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Archive for January 16th, 2011
Australia floods sweep south, trail of disaster grows
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 16th, 2011
Reuters: Australian floods wreaked fresh havoc on rural communities in the south on Sunday, leaving a trail of destruction across four states, at least 17 dead and the prospect of reconstruction of historic proportions.
As tens of thousands of people in flood-stricken towns and cities in the north worked to clean out their homes and offices, heavy rains and floods meted out fresh disaster in southern Victoria state, the nation's second most populous.
Four major rivers in Victoria were in full flood,...
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Brazil rains death toll rises
Posted by Reuters: Sergio Queiroz on January 16th, 2011
Reuters: Rains that devastated a mountainous region north of Rio de Janeiro have killed at least 611 people, Brazil's Civil Defense agency said on Sunday, as forecasts of more storms and fears of disease outbreaks overshadowed rescue operations.
Nearly five days after rains sparked floods and massive landslides in one of Brazil's worst natural disasters, the death toll continues to rise steadily as rescuers dig up corpses buried by rivers of mud and reach more remote areas.
TV images showed rescue workers...
Drowning: Death tolls climb and more floods are on the way
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on January 16th, 2011
Independent: The suffering in the southern hemisphere grinds on. Torrential rain triggered fresh flood warnings in four Australian states yesterday just as the clean-up began in the Queensland capital, Brisbane. Meanwhile, 10 more people were reported dead in Sri Lanka's floods, and in Brazil the death toll from floods and mudslides is now rising inexorably towards, and possibly beyond, 600.
Uncommonly heavy rainfall -- Sri Lanka's hardest-hit area, the eastern port of Batticaloa, has had more rain in the...
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall: The fisherman’s friend sails to the rescue
Posted by Guardian: Ian Tucker on January 16th, 2011
Guardian: There was a moment in Thursday's Hugh's Fish Fight when it was almost possible to detect a baton being passed from Jamie Oliver to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. They were in Parliament Square, campaigning to change the EU fish quota legislation that results in half of the fish caught in the North Sea being thrown back overboard dead.
Fearnley-Whittingstall was in his element. He tossed bits of fish into fellow Old Etonian Zac Goldsmith's mouth, cajoled fisheries minister Richard Benyon and asserted...
Gasland – review
Posted by Guardian: Philip French on January 16th, 2011
Guardian: This quiet, hard-hitting documentary began when director Josh Fox wondered why a company was offering his family $100,000 to drill for gas on the lands around their house in rural Pennsylvania. Discovering the pollution being wreaked locally, he set out on a journey of discovery that took him across America, where gas companies everywhere are destroying the environment and poisoning people by using hydraulic fracturing ("fracking") to drill for gas.
GasLand
Production year: 2010
Country:...