Invading alien species are responsible for a worldwide biodiversity crisis, driving large numbers of native plant and animal species to extinction on every continent. The damage is documented by IUCN - the World Conservation Union in a new survey of the 100 worst alien species issued in time for Biodiversity Day, May 22.

Environmentally damaging subsidies and tax exemptions to agriculture and energy are on their way out in the world's most developed nations. Environmental ministers or their representatives from the 30 industrialized countries that are members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development adopted an environmental strategy for the next decade at the annual OECD ministerial meeting in Paris Wednesday that pledged to eliminate or phase out these financial perks by 2010.

This paper is based on an ethnographic study of a company with widely distributed holdings within a volatile industry. The need for this distributed organization to respond as a unified whole to a rapidly changing environment required it to confront the uncertainties and contingencies introduced by invisibility, distance, and fragmentation of information. In this paper, we focus on issues generated by the integration of remote meeting technologies into local work practices. We compare face-to-face meetings with virtual meetings to understand how these new technologies impact the work of a distributed organization, and to uncover the new order that emerges around the use of these technologies.

A new study by the World Resources Institute reveals that water policies in most of the world are failing to protect the world's freshwater systems, resulting in growing water scarcity and alarming declines in the numbers of aquatic plants and animals. The study recommends that water prices should reflect the cost of supplying water and protecting watersheds.

THE proposed plan by Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) to build a facility to recycle waste generated in one of its areas of operation ran into a hitch yesterday as the communities in which it was to be sited rejected it.

Tension is growing in the Niger Delta, southeastern Nigeria, following a rash of oil spills which, in combination with communal and industrial disputes, have disrupted crude oil production by three transnationals, industry sources said on Friday. US multinational ExxonMobil Corp's Nigerian subsidiary shut its Qua Iboe oil export terminal on Thursday after it was besieged by protesters from the local Eket community who accused the company of neglect.

Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC) of Nigeria finally managed to cap the oil gushing from one of its wells in Ogoniland at the weekend, but the well's blow-out and the resulting flood of oil and gas into the immediate environment has once more intensified tensions between the giant oil company and the half-million strong Ogoni Kingdom.

European scientists meeting this week in Stockholm have been urged to work in close partnership with policy makers to chart a course toward sustainable development. European Union Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom and Swedish Environment Minister Kjell Larsson both argued that the effectiveness of research would be greatly enhanced if more effort was made to link it with green policies.

Three Texas oil control specialists have arrived safely back in the United States after they capped a huge, potentially explosive oil spill in southeast Nigeria. Contrary to media reports, the company for which they work says the three men were not held hostage by Nigerians upset over the spill at an abandoned Royal Dutch/Shell well in the Niger Delta.

Two of the world's leading environmental and agriculture groups reported today that almost half of the world's 17,000 major nature reserves, which are intended to protect wildlife from extinction, are being heavily used for agriculture. They also report that extreme malnutrition and hunger are pervasive among people living in at least 16 of the world's 25 key biodiversity hotspots, where wildlife is most at risk.

A 44-gallon drum of fuel and a funnel is the roadside symbol of the government's deregulation of Zimbabwe's fuel supply industry. The move has not resulted in chains of new service stations criss-crossing the country, but rather illicit boot sales of fuel that has raised serious safety and environmental concerns, industry sources told IRIN.

Huge stocks of toxic pesticide waste are a serious problem in almost all developing countries and in many countries in transition. More than 500 000 tonnes of old and unused pesticides that have been banned or have expired threaten the environment and the health of millions of people in these countries, FAO warns in a new report. The figures are dramatically higher than previous estimates of around 100 000 tonnes.

THE Land Bank's commitment to weed out corruption in its ranks was illustrated last Friday when the Scorpions anticorruption unit arrested the bank's former Tzaneen branch director, Sydney Khando, for alleged fraud involving R24m.

Italian authorities are investigating the multi-million dollar trafficking of radioactive waste to north and east Africa in an exercise which could lift the lid on a colossal 'North-South' business linked to money laundering and gunrunning, say lawmakers and activists.

The UK Tory trade and industry spokesman, Alan Duncan, was under pressure last night to explain his alleged involvement in an elaborate operation to bust UN oil sanctions against apartheid South Africa. The claims come from two fellow oil traders who claim to have personal knowledge of his career before he entered parliament.

The latest environmental emergency in southern Nigeria's volatile Niger Delta has been brought under control by US specialists, Royal/Dutch Shell's Nigerian subsidiary said on Monday. The three specialists from the Houston-based Boots & Coots International Well Control company were flown in on Friday to the affected area, Yorla Fields, to deal with a blow-out at a well which shot jets of crude oil and gas 30 metres into the air for the better part of last week.

The Nigerian human and environmental right group MOSOP has today called on oil multinational Royal Dutch Shell to immediately cease making misleading
statements regarding the major oil and gas blowout which has occurred in the Yorla oilfield in eastern Ogoni in the oil rich Niger delta. "In the past two days Shell has alternated between blaming the local people for this disaster by accusing them of vandalisation and in a contradictory position declaring that all the abandoned oil wells in Ogoni are a 'time bomb' due to lack of maintenance," said Ledum Mitee President of MOSOP speaking from London today.

Through the thick white fog stinging with the smell of raw gas, boys clutching handkerchiefs to their noses patrol making sure no one starts an engine, takes a flash photograph or does anything that could light a spark and ignite the whole area. The continuous hiss of rushing gas, so loud that people within an arm's reach have to shout to each other, can be heard 500 metres (yards) away from the site of the oil wellhead that burst on Sunday on an Ogoniland farm in Nigeria's southeast.

The Tanzania government has formed a four-man task force to investigate a massive corruption scandal involving government officials suspected to have pocketed millions of Tanzania shillings in compensation to some 900 people relocated from a gold mining area in Geita, Mwanza, on the shores of Lake Victoria.

An historic meeting of Ministers of Water Affairs from the Nile Basin countries has ended with agreement to cooperate on seven basin-wide projects. The meeting marks an important milestone of the Nile Basin Initiative
(NBI), an unprecedented partnership which has united nine African countries in pursuit of sustainable development and management of the River Nile water resources.