A beautiful day for a wedding — crisp, clear and, for China in midsummer, relatively cool. The latest typhoon’s high winds have swept away the air pollution, and under a brilliant blue sky the guests are chatting in the hollow of a terraced field beside a single spindly tree — symbolic decoration in a country whose scant arable land continues to disappear
Tag Archives: pollution
The Family-Friendly Version of The King’s Speech: No F-Words Allowed
Reader alert: This story quotes quite a few four-letter words, all of them spoken by a future King of England. Some readers may wish to skip the dialogue section after the next boldface advisory
London Lacking in Clean Air? Blame Europe
Call it the Air Wars. For the past 18 months, the city of London has failed to meet air-quality limits set by the European Commission .
Looking for a clean beach? Consult the stars
Going to the beach has become a lot like looking for hotel accommodations: If it has a one-star ranking, you know you’re in for nothing but trouble.
Nigeria oil company rejects damning Amnesty report
Nigeria’s state oil company rejected criticism from a leading human rights group Wednesday, calling an Amnesty International report "inaccurate." “We have issues with the report,” said Levi Ajuonoma, a spokesman for Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation. Amnesty said Tuesday that pollution and environmental impacts from the oil industry in the Niger Delta are creating a “human rights tragedy” in which local people suffer poor health and loss of livelihood. Governments and oil companies are failing to be accountable for the problems, Amnesty said in its report, called “Petroleum, Pollution and Poverty in the Niger Delta.” But the state oil company said it was local communities who cause much of the environmental damage by vandalizing pipelines for monetary gain.