By Oliver Lazarus11 August 2015 (PRI) – The number of worldwide refugees last year totaled over 50 million — the highest since World War II. They’ve come from most corners of the world — but nowhere, perhaps, has more attention than the Mediterranean Sea, where approximately 200,000 people have attempted the journey to Europe from […]
By Adam Wernick7 August 2015 (PRI) – Scientists estimate that due to climate change, the village of Kivalina, in northwestern Alaska, will be underwater by the year 2025. In 2008, the Inupiat village sued 24 of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies for damages. In 2013, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case and […]
By Sibusiso Tshabalala10 August 2015 (Quartz) – Zimbabwe’s temporary ban on trophy hunting lasted for just over a week. South Africa’s News24 reported yesterday that the ban, introduced after last month’s scandal over the killing of Cecil the lion, has been lifted. According to the report, a statement from the Zimbabwe Professional Hunters and Guides […]
By Eric Holthaus 5 August 2015 (Rolling Stone) – Historians may look to 2015 as the year when shit really started hitting the fan. Some snapshots: In just the past few months, record-setting heat waves in Pakistan and India each killed more than 1,000 people. In Washington state’s Olympic National Park, the rainforest caught fire […]
By David Volodzko5 August 2015 CHENGDU, China (Global Post) – While China clamps down on logging within its borders, illegal Chinese loggers are felling the world’s forests with abandon for the sake of teak floors and fancy chairs. In late July, 153 Chinese nationals were sentenced to life in prison for illegal logging in Myanmar’s […]
By Matthew Chance5 August 2015 Moscow (CNN) – Millions of locusts have descended on farmlands in southern Russia, devouring entire fields of crops and causing officials to declare a state of emergency in the region. A vast area of at least 800,000 hectares is currently being affected as the swarms of insects, each measuring about […]
By Jonathan Soble, with additional reporting by Hisako Ueno31 July 2015 TOKYO (The New York Times) – In the first criminal prosecutions of officials connected to the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster of 2011, the Japanese authorities said Friday that they would move forward with cases against three former executives of the Tokyo Electric Power Company, […]
BERLIN, 4 August 2015 (AP) – Customs officials at Zurich airport have seized 262 kilograms (578 pounds) of ivory that three Chinese men had dispatched from Tanzania, contraband that may have come from up to 50 elephants, Swiss authorities said Tuesday. The ivory was found during a security check on July 6 and packed in […]
By B. Khash-Erdene24 July 2015 (UB Post) – Approximately 80 percent of Mongolia’s crops have died this summer due to extreme drought across the country, according to board member of the Mongolian Plantation Union B. Erdenebat. Though the situation has reached a critical level, the Ministry of Industry and Agriculture has yet to take action, […]
3 August 2015 (University of Zurich) – The World Glacier Monitoring Service, domiciled at the University of Zurich, has compiled worldwide data on glacier changes for more than 120 years. Together with its National Correspondents in more than 30 countries, the international service just published a new comprehensive analysis of global glacier changes in the […]
