Today is Boxing Day and the start of Kwanzaa. Whatever holiday you are celebrating, have a joyous time and we wish you a happy new year.

This week, Global Investment Watch editor Erika Yost profiles two alternative energy companies: Vestas and Conergy. In addition, Erika has happened upon an entertaining commercial from Epuron. Take a look.

He didn’t pour sugar into a bulldozer’s gas tank. He didn’t spike a tree or set a billboard on fire. But wielding only a bidder’s paddle, a University of Utah student just as surely monkey-wrenched a federal oil- and gas-lease sale Friday, ensuring that thousands of acres near two southern Utah national parks won’t be opened to drilling anytime soon.

Tim DeChristopher, 27, faces possible federal charges after winning bids totaling about $1.8 million on more than 10 lease parcels that he admits he has neither the intention nor the money to buy — and he’s not sorry.

The Salt Lake Tribune reports that an environmental activist wrecked a bit of havoc on the environment in the offices of the Bureau of Land Management by bidding up oil leases in environmentally sensitive area in the state of Utah. Since the Election Day announcement of the lease sale, preservationists, conservationists, archaeologists, business owners, river runners, anglers and hunters have registered objections to the BLM’s plans to allow drilling in some of Utah’s most scenic redrock desert.

“They challenged proposed leases near Arches National Park, the White River, the greater Desolation Canyon region, Labyrinth Canyon, the benches east of Canyonlands National Park, Nine Mile Canyon, the Book Cliffs and the Deep Creek Mountains.

Objections also have come from the National Park Service, members of Congress and John Podesta, the head of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, who said the lease sale should be halted or altered to accommodate environmental concerns.”

Massive forced civilian displacements, violence, and unmet medical needs in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan, and Pakistan, along with neglected medical emergencies in Myanmar and Zimbabwe, are some of the worst humanitarian and medical emergencies in the world, the international medical humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) reported Monday in its annual list of the “Top Ten” humanitarian crises. .

The report underscores major difficulties in bringing assistance to people affected by conflict. The lack of global attention to the growing prevalence of HIV-tuberculosis co-infection and the critical need for increased global efforts to prevent and treat childhood malnutrition-the underlying cause of death for up to five million children per year-are also included in the list.

1. Somalia’s Humanitarian Catastrophe Worsens
2. Critical Need of Assistance in Ethiopia’s Somali Region
3. Critical Health Needs in Myanmar Remain Unmet
4. Civilians Killed and Forced to Flee as Fighting Intensifies in Northwestern Pakistan
5. Health Crisis Sweeps Zimbabwe as Violence and Economic Collapse Spread
6. No End in Sight to Violence and Suffering in Sudan
7. Civilians Trapped as War Rages in Eastern Congo
8. Iraqi Civilians in Urgent Need of Assistance
9. Millions of Malnourished Children Left Untreated Despite Advances in Lifesaving Nutritional Therapies
10. HIV/TB Co-Infection Poses Health Battle on Two Fronts

Many of the countries on this year’s list illustrate the ever-shrinking space for impartial humanitarian action, making it extremely difficult to deliver aid to those most affected and vulnerable. Aid organizations now operate with increased security risks and in generally more hazardous and threatening environments. In highly politicized and volatile conflicts such as those in Somalia, Pakistan, Sudan, and Iraq, MSF-despite its neutrality and independence-is limited in its ability to directly address immense medical needs.

In Somalia, intensified violence, including direct attacks and threats against aid workers, meant that MSF had to curtail some of its operations in 2008, including the withdrawal of its international staff, significantly reducing the quality of assistance provided to an already weakened population. In Pakistan, hundreds of thousands of people fled air attacks and bombings from a counter-insurgency campaign in the northwest area earlier in the year. After aid workers in the country were threatened, attacked, and kidnapped, MSF restricted the number of international staff in its projects.

In places such as Myanmar and Zimbabwe-where governments fail to make health care a priority or view NGO interventions with suspicion-humanitarian organizations are either limited in the type of assistance they can provide or are left to deal with overwhelming health crises on their own. In Myanmar, where MSF is the main provider of HIV care, hundreds of thousands of people are needlessly dying due to a severe lack of HIV/AIDS treatment while the government does far too little to help its own people.

Governments are also ignoring the crisis of childhood malnutrition. In Niger, the government in 2008 forced the termination of MSF’s child nutrition program in the region of Maradi, where tens of thousands of children were suffering from acute malnutrition. As a result, they have not received proven and highly effective treatment. The closure came at a time when efforts to make progress in the fight against malnutrition globally are more possible-and more necessary-than ever.

Support Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) by making a contribution.