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Gorillas in the Midst (of War)
The five-year-old war in Congo is taking a heavy toll on the nation’s wildlife. Officials in the Kahuzi-Biega National Park talk of “animal genocide” and estimate that about 100 of the 250 eastern lowland gorillas in the park have been killed since 1996, as well as about 300 of the 400 forest elephants alive before […]
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They'll Finnish the Report Annan
The head of a U.N. team investigating environmental damage in Yugoslavia said yesterday that the team has found no evidence that NATO bombing caused major ecological catastrophes. But Pekka Haavisto, the former Finnish environment minister who led the team’s 10-day tour of Serbia, called for urgent action to help clean up “hot spots” of war-related […]
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Riders Knocked Out of Their Saddles
Senate Democrats knocked four anti-environmental provisions out of an Interior Department spending bill yesterday, including riders that would have blocked new energy-efficiency rules for federal agencies and permitted lead mining in a Missouri national forest. But Democrats failed to remove language that would let mining companies dump large amounts of waste on public land, and […]
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Carbon Sinking
Worldwide emissions of carbon from the burning of fossil fuels fell by 0.5 percent last year, the first drop since 1993, according to new estimates from the Worldwatch Institute. This decline took place even as the world economy expanded by 2.5 percent last year, undermining the argument that reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate […]
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Boyz 'n the Oxygen Hood
Children in poor, predominantly minority neighborhoods in New York City are as much as 21 times more likely than children from affluent parts of the city to be hospitalized for asthma, according to a new study. Doctors suspect that a number of environmental factors contribute to the nation’s urban asthma epidemic, including indoor and outdoor […]
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Frown and Bear It
Wild bear populations around the world are seriously threatened by poaching, pollution, and disappearing forests, according to a World Wildlife Fund report released yesterday. In Russia, home of the world’s largest brown bear population, poaching for hides and gallbladders has increased dramatically in the last decade, and poaching is rampant in China and southeast Asia. […]
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Seedy ROM
In a project likely to revolutionize the study of biology and have important impacts on international environmental policy, a group of nations this month began setting up a database where information about all named species will be recorded — in effect, a catalog of life on earth. The project — launched by the Organization for […]
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I Don't Want My MTBE
An expert panel convened by the EPA plans today to recommend a substantial reduction in the use of MTBE, an additive that makes gasoline burn more cleanly, because MTBE poses serious public health risks when it leaches into water supplies. The panel will recommend that Congress ease Clean Air Act language that mandates the widespread […]
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Gdansk You Very Much
Poland could get up to $213 million annually until 2007 from the European Union to clean up its environment, with the funds going primarily to combating air pollution and improving drinking water and sewage treatment. Poland wants to join the EU in 2003, but to meet the EU’s strict environmental standards, the nation will need […]
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What Have They Been Smoking?
Environmentalists are up in arms over a proposal by Florida drug enforcement officials to wipe out marijuana plants with a bioherbicide, a soil-borne fungus. The state Agriculture and Environmental Protection departments have given approval for tests of the fungus in a quarantine lab. Enviros worry that the plant-killing fungus could mutate and cause diseases in […]
