Bald eagles, wolves, snails, butterflies and many other species native to the US have long been at risk. Many have made it on to the country's endangered species list, but not under the administration of US President George W. Bush over the last two years.
Conservation groups claim that Bush appointees have been deliberately making it harder to designate animals and plants as endangered, and have launched a series of lawsuits. Administration officials admit that there are about 280 species waiting to be added to the list.
Former president George Bush designated 231 species as endangered or threatened in his single term. In former president Bill Clinton's eight years 521 species were designated as endangered. President Bush has designated 59 in seven years, and none in the last two since Dirk Kempthorne became secretary of the interior.
Conservation group Sierra says Kempthorne, a former senator and head of a housing development group, is biased in favor of commercial interests.
The lack of urgency in the US comes against a background of concern worldwide. That fear was summed up last year by the Red List of the World Conservation Union, an environmental network. Its list defined 16,306 species as vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered.
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
RSS