downtoearth-subscribe

Age (Australia)

  • Garbage in bay brings penalties of $52,000

    AN OFF-DUTY policeman trawling for fish, not felons, helped net a Chinese shipping company whose vessel dumped garbage in Port Phillip Bay. In the first prosecution by the Environment Protection Authority for garbage pollution in Victorian waters, the company and the ship's former master were yesterday penalised a total of $52,000. Hong Kong-based Tian Ren Company Ltd and captain Zhu Hanjie, 43, since sacked over the incident, were charged after now Inspector Glenn Davies saw a large plastic bag fall from the container ship Sky Lucky on January 19 last year.

  • Finally, US aid touches down in Burma

    THE first US aid flight has landed in Burma, where some 1.5 million survivors of Cyclone Nargis are still waiting for help. A C-130 military transport plane flew into Rangoon yesterday from Thailand, carrying 12,700 kilograms of water, mosquito nets and blankets. The arrival of the plane follows a week of delays and negotiations and is a huge concession by the nation's military junta.

  • Europe urged to combat rising food prices

    UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling will call on European Union finance ministers to combat rising food prices by removing import levies and scrapping rules that keep food prices in the 27-nation bloc artificially high. Darling said the action is needed to curb headline inflation rates and to help the poorest households deal with a 7% increase in food prices that took place in the year through March, according to a letter he will send his EU counterparts tomorrow. Darling is due to meet with ministers in Brussels this week.

  • Supermarkets rip us off, farmers claim

    Victoria's peak farming body has accused the major supermarket chains of ripping off consumers and farmers by labelling the same products differently. Grocery chains often have up to three different private brands which are priced differently but contain the same product, the Victorian Farmers Federation (VFF) told an inquiry into grocery prices in Melbourne on Monday. "There's home brand, there's a medium one, then there's the top one," VFF Deputy President Meg Parkinson said. "They don't say Woolworths or Coles, they have got another name.

  • Beijing warned of second earthquake

    China has deployed troops to help victims of a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck the southwest today, with at least four children killed and 100 injured when two schools collapsed. The earthquake was so strong it was felt as far west as Thailand's capital Bangkok, some 3300km away, where office buildings swayed for several minutes. It also swayed buildings in the Taiwanese capital of Taipei, and was felt in Hong Kong. China had sent military troops to help with disaster relief work, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.

  • Brumby says higher solar subsidy burden for families

    HIGHER subsidies for Victorians installing solar panels on their homes would put a significant burden on low-income families, Premier John Brumby has warned. Backing a cabinet decision to pay households for feeding solar power into the electricity grid, announced in this week's budget, Mr Brumby said the new solar "tariff" was the highest in Australia. Yesterday, The Age revealed that debate over the solar payment had sparked heated clashes between senior cabinet members Energy Minister Peter Batchelor and Environment Minister Gavin Jennings.

  • Cyclone kills at least 350 in Burma

    More than 350 people have been killed in Burma by a powerful cyclone that knocked out power in the impoverished country's commercial capital and destroyed thousands of homes, state-run media said today. Military-run Myaddy television station said five regions have been declared disaster zones following yesterday's storm, which packed winds of up to 190 km/h. It said at least 351 people were killed by Tropical Cyclone Nargis, including 109 who lived on Haing Gyi island off the country's south-west coast. Many of the others died in the low-lying Irrawaddy delta.

  • Loans to poor nations aim to stem rising food cost

    THE Asian Development Bank has rushed to offer cheap loans to poor countries in the region to help them cope with the world food crisis. Warning of a backwards slide in economic development that could potentially plunge millions of people back into poverty, bank president Haruhiko Kuroda told a meeting in Madrid: "The cheap food era may be over." Rising fuel prices, economic subsidies, poor farming methods and climate change have contributed to a sharp increase in the cost of staple crops.

  • Asbestos case details go missing

    A FEDERAL Government department has admitted "potentially losing" detailed records of 1000 deadly asbestos-related disease cases required by researchers to better understand exposure risk. The details were collected in the 1980s for one of the world's most comprehensive surveys on mesothelioma, the fatal lung condition that killed asbestos crusader Bernie Banton last year.

  • Hybrid car to be built at Altona

    MELBOURNE is set to become the new production home of Toyota's hybrid Camry, with negotiations between Australia and Japan likely to conclude by mid-year. While the high-level talks are not yet wrapped up, sources have told The Age that senior Toyota executives in Tokyo are now strongly behind making the company's Altona plant the regional production base for the green Camry, provided the right government incentives are secured.

  1. 1
  2. ...
  3. 66
  4. 67
  5. 68
  6. 69
  7. 70
  8. ...
  9. 73