Rio Gears Up For Green Fireworks
This year’s New Year’s Eve fireworks on Rio’s famed Copacabana beach, an event expected to draw nearly two million party-goers, will have an environmental theme, officials said.
Philippines Floods: An Expected Shock
The typhoon that hit Mindanao in the Philippines before Christmas to claim 1,000 lives and leave nearly 50,000 homeless was a shock, but not a surprise. In 2009, campaigners and scientists simulated the effects of a tropical storm on the island, and predicted that the two coastal cities of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan would be hit by flash floods. At the time, the prediction was dismissed as alarmist.