News

October 18, 2013

International Conference on Geoethics 2013 has been finished.  The conference was held as a part of the 52nd Symposium “The Mining Příbram in science and techniques” under the umbrella of the Working Group for Geoethics of the International Association for International Development (AGID). Altogether 30 persons from the Czech Republic, Italy, Japan, Poland, Russian Federation and Senegal attended the meeting. The authors or registered participants included also colleagues from Algeria, Bolgaria, India, Germany, Mongolia and the USA.

October 17, 2013

Reuters reported police in the eastern Canadian province of New Brunswick arrested about 40 people on Thursday after efforts to dismantle a highway barricade turned violent and protesters against shale gas exploration set several police vehicles on fire. The incident came in response to a weeks-long protest by activists and local aboriginals, who blocked a road near the town of Rexton to try to slow work by SWN Resources Canada, a subsidiary of Southwestern Energy Co, which is exploring shale gas properties in the area.

October 11, 2013

Prof Jesus Martínez-Frías (Spain), Chair of IUGS Commission on Geoscience Education, Training and Technology Transfer and President of IUGS Affiliate International Association for Geoethics (IAGETH) has been awarded a NASA Group Achievement Award (2013). This NASA Award is received as part of the "MSL REMS Instrument Development and Science Team" For exceptional achievement defining the REMS scientific goals and requirements, developing the instrument suite and investigation, and operating REMS successfully on Mars. This is the second NASA award received by Prof. Martínez-Frías.

October 07, 2013

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is likely to cancel the US Antarctic programme’s upcoming field season if the US government shutdown persists through mid-October -  jeopardizing hundreds of scientists’ work in glaciology, ecology and astrophysics. The agency has kept its three Antarctic research stations open during the initial days of the shutdown, which began on 1 October, under rules designed to protect human lives and US government property.

October 01, 2013

A seaquake of magnitude 6.1 occurred in the Okhotsk Sea off the western coast of Kamchatka, as reported to Itar-Tass by Kamchatka’s branch of the Geophysical Service of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The quake has been registered today at 15:39 local time (07:39 GMT). The epicenter was located 363 km south-west of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, at a depth of 642 kilometers under the sea. In some areas of the Kamchatka's regional center ground motion was felt at the power of up to 2 points. According to the regional emergency department, no victims and destructions were reported.

September 26, 2013

Minister of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation published the article «The cold calculations» in the newspaper «RBC Daily». Arctic is a leading region in the world on reserves and diversity of mineral raw materials. Most Russian deposits have been located in the Arctic zone - about 600 oil fields, more than 150 gas fields, two nickel deposits and more than 350 gold deposits. Arctic mineral resources ensure about 11% of Russia's national income and almost a quarter of total Russian export. Arctic is «resource crown» of our country.

September 25, 2013

Reuters said the death toll from a powerful earthquake in Pakistan rose to at least 208 on Wednesday after hundreds of mud houses collapsed on people in a remote area near the Iranian border, officials said. The earthquake struck Pakistan's thinly populated province of Baluchistan on Tuesday and was felt across South Asia. It destroyed houses and cut communications with the worst affected district of Awaran, and was so powerful that it caused a small island to emerge from the sea just off the coastline in the Arabian Sea.

September 20, 2013

A standoff between environmentalists and Russian authorities in the Arctic got a few degrees hotter Thursday, with Kalashnikov-toting men reportedly seizing a Greenpeace ship sailing under the Dutch flag, hours after Moscow announced it had handed the Dutch ambassador a diplomatic note expressing concern over the activists’ protest a day earlier. The armed men, believed to be Russian border guards, boarded the Arctic Sunrise icebreaker in international waters, Greenpeace said in a statement, adding that all 25 crew members had been forced into the mess hall at gunpoint and locked there.

September 19, 2013

Greenpeace said two its international activists have been arrested after climbing a Gazprom oil platform in the Russian Arctic (the Pechora Sea), during a peaceful protest that has prompted a disproportionate use of force by the Russian Coast Guard. There are now no climbers remaining on the platform, but the Greenpeace International icebreaker Arctic Sunrise remains in the area. The two are now in custody on the Coast Guard vessel.

September 18, 2013

Two Greenpeace activists scaled the Prirazlomnaya oil platform in the Pechora sea (the Arctic waters) in a fresh protest over the potential threat to the environment from operations slated to start by the end of the year. Production at the Gazprom-owned rig, Russia's first such project in the Barents Sea, was delayed last year after similar action. Gazprom put the delay down to "technical reasons." Hydrocarbon production in its vast offshore areas is seen by Russia as vital to maintaining oil output, the world's largest, at no less than 10 million barrels per day this decade.

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