Julio Godoy

PARIS, Jun 19 2006 (IPS) – The asbestos-laden French ship Clemenceau continues to provoke controversy, after being at the heart of an international debate on how and where so-called end-of-life ships should be dismantled.
The Clemenceau, a former French military aircraft carrier, which contains some 100 tonnes of the cancer-provoking asbestos, was supposed to be broken down at a naval yard in Alang, in the western Indian state of Gujarat. From Jan. 1 to Feb. 15, the ship was towed from the French port of Toulon to the Indian Ocean, and was expected to be docked in Alang by late February.

But a legal battle between French environmental and health activists, who claimed that the disposal of the ship s asbestos could not be carried out in India without puttin…

Marcela Valente* – Tierramérica

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 4 2006 (IPS) – Argentine judicial authorities are investigating cases of uranium contamination around the Ezeiza Atomic Centre, in Buenos Aires province. A married couple who have been diagnosed with cancer have been accepted as plaintiffs in a related lawsuit.
The first complaint reached the judicial branch in 2000, when residents of the area sounded the alert about possible poisoning of the water supply with uranium, and blamed the nuclear facility for the potential health consequences for the nearby population.

All of the reports recognise that there is contamination, and all are valid. The judge will have to combine the results and reach a conclusion, biologist Raúl Montenegro, president of the independent Found…

Marwaan Macan-Markar

CHACHOENGSAO, Sep 6 2006 (IPS) – To be a duck in a modern poultry farm, that conforms to bio-safety measures against bird flu, is to be condemned to a brief, joyless life bereft of sunshine or a pond to take a dip in.
That is the fate of 80,000 ducks currently spending 42 weeks before being slaughtered for the table at the Big Duck Farm located in this province, east of Bangkok.

Visitors to this farm are sprayed with disinfectant and the workers must also shower and shampoo and wear protective clothing before going into the long, low-rise sheds covered with black fabric where the ducks are raised.

We have also begun to check the ducks every eight weeks for avian influenza, says Sompiss Jullabutradee, a consultant at the Big Duck Farm. Whe…

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Naoki Yoshida ผู้กำกับเกม Final Fantasy XIV ได้ออกมาชี้แจงข่าวลือที่ว่าทีมงานของเขากำลังพัฒนาเกมรีเมค Final Fantasy IX ผ่านรายการ Letter from the Producer บนช่อง YouTube ของ Final Fantasy XIV เมื่อวันที่ 14 มิถุนายนที่ผ่านมา

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Sikiratou Ahouansou

DAKAR, Sep 26 2006 (IPS) – You can find them at the rear of the large shed in the market at the train station, amidst dust, shouts of laughter and the thwack of sacks being thrown onto pushcarts. These are some of the kaolin sellers that frequent the Senegalese capital, Dakar.
A good many people may be unfamiliar with kaolin a type of fine, crumbly clay typically used to make ceramics such as porcelain. Still fewer may be aware that kaolin is not only used for manufacturing purposes, but is also eaten in Senegal and other parts of West Africa.

Trade in the substance is dominated by vendors from neighbouring Mali, where it is mined in several regions. A sack of kaolin, weighing in at a hefty 90 to 95 kilogrammes, sells for about 14 dollars. (Over 70…

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Nov 6 2006 (IPS) – Each story is more heart-rending than the last, and they all have a common theme: alcohol destroyed these women s lives, sometimes with the help of other drugs, and now they are trying to rebuild them.
Odilia says she drank because of everything, and because of nothing. She even abandoned her six-month-old son so that she could drink at her leisure. My daughter still resents my past, mourns Alicia, while María Consuelo can t forget the times she slept in the street.

They all admit to being alcoholics, and now they are grasping the happiness they feel at living sober for 24 hours a day. Yesterday is over, tomorrow hasn t arrived. Today is the most important day, Carmen says.

Erminda, a character in the Cuban soap opera…

Archna Devraj* – IPS/IFEJ

CHERTHALA, Kerala, Dec 4 2006 (IPS) – Lulled by social indices that compare with the developed world s and tourist brochures that gush over God s Own Country , the deaths of 125 people from an outbreak of the mosquito-borne disease, chikungunya, has come as a reality check for people in this southern state.
Lulled by social indices that compare with the developed world s and tourist brochures that gush over God s Own Country , the deaths of 125 people from an outbreak of the mosquito-borne disease, chikungunya, has come as a reality check for people in this southern state.

Authorities and experts, starting with federal health minister Anbumani Ramadoss, were quick to point out that the outbreak, which raged through September and October, was …

Sonny Inbaraj

KANCHANABURI, Thailand, Jan 21 2007 (IPS) – The upsurge in bird flu outbreaks in South-east Asia has raised a paradoxical question: does high community awareness of the disease, that at the start of the new year killed thousands of ducks and chickens in the region and five Indonesians, lead to behaviour change that could prevent the spread of the H5N1 virus globally?
Not necessarily, says new research into bird flu or avian influenza prevention in Cambodia, one of the virus s past hot spots.

A paper written by scientists from the Pasteur Institute in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and Cambodian and U.N. agencies published in the January edition of the Emerging Infectious Diseases edited by the U.S.-based Centres…