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Good Morning!
News
Commission Calls Fukushima Nuclear Crisis a Man-Made Disaster
TOKYO — The nuclear accident at Fukushima was a preventable disaster rooted in government-industry collusion and the worst conformist conventions of Japanese culture, a parliamentary inquiry concluded on Thursday.
The report, released by the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission, also warned that the plant may have been damaged by the earthquake on March 11, 2011, even before the arrival of a tsunami — a worrying assertion as the quake-prone country starts to bring its reactor fleet back online.
Oh Canada: the government's broad assault on the environment
Outsiders have long viewed Canada as a pristine wilderness destination replete with moose, mountains, and Mounties who always got their man. Recognizing the tourism value of that somewhat dull but wholesome image, successive Canadian governments — both Liberal and Conservative — were content to promote the stereotype in brochures, magazine advertisements, and TV commercials.
The lie of that was evident in the rampant clear-cutting of forests in British Columbia, the gargantuan oil sands developments in Alberta, the toxic mining practices in the Arctic, and the factory fishing that literally wiped out the Canadian cod industry by the 1990s. But this wholesome image endured because progress was made on several environmental fronts, such as creation of many new national parks, and because Canada remains sparsely populated with large swaths of unspoiled boreal forest and tundra.
But Canada's pristine image — and more importantly its environment — is not likely to recover from what critics across the political spectrum say is an unprecedented assault by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper on environmental regulation, oversight, and scientific research.
China's controversial Three Gorges dam completed
"The complete operation of all the generators makes the Three Gorges dam the world's largest hydropower project, and the largest base for clean energy," Zhang Cheng, general manager of the project's operator, China Yangtze Power, told a ceremony.
But the project, located on the middle reaches of the Yangtze river, cost 254bn yuan (£26bn), four times the original estimate, and another 123.8bn yuan (£12bn) has been spent on "follow-up work".
An early Scientific American report on the real cost of the Three Gorges Dam
China's Three Gorges Dam: An Environmental Catastrophe?
That biodiversity is threatened as the dam floods some habitats, reduces water flow to others, and alters weather patterns. Economic development has spurred deforestation and pollution in surrounding provinces in central China, endangering at least 57 plant species, including the Chinese dove tree and the dawn redwood. The reservoir created by Three Gorges dam threatens to flood the habitats of those species along with over 400 others, says Jianguo Liu, an ecologist at Michigan State University and guest professor at the Chinese Academy of Sciences who has done extensive work on biodiversity in China.
South Korea unveils 'scientific' whaling proposal
"Scientific whaling is an obsolete and sad consequence of a document drafted 60 years ago," said Monaco's IWC commissioner, Frederic Briand.
Wikileaks Publishes the 'Syrian Files'
The Syria Files include over 2 million emails from Syrian political figures, ministries and associated companies, dating from August 2006 to March 2012.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said: "The material is embarrassing to Syria, but it is also embarrassing to Syria’s opponents. It helps us not merely to criticise one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts. It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it."
Blog Posts of Interest
One Hour Interview of The Tragically Hip's Gord Downie on Q TV
Imagine… an exciting new independent blog and news site with a focus on a better future, waging peace, battling ignorance and greed.
“Peace is not something you wish for; It's something you make, something you do , something you are, and something you give away.” ― John Lennon
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