In short

>> Bolivian President Evo Morales recently announced that credits from the International Monetary Fund would be refused if they were accompanied with stiff conditions.

>> 10 per cent of the Yellow River, China's second longest river, is made up of untreated sewage from factory discharges and urban centres, according to a recent report by Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs, an NGO based in Beijing.

>> Recent plans to dump the Bhopal Gas Tragedy waste in Ankleshwar in Gujarat's Bharuch district has been challenged in the Madhya Pradesh High Court. An intervening petition was filed on May 7 in the ongoing 'Alok Pratap Singh v. Union of India and Another' case.

>> Russia has criticised the draft bill on gas and oil cartels that was recently submitted to the US Senate. The bill states that the US attorney general and the judiciary can prosecute foreign governments for creating gas and oil associations or participating in those that already exist.

>> Nepal's Bardiya National Park and Wildlife Reserve officials began a census of the endangered one-horned rhinoceros population on May 20. The census will cover 320 km southwest of Kathmandu. In recent years many rhinos have gone missing from the reserve.