News snippets
• The Federal High Court in Lagos, Nigeria, has awarded (Nigerian dollar) N1.4 billion (Rs 45 crore) to three communities in the country's Bayelsa and Rivers States as ecological damages, resulting from the 1998 crude oil spillage from Mobil Nigeria Limited's pipeline in Akwa-Ibom State. The communities had instituted separate actions against the American oil giant and its Nigerian subsidiary.
• Eight Timaini-Wayeli clans of the Anawae tribe, in the Enga province of the highlands of Papua New Guinea, have petitioned the Pacific island nation's mining minister not to issue a dumping license to a gold mining company