By Karin Kloosterman 16 March 2012 Can mobilizing the world’s faithful save the planet where activists without faith have failed? Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders will be speaking out on climate change this week, while conveying their shared visions on renewable energy at the Interfaith Climate and Energy Conference. It will be held in Jerusalem […]
By Larry B. Stammer27 February 2012 It has long been a maxim that mixing religion and politics can spell trouble. So when Rick Santorum told a partisan crowd in Columbus, Ohio, recently that President Obama’s worldview was based on a “phony theology” that drives “radical environmentalists,” he must have known his comments would reverberate far […]
By Ruairidh Villar and Yuriko Nakao; Writing by Elaine Lies; Editing by Michael Perry10 February 2012 FUKUSHIMA (Reuters) – On the snowy fringes of Japan’s Fukushima city, now notorious as a byword for nuclear crisis, Zen monk Koyu Abe offers prayers for the souls of thousands left dead or missing after the earthquake and tsunami […]
By Erik De Castro, with additional reporting by Rosemarie Francisco and Manny Mogato in MANILA; Editing by Robert Birsel18 December 2011 CAGAYAN DE ORO, Philippines (Reuters) – Rescuers searched for more than 800 people missing in the southern Philippines on Sunday after flash floods and landslides swept houses into rivers and out to sea, killing […]
It’s time for the yearly retrospectives on 2011, and we’re kicking them off with 2011’s most-viewed stories on Desdemona. It won’t surprise anyone to see that the triple meltdown at the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant was the most popular event, with 9 of the top 20 stories. Most surprising is the continued popularity of a 2009 […]
December 5 (Catholic World News) – As the Durban Climate Change Conference reached its midway point, the president of the Church’s confederation of relief and development agencies compared current environmental policies to apartheid. Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, president of Caritas Internationalis, said that “just as South Africa’s apartheid era policies sought divisions along race lines, […]
By Will Ross BBC East Africa correspondent26 October 2011 A combination of a military build-up in Somalia and heavy rains are making the humanitarian relief effort in the country even harder, the UN has warned. Some four million people in Somalia need food and other assistance because of the drought and famine. Eleven days ago, […]
By Paul Harris22 October 2011 NEW YORK (The Guardian) – The United Nations will warn this week that the world’s population could more than double to 15 billion by the end of this century, putting a catastrophic strain on the planet’s resources unless urgent action is taken to curb growth rates, the Observer can reveal. […]
October 11 (VOA News) – United Nations officials say the capitals of Thailand and Cambodia are at risk as the worst flooding in modern times sweeps through the Mekong Basin. Kirsten Mildren, spokeswoman for the U.N.’s humanitarian affairs agency, told VOA Tuesday that officials in Bangkok are taking urgent measures as the floodwaters bear down […]
By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times3 October 2011 Reporting from Robert Lee, Texas — It is the day before homecoming, and there is trouble at the Robert Lee High School football field. The field is dying. The field that was once so lush, so emerald green, that the maintenance staff took calls from other schools […]
