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Important but overlooked news from around the world. QUOTED:
“I’ll tell you what, Marc. Someone in the shop that day saw you reading something, and thought it looked suspicious enough to call us about … Like I said, there’s no problem. We’d just like to get to the bottom of this.
The Tigris River (right), is one of 13 rivers in Turkey up for sale under a new privatization plan expected to boost infrastructure and net $3.1 billion in profits. Similar plans around the world are pushing forward, though not without opposition.
Photo: Charles Roffey
European shipping experts questioned a new U.S. security bill requiring all incoming shipping containers to be screened for explosives and other dangerous material. Detractors point out that the United States already has a screening team in place at major world ports to check suspicious cargo. They also note that the new rules would benefit countries wealthy enough to afford the new screening technology, but would cut out other trade partners. A European Union official went so far as to condemn the effort last Thursday, saying the new requirements would “disrupt trade without diminishing the terrorist threat,” according to Reuters. Sources:
“U.S. security law could hit poor countries”
Reuters, August 5, 2007
Important but overlooked news from around the world. QUOTED:
*Top Stories*
“More than anything, this was a kidnapping. With it, the government is sending a political message: ‘Don’t protest.'”
— Julio Cesar Portillo, husband of Marta Lorena Araujo, who was arrested for terrorism after blockading a water-privatization conference in El Salvador (see “Water,” below). CONTENTS:
*Top Stories*
Young immigrants take a hard road north
Cargo security plan comes under fire
Green mandate sparks E.U. lawsuit
*Pollution & Health*
Back to the beach, with feces
*Water*
Buy me a river: Water privatization pushes forward
*Middle East*
Hezbollah: Talkin’ war and peace in Lebanon
TOP STORIES
Young Immigrants Take a Hard Road North
A growing number of youth and children throughout Central America are migrating on their own to Mexico and the United States, doing odd jobs and pickup work along the way. The Christian Science Monitor reports the number of migrant children increased from 3,000 in 2004 to 5,000 last year; many are repatriated, but often set out again, following parents and siblings who have already headed north.
Reliant on reservoirs and tightly controlled water resources, China nevertheless faces an increasingly dry future. But a Beijing cab driver’s proposal for restoring natural water cycles may change all that.
Photo: Great Wall reservoir/H. Alverson
Driven by environmental pressures and ethnic divisions, the violence in Darfur is reaching across borders to affect black African and Arab communities alike throughout the region. Aid groups believe Khartoum has rounded out its ethnic cleansing campaign against black farmers in Darfur by resettling their burned-out villages with Arabs from Chad and Niger, who are entering Darfur in “unprecedented” numbers, reports The Independent. A confirmed 30,000 Arabs have crossed the border in the past two months, according to a United Nations report, and another 45,000 are widely rumored to have already entered the country. Very few of ask for help from the U.N. Refugee Agency, suggesting that they are not refugees. When they arrive, they are given Sudanese identity cards and citizenship.
Important but overlooked news from around the world. QUOTED:
“Even today people call us the Janjaweed. They won’t say it to our faces, but when our backs are turned they call after us.” — Zakaria Yacoub, an Arab village chief in Chad, on the ripple effects of violence in Darfur (see “Sudan,” below). CONTENTS:
*Top Stories*
Iraqi politicians fear U.S. pullout
Pentagon delayed bomb-proof cars
Officials praise cabbie’s plan for China’s water
*Zimbabwe*
Crises in climax
*Sudan*
You can’t go home again
TOP STORIES
Iraqi Politicians Fear U.S. Pullout
While Congress debates (or refuses to debate) a withdrawal timeline for Iraq, most Sunni and Shia Arab parties in the Iraqi parliament are getting nervous at the prospect of losing the protective presence of U.S. troops.
Hardly isolated mega-catastrophes, oil spills occur routinely all around the world, from remote wilderness (at right) to bustling cities and placid suburbs.
Photo: BP/Alaska
As humanity’s energy needs only grow, world powers are plumbing the depths of the Arctic Ocean for fossil fuels and making plans to give countless acres of land over to “green” power production — even as the citizens of energy-rich developing nations rely on firewood and struggle with the labor abuses of emerging biofuel markets. Russia sent a submarine carrying two legislators 14,000 feet below the Arctic ice to plant a flag on an underwater ridge they say connects the mainland to vast fossil fuel reserves there. The move, which according to the BBC anticipates greater future access to the Arctic seascape thanks to global warming and melting ice, is opposed by the United States and others. Concern for climate change caused by fossil fuels is driving a boom in renewable and “green” energy projects around the world. This includes wind farms and biomass, which are touted as free of carbon emissions blamed for rising temperatures.
Important but overlooked news from around the world. QUOTED:
“All of these renewable sources of energy are incredibly invasive and aggressive with regard to nature. Renewables may be renewable, but they are not green.” — Prof. Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University, NY, says the industrialization of open space for biofuels and wind farms undermine the benefits of renewable power (see “Energy,” below). CONTENTS:
*Top Stories*
A farewell to arms
Copyright expires on British Invasion
Mommy, I got the safe-sex merit badge!