NEW YORK – More than 10 million people are at risk for lung infection, cancer and shortened life expectancy because they live in the 10 worst-polluted cities in the world, according to a report issued Wednesday.
The report published by the Blacksmith Institute lists 10 cities in eight countries where pollution poses health risks and fosters poverty.
“Living in a town with serious pollution is like living under a death sentence,” the report said. “If the damage does not come from immediate poisoning, then cancers, lung infections, mental retardation, are likely outcomes.” The worst-polluted places in the world, the report said, are in secluded areas far away from capitals or tourist areas.
Three Russian cities are among the most polluted – Dzherzhinsk, Norilsk and Rudnaya Pristan. The other cities are Linfen, China; Haina, Dominican Republic; Ranipet, India; Mayluu-Suu, Kyrgyzstan; La Oroya, Peru; Chernobyl, Ukraine; and Kabwe, Zambia.
SANTIAGO, Chile
Water cannons used on student protesters
Police used water cannons to disperse hundreds of high school students who took to the streets Wednesday demanding that President Michelle Bachelet speed up promised reforms to Chile’s dictatorship-era education law.
High school students declared a one-day national strike and marched toward an Education Ministry office but were repeatedly blocked by police.
Earlier protests, joined by up to 700,000 students, ended only after Bachelet agreed to meet most of the students’ demands, including eliminating a fee for a college entry exam for 167,000 students and providing school meals to 200,000.
MOSCOW
Suspensions loom under new permit law
Dozens of foreign nongovernmental organizations in Russia, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, faced suspension Wednesday after failing to obtain necessary permits required under a tough new law.
The law allows authorities to ban financing of specific NGOs if they are judged to threaten the country’s national security or “morals” and to require foreign and domestic organizations to report how much money they have received and from whom.
NASHVILLE, Tenn.
VA employee gets 4 years for kickbacks
A Veterans Affairs employee was sentenced to nearly four years in prison for taking more than $115,000 in kickbacks on the purchase of red tape – actual red tape.
The tape is intended to deter tampering.
Natalie Coker, former associate director of a VA pharmacy in Murfreesboro, Tenn., was arrested along with her boss in November 2005 in a scheme to collect kickbacks from a company that was selling the tape to the federal agency at inflated prices.
Her boss, Joseph Haymond, was found dead at his home in an apparent suicide the day after his arrest.
CHICAGO
Housing sweep hits tainted-heroin dealers
Police raided a public housing complex Wednesday in a sweep targeting suspected dealers of deadly fentanyl-laced heroin, authorities said.
Officers were looking for 37 suspects and had arrested about half by Wednesday afternoon, said Chicago police spokeswoman Monique Bond.
The arrests at the Harold Ickes public housing complex followed a federal bust in June at another housing complex nearby, Bond said.
Hundreds of people have died nationwide from heroin laced with the prescription painkiller fentanyl.
NEW YORK
7 undertakers guilty for selling body parts
Seven funeral home directors linked to a scheme to plunder corpses and sell the body parts for transplants pleaded guilty to undisclosed charges and have agreed to cooperate with investigators, prosecutors announced Wednesday.
The unidentified directors secretly pleaded guilty in the probe of what investigators say was a plot to harvest bone and tissue and sell it to biomedical supply companies, Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes said.
