BLANCHE This is Desdemona News for Friday, March 12th, 2010. Melting Arctic ice could cost global agriculture, real estate, and insurance anywhere from 2.4 trillion to $24 trillion by 2050, in damage from rising sea levels, floods, and heat waves, according to a report released last Friday. EDDIE Severe forest fires in Vietnam’s northern mountainous region have broken out over the last few days, with many blazes yet to be brought under control. The Red River is at its lowest ever level, as the northern region suffers a serious drought. BLANCHE A chemical that causes chemical castration and sex changes in frogs has been found in samples taken from the Noosa River system in Australia. Atrazine was one of a growing list of chemicals found from testing in the river and around the hatchery. EDDIE A huge volume of water that has caused widespread flooding in southwestern Queensland is on its way south and is expected to cause extensive flooding in New South Wales over the next two months. The Insurance Council of Australia has declared the event a catastrophe, and the damage bill is expected to exceed $200 million. Emergency services received more than 5500 calls for assistance in Melbourne alone. BLANCHE Women hit hard by the effects of climate change — drought, floods, sea level rise, and crop failure — gathered on Monday to plan a Capitol Hill push for U.S. legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions.  Climate witnesses from the United States, Peru, Senegal, Uganda, and other countries told their stories to members of Congress on Tuesday in a lobbying effort timed to follow Monday’s International Women’s Day. EDDIE This winter has been the warmest and driest in Canadian record books. Canadian scientists report that winter 2010 was 4 degrees Celsius above normal, making it the warmest since nationwide records were first kept in 1948. It was also the driest winter on the 63-year record, with precipitation 22 per cent below normal nationally and down 60 per cent in parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Ontario. BLANCHE Despite a collapse of world tuna stocks, the Australian Government will not support a global ban on the trade of the northern variety of the species. The Federal Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, supports stronger trade control measures on Atlantic bluefin tuna. Environmental groups say the stocks of Atlantic bluefin tuna are so low that the species should not be fished at all. EDDIE A worsening drought is exacting a terrible toll on the mountain rice terraces of the northern Philippines. A state of calamity was declared this week for the Banaue area, home to many of the ancient stone-walled paddies, and one of the Southeast Asian nation’s most popular tourist destinations. BLANCHE A Doomsday facility that stores crop seeds in an Arctic deep freeze has surpassed 500,000 samples, to become the most diverse collection of food seeds in history. Built on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard two years ago, the vault aims to store seeds of all food crops deep beneath permafrost, to withstand threats ranging from a cataclysmic nuclear war to a mundane power failure. Blasted out of icy rock 1,000 km from the North Pole, the hermetically sealed vaults will stay frozen for 200 years even in the worst-case scenario of global warming, and if mechanical refrigeration were to fail. BLANCHE Up to 60 percent of Syria is gripped by the worst drought in 40 years, but a deep funding shortfall for emergency assistance has left United Nations aid agencies at a loss. The ongoing drought in northeastern Syria has destroyed the agricultural livelihoods of more than one million people, driving hundreds of thousands to urban areas where they face difficult living conditions. Thank you for watching Desdemona News for Friday, March 12th, 2010. We’ll be back next week, and in the meantime, keep visiting www.DesdemonaDespair.net.