On Tuesday, December 5, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a new code regulating forest ownership. Putin signed the law despite severe criticism by environmental activists, the Kremlin said.
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December 5, 2006
Eruption of the Shiveluch volcano has begun on the Kamchatka Peninsula.
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Moscow police have arrested five Greenpeace activists for unauthorized picketing in the city center.
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November 21, 2006Insomniac bears are roaming the forests of southwestern Siberia scaring local people.
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November 16, 2006A popular Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda tells a story of a pet labrador who reported an astonishingly high income of 500 rubles (approx. $20) after he had spent nights gathering coins in the courtyard of an apartment block where his owners live.
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Two Russian planes have arrived in the Indonesian province of South Kalimantan on Borneo island to battle fires behind the choking smoke haze that has engulfed the region.
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November 8, 2006Water analysis carried out by the Prosecutor`s office of the Russian city of Tver has discovered that the radioactivity level exceeded maximum allowed norms more than 10 times.
The water samples taken on October 18 in a local nursery school and a hospital has indicated that the norm for pernicious contraries was 5 to 6 times above the safety levels and the Prosecutor`s office initiated proceedings against the Federal Supervision Agency for Customer Protection and Human Welfare. However none of the state officials was charged within the case.
The Head of the Federal Supervision Agency for Customer Protection and Human Welfare Arnold Viskupov has addressed Tver residents and adviced them to use water filters. The prosecutors insist on additional water tests that will allow them to make a final conclusion on the water condition.
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November 2, 2006A hard-hitting report on climate change published by the British government on Monday has no basis in science or economics, OPEC’s Secretary-General Mohammed Barkindo said on Tuesday, the Reuters news agency reported.
The report written by former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern said that failure to tackle climate change could push world temperatures up by 5 degrees Celsius (9 Fahrenheit) over the next century, causing severe floods and harsh droughts and uprooting many as 200 million people.
The study recommended taking action now to offset the far greater cost of dealing with climate change later.
But Barkindo told an energy conference in Moscow that the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) —- which holds around two thirds of the world’s oil reserves —- opposed such research efforts. “We find some of the so-called initiatives of the rich industrialized countries who are supposed to take the lead in combating climate change rather alarming,†he said.
“One recent example is the review on climate change that was issued yesterday by the UK government in London.â€
Stern’s report was welcomed by environmental activists as well as by the British government and the European Commission. The White House Council on Environmental Quality said it was a contribution to an abundance of economic analysis on climate change.
Barkindo said it was misguided but he did not elaborate on possible solutions to the problem.
“The mitigation and adaptation to climate change can only be accomplished on the principles of common responsibility and respected capabilities and not by scenarios that have no foundations in either science or economics as we had yesterday from London,†he said.
OPEC is made up of Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Venezuela.
Australia, which alongside the United States has not signed the Kyoto Protocol designed to curb Greenhouse gas emissions, also said on Tuesday it did not accept the British report.
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October 31, 2006Two Russian amphibian aircrafts were leased by the Indonesian national disaster agency to help douse forest fires that have been spreading smoke across the region for months, the Reuters news agency reported on Tuesday.
It has been the worst smoke pollution originating from Sumatra and Borneo since 1998 when it cost the region billions of dollars in economic losses.
The pilots and technical staff will also come from Russia to be involved in targeting areas on Sumatra and Borneo Indonesian officials said.
However, by the time the planes were ready, conditions in the haze-hit regions including Singapore and Malaysia have generally improved following rains.
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Swedish wildlife filmmaker Erik Fernstrom was in Russia shooting a film when he was attacked by a bear. The incident occurred during the production this summer of a film called “The true face of the bearâ€, The Local online daily reports.
Fernstrom’s film is based on scientific research about the logic behind bears’ behavior. Armed with this knowledge he knew how to react when a brown bear suddenly turned on him and his crew.
“Nine out of ten times brown bears attack just to scare you. We just stood our ground,†he told the paper.
“Of course I was scared. But the bear will only attack if he is wounded or protecting his prey. He kept coming at us. He was pushing the limits. But so were we. He came to within 5-10 meters of us.â€
Fernstrom also described how bears often follow in the tracks of berry and mushroom pickers just to have a look at what is going on.
“They get quite close. They are curious about who you are,†he said.
But they rarely show themselves. Attacks are infrequent and casualties rare. But a wounded bear will not hesitate to strike.
“A hunter in the north of Sweden was killed by a brown bear a couple of years ago. The hunter’s dogs scared the bear out of its den. It seems that the man then wounded the bear and was attacked and killed.
â€The story has been in the news recently because the man’s family have tried to get compensation from the state. Apparently you can get compensation for a dog that has been injured or killed by a bear. But you can’t get compensation for a family member,“ Fernstrom said.
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October 27, 2006
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