(August 13, 2006) Up to $US120 billion of Iraq’s total debt is expected to be cancelled by the end of next year, the Iraqi central bank governor Dr. Snan Al-Shabibi announced last month.
Trial dismissal rejected for Pinochet
(August 11, 2006) The judge investigating the origin of the personal fortune of Augusto Pinochet rejected a request for dismissal by his defense lawyers because of his state of health and impaired ability to speak, judicial sources said here Friday.
Eyewitness on the Salween
(August 9, 2006) ‘At both Maji and Songta there is much activity. Generators rumble, power tools blast into the riverbanks. Trucks full of workers and engineers are everywhere. According to some reports there have been no environmental impact surveys.’
China: Tibetan water plans raise concerns
(August 9, 2006) China’s gigantic water bureaucracy constantly needs to find new work to do and is now turning its attention to Tibet, says a Tibetan expert on natural resources.
A damming indictment
(August 9, 2006) More than 30 dams planned across mainland Southeast Asia will bring electricity, population upheaval, food shortages and ecological destruction.
One-third of China’s dams unsafe
(August 8, 2006) ‘What I fear most is dam collapses, and I think it’s not just me. Party and state leaders at every level fear this," said E Jianping, head of China’s flood-fighting agency.
China warns aging dams risk flood disaster
(August 8, 2006) The head of China’s State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters has said he is worried about the country’s aging dams, many of which were built in the 1950s and 1960s. ‘Now many dams are already operating beyond their expiry date,’ he said.
The Fallen: Shame and scandal on the road to riches
(August 7, 2006) Mark O’Neill looks at a rogue’s gallery of the business world as China takes the fast lane to progress.
Sturgeons released
(August 7, 2006) Thousands of endangered Chinese sturgeons, equipped with microchips that will record migration patterns, have been released into the Yangtze River. Each fish also carries a tag with a phone number so that, if caught, it can be returned to scientists.
Chinese go further, faster and higher with media crackdowns two years before Beijing Olympics
(August 7, 2006) ‘The Chinese police continue to jail, attack or intimidate Chinese citizens who talk to the foreign press. The most dramatic recent case was that of Fu Xiancai, an activist on behalf of people displaced by the Three Gorges dam.’
Quakes the main natural disaster killer on mainland
(August 6, 2006) Earthquakes have killed more people in China than any other form of natural disaster, accounting for 54 per cent of such deaths since 1949, a Chinese seismological official says.
Damming Asia’s watershed: China’s hydropower plans in Tibet
(August 4, 2006) After covering most of the rivers of southwestern China in dams and turbines, the big players in the industry – encouraged by the central government in Beijing – are now coveting Tibet, which is thought to have the biggest potential capacity of all.
Asian hopes for hydropower may add to oil reliance
(August 4, 2006) ‘Asian plans for a multitude of hydroelectric projects will lead some nations to a greater reliance on dams to meet power demand, potentially triggering costly bouts of extra oil imports in times of drought.’
Chinese impose rules for water use
(August 3, 2006) ‘We need to give priority to conservation because there is now inefficient use of water in agriculture, in the cities, in the urban and industrial uses along the [Yellow] river,’ says Ma Jun, author of China’s Water Crisis.
China’s drinking water situation grim; heavy pollution to blame
(August 3, 2006) China will soon revise its national compulsory standards on drinking water quality. The indices for testing will rise from 35 to 107, and include organic pollutants and other substances caused by industrial pollution.
Patricia Adams
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