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Namibia's Power Battle
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The proposed building of a massive dam to supply electricity for Namibia has met with fierce resistance from both environmental groups and local tribes.
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The proposed Epupa dam project - to be built on the Kunene river in the north-west of the country - would dramatically alter the environment by flooding a vast expanse of the region. Although this would require
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long-settled tribes to be moved and destroy the beautiful Epupa valley, government officials in the country's capital Windhoek defend the dam almost as a matter of national pride. full story
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Amnesty International: U.S. Iraqi Detentions Violate Law
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BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Amnesty International said Monday it has gathered evidence that points to U.S. violations of international law by subjecting Iraqi prisoners to "cruel, inhuman or degrading" conditions
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at its detention centers here. The report coincides with a two-day United Nations conference on human rights that began in Baghdad on Monday. The conference, which focuses on abuses committed during the rule of Saddam Hussein, will coordinate investigations into the regime's alleged killings of some 300,000 Iraqis. full story
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Thousands Demonstrate Against Bush During California Fund Raisers
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Late in his second term, Lyndon Johnson was only able to make public appearances on military bases because of fierce public opposition to the Vietnam War. Currently, a similar situation is developing with
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George W. Bush -- though Bush also ventures out for $2,000 per person fund raisers for his re-election campaign. The absurd notion, propagated by the mainstream media, that 70% of the American population adores the pResident; is clearly belied by the throngs of protesters that appear whenever he travels anywhere in the country that is not a reactionary stronghold.
full story
Report from Century City
CODEPINK on the Day's Events
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Urgent Measures Needed to Stop Shocking Amazon Deforestation Rate
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Brasilia, Brazil/Gland, Switzerland - The shocking new deforestation rate in the Amazon announced by the Brazilian government shows that implementation of drastic measures are urgently needed to
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revert such a trend, said World Wildlife Fund today.
Based on a satellite image survey by the Brazilian National Space Research Institute (INPE), 25,500 square kilometres of Amazon forests disappeared between July 2001 and June 2002. This is the highest deforestation rate since the 1994-1995 peak - 29,000 sq. km - and WWF fears that the period July 2002-June 2003 has been even worse. full story
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Senators Keen to Reform
Endangered Species Act
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Some Republican senators believe the requirement that federal agencies consult with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service to ensure their actions do not jeopardize
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endangered species has become too costly and time consuming. The process is burdening federal agencies without producing measurable conservation benefits and should be reformed, the senators said today at a subcommittee hearing.
full story
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Greenpeace Takes Hot Iraqi Canister
to U.S. Forces
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A convoy of vehicles bearing Greenpeace banners with a single activist walking in front carrying a white flag, today returned a uranium yellowcake mixing canister to U.S. military guards stationed at the
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Tuwaitha nuclear plant just south of Baghdad. The size of a small car and adorned with radiation symbols, the canister was brought into Tuwaitha on a flatbed truck. It had been dumped on a busy section of open ground near the Tuwaitha plant.
full story
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Doctored EPA Environment Report
Raises Questions
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The Environmental Protection Agency’s “Draft Report on the Environment,” released Monday by Administrator Christie Whitman, is billed as the first complete national picture of U.S. environmental quality and human
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health. But the document has stirred controversy and puzzled environmentalists, legislators and analysts who question the depth of the research and the omission of climate warming and water information available to the agency. full story
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Massive Protest Roils Downtown
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20 Arrested as 2,000 Demonstrate Against International AG Conference
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SACRAMENTO, CA -- A spectacle -- part Mardi Gras, part nightmare -- rolled through downtown Sacramento on Sunday as nearly 2,000 protesters and an army of riot-gear-clad police hit the streets. The
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chaotic scene was a precursor to an even larger rally and march beginning at 10 a.m. today at the state Capitol. Organizers have taken out a march permit for 8,000 people. Their target: an international agriculture conference, hosted by the U.S. government, that starts today at the Sacramento Convention Center. full story
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Greenpeace Stops Offloading of African Rainforest Destruction in Italy
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Greenpeace activists early this morning climbed onboard the timber transport vessel "Tradco" in Ravenna Italy. At 5.00 hours 25 activists locked themselves to the ship's cranes thus preventing any off-loading of
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timber from African forests. Banners that read: "Save the Ancient Forests" and "Forest Crime" are being displayed from the cranes. full story
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Chirac: Do Not Make the Stay of Troops
in Congo a Brief One
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By Adetokunbo Abiola
There is a story popularly told on the streets of Kinshasa. George W. Bush, Jacques Chirac
and Gerhard Shroader, on seeing the pitiable conditions of African farmers, gave them
some peanuts to alleviate them of their poverty. After the farmers had left, the world
statesmen said:"Oh God! That should take them out of their misery." Out of their
earshot,the farmers fell down and wept bitterly: "Oh God!" they said, "This is
peanuts. What have we done to deserve this misfortune?"
