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• New committee to fix fare of CNG-run buses

  The government yesterday formed a high-powered committee to set the fare of CNG-run passenger buses running in Dhaka and Chittagong as the bus operators refused to accept the fare fixed by a previously formed committee. After a series of meetings with different stakeholders, a sub- committee of Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) had earlier proposed the fare for one-kilometre journey at Tk 0.98. The transport leaders, however, demanded fixing Tk 1.71 per kilometre, almost double the recommended fare.

  • 22/05/2008

  • Daily Star (Bangladesh)
  • • Vehicular Pollution
    • CNG Buses
    • Bangladesh
    • Chittagong

• Walk to preserve heritage sites

  Daily Star 22/05/08 On the eve of celebrating 400 years of Dhaka, the city is losing its past glory to the current trend towards shiny new apartment buildings. With the aim to preserve the city's heritage sites, Urban Study Group (USG) arranged a heritage walk yesterday afternoon at Farashganj in the old part of the city. "One of the aims of our walk is to create awareness among people so that they come forward to save the heritage of the city," said Taimur Islam, a conservation architect of USG.

  • 22/05/2008

  • Daily Star (Bangladesh)
  • • Habitat
    • Bangladesh

• Punjab pleads for Indus water for south

  With water situation in the country improving, Punjab on Wednesday protested the distribution formula calling it "disastrous for cotton crop' in four crucial districts of southern Punjab, which produce over four million bales of cotton. In a letter to the Indus River System Authority (Irsa), the Punjab government said the distribution formula hurt cotton sowing in Dera Ghazi Khan, Rahim Yar Khan, Rajanpur and Muzaffargarh, which produced over four million bales.

  • 22/05/2008

  • Dawn (Pakistan)
  • • Cotton
    • Irrigation

• Human activity has degraded 60pc ecosystem services

  International Day for Biological Diversity is being observed on Thursday to raise awareness of the importance of biodiversity at a time when over 60 per cent of ecosystem services were being degraded as a result of human activity. One of the most important challenges facing mankind today is to feed a growing population in an increasingly urbanised world confronted with the combined impacts of climate change and the unprecedented loss of biodiversity.

  • 22/05/2008

  • FAO
  • • Ecosystems
    • Climate Change
    • Biodiversity
    • UN
    • Rawalpindi

• Health dept to supervise anti-polio campaign

  The Sindh health department will field its own team of senior officials to monitor the special anti-polio vaccinations to be administered to children in various districts of Sindh during the mop-up campaign planned to be conducted in 14 districts of the province from May 26, it was learnt on Wednesday.

  • 22/05/2008

  • WHO
  • • Health
    • Polio

• Unregulated quarrying poses a threat to biodiversity

  Hamidullah, Abul Waheed and Ashraf, along with 10 others, do not know that the World Biodiversity Day is being observed on Thursday. They remain busy taking out huge stones from mountains in an isolated area some 10 to 15 kilometres off Cape Monze near Hub.

  • 22/05/2008

  • Dawn (Pakistan)
  • • Mining
    • Biodiversity

• Seven CNG stations to be set up in Capital

  Considering the problems being faced by the residents of the federal capital due to the shortage of CNG stations in the capital, Capital Development Authority (CDA) has approved seven locations for setting up CNG stations. The approval was given in a meeting of the CDA Board held here on Wednesday. The meeting was presided over by Chairman CDA Kamran Lashari while Moin-ud-Din Kakakhel, Member Engineering, Brigadier Asad Munir, Member Estate, Sarwar Sindhu, Director Urban Planning and others also attended the meeting.

  • 22/05/2008

  • Business Recorder (Pakistan)
  • • Air Pollution
    • Vehicular Pollution
    • CNG

• Call to ensure de-silting of canals

  District Coordination Officer (DCO) Larkana Abdul Aziz Uqaili has called upon the Irrigation and Agriculture officials to ensure the de-silting of irrigation canals so that tail-end Abadgars may be able to get irrigation water for their agriculture lands. This he said while presiding over a meeting of Abadgars, Agriculture and Irrigation officers at his office on Tuesday. The theft of irrigation water would not be tolerated at any cost, and strict action in this regard might be taken accordingly, he added.

  • 22/05/2008

  • Business Recorder (Pakistan)
  • • Agriculture
    • Canal Irrigation

• Constructing water reservoirs: Senate panel may convene CCI meeting to evolve consensus

  A Senate panel on Wednesday recommended convening an extraordinary meeting of the Council of Common Interest (CCI) to evolve consensus among provinces on the construction of new water reservoirs, including controversial Kalabagh dam.

  • 22/05/2008

  • Business Recorder (Pakistan)
  • • Water Resources
    • Dams

• Pacific Islands Act To Save Threatened Tuna

  South Pacific nations have taken steps to shore up dwindling tuna stocks, banning licensed tuna vessels from fishing in international waters between their islands and requiring them to always carry observers. The new rules, agreed to at a fisheries meeting in Palau on Tuesday, will take effect from June 15, 2008. "This is an historic moment for the Pacific, its people, marine life and future food security," Lagi Toribau, Greenpeace Australia's Pacific Oceans campaigner said on Wednesday.

  • 22/05/2008

  • Planet Ark (Australia)
  • • Fisheries
    • Food Security

• Garbage Is Dirty, But Is It A Clean Fuel?

  About 45 minutes north of downtown Los Angeles, a machine the size of a small truck flattens tons of food scraps, paper towels and other household trash into the side of a growing 300-foot pile. To Waste Management which operates the landfill, this is more than just a mountain of garbage. Pipes tunnelled deep into the mound extract gas from the rotting waste and send it to a plant that turns it into electricity.

  • 22/05/2008

  • Planet Ark (Australia)
  • • Ethanol
    • Climate Change
    • Renewable Energy
    • Garbage
    • Waste Management
    • Electricity

• China To Probe Builders After Quake Collapses

  China vowed on Wednesday to deal severely with anyone found responsible for shoddy state building work, as parents demanded to know why last week's earthquake destroyed so many schools, killing thousands of children. Nine days after the massive tremor hit mountainous Sichuan province in southwestern China, rescuers were still finding survivors. A woman was pulled alive from a tunnel at a hydropower plant in the town of Hongbai, state media reported. The number of dead and missing rose to more than 74,000, with a further 247,000 hurt.

  • 22/05/2008

  • Planet Ark (Australia)
  • • Natural Disasters
    • Earthquakes
    • Children
    • China

• US Court Rejects State's Nuclear Waste Cleanup Law

  A US appeals court on Wednesday threw out a Washington state law barring the federal government from adding radioactive waste to the Hanford nuclear disposal site until existing contamination is cleaned up. The Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal law pre-empts the state from halting waste disposal at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, a 586-square-mile (1,520-square-km) site along the Columbia River in south-eastern Washington. It provided plutonium for World War Two atomic bombs and for the US Cold War arsenal.

  • 22/05/2008

  • Planet Ark (Australia)
  • • Waste Disposal
    • Radioactive Waste
    • Nuclear Fuel
    • Nuclear Wastes
    • Court

• Australian Police Arrest Kangaroo Cull Protesters

  Police arrested eight protesters on Wednesday as they tried to stop a cull of hundreds of kangaroos on a military base near the Australian capital, and local Aborigines joined the campaign against the slaughter. Elders from the local indigenous Ngunnawal clan said they were reclaiming the land from the Australian Defence Force, lighting a small ceremonial fire, which they attempted to carry onto the defence communications site. "We are claiming our land and that's what our sacred fire means," elder Isobel Coe shouted at police as protesters forced their way to the site of the cull.

  • 22/05/2008

  • Planet Ark (Australia)
  • • Animal Cruelty
    • Population

• Biodiversity and agriculture: safeguarding biodiversity and securing food for the world

  This publication highlights the importance of sustainable agriculture not only to preserve biodiversity, but also to ensure that will be able to feed the world, maintain agricultural livelihoods, and enhance human well being into the 21st century and beyond.

  • 22/05/2008

  • Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity
  • • Convention On Biological Diversity (CBD)
    • Ecosystem Services
    • Agriculture
    • Agricultural Systems
    • Agroforestry
    • Nutrition
    • Climate Change
    • Biofuel
    • Biodiversity
    • Biosafety
    • Global
    • Food Security

• Queen Goes Green With World's Largest Wind Turbine

  Britain's Queen Elizabeth is going green by investing in the largest wind turbine in the world, her property company the Crown Estate said on Wednesday. The Estate, which owns most of the seabed off Britain's shores, regularly leases out its land to wind farm projects but has never invested in the turbines. With a capacity of 7.5 megawatts, the Crown has gone for the biggest yet. "This is not something we've ever done before and I think it will raise quite a few eyebrows," Ben Barton, the company's offshore manager for wind farms said.

  • 22/05/2008

  • Planet Ark (Australia)
  • • Wind Energy
    • Turbines
    • World Meteorological Orgnisation ('WMO)

• Environment is secondary to private profits

  THE idea that coal-fired electricity generation can continue to be the major contributor to global electricity generation and the world can still restrict carbon dioxide emissions to a level constant with holding climate warming below 2 degrees is a fairytale, according to letter in the premier science journal Nature (published online, May 7, 2008).

  • 22/05/2008

  • Age (Australia)
  • • Environment
    • Carbon Capture and Storage
    • Fossil Fuels
    • Nuclear Wastes

• Record fuel prices still cheaper than Europe

  Melbourne's unleaded petrol reached an all-time high yesterday of 162.9 cents a litre for unleaded fuel. More than 100 petrol stations across the city were charging the record figure, before dropping the price back to 159.9 cents. Retail prices for petrol, diesel and oil have risen worldwide due to political, environmental and economic factors. High prices are hurting consumers everywhere - even in countries such as Egypt, India and Indonesia where fuel prices are subsidised by the government to minimise consumer costs.

  • 22/05/2008

  • Age (Australia)
  • • Europe
    • Fuel Pricing

• Manab Bikash Society observes National Environment Day

  A day-long programme was held at the Madhupur High School at Nagaon by the Manab Bikash Society, an NGO to observe

  • 22/05/2008

  • Sentinel (Guwahati)
  • • Environment
    • Assam

• Forest Department seizes smuggled logs

  The Forest Department, in a major move against the illegal trade of timber, seized two salis of logs while they were being smuggled from Arunachal Pradesh through the waterway of the Brahmaputra at Balijan in Tinsukia today. A haul of three hundred logs was made during the operation, which was conducted jointly by forest officials and personnel from the forest ranges of Dibrugarh, Doomdooma and Dibru Saikhowa.

  • 22/05/2008

  • Sentinel (Guwahati)
  • • Forest Resources
    • Timber Smuggling
    • Arunachal
    • Assam
    • Tinsukia (D)