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NOT A USUAL EXERCISE
Soldiers smell the ground to detect bodies of flash flood
victims in Taiwan after Typhoon Morakot battered the island's
southern region in the second week of August. The typhoon,
which Met officials call the deadliest in 50 years, also triggered
mudslides; one such mudslide buried the entire town of
Xiaolin. The government of Taiwan said it would take more
than three years to reconstruct the devastated region. |
Africa threatened to
withdraw from the global
climate change talks in
Copenhagen in December if
rich nations do not agree to
pay US $67 billion a year for
mitigating and adapting to
the effects of climate change.
At a conference in Ethiopia,
African leaders demanded
rich nations reduce their
emissions by 40 per cent of
the 1990 levels by 2020.
As Ghana prepares to
extract three billion barrels
of
petroleum from its oilfield
by 2010, student groups
said foreign oil exploration
companies are keeping out
communities around the oilfield.
They could go the oilrich
Niger delta way where
popular discontent led to
militancy, they warned.
Zambia's government
enacted a legislation regulating
the functions of
nonprofits. The government
had to withdraw a similar
legislation in 2007 following
protests from civil society.
The
heaviest rains to hit
Burkina Faso in 90 years
have killed five people and
left 150,000 homeless.
Two hundred children living
near an industrial park
in China's Yunnan province
fell sick with
lead poisoning.
This is the country's third
such case in a month. About
1,900 children from Shaanxi
and Hunan provinces tested
positive for lead poisoning
in early August. China is the
world's top producer of lead.
An acute
water crisis in
oil-rich southern Iraq
threatens two million people.
The government blamed
its upstream neighbours
Iran, Turkey and Syria for
siphoning water from the
Tigris and Euphrates rivers
before they enter Iraq.
Almond production in
Afghanistan increased 20 per
cent from last year but its
price has fallen by 40 per
cent, dealing a blow to farmers.
Almond is a major revenue earner in the country
ravaged by armed conflict.
To attract foreign investment,
Mongolia exempted
foreign miners from a
windfall profit tax. The tax,
enacted in 2006, was delaying
multi-billion dollar deals
by Canada's Ivanhoe Mines
and Australia's Rio Tinto to
develop copper and gold
mines in the Gobi desert.
London Mayor Boris
Johnson announced plans to
create UK's first
hydrogen
highway by building a
network of filling stations
across the capital and
launching hydrogen-fuelled
buses and cars by 2012.
As part of his
agrarian reform, Bolivia's first indigenous
president Evo Morales
handed over 200,000 ha of
land to the Guraya people.
The land was occupied by
European descendants since
the country's independence
in 1825. Bolivia is Latin
America's poorest country.
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About 300
sea lions were
found dead along Chile's
northern Pacific coast.
Authorities link it to lack of
food in the Pacific caused by
El Nio conditions that lead
to unusual ocean warming.
Ecologists blame it on mining
operations nearby.
Russian astronauts plan to
carry Peruvian
potato to the
International Space Station
as part of an experiment to
evaluate how the vegetable
grows in zero gravity.
Workers in central Peru
are demanding the government
save their jobs by
delaying the
environmental
cleanup of an 87-year-old
smelter in the Andes. It has
been the main source of pollution
in the La Oroya city,
ranked one of the 10 most contaminated on earth.
Many in the city suffer from
lead and arsenic poisoning.
The Bahamas banned the
possession and trade of
marine turtles and their
eggs. Turtle meat and shell is
a major tourist attraction in
the Atlantic archipelago. As
per the World Conservation
Union,
marine turtles are
threatened or endangered.
As
sea ice melts in the
North Pole and opens up
vast expanses of Arctic
waters, the US government
unveiled a fishery management
plan banning fishing
until researchers gather
information about fish
stocks in the waters.
Australia's parliament
passed a law mandating that
20 per cent of the country's
electricity be sourced from
renewables. The target
matches one set by EU.
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