A year on from the earthquake of 22 February 2011 is a time for Christchurch to remember those lost and to look forward to the future with hope.

The public commemorative events on Wednesday 22 February 2012 are:

Service to mark the 1st anniversary of the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake
8am-8.45am, Latimer Square

This service is focused towards the families of those lost and first responders.  The public are welcome to attend. Members of the public can view the service on a large screen.

Civic Memorial Service
12 noon-1.30pm, North Hagley Park

This is a public event for the whole community. The service include musical accompaniment from Christchurch school children, the reading of the names of the 185 lost and an observance of two minutes’ silence at 12.51pm

Christchurch Earthquake Awards
2pm-4pm, North Hagley Park

This is a public event for the whole community where we recognise our earthquake heroes.

Mayor Bob Parker is pleased that there is a strong community focus to the commemorative events and hopes many Christchurch residents will come together on Wednesday 22 February.

“We experienced tremendous loss in 2011 and while it is important to remember those lost, we also need to look ahead to the future as a community.  The public commemorative events will provide us with the opportunity to collectively reflect on the events of the past year” he says.

The Civic Memorial Service is the main public commemorative event and many Christchurch residents are expected to attend.  To make travel around the city as easy as possible, the Council suggests residents take a bus, bike or walk to Hagley Park.  There will be limited parking areas as well as taxi and drop-off places.  For information about the bus timetable and route information visit www.metroinfo.co.nz

St Johns first aid will be in attendance and toilets will be on site.  Residents are asked to bring their own food, drinking water and a rug to sit on.  Alcohol is strictly prohibited at the event and there will be security on site to ensure public safety.

The Civic Memorial Service will go ahead rain or shine.  Residents are asked to check the weather reports in the morning and bring warm clothing and wet weather gear if needed.

For further information on the public events and community events throughout the city visit this page.

Residents of 13 U.S. states reported that they felt a magnitude 4.0 earthquake that occurred Tuesday in southeastern Missouri, said American Institute of Geophysics (USGS).

According to USGS, the earthquake occurred at 3.58 local time (11.58 GMT) with epicenter at 14.5 kilometers east-southeast of Sikeston, Missouri and 25.7 km southwest of Cairo, Illinois. The epicenter was located five kilometers deep, writes CNN.

The earthquake was felt in 13 states, the farthest place from the epicenter was in New Bern, North Carolina, from 1287 kilometers away, according to USGS. Besides those in Missouri, Illinois and North Carolina, residents of states Pennsylvania, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Wisconsin, Kansas, Arkansas and Oklahoma have also said they felt the earthquake.

A Japanese engineering contingent has arrived in South Sudan to join the United Nations peacekeeping mission in the young country and help build roads and bridges in areas with very little basic infrastructure.

Japanese engineers join UN mission to build roads and bridges in Juba, South Sudan. Photo: UNMISS

The group of 120 engineers from the Japanese Ground Self-Defence Force (GSDF) follows the arrival of an advance team of 34 logisticians from Japan last month, the mission (UNMISS) reported yesterday.

By next month a full contingent of 330 engineers will be in place, as will road rollers, excavators, bulldozers and water tankers.

South Sudan, which became independent from Sudan in July last year, has hardly any tarmacked roads or other basic infrastructure, a legacy in part of years of civil war in Sudan.

Colonel Toru Namatame, who heads the Japanese unit in UNMISS, said his team specialized in “horizontal engineering” and its main role would be constructing roads and bridges.

Hilde F. Johnson, the head of UNMISS and the Secretary-General’s Special Representative for South Sudan, voiced her gratitude to Japan for the new contingent.

“The arrival of the Japanese Engineering Contingent is a welcome addition to the mission and its efficiency will only strengthen our efforts to provide assistance to the new nation,” she said today.

Destructive floods caused by the rapid thawing of the Danube River could add to the fatalities from an already harsh European winter, the head of the United Nations agency dealing with disaster risk reduction warned today.

In a statement, Margareta Wahlström, the head of the secretariat of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), voiced concern for the consequences faced by those countries traversed by the Danube, whose sudden thaw is taking many by surprise.

“The thaw is now setting in along the Danube. While thousands of people remain snowbound from Serbia to Bulgaria, there are warning signs that destructive floods will add to the loss of life and economic assets particularly in places where there is an absence of flood management infrastructure such as dams and dikes,” Ms. Wahlström stated.

According to media reports, the quick thawing of Europe’s second longest river has sent massive ice floes careening into boats and bridges, causing widespread damage to river vessels. The cold front had previously frozen large tracts of the waterway, making it unnavigable in areas of Germany and the Balkans.

