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| PORTRAIT OF A DOOMED SEA |
| Earth’s youngest desert is shown in this July MERIS satellite image of the Aral Sea in Central Asia. Once the fourth largest lake in the world, over the last 40 years the Aral Sea has evaporated back to half its original surface area and a quarter its initial volume, leaving a 40,000 square kilometre zone of dry white-coloured salt terrain now called the Aralkum Desert. |
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| SARS HAS PEAKED EVERYWHERE EXCEPT CHINA - WHO |
| Outbreaks of SARS have now peaked in Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong and Vietnam - but not in China, where the virus that causes it emerged and which will be key to halting its global spread. |
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| HALF THE WORLD FACING WATER SHORTAGES BY 2025 |
| Half the world's population will not have enough water by 2025 unless governments lift their development and investment priorities, a senior official of the World Water Council said. |
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| CAN THE SPHINX KEEP ITS FEET DRY? |
| The monuments of ancient Egypt may have stood for thousands of years in the desert sands, but now they face a new threat -- from rising groundwater.
Ayman Ahmed of the University of Sohag, Egypt, is working with Graham Fogg, professor of hydrology at the University of California, Davis, to study the problem and find ways to solve it. |
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| INSECT PEST OF POTATOES TECIA SOLANIVORA HITS CROPS IN LATIN AMERICA AND THE CANARY ISLANDS |
| International Symposium on Guatemalan moth in Quito, Ecuador
Lepidopteran Tecia solanivora, an insect pest, is currently devastating potato crops in Latin and Central America. Equador is particularly badly hit. |
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| ORANG-OUTANG POPULATION MIGHT BECOME EXTINCT IN THE 10 YEARS TO COME |
| Orang-outang, the only big man-like monkey living in Asia, might become extinct in the next 10 years if people don’t stop the deforestation and offending hunting in monkeys’ natural habitat. For the time being, numerous chronic illnesses of monkeys are registered throughout an area inhabited by orang-outangs. |
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| IT IS FOOLISH TO DIE OF THIRST IN A DESERT IF IT`S FULL OF WATER |
| Any arid desert is actually full of water. And it is not a joke. The soil absorbs the atmosphere steam and even in ordinary and
apparently dry sand there is water – several tenths of a per cent by weight. |
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Extreme situations