full story
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Global Warming 'Catastrophe'
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Global warming over the next century could trigger a catastrophe to rival the worst mass extinction in the history of the planet, scientists warned yesterday.
Researchers at Bristol University have discovered that a mere six degrees of global warming was enough to wipe out up to 95 per cent of the species which were alive on Earth at the end of the Permian period, 250 million years ago.
Up to six degrees of warming is now predicted for the next 100 years by United Nations scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, if nothing is done about emissions of greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide.
full story
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Whales Win No Sanctuary from
Acrimonious Commission
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The annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission wound up today with the 51 member organization more deeply divided than ever. The body responsible for management of the world's whales passed
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the Berlin Initiative to set up a conservation committee by a simple majority vote, but proposals for two whale sanctuaries that required a three-quarters majority to pass both were turned down. full story
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New Studies Reveal Poor U.S. Treatment of Asylum Seekers, Children
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Less than a month after an internal Justice Department audit found widespread abuse of hundreds of Muslim immigrants detained after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, two new
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reports released this week are charging that the detention of unaccompanied immigrant children and asylum seekers is causing serious harm to innocent people who need protection
rather than prison.
In one study, Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) found that the mental health and well-being of asylum seekers detained by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) after arriving in New York area airports was generally "extremely poor and worsened the longer the individuals were
in detention." full story
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U.S. Policing of Biotech Crops Denounced
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Federal government agencies are failing to monitor genetically engineered crops to protect the environment and public health, according to two separate studies released today. The Center for
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Science in the Public Interest says that its review of government data shows farmers are routinely overplanting corn genetically engineered to be insect resistant. A U.S. Public Interest Research Group report is critical of testing procedures used in monitoring experimental biotech crops in
the field. full story
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GM Seeds Spread by Human Activity
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Seeds may be a bigger danger than pollen in allowing GM crops to escape into the countryside. Seeds can be carried long distances on farm machinery to cross with wild relatives, a French study has found.
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Genes from commercial sugar beet turned up in wild plants growing more than 1.5 kilometres away, according to scientists at Lille University.
full story
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Whaling Commission Authorizes
Global Conservation
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Conservation of the world's whales will be the future guiding principle of the International Whaling Commission after a vote today that creates a Conservation Committee to protect these marine mammals from the
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many threats that assail them. Environmentalists were jubilant at the outcome, but whaling nations reserved the right not to participate in, nor fund, the new initiative. full story
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Treaty on Trade in Biotech
Organisms to Become Law
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The small Pacific island nation of Palau today became the 50th country to ratify an international treaty that seeks to safeguard the Earth's biological diversity, triggering the treaty's entry into force. It is the first treaty that
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formally protects biological diversity from the potential risks posed by genetically modified organisms. The United Nations treaty, known as the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, or the Biosafety Protocol, will enter into force in 90 days, on September 11. full story
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Global Bycatch Nets Some 308,000
Cetaceans a Year
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Some 308,000 whales, dolphins and porpoises - collectively known as cetaceans - die each year from entanglement in fishing gear, finds new research by U.S. and British scientists. The study, which was submitted today
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to the International Whaling Commission (IWC), is the first global estimate of cetacean deaths caused by fishing bycatch.