“This severe winter in which hundreds of people have died has highlighted several weaknesses in our built environment and our ability to prepare for worst–case scenarios,” Ms. Wahlström said. “Vulnerable communities across Europe have been cut off from transport, schools, health facilities and electricity in many cases.”

The cold spell which has paralyzed much of Europe also reportedly killed more than 300 people in Ukraine, Poland, France and Italy as extremely low temperatures and substantial snowfalls blanketed the continent.

Ms. Wahlström commended Bulgaria’s decision to inspect over 500 dams throughout the country and to release the water from some dams and reservoirs to contain the Danube’s eventual floodwaters.

However, she also urged governments to undertake better planning for the possibility of future extreme winter weather patterns

“The unpredictability of severe weather events leads to high human and financial costs,” she added. “More focus on winterisation planning will be a wise investment in the coming years.”

More of the EU’s broken fridges, phones and gadgets are set to be collected and recycled, following MEPs’ approval on Thursday of new targets agreed with Council. The update to Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) legislation offers consumers new possibilities to return small waste items to retailers and will also cut red tape for businesses.

“After difficult negotiations I am very satisfied that we have agreed ambitious but achievable collection rates with Council. Europe will now recover more raw materials, which is excellent news both for the economy and for the environment”, said rapporteur Karl-Heinz Florenz (EPP, DE) after the agreement was overwhelmingly approved in plenary by a show of hands.

Once Council formally approves the updated directive and it enters the EU lawbooks, Member States will have 18 months to update their national legislation.

Collection and recycling

All Member States must increase their collection of e-waste, regardless of whether they already meet the current flat-rate target of 4kg per person per year.

By 2016, most will have to collect 45 tonnes of e-waste for every 100 tonnes of e-goods put on sale three years previously. By 2019, this must rise to a rate of 65%, or alternatively they can collect a comparable figure of 85% of e-waste generated. Ten countries needing to improve their facilities will have an interim target of 40% and may take until 2021 to reach the final target.

To help everyone play their part, Parliament successfully argued that consumers should be allowed to return small items (such as mobile phones) to any larger electrical goods shop, without needing to buy a new product.

Better processing will help to recover more valuable raw materials and prevent harmful substances going to landfill. Recycling rates will need to rise to 80% for some categories of goods. The best recycling techniques should be used and products should be designed to be recycled more easily.

E-waste exports

MEPs also negotiated tighter controls on illegal shipments, to prevent e-waste being processed in countries where conditions are often hazardous to workers and the environment. The burden of proof moves from customs officials to exporters, who must properly demonstrate in future that goods are being shipped for repair or reuse as appropriate.

Cutting red tape

Producers of e-goods will continue to contribute financially towards meeting processing targets. They will benefit from simplified registration and reporting requirements and will be able to appoint representatives instead of needing to establish a legal seat in each country where they operate. New measures will prevent double charging of registration fees within Member States.

Source: European Parliament

World Water Day – 22 March 2012

UN-WATER and UN-HABITAT are coordinating this year’s World Water Day activities globally.

There are 7 billion people to feed on the planet today and another 2 billion are expected to join by 2050. Statistics say that each of us drinks from 2 to 4 litres of water every day, however most of the water we ‘drink’ is embedded in the food we eat: producing 1 kilo of beef for example consumes 15,000 litres of water while 1 kilo of wheat ’drinks up’ 1,500 litres.

When a billion people in the world already live in chronic hunger and water resources are under pressure we cannot pretend the problem is ‘elsewhere’. Coping with population growth and ensuring access to nutritious food to everyone call for a series of actions we can all help with:

• consume less water-intensive products;
• reduce the scandalous food wastage: 30% of the food produced worldwide is never eaten and the water used to produce it is definitively lost!
• produce more food, of better quality, with
  less water;
• follow a healthier diet.

(Helmholtz Association of German Research Centres) Global warming is having an effect on the dive behavior and search for food of southern elephant seals.

(Oregon State University) As oceans warm due to climate change, water layers will mix less and affect the microbes and plankton that pump carbon out of the atmosphere – but researchers say it’s still unclear whether these processes will further increase global warming or decrease it. It could be either, they say.

(University of Colorado at Boulder) Earth’s glaciers and ice caps outside of the regions of Greenland and Antarctica are shedding roughly 150 billion tons of ice annually, according to a new study led by the University of Colorado Boulder.

(Simon Fraser University) Lynne Quarmby, a Simon Fraser University cell biologist with a passion for promoting science, will deliver a talk to 30-top flight American high school science students and their teachers about the importance of basic science. Quarmby will be the keynote speaker at the Feb. 16 AJAS meeting at SFU Burnaby. It strategically brings together the crème de la crème of young American science students during the AAAS meeting in Vancouver.