Global News Journal | Analysis & Opinion

It was early March and Kristalina Georgieva, the European Commissioner of International
Cooperation Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, was traveling in Asia. Her plan was to attend a
7.5 magnitude earthquake simulation that would hit Indonesia and generate a tsunami. A few things,
however, changed in her itinerary: The destination turned out to be Japan, the earthquake was 9.0
and it not only generated a huge tsunami, but also a nuclear catastrophe. Plus, it was real.
from Environment Forum:

Most people have seen a polar bear, usually at the local zoo. And most
zoo-goers know that wildlife advocates worry about the big white bears' future as their icy Arctic
habitat literally melts away as a result of global climate change. But apparently more than the
climate is changing above the Arctic Circle.
from Environment Forum:

Zoom! Pan! Swish! Take a look at a new movie of

walruses crowding an Alaska beach -- as you've never seen them before! Shot from 4,000 feet up in
the air, the vast herd of walruses looks like a pile of brown gravel from a distance. (A far different
view than the extreme close-up in the still photo at left, which was taken at a zoo in Belarus.)
from Environment Forum:

As the special envoy on climate change for the World

Bank, Andrew Steer might be thought of as the $6 billion man of environmental finance. He oversees
more than that amount for projects to fight the effects of global warming.
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

Outside tutus for princesses President Asif Ali Zardari's

political rally in Birmingham last weekend, I chatted to a middle-aged woman passing by about the
floods in Pakistan. "I have every sympathy for Pakistan and the Pakistanis, but he is not helping
them much, is he?" she said. Another woman asked me to explain why it was that the protesters
were not focused on the floods but demonstrating "about all sorts". Inside the rally, a young British
Pakistani who had recently returned from a visit to his family home in Kashmir complained about
negative stereotyping in the media of Pakistan that had reduced a country of some 170 million
people to "a terrorist threat".
from Environment Forum:

East Africa's Lake Tanganyika might be getting too hot

for sardines.
The little fish have been an economic and nutritional mainstay for some 10 million people in

neighboring Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo -- four of the poorest
countries on Earth. They also depend on Lake Tanganyika for drinking water.

Sweden complained that the recent Copenhagen climate change

summit was a "disaster." British Prime Minister Gordon Brown described it as "at best flawed and at
worst chaotic." Sudan's U.N. ambassador, Abdalmahmoud Abdalhaleem, dubbed the outcome
confirmation of a "climate apartheid." For South Africa it was simply "not acceptable."
from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

One of the more controversial arguments doing the

rounds is the question of whether you can compare Pakistan's Islamist militants to Maoist insurgents
in India. Both claim to champion the cause of social justice and have been able to exploit local
grievances against poor governance to win support, and both use violence against the state to try to
achieve their aims.

A firefighter puts out a fire at

Princess Tutus a village near Bangkok March 31, 2008. REUTERS/Sukree Sukplang

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd may be a shoo-in to return to office late next year, but this
week his reputation as a transformative leader will be on the line.