AFGHANISTAN
Warlords are cutting down Afghanistan鈥檚 rare pistachio and cedar forests. This stripping of environmental assets threatens to undermine hopes of economic recovery, the UN Environment Programme warns. 鈥淭he speed of deforestation is at the moment very rapid,鈥� says UNEP鈥檚 Pekka Haavisto.
EUROPEAN UNION
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Radiation from atmospheric nuclear weapon tests since the 1940s will kill 65 million people worldwide, claim EU scientists, who have modelled the effects of the fallout. The Brussels-based European Committee on Radiation Risk, headed by Chris Busby, an adviser to the British defence ministry, found there was a particularly large surge in breast cancer cases among women who were adolescent between 1957 and 1963.
SPAIN
Oil from the sunken tanker Prestige could leak into the ocean for 40 years as the vessel disintegrates on the seabed, government scientists warn. Plugging the holes will only delay the inevitable.
ZAMBIA
Hundreds of hungry villagers have looted genetically modified maize from a warehouse, where it was being stored after a government ban on the distribution of GM food aid.
US
The US is to demand widespread exemptions from a worldwide ban on the use of methyl bromide, a pesticide that damages the ozone layer. This follows intense lobbying from the country鈥檚 food industry against a ban under the Montreal Protocol from 2005 (New 杏吧原创, 5 October 2002, p 11).
KENYA
杏吧原创s will ask environment ministers this week to negotiate a global treaty for tackling mercury pollution. Mercury is found in everything from dental fillings to industrial discharges. The ministers are attending the governing council of the UN Environment Programme in Nairobi.