AFGHANISTAN
Warlords are cutting down Afghanistan’s rare pistachio and cedar forests. This stripping of environmental assets threatens to undermine hopes of economic recovery, the UN Environment Programme warns. “The speed of deforestation is at the moment very rapid,” says UNEP’s Pekka Haavisto.
EUROPEAN UNION
Radiation from atmospheric nuclear weapon tests since the 1940s will kill 65 million people worldwide, claim EU scientists, who have modelled the effects of the fallout. The Brussels-based European Committee on Radiation Risk, headed by Chris Busby, an adviser to the British defence ministry, found there was a particularly large surge in breast cancer cases among…
