borrowers with better, though not pristine,

      The contagion has unnerved brokers, who are scrambling to complete mortgages before big lenders tighten terms..."

      U.S. Economy: "OUCH!!!".

      San Francisco (National Geographic) - "The world's oceans are turning acidic due to the buildup of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, and scientists say the effects on marine life will be catastrophic.

      In the next 50 to 100 years corrosive seawater will dissolve the shells of tiny marine snails and reduce coral reefs to rubble, the researchers say.

      Four leading marine experts delivered this grim prognosis yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco, California.

      The scientists stressed that increased ocean acidity is one of the gravest dangers posed by the buildup of atmospheric CO2.

      "Ocean chemistry is changing to a state that has not occurred for hundreds of thousands of years," said Richard Feely of Seattle's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory.

      "Shell-building by marine organisms will slow down or stop. Reef-building will decrease or reverse."

      Already, Feely said, ocean acidity has increased about 30 percent since industrialization began spurring harmful carbon emissions centuries ago. Unless emissions are reduced from current levels, an increase of 150 percent is predicted by 2100.

      Such an increase would make the oceans more acidic than they've been at any time in the last 20 million years, he added..."