For many years now, experts have assumed that global population would stabilize at 9 billion people around the year 2050. That projection was based upon a number of assumptions which, while reasonable, were never really carefully examined. New research, however, has raised questions about the estimates, and the new studies suggest that global population could plausibly increase to about 11 billion by the year 2100. Such an increase would create serious challenges to the global environment and the carrying capacity of the planet.
The US Senate has followed the lead of the House of Representatives and endorsed arming Syrian rebels dedicated to the overthrow of Syrian President Assad as well as opposing the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The measure was voted upon as part of a larger bill to fund the government, so many Senators were unable to express their true feelings about supporting the rebels. Nonetheless, it does not seem to be likely that the measure will have any effect on the Syrian civil war any time soon since it will take months to begin training the rebels. But the measure deepens US involvement in this very sticky situation.
Eight health workers were killed in Guinea as a crowd believed that the health care providers were intent on spreading the Ebola virus. The tragedy reflects one of the ongoing problems in containing the outbreak of the Ebola virus: many of the people in the region are afraid of the health care system and some parts of the population believe that Ebola is being deliberately spread. The article quotes a local police officer, Richard Haba, who said that the villagers believed that Ebola “is nothing more than an invention of white people to kill black people.”
World Politics News 
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