By COREY WILLIAMS (AP) DETROIT — Doors are expected to shut on more than a quarter of Detroit’s 172 public schools in June as the district fights through steadily declining enrollment and a budget deficit of more than $219 million, an emergency financial manager said Wednesday. Three aging, traditional and underpopulated high schools would be […]
Reporting by Enrique Andres Pretel; Writing by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Eric BeechCARACASWed Mar 10, 2010 10:12am EST CARACAS (Reuters) – President Hugo Chavez is confident that God and nature will pull Venezuela out of a power crisis battering both the economy and his popularity. Rationing and blackouts have afflicted the South American oil exporter […]
(Reuters) – 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 aim to tell their […]
Declining finances, rising health care costs threaten a generation Not so long ago, Michael Blattman lived in the upscale Washington, D.C., suburb of Potomac, Md., earning $225,000 a year as senior vice president for a student loan company. As he reached his 50s, it never really occurred to him that his job wouldn’t last forever. […]
By BARNEY ZWARTZFebruary 27, 2010 Environmental vandalism by loggers in Papua New Guinea is destroying the nation and its people while Australia makes futile promises to try to influence logging policy, according to a former missionary and a landowner. Brother Jim Coucher worked in and near Vanimo on the north-west coast of PNG for 43 […]
By Staff WritersHanoi (AFP) Feb 26, 2010 Water levels in the northern Mekong River are at record-low levels, posing a threat to water supply, navigation and irrigation along a stretch of water that is home to millions, a regional official said. Northern Thailand, northern Laos and southern China have all been affected, Jeremy Bird, chief […]
Nomads paid to collect goats and yaks killed by extreme drought followed by harsh winter to stop disease and soil contamination By Jonathan Watts, Asia environment correspondentwww.guardian.co.uk, Thursday 25 February 2010 14.06 GMT The United Nations has launched a $4m dollar carcass-clearing appeal for Mongolia as millions of camels, goats, yaks and horses perish across […]
Bonn, 7 September 2009. Chetan Soni is the first-prize winner of the International Photography Contest of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, the secretariat of the Convention, which is based in Bonn, Germany, announced today. The picture depicts a young Indian girl dressed in a colorful blue and orange saree with pot in hand […]
ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2010) — Despite good intentions, the push to privatize government functions and insistence upon “free trade” that is too often unfair has caused declining food production, increased poverty and a hunger crisis for millions of people in many African nations, researchers conclude in a new study. Market reforms that began in the […]
By Matthew McDermott, New York, NY on 02.12.10 What’s dzud you ask? Well, it’s the Mongolian word for the sort of weather they are now experiencing. Roughly translated by Shambala Sun, it’s an unusually dry summer where there isn’t enough grass growth to allow herd animals to grow strong, followed by an unusually cold winter […]
