Flood damage to Serbia, Bosnia around 3 bln euros: EBRD
Belgrade (AFP) May 29, 2014 -
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) estimated Thursday that the damage from record floods in Serbia and Bosnia could cost some 3 billion euros ($4 billion).
"No official estimates as to the cost of this natural disaster are available as yet. However, some very rough preliminary estimates put the damage at around EUR1.5-2 billion in Serbia, and about EUR1.3 billion in ...
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Be prepared for hurricanes, despite calm forecast, NOAA warns
Miami (AFP) May 29, 2014 -
Despite the quiet forecast for this year's hurricane season, the director of the Miami-based National Hurricane Center warned Thursday not to let guards down completely.
Rick Knabb, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's NHC, emphasized that even a single storm that hits land can have a huge impact.
He cautioned residents of all hurricane-prone areas, from the ...
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After 8,000 cholera deaths, Haiti faces new epidemic
Port-Au-Prince (AFP) May 28, 2014 -
Hard-hit by a cholera epidemic that started in 2010, Haiti now faces a new threat in the expanding chikungunya virus, authorities said Wednesday.
"We have had 8,561 deaths from cholera since its reappearance in Haiti in 2010, while 702,892 cases have been confirmed," said Health Minister Florence Duperval.
Now, the chikungunya virus that has been spreading in the Caribbean has emerged as ...
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Australia rules out swathe of ocean as MH370 crash zone
Sydney (AFP) May 29, 2014 -
Australia Thursday ruled out a large swathe of Indian Ocean as Malaysian Flight MH370's final resting place, compounding the frustration of passengers' relatives who are still without answers almost three months on.
The Joint Agency Coordination Centre said a lengthy underwater search of an area where acoustic transmissions were detected in early April was now complete, as a US Navy official ...
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Super typhoon cools Philippine economy
Manila (AFP) May 29, 2014 -
The Philippines' roaring economy cooled in the first quarter of the year as the impacts of Super Typhoon Haiyan and other natural disasters hit harder than expected, official data showed Thursday.
Economic growth slowed to 5.7 percent in January-March, compared with 7.7 percent in the same period last year, the government said.
"The relatively slow growth is expected given the magnitude ...
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Storm Amanda blamed for three deaths in Mexico
Morelia, Mexico (AFP) May 29, 2014 -
Torrential rains from tropical storm Amanda claimed the lives of three people in Mexico, authorities said Wednesday.
Waters rushing down mountainsides caused flash floods that swept away two people in the town of Zitacuaro in the western state of Michoacan, said the state's director of civil protection, Nicolas Alfaro.
The fatalities were a 50-year-old man and a girl of eight.
Roads ...
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Chinese embassy's US street urged renamed for dissident
Washington (AFP) May 30, 2014 -
US lawmakers called Thursday for the street outside China's embassy to be renamed in honor of jailed dissident Liu Xiaobo ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown.
A diverse group of US House members said that a name change on at least a section of the street in Washington would embolden Chinese rights campaigners as Beijing authorities work hard to censor any mention ...
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US 'troubled' by sacking of Chinese blogger
Washington (AFP) May 31, 2014 -
The State Department said Friday it was "troubled" by reports that a Chinese blogger who met top US diplomat John Kerry had been fired by his employer.
Journalist Zhang Jialong was one of four bloggers who met Kerry in Beijing in February, when he urged the United States to help "tear down the great Internet firewall."
Zhang told AFP Sunday he had lost his job at Internet firm Tencent fo ...
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Shallow 5.9 magnitude earthquake hits SW China: USGS
Beijing (AFP) May 30, 2014 -
A shallow earthquake with a magnitude of 5.9 hit southwest China close to the border with Myanmar on Friday morning, the US Geological Survey said, the second in a week to hit the area.
The epicentre was in China's Yunnan province, 65 kilometres southeast of Myitkyina, capital of Kachin state in northern Myanmar, USGS said, adding the quake was 10 kilometres deep.
Shallow earthquakes can ...
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MH370 search on right track: Australian transport chief
Sydney (AFP) May 30, 2014 -
The head of Australia's transport safety bureau has defended the fruitless hunt for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, saying he is confident that search teams are targeting the right area.
Satellite analysis in the days after the Boeing 777 went missing on March 8 with 239 people onboard placed the jet somewhere in a huge tract of the Indian Ocean stretching from near Indonesia south t ...
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Norway creates 'safety zone' at contested Arctic drill site
Oslo (AFP) May 30, 2014 -
Norway said Friday it had created a "safety zone" around the Arctic drilling site where Greenpeace is trying to prevent oil explorations.
The zone, which stretches for 500 metres (1,640 feet) around the site, has been created in order to force the departure of the Greenpeace ship Esperanza, which is currently there.
The environmental group is trying to prevent Statoil from operating the ...
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Scientists find compound to fight virus behind SARS, MERS
Geneva (AFP) May 30, 2014 -
An international team of scientists say they have identified a compound that can fight coronaviruses, responsible for the SARS and MERS outbreaks, which currently have no cure.
Coronaviruses affect the upper and lower respiratory tracts in humans. They are the reason for up to a third of common colds.
A more severe strain of the virus, thought to have come from bats, triggered the glob ...
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France's unloved tipples hope to match cognac's Asia boom
Hong Kong (AFP) May 30, 2014 -
After cognac's transformation into a Chinese status symbol, its lesser-known French cousins armagnac and calvados are hoping to establish themselves in lucrative Asian markets as demand wanes at home.
Cognac currently accounts for 67 percent of French spirit exports, but rival digestifs and eaux-de-vie are seeking to seize more of that market and offset slumping domestic sales as France's po ...
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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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