In 2019, the illegal wildlife trade reached staggering levels. Pangolin scales and ivory were being trafficked in massive quantities from Africa to Asia, exposing a network of crime syndicates operating at an industrial scale. The sheer volume of these shipments marked a disturbing milestone, one that revealed the global reach …
The Chinese government has kicked off its development campaign in the Shaanxi province. The province is a major centre for trade in northwestern China. The plan, introduced by prime minister Zhu Rongji recently, aims at creating a greener region within the next 10 years. It also promises to revitalise the …
T ourist attractions in China will now be classified according to hygiene, communications, safety and protection of the environment. Declaring this, a senior tourism official of the China National Tourism Administration ( cnta ) said the project will begin from October and would be classified into four grades. Zhong Haisheng, …
Protests against large dams have gained momentum in recent years the world over. Projects in India and China displace large numbers of people because of the high population densities of those countries. While China has displaced the largest number of people, in India, too, relief and rehabilitation programmes offered by …
Around 725 people have died due to floods in China due to the overflowing Yangtze river. But media reports say that the figure could have been worse had it not been for timely measures by the government. In last year's floods more than 4,100 lives were lost. The ministry of …
The UK has banned the import and sale of a Chinese herbal medicine after it was linked to kidney failure. Aristolochia, used to treat fluid retention and rheumatic symptoms, was banned until October 27 on the advice of the Independent Committee on Safety of Medicines. The government said Aristolochia had …
Around 770,000 people in Ziyang in China's Hunan province were evacuated by rescuers after the Minzu Yuan dyke collapsed following heavy rains that lashed the area on July 23. "However, no casualties have been reported so far,' an official with the Ziyang district's civil affairs bureau said. Floods are a …
As part of the 25th anniversary celebrations of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Thailand and China, the two countries have signed an agreement on joint research in the use of herbal medicine to treat cancer and aids . The cooperation will be carried out between the Kunming Institute of …
chinese scientists have achieved a major breakthrough by cloning the endangered giant panda by growing an embryo that contains genes from a dead panda. The proposal to clone pandas reflects the frustrations of zoologists who, after decades of research, remain puzzled by many aspects of panda reproductive physiology. According to …
kazakh foreign minister Kasymzhomart Tokayev played down concerns that China's plans to siphon-off water from the Irtysh river would cause economic and ecological damage in the ex-Soviet republic. China revealed that it planned to build a canal in the far northwest of the country, diverting water from the Irtysh, a …
Li-Yuxing has been looking at the skies in despair. He is one of the many farmers of northeast China's Shandong and Henan provinces that produce about half of China's winter wheat. At the time when the Chinese government is gearing up to face annual summer floods, the problem actually is …
China's investment in environmental protection totalled US $9.6 billion in 1998, in the process exceeding one per cent of its GNP for the first time in the nation's history. Xie Zhenhua, administrator of the State Bureau of Environmental Protection said that China invested around US $2.93 billion in pollution control …
EXPERTS from China, Bhutan, India, Pakistan and Nepal reviewed their respective government's policies on water harvesting in the Himalayan region at a workshop at International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (icimod), Kathmandu, on the March 14-16, 1999. Attended by academicians, researchers, government officials, grassroots functionaries and beneficiaries of water harvesting …
According to the Chinese scientists, ice cores from the Himalaya, the world's highest mountain range, indicate a significant increase in pollution levels over the past few decades. Wang Ninglian, an associate researcher with the Lanzhou Institute of Glaciology and Cryopedolgy under the Chinese Academy of Sciences ( cas ) said …
Urban dwellers spend 80 per cent to 90 per cent of their time indoors in an environment that is dangerous to their health, according to Cui Jiusi, a Beijing environmental scientist. Cui, director of the Air Quality Monitoring Laboratory under the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine, recently cited health dangers …
with the successful testing of Agni ii on April 11, India has developed a combat-ready missile designed to deliver nuclear warheads anywhere in Pakistan and deep inside China. However, some environmentalist say that the testing was in violation of the defence ministry's commitment to the Orissa High Court. Two days …
in his book, Biohazard , a defector from the Soviet germ-warfare programme, Kanatjan Alibekov, has written that Soviet researchers tried to turn HIV, the AIDS causing virus, into a weapon. Even as the last Soviet president, Mikhail Gorbachev, pursued peace openings with the West, he ordered a vast expansion of …
A Chinese meteorologist has mooted the idea of building an Ozone Observation Station in Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region, to study the thinning of the ozone layer above the Qinghai-Tibet plateau. Zhou Xiuji, an academician with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led the research group that studied …
A rare form of rotavirus, so far confined only to China where it appeared 16 years ago, has been detected in India. For the first time, the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED), Calcutta, detected five cases of Group B Rotavirus between September to December 1998. This virus …
Top environment officials from China and the us will meet in Beijing to exchange ideas and discuss specific cooperation schemes. Carol Browner, administrator of the us Environmental Protection Agency ( epa ) visited Beijing recently. Several letters of intent on Sino- us environment cooperation are expected to be signed. The …
The city of Shangqiu in central China's Henan Province is still polluting the Huaihe River. The river is a famous waterway in central and east China, and it runs through several provinces. The Beijing-based newspaper Workers ' Daily reported that inside Shangqiu, several branches of the Huaihe were full of …
