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Archive for August 24th, 2010
Canada: Oilsands proposal draws protest
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 24th, 2010
Montreal Gazette: A battle is brewing over a proposed oilsands project by a French-based company that has drawn more than two dozen opponents from Canada, the U.S. and France at today's deadline for submissions to a joint federal-provincial environmental review panel. While a wide range of environmental and faith-based groups, including an Anglican bishop from Atlantic Canada, are urging the panel to reject the Joslyn North Mine project in Alberta, officials from Total E&P Canada Ltd. say they are ...
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800,000 Stranded By Floods In Pakistan, U.N. Says
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 24th, 2010
National Public Radio: About 800,000 people have been cut off by floods in Pakistan and are reachable only by air, the United Nations said Tuesday, adding it needs at least 40 more helicopters to ferry lifesaving aid to increasingly desperate people. The appeal was an indication of the massive problems facing the relief effort in Pakistan more than three weeks after the floods hit the country, affecting more than 17 million people and raising concerns about possible social unrest and political ...
Microbes ate BP oil deep-water plume: study
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 24th, 2010
Reuters: A Manhattan-sized plume of oil spewed deep into the Gulf of Mexico by BP's broken Macondo well has been consumed by a newly discovered fast-eating species of microbes, scientists reported on Tuesday. The micro-organisms were apparently stimulated by the massive oil spill that began in April, and they degraded the hydrocarbons so efficiently that the plume is now undetectable, said Terry Hazen of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. These so-called proteobacteria -- Hazen ...
Pakistan floods: Deluges after the deluge
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 24th, 2010
Guardian: The Pakistani crisis is already one of the very first order. Some 20 million people have been left homeless, along a path of destruction of more than 600 miles. Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has even compared the challenges the country now faces to those during the 1947 partition of the subcontinent in which around half a million people were killed in mass violence. It is small wonder that Pakistani president Asif Ali Zadari has said that it will take at least three years for the ...
India blocks Vedanta mine on Dongria-Kondh tribe’s sacred hill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 24th, 2010
Guardian: After years of controversy and confusion, Vedanta's project to mine bauxite on a forested hill considered sacred by an ancient tribe has been stopped by the Indian government. "There's no emotion, no politics, no prejudice," environment minister Jairam Ramesh said as he announced that Vedanta would not be allowed to mine in the Niyamgiri Hills of the eastern Orissa state. "I have taken this decision purely on a legal approach – laws are being violated." Trouble seems to be ...
Pakistan’s Climate Change Floods, Seen From Above
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 24th, 2010
Wired News: A series of satellite photographs conveys the epic scale of the floods sweeping through Pakistan, leaving millions homeless and the world aghast at an extreme weather disaster that experts consider the new normal. Above at left is the central Pakistan city of Hyderabad on July 31. At right is the city on August 19, as floodwater swelled the Indus River. In coming days the water will reach the coast, joining tidal waters and inundating the floodplain. An estimated four million people ...
Officials: Oil probably didn’t cause fish kill
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 24th, 2010
AP: Louisiana officials say thousands of dead fish floating at the mouth of a shipping channel likely died from a seasonal lack of oxygen -- not the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Between 5,000 and 15,000 dead fish were found Sunday, collected in pockets of spill boom near the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet. Species included crabs, sting rays, eel, drum, speckled trout and red fish. An investigation and samplings by the Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries show the ...
Pakistan disease threat ‘serious’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 24th, 2010
BBC: Pakistan's prime minister says the government is "seriously concerned" about the potential spread of epidemic diseases in the flood-hit country. Yousuf Raza Gilani was speaking during high-level talks aimed at preventing a mass health crisis. Doctors in many areas are reportedly struggling to cope with the spread of diseases such as diarrhoea and cholera. The UN says more than 17 million people have been affected by the floods, with about 1.2 million homes ...
Climate change, capitalism and war produce disaster in Pakistan
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 24th, 2010
rabble.ca: The massive floods in Pakistan that affect 20 million people are far from a random "natural disaster." Rather, they are a predictable result of global warming, capitalist development, and US-backed war. There have been 12 major floods in Pakistan since 1973, and three years ago the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned of worse flooding to come due to global warming. This year is the hottest year in recorded history, which has brought Russia's worst ...
India Bars Company From Mining Bauxite
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on August 24th, 2010
AP: India on Tuesday refused permission to a London-based company to mine bauxite for its alumina refinery in the country's east, citing violations of environmental and human rights laws. The company, Vedanta Resources, set up an alumina refinery in Orissa state in 2008 hoping it would be allowed to extract three million metric tons of bauxite annually from mines in the Niyamgiri Hills. It has been getting bauxite from neighboring Chhattisgarh state. But the environment minister, ...