Nitrogen dioxide pollution around the world. Greenpeace
Greenpeace has revealed the world's largest nitrogen dioxide (NO2) air pollution hotspots across six continents, and identified Mpumalanga, South Africa as the biggest NO2 hotspot, even outranking areas in China, India and the U.S.
The lush, green province is home to the southern half of Kruger National Park and the iconic Blyde River Canyon. At the same time, it's home to a dozen coal fired power plants owned and operated by the power utility Eskom.
"To achieve this, we encourage animal welfare organisations, community groups, youth and children's clubs, businesses and individuals to organize events in celebration of World Animal Day. Involvement is growing at an astonishing rate and it's now widely accepted and celebrated in a variety of different ways in many countries, with no regard to nationality, religion, faith or political ideology," the event's website says.
Tess Thompson Talley of Kentucky has sparked public outcry after photos of her proudly posing with a black giraffe she killed in South Africa last year went viral.
The big game hunter posted images of the June 2017 hunt onto her social media page. Then last month, the South Africa-based news outlet Africland tweeted out the images with a missive describing Talley as a "White American savage" for shooting down the "very rare" animal.
“Day Zero," the day drought-stricken Cape Town, South Africa is projected to run out of municipal water, has been moved to mid-May 2018 following a decline in agricultural usage, according to a statement from Alderman Ian Neilson, the city's executive deputy mayor. Day Zero was previously projected to fall on April 16.
Capetonians, however, were urged to continue reducing consumption as "there has not been any significant decline in urban usage," Neilson said. The city's four million residents must continue to use no more than 50 liters of water per person per day.
After three years of unprecedented drought, the South African metropolis of Cape Town is at risk of becoming the first major city in the world to run out of water.
Dam levels fell to 26 percent capacity on Wednesday, compared to 26.3 percent on Monday and 26.6 percent last week. Once the dams reach 13.5 percent, the municipal water supply shuts off for all but essential services, such as hospitals and key commercial areas.
Cape Town: Three months to Day Zero? SkyPixels / Wikimedia Commons
By Alex Kirby
Water scarcity is now a real threat in two developing countries at the forefront of efforts to reduce climate change, India and South Africa.
This is not the tragically familiar story of extreme weather, stunted crops and foreshortened lives. It is a different sort of threat: to urban life, to industrial development and to attempts to end poverty.
Molteno Dam Reservoir in Cape Town. Wikimedia Commons
Cape Town is on track to become the first major city in the world to run out of water.
The world-renowned tourist destination—and the second-most populous urban area in South Africa after Johannesburg—could approach "Day Zero," when most taps run dry, by April 21, Mayor Patricia de Lille said Tuesday.
The world's last remaining tigers are living under severe threat of extinction, having lost 93 percent of their historical range and suffered a population crash of 95 percent during the past century.
The major threat to their continued existence on Earth is poaching to meet the high demand in Asia for their parts and derivatives.
Greenpeace activists in Berlin projected an image of Donald Trump on the U.S. Embassy. Michael Sohn / DPA
The overwhelming global response to President Donald Trump's decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate agreement was essentially, "Go jump in a lake"—or as one Germany tabloid succinctly phrased it in a widely circulated headline:
As a result of South Africa's highest court rejecting a bid by the government to keep a ban on the sale of rhinoceros horn, it will soon be legal to buy and sell the land mammals' horns in the country.
