INDIA
More than a thousand people have died from the cold in northern India, Nepal and Bangladesh since December. The freak weather, which has brought temperatures close to freezing and sent demand for electricity up 20 per cent, looks set to continue.
RUSSIA
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Ministers say they are still not ready to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, even though Russia stands to make $20 billion a year by selling its pollution quota. 鈥淣obody is against the protocol,鈥� says Greenpeace in Moscow. 鈥淭his is just Russian bureaucracy.鈥�
BRITAIN
A barrage across the Severn estuary could supply 6 per cent of Britain鈥檚 electricity by tapping into the estuary鈥檚 12-metre tidal range, according to a group of engineering companies. The barrage would be comparable in size to China鈥檚 giant Three Gorges dam. The engineers say it would provide green power and protect the estuary鈥檚 coastline from rising sea levels.
INDONESIA
Illegal logging is rife in Indonesia鈥檚 national parks because of widespread government corruption, concludes a report by the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency. 鈥淚llegal logging is completely out of control,鈥� says Dave Currey, EIA鈥檚 director.
KENYA
Zoologist Wangari Maathai has been named assistant environment minister in Kenya鈥檚 new government. A leading environmentalist and founder of the Green Belt Movement, which pays peasant women to plant trees, Maathai will be in charge of forest conservation.
US
Fourteen years after the Exxon Valdez oil spillage, toxic chemicals are still leaching into waters off Alaska from contaminated beaches, says the National Marine Fisheries Service. Wildlife, including sea otters and harlequin ducks, are still plagued by high death rates and low fertility.