Blog Heap of Links for the day 5 May 2014

...World Health Organization announced Monday that spread of polio is an international public health emergency... could grow in the next few months and unravel the nearly three-decade effort to eradicate the crippling disease. ...described current polio outbreaks in Asia, Africa and the Middle East as an "extraordinary event...." first-ever international alert on polio. ...
[Extraordinary.... what could these areas have in common...?]

A New Jersey family whose terrier-pit bull mix escaped from their backyard during Superstorm Sandy went to an animal shelter this week to adopt a new pet and came home with their old dog....

...She posted her sign right under the DOT's parking sign in her Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, neighborhood and left a spot for people to leave comments.

"The first person wrote like, 'The mayor should hire you. This is great,'" she says. "Things like that."

Projects like Nkki's are part of a growing trend called "tactical urbanism" in which regular citizens using tactics to try to improve the urban environment without the government's help.

[IOW what people outside the Big Dependencies do all the time!]