Word: coastal
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...Algiers bore a similar Al Qaeda earmark, experts say: while targeting foreigners, it maximized the death toll by claiming as many people from the local Muslim population as possible. By contrast, while the eight people killed and 19 injured in the August 10 suicide car bombing in the coastal town of Zemmouri el Bahri were all Algerian, AQIM claimed responsibility for the attack by describing its victims as "the sons of France and the slaves of America". The message being that anyone not supporting the AQIM cause - foreign or Muslim - represent the same enemy...
Over the past two or three decades, scientists have noticed with growing alarm that vast stretches of coastal waters are turning into dead zones - patches of seabed so depleted of oxygen that few creatures, if any, can survive there. In 2004, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) took stock of the phenomenon - which is caused in large part by agricultural runoff - and pronounced it one of the biggest environmental problems of the 21st century. Two years later it noted that the number of identified dead zones, some of which cover thousands of square miles, had climbed from...
That's bad news for fish - and for the people who eat them. Much of the world's fish supply is already troubled due to overfishing, dying reefs and the disappearance of marshland, mangrove forests and other coastal environments that serve as breeding grounds and nurseries for many valuable species. Biologists haven't been able to figure out how much oxygen depletion alone contributes to the decline of teetering fisheries - the question is hotly debated in marine-science circles these days - but few experts would disagree that an increase in dead zones can only be a detriment...
...cheap or easy to implement. But, as Diaz's study suggests, the consequences of inaction might prove infinitely more expensive. "The oceans are vast and they cover most of the Earth's surface," notes Howarth. "But what people mostly care about in the oceans is largely in these coastal areas. That's where the most productive fisheries are, and where people recreate. And that's where people are overfishing, and where dead zones are developing...
...cultural upbringing, Tipoti spent time with a Torres Strait elder and linguist, the late Ephraim Bani. "Through his teaching I learned that our western island language is connected to the Cape York and northern Aboriginal people," he recalls, "and the eastern island language is connected to the coastal villages of Papua New Guinea. Adding to that, our language is very strongly connected to all the Pacific islands. We're part of that network. And that's why I'm really proud to be part of events like this...