full story
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Senate Approves Offshore Oil
and Gas Exploration
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The Senate voted today to keep a provision within its version of the Energy bill that calls for a comprehensive inventory of the nation's offshore oil and gas resources. Critics of the measure
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fear it is the first step toward lifting a 20 year ban on offshore drilling in many of the nation's coastal waters and could harm the environment and the economies of affected coastal states. full story
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Parks Suffer Under Bush,
Conservationists Say
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The Bush administration is failing to look after the national parks and its policies are putting further stress on the understaffed and underfunded National Park Service, conservationists say. In a detailed analysis released
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today, the National Parks Conservation Association gives the Bush administration a D- in a report card that measures its performance in protecting and managing the nation's 388 national parks. full story
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Threats Rising for U.S. Public
Water Supplies
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Many Americans take the safety of their tap water for granted, but that faith could be misguided. In a report released today, the Natural Resources Defense Council says that aging infrastructure, source water pollution
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and outdated treatment technology are combining to increase the potential health risks from public drinking water for many residents in 19 of the nation's largest cities. full story
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Senate Panel Wades Into Wetlands Debate
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In the wake of a Supreme Court ruling more than two years ago that limited the federal government's ability to regulate isolated wetlands, the Bush administration has tried to clarify the scope of the Clean Water Act. But both
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the ruling and the administration's policies appear to have done little but further cloud an already murky debate over which waters should be protected by the federal law. full story
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Bush Ready to Revise Roadless Rule
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The battle over how to protect the national forests took another turn Monday, as Bush administration officials announced revisions to the Clinton-era rule that bans roadbuilding in 58 million acres of the national
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forests. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman says the administration will issue an amendment to the rule to allow individual exemptions for states as well as a new regulation to reverse the rule within parts of Alaskan national forests. full story
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Rich Countries' Greenhouse Gas
Emissions Ballooning
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The emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from Europe, Japan, the United States and other industrialized countries could grow by 17 percent from 2000 to 2010, despite measures in place to curb them,
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according to a new United Nations report. Based on projections provided by the governments themselves, the report is under consideration at a two week meeting of the UN Climate Change Convention’s 190 member governments. full story
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German Police use Grenades, Gas
on G8 Protestors
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A group of peaceful demonstrators, consisting of a variety of non-governmental organisations, children, elderly and disabled people were attacked by German riot police yesterday, Sunday 1st of June at
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approx 16.00, as they returned from an anti-G8 demonstration in Geneva.
The demonstrators were marching on a main road out of Geneva, returning from a large peaceful demonstration against the G8 summit, when German police, part of a 1,000-strong contingent 'loaned' to Switzerland for the duration of the G8 summit, arrived on the scene screaming aggressively into their megaphones and blocking off all the streets, trapping the returning demonstrators and passers-by in one place.
full story
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World Marks Environment Day
'Dying for Water'
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"Water-related diseases kill a child every eight seconds," U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a statement for the annual day set aside since 1972 to take stock of the state of the planet. "One person in six lives without regular
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access to safe drinking water. Over twice that number -- 2.4 billion -- lack access to adequate sanitation," he said. full story
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Pew Report Finds U.S. Oceans in Crisis
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The nation's oceans are in crisis from overfishing, pollution and coastal development, and the government's patchwork of laws and bureaucracies are failing to protect them, according to an independent report released
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today. The report from the Pew Oceans Commission calls for dramatic efforts - including the creation of a single federal agency to set and oversee U.S. ocean policy - to reverse the decline of ocean wildlife and the collapse of ocean ecosystems. full story
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Activists Identify Most
Endangered U.S. Forests
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Americans concerned about global deforestation need look no further than their own backyards for endangered forests, environmentalist say. A new report released this week by forest activists documents U.S.
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forests at continued risk from mismanagement and commercial logging, and takes aim at Bush administration's policies that some believe are further endangering the national forests. full story
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Interior Deputy Secretary's
Conduct Questioned
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A coalition of environmental and government ethics organizations today asked U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft to launch a criminal investigation into the conduct of the Bush administration's second in
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command at the Interior Department, Steven Griles. The organizations say Griles, a former lobbyist for mining and oil industries, has failed to abide by recusal agreements and has played a key role in several decisions that have directly benefited his former employer and clients.
full story
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Forest Thinning Rules Fuel
Wildfire Controversy
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The Bush administration announced controversial new rules Friday to expedite forest thinning projects in order to reduce the risk of wildfire on public lands. Environmentalists are outraged by the new regulations,
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which they describe as little more than a giveaway to the timber industry, but Bush administration officials say the changes reflect "common sense" forest management. full story
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