Johannesburg, South Africa, 21 January 2016 (Traffic.org) – South Africa today announced the official number of rhinos illegally killed in the country during 2015. The figure of 1,175 represents a slight drop on the 1,215 record total in 2014, but overall rhino poaching figures for Africa total a record high for the continent. “While a […]
18 January 2016 (UN) – With 14 million people facing hunger in southern Africa as the El Niño weather pattern, the worst in over three decades, exacerbates drought, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned today that it faces critical funding challenges in scaling up food and cash-based aid. “The number of people without […]
GREECE, 22 December 2015 (IOM) – IOM confirmed yesterday (21 December 2015) that over a million irregular migrants and refugees arrived in Europe in 2015, mostly from Syria, Africa, and South Asia. Through the weekend, IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix – Flow Monitoring System counted 999,745 irregular arrivals across the Mediterranean, including migrants journeying by both […]
19 November 2015 (IRIN) – Alarm bells are ringing for a food emergency in Ethiopia. The UN says 15 million people will need help over the coming months. The government, wary of stigma and therefore hesitant to ask for help, has nevertheless said more than eight million Ethiopians need food assistance. Extra imports to stem […]
By Monte Morin28 November 2015 (Los Angeles Times) – A fog of suffocating smoke settles over the Indonesian countryside, sickening hundreds of thousands of people and triggering an environmental crisis. In Peru, officials abandon plans to host the lucrative Dakar Rally and prepare instead for torrential rains and devastating floods. And in Ethiopia, crops perish […]
23 November 2015 – A new report issued today by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) shows that over the last 20 years, 90 per cent of major disasters have been caused by 6,457 recorded floods, storms, heatwaves, droughts and other weather-related events. The report, titled The Human Cost of Weather Related […]
By Rong-Gong Lin II and Rosanna Xia17 November 2015 (Los Angeles Times) – Temperatures in a key location of the Pacific Ocean are now hotter than they ever were in the record 1997 El Niño. Some scientists say the readings show that this year’s El Niño could be among the most powerful on record — […]
By Rod Nordland31 October 2015 SID, Serbia (The New York Times) – They arrived in an unceasing stream, 10,000 a day at the height, as many as a million migrants heading for Europe this year, pushing infants in strollers and elderly parents in wheelchairs, carrying children on their shoulders and life savings in their socks. […]
By Farai Mutsaka26 October 2015 HARARE, Zimbabwe (Associated Press) – Cyanide poisoning has killed 22 elephants in Zimbabwe’s Hwange National Park, the Zimbabwe National Parks and Wildlife Management Authority said on Monday. This brings to 62 the number of elephants poisoned by poachers in this southern Africa country in October. Rangers found the carcasses of […]
20 October 2015 (AP) – Thousands of people trying to reach the heart of Europe surged across Serbia’s border into Croatia on Monday after authorities eased restrictions that had left them stranded for days in ankle-deep mud and rain. The miserable wave of humanity left behind a field scattered with soaked blankets, mud-caked clothing and […]
