Tag Archives: pollution

Frankfurt am Main, Germany | AFP | Some 372,000 German owners of Volkswagen cars fitted with motors that cheated emissions tests have joined a collective legal action against the auto giant, official figures showed Thursday. Hundreds of thousands of people signed up to the collective action between late November and …

Madrid, Spain | AFP | Madrid on Wednesday temporarily banned the oldest, most polluting vehicles from driving its streets, two weeks after new driving restrictions were introduced to fight air pollution in the centre of the Spanish capital. The latest bid to reduce emissions comes as the city battles acutely …

Paris, France | AFP | The global population of fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals has declined 60 percent since 1970, according to the WWF’s “Living Planet” report released Tuesday. WWF director general Marco Lambertini tells AFP what went wrong and what’s at stake. – How bad is it? – …

Johannesburg, South Africa | AFP | South Africa’s eastern Mpumalanga province has the most polluting cluster of coal-fired power stations in the world producing record levels of nitrogen dioxide, a report by environmental campaign group Greenpeace said Monday. Mpumalanga, which borders Mozambique, is the hub of South Africa’s coal industry …

Paris, France | AFP | Bits of plastic have been detected in the faeces of people in Europe, Russia and Japan, according to research claiming to show for the first time the widespread presence of plastics in the human food chain. All eight volunteers in a small pilot study were …

Berlin, Germany | AFP | Berlin could shut out diesel drivers from major arterial roads next year, after a court Tuesday ordered the German capital to follow in the footsteps of Hamburg, Frankfurt and Stuttgart with exclusion zones. A renewed focus on air quality in the wake of Volkswagen’s 2015 …

Lagos, Nigeria | AFP | Nigeria was on Friday urged to re-open investigations into 89 oil spills in its southern delta region, after claims that Shell and ENI misreported the causes. Rights group Amnesty International said there were “reasonable doubts” about how the spills happened, suggesting corrosion rather than oil …

Tehran, Iran | AFP | Primary schools will be closed on Monday in Tehran as thick fog caused by pollution smothers the Iranian capital and most of the surrounding province, local authorities said. They also announced Sunday they would impose traffic restrictions in Tehran, home to 8.5 million inhabitants, allowing cars …

Oslo, Norway | AFP |  Electric or hybrid vehicles accounted for more than half of all new cars sold in Norway last year, official data showed on Wednesday, confirming the country’s pioneering role in carbon-free transport. Zero-emission, mainly all-electric as well as a few hydrogen-powered cars, accounted for 20.9 percent …

Nairobi, Kenya | AFP | Irene Akinyi Odinga has lead poisoning. With no money for treatment, the young mother of two stares death in the face. “I feel very bad,” the 25-year-old tells AFP on the sidelines of a UN pollution conference, shivering in a thick jacket in the warm Kenyan …