EU/ERBD News
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Amid the worst drought in the Horn of Africa in more than 50 years, the World Food Programme planned to airlift food. But such efforts, according to a commentary in The Atlantic, are unlikely to address the economic and climatological forces underlying the disaster. In addition to conflict and drought, Somalia’s problems include regional deforestation...
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More than 1,000 beef cattle that ate feed contaminated with radioactive cesium have been shipped all over Japan from Fukushima and other prefectures, Reuters quoted the Kyodo news agency as saying. Japanese consumers have become increasingly worried about food safety following cases of tainted vegetables, seafood and other products due to radiation...
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A new Greenpeace investigation raises questions about the responsibility of Nike, Adidas, Puma and other leading fashion brands for the firms they do business with in China, The Guardian reported. In its report “Dirty Laundry”, Greenpeace said a Chinese conglomerate supplying the brands has discharged hormone-disrupting chemicals and other toxins...
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Because of sulfur’s cooling effect, smoke from Asia’s rapidly growing economies is largely responsible for a halt in global warming in the decade after 1998, even though greenhouse-gas emissions soared, Reuters reported a study by scientists in the United States and Finland as saying. The findings raised the prospect of more rapid, pent-up climate...
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French president Nicolas Sarkozy pledged one billion euros (nearly US$1.5 billion) of investment in atomic power, resisting the anti-nuclear trend following Japan’s Fukushima disaster, The Guardian reported. Seeing “no alternative to nuclear energy today”, Sarkozy said moratoriums on new reactors adopted since the Japanese crisis began in...
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Fish, sharks, whales and other marine species are in imminent danger of an “unprecedented” extinction event, The Guardian cited a study of the world’s oceans as finding. The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) report said species are disappearing far faster than predicted because of overfishing, pollution, fertiliser runoff...
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Climate change could be slowed if governments cleaned up “black carbon” from industry and cooking fires, The Guardian reported, citing a UN report by 50 leading atmospheric scientists. Linked to melting of Himalayan glaciers, the pollutant affects climate by absorbing sunlight, darkening snow and ice when deposited, and helping to form clouds....
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As EU health officials met to discuss the world’s deadliest E. coli outbreak, Germany said new infections were dropping, the Associated Press reported. In the bacterial outbreak centred in the Hamburg area, 26 people have died and nearly 3,000 have become ill since May 2. Scientists are still looking for the cause -- possibly raw vegetables. Much...
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The development of regional airports is one of the earliest aspects of the Polish economic transformation. Although Poland has had a fairly well-developed network of civil airports, and particularly military airports, since the post-W=war years, their role has been very limited. They used to be auxiliary airports for the main airport in Warsaw, which means...
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Warning that world food demand will have jumped by 70% by 2050, the charity Oxfam said soaring food prices and weather and financial shocks had aggravated the hunger crisis -- and that the global food economy was broken, according to Reuters. In a new report, “Growing a Better Future”, Oxfam called for regulation of financial speculation and the...
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