News Snippets
• After requesting for more time, Turkmenistan signed the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea on November 8, 2003. The treaty was formally signed by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan and Russia on November 5, 2003 at Tehran. The United Nations Environment Programme-sponsored convention is the first legally-binding treaty on any subject signed by the five Caspian Sea states. It seeks to halt mounting damage to the world's largest freshwater lake from industrial pollution, sewage inflows and leaks from oil extraction and refining.
• Drought has affected one million people in Vladivostok, Russia's far eastern region. Announcing this on Tuesday, November 11, 2003, Vladivostok mayor Yury Kopylov said the region was on the brink of an acute drinking water shortage, as "there only remains enough water in the cisterns until next February.' In the same week, un special humanitarian envoy Martti Ahtisaari