Snippets
• Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's (CNSC's) president recently said it was discovered last year that the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited secretly dumped thousands of litres of hazardous radioactive waste into the ground at the Chalk River Laboratories for a decade. CNSC officials said they had lost track of the problem.
• Marine animals and nearly 3,000 people's jobs are threatened in Tsunza, Kenya after over five million litres oil spilled into the ocean at the Mombasa port recently.
• Bird flu has claimed its 51st victim in Asia since the end of the 2003 outbreak; an eight-year-old girl in Cambodia, which has suffered three deaths. Vietnam has suffered 36 deaths while Thailand 12.
• On April 12, 2005, the European Parliament endorsed rules to make household appliances more energy efficient under a voluntary agreement with the industry. The rules are expected to save 180 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions by 2010.
• Over 6,000 animals have been killed by a mystery disease in Afghanistan's agriculture-dependent northeastern province, Badakhshan. Foreign aid agencies have conducted tests on the animals to identify the cause of the disease.
• New Zealand is going to screen its entire population for bowel cancer. The country has the world's highest rate of the disease, linked to eating too much fatty food and milk products and little fruits and vegetables.