Snippets
• Environmentalists in Alabama, US, fear people eating locally caught fish might take in more mercury (fishes absorb mercury from the water) than commercially bought fish which are screened.
• The Russian legislature recently demanded the removal of the two isotope thermoelectric generators from the Sea of Okhotsk. They had fallen into the sea in 1987 and 1997 due to a malfunction in the helicopters carrying them.
• The Pacific island state of Tonga would formally become the 150th member of the World Trade Organisation on December 13, 2005.
• At least 146 miners died in China after coal dust caught fire, setting off a massive explosion on November 27, 2005, at the Dongfeng coal mine. A total of 72 miners have been rescued.
• Mount Karthala's (one of the world's largest active volcanoes) eruption has contaminated water supplies of over 100,000 people in the Comoros Islands in the Indian Ocean.
• Statoil, a Norwegian oil and gas exploration company, is enquiring into a recent oil discharge near Transocean Arctic rig, which happened during a facilities shutdown for modification of the ship.