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Tanks roll into Tahrir Square outside the Egyptian Museum in Cairo on Sunday, January 30, 2011. During the chaotic protests two nights before, would-be looters broke into the 108-year-old building through a skylight, according to official reports. The vandals damaged mummies and artifacts but were arrested before they could make off with anything. (From: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/01/pictures/110131-egyptian-museum-looted-artifacts-damaged-egypt-protests-mubarak/) [...]

From: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net South Africa was warned on Wednesday to brace for months of heavy rains and storms as the government admitted it could have been better prepared for floods that have killed more than 120 people. Weeks of above normal rains, caused by the "La Niña" weather phenomenon – also blamed for deadly floods in [...]

TERESOPOLIS, Brazil — Walls of earth and water swept away homes in the mountains north of Rio de Janeiro, wiping out families and leaving survivors scrambling Thursday to reach still-trapped neighbors. At least 355 people died in three Rio state towns after slides hit at about 3 a.m. Wednesday, and at least 50 people were [...]

Brisbane Residents Despair as Flood Leaves ‘War Zone’ Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Nick Turnbull’s two-story Brisbane home sits three-quarters submerged in floodwaters swamping riverside suburbs across Australia’s third-biggest city. “Stuff’s everywhere -- kids’ toys floating on brown, dirty brackish water,” the 38-year-old police detective said from the suburb of Graceville, one of more than 60 [...]

When an estimated 184 million gallons (697 million liters) of industrial waste spilled into Hungary’s Marcal River in early October, arsenic and mercury threatened to taint water supplies and degrade rivers, both at the site and for hundreds of miles downstream. In some ways, Hungary’s toxic mud disaster was a wake-up call, shining a spotlight on potential water pollution hotspots around the globe. (Read more about the Hungary spill.)

Professor Ruth Fincher, Vice-President of the IGU has been elected to the Executive Committee of the International Social Science Councillor at its General Assembly in Nagoya, Japan, 9th - 12th December 2010.  The Assembly elected several new EC members at which Dr Olive Shisana took over from Professor Gudmund Hernes as President of the organisation.  Dr Heide [...]

See: To rapturous applause, they signed up to the first truly global climate change agreement under the umbrella of the United Nations, following all-night talks in Cancun. The negotiations, at a luxury resort in Mexico, repeatedly came close to collapsing as different countries tabled objections. Eventually only Bolivia refused to accept the deal, on the [...]

Dear Colleagues, I write this from Helsinki. The stop in Finland en route to Beijing for a meeting of the IGU Executive Committee was made in order to present the IGU’s Planet and Humanity Medal to former President of Finland Martti Ahtisaari. President Ahtisaari, you will recall, received the Nobel Prize for Peace [...]

ScienceDaily (Nov. 25, 2010) — The loss of biodiversity will continue in the 21st Century. Global-scale extinctions will increase strongly, the average species abundance1 will decline and their distribution will be disturbed. Scientists thought until recently that the complexity of biodiversity made it unfeasible to predict future trends. Now, however, like the climatologists, life science [...]

Professor Yukio Himiyama was recently elected as Executive Committee member to replace Professor Mike Meadows who assumed the position of Secretary-General and Treasurer in July. Professor Yukio Himiyama was born in Japan in 1949. He received his B.S. in Physics at Tohoku University in Japan (1973), M.S. in Physics at UCLA (1975) and at [...]