The captain and the navigation officer of a container ship that smashed into a reef off a popular New Zealand holiday resort were jailed on Friday for causing the country's worst environmental disaster in decades.

The two men, captain Mauro Balomaga and navigation officer Leonil Relon, both Filipino nationals, were jailed for seven months. They had faced maximum terms of seven years imprisonment.

The Department of Environment (DoE) yesterday fined a dyeing factory in Gazipur Tk 14 lakh for not setting up Effluent Treatment Plant (ETP) even 21 months after the factory owner promised to set up the ETP.

The DoE fined the owner of the factory, Ema Cintex Ltd, and also ordered to keep its production shut. It also rebuked its owner Modabber Hossain, said a DoE press release.

The factory has been dumping untreated chemical wastes into the river Turag and polluting the river severely, it added.

The owner has been promising to set up ETP since October 5, 2010.

Devolution of more powers to panchayats in the management of national rural drinking water mission and the issues of arsenic and shortage of drinking water will figure prominently at the two-day national conference of state ministers of rural drinking water supply and sanitation beginning in New Delhi tomorrow.

Bathing ghats remain dilapidated; mosquitoes find breeding ground

Though the temple town of Kumbakonam is blessed with the Cauvery, the glory of the river seems to be slowly dwindling with it being turned into a cesspool during summer and dumping yard for plastics and other wastes. Senior citizens feel that the river could be put into good recreational use by converting it into a boating paradise when it is in full flow.

Some officials of the Water Board seem to have found an easy way to solve the problem of water contamination in the city. Citizens complain that they have received SMSes from officials stating that the water pollution complaints lodged by them have been attended to and the problem solved.

“I was shocked to receive the SMS on my mobile phone stating that the water pollution problem in my area has been solved. How is it possible when no official has visited my area? What’s more, I am the complainant and none of the officials contacted me to even cross check or confirm whether the water pollution complaint has been attended to before sending me that SMS,” said C. Shankar, a resident of Old Ghansmandi.

The mystery surrounding the deaths of at least 877 dolphins in Peru deepened on Wednesday as the government said human activity was not to blame but failed to pinpoint a natural cause for the massive die-off.

A final report from the Peruvian government's Ocean Institute, which manages one of the world's richest marine ecosystems, said the dolphins did not die from a lack of food, hunting by fishermen, poison from pesticides, heavy metal contamination, an infection or a virus.

Shortly before Thanksgiving in 2010, the leaders of the commission President Obama had appointed to investigate the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico sat down in the Oval Office to brief him.

After listening to their findings about the BP accident and the safety of deepwater drilling, the president abruptly changed the subject.

“Where are you coming out on the offshore Arctic?” he asked.

Public sector Hathazari Peking Power Plant (HPPP) was fined of Tk.10 lakh for alleged pollution of the water of Halda River recently through dumping effluents of the plant. Department of Environment, Chittagong announced this penalty to HPPP for polluting and destroying the fish spawn in the only fish breeding centre of South Asia in current season .

Bhopal Gas Tragedy Relief and Rehabilitation Minister Shri Babulal Gaur called on Union Urban Development Minister Shri Kamalnath here today and handed over to him an action plan chalked out for Narmada River’s conservation by the State Urban Administration & Development Department. He demanded funds to the tune of Rs. 1298.87 crore for solid waste management, sewerage, construction of rain-fed drains and nullahs, cleanliness and plantation.

Environmental scientists have known that high levels of the toxic element, mercury, have been accumulating in the Arctic Ocean for some time. It was believed to be mostly caused by atmospheric sources stemming from the combustion of coal. However, a new study from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Harvard School of Public Health has found that the great majority of Arctic mercury arrives via circumpolar rivers. Some of the largest rivers in the world flow north into the Arctic in Eurasia and North America.