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Hong Kong’s Centre for Health Protection (CHP) of the Department of Health announced Dec. 29 that it was investigating two suspected cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) affecting a nine-year-old boy and his six-year-old sister.

It’s been an unprecedented year for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as America’s public health agency continues its emergency response to the most complex Ebola epidemic in history. Ebola, however, is far from the only critical mission CDC undertook in 2014.

The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station disaster in March 2011 is still a “hot” story more than three years after the incident. The operating company TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) is cleaning up the site and continues to battle problems with tons of contaminated water being stored at Fukushima.

The IPIECA, the global oil and gas industry association for environmental and social issues, in partnership with the International Association of Oil & Gas Producers (IOGP), has completed seven of the 24 Good Practice Guides that are being rewritten or newly created as part of the update of the IPIECA oil spill preparedness and response report series.

A draft international standard on health and safety at work failed last month to get the necessary two-thirds majority vote in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) committee that is developing it. It will now have to be reviewed and voted on again.

A major new Series on health and ageing, published in "The Lancet", warns that unless health systems find effective strategies to address the problems faced by an ageing world population, the growing burden of chronic disease will greatly affect the quality of life of older people.

European Union (EU) greenhouse gas emissions fell almost 2 % between 2012 and 2013, putting the EU very close to its 2020 reduction target, according to new analysis from the European Environment Agency (EEA). The EU is also on track to meet two other targets to boost renewable energy and energy efficiency by 2020.

The rampant use of toxic chemicals at almost every workplace is putting the huge number of the country's workforce at high health risk, as according to a survey, at least 21 people die in Bangladesh every month due to use of such chemicals.

Before I talk a bit about our energy and environmental future, let’s take a look at a lesson from the past. Most of you won’t remember this as I do, but in the 60’s, industries and business were growing. Suburbs were sprawling up and the automobile was a symbol of the American dream - “a chicken in every pot and a car in every driveway.” The auto industry set the pace of the American economy.

This morning, Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez announced the release of the department’s “Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor” report. The report is prepared annually by the department’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs, and it assesses efforts by more than 140 countries to eliminate the worst forms of child labor.