[Part 1: ‘Skull is removed, brains eaten alive’: Like the drug trade, wildlife trafficking is big business in Asia] By Jerrie Demasi19 April 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – “Mum, you need to be more patient,” says nine year old Cambodian Bo Pa. Her adoptive mother sits across the table of a red-and-gold-clad Chinese Restaurant in […]
By Valerie Volcovici; editing by Xavier Briand19 April 2013 WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Top industry groups and a dozen states have asked the Supreme Court to review a lower court decision upholding the Obama administration’s plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions generated by power plants and vehicles. The parties, which had until Friday to submit petitions […]
By Paulo Padilha and Felipe Milanez 15 April 2013 (VICE) – The city of Marabá was founded on 6 April 1913, in the southeastern edge of the Amazon rainforest on a narrow strip of land where the rivers Tocantins and Itacaiunas meet. For the first several decades of its existence, the city’s economy was dependent […]
By Tom Spears13 April 2013 OTTAWA (The Ottawa Citizen) – Claims that Alberta’s oilsands are environmentally harmless are “lies” and won’t convince anyone in Washington, one of this country’s most famous ecologists said Friday. Political leaders in Alberta and Ottawa “seem to think that Americans believe in magic fairies — just shut your eyes and […]
By Tom Randall 9 April 2013 (Bloomberg) – Kansas, I love your sense of humor. It seems like every time the Sunflower State pops up in my news feed, it’s for something like this: House Bill No. 2366, a proposed law that would make it illegal to use “public funds to promote or implement sustainable […]
THE HAGUE, 12 April 2013 (AFP) – Australia is to fire the opening salvoes in a legal battle before the United Nations’ highest court in June aimed at stopping Japan’s whaling research programme in Antarctica. “The International Court of Justice … will hold public hearings in the case concerning whaling in the Antarctic, Australia versus […]
By Nick Wiltgen 4 April 2013 (Weather Channel) – Roughly three of every eight registered voters in the U.S. believes that “global warming is a hoax,” according to a national poll released Tuesday by the firm Public Policy Polling (PPP) [pdf]. The automated telephone poll asked 1,247 American registered voters their beliefs on a wide […]
By Jonathan Watts3 April 2013 Rio de Janeiro (guardian.co.uk) – An Amazonian community has threatened to “go to war” with the Brazilian government after what they say is a military incursion into their land by dam builders. The Munduruku indigenous group in Para state say they have been betrayed by the authorities, who are pushing […]
[cf. Shadow banking grows to $67 trillion industry, regulators say] By Gerard Ryle, Marina Walker Guevara, Michael Hudson, Nicky Hager, Duncan Campbell, and Stefan Candea3 April 2013 (icij.org) – A cache of 2.5 million files has cracked open the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts, exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con men […]
OTTAWA, Ontario, 29 March 2013 (AP) – Canada defended its decision to pull out of a United Nations convention that fights the spread of droughts just a month before a major gathering would have forced the country to confront scientific analysis on the effects of climate change. Canada is the only country in the world […]
