Environment

SYDNEY, Jan. 16 (Xinhua) -- Around 2,500 lightning strikes have ignited dozens of fires across Australia's southern island State of Tasmania on Tuesday, adding to a number of dangerous blazes which crews are already battling.

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — An Australian state government on Tuesday announced plans to mechanically pump oxygen into lakes and rivers after hundreds of thousands of fish have died in heatwave conditions.

Up to a million dead fish were found floating last week in the Darling River in western New South Wales state and the state government announced that 1,800 more rotting fish had since been found in Lake Hume in the state’s south.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 14 (Xinhua) -- American and Dutch scientists found that yearly ice mass loss in Antarctica increased sixfold in the past 40 years.

The study published on Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed the accelerated melting elevated global sea levels more than 1.2 centimeters during 1979 to 2017.

It is the longest-ever assessment of Antarctic ice mass, covering 176 basins and surrounding islands.

The researchers compared snowfall accumulation in interior basins with ice discharge by glaciers at their grounding lines.

Jan 13, 2018; AP: A winter storm that contributed to at least five deaths in the Midwest pummeled the mid-Atlantic region for a second day Sunday, bringing with it an icy mix that knocked out power, cancelled flights and contributed to hundreds of car accidents.

Virginia State Police said the driver of a military surplus vehicle was killed late Saturday after he lost control on Interstate 81 because of slick road conditions.

BEIJING, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- Beijing's new international airport, which is set to be operational this year, will be an airport in the forest, district officials said Sunday.

The Beijing Daxing International Airport is located 46 km south of downtown Beijing. It sits at the junction of Beijing's Daxing District and Langfang, a city in neighboring Hebei Province.

Forest will cover 17,866 hectares of surrounding areas of the new airport, officials said at the on-going Daxing district people's congress.

KANPUR: As we know the National Green Tribunal is determined to bring improvement in the environmental condition, it has fielded as many as 23 judges to study the situation in the whole of the country. On Friday the solid waste management monitoring committee visited the city areas and found the grim situation. The panel president Justice (retd) D P Singh appeared deeply annoyed with the state of affairs and did not fail to indict the officers concerned in this regard. They had no genuine answer.

11 Jan 2019; AFP: The world's oceans are heating up at an accelerating pace as global warming threatens a diverse range of marine life and a major food supply for the planet, researchers said Thursday.

The findings in the US journal Science, led by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, debunk previous reports that suggested a so-called pause in global warming in recent years.

KAMPALA, Jan. 10 (Xinhua) -- Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni on Wednesday unveiled the largest solar power plant in East and Central Africa which has the capacity to generate a total of 20 megawatts of electricity.

The Kabulasoke Pilot Solar Park is located in the central Ugandan district of Gomba.

According to the State House Uganda, the president's official residence, the solar park project is already connected to the national grid and will serve more than 5 million people in rural areas.

KANPUR: A new revelation has startled the State Pollution Control Board (SPCB). It was nothing but the direct flow of domestic waste into the river through the pumping station.

On his inspection of Sheetla Bazaar pumping station here on Wednesday, the State Pollution Control Board’s officer Kuldeep Mishra found that as many as twenty MLD domestic wastes were flowing into the Ganges.

SHENZHEN, China (AP) — One of China’s major cities has reached an environmental milestone: an almost entirely electric-powered taxi fleet.

The high-tech hub of Shenzhen in southern China announced at the start of this year that 99 percent of the 21,689 taxis operating in the city were electric. Last year, it still had 7,500 gasoline-powered taxis on the roads. A few can still be found, but electric ones far outnumber them.