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Dear Reader,
June 8 is World Oceans Day - a growing global celebration of the big blue body of life that covers 71 percent of the earth's surface.
"The ocean makes life on Earth possible," reads the 2006 United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) publication "Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Deep Waters and High Seas." Generating nearly half of the oxygen in the atmosphere, the ocean "absorbs huge quantities of carbon dioxide, governs our climate and weather, regulates temperature, drives planetary chemistry, harbors most of the water and contains the greatest abundance and diversity of life on Earth."
This World Ocean's Day, revisit The WIP's archives to read our interview last year with Sarah-Mae Nelson, the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Climate Change Interpretive Specialist, and discover how so much of the plastic that is either recycled or thrown away eventually ends up in the ocean. READ
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BYLINE PORTAL HIGHLIGHT
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Syrian War Profiteers Cash In on Insurgency
by Nadia Bitar, Der Spiegel, Germany
EU sanctions were designed to undermine rich businesspeople propping up the Assad regime in Syria. But they are actually helping entrepreneurs with close ties to the government. Syrian profiteers are cashing in by buying up real estate at bargain prices and selling natural gas and diesel....READ
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CURRENT HEADLINE
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Insight: In Greece, a painful return to country roots
(Reuters) Thirteen years after abandoning rural Greece for a career in graphic design, Spiridoula Lakka finds herself in the last place she expected to end up - watering a patch of lettuce and herbs in her sleepy village...READ |
THE WIP TALK
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| On Monday, Cesar Chelala published a moving post on The WIP Talk about the Houla massacre on May 25 - an 'unforgettable and unforgivable tragedy in Syria' that left over 100 Syrian villagers, mostly women and children, dead. Cesar posts the question, "Who are responsible for these terrible actions?" and calls on the killers to remember a famous poem by Pablo Neruda related to the Spanish civil war...READ |
