By Pete Wilton June 28, 2011 Half the elephants from West and Central African savannahs have vanished in the past 40 years, scientists report in PLoS One. A team, including Iain Douglas-Hamilton of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology, estimate that around 7,750 elephants remain in the Sudano-Sahelian zone, which covers 20% of the continent, a […]
By LAWRENCE HURLEY AND PAUL QUINLAN of Greenwire29 June 2011 A federal appeals court handed Georgia an enormous victory in long-running, tri-state water litigation yesterday, overturning a decision by a federal judge that could have sharply curtailed the availability of water in Atlanta beginning next summer. The three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit […]
By Steve Savage27 June 2011 I tend to be a “glass half full” sort of person, particularly about the prospects of successfully feeding the 9-10 billion people we expect by 2050. My optimism is based on daily contact with the innovative public and private entities who develop technology for agriculture. It is also based on […]
Kabul (AFP) June 9, 2011 – War may kill thousands of civilians a year in Afghanistan, but choking air pollution in the capital Kabul is more deadly, experts say. Signs of the silent killer — pollutants emitted by old cars, poor quality fuel and people burning trash — are everywhere on the city’s chaotic streets. […]
At the end of 2010, some 43.7 million people worldwide were forcibly displaced due to conflict and persecution, the highest number in more than 15 years. This included 15.4 million refugees, 27.5 million IDPs, and more than 837,500 individuals whose asylum application had not yet been adjudicated by the end of the reporting period. The […]
By Tony Capaccio21 June 2011 The Pentagon says it has spent at least $1 trillion prosecuting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and defending the U.S. homeland, according to newly released Defense Department figures through April 30. Spending growth on Afghanistan operations helped push the Pentagon over the $1 trillion mark, increasing to $6.2 billion […]
By KATE GALBRAITH18 June 2011 On the cliffs surrounding Lake Buchanan in Central Texas, a white ring extends some 13 feet above the shoreline, marking where the water reaches when the lake is full. At nearby Lake Travis, staircases that once led to the water’s edge now end well above it. These two lakes serve […]
Posted By Steve LeVine 15 June 2011 Two decades ago at this time, the Soviet Union was well into a startling disintegration energized by widely dispersed public dissatisfaction to which central authorities could no longer satisfactorily respond. Today, one is made rapt by a broad outbreak of public protests in China, among them, compiled in […]
By JULIANA BARBASSA15 June 2011 RIO DE JANEIRO — A landless peasant activist was killed by a gunshot to his head outside his home in Brazil — the fifth murder in a month likely tied to the conflict over land and logging in the Amazon. The body of the victim, Obede Loyla Souza, was found […]
By Pete Spotts, Staff writer10 June 2011 A blend of natural climate swings and global warming appears to be driving a long-term decline in snowpack along the Rocky Mountains rarely seen in the past 800 years. In the process, and perhaps more important for the future, the dominant driver behind available snowpack along the continental […]
