Category: RT Newswire

Published on Monday, June 16, 2008 by The Los Angeles Times
Human Cost of Brazil’s Biofuels Boom by Patrick J. McDonnell

BOCAINA, BRAZIL – For as far as the eye can see, stalks of sugar cane march across the hillsides here like giant praying mantises. This is ground zero for ethanol production in Brazil — “the Saudi Arabia of biofuels,” as some have already labeled this vast South American country.

But even as Brazil’s booming economy is powered by fuel processed from the cane, labor officials are confronting what some call the country’s dirty little ethanol secret: the mostly primitive conditions endured by the multitudes of workers who cut the cane.

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Published on Sunday, June 15, 2008 by Associated Press
Oil Companies Get OK To Annoy Bears by Dina Cappiello
WASHINGTON – Less than a month after declaring polar bears a threatened species because of global warming, the Bush administration is giving oil companies permission to annoy and potentially harm them in the pursuit of oil and natural gas.

The Fish and Wildlife Service issued regulations last week providing legal protection to seven oil companies planning to search for oil and gas in the Chukchi Sea off the northwestern coast of Alaska if small numbers of polar bears or Pacific walruses are incidentally harmed by their activities over the next five years.

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BBC News-08:12 GMT, Sunday, 15 June 2008 09:12 UK
A Million Flee South China Floods

Video: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7455239.stm

Flooding in southern China has killed at least 55 people and forced more than one million to flee their homes, the government says.

Torrential downpours have affected nine provinces, China’s civil affairs ministry says. More rain is expected in the coming days, forecasters warn.

Among those provinces badly hit is Sichuan, which is still reeling from last month’s massive earthquake.

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Published on Saturday, June 14, 2008 by Inter Press Service
“Water Is Alive, It Hears Our Words”
by Alice Gordon

LAKE LANIER ISLANDS – Native Americans and others completed a 10-day “Walk for the Water” this week along the Chattahoochee River, which some estimates say will dry up completely by 2025 due to pressure from the rapidly growing city of Atlanta.

“We have a problem with water,” Gary Fourstar, of Assiniboine and Ohlone lineage and one of the event founders, told IPS. “States are fighting over rights. Water has become like everything else: a commodity rather than being given to us freely by the creator and used as it was meant to be. It is being used for commercial purposes… It becomes a resource, and like all resources is to be used up rather than taken care of.”

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