EU/ERBD News
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An Amazon environmental activist and his wife have been shot dead in Brazil, Al Jazeera reported. José Cláudio Ribeiro da Silva, a rubber tapper, and his wife Maria do Espirito Santo were ambushed in the Amazon state of Pará. News of the killings came as the Brazilian congress wrangles over new laws that environmentalists say would reduce...
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The swollen Mississippi River, already spilling over into wide areas of the Mississippi Delta in the southern US, is dealing a heavy economic blow to commercial and agricultural life, The New York Times said. Tens of thousands of hectares of cropland were inundated in Louisiana when floodgates were opened to ease the flooding threat to New Orleans,...
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Nearly 1.3 million hectares of farmland in three southern US states have been submerged by flood waters from the Mississippi River and its tributaries – North America’s largest river system – Reuters reported. Caused by melting snow and heavy spring rains, the floods add to troubles in seeding this year’s crops in the world’s...
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Indonesia and the European Union finalised an agreement aimed at ending the trade in illegally sourced wood, the BBC said. Similar to deals made with several African countries, the accord means that EU companies will only be able to import Indonesian timber that is certified as complying with the country’s environmental laws. Conservationists...
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Radiation readings at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear facility rose to the highest level since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami knocked out cooling systems, impeding efforts to contain the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, Bloomberg News said. Two robots took readings as high as 1,120 millisierverts per hour -- more than four times the annual...
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The four countries that share the lower stretches of the Mekong River have failed to reach agreement on construction of the 1,285-megawatt Xayaburi Dam, Reuters reported. The dam --the first of 11 planned for the lower Mekong – has put Laos on a collision course with neighbours Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia, and with environmentalists.
One...
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Japan raised the severity level of its nuclear crisis to the maximum of seven, putting the Fukushima power-plant disaster on a par with the 1986 Chernobyl accident, CNN said. The move followed a review of the amount of radiation released in the month since an earthquake and tsunami severely damaged the facility. But Fukushima is not another Chernobyl, experts...
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Japan has stopped highly radioactive water leaking into the sea from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear-power plant, Reuters said, but the damaged reactors are far from being under control. Engineers still need to pump 11.5 million litres of contaminated water – used to cool overheated fuel rods -- back into the Pacific Ocean.
Meanwhile,...
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The operator of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex said it had “no choice but to scrap” four reactor units at the Japanese facility following damage stemming from the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, according to The New York Times. As new tests of seawater near the plant showed sharply increased levels of radioactive iodine, smoke was seen...
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Radiation in food and water, attributed to Japan’s damaged Fukushima nuclear plant, is more serious than previously thought, Reuters quoted the World Health Organisation as saying. Officials in Tokyo warned that babies under the age of one should not be given milk formula mixed with tap water because of raised levels of radioactive iodine-131, the...
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