“What will our future sound like?” That's the question hundreds of artists like Dilo have answered in a new musical project that celebrates nature.
After scoring some big victories in the US in 2014, the movement to get institutions to cut their ties to fossil fuel companies is broadening its focus in the UK to include big name museums and even toy companies.
Burkina Faso is in turmoil after protesters decided they'd had enough of their long-serving leader finding new ways to stay in power. But it seems their protests have worked, and forced him from power.
A Canadian company has struck a deal with Papua New Guinea to mine gold and other metals from deep beneath the sea. The project raises great concerns about the impact on life in the deep ocean.
The British government is set to introduce a bill that critics say would allow gas fracking under people's homes, without permission. Opponents from Greenpeace responded by setting up a bogus fracking operation outside the country home of Prime Minister David Cameron.
The Russian Parliament has passed an amnesty law that covers two very high-profile Russian cases. It calls for the release of the two jailed members of the protest punk band Pussy Riot. And the amnesty is expected to end the prosecution of the Arctic 30, the Greenpeace activists arrested as they protested Russian oil drilling in the Arctic.
Russia's President Vladimir Putin seems to have once again pulled off a PR "master stroke" by having a routine amnesty law expanded to free two groups at the center of global human rights protests, just before the Sochi Olympics. The world's youngest nation, South Sudan, is suffering from renewed ethic violence. And the illegal practice of shark finning —stripping sharks of their fins — proves hard to end in Costa Rica. All that and more, in today's Global Scan.
A Brazilian Greenpeace activist walked out of a courtroom in Saint Petersburg, Russia on Wednesday, free until her trial on charges of hooliganism. She was holding a sign that said "Save the Arctic." Most of the 29 others picked up in the Arctic while protesting offshore drilling there, have been granted bail and should be released this weekend.
On September 19th, Russian journalist Andrey Allakhverdov was aboard the Greenpeace ship Arctic Sunrise protesting at an Arctic oil rig, when Russian authorities arrested the entire crew. His letters from a prison in Murmansk tell a story of uncertainty, yet reasonable treatment.
Pavel Litvinov is no stranger to Russian prisons. He's a former Soviet dissident and a retired math teacher now living in the US. But as he wrote recently in an op-ed letter to the Washington Post, "Disastor has struck my home."
Suspicions abound in this edition of the daily Global Scan. Newly-leaked documents show the NSA has spied on leaders and citizens of America's friends and foes alike. The Roma fall under suspicion of child trafficking, while they fear losing their legitimate children. And an Australian leader is suspicious over claims that fires raging in his country are an early sign of climate change. Those are some of the stories we're tracking in today's Global Scan.