The Fragile States Index, produced by The Fund for Peace, is a critical tool in highlighting not only the normal pressures that all states experience, but also in identifying when those pressures are pushing a state towards the brink of failure. By highlighting pertinent issues in weak and failing states, …
The United Nations (un) has asked for immediate steps for cleaning the River Danube of wastes generated by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (nato) bombing. Water from the Danube is used for drinking purposes in the downstream nations Romania and Bulgaria. According to Pekka Haavisto, head of the United Nation …
yugoslavia faces grave ecological damage after more than three months of warfare as an aftermath of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (nato) bombing , an international humanitarian group was quoted as saying. The Beta news agency said a team of Russian, Austrian, Greek and Swiss experts from the Focus Organisation …
chemists at Sheffield University in the uk have discovered a new method to determine the extent of wartime air pollution by studying rings formed around tree trunks. Cameron McLeod, Alan Cox and their colleagues have looked into Sheffield's war-ravaged past by examining felled trees. Sheffield's air choked with metals during …
according to a report compiled by the United Nations ( un), toxic waste emitted from industrial facilities hit by North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (nato ) air strikes on Yugoslavia have seriously contaminated the water and soil in surrounding areas and may threaten the health of local people. The report is …
did early spring in Kargil help the Pakistan-backed intruders occupy strategic heights on the Indian side of the Line of Control ( loc )? Some experts believe so. The first signs of Pakistani intrusion became known on May 14 at Kaksar. Lt Gen Satish Nambiar, director of the United Services …
greenpeace said nato 's (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) bombing of Yugoslavia is not only causing widespread pollution in the Balkans but risking a major nuclear accident. "We are concerned about the missiles that keep striking Bulgaria, with some even reaching Sofia,' Stelios Psomas, director of Greenpeace Greece, said in a …
Every war has an environmental cost. Armies have been known to degrade the environment, burn fields and forests and poison water sources. Advances in weapon technology have left their mark in innumerable places, the most noticeable being Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Recently, NATO bombing of a petrochemical plant in Belgrade has …
Thousands of people living near the Pancevo industrial zone outside Belgrade have been evacuating their homes for fear that (NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation ) strikes may cause an environmental disaster, Serb media said ( Down To Earth , Vol 7 No 24). The state news agency Tanjug said that …
serb officials have said that strikes by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's ( nato) forces on chemical plants and refineries around Belgrade could cause an ecological disaster. Civil defence authorities said they have asked the residents of two districts near the Pancevo industrial complex, northeast of Belgrade, to evacuate. Serb …
SIXTEEN British ex-servicepersons, who served in the 1991 Gulf War, have tested positive for depleted uranium contamination, according to the National Gulf Veterans' and Families' ssociation (ngvfa). Depleted uranium poisoning is the cause of a variety of illnesses veterans are suffering from since the war against Iraq, said a spokesperson …
IT is pay back time now. During the Vietnam War, the US sprayed Agent Orange - a chemical mix of herbicides rich in dioxins, that are hormone disrupters - in Vietnam during the 10-year war. Vietnamese government officials say that Agent Orange has deformed around 50,000 children and has claimed …
even though it is too early to establish the damages caused by the Operation Desert Fox in 1991 by us and uk forces in Iraq, uk -based newspaper Guardian has thrown some light on it. This was for the first time that heavy metal-depleted uranium was used in a battlefield. …
AFTER the World War II, thousands were displaced in Slovakia when the government undertook dam construction projects. However, those displaced were neither rehabilitated nor given compensation. The affected villages lost their independent municipal status and were deprived of state subsidies, leading to the collapse of their social and economic infrastructure. …
TESTS carried out by France and Switzerland have not found any presence of vx, a poison gas on Iraqi warheads. These findings are contrary to those of the US, which had shown presence of the deadly nerve substance on the warheads. If the findings are confirmed, then Iraq's argument that …
IT is an example of how innocent civilians pay the price for strategies of politicians and war-mongers. Unexploded landmines - more than 100 million of them - left behind by wars and civil strives claim thousands of lives and injure hundreds every year. In the recent years, these have emerged …
The US military pumps over 700 million rounds of ammunition, or some 2,000 tonnes of lead into the environment every year during training. The metal pollutes the water supply and poisons the wildlife. So the Texas Research Institute in Austin, Texas, has developed a lead substitute whose density is comparable …
a conventional fireworks-based device fashioned into a blowtorch may soon end up saving thousands of lives apart form the huge amounts of money spent in destroying landmines each year. This simple, safe and relatively-inexpensive device, designed by British defence researchers, simply burns up a landmine to ashes without actually having …
mistaken identity is the last thing a soldier needs when there is a war on. During the Gulf War in 1991, nearly 20 per cent of Allied casualties were caused, not by Saddam's Scud missiles, but by soldiers or pilots on the same side firing at each other. Deaths from …
US Navy will modify its Quickstrike naval mines so that they can disable enemy mines and clear a safe passage for its ships. The mine is usually dropped from a fighter aircraft. As it falls, air pressure and impact with the water arm the warhead, causing it to detonate when …
