Activists held after trying to halt Faroe Island dolphin hunt
Stockholm (AFP) Aug 31, 2014 -
Fourteen activists from the radical animal rights group Sea Shepherd have been arrested in Denmark's Faroe Islands while trying to halt a traditional dolphin hunt, their organisation said Sunday.
The activists were detained Saturday on the island of Sandoy while attempting to save a pod of 33 pilot whales - members of the dolphin family - which were being driven toward shore to be slaughte ...
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Thailand totters towards waste crisis
Bangkok (AFP) Sept 01, 2014 -
A blaze at a vast rubbish dump home to six million tonnes of putrefying trash and toxic effluent has kindled fears that poor planning and lax law enforcement are tipping Thailand towards a waste crisis.
Locals had long pressed for the closure of the foul-smelling Praeksa landfill site, which is wedged between a cluster of industrial estates on the fringes of Bangkok.
But a ferocious eig ...
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Climate focus at UN small islands summit in Samoa
Wellington (AFP) Sept 01, 2014 -
A major United Nations conference on small island nations began in Samoa on Monday, with the emphasis on helping them survive the pressing challenge posed by climate change.
Some 3,000 delegates are attending the UN Small Island Developing States meeting, making it the largest event ever staged in the tiny Pacific nation of about 200,000 people.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the ...
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Dramatic Papua New Guinea volcano quietens
Rabaul, Papua New Guinea (AFP) Aug 30, 2014 -
A volcano which has erupted in Papua New Guinea was Saturday spewing fragments from its crater and rumbling loudly, but its activity appeared to be subsiding, a seismologist said.
Mount Tavurvur, which destroyed the town of Rabaul when it erupted simultaneously with nearby Mount Vulcan in 1994, came to life again early Friday, with rocks and ash erupting from its centre.
The eruptions on ...
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Panasonic, Tata join hands in water treatment: report
Tokyo (AFP) Aug 30, 2014 -
Japan's Panasonic will develop a water purification system together with India's Tata Group, tapping into a fast-growing market in Asia, a media report said Saturday.
The electronics giant has developed a prototype of a device that will detoxify harmful substances in groundwater, making it potentially safe to drink, the Japanese economic daily Nikkei said.
The system, which is compact ...
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New Earth-Observing Instrument Makes Successful Balloon Flight
Washington DC (SPX) Aug 28, 2014 -
In New Mexico on the morning of Aug. 18, a high-altitude balloon successfully carried the HyperSpectral Imager for Climate Science (HySICS) instrument to an altitude of 123,000 feet, above most of the Earth's atmosphere, to reach space-like conditions and demonstrate new technologies for acquiring high-accuracy science measurements of the Earth.
Scientists use outgoing shortwave radiance, ...
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Sentinel-1 poised to monitor motion
Paris (ESA) Aug 28, 2014 -
Although it was only launched a few months ago and is still being commissioned, the new Sentinel-1A radar satellite has already shown that it can be used to generate 3D models of Earth's surface and will be able to closely monitor land and ice surface deformation.
As the first in a fleet of satellite missions for Europe's Copernicus environmental monitoring programme, Sentinel-1A was launc ...
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