Tiananmen leader: US didn't care about crackdown
Washington (AFP) May 30, 2014 -
An exiled leader of the Tiananmen Square protests deplored Friday the US stance 25 years ago, saying the ambassador confided to her that Washington didn't "care" about the crackdown.
Chai Ling, who was commander-in-chief of the students agitating for democracy in Beijing, said that she had hoped the United States would intervene as Chinese troops crushed the uprising on the night of June 3-4 ...
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Tiananmen activists gather in Japan to pressure Beijing
Tokyo (AFP) May 30, 2014 -
Dozens of pro-democracy activists gathered in Japan Friday to call for global pressure on Beijing, days ahead of the 25th anniversary marking the brutal crushing of the Tiananmen Square protests.
"There used to be legitimacy in the Chinese government that was based on an ideal. But since the 1989 crackdown, there is no such a thing," Wu'er Kaixi, one of the leaders of the ill-fated protest, ...
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Major cities must unite against climate change: Paris mayor
United Nations, United States (AFP) May 30, 2014 -
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo urged the world's major cities Thursday to unite in the fight against climate change.
Stressing that half the world's population is now urbanized, she noted that cities are already responsible for 80 percent of greenhouse gas emissions and the consumption of three quarters of Earth's energy resources.
"Major cities must unite to develop industrial bids to tackle ...
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Ancient rocks yield clues about Earth's earliest crust
Edmonton, Canada (SPX) Jun 01, 2014 -
It looks like just another rock, but what Jesse Reimink holds in his hands is a four-billion-year-old chunk of an ancient protocontinent that holds clues about how the Earth's first continents formed. The University of Alberta geochemistry student spent the better part of three years collecting and studying ancient rock samples from the Acasta Gneiss Complex in the Northwest Territories, part of ...
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Drop in global malnutrition depends on ag productivity, climate change
West Lafayette IN (SPX) Jun 01, 2014 -
Global malnutrition could fall 84 percent by the year 2050 as incomes in developing countries grow - but only if agricultural productivity continues to improve and climate change does not severely damage agriculture, Purdue University researchers say.
"The prevalence and severity of global malnutrition could drop significantly by 2050, particularly in the poorest regions of the world," sai ...
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An Ecological Risk Research Agenda for Synthetic Biology
Boston MA (SPX) Jun 01, 2014 -
Environmental scientists and synthetic biologists have for the first time developed a set of key research areas to study the potential ecological impacts of synthetic biology, a field that could push beyond incremental changes to create organisms that transcend common evolutionary pathways.
The Synthetic Biology Project at the Wilson Center and the Program on Emerging Technologies at the M ...
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NASA Widens 2014 Hurricane Research Mission
Greenbelt MD (SPX) Jun 01, 2014 -
During this year's Atlantic hurricane season, NASA is redoubling its efforts to probe the inner workings of hurricanes and tropical storms with two unmanned Global Hawk aircraft flying over storms and two new space-based missions. NASA's airborne Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel or HS3 mission, will revisit the Atlantic Ocean for the third year in a row.
HS3 is a collaborative effort th ...
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