News Snippets

>> Law and Justice, one of Kazakhstan's few independent newspapers, is to be closed by order of the Astana region court. The newspaper is charged with improper registration. The newspaper, however, claims the move has to do with getting rid of independent media in Kazakhstan. It says that the paper is being targeted because it did not shirk from pointing fingers at corrupt officials in the country's legal system, including the chairperson of the Astana City Court.

>> The Daily Mail has put its considerable weight behind the campaign to cut down on the use of plastic bags. The Associated Newspapers' flagship title, which has unrivalled reach in middle UK, devoted its first nine pages to the issue on February 27. Accompanying the front page splash headline 'Banish the Bags', the Daily Mail showed contrasting pictures of a British family carrying numerous plastic bags from their weekly shop and a turtle swimming among discarded plastic bags. The paper also had images showing animals chomping on bags or swathed in plastic.

>> A US biologist who urges wider use of economic incentives to solve problems such as pollution or a rising loss of animal and plant species was awarded a US$100,000 environmental prize in Norway on Tuesday. Gretchen Daily, a scientist at Stanford University, won the 11th annual Sophie Prize, set up by Norwegian Jostein Gaarder, the author of the 1991 best-selling novel and teenagers' guide to philosophy Sophie's World. "She has shown that there are different ways to put a value on nature," the award committee said.