Word: gao
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...More than 10,000 troops and close to 100,000 volunteers have been deployed to battle the algae, says Gao Zhenhui, director of the State Oceanic Administration's North China Sea Environmental Monitoring Center in Qingdao. "At first we didn't realize how big it would be," Gao says. "We didn't think it would happen so fast." Last June, Qingdao saw an algae blooms that covered 27 square miles, and a second one in September covered three square miles. But those are dwarfed by the current algae bloom, which covers 154 square miles...
...Once we saw how big it was we decided to organize the troops and the cleaning teams," Gao says...
...Algae-filled waters of Qingdao wouldn't mark the first time that debris-strewn seas have plagued Olympic water sports. Windsurfers complained of seaweed and pollution before the Barcelona Games in 1992. Still, Qingdao's green waters have triggered a massive official response. Gao says the cleaning teams have used boats to pull 100,000 tons of the seaweed from the water. Nets have been extended 40 to 50 miles into the ocean to contain the inflow, and four helicopters have been dispatched to direct clean-up boats. At the environmental monitoring center, employees have been working around the clock...
...mildly titled June 23 report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is a glass-half-empty study of the vexations that continue to hamper U.S. efforts in Iraq as the war enters its sixth summer. While the GAO doesn't contradict a Pentagon report that indicates violence in Iraq has dropped significantly, it claims the improvement is based on a rickety foundation provided by the now slowing U.S. troop surge, a creaky cease-fire with Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and a U.S.-led effort to recruit former insurgents for policing--not on any sustained reforms needed for lasting...
...conflict between the two reports was reflected in the press coverage they generated. Both the New York Times and Washington Post led with the bleak assessment contained in the GAO study, while the Wall Street Journal highlighted what it called a "generally upbeat assessment" of Iraq's current security and political situation. It relegated the GAO's findings to the final three paragraphs of a 17-paragraph story. But it did lead with bad news from the Pentagon report: claims that Iran continues to funnel money to militias inside Iraq, and that Tehran "may well pose the greatest long-term...