Environmental News Archive
Peru has declared a state of emergency in jungle areas where indigenous groups are blocking oil and gas installations in protest at a new land sale law.
The measure allows the authorities to send in troops and bans public gatherings for 30 days.
Some 65 Amazon tribes say the law will make it easier for big energy companies to buy up their land, parts of which are known to be rich in oil and gas.
They are angry at a law which they say makes it easier for investors to buy their land because it lowers the bar for consent from two-thirds of a community assembly to a simple majority.
The legislation is one of a number of laws being passed as part of Peru's free trade agreement with the US.
Paul Hoffman, high-ranking Interior official, resigns - Hoffman, who got his post thanks to Vice President Dick Cheney, regularly helped the veep undercut environmental regulations, according to a Washington Post investigation published last year. From keeping the Yellowstone cutthroat trout off the Endangered Species List to helping lift the Clinton-era ban on snowmobiling in Yellowstone National Park, Hoffman, former director of the Cody, Wyo., Chamber of Commerce, made sure that commerce in his and Cheney's home state wasn't unduly burdened. Hoffman also overrode the decision of the Grand Canyon's park superintendent to remove biblical plaques from the park, and forced its bookstores to stock a creationist text claiming the canyon was created in six days a few thousand years ago. More recently, he tried to rewrite national park management rules to give snowmobiles and off-road vehicles free rein and allow commercial activities, like mining and rock concerts. Perhaps Interior will bleed a bit more green now.
There are now more than 400 known dead zones in coastal waters worldwide, compared to 305 in the 1990s, according to study author Robert Diaz of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. 
Officials also have told the governments of Malaysia and Singapore that the sub made port calls to those countries while leaking the radioactive water, Navy officials said. The Houston also made stops in Guam and Hawaii.
Water with trace amounts of radioactivity may have leaked for months from a U.S. Navy nuclear-powered submarine as it traveled around the Pacific to ports in Guam, Japan and Hawaii, Navy officials told CNN on Friday.
