Environmental Glance
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– The United Nations will go dark later this evening as the Organization shuts off the lights at its iconic Headquarters complex in New York and other facilities around the world in observance of 'Earth Hour,' an annual global event to put the spotlight on the issues facing the planet and to inspire millions across the world to live more sustainably.
In a video message, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said: “This year's Earth Hour comes at a pivotal moment. Last December, all the world's Governments came together to adopt the Paris Agreement on climate change. This is a historic achievement for people and the planet – but only if we follow through on the promises made.”
Earth Hour 2016: UN goes dark to spotlight climate change
Severe flooding in Louisiana forces evacuations, school closures
A storm system moving through the southern United States killed at least one person in Texas and forced evacuations in Louisiana on Wednesday.
The storms were expected to continue throughout the day with the heaviest rainfall forecast for eastern Texas, parts of Arkansas and western Louisiana, where flash flood emergencies were declared for the parishes of Bossier, Caddo, Webster, DeSoto and Red River due to widespread flooding.
Egypt parliament expels lawmaker over meeting with Israeli
An Egyptian lawmaker and TV talk show host has been expelled from parliament over a meeting he had with the Israeli ambassador to Egypt, which in 1979 became the first Arab nation to sign a peace treaty with Israel.
The controversy over the meeting began when the ambassador, Haim Koren, posted a picture last week on the embassy's Facebook page of himself and Tawfiq Okasha.
Dwindling bee, butterfly populations pose global agriculture threat
Important invertebrate pollinator species, like the honeybee and butterfly, are under a threat of extinction due to a number of environmental pressures, many of them man-made, a new study found.
The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services released a detailed assessment regarding pollinators Friday during its fourth plenary in Malaysia. Results come from a two-year, United Nations-sponsored study conducted by the panel.
So. California oil spill tied to pipeline corrosion
The federal government said its preliminary report of the May 2015 oil spill at Refugio Beach in southern California found pipeline corrosion to be the culprit.
A pipeline system operated by Plains All American, which has headquarters in Houston, leaked up to 3,400 barrels of oil in Santa Barbara County in mid-May. The company in November indicated the spill volume was around 2,960 barrels and was still working to reconcile the difference. About 30 percent was recovered during remediation efforts.
Japan: Fukushima clean-up may take up to 40 years, plant's operator says
Cleaning up Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, which suffered catastrophic meltdowns after an earthquake and tsunami hit in 2011, may take up to 40 years.
The crippled nuclear reactor is now stable but the decommissioning process is making slow progress, says the plant's operator Tokyo Electric Power Co, better known as TEPCO.
Radioactive Water From Fukushima Is Leaking Into the Pacific
"Fukushima is the biggest industrial catastrophe in the history of mankind," Arnold Gundersen, a former nuclear industry senior vice president, told Truthout shortly after a 9.0 earthquake in Japan caused a tsunami that destroyed the cooling system of Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) nuclear plant in Fukushima, Japan.
While this statement might sound overdramatic, Gundersen may be right.
Several nuclear reactor meltdowns in the plant, which at the time forced the mandatory evacuations of thousands of people living within a 15-mile radius of the damaged power plant, persist, and experts like Gundersen continue to warn that this problem is not going to go away.
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