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Archive for September 13th, 2011
Leaders of famine-hit Horn of Africa point fingers while they feast
Posted by AlertNet: Katy Migiro on September 13th, 2011
AlertNet: The band played a popular tourist tune as the wine flowed and the guests queued to pile their plates from the heaving buffet, offering a choice selection of meats and salads from one of Nairobi's finest hotels.
"Well, there's certainly no hunger here,' joked Jeffrey Sachs, the American economist famed for his theories on ending poverty, as he queued for lunch.
The Kenyan president, seated at the high table between the Ethiopian and Somali heads of state, looked bored, cleaning his teeth with...
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India: Landless Plan a Long March
Posted by Inter Press Service: Isolda Agazzi on September 13th, 2011
Inter Press Service: The Gandhian movement Ekta Parishad plans to organise a march for land rights in October 2012 in India, aiming to gather around 100,000 indigenous people, dalits and poor peasants. Support is shaping up around the world, at events such as an international mobilisation conference in Geneva Sep. 12-13.
"In India, a large number of adivasi (indigenous people) are pushed out of their land because of mining, huge dams, wildlife protection, industrialisation and tourism. Every time you have a new industry,...
Arctic ice melts to lowest level on record
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 13th, 2011
Guardian: Ice at the North Pole has melted to the lowest level since satellite observations began in 1972, meaning the Arctic is almost certainly the smallest it has been for 8000 years, polar scientists said.
If the trend continues, the Arctic will be largely ice-free in the northern summer 40 years earlier than anticipated in the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report.
Daily satellite sea ice maps released by Bremen University physicists show that with a week's further melt...
Canada: Alberta wants more oil sands pipelines
Posted by Financial Times: Ed Crooks on September 13th, 2011
Financial Times: Canada’s oil sands producers need to build at least two more pipelines the size of the controversial Keystone XL project if they are to meet their ambitious plans for growth, Alberta’s energy minister has said. Keystone XL, a planned 1,700-mile pipeline to carry diluted bitumen, or heavy oil, from Canada to refineries on the Texas coast, has faced opposition from environmental activists over the higher carbon dioxide emissions associated with oil sands compared with other forms of oil production....
Vancouver marks birth of Greenpeace 40 years ago
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on September 13th, 2011
Agence France-Presse: A simple phone call about dead sea otters washing up on the shores of Alaska after US nuclear tests lead to the birth of environmental organization Greenpeace four decades ago.
Irving Stowe and his wife, Dorothy, were so outraged by the news that they launched a petition from their home in Vancouver, on the Canadian west coast, and set up a group called "Don't Make A Wave."
Their daughter, Barbara Stowe, recalled the early beginnings of the group which eventually blossomed and grew into the